These, in turn, are the result of extreme market ideology, the idea that markets aren’t just places were you go every other week – they’re moral arbiters that tell us who the worthy and unworthy are among us
Of course! That’s why using markets run by those people is literally investing in one’s own oppression. You start digging your own grave with your teeth, and then its a lot easier to shoot you once you complain from in a hole, than if you never start. It’s gullible to suppose that that makes one safe, but nearly everyone seems to choose the strategically worse option.
The popularity of today’s dystopias might represent the fear of shear between the contradictions of believing in the primacy of the individual (and the idea that our shared destiny is a delusion) and the certainty of the very small and unimaginably large ways in which we are linked.
That’s close, I think. The primacy of the individual does seem to be a delusion. But the way most people discuss notions such as “shared destiny” seem very romantic and also miss the mark. Why is everything a celebration of “humanity” as some grand concept, as if every other living thing isn’t just as much of a participant, with agency and autonomy? As I have joked recently, why do people refer to “human beings” but never dog beings, fern beings, etc? How does “humanity” represent some specific ideal, while “bovinity” apparently does not?
What I am getting at is that people have very selective filters for how interdependence works, because interdependence does not play favorites. Do chickens have a common destiny? Does bamboo? The dichotomy of individualism versus collectivism are both too static and contrived and miss the real goal of interdependence. Saying that “we are all humans, with humanity, and that means something, and gives us a common destiny” is collectivism (which I have no small amount of sympathy for). So this presumes that our connections, our dependencies - even our very character as “human” - are somehow innate, immutable, beyond negotiating as groups. Collectivism as a totality makes smaller groups impossible, unless they can be reconciled into a hierarchy, which then re-creates class and conflict.
Instead of a “we are all members of a group automatically, and will all succeed or fail together” monoculture we need diversity of systems. Inter-dependence means not being passively subsumed into a totality, but actively making and breaking them as-needed, and helping others to do the same.
