Shifting Things Around
Not my problem.
[Letter #028]
Good morning, son.
We’re now just within a month of your due date. Your mother has been attempting several inversion exercises to attempt to get her unruly passenger to turn his head in the proper direction for birth. If he does, then we have a few additional options. If not, then it’ll be a C-section for sure. Either way, she and I are both eager to get you here with us, if for no other reason than to simply get things back into some semblance of normalcy. She’s probably about 50% larger than she typically would be if she wasn’t pregnant, so you can imagine how challenging it has become for her to move about.
Today, I intended to write about the Fermi Paradox, but let’s save that for another day. It would have made for a simple enough letter, at least for the little bit that I would say about it, but I have a bit more time today. In this letter, I want to describe something that I see over and over in our world, although I’m by no means the first or only person to observe such a thing. What I see is a tendency to shift things to be someone else’s problem, but I don’t mean that in the way that old folks and rich bastards usually mean. I don’t mean that “kids these days don’t take responsibility anymore!” Not that. Let me see if I can describe what I see.
Your mother and I have recently watched through a couple seasons of a television show. This one is a sort of game show in the “reality” style where celebrities from other reality shows are gathered as contestants, mostly for the nostalgia value, much like Match Game and Hollywood Squares used to do. It’s a profitable gimmick, as these reality show celebrities tend to command their own fan following similarly to sports stars, music stars, or even gladiators in Rome long ago. While I generally wouldn’t watch reality shows on my own, your mother has a few of them that she has enjoyed for years, and this new series has drawn several of her favorite characters back together. I just like that it’s set in Scotland, and the host is pretty entertaining. Otherwise, meh…
On this recent season of the show, a large bloc of the contestants were from the “Real Housewives” set of shows. These women are essentially caricatures of extreme consumer/disposable culture. They are never seen without hours worth of make-up applied, without their hair presented just so, or without a fabulously impractical outfit that serves no real function beyond declaring its impracticality and accentuating their grotesquely overstuffed, silicone-engorged breasts. They play the role of the clown, demonstrating the gaudy extremes of our society in laughably unrealistic performances of supposed luxury and glamor. Now, the fact that most Americans can’t seem to perceive this motley charade as their role, and will thus proceed to envy this farce of luxury and glamor, only underscores the broader trend of the populace’s incapacity to understand satire in general.
Among the various personality traits common with these characters is an exceptional narcissism. Beyond the slightest effort of bringing a wine glass to their toxin-injected lips, they really need everything done for them. In part, this is because they are physically incapable of performing such tasks (and would be impaired by constricting clothing besides), but also it’s because they simply couldn’t be bothered to exert themselves in any way that might cause the slightest inconvenience or strain. This is often accompanied by a quick tongue-lashing of blame and accusation for the service-person who is tasked to perform these trivialities. The “Housewives” characters themselves will insist that this is how they behave day-to-day, everyday. Such suggestions remind me of the kayfabe of professional wrestlers.
There is never any gratitude. There is only expectation and punishment.
I think that’s the image that sits in my mind today. It’s the depiction of the master — narcissistic, grotesque, falsely glamorous, expecting, entitled, impatient, incapable, loud, ignorant, self-absorbed, uncaring, older than admitted, talentless, boastful, exploitative, greedy, and myopic — and the servant — diligent, genuine, common, grateful, generous, patient, capable, modest, skillful, empathetic, considerate, spry, talented, humble, cooperative, thrifty, and observant. The master believes that it is his right to push inconvenient or strenuous tasks off onto the servant. The servant is bound by forces of Hierarchy, by way of Capitalism and Money, and ultimately enforced through violence, to take these tasks without recourse.
The lady-clowns do an excellent job depicting this for us, but what they’re demonstrating is obvious everywhere in our modern world. The first example that comes to mind is the “boss.” Whether it’s an office manager or a worksite foreman, what’s often found is that the common laborers are the ones who manage to perform the most difficult and distasteful tasks, often without any measure of gratitude. There’s the expectation that it’s the duty of the “lowest” to complete the unwanted jobs, usually with the boss excusing himself for having already “done his time.” In my experience, the boss has no clue how to perform the “lower” level task with any degree of capability anyway. Remember, the Peter Principle says that folks end up getting promoted over and over until they’re no longer able to do a good enough job for further promotion, which means that everyone on the hierarchical ladder is just slightly too incompetent to do the job they end up with.
Except for the executives of corporations. They seem to come from a different slice of the same incompetent pie. That’s the next iteration of the master/slave dynamic that comes to mind for me: the caste system. We United Statians really love to pretend that “all [humans] are created equal” and that we don’t have a caste system here. It’s part of the mythos of America, after all, with the bootstraps and the Wheaties-eating. It’s all garbage, but there are some folks who still pretend it’s true. In America, we call the upper class “elites,” but in older parts of the white empire (that is, the generalized imperialism of civilization that transfers from one dominant nation to the next), they’re usually called “aristocrats.” We prefer to make up stories about how they “started in a garage with nothing more than a computer and a lot of motivation.” We don’t mention the multi-million dollar budgets granted by the family wealth that goes along with the garage.
These elites are where we get folks who run the corporations on the highest levels and who run for government offices up to and including the presidency. They believe it is their birthright to command and dominate. It’s not just because they have a lot of money, although they do, but because they believe in their bones that they are simply better than average people. They often believe that they’re more talented, more attractive, and more intelligent than average people, because who will risk telling them otherwise? These folks command the powers of life and death, and the law is no significant obstruction to them. Remember, Wilhoit’s Law says: “There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
The two above examples are both on the individual level: overseer vs worker and elite vs commoner. They represent two of the layers removed from the actual violence that supports the entire system. This is basically just how much effort the master position has to go to in order to employ the violence against a defiant subordinate.
With bosses, the subordinate could simply refuse to do the job, and they’d have to find another one. The boss usually can’t have the subordinate killed, let’s say. However, the worker will have to find another job, and that new boss will have the same power as the old boss. Failure to do any job at all will leave the worker without income and that will result in starvation or criminal behavior. This “do what I say or end up on the street” implicit threat is a form of violence imposed by the system.
With elites, subordinates generally have to comply with orders for the same reason as with bosses, but also that the elites are not often bound by the laws, as they are members of the inner circle that Wilhoit describes. They therefore have closer access to the violence, if they could be bothered enough to employ it. With a command, they could have an insubordinate underling executed (or their family, or dog, or house burned, or whatever) and expect no real retribution whatsoever. Thus, the speed and intensity of the violence are increased and less effort is required of the master position.
There are limits to even elites’ access to this power though. An elite couldn’t, say, carpet bomb an entire nation with impunity. For that, we need to examine the third example of the master/slave relationship: the empire. Throughout every stage of civilization, we have had empires, and every single one of them has operated on this dynamic: there are those who command and those who serve. The ones who serve are compelled to do so, because if they don’t, they will suffer violent consequences. This counts for individual humans just as much as it does entire nations, but nations make such claims without resorting to higher authorities.
Their will is enacted by way of raw violent force, or threat thereof. The state’s master position is the source of the systemic violence, so there are no requisite channels to go through in order to exercise its power. While states will almost always construct some ceremonial procedure (such as making declarations of war, trade agreements, or absorbing vassals), usually in order to facilitate Propaganda and maintain public opinion, there is absolutely no requirement to do so.
All empires have worked on these principles. They push around “lesser” nations with expectation and entitlement, and the victim nations are supposed to just take the abuse and provide wealth to the empires. This is the core of violence-based hierarchical relationships — only flowery language, dubbed “diplomacy,” manages the silkscreen facade that hides what amounts to nothing more sophisticated than a back-alley mugging. “Gimme your money or I’ll put a bullet in you.” Although, I think that I could probably understand and empathize with a mugger better than I could an empire.
In these examples, each stepping closer to the core of systemic violence that makes it all possible, there’s another typical behavior that I was getting at with the start of the letter: making things someone else’s problem. When you hold the gun to someone’s head, they are forced to do whatever you say if they want to go on living. This sort of power incentivizes the master position to offload essentially everything disagreeable onto the servant position.
Capitalism has a reputation for solving problems — a problem comes up and “the market” is supposed to recognize it and commodify an answer to sell to the interested parties. There are individual cases where that’s probably happened, but that’s not really what I see most of the time — especially not when it comes to emergency crises. What I see is that people with money, and thus power, just pay/command to have problems outsourced to people with less money or power. Because, why wouldn’t they?
Capitalism … never solves its crisis tendencies, it merely moves them around. It does so in a double sense, from one part of the world to another and from one kind of problem to another.
– David Harvey, The Enigma of Capital, p262.
Moving a problem from one part of the world to another is instantly visible in the waste that is produced from our gluttonous consumer culture. The rotten food, the unworn fast fashion, all the plastic — it all has to go somewhere, and our rich nation can’t be bothered to touch it. It’s yucky, and we just had our nails done, and do you know how much these shoes cost? Way more than some poor country’s meager salary, that’s how much. And so, we barge our trash away by the literal shipload. Sure, we have some landfills here (operated by the “lower” classes, of course), but with the most toxic things — we simply must ship them away. Let it pollute someone else’s beaches. Or just dump it in the ocean, right? It’ll float away and we won’t have to see it again.
Of course, imperial imposition doesn’t stop with physical trash. We export our economic disasters as well.
In some parts of the world, however, the [Great Recession] has been long gone. Even in the United States the recession was declared statistically over in June 2009. Ask [in 2010] about ‘the economic crisis’ in Brazil, Argentina, India, or Australia and the answer will be, ‘What crisis? That’s [their] problem, not ours.’ Geographical myopia is, of course, common enough.
– David Harvey, The Enigma of Capital, p262.
So long as the rich and powerful can’t see the problem, then it’s not a problem for them, and myopia is the name of the game. They will do anything and everything in their power to cover things up or avert their eyes if it means that they can continue to live in their fabricated reality undisturbed. Empires, and the elites who run them, prefer to outsource all “problems” and continue through life indefinitely with nothing but pure comfort, serenity, entertainment, delight, satisfaction, and security. Forever may they reign, and all that.
In one sense, this is why climate change has become as bad as it has. The imperial core has demanded more and more “luxuries,” no matter the costs. Those costs, at any rate, will be borne by the vassal states of the empire. The minerals and fuels will be drawn from their soils, the lumber will be cut from their forests, the food will be grown from their depleting topsoil, the labor will be done cheaply (or free) by their exploited population, and the waste and pollution will be dumped into their waterways.
All the while, rich nations like the US, France, Britain, Sweden, Germany, or Denmark can gloat about how they’re being “environmentally friendly.” Just look at the pristine hills with the windmills! They can offer tax breaks to have solar panels installed on rooftops and fields, so long as those panels are manufactured (an exceptionally toxic process) in some other forgotten sacrifice zone. Behold, a “sustainable” climate in the Global North, brought to you by the destruction of the Global South.
The big problem with outsourcing all of your shit is that eventually there’s no place left to send it, and then you just have to deal with it. This is a crash scenario, and it’s global this time. This hierarchical structure — this imperial dynamic, our civilizational trajectory — is parasitic, and the parasite is killing the host. I think it’s high time that the “masters” at all levels of hierarchy start to take back their own responsibilities, waste, discomforts, and stresses. They won’t want to do that, naturally, but soon enough they won’t have a choice.
Son, I hope that you’re doing well when you read this. I hope that I’m still around to explain my thinking. I’m sure that I’ll be truly embarrassed by the quality of my writing, but maybe you now have a better understanding of where my mind was when I wrote these missives. Know that I’m going to do my very best to give you a good life, despite the calamities coming at us.
I love you, son.
Your father,
Papa Bear
[Author’s note: This is a series of letters that I intend to print to paper and deliver to my son, probably around the year 2040. You are more than welcome to read along. The links in the article are only for you, the reader, and will include citations, jokes, asides, and links to books or other items. If you happen to purchase anything through such a link, I’ll get a small commission. Every little bit helps, right?]
