I was in the car the other day and rather bored with ‘my local ABC’ and its inanity so I switched over to Radio National and that famous "green on the outside pink in the middle", leftie, commo broadcaster Philip Adams was on. He was discussing the current election circus with three guests. During the conversation I heard the following term used, "downward envy".
Apparently this term refers to that feeling the ‘aspirational voter’ feels when she or he believes that those whose misfortune in life robs them, as ‘aspirational’ middle class wage slaves, of what they consider to be their birth right, greater personal wealth. But not only that. It seems even those on low wages, the already impoverished un and under-employed, also express this "downward envy".
One of the speakers made a comment along the lines that the aspiring middle classes and the low or no wage earners are not concerned with "middle class" concerns such as refugees or the war on terror as much as they are on home mortgage rates, health care and education. In short, the speaker was saying that individualism has replaced a sense of connectedness. As this group of chattering, Chardonnay sipping middle class commentators waffled on my mind wandered to the connectedness that links all of us in ways we rarely even consider. For many, it’s a case of "them" trying to do something to "us". Yet we rarely consider let alone hear spoken on the popular media the ways in which "we" have been doing to "them" for decades. As we see the cracks open up in Iraq between the US and British occupiers and their appointed minions in Baghdad over the latest hostage crisis, we should pause to consider how connected we are to this event. And to the tomato farmers along the Tigris.
Sure, most of us have never been to Iraq and most of us probably haven’t ever met an Iraqi let alone got to know the culture, lifestyles and languages of this ancient people. It’s taken as granted that we never pushed a button that sent a missile into the house of a tomato farmer in Mosul reducing it to rubble and incinerating the occupants including old women, men and children. Yet I would think there is a great probability that at some stage in the last ten years some of us have eaten tomatoes grown on the banks of the Tigris. Perhaps we have enjoyed the pleasure of dates also grown on a farm that is now a battle ground. Maybe, maybe not. If we did enter into a commercial relationship with one of these products then, in a not too tenuous way we have become ‘connected’ to the events in this far away land.
More so, in that transaction, we have indicated our willingness to take part in a global market place. A system of commerce and trade that has direct, material ramifications on the lives of those who produce, pack, distribute and sell the goods that we deem ‘necessary’ for our way of life. A tin of tomatoes may cost us a dollar from Safeway, but have we ever stopped to ask how much of that dollar went back to the farmer who grew them? If you’re anything like me, then probable rarely. But every now and again, when I feel the weight of the tin and see the country of origin I wonder what my lifestyle is doing to those who have no time to consider "downward envy".
The middle class, western, affluent notion of "downward envy" is only made possible when we become so disconnected from the community around us that we fail to consider the broader ramifications of the choices we make. Like most things in this wildly interconnected, integrated and fractured world, our choices affect the ways in which others can enjoy their lives. In the quest for lower cost, higher yield, ‘better’ quality food, we as consumers demand that those who supply that food drive costs down down the line. If costs can’t be controlled adequately then new technology may be developed and deployed. This new technology, in turn, displaces the jobs and therefore livelihood of some family somewhere. Whether that family is down the street, in the next town, in another state or in some far-flung corner of the globe, we are connected to them intimately. Therefore, we cannot sustain an argument that our daily decisions don’t do any harm to anyone. However, there are whole industries devoted to attempting to convince us, if we are not already comfortable in our ignorance, of just that.
I’ve said before that I’m not an historian, psychiatrist, politician or, in this case, theologian, but I believe that a great part of our current problem is spiritual. I don’t mean that in the sense of sectarian religious dogma but rather in the broader sense of disconnectedness from each other. That sense of disconnectedness is best illustrated by the current election process. We aren’t being asked to elect a government that will govern for all, but rather to choose the most likely bunch that will govern for ‘me’. The campaign is a sham because the political system we allow to continue is a sham.
It’s a dance if you like. We all know the steps. We know what music to listen too and we know when to move to the next partner. We know the people in the band, we know the caller, and we have each brought a plate to share. Yet at the core of our being, we know we don’t want to do the progressive barn dance again, that dance where politeness, regularity and familiarity becomes stale through repetitiveness night after night. We know in the core of our being that there are other possibilities. Possibilities that we hope will improve our social conditions. I mean, what have we got to loose. It’s patently obvious the current dance isn’t working too well. The problem is, once we get out of step we become obvious and a potential target of ridicule and scorn. Perhaps that’s the choice we are being asked to make the cost we may have to bear.
So it gets back to choice and cost. Every day thousands of actuarial accountants do their sums trying to predict the future ramifications of choices that will be made today. Millions of people walk out of their homes having made a choice to go to work, to visit their friends or to spend a day relaxing. Many more millions who have the time and energy will spend their time counting the cost of their "downward envy" as they sneer at the poor or fail to think about their own impoverished state of mind and spiritual condition. The bottom line is though, that all of us who can potentially make a difference, to change the rhythm of the dance or invent a new step, can chose to do so or not.
One of the reasons I can do what I do is because I chose to. But more importantly, I understand that I do what I do because of the choices that others made before me and, due to the accident of my birth, I was born in a middle ranking, English speaking, relatively affluence nation. Speaking on cosmic terms, we all had the same chance of being born in Mosul, or Jenin, or San Salvador or Pyongyang, places where our choices would have been incomprehensively different. So what do we do?
We can begin by talking with our friends about the concerns we have, not as uninfluential victims, but as active agents of change. We can stop whingeing about the political system and begin to act to change it. Sure, we can never make it perfect and we can never get everyone to see things as we see them but what we can do is open our minds and our hearts to the possibility that not every detail is important. That’s one thing the ruling classes have learnt. The overall strategy and goal is the important thing, not necessarily the detail of how you get there. Change is the hardest thing and each of us, if we have to undergo change, want someone to go through it with us. Yet in our increasingly individualised world, we are asked to go it alone.
The only way to make a change, in both our own lives and the lives of the tomato farmers of the Tigris, is to accept that we are interconnected and intimately related to each other in ways that transcend the physical and economic. Only then will we see a move away from "downward envy" towards global action and the transformation of our communities into places we all want to be.