Thread by @GeorgeMonbiot

For years I’ve been struggling with a paradox that seems fundamental to our age. We live under a system that celebrates freedom and choice. Yet almost everyone in a position of power or influence subscribes to the same set of preposterous beliefs.
Thread/

Here are a few of them.
- That economic growth can continue indefinitely on a finite planet.
- That the economic system should be granted primacy over the Earth systems that sustain it.
- That you should pledge allegiance to capitalism, even if you don’t know what it is.

- That natural wealth can be turned into private property, and the right of a person to own it corresponds to the numbers in their bank account.
- That the “invisible hand of the market” can one day solve our problems, though it has failed to do so to date.

- That the unhindered acquisition of enormous wealth by a few could lead to something other than economic and political disaster.
- That taxes sufficient to break the cycle of accumulation and redistribute this wealth are unthinkable.

- That permitting a handful of offshore billionaires to own the media, set the political agenda and tell us where our best interests lie is somehow OK.
- That democracy can proceed in the almost complete absence of civic knowledge and useful information.

- That we are best-served by an education system which recognises only one kind of intelligence (analytical, linear and hyperlexic) while neglecting other forms (spatial, systemic etc), writing off millions of children.

What amazes me is that no terror or torture is required to persuade people to fall into line with these crazy beliefs. Somehow the system has created an entire class of politicians, officials, media commentators, cultural leaders, academics and intellectuals who support them.

Reading accounts of 20th Century terror, it sometimes seems to me that there was more dissent among intellectuals confronting totalitarian regimes than there is in our age of “freedom” and “choice”.

It’s not total. There are a few dissenters.
They are not, on the whole, imprisoned or executed. The system is so powerful that it doesn’t need to crush them. They are simply ignored and marginalised. It is entirely unruffled by their objections.

So what’s going on? How has this system created a near-consensus around its ridiculous ideas? How has it ensured not only that people of power and influence defend them, but that almost everyone else nods along, or simply shrugs as Earth systems spiral towards collapse?

I don’t have a complete or satisfactory answer. But here are some guesses:

1. That petty ambition (better job, bigger house, smoother car) is as potent an enforcer of consensus as state terror.

2. That the billionaire press has become more powerful than human courage.

3. That spectacle, banter and an obsession with trivia and celebrity are more effective at defusing dissent than coercion and fear.

4. That our current organisational structures, which look as if they offer choice and freedom, actually do nothing of the kind. On the contrary, though it might have been accidentally achieved, we have arrived at an almost perfectly calibrated system of social control.