Making the Invisible Backdrop of Neoliberalism Visible

Neoliberalism's trickle down effect

When synchronicity happens in my life, my ears perk up! It's the Universe's way of telling me to pay attention. And it happened again this past week.

A little history first. As you may know, I have a consulting "entity" (it's not profitable so it's not really a business; it's only me so it's not really an organization) called GreenHeart Education whose byline — "Greening the heart of teaching... one teacher at a time" — I sometimes rue. Although it feels like the educational monolith can't be moved and we can only chip away at it (one teacher at a time), it's also pretty evident that only a massive transformation will create the change that's necessary.

A very caring and knowledgeable houseguest sat at our breakfast table last week and said matter-of-factly: "If we don't stop creating our money from debt, nothing else can change." That our banking system is allowed to make money from debt is something my hubby and I have known about for years, but I'd never heard it put so succinctly.

Then an equally caring and knowledgeable friend wrote to say that she's been looking into the ideology of neoliberalism and its impacts on our education systems — and she has been pretty shocked by what she's uncovered. Indeed, echoing our houseguest, she said that within a neoliberal economy, "we MUST keep shopping to finance a debt economy, and we MUST keep the economy growing for the same reason." (Bingo, synchronicity. Ears perked up!)

Neoliberalism (unlike neoconservatism, which is so in-your-face with military force as its main expression) has been  
surreptitiously installed (in most if not quite all EuroAmerican countries, and increasingly globalized) as our social, political but especially economic backdrop, certainly without fanfare, without informed vote, in short, without us noticing. Indeed, Bronwyn Davies and Peter Bansel have written an article called Neoliberalism and education, in which they ask: "How does the calculated invisibility of neoliberalism work against our capacity to make a critique of it?"

As my friend pointed out, "Neoliberalism is not something teachers are taught about. It is specifically relevant to the language, policy, goals, methods, and assumptions of public education." And that's when I realized the source of my angst around trying to teach teachers about transformative education for sustainability. We're working against an enemy that has made itself invisible against the backdrop of its own making. Beige against a beige backdrop is pretty hard to see, let alone acknowledge, define, understand and mitigate — and throw out on its ass if we want to survive the climate change emergency.

The juggernaut that I've spoken about in the past — this is it. It's neoliberalism. Heck, I even managed to write about it without noticing it (a testament to its invisibility, or impenetrability perhaps)! The neoliberal worldview is so entrenched and seemingly intractable that Margaret Thatcher used to say "There is no alternative" (acronymized to TINA). And it's entrenched because it helps the rich get richer, ensures that those with power grow more powerful, and keeps the financial elites on their thrones — so it ain't goin' anywhere any time soon.

Neoliberal. Such a nice word, eh? Neo, new. New can't be bad, can it? Liberal ... liberal sounds nice (unless, ahem, you're a conservative, but then you're probably in on the deceit). Progressive, open-minded, free, enlightened. Yeah, sure. Like the military, the backers of neoliberalism choose nice, reassuring words to cover up the evil of their deeds.

Alas, it's summer so I'm not going to write a treatise on neoliberalism (though my friend's email was almost poetic). But I would like to render it visible ... hence all the images (with thanks to their creators) with this week's post. And I don't think you have to speak Spanish to see that South American citizens are at the forefront of those fighting the neoliberal enemy: the wealthy, the governments, Big Money and corporations who are all laughing behind our backs. 

Choice is Addictive

I made a commitment a few weeks ago to get back to the theme of this blog, compassionate climate action — this time, focusing on food growing and food security. So I'm rereading The 100 Mile Diet right now, a wonderfully written, evocative book that definitely makes me think about my food choices.

The other day, however, I started thinking about my food choices from a different place. I visited Walmart for the third time in my life (don't ask). After provisioning my hubby for a stint of granddog-sitting (don't ask), we wandered a bit. Suddenly, in the middle of an aisle in the middle of a warehouse-sized everything store bigger than the community I live in (well, almost), I stopped and burst into tears. 

"This is what's killing everything," I sobbed, leaning on the super-sized cart. "All this. All this choice, all this sense of entitlement. People thinking they can have anything they want, anytime they want, at the cheapest possible price."

I heard a woman with a cart filled to overflowing with boxes of processed foods telling the cashier that her daughter was considered "difficult" at school. I so wanted to say something, but decided against it. I wanted to ask her if she'd like a simple antidote (fresh fruits and vegetables) for her child's behaviour, but chickened out. 

So perhaps I've been barking up the wrong tree when I call Wall Street and fossil fuel corporations "the juggernaut." Maybe Walmart and all the big box stores in North America are the juggernaut — and we're pushing ourselves under the wheels. 

Choice is addictive. It's not fossil fuels we're addicted to, it's choice. The word "choice" comes from the French choisir - to choose. 

What if we started choosing to let the Peruvians eat their own asparagus in December, and the Californians their own strawberries in January? What if we chose to buy less food, waste less food, eat less food? Or at least less unhealthy food? I'm all for everyone in North America eating more kale! (And learning to grow it first.) What if we set up information booths outside every grocery store to tell shoppers what fruits and veggies are in season? Or to offer them a different nutrition lesson each time they shop? To show them the connections between their food choices and the climate change emergency? What if every region had a community farm and every school a schoolyard garden?

What if we started choosing to acquire our food in a way that contributed to the healthiest possible future for ourselves, for our children — and for the Earth? Could that kind of choice ever become addictive?

We're Standing in the Intersection

That image of the huge juggernaut wending its way down the street in India, through throngs of people, some of whom, it is purported, are getting crushed beneath the chariot's giant wheels ... that image has stuck with me all week. 

And now I realize, we — humanity and all life on Earth — are trapped in an intersection with juggernauts rolling towards us from all four directions. There's (1) the Big Money profit-at-all-costs economy (and the governments riding along in their pockets); there are (2) the mammoth fossil fuel industries (who refuse to budge out of their number one money-making spot); there's (3) the colossus of EuroAmerican consumer culture turning every citizen of the world into a shopper; and then there's (4) the climate armageddon — increasingly catastrophic impacts of global climate disruption — bearing down on us. 

(Read this Scientific American article if you want to feel chilled this morning. "Climate Armageddon: How the World's Weather Could Quickly Run Amok," by Fred Guterl, is an excerpt from his book The Fate of the Species: Why the Human Race May Cause Its Own Extinction and How We Can Stop It. In it, Guterl lists dynamical systems theorist Tim Lenton's nine tipping points that could lead to abrupt climate flips — and catastrophic effects. Ironically, Lenton doesn't even mention the scariest one: the methane time bomb in the Arctic. See the Arctic Methane Emergency Group website and this Homo Sapiens, Save Your Earth blog post for information on this potential cataclysm.)

Where do the global warming/climate change denialists, skeptics, ignorers and delayers fit into this metaphor? Ah, they're the ones pushing innocent people under the wheels. Their delay tactics are bringing on a holocaust of unimaginable proportions, and yet they still get their feelings hurt when you call them deniers. Grrrr.

So, here we are. Trapped. Cornered. (Ha! Figuratively literally!) Will some survive by slipping under the enormous chariots? Or by pressing themselves against the walls of the surrounding buildings? Perhaps, but we don't know how many juggernauts are waiting for us behind the four we can see. So, what do we do?

Quite often, the question is "But what can one person do?" I think it's time we stopped posing this question. We have to start seeing the power and strength in our numbers. The solution is simple: stop the juggernauts. How we stop the juggernauts is the complex part.

1. Pull the rug out from under Big Money. Invest only in renewable (perpetual, non-burning) energy technologies and other ethical funds. Stop buying frivolous things. Buy organic and locally grown foods (and less of it = lose weight = more energy to fight this good fight). Vote with your money! 

And wake up when it comes to election time — and in between. Was it Marx who called religion the opiate of the masses? Well, democracy has become our soother, our pacifier. It has dumbed us down and convinced us that we have nothing to worry about. With democracies everywhere becoming police states (to protect fossil fuel production and profits), it's time to be worried, very worried!

2. Fossil fuels. Can't live with 'em (they're killing us!). Can't live without 'em (we're hooked because of our lifestyles). Getting ourselves off this addiction means convincing our governments to invest public funds in the right things, rather than fighter jets and wars on other countries. Our children and grandchildren will be happy to repay debts incurred to ensure them a future. It's those other debts they will find abhorrent. Individuals will not be able to change en masse until governments use everything they've got to make the necessary changes for us: legislation, incentives, disincentives, fines and penalties, education and publicity, tax money, intergovernmental relationships ....

3. The globalized EuroAmerican culture? See through it, folks. Don't buy in, don't feed it. Go for walks instead of watching violent movies. Take a bike trip instead of planning a vacation in Hawaii (unless you live in Hawaii). Our consumer culture drives the fossil-fuelled economy, which necessitates the military-industrial complex. Why don't we all just step out of the rat race for a while till we get the climate mess fixed. Then we can figure out if we want to build a renewable energy-powered rat race — or maybe not go back there.

4. Climate catastrophe? Everyone's talking about adaptation (and hey, I'm guilty: I'm teaching my students to grow food, because you can't learn that sort of thing overnight), but without mitigation (from the Latin verb mitigare, to alleviate: the action of reducing the severity, seriousness, or painfulness of something), we simply will not be able to adapt. Global warming, climate change, and ocean acidification will continue for a thousand years — and that's after we reach zero carbon emissions and stabilize carbon in the atmosphere. We must do something drastic NOW. I'm now a convert to the call for geoengineering in the north. If we don't cool and refreeze the Arctic, we are doomed. And for those who insist we shouldn't experiment with the climate system, I say Hellooooo! Wake up! We have been meddling with it (albeit unknowingly at first) since the start of the industrial revolution. There's no time left to be a purist. If we're going down already, why not try the one thing that could possibly stick a spoke in the wheels.

Which brings me back to what we should be doing as a threatened species facing our exterminators. We need to poke giant sticks in the wheels of the juggernauts. We need to place wheel chocks/wedges, giant bricks or blocks in front of the chariots' wheels. Together.

We have to stop these juggernauts at all costs — except our children's lives.

"It's a Juggernaut"

That line, "It's a juggernaut," has been running through my head this week, I think perhaps in response to my own sense of futility and to assuage my activist friends who feel their efforts are amounting to sweet tweet (ie, nothing). The word just sounded right. Something about overwhelmingly big, right? So I looked it up. Little did I know how right it is!

juggernaut |ˈjəgərˌnôt|noun: a huge, powerful, and overwhelming force or institution: a juggernaut of secular and commercial culture; a massive inexorable force, campaign, movement, or object that crushes whatever is in its path: an advertising juggernaut, a political juggernaut.ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: extension of Juggernaut.Juggernaut |ˈjəgərˌnôt| Hinduismthe form of Krishna worshiped in Puri, Orissa, where in the annual festival his image is dragged through the streets on a heavy chariot; devotees are said formerly to have thrown themselves under its wheels. Also called Jagannatha.ORIGIN via Hindi from Sanskrit Jagannātha "Lord of the world."

I had to laugh. First, because Puri, in the eastern state of Orissa, is one of the few places I've visited in India. So how's that for synchronicity? But also, how apt that the original term refers to Lord Krishna, an avatar of one of the main gods in the Hindu pantheon, Vishnu. Vishnu is considered the "preserver god," at least recently. When the balance of power is upset in favour of evil, Vishnu ascends to Earth in mortal form (his avatar) to save humankind.Now, I might be messing up a metaphor here, but isn't The Economy gone awry just like a juggernaut that runs over innocent people in the streets? I mean, the economy isn't a bad thing; indeed, as a tool, it's quite neutral. But once Big Money (aka a handful of mainly white, mainly male rich people) turns it into The Economy and greed takes over as the main guiding principle ("upsetting the balance of power in favour of evil"), then it becomes a juggernaut.Isn't it incredible to think that it's our (globalized EuroAmerican) economy that is destroying the life-giving and life-preserving abilities of Earth's biosphere? Professor Brendan Gleeson, speaking at National University of Ireland, said in April 2012 that through neoliberal market economics, the western world ... had been "handcuffed to a madman" and it was now time to abandon the "ship of fools" in favour of a "lifeboat mentality." Prof. Gleeson outlined what he calls "The Climate Emergency" this way:

"Of all the threats that have faced capitalist modernity in the past 400 years, none has possessed the lethal potency of climate change. In this most uncertain of worlds, a western civilisation deprived of the certainties of ideology, faith and human identity, there is one thing we can be sure of: our species is already in transit to what the scientist and environmentalist James Lovelock calls 'the next world.' It will be a world dominated by a global climate shift that we cannot yet describe fully, but which is inevitable and approaching fast. And it is not as unknowable as all that. The next world will be very much hotter and drier.... It will be much less conducive to human existence."

Our economic system is an unstoppable juggernaut. Or is it? We can still hope (or pray, as hoping is not an action verb) that the people will one day soon simply stop the unstoppable chariot, to prevent it from running over the children and their future.*******Read on, for more information (from Wikipedia) on the word "juggernaut":A juggernaut in colloquial English usage is a literal or metaphorical force regarded as mercilessly destructive and unstoppable. Originating ca. 1850, the term is a metaphorical reference to the Hindu Ratha Yatra temple car, which apocryphally was reputed to crush devotees under its wheels. The word is derived from the Sanskrit Jagannātha or "world-lord", one of the names of Krishna found in the Sanskrit epics.

The English loanword juggernaut in the sense of "a huge wagon bearing an image of a Hindu god" is from the 17th century, inspired by the Jagannath Temple in Puri, Orissa, which has the Ratha Yatra ("chariot procession"), an annual procession of chariots carrying the murtis (statues) of Jagannâth (Krishna), Subhadra and Balabhadra (Krishna's elder brother).

The first European description of this festival is found in the 14th-century The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, which apocryphally describes Hindus, as a religious sacrifice, casting themselves under the wheels of these huge chariots and being crushed to death. Others have suggested more prosaically that the deaths, if any, were accidental and caused by the press of the crowd and the general commotion.The figurative sense of the English word, with the sense of "something that demands blind devotion or merciless sacrifice" was coined in the mid-19th century. For example, it was used to describe the out-of-control character Hyde in Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The term is often applied to a large machine, or collectively to a team or group of people working together (such as a highly successful sports team or corporation), or even a growing political movement led by a charismatic leader—and it often bears an association with being crushingly destructive.