For this reflection, I’ve chosen the chapter on Ideology from Saad’s book ‘Worlds at Stake’, and Monbiot’s article for The Guardian on Neoliberalism.
Firstly, ideological arguments are my bread and butter, or, well, they used to be before my twitter account was permanently suspended (and then unsuspended).
That said, I found the chapter provided was succinct and generally neutral. My question, however, is when pairing it with Monbiot’s article, if ideology is so heavily tied in with a sense of identity, can it still even be considered an ideology when enforced upon the entire world in the way that neoliberalism has?
Further, to answer a question asked on page fourteen of the chapter on Ideology, are humans fundamentally good natured and social?
Or are they prone to mutual distrust and enmity that embroils us in violence?
I believe the answer to be both, but in a way that a human is born with a blank slate and is then affected by their environment.
To explain it further, I will briefly call back to Táíwò’s analogy in ‘Reconsidering Reparations’, of ancient Roman water aqueducts continuing to direct water long after the fall of Rome and the death of the very architects who built them. In that sense, neoliberalism would not be possible without industrialization, and further, industrialization would not have been possible without the profit made from slavery.
When we consider the mean-spirited individualism, and mutual distrust/enmity that neo-liberalism as an ideology promotes, and which capitalism as a system nourishes, who can really say what constitutes human nature when what we know of nuanced human nature has been recorded with the backdrop of industrialization and capitalism?
Continuing on, while I hate to give Freud any credibility; when considering neoliberalism, could we not apply the psychoanalytic theory? Consider the superego, which is composed of internalized ideals absorbed from the environment of the human in question…with that in mind, how much is it able to suppress the violent and greedy urges of the id?
In this case, the environment is like a snowball tumbling down a mountain, continuously picking up more and more snow with every generation, until we are left with a devastating unstoppable mass that will eventually destroy every village in its path.
This is neoliberalism.
Monbiot attributes this ideology to the slow collapse of public health and education, resurging child poverty, and the collapse of ecosystems (among many other crises); while I agree with many of his points, I do not agree with his claim that neoliberalism fell in 2008, continuing as a zombie. I believe it to be like any other virus, mutating to an increasingly hostile environment; that is, rising social awareness, intersectionality awareness, and of course, the climate crisis.
That is why corporations will change all of their advertisements to Black History Month in February, rainbows in June, and continuously bleet on about carbon-offsets; they have learned that so long as they play and wear that mask, then even the most left-leaning politician–who may be just as susceptible to the greed of profit as the most right-winged neo-liberal, applying that psychoanalytic theory–then they never have to fear losing power, and/or losing their wealth…not until it destroys the villages.
Readings:
Saad, A. (2022). Worlds at stake: Climate Politics, Ideology, and Justice. Fernwood Publishing.
Monbiot, G. (2021, September 8). Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot
ma guarda quante stelle nel cielo 