No economic system has lasted forever. And I
imagine that some day, when historians are studying the rise and
fall of capitalism, they might look back at Glenn Beck's 2010
Earth Day meltdown as a seminal moment — an exemplar for how
capitalism created the post-truth society that seems destined to
doom its ability to function.
Though it was only 8 years ago, we have largely forgotten how
far-right firebrand Glenn Beck essentially prophesied the brand
of spite politics that animates much of the right today. On his
radio show, Beck gleefully shared with his listeners his plans
to turn on as many lights as possible in his home during Earth
Hour, and to intentionally pollute as much as possible on Earth
Day. "I'm going to burn garbage in my backyard with Styrofoam,"
Beck told a caller on his April 22, 2010 radio program. "Have
you cut down your Earth Day tree yet and put it in your living
room? It's great. I decorate mine with heat lamps, but that's a
different story," he bragged. "You know, in our Earth Day, what
we've decided to do is turn on every light in the studio because
we have some cockroaches to expose tonight in the bright light."
Consider, for a moment, the kind of political position one must
take in order to find joy and purpose in willfully burning
something as caustic as Styrofoam in one's yard. Such an act has
no functional purpose, besides spite; yet Beck seems to believe
it is his individual choice — his individual freedom, he
believes (or is told to believe), and that burning Styrofoam is
somehow as American as apple pie.
Beck, of course, doesn't own the atmosphere. We all have to
breathe the same one. Hence, the chemicals released in the
burning of these toxic synthetic plastics spread across the
planet in short order; we have all inhaled their carcinogens by
now.
If future historians look back at this moment, surely they will
marvel at what kind of confused ideological belief system could
compel someone to do something so selfish and, frankly, stupid.
Yet capitalism begat this culture, this notion that we alone
have the individual right to do whatever we want with our time,
money, or our lighters — even (or especially) if it hurts
others. Capitalism, to function, requires us to collectively
deny the sheer idea of the collective good. As Margaret Thatcher
once said, "There's no such thing as society. There are
individual men and women and there are families."
As Beck and Thatcher eloquently illustrated in very different
ways, the ideological core of late capitalism is the supremacy
of the belief in one's individual beliefs and actions —
regardless of how they make others suffer, or are morally or
factually wrong. The celebration of individualism in all its
forms — including behavior, dress and actions — is intrinsic to
this epoch of capitalism, exemplified in social media.
This culture of hyper-individualism undergirds so much of modern
consumer society. Indeed, there is an argument that some
theorists have floated that neoliberal capitalism requires us to
have the maximum degree of consumer freedom, yet almost no
economic or political freedom. Countries like Singapore and the
United Arab Emirates are the ultimate models of this: capitalist
paradises with authoritarian governments. But this political
model also exists in most of the so-called liberal democracies,
many of which are functionally authoritarian in that the rich
essentially choose and fund politicians, and hence said
politicians almost always advocate for policies that benefit
their rich benefactors at the expense of everyone else.
Neoliberalism is so normalized that the left (and right) are
laughed at when they push back against it. It is as water is to
a fish.
If you take this culture of hyper-individualism to its extreme,
one might come to believe that we have the right to believe
whatever we want, to — even if those beliefs are immediately
provably untrue. There's been "mission creep" with capitalist
culture's idea of what freedom means. Freedom to believe in
one's own, individual universe; freedom to pick and choose
facts, and discard those that are disagreeable.
We are now seeing this result of this mission creep in the
emergence of the post-truth society. We've been encouraged by a
marketing apparatus to embody our own individual whims — to buy
what we want, see what we want, do what we want, as though all
of this was our right. Thus, that we would believe whatever we
want isn't much further of a stretch. Believe in astrology.
Believe in a flat Earth. Believe that vaccines are a toxic plot.
Believe that everything leader Trump says is right is right, and
that all conspiracies are true simultaneously.
My slightly shocking proposition, then, is this: what if
capitalism, ultimately, has created its own undoing by
normalizing a post-truth society? Capitalism was forged from the
Enlightenment; driven by science, liberalism and rationalism,
capitalism found its power and became the dominant economic
system on the planet. But ironically, it seems to have hit an
end stage; rationalism cannot survive in a post-truth epoch.
Post-truth is contrary to rationalism itself.
The modern-day levers that make corporations function won't work
if their employees and executives don't believe that their
figures are real, or if they don't believe in the quantitative
data that runs through their spreadsheets. Shipping lanes won't
work if their planners think the Earth is flat. As more and more
citizens fall into a post-truth morass, the aspects of trade
that rely on rational thought may cease to function well.
This proposition is a contrarian take on the origins of
post-truth. Many on the center and right believe that
"postmodern" professors (a vague term, and I disagree with how
they wield it) have somehow perpetuated this lazy relationship
with truth, by promoting some sort of multipolar view of truth.
Others blame the sort of drug-induced counterculture ideologies
embodied in writers like Carlos Castañeda, whose literature
depicted a reality that was hazy and self-determined.
Those movements may have sprung from the same fount of late
capitalism, however — and its tendency to tie individualism with
one's belief system. You can draw a line, I think, from Milton
Friedman's depressingly shallow view of human nature to our
post-truth problems.
If we — meaning those of us who live in the Western World, and
Americans especially — can tilt back towards a more social and
less individualistic self-conception, we may yet save ourselves.
But it probably would mean that capitalism would have to end, or
be transformed beyond recognition. |
