The Quiet Road

Time and again over the past few months I’ve found myself in discussions (both in person and online) with highly intelligent, articulate and well-intentioned people with whom I was completely unable to find a common ground. On a variety of topics… from economic policy to Climate Change, creationism to group psychodynamics, sustainability to local politics, the credit crunch to the oil industry… I find myself totally isolated and end up doubting myself… wondering if maybe I haven’t got it wrong after all.

At the same time, I made a promise to myself when I started studying psychoanalysis and group psychodynamics that I would follow my own research and conclusions wherever they led… even if they led to unpopular or unfamiliar places.

Even so, and I’ll only say this once to get it off my chest and I’ll then shut up about it, lest I appear like I’m whinging (though what else is a personal blog for, if not for whinging?)… I have reached the stage where I’m finding it incredibly frustrating and disheartening that everyone I speak with finds my views wrong-headed or mystifying or objectionable or silly. It’s almost like the only person in the entire world who agrees with me is Gregory Bateson.

And he’s dead.

George Monbiot has written an excellent piece in The Guardian about the unsustainable nature of the modern fishing industry and the destruction it is wreaking on our oceans (Trawlermen cling on as oceans empty of fish – and the ecosystem is gasping).

The comments that follow the article are fairly predictable and fall into two broad categories. The first — and largest group — expressing their agreement with Monbiot and adding their voice to a collective lament about the stupidity of humanity. The second, smaller group, grudgingly admitting that Monbiot has a point (his article largely states obvious truths and refrains from making too many value judgments of the kind that provoke the typical Monbiot-backlash) but bringing up “the tragedy of the commons” to nip in the bud any notion that the reason for this ecological destruction might be free markets, capitalism or the profit motive. In fact, they reason, it’s only happening because we’re not capitalist enough!

The argument is a simple one. Because the fishermen don’t own the oceans, they have no incentive to take care of it. The answer, therefore, is to privatise it. So long as it’s just some indefineable collective thing… “nature”, for want of a better word… people have no interest in protecting it. As soon as it is turned into property, on the other hand, it becomes important enough for the owners to preserve.

Tim Worstall‘s comment sums this position up succinctly:

Yes, it’s the Tragedy of the Commons and as Garrett Hardin pointed out the only way to solve it is to apportion property rights. We can see that the bureaucratic apportionment of quotas doesn’t work for public choice reasons. We thus need to move to the alternative system, direct ownership for the long term of the fishing rights by the fishermen.

Tim Worstall

I’ve gone over that comment maybe half a dozen times, and I state without exaggeration that it is one of the most depressing statements I’ve ever read. Partly because of the sentiment it expresses and the profound disrespect for nature as a thing in itself that it accepts without resistance — indeed appears to embrace — but mostly because it may well be true. At least in the context of modern civilisation.

To me, the real tragedy of the commons is that we have come to think in such terms.

Unlike almost every other human culture that has ever existed (unsurprisingly, the vast majority of the few exceptions are the “civilised” or “city-building” cultures), we no longer have a sane relationship with nature. The Hopi people didn’t need to apportion property rights to know it was a bad idea to shit in the stream they drank from. There was a basic but very deep understanding that nature — the environment — was a large system of which they were merely a part. This leads to the, I would have thought, blindlingly obvious conclusion that any activity which is clearly destructive to the larger system, is almost inevitably going to be destructive to the culture… the people… the person carrying out the destructive act. And this is the case even if the impact is not immediately apparent. With cities (or perhaps it was large-scale agriculture, it’s hard to know) came the tendency to see a separation between humanity and nature.

To me this represents nothing less than a collective psychosis. A “psychotic break” in as literal a sense as that term could ever be used.

A simple analogy

It’s not at all difficult to follow. Just as an individual human being is part of a wider system (society), so our culture is part of a wider system (the environment*).

Now, imagine an individual who suffers from a delusion which convinces him or her that they are not part of society; that they exist separate and distinct from it; and in fact, it exists simply to satisfy their demands. This belief is so strong that they view and treat all of society, including the very people themselves, as personal property to be exploited as they see fit and without regard for any consequences to that society.

Such a person may well treat others acceptably because they do not wish to damage their property, but this isn’t an indication that they’re not psychotic. And nor is it a guarantee that they won’t cause a considerable amount of suffering with their actions if given free rein. I would certainly question the wisdom of anyone who felt the best thing for all concerned would be to provide them with the tools to act out their delusion and treat society as personal property.

Furthermore, such a person is almost certainly not well-qualified to judge the amount of damage they are doing and, therefore, cannot even be trusted to know when they have begun to threaten their own survival. Self-destructive behaviour is hardly unknown amongst those experiencing psychosis.

A way out?

I’m pretty much convinced that we’ve passed the point where we can simply “reinject” some sense of reality into modern civilisation — at least within the required timespans. Relearning an appreciation of nature as part of us, and of us as part of nature, probably can’t be done quickly enough.

On the other hand, we have actually developed a system, imperfect though it is, which allows us to regulate our collective behaviour with a degree of success… the law. See, when Tim Worstall insists that “the only way to solve” this problem is to apportion property rights, he is clearly mistaken. It would be theoretically possible to declare the oceans to be… oh, I dunno, a Vital Element of Our Survivial? (VEOS? Someone can come up with a better term). A sustainable fishing strategy would be developed (erring always on the sustainable side) and society would employ fishermen to carry it out.

And when Tim speaks of “public choice” being the primary reason why such a strategy might fail, then he may, in practice, be right. But it is clear to me that it’s wrong to allow a psychotic individual to seriously harm themself out of respect for their choice. We understand that there is a high enough probablility that they aren’t currently capable of sound judgment, to warrant intervention out of concern for their well-being.

Likewise, if the public demand fish at an unsustainable rate, then we’re not acting in sound (collective) mind. We need to make it clear to everyone that demanding resources at an unsustainable rate represents a collective madness. We need to make it clear that insofar as morality is linked with the prevention of human suffering, such demands are deeply immoral. We need to make it clear that while such ways of thinking may well be ingrained, we can no longer allow them to dictate our behaviour in the world. We need to ensure that everyone knows new rules — a kind of imposed collective super-ego, if you will — are now required to govern our interaction with the environment.

And yes, those found acting outside the rules would be viewed and treated the same way we would treat anyone who seeks to endanger the survival of millions.

If you’d spent the past 10 years or so reading about the oil industry, you would have heard about a man called ‘T. Boone Pickens’ on a number of occasions and secretly thought to yourself, “what a fantastic name!”

Pickens is one of the most respected men in the Texas oil industry and has been for many years. Like other industry insiders (such as Campbell and Laherrère) and academic petrogeologists (such as Deffeyes), Pickens is the sort of guy whose opinion on this subject should be listened to. He knows more about the global oil industry than damn near anybody else you care to mention. So if his views are found to contradict the models and forecasts of economists, it can only be blind faith in the free-market that allows a person to summarily dismiss the former in favour of the latter.

Anyways, two days ago Pickens was invited to speak before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee where he stated in stark terms that global crude oil production has peaked.

And Pickens is very firmly putting his money where his mouth his. He is currently in the process of financing the world’s largest Wind Farm project.

I have family visiting this week, so blogging will be light-to-nonexistent. All the same, when I checked my email this morning, my friend A had sent me a link to a news item that I thought needed wider dissemination. When reading this report, try not to think about it as limited to a specific environmental problem in a specific geographical area. Instead think about any general lessons that may be learned from this.

Here it is, from the BBC: Australian rivers ‘face disaster’

Tim Worstall is no fool. He’s extremely right wing (in the libertarian, rather than the overtly dictatorial, sense… though in truth, I tend to see the two as being far closer than most right-wingers would admit, but that’s a discussion for another day) and an outspoken champion of free markets. Nonetheless, I am of the opinion that he’s misguided rather than evil, and I believe he has of the same opinion of me (could be wrong, of course). This means that dialogue is possible without it inevitably descending into insults and obfuscation.

That said, because I know he’s not a fool, I tend to get a little irritated when I see him deliberately misinterpret my position in order to make it appear foolish (or if you’re also a right-winger, then perhaps “more foolish than it really is” would be a better choice of words… even the most dogmatic free-marketeer will accept that there are levels of left-wing foolishness and the “moderately foolish” can be easily painted as the “very foolish” given selective quotation and/or the use of insupportable assumptions).

Recently, in response to my Constructivism entry, Tim posted One Way of Looking at the World. Here he takes the following statement of mine:

By “heavily taxed” I do — of course — mean “nationalised”. I do not view non-renewable natural resources as appropriate commodities to be traded for profit.

and asserts that such an approach is “not a very clever one” because, sarcastically, “The Soviets certainly did that really well”.

This is a personal bugbear of mine. Essentially the idea is that by advocating a particular philosophy (in this case the removal of a specific resource, commodity, or set of resources / commodities from the free-market system and placing them into collective ownership), one is automatically advocating the worst historical example of that philosophy.

There’s an obvious logical fallacy there, and it’s an annoying one. But, let’s be frank, we are all guilty of occasionally shielding our beliefs with fallacious reasoning. Those beliefs are precious to us and, as such, we may not always be entirely discriminating when it comes to defending them. However, ultimately we do ourselves a disservice when we slip into this mode of debate. If I object to the principle of private corporations on the grounds that many of them actively supported Hitler’s Germany, I would be rightly lampooned, and the phrase Godwin’s Law would quickly rear its head. Yet seemingly intelligent people see no absurdity in tarring all talk of collective ownership with a Stalinist (or Maoist) brush.

Similarly, when I object to free markets in non-renewable resources, I do not bang on and on about Enron every fecking time. That’s because I’m smart enough to be aware that nobody (well, nobody sane) is actually defending the corrupt and disastrous implementation of free-market principles. When a pro-capitalist* defends the free market in oil (for example) they tend not to use the Exxon Valdez oil-spill to support their position. So objecting to the free market in oil on the grounds of Exxon’s environmental record is not particularly useful (an oil tanker run by an anarcho-syndicalist collective could still end up running aground and polluting the wilderness).

Far more useful is an approach which acknowledges that any general philosophy can be corrupted and subverted and that human error can creep into the best systems. So instead of focussing entirely upon those individual corrupt instances (or, as is often the case, the very worst of those instances), one instead addresses the very claims made by proponents of that philosophy. It is only then that honest debate emerges and progress can be made towards — if not a common ground, then at least an understanding of one another’s position.

But so long as I insist that private corporations are evil because they were willing to trade with Nazi Germany, I will look just as foolish as the capitalist who insists that collectivism can never work because the Soviets couldn’t manage it.

Well, it’s been a few weeks since I first posed some questions that had been troubling me regarding the Lisbon Treaty and the forthcoming referendum in Ireland. I’m very grateful to all those who took the time to respond and who discussed the treaty, without acrimony, here on this blog. It’s refreshing to see a discussion of European politics that doesn’t end in a slanging match (or maybe I just spent too long in the UK).

Anyways, despite all that, I was still rather confused by the whole thing. The text of the treaty is — in my view — quite deliberately opaque. You can download the PDF here, but I warn you there’s very little point. You see, huge chunks of the text of the treaty (the majority, in fact) actually don’t state very much at all. Rather, they list amendments to existing treaties which are themselves scattered widely and not always easy to track down and cross-reference. Take this (entirely representative) example…

ARTICLE 2

1. The articles of the Protocol on the Statute of the European System of Central Banks and of the European Central Bank, of the Protocol on the Statute of the European Investment Bank, and of the Protocol on the privileges and immunities of the European Union, as they are amended by the Treaty of Lisbon, shall be renumbered in accordance with the tables of equivalences set out in the annex to this Protocol. Cross-references to articles of those protocols which appear therein shall be adapted in accordance with the tables.
2. References to recitals of the protocols set out in point 1 of Article 1, or to articles of those protocols, including to paragraphs thereof, as renumbered or rearranged by this Protocol, and which references figure in other protocols or acts of primary legislation shall be adapted in accordance with this Protocol. Such adaptations shall, if necessary, also apply in the event that the provision in question has been repealed.
3. References to recitals and articles, including to paragraphs thereof, of the protocols set out in point 1 of Article 1, as amended by the provisions of this Protocol and which figure in other instruments or acts, shall be understood as references to recitals and articles, including to paragraphs thereof, of those protocols as renumbered or rearranged in accordance with this Protocol.

Treaty of Lisbon / Protocols / English Language Version / Page 78

From what I can tell, this is a set of instructions for renumbering various paragraphs in several other treaties and protocols. Now, there are clearly plenty of issues on which it is appropriate to consult the people, or vote in parliament. But the paragraph numbering system used within the Protocol on the Statute of the European System of Central Banks, as amended by the Treaty of Lisbon, just isn’t one of them.

This becomes problematic when you’re asked to vote on a treaty that contains page after page after page (after page) of this stuff interspersed with genuinely meaningful clauses and protocols. By burying the relevant information beneath a heavy blanket of bureaucratic fluff, one can be forgiven for wondering what exactly is being hidden from the voter.

I mean, it’s worth pointing out that the section quoted above appears to refer to “point 1 of Article 1” of The Protocol on the Statute of the European System of Central Banks and of the European Central Bank (PDF file) which itself is no more than a reference to yet another treaty…

ARTICLE 1
1.1 The European System of Central Banks (ESCB) and the European Central Bank (ECB) shall be established in accordance with Article 8 of this Treaty; they shall perform their tasks and carry on their activities in accordance with the provisions of this Treaty and of this Statute.

The Protocol on the Statute of the European System of Central Banks and of the European Central Bank

And I am assuming (because it’s not explicitly stated) that “this Treaty” refers to “the Treaty establishing the European Community”. So to properly understand this tiny section of the Lisbon Treaty which appears to refer to something as genuinely insignificant as a paragraph numbering system, a person needs to track down and cross-reference it with at least two other separate treaties (in fact, it’s more than two).

This may seem like an insignificant point. And I’m well aware that such “bureaucratic housekeeping” is required when complex treaties are amended. But when you hear that somewhere within the 294 pages of the Lisbon Treaty is a clause that denies Ireland representation on the European Commission for five out of every fifteen years (one third of the time). And given that the European Commission is tasked with such minor issues as European Tax Harmonisation and European Energy Policy, I think you can be forgiven for becoming suspicious of the motives of those who decided to bury such important details within a blizzard of administrative irrelevance.

But being suspicious of the motives of the authors of the treaty still wouldn’t be enough to make me vote against something I don’t really understand (as opposed to merely abstaining). After all, when it comes to those who have sought and achieved positions of power, my default position is one of suspicion. Don’t get me wrong, it kind of goes without saying that some politicians are better than others. Bertie Ahern for instance — for all his faults… his many, many faults — would still get my vote if he was standing against Joseph Goebbels in an election. But that doesn’t mean I’d trust Bertie to look after my wallet, let alone the nation’s tax revenue.

The Treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community

Here though, we unearth something I am more than willing to vote against. The first thing to point out is that The Treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community (link) is an existing treaty which came into effect in 1958. This was prior to Ireland joining the EU, but when we did join (the EEC as it was then) in 1973 we nonetheless technically became signatories to the Treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community.

I’m more than willing to cut the voters of 1958 and 1973 some slack with regards to nuclear energy. The issues of sustainability, Climate Change and the overwhelming importance of energy policy weren’t part of popular consciousness back then. The arguments against nuke power, though just as valid then as they are now, were far from well-understood.

This is no longer the case.

The simple fact is that whatever else the Lisbon Treaty may say; whatever good it may do; if given the opportunity, I am compelled to vote against a treaty that explicitly promotes nuclear power as a central pillar of European energy policy. I want Ireland to be at the forefront of renewable energy development. I want us to be vocal advocates of wind and wave and tidal (and solar in southern Europe) and to be at the vanguard of the anti-nuclear tendency. A vote for Lisbon is a vote against this position.

Which means I’m forced into a corner I didn’t really want to be in. But every Irish vote for Lisbon is a vote against a sustainable European energy policy. So I must use my own vote to counteract one of those. I’m voting ‘No’ to Lisbon, and I urge other Irish voters to do the same.

Justin at Chicken Yoghurt has made some suggestions as to how the British Labour Party might reconnect with the electorate in the wake of the sound kicking they received in the local elections this week. His ideas are good ones in my opinion, but they wouldn’t save Labour even if the party was far-sighted enough to implement them. Which it’s not.

In reality, nothing’s going to prevent a Tory victory at the next general election. Well, nothing beyond the wildly implausible. Britain is fed up with Labour. And what’s more, Britain doesn’t like Gordon Brown. The poor bloke is on a hiding to nothing; he’s got no charisma and he’s leading a government that people don’t feel they can trust. In our ultra-mediated world, that’s a recipe for disaster.

Plus the economy won’t be kind to him between now and the next general election. Every Labour soundbite that followed the meltdown this week insisted that the poor result was due to a downturn in the economy. I have news for them… no it wasn’t. The electorate gave you a thrashing because they don’t like you any more. Get your heads around that and you may not spend quite so many years in the wilderness after the next election. That said, the economy will be a major factor at the general election. And not in a good way.

Smart Labour strategists (I assume there are a couple) are already thinking about how best to exploit the predictable mess of 2010 from the opposition benches.

The tragedy of all this is the fact that the electorate don’t have the imagination to look beyond the tories when it comes to choosing a replacement. And they certainly don’t have the imagination for what’s really needed… to look beyond party politics entirely.

I’ve just realised that, despite the title of this post, none of this is very constructive really. But the trouble is — as Burroughs says in Interzone —

We have a new type of rule now. Not one-man rule, or rule of aristocracy or plutocracy, but of small groups elevated to positions of absolute power by random pressures, and subject to political and economic factors that leave little room for decisions […] The rulers of this most insecure of all worlds are rulers by accident; inept, frightened pilots at the controls of a vast machine they cannot understand, calling in experts to tell them which buttons to push.

… and I really don’t see much room for constructive improvement until we’ve shrugged off this foolish way of running our affairs.

All the same, in the spirit of constructivism in its broadest sense, and having already ruled out any real likelihood of saving the British Labour party, here’s some ideas that I believe should be implemented by the people of all industrialised nations (and if they insist on going through the party-political system to do so, then so be it). Oh, and I don’t vouch for the popularity of these policies, merely their urgent necessity…

1. The fundamental philosophy that public transport needs to be given priority over private car ownership should inform all relevant policies. Car ownership should be made more expensive and less convenient, while public transport should be expanded.
2. All new buildings must be built to passivHaus standard, or equivalent. Profits from fossil fuels should be heavily taxed* and the revenue used to upgrade the energy efficiency of current building stock.
3. The building of new fossil-fuel and nuclear power plants should be halted. The question must cease to be “how do we supply our demands with renewables?” And it must become “how do we modify our demands to meet the supply from renewables?”
4. Airport expansion projects should be halted. Aviation fuel, like all fossil fuels, should be heavily taxed. Plane tickets should be taxed and the money used to subsidise train tickets.
5. An examination of the food production and distribution system should be carried out. This should be done with an eye to optimising it based on two priorities; (a) the physical health of the population, and (b) the environmental impact of that system. Financial profit is not to be considered a priority, and questions of raw production efficiency (units per hectare, for instance) should not over-ride health and environmental concerns.

Oh, and there’s plenty more where that came from. Stuff about limiting property ownership and about fundamentally restructuring the way political decisions are made. It’s real nightmarish fringe stuff, I guess, when viewed from the modern political mainstream.

But that can change too, you know. And sometimes faster than you’d think.

“The modern free market as manifestation of a collective pleasure principle”. That’s an idea that may well feature prominently in my thesis. I’ve got a self-imposed deadline of April 2nd to finalise the title. Right now I’m essentially researching three different thesis topics, which is fascinating and all, but not too efficient. Mind you, I’ve whittled that down from about six. The most recent to fall by the wayside was the idea of writing on Freud’s notion of compulsive repetition, via an analysis of the films of Takeshi Kitano. Sadly, I realised that despite my familiarity with his films, I’m not nearly familiar enough with Japanese culture to really do justice to the subject (though it’s definitely a paper I’d love to read).

But “the modern free market as a manifestation of a collective pleasure principle”? What the hell does that mean, right? Oh, and what’s the pleasure principle again?

Well, last question first I guess; a few paragraphs on Freud’s second topography wouldn’t go amiss.

The ego and the id

During Freud’s early work, he used a theoretical model of the mind / psyche now known as ‘the first topography’. This divided the psyche into three parts / processes; the conscious, the unconscious and the preconscious. However, he later revised this significantly into the second topography. There are still three parts / processes but now they are the id, the ego, and the super-ego*.

The ego is a conflation of the conscious and the preconscious of the first topography. By and large, it’s that part of the mind that we are aware of (though there are elements of the ego of which we are unconscious, confusingly enough). And it’s more than just awareness; the ego, for most of us, is where we locate our identity.

The id relates, more or less, to the unconscious of the first topography. It’s the part of the human psyche that contains the thoughts and memories of which we are currently unaware (including, though not limited to, those which are the subject of repression). Perhaps more importantly, to psychoanalytic theory at least, the id; the unconscious mind; is also home to a cauldron of desires and drives which motivate us as much as, if not more than, those desires and drives of which we are conscious.

In Freudian theory, the ego and the id are generally in conflict. The id is governed by “the pleasure principle” which is regularly misunderstood as being an instinct to seek out pleasure. In fact, Freud pointed out that the drive behind the pleasure principle is at least as much about the desire to avoid “unpleasure”. It’s what drives us to seek food when we are hungry. The ego, on the other hand, is governed by “the reality principle”. This is, in simple terms, an awareness of the appropriate way to interact with the external world.

So, for example, a hungry person who passes a market-stall containing fresh bread will be driven, by the pleasure principle, to consume it and so escape the hunger. The primary biological / unconscious / id imperative is a simple “eat that bread”. An infant in this position will consequently reach out and grab the bread (Freud believed that the ego, and therefore the reality principle, is acquired through development, while the id is innate). Someone who has developed a relatively normal ego, adequately governed by the reality principle, will — on the other hand — understand that the appropriate behaviour is to first buy the bread and then eat it. This is why, in Freudian terms, the primary tool deployed by the reality principle to keep the pleasure principle in check, is known as “postponement”.

The super-ego

Often seen as the poor cousin in Freud’s topography, the super-ego is usually of less interest to Freudians. Probably because they already have their hands full dealing with the id. All the same, it’s a fascinating part of his work and plays a pretty important role in my mapping of Freud’s topography onto groups rather than individuals. I’ve written before that “the super-ego is where culture lives”. I still believe that to be a true statement (albeit at the poetic end of truth), but it’s a very incomplete picture. I wrote it when discussing culture, not the super-ego.

Indeed, because parts of it are conscious and parts unconscious, the Freudian super-ego can be a little hard to pin down. Rycroft writes that the super-ego is that part of the psyche “where self-observation, self-criticism and other reflective activities develop” (guilt is a big weapon in the arsenal of the super-ego). Meanwhile, according to the bible, “Super-ego is the product of an internalisation of, and identification with, parent and parental authority, including prohibitions and values associated with that authority. Insofar as parental authority reflects the broader social context, the super-ego can be seen as the indirect product of the internalisation of society’s demands and values”.

I’m aware that the super-ego sounds a bit like the reality principle. But they are quite distinct, one being a regulatory function of the ego based upon both an awareness of the immediate environment and circumstances as well as an understanding of consequences and appropriate behaviour. The super-ego is — in part — where that “appropriate behaviour” is stored within our psyche. The reality principle is guided both by the ego and the super-ego with the goal of modifying the pleasure principle so that it doesn’t get us into trouble.

Applying this to groups

As I’ve discussed elsewhere, there are problems with trying to scale up Freud’s topography as a tool to analyse groups, organisations or cultures. But at the same time, there can be merit in doing so. Gregory Bateson is my main guide in this territory, and he has explained why this approach is both legitimate and useful. In Morale and National Character (1942), Bateson demonstrates that the relationships between sub-groups within larger groups are subject to analysis, contrast and comparison so that something we could rightfully consider “national character” begins to emerge. It’s worth pointing out that this analysis can be applied not merely to nations, but to any large group that adheres to a specific set of cultural norms.

For the sake of clarity, allow me to pause and provide examples of what I mean by “the relationships between sub-groups within larger groups”. Bateson’s essay is comparing the national character of Germany and England and does so by examining the culturally determined relationships that exist between (for example) men and women, parents and children, upper-class and lower-class, and so on. The essay is not an exhaustive case-study, and is largely about promoting the (at the time heretical) idea that western cultures and civilisations are just as open to anthropological and psycho- analysis as are the “primitive” cultures of Bali and Papua New Guinea where he did revolutionary work. Along the way, however, he convincingly demonstrates how pronounced character traits can emerge within large groups of people due to specific commonalities in their individual development, which are themselves culturally determined by, and specific to, those groups.

So when Bateson’s work is read in the context of Hostadter and Dennett’s theories about “mind” emerging from organised complexity, and even Jung’s theories of the collective unconscious, it doesn’t seem illegitimate to suggest that large groups can indeed by “psychoanalysed” (to use the term in it’s most broad sense) despite the apparent lack of an identifiable “psyche”.

The modern free market as manifestation of a collective pleasure principle

So let’s return to the original theme, and answer the first of those questions: “The modern free market as manifestation of a collective pleasure principle”… what the hell does that mean?

Well, a part of my hypothesis is the idea that there now exists a global civilisation that transcends national borders** but which can be defined largely by American cultural and economic influence. I’m not suggesting that this civilisation originated in America, merely that those cultural norms which have historically been embraced and promoted by American society, help define it. And thanks to US (and US-influenced) mass-media as well as global movements like feminism, the equal rights initiatives and multiculturalism, we have entered a period where the developmental experiences of American, Irish, British, German, Greek or Australian individuals are becoming far less distinct, opening the way for a collective analysis.

As part of that analysis, it is my suggestion that… you guessed it… the modern free market is a manifestation of our collective pleasure principle. It represents the demands (quite literally) of the collective. When those demands are repugnant or unreasonable then the market gets modified and restricted by laws (the passing of such laws being an example of our collective reality principle at work).

To take an unambiguous example, upon which I suspect we can all agree that a level of market intervention is required; much to our dismay, there exists a demand for — and market in — child pornography. Leaving aside the abstractions of “simulated child pornography” (as clearly there is a demand specifically for the non-simulated variety), we have passed laws making the sale or possession of such material illegal. This is noteworthy, because we have done so despite already having laws that outlaw its production. As a culture, we have understood that the market for this material is in itself problematic. We work, therefore, not merely at outlawing supply but also at attempting to curtail demand.

The basic analogy

An individual who allows their behaviour to be guided by an unregulated pleasure principle is likely to be both destructive to himself and his immediate environment (along with anyone who shares that environment with them). It is clear that we, as a civilisation, are capable of regulating our demands of the world. We possess the tools to do so. I would suggest, however, that we are guilty of significantly under-using those tools, and that the almost-unregulated demand for natural resources is resulting in behaviour both destructive to ourselves and to our immediate environment.