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Musings Report 2017:31 8-4-17 Crisis of Meaning, Crisis of Agency
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For those who are new to the Musings reports: they are basically a glimpse into my notebook, the unfiltered swamp where I organize future themes, sort through the dozens of stories and links submitted by readers, refine my own research and start connecting dots which appear later in the blog or in my books. As always, I hope the Musings spark new appraisals and insights. Thank you for supporting the site and for inviting me into your circle of correspondents.
Apologies in Advance
Life has put a full-court press on me the past week, and the pressure will remain intense for the rest of August. I am unable to respond to any email or messages, and the blog will be in maintenance mode. Thank you for your understanding.
Crisis of Meaning, Crisis of Agency
One of my frustrations with the mainstream dialog about the decline of paid work, automation, immigration, offshoring, and the opioid epidemic is the lack of context that ties these issues together.
The context that makes the most sense to me is a crisis of meaning and a crisis of agency.
A livelihood is not just a means to a paycheck--it's the primary source of identity, self-worth, pride, a sense of accomplishment, agency and belonging to something larger than oneself. When people are deprived of their livelihoods, and opportunities to find replacement livelihoods are few, people suffer a crisis of meaning: they have lost a primal source of purposes and meaning.
This crisis of meaning is not just financial or psychological; it is ontological--their entire state of being has been disrupted and hollowed out.
In this purposeless, directionless, debilitating state of existence, addiction and hopelessness thrive.
A crisis of agency results from the loss of agency--the ability to pursue self-directed goals, to have the power to shape or influence one's surroundings, connections and future.
Agency is defined as "the capacity of an actor to act in a given environment." This may not seem like a profound concept, but another way to describe agency is that it is the opposite of powerlessness.
People with agency define themselves and their identity; they shape the world around them rather than passively await whatever local circumstances deliver up.
In the real world, people with agency move on when things no longer work for them in a particular situation. Agency is not just the opposite of feeling powerless; it's also the opposite of victimhood, i.e. the state of being in which others are responsible for all of one's travails and difficulties.
Agency and responsibility are two sides of the same coin: each manifests the other.
When we examine communities that have suffered structural losses of paid work, we find a loss of agency--a pervasive sense of powerlessness to fix what's dysfunctional or broken. In this state, people are prone to sliding into victimhood as they lose their agency. Victimhood further debilitates them by sapping their sense of self-direction, control and responsibility.
Any functional solution to a loss of livelihood must address the crises of meaning and agency by creating an abundance of opportunities to make new connections, learn new skills and join new organizations that provide belonging, direction, purpose and meaning.
This is the reason why the foundation of my proposed CLIME system (community-labor integrated money economy) is the structured, self-directing community group: anyone can start a group, but every group must follow specific guidelines in order to receive funding: it must be democratically governed, and it must perform work that serves the community, i.e. fills local scarcities.
As I have explained in my books, neither the market nor the government can resolve the crises of meaning and agency; these crises are not even recognized, much less understood.
The market and the government are specific structures that address certain scarcities and needs, but they don't address all scarcities and needs. A finer-grained, far more localized and empowered way of creating livelihoods and purpose is needed.
Summary of the Blog This Past Week
Is Another Oil Head-Fake Brewing? 8/4/17
USD: Setting Up a Rip-Your-Face-Off Rally or in Freefall? 8/3/17
Why We're So Risk-Averse: "We Can't Take That Chance" 8/2/17
6 Key Questions about RussiaGate 8/1/17
Meanwhile, Somewhere in the Pentagon... 7/31/17
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
Harvested and prepped over 300 peaches from our tree, sliced, bagged and frozen--I was lucky to have the help of Dave P.
Market Musings: Oil
I wrote about a possible Oil Head-Fake in the blog, but I didn't emphasize the inevitability of a global recession, and the outsized impact any decline in demand will have on the global price of oil.
The drop from $50 to the high $20s in late 2016 was a precursor to a truly serious drop in demand that pushes prices to lows few anticipated.
If the price of oil plummets to $25/barrel oil for more than a few weeks, the shock waves have to potential to topple governments, bankrupt oil-exporting nations and disrupt global bond and stock markets.
Cheap oil is a blessing to consumer nations, but it's a mixed blessing, as it's not enough to compensate for the lost jobs and stagnant wages that result from recession.
Nor does cheaper oil compensate for over-indebtedness, i.e. the need to pay down debt or liquidate bad debt in recessions.
Low oil prices devastate oil-producing communities and states, adding fuel to the recessionary fire of declining payrolls and profits.
I fully expect oil to decline to $25/barrel in the next recession, which seems increasingly likely to start in 2018, if not sooner.
At this low, oil services stocks will likely be sold down to the ground, as demand for deepwater platforms etc. vanishes. Survivors of the decline in oil prices may offer investors who can afford big risk appetites bargain prices for valuable assets.
From Left Field
Kin: a decentralized ecosystem of digital services for daily life (via G.D.T.)
Can Personality Be Changed? Psychologists have long debated how flexible someone’s “true” self is.
The solution to the global crisis of capitalism is simplicity itself
Tesla’s new Solar Roof is actually cheaper than a normal roof -- I wonder if this includes labor and maintenance...
Two Realities: Political Reality, Physical Reality
The fragility of you and what it says about consciousness
Hate is the New Sex (via Pam C.)
America's Productivity Plunge Explained -- mass addiction to smart-phones...
$200 solar self-sufficiency without your landlord noticing.
Building a solar micro-grid in my bedroom with parts from Amazon
The insidious creep of pseudo-public space in London
15 Craziest Things We Spotted on Amazon
The New Yuppies How the aspirational class expresses its status in an age of inequality.
Sound Mixer--Use this free tool to play or create an audio download of nature sounds. -- this is pretty neat...
"It's not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It's because we dare not venture that they are difficult." Seneca
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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