This comes via Ken Jones, engaged Buddhist and patron of Amida Trust, who writes:
You may be interested in the following on the social supercharging of tanha ("grasping" -- one of the Three Fires of ancient scripture). There's so much transparent social dharmic teaching around these days in the quality papers ! Good reading.
Failed consumers will lie, cheat and steal to gain
the trappings of success so that they can be regarded as normal
Last week my son got mugged for his iPod. He wasn't
hurt, just a bit embarrassed about some of the songs his assailants will find on
it. This week I had my mobile stolen while sitting on a park bench. This is
low-level stuff that is now commonplace. But there is a vital link between these
ever-upgradable gadgets and the prime minister's call for a rebalancing of the
relationship between the victims of crime and the perpetrators.
In "my day" it was different. No one got mugged,
perhaps because we didn't have anything worth taking. A home-made catapult was
about as hi-tech as it got. Today a kid's trainers, iPod and mobile can easily
cost £400 to replace - and can be gone as quickly as it takes a hooded youth to
claim there's a knife in their pocket. I'm glad my son didn't take the risk of
calling his robber's bluff.
But he had something they didn't. An iPod and the
right phone are now essential trappings of youth - not just because they let you
talk or listen to music at your convenience, but because of what they say about
you. Once we were known by what we produced. Now we judge ourselves and others
by what we and they consume. The advertisers know this; that's why they ask:
"What does your mobile say about you?" Welcome to the consumer society and the
world of the turbo-consumer. It's a world driven by competition for consumer
goods and paid-for experiences, of hi-tech and high-end shopping signals that
have become the means by which we keep score with each other.
As the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman points out, to be
a successful consumer now defines what it is to be "normal". Therefore to be
"abnormal" is to be a failed consumer. The lot of the failed consumer is
miserable. This new poor may be better off in absolute terms than the poor of
previous generations, but in the world of the turbo-consumer what you have means
nothing - it's what others have and therefore what we must have next that
counts. On these terms the new poor are falling far behind in an age when
keeping up is everything.
The failed consumer suffers not just from exclusion
from normal society but isolation. The poor of the past had each other in a
community of poverty. Misery could be shared and countered through class
solidarity and the hope of a different life. The new poor lick their wounds
alone in their council flats, with nowhere to hide from the messages on
billboards and TV that constantly remind them of their social failure. The new
poor, without the right labels and brands, are not just excluded but invisible.
The final ignominy of today's poor is that they don't want to overthrow the rich to create a new order, they just want to be like them. So they are denied even the satisfaction of anyone to hate - just B-list celebrities to envy and copy.
So if you want the causes of crime then look no further than the impulse of the poor to belong and be normal. So strong is this urge that the failed consumer will lie, cheat and steal to "earn" the trappings of success. In the world of the "me generation", people become calculating rather than law-abiding in their overwhelming desire to be normal. This is crime driven by the rampant egoism of turbo-consumerism, where enough is never enough. And precisely because of its competitive nature, consumer-driven crime cannot be switched off through tougher laws.
The final ignominy of today's poor is that they don't want to overthrow the rich to create a new order, they just want to be like them. So they are denied even the satisfaction of anyone to hate - just B-list celebrities to envy and copy.
So if you want the causes of crime then look no further than the impulse of the poor to belong and be normal. So strong is this urge that the failed consumer will lie, cheat and steal to "earn" the trappings of success. In the world of the "me generation", people become calculating rather than law-abiding in their overwhelming desire to be normal. This is crime driven by the rampant egoism of turbo-consumerism, where enough is never enough. And precisely because of its competitive nature, consumer-driven crime cannot be switched off through tougher laws.
New Labour has attempted to address some of the
causes of crime with tax credits, a minimum wage and the New Deal. They are all
helpful, but the government hardly ever talks about them.
Why should failed consumers play by the rules when
no one at the top seems to - when social mobility is declining; when the
government refuses to implement vocational training reforms for fear of a Daily
Mail backlash over A-levels; when more thick middle-class children fill our
universities; and when school league tables mean "problem kids" won't be
tolerated?
New Labour refuses to change the rules of the
market state and consumer society, and instead attempts another crackdown on the
symptoms through Asbos and control orders. Just like Thatcherism, New Labour
relies on a strong state to police a free market. The prime minister extols his
respect agenda without realising that the architect of the term, the sociologist
Richard Sennett, was talking about the respect the powerful give to the
powerless. So Tony Blair tries to turn back the tide of crime against a rampant
consumer culture of new gadgets that are designed, advertised, sold and bought
to prove our normality over and over again. Nine years, 50 law bills and more
than 700 new offences later, being even tougher on crime isn't going to work.
Of course, it is always wrong to mug or steal - but
unless, as a society, we are prepared to understand why crime happens then, in
the words of the criminologist Professor Ian Loader, "we are using a sticking
plaster to fix a broken leg". You cannot build a tolerant society on the basis
of zero tolerance.
In his speech last Friday, Blair admitted that "we
can identify such families virtually as their children are born". But his
solution is the science fiction of the film Minority Report, when the real crime
is the existence of such families in a nation bulging with wealth.
When it is the dominance of the consumer economy that is driving so much crime, easy answers aren't close to hand. We need a different conception of the good life, in which time, relationships and care take precedence over consumerism. Next there is a political alliance to be created between the post-material, happiness-seeking middle classes, who want more time, and this new poor, who have all the time in the world but none of the money. This is what needs rebalancing: not the criminal justice system, but the wealth and riches of the nation.
When it is the dominance of the consumer economy that is driving so much crime, easy answers aren't close to hand. We need a different conception of the good life, in which time, relationships and care take precedence over consumerism. Next there is a political alliance to be created between the post-material, happiness-seeking middle classes, who want more time, and this new poor, who have all the time in the world but none of the money. This is what needs rebalancing: not the criminal justice system, but the wealth and riches of the nation.
The problem of not belonging, of being
anxious and insecure, afflicts us all. It's just more sharply focused for those
at the bottom of the heap. The social theorist Roberto Unger says: "Almost
everyone feels abandoned. Almost everyone believes they are an outsider, looking
in through the window at the party going on inside."
If we don't acknowledge their plight, the victims
of an economy out of our control will always come back to haunt us. Against the
backdrop of our comfort and complacency, the case for tax and tolerance
[and Dharma - KJ] has never been more needed.
· Neal Lawson is chair of the pressure group
Compass and is writing a book about shopping and politics
www.allconsuming.org.uk
www.allconsuming.org.uk
Very interesting reading - I am guity of the latest from mobile phones to iPods... now I wonder why.
Posted by: Tyson Williams | Tuesday, 04 July 2006 at 02:22 AM