The economy of wants manages to completely disregard what we need. The reason we maintain this economy of wants, even when we know it's detrimental to the very basics of life and liberty, is because it's the best we can do.
source: Flickr
And it's the best we can do because it's just the way we humans operate; it's human nature. This is the argument so often used against people who dare to think about another way to organize our economy. These ideas are just of no use to us, because who would want to go against human nature? It's written in our genes through millions of years of evolution, the game with one rule only: survival of the fittest.
"Don't you know that the strong survive and the weak perish? What's all this loser-talk about cooperation and community? We've tried all that and it failed miserably! Now go away and join your communist Marxist friends far away from here and leave us be in our free market capitalism where anyone who works hard can have all they want!"
And that's usually the end of it. Capitalism is like the weather, it just is. Ranting against capitalism is like ranting against the rain; completely lunatic and with no chance of success. The only tiny problem I have with this is that it's totally wrong, in every way conceivable.
There Is No Human Nature. And to claim otherwise is to diminish what it means to be human. Period. Do you all know the story about Hansel and Gretel? If not, there's a quick refresher-course linked below this post ;-)
Hansel and Gretel is quite a horror-story to tell kids when you think about it. But like so many fairy tales, this one also has connections to historical truths; in medieval times kids were sometimes brought to the woods to be left there. These kids would on rare occasions be found by wolves or other animals and were "raised" to adapt their societal behavior. Here's a possible source for the character of "Mowgli" in "Jungle Book":
Often known as the "Wolf Boy", Dina Sanichar was first discovered in 1867, after a band of hunters spied what they initially thought was a wild animal sleeping in the mouth of a cave in Bulandshahr district, India. When the men finally smoked the creature out its hiding place, they were astonished to find it was actually a boy of around 6 years old. The child appeared to have been living in the wilderness for most of his life, and had allegedly survived by scampering on all fours with a pack of wolves. The hunters brought the boy to the Sikandra Mission Orphanage in Agra, where he was taken in and named Dina Sanichar. Missionaries spent the next several years trying to rehabilitate the "Wolf Boy", but years in the wild had taken their toll. Sanichar never learned to talk before his death in 1895, and he preferred to gnaw on bones and dine on raw animal meat rather than cooked food. Some have since suggested that his story may have inspired the feral boy character "Mowgli" in Rudyard Kipling's "Jungle Book" stories.
source: 6 Famous Wild Children from History (history.com)
Humans are the most flexible, the most adaptable creatures on the planet and our ability to communicate and cooperate has landed us on top of every food-chain we know of. Working together has made us masters of the planet. Prehistoric men and women didn't eat meat from big animals because they hunted alone. What they did was organize behind a common goal. Look, we're not strong, we don't have the best hearing or eyesight, we're certainly not the fastest; what we've got going for us is language to communicate with, and social structures, planning and organization, that's how we conquered the rest of nature. We might say it's our communist tendencies that gave us the head start in our rise to total domination of all life on earth. That woolly mammoth or saber-tooth tiger was no match for one man and his spear or stones. But many men and women together could make a whole lot of noise and drive the beast into a pit they collectively dug, stone and spear the animal to death and share the meat afterwards. Very Marxist of those early humans.
Also in the small history of our own upbringing we're essentially raised on communist principles, or at least what we would now call communist. In kindergarten we're taught to not fight, not argue, share, wait our turn and not cut in line. All very decent, all very non-capitalistic. But then, some day something happens to totally confuse the kids. Two kids, let's say a boy and a girl, are playing together in a sand box, with their fathers watching. The boy brought his plastic shuffle and maybe a bucket, and the girl brought a toy truck, to transport the sand away. They're playing peacefully, but at some point the boy says that he really likes the truck. The girl doesn't really care about all that stuff and happily agrees to trade the truck for the shovel and bucket.
Capitalism is about to teach those kids a lesson when the girl's father shouts at her something like: "Whoah, sweety, not so fast. Take back your truck and give little Jimmy his shovel back. Are you crazy? I bought that truck only last week for 20 bucks and that shovel plus bucket can't have cost more than 8 or 9, so we don't make that trade honey!" The boy's father agrees with a look at his boy that says as much as "don't worry, we grown-ups are like that but you'll get your own truck soon". And BAM! The first steps to conforming to the desired human nature are taken. Welcome to capitalism, where togetherness, shared responsibilities and shared spaces are a thing of the past. The boy and girl now know that there's no need to share, and they'll get what they want without.
Not everybody raises their kids this way of course, but I bet many of you recognize this story in one way or another. We are all set on a path to believe that we're essentially alone in this world and that all other people are essentially our opponents. Social Darwinism is today's excuse to refer to some implied and inherent set of traits we call human nature. We believe that evolution has led us to an unchangeable mental complexion with greed as it's main ingredient. The Bible adds to that by asserting that we're inherently evil, sinners by nature, that need to live humble lifes in order to be able to apply for eternal bliss after death. That's our western "Judaeo-Christian" ethics in a nutshell: a sure recipe to keep the masses content with the failing status-quo as long as they get enough of what they want and keep their focus away from what they need.
There is no such thing as human nature. We adapt according to our surroundings and what we learn from other people. What we believe makes a difference because it's a reflection of our surroundings and it has an effect on those surroundings. Our wants are very individual, no one wants the same as the next person. But our needs are almost all of a common and shared nature. We all need food, we don't all want a swimming-pool behind the house. But we all need a place to live. And all that has no relation to human nature, but has everything to do with what we believe to be true, what we believe to be just and fair. Just ask what would be the human thing to do, and you'll soon realize that capitalism isn't it. Greed is not our nature, human nature is what we collectively decide it should be.
Hansel and Gretel story for children
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