The conversation that OWS must bring to the fore~ why empathy matters to economics

[BanzaiBonnie]

Economics has always seemed a pretty dry subject. But it's certainly jumped to our attention in the last few years. Today, we find ourselves in the position of having lost confidence in Wall Street.

Those who have been driving Wall Street into the ditch, for their own enrichment at the cost to society as a whole, don’t seem to get it. The economists we’ve been allowing to guide our fiscal policies don’t get it. And before now, I didn’t quite get it either.

Then I began reading about associative economics. And I’ve found it fascinating. It is neither capitalism nor socialism. It is, in my mind, the proper way of viewing the market system.


In 2010, Jeremy Rifkin wrote in Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-rifkin/economic-recovery-will-fa_b_448353.html

“What the economists fail to grasp is that commerce and trade, and indeed, all market relations, are only made possible by a very different kind of "invisible hand"--the one that establishes social trust among people. That social trust, in turn, is created by the extension of empathic sensibility to others. This is the process that creates human culture.

Sometimes referred to as the third sector, as if to suggest that it is of less relevance than the marketplace or government, in fact, the culture or civil society is the primary sector. It's where people create the narratives that define their lives and the life of the society. These narratives serve as the cultural common ground that allows people to create emotional bonds of affection and trust, without which commerce and trade would be impossible.

While the empathic drive is faintly acknowledged by economists, it is relegated to a secondary level in human affairs − something one engages in within the family and among friends and neighbors, but which plays no appreciable role in the economic arena. Being open, vulnerable and sensitive to the plight of others is considered detrimental to commercial relations and a prescription for failure in the marketplace.

Yet the market requires a continuous infusion of social trust to function. Indeed, the market feeds off social trust and weakens or collapses if it is withdrawn. That's why there are no examples in history in which markets preceded culture or exist in its absence. Markets are extensions of culture and never the reverse. They have always been and will always be secondary rather than primary institutions in the affairs of humanity because culture creates the empathic cloak of sociability that allows people to confidently engage each other in the marketplace.”

At issue with citizens across the nation, is that both the government and business are too big. I’ve expressed before that anything that is too big will eventually become corrupted, fail, and die.

But I failed to recognize, before reading about associative economics, that it is culture itself that comes first in the whole equation. For years, the extreme discomfort I’ve felt is about the way the market has been driving culture rather than culture driving market.

We’ve been allowing the engine, which has no heart, to drive us into a very bad place. It has given us a new culture which has at its heart, human beings as a commodity. It’s not just women anymore. Everyone is now an object. And what could be a more perfect reflection, than the decision that corporations are people?


So where do we go now? Is there more that we need to understand before we move foreward? And now that we have attention being focused on the problem, what steps do we take, to make the corrections that will bring the economy in line with people?