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We all do it and it is happening more often most of the time. The ‘Me’ filter: Perceiving life self-obsessively. Some religious folk point to the popular demise of the Christian ethos – a cultivated concern with the welfare of others. Now, not every Christian was genuinely any good at this lifestyle orientation but it was widely proselytised at the time. These days, more of us are openly much more devoted to self-interest in all walks of life. What’s in it for me? Is asked at the ballot box and elsewhere in our negotiations and dealings with work, life and play.
The Focus Is On “Me’ & Not Much Else
Parents ask this on behalf of their kids and other family members. Thus, the selfish ring of interest is extended somewhat in this way. On a cultural evolutionary scale we have been narrowing our focus over the millennia. Patriarchs and their family tribes used to be the units of sociological measurement back in the Bronze Age, when the monotheistic religions were born. That these ancient cultural manifestations are still with us in codified forms, although morphed into new translations, is fascinating in itself. Judaism, early Christianity, and Islam were fundamentally family affairs. Individuality is a fairly recent phenomena in time’s view.
Individuality vs The Public Good
The ’Me” filter is worn with pride in the United States of America. Libertarianism struts about on the white skinned stage in the US. There is no such thing as excessive wealth in the land of the free, where oppressed folk are free to be dirt poor in silence. History and the education curriculum are free to be so full of holes and omissions that few remember what happened last week let alone in prior years. Public discourse is limited to a despised subsection of liberal intellectuals. Anti-elitism is as American as apple pie. Hollywood is a fictional filter full of cartoonish superheroes fighting representations of everything that doesn’t matter. Technology is the realm of excitement, where Silicon Valley technocrats invest in monopolistic ventures to grow billionaires at the expense of everyone else. Humanity has been turned into digital screen watching idiots whilst real life passes us by. The ‘Me’ filter: Perceiving life self-obsessively.
The Digital ‘Me’
‘Me’ may be an online profile, an avatar, a digital record of a fading human being. AI is the revolutionary new thing; we are all to get excited about. The replacement of humans with a synthetic rendition of limited intelligence. We all know that these machines are not as smart as us, but these LLM trained AI bots are going to take our jobs. Why? Because billionaire investors involved in a high tech race have deemed it so. The market is excited about it, which means billion dollar bets on companies involved. The rest of us sheep are heading docilely to the slaughterhouse of our dreams. In a similar way, drones and automated warfare are taking over our militaries. Again, we have no say in this, as there is another high tech arms race occurring around the globe. Ukraine is the testing ground for many of these deadly high tech toys. Gaza and Lebanon are new sites now opening up for further mass killing of humans in the testing of these automated devices of mass destruction. Nobody is really talking about this; our media is too busy apportioning blame in the culture wars and provoking their viewers to take sides. Folks at home are busy wondering how their self-obsession with ’Me’ relates to these wars and what side they should be on.
The Limited Power Of Little You
The ’Me’ filter: Perceiving life self-obsessively at a superficial level. We are encouraged to be passionate about the material stuff we consume. To define ourselves via the cars we drive, phones we use, clothes we wear, and the homes we live in. Hand held devices display images of stuff we aspire to possess. The financialization of all aspects of our lives has seen private equity make everything about profit. Houses are no longer shelter but major investment assets. Hospitals and healthcare are run according to shareholder profitability ROIs. Aged care is real estate, where property developers and facility management firms subsume care as an inconvenient cost to be minimised. Corporations don’t pay much tax despite generating multibillion dollar profits every year. The wealthy amass capital which is hardly taxed, as income and consumption taxes strip the poor of their modest incomes. The middle class has been shrinking, as many join the working poor and a few move up into a wealthier category. Aspirational politics are actively promoted by parties on the right, as they blame economic woes on immigrants and other marginalised groups. It is easier to punch down upon the weak than stand up to the rich and corporate world. Big money buys power and influence to the detriment of the growing poor. It is not a new story; indeed, it has been going on for centuries. Political and cultural leaders promulgate a story about equal opportunity and meritocracy – the statistical evidence proves this is a lie. The BS about self-made success stories ignores the fact that this occur as frequently as someone winning the lottery. The odds of which are around:
| Powerball – winning first division (getting all seven numbers and the Powerball correct) | 1 in 134,490,400 | $3,000,000 – $15,000,000 |
| Set for Life – winning first division (getting all seven numbers correct) | 1 in 38,320,568 | $20,000 a month for 20 years |
If you work hard and overcome lots of obstacles your odds of achieving this kind of success is roughly one in 50 million. Good luck with that! If you were born into a very wealthy family the chances of you going to the right schools, university, and getting the economic opportunity to shine are, incredibly, much, much better. Wealth is hardly taxed in this country and the trend has been to reduce progressive taxes, which were designed to even the playing field. Neoliberalism has ushered in a period of capital protection for the rich – funny that, whilst consumption taxes and income taxes unfairly place the burden of tax on the working poor. Governments have been bought off by the wealthy and the majority of us are blind to what goes on and do not read the fine print in any legislation passed. The co-opting of aspirational voters is a strategy of the wealthy. No estate taxes despite their estates being worth billions whilst yours are worth way less – but they never impose any limits on these laws, no they impose flat rates for all. They hide in this – we are all in this together BS! Australians are famously stupid, too busy watching sport, while their elected representatives and senior public servants do deals with multinational corporations which wildly favour these companies. Miners don’t pay hardly any tax and in some cases bugger all royalties. These resource ministers and their lackeys often end up with high paying jobs in these firms after they leave office – funny that. The Minerals Council of Australia, which is made up of foreign owned multinationals runs PR campaigns telling us how lucky we are to be a mineral’s rich nation. Meanwhile, most of us are wondering how come we can’t afford to pay the rent, mortgage, or shop at Coles or Woolworths for our weekly food. Yeah, all that resource wealth is not going to us.
“In the last four years alone, Australians have given away the gas that made $149 billion worth of LNG, for free,” the Australia Institute report said. “$111 billion worth of this royalty-free LNG was produced in Western Australia.”
ACT senator David Pocock said the loss of royalty revenue was “daylight robbery” by “the gas industry that is not paying royalties, (and) not paying petroleum resources rent tax for offshore LNG exports”.
Me Is Much Less Than Them
We have been sold a pup, scammed, conned and kept in the dark. Thinking about our selves makes us small and inconsequential, when up against a corporation. The ‘Me’ filter: Perceiving life self-obsessively. Neoliberalism attacked the unions because of this and ran a sustained union bashing narrative over many years. Because it is easier to rip off individuals than take on a bunch of us. You know that old Kung Fu story about breaking one stick is easy but breaking a bunch of sticks is much harder. Enter the rise of labour hire firms making everybody a casual, even though they work full time at the same job 5 days a week. No sick pay, no holiday pay and you can be dismissed at any time. This, we were told makes us better off because it pays a slight increase on the hourly rate. However, if you do the figures over the long haul this is not the case, especially if you get sick or are sacked. Big business wins and the workers get shafted, which is how the neoliberal economists like it. The worker and the labour force take all the risk for a very small insecure hourly rate increase. Funny that all these corporations are making record profits during a cost of living and housing crisis. Seems like the system has been set up to punish one side and protect the company. How come rich countries cannot afford to look after their citizens? Rising interest rates hurt the poor and benefit the rich.
Mostly they end up causing an economic recession and workers lose their jobs. Small businesses go bust and all you are left with our duopolies of giant companies and no competition in the sectors. Sounds like Australia.
Little You Has No Buying Power
If we all continue to selfishly focus on our own small economic realities the inequality will keep expanding. The ‘Me’ filter: Perceiving life self-obsessively. If we keep believing this neoliberal narrative about business and the market knowing best the society of the fair go will be a distant memory. If we elect timid governments incapable of actually doing anything but meekly acquiesce to big business things are just going to get worse. We need to resurrect the public good and reestablish shared wealth in state run assets. The neoliberal story supports corruption via insider wealth transfers. If markets knew best we would not have homeless families living in tents around our cities. The market looks after the wealthy and the powerful because they buy influence. Qantas has been a disgrace in its behaviour toward Australians at the behest of its corporate management. The federal government bailed out Qantas with our tax dollars. The Commonwealth Bank has been prosecuted multiple times for offences.
“Criminal charges have today been filed against the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) in the Federal Court for the mis-selling of consumer credit insurance.”
“The head of the Commonwealth Bank, Ian Narev, has apologised for the findings, acknowledging that poor advice had caused “financial loss and distress” to customers. The bank has so far paid out $52 million in compensation to affected customers and has pledged to undertake an in-house review into the advice its financial planners gave to customers between 2006 and 2010.”
These huge companies have vast concentrations of market share and you would think that this would be enough. You would be wrong, as they break the law to screw further wealth out of their customers at every opportunity. This is the neoliberal ethos, the mood of the times, as their lobbyists push for further deregulation to enhance profitability at every juncture. The previous LNP federal government slashed the public service and shifted huge wealth to the private sector via the PwC, KPMG, Ey, and Deloitte consultancy quartet. This provided Morrison with less transparency of government to worry about. The private sector is not accountable like the public service. Tens of billions of dollars flooded into the private hands of insider mates running these firms.
Ever wondered about the explosion of billionaires in Australia and how it happened?
Neoliberal Policies Foster Corruption
Corruption accompanies neoliberalism likes flies on shit. The rise of Donald Trump to the presidency in America. The fall of the Soviet Union saw Trump in Russia, who had already formed a relationship with the Russian mafia selling them condos in Trump Tower. Money laundering in real estate is big business and continues unabated by any pesky regulation in Australia to this day. The oligarchs in Russia were created by neoliberal economic policies which saw the transfer of state assets of enormous wealth potential transferred into the hands of mob bosses and Putin puppets.
This was the gift of the West, of the Republican leadership, to the new Russia – it was poisoned right from the start. Crooks like Trump were there, on the ground floor, to encourage corruption and greed to flourish.
If you look at America right now and if the polls can be believed the race for the presidency is tight. This means that half of voting age Americans are fine to elect a career criminal to the highest office in the land. Because everyone knows who Donald Trump is. Do not give me any crap about folk not buying the facts about Trump. They all know the kind of man he is. This is the place America finds itself in 2024. America is the birthplace of this neoliberal toxic stew. A land of extreme inequality. A violent place where way too many folk act first and think about stuff hardly at all. Guns, endemic racism, bullies, and the other half of the country trying to pull it out of this spiral into chaotic destruction. I hope Kamala Harris can prevail and that Trump MAGA quietly goes away. However, that may just be wishful thinking.
A civil war may once again be on the cards if the Union is to be preserved.
The ‘Me’ filter: Perceiving life self-obsessively ends up in the hands of manipulating neoliberal forces. We are playing into their hands if we primarily focus on enriching ourselves without one eye on the public good. Community has to be as important and more important in some instances. The pandemic is a good example of this, as public health policies grappled with a new contagion of unknown ramifications. I have met quite a few folk who have disappeared down rabbit holes since the advent of the global pandemic. Sure, public officials may have made some mistakes but largely they got it right. Individual freedoms have to be quashed during national crises. Private citizens do not get to do whatever they want when the community as a whole is threatened. People get scared when their mortality is at risk and we all react in different ways but the state is there to hold the line. I don’t agree with everything that was done and how relief was distributed via employers but decisions had to be made and enacted quickly. We learn from our mistakes hopefully. The misinformation and disinformation on social media remains a problem but we live in a democracy where our norms entertain a level of freedom of speech. The fact that many folk are too lazy to verify source material online – where information comes from and what agenda is behind it – continues to foster lies and conspiracy theories to the detriment of social cohesion. The Internet is all about information and finding primary sources should be the responsibility of all users. I studied academically as an historian, so got training in this regard, but we all need to learn how to verify and qualify the stuff we read online. The government should be issuing warnings about this and running PR campaigns to that effect. People go on about rights but with rights come responsibilities too. Freedom of speech should not mean the freedom to spread lies and disinformation. We all have to become historians researching the information we consume in real time. Social media will become a sewer of gossip and fictions if it has not already done so. The talk is about banning kids from social media but its destructive reach is damaging our democratic institutions and social cohesiveness, as we speak. Elon Musk, via his purchase of Twitter and turning it into X, seems hell bent on accelerating the collapse of societies. Witness his damaging behaviour in fanning flames during the race riots in the UK. Apparently, accelerationism is a thing, a movement of sorts, which seeks to bring down the current societal and economic structures as we know them. The tech billionaires, some of them, see themselves as oligarchs with the potential power to remake the world in a vision of their own undertaking. Musk and Peter Thiel grew up exposed to a white supremacist apartheid South Africa. That they are right wing fascist financial supporters of Donald Trump is of real concern in terms of the influence they can wield. The culture wars, which are split along gender lines to a great degree, are more than Internet fodder. The progressive vs radical conservative fight is about which philosophies will prevail in the world. Real inclusiveness or a stubborn white male holding onto power period is at stake. Crooks like Trump and Putin prevailing or something new and fresh.
The United States has never had a woman president, that fact alone tells you something about power and the status quo.
Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump.
©MidasWord
