Friends are Electric

My greatest concern, and perhaps the concern of a great number of citizens, is the utilitarian nature of our systems. This utilitarianism is built into the core of, perhaps is axiomatic of, our capitalist systems. Indeed it is extremely difficult to conceive of a way of running a capitalist system after discarding utilitarianism. The system is utilitarian because it reduces everything to a dollar figure. One of the greatest advantages of money is just this, the ability to be a universal language of exchange. But it is also a flaw, a very dangerous one. An example: consider the recent British Petroleum Gulf of Mexico oil spill. We need oil. We need jobs. Both create wealth. We need wealth. We need growth. By drilling a well there we have silently decided that wealth is worth the risk of destruction of an entire ecosystem. Another: in the name of jobs and wealth we strip mine a coal seem in the side of a mountain. The mountain itself had no intrinsic monetary value so by mining it the capitalist good is served. We have decided that our present comfort is more important than the landforms which were destroyed, never to exist again. Of course we do need energy. We need food. The utilitarian requirements of human life demand these actions. We value our instantaneous desires over anything long term. That we have destroyed something, thus depriving our children from experiencing it, never enters into the equation. The mountain has potential value as a coal source and nothing more.

Another example: sustenance farmers are removed from the land because their work is `unproductive’ and sent to cities to get `productive’ jobs in a factory. Here again we see the utilitarian values our society worships so highly possessing the best intentions and leading to the worst results. We of course want to provide these people a better way of life, or so we tell ourselves. This type of transformation is usually followed by plantation farming by large corporations, who sell to us and are therefore productive in a utilitarian sense. And of course large populations of unskilled labour make excellent sources of cheap labour for our imports. From our utilitarian standpoint, its a victory. The sustenance farmer makes no wage but now has one, so on paper his quality of life is improved. Their land is no longer `wasted’ on unproductive activities, like feeding the farmer’s family, and we are free to buy the surplus of our more efficient activities. The country in question has improved exports, improving their situation on paper. None of this is so from a more grounded viewpoint, but by utilitarianism it is a victory.

Getting beyond utilitarianism to a system which places value in a more balanced and reasonable way is difficult. What is the dollar value of a mountain? How much is the wetland worth? How much wealth does a sustenance farmer produce? Proposals for better systems are out there, many focus on human happiness or comparable things. This is much more difficult to measure than GDP and is by necessity more subjective. Has our increasing GDP over the past forty years made us happier, or just focused us more strongly on consumerism?

Douglas Adams, in his unique style, described the problem in this way: “This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.” The use of had, for anyone who has not read The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, is because the Earth was destroyed moments before, not because a solution was presented.

I have no answers, no solutions. Perhaps that is just as well. I have a principle, however. It is my rebellion against the system. I’ll live, as best I can, in a way that my children, children’s children, etc., could live in an identical way if they so choose. It is insufficient. It will changing nothing of the destructive nature of a utilitarian based society. But its a start.