Lived experience, conditioned by a media-enhanced perspective, is analogous to the restricted view through dirt and drapery from an ancient building. There is a potentially better life outside our perceptions shrouded, slightly grimy window. We all know it. We catch glimpses when a brief, chaotic draught blows the obscuring cloth away, like the global financial crisis or the Covid-19 pandemic. It is not that we know the potential life, in that moment, however, we sense that the present is not complete, or all it could be.
For all humanity’s scientific and technological advancement, the inquisitive human nature is attracted to the vast unknown and a premise of a higher aim. The draught disappears, the curtain falls back and we snap out of our reverie, and back to now.
The goal of this series is to remove some of the dirt and grime that obscures our view. To pull back the shroud, remove unnecessary obstructions, let in the light and reveal the full vista of opportunity. There is a potential life that as a community, we are desirous of, and willing to employ skills towards.
Every individual action and decision affects the community, while each person is simultaneously as insignificant as a grain of sand. Each of us in a way acts both as a rugged individual and a communist each day, striving to meet the same desires. Shared goals have helped to form communities and must be recognised to prevent the current economic system from bringing our humanity to its knees through ignorance, narcissism, juvenile hedonism and greed.
Manufactured understanding and mind control
This frame and curtain were procured and hung for a purpose. By whom, is perhaps, not significant, but, investigating when, and to what purpose, may provide crucial guidance for an ongoing strategy. Fundamentally, our leaders, educators, and influencers accept the view offered. It is not that these people are oppressed in their thinking. Their position on society’s hierarchy is commensurate with their orthodox belief. They are blind (perhaps wilfully) to the fact that this view is deliberately restricted and therefore unnatural.
Flimsy as the material is, it interrupts and corrupts vision. Warping perception, the result is distorted versions of our fellow citizens – blurred and unclear – that the mind reconstructs to fabricated false imagining. Again, this is largely influenced by social construction, with sensationalist indicators provided by a media tailored to trigger. We exaggerate the characteristics in which they differ from us. We diminish the obvious fact their aims in life will completely mirror ours due to natural, essential basic needs that are common throughout humanity.
False constraints put lives on the line
On investigation, the first hint of unseen potential is the discovery of a false frame (think of the Chancellor’s fiscal rules as an example). Artificial and unnecessary, it concentrates attention and constrains the limits of possibility. In so doing, options and alternatives, lying outside this deliberately focused view, are rendered invisible and effectively cancelled. Those options are no less relevant or potentially beneficial, however, with the structure in place they may as well not be there.
This current constructed view of life – the economy as it is known today – stands on foundations laid over half a century ago. An academic generation has known no alternative. Those who enable deception today act in ignorance rather than malice. Believing and enforcing the lie does not make one a liar, however, the consequences are momentous. The unit of account for this error is not measured in a currency but in the quality of human lives. This account should always be in surplus, raising living standards and advancing humanity.
Sales and marketing
The orthodox talking head highlights the benefits of what is on offer today while ignoring the pitfalls. A fictional narrative is spun, creating a desire for the product, moulding the public’s thought process, and creating a desire perceived as essential and a self-interested step forward. Another point won in the Game of Life.
Awareness of anomaly and openness to novel discovery are increasingly restricted as confirmation bias concentrates on the fine detail of the framed outlook. Essays and papers are written on the minutiae; the grain of the wood, the mathematics of the angles of the joints, the pressures and forces acting on the timbers, the colour and texture.
Lifetimes of academic study and publication are invested in such navel-gazing exercises. The focus describes and theorises on the merits of the structure as the orthodoxy’s asserted certainty requires it to be. Sober analysis by heavyweight media entertains the public with easy-to-digest, simplified chunks of information on the concept. Yet, for all this depth of enquiry, expectations miss the mark and reality manifests the error in thinking. The promise of better is never actualised.
Memories of an alternative
The forgotten wide vista of a better world is still accessible. The elders of society retain a memory of the limitless vision, which is too readily chased away by the contemporary narrative. A ventured question, based on that prior knowledge, is derided and ridiculed with extreme examples of failure, collapse and destruction. However, these older people lived a life in a period of prosperity that lasted for over a generation. They know implicitly that better is possible, but do not understand the process necessary to change outcomes as they despair of their helplessness in a changing world. The public generally trusts the media to fact-check and act in favour of the common good.
This series is an attempt to destroy metaphorical frames and open the way to truthful, constructive debate. The aim is to debunk long-held fallacies by pointing out logical inconsistencies and backing this up with the work of experts, professors and analysts. Destroying misplaced constraints and debunking the scarcity narrative is the pathway to future success for all, irrespective of political or constitutional views.
This should only be the start of a much longer journey of discovery on where contemporary abundance and limitations lie.
Unity will drive life forward
Nature provides our one true governor. She sets the limits on what is possible and is a formidable ally. However, nature will eventually take humanity out if bounds are over-stepped. The temporal deficit of a few million years of evolution will be written off and the process re-booted.
Perception and nature appear to be intrinsically linked. While Nature could erase our species and update the human chapter in the book of life on Earth, human cognitive ability and dexterity are essential to advancing the project of life.
On the far horizon there are existential threats that currently seem insurmountable. This is what a networked global humanity should work towards a solution to. It may take millions of years of further evolution and perceptive, inventive genius, but if humanity requires a purpose, and a common religion, what aim could be higher?
Frames which obstruct advancement and limit potential have far-reaching consequences. This series begins with an interrogation of three main components of such a structure. In a series of statements, Margaret Thatcher redefined the UK perspective on economic potential, throwing up the ideological barriers to perception. With these removed, we’ll continue on a new path to examine the implications of the panorama of possibility
More in economy.
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