It strikes me that the sorts of life choices you write about are made possible by the neoliberal system continuing to function. And I also considered that the fragmentation of social media can contribute to those life choices in the form of self-selecting communities that come together online to support quality. For example a community of Substack readers who may eventually come together in real life.
"Most of the time, wherever I go, my thought is: it’s amazing how well things work."
If you are in the top 30% the world, yes. Otherwise, not so much.
"And what’s so intriguing about neoliberalism is that nobody seems to have created it, or to administer it,"
This makes no sense. There is an entire apparatus to make the whole structure based on currency, shared values, and mutual dependency which at times has had to make large changes to fit the new structures. Some examples being the end of gold based monetary systems, the tightening of bank regulations worldwide in 2007/2008, the actions of the international monetary fund and the World Bank, and so on.
And the people regulating this worldwide system hold a conference called… Davos. You should look it up, it's really rather important.
You are just not paying attention.
The real issue is that it is set at the top but percolates down all the way to the dollar bills stopped inside your sofa. This is why Argentina has elected president to scrap the peso and Institute a US dollar-based currency in Argentina, enough people want in on the neoliberal consensus. right now the inflation in Argentina is 143%. in case you missed the memo, 143% is not working, not even close.
This is true even in places like the United States where the bottom half of the economy shuffles along and has 9 years less of lifespan. https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R44846.pdf
At any given moment the system as run tends to work for "the affluent", and I'm going to bet that most of the people here are in that group, but does not work as well for the people who are not on that list. This does not mean that the affluent don't have problems and are looking for a better solution because most people want to move up in the world and the people who run the system dislike the fact that they cannot get more things done, and because there are always going to be problems. It's game theory and if you want me to explain it to you I will, in detail.
Thank you. Brilliant essay, a call to arms for us to do the work that really matters!
Your exhortations will be extra relevant for the coming year as news media will tempt us with day to day gossip about the campaigns and social media capitalize on our distraction to squabble over the elections.
It’s difficult not to be a curmudgeon about Neoliberalism as it has also done so much harm to the planet, to people and to economies around the world for decades. Chomsky has written extensively and precisely on the subject for years and no student of where we are headed should ignore his teachings. Thomas Piketty followed up this work with extensive empirical data last decade on what Neoliberalism has actually achieved and shows through extensive analysis and proofs what the results have really been around the globe. And David Stockman, one of the original Architects of the Neoliberalism - and now writes on Substack - has become one of its harshest critics. So let’s leave it to them to provide a fuller picture of the results of Neoliberalism and also don’t forget Edward Snowden. He showed everyone what’s behind the curtain and how the Neoliberal order is truly maintained around the world. It’s not pretty. Especially for the losers in this system. But like you pointed out maybe it’s the creatives who can shed some light on a subject very few people truly understand. It is strange that so many can offer opinions on capitalism and communism but in relative terms only a handful of people even know we live in a neoliberal order let alone can describe what it does to maintain itself. From the creative realm probably the best, most concise and most well known artist and critic of Neoliberalism there is Banksy. With 12M followers on Instagram he/she/they speak from perspective of the losers in the Neoliberal order and the base of followers continue to grow. Personally, Neoliberalism is a sham and relies entirely on printed money and a trillion dollar a year military to maintain itself. It’s not sustainable and the fall out from its failure is likely to occur in our children’s lifetimes if not their children’s, for sure. It will more than likely be a painful restructuring and Zuckerberg’s 100M bunker in Hawaii will be put to the test eventually by somebody, probably not him. See, it’s hard not to be a curmudgeon about Neoliberals and the desire to disappear into an archipelago in New Zealand is strong. I’ll be there in January looking lol. Happy Holidays!
What a beautiful rumination to wake up to this morning, thank you!
I agree so much that it almost feels intimate. The reason, I believe, that money dominates as a benchmark for value, even in the arts, is not only because money is so useful. It is because money is the clearest benchmark. It's the easiest to quantify. Units of currency are countable and accessible immediately to everyone, everywhere. It's not just that people love money, it's that we love simplicity and clarity, and nothing is more simple and clear than saying, "This thing is worth this many."
But, as you so perfectly expressed, art and spirituality and humanity are so much more than that. Our experience and the value of art is not countable. Attempts to quantify it immediately reduce it at best or distort it into something else altogether at worst.
But artists, as you say, must carve out and explore new spaces. Unmeasured and unmeasurable in-betweens and beyond the edges, under, over, within and without. That's the joy of encountering great art, it shows us things we didn't know existed within ourselves and others, it confirms and redefines, reshapes, and re-ifies. What kind of price can you put on that? Artists will pay virtually any price to express their work. Why? Because we're called to.
Art is a vocation. It is a calling to create, and creation is divine. Anyone present at the birth of a child knows that something far greater than 'human capital' has arrived in our midst.
As our world, especially with AI, moves more and more toward sizing up the countable, the need for experiencing the uncountable will grow. Reducing the world to a singular metric: currency, will only grow as the datafication of our existence intesifies. Data is useful, money is incredibly helpful. As you say, the neoliberal order was a technology that achieved a great deal. But it is a model for what can be measured, and it neglects what cannot.
We who care more about what can't be counted will continue to "spend our time" exporing what it means to live in the liminal. Thank you for another exciting manifesto!
A pensive piece as always. This is the key for me: "It’s possible simply to ignore the exigencies of neoliberalism and to live in a way in which one does what one wants," which is both the blessing and the curse. On the one hand, to use this platform as an example, I can make a small income as a writer on Substack in a way that would be unimaginable even three years ago.
However, the "live like one wants" mentality is also a problematic symptom of the individualistic era which, historically, births fascistic thinking (or at least populism) in a misplaced desire to reject greed/individualism in favor of unifying a collective via nationalistic/ethnic lines.
And this, for me, is the bind we find ourselves in: as artists in the neoliberal era, we can most assuredly "live our best life" in favor of personal reflection & time > money, but isn't that just another term for leisure, which is a product of the neoliberal currents we are trying to swim against? It's at least a balancing act, if not the Catch-22 of the "neoliberal" generation.
This article had me in the first half... I like the argument, a counterpoint to another article I read years ago that proposed the diametrical opposite advice on trying to live as an artist: a day job you hate will not make you a better artist under moonlight; quite the contrary, it will make you hate yourself, and self-hate can only take you so far as an artist.
Trying to find self-worth outside the framework of monetary value can be described as swimming against the current... I quit my day job because it made me feel quite dismal, and I'm feeling that current pull at me now more than ever. With enough money you can actually not feel that current at all, so perhaps if I get to that point I can suspend my disbelief in the way you describe, undo that trick of the mind. But IMHO, it's not the kind of knot you can untie once, but over and over, day in, day out. Just keep swimming...
I loved this, and it was the first time I’ve seen the term neoliberalism used in a positive manner. I’ve most often heard it used like a curse, and to mean very different things. (I would have agreed with your editor until now!)
As for the rest, I very much agree with your analysis. A system that provides prosperity and security is one in which any of us can carve out some kind of human flourishing that exists beyond it. Very well said!!!!
Great stuff. Carving out those spaces is a big part of my mission as a teacher.
Great post that made me think.
It strikes me that the sorts of life choices you write about are made possible by the neoliberal system continuing to function. And I also considered that the fragmentation of social media can contribute to those life choices in the form of self-selecting communities that come together online to support quality. For example a community of Substack readers who may eventually come together in real life.
"Most of the time, wherever I go, my thought is: it’s amazing how well things work."
If you are in the top 30% the world, yes. Otherwise, not so much.
"And what’s so intriguing about neoliberalism is that nobody seems to have created it, or to administer it,"
This makes no sense. There is an entire apparatus to make the whole structure based on currency, shared values, and mutual dependency which at times has had to make large changes to fit the new structures. Some examples being the end of gold based monetary systems, the tightening of bank regulations worldwide in 2007/2008, the actions of the international monetary fund and the World Bank, and so on.
And the people regulating this worldwide system hold a conference called… Davos. You should look it up, it's really rather important.
You are just not paying attention.
The real issue is that it is set at the top but percolates down all the way to the dollar bills stopped inside your sofa. This is why Argentina has elected president to scrap the peso and Institute a US dollar-based currency in Argentina, enough people want in on the neoliberal consensus. right now the inflation in Argentina is 143%. in case you missed the memo, 143% is not working, not even close.
This is true even in places like the United States where the bottom half of the economy shuffles along and has 9 years less of lifespan. https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R44846.pdf
At any given moment the system as run tends to work for "the affluent", and I'm going to bet that most of the people here are in that group, but does not work as well for the people who are not on that list. This does not mean that the affluent don't have problems and are looking for a better solution because most people want to move up in the world and the people who run the system dislike the fact that they cannot get more things done, and because there are always going to be problems. It's game theory and if you want me to explain it to you I will, in detail.
Thank you. Brilliant essay, a call to arms for us to do the work that really matters!
Your exhortations will be extra relevant for the coming year as news media will tempt us with day to day gossip about the campaigns and social media capitalize on our distraction to squabble over the elections.
It’s difficult not to be a curmudgeon about Neoliberalism as it has also done so much harm to the planet, to people and to economies around the world for decades. Chomsky has written extensively and precisely on the subject for years and no student of where we are headed should ignore his teachings. Thomas Piketty followed up this work with extensive empirical data last decade on what Neoliberalism has actually achieved and shows through extensive analysis and proofs what the results have really been around the globe. And David Stockman, one of the original Architects of the Neoliberalism - and now writes on Substack - has become one of its harshest critics. So let’s leave it to them to provide a fuller picture of the results of Neoliberalism and also don’t forget Edward Snowden. He showed everyone what’s behind the curtain and how the Neoliberal order is truly maintained around the world. It’s not pretty. Especially for the losers in this system. But like you pointed out maybe it’s the creatives who can shed some light on a subject very few people truly understand. It is strange that so many can offer opinions on capitalism and communism but in relative terms only a handful of people even know we live in a neoliberal order let alone can describe what it does to maintain itself. From the creative realm probably the best, most concise and most well known artist and critic of Neoliberalism there is Banksy. With 12M followers on Instagram he/she/they speak from perspective of the losers in the Neoliberal order and the base of followers continue to grow. Personally, Neoliberalism is a sham and relies entirely on printed money and a trillion dollar a year military to maintain itself. It’s not sustainable and the fall out from its failure is likely to occur in our children’s lifetimes if not their children’s, for sure. It will more than likely be a painful restructuring and Zuckerberg’s 100M bunker in Hawaii will be put to the test eventually by somebody, probably not him. See, it’s hard not to be a curmudgeon about Neoliberals and the desire to disappear into an archipelago in New Zealand is strong. I’ll be there in January looking lol. Happy Holidays!
What a beautiful rumination to wake up to this morning, thank you!
I agree so much that it almost feels intimate. The reason, I believe, that money dominates as a benchmark for value, even in the arts, is not only because money is so useful. It is because money is the clearest benchmark. It's the easiest to quantify. Units of currency are countable and accessible immediately to everyone, everywhere. It's not just that people love money, it's that we love simplicity and clarity, and nothing is more simple and clear than saying, "This thing is worth this many."
But, as you so perfectly expressed, art and spirituality and humanity are so much more than that. Our experience and the value of art is not countable. Attempts to quantify it immediately reduce it at best or distort it into something else altogether at worst.
But artists, as you say, must carve out and explore new spaces. Unmeasured and unmeasurable in-betweens and beyond the edges, under, over, within and without. That's the joy of encountering great art, it shows us things we didn't know existed within ourselves and others, it confirms and redefines, reshapes, and re-ifies. What kind of price can you put on that? Artists will pay virtually any price to express their work. Why? Because we're called to.
Art is a vocation. It is a calling to create, and creation is divine. Anyone present at the birth of a child knows that something far greater than 'human capital' has arrived in our midst.
As our world, especially with AI, moves more and more toward sizing up the countable, the need for experiencing the uncountable will grow. Reducing the world to a singular metric: currency, will only grow as the datafication of our existence intesifies. Data is useful, money is incredibly helpful. As you say, the neoliberal order was a technology that achieved a great deal. But it is a model for what can be measured, and it neglects what cannot.
We who care more about what can't be counted will continue to "spend our time" exporing what it means to live in the liminal. Thank you for another exciting manifesto!
A pensive piece as always. This is the key for me: "It’s possible simply to ignore the exigencies of neoliberalism and to live in a way in which one does what one wants," which is both the blessing and the curse. On the one hand, to use this platform as an example, I can make a small income as a writer on Substack in a way that would be unimaginable even three years ago.
However, the "live like one wants" mentality is also a problematic symptom of the individualistic era which, historically, births fascistic thinking (or at least populism) in a misplaced desire to reject greed/individualism in favor of unifying a collective via nationalistic/ethnic lines.
And this, for me, is the bind we find ourselves in: as artists in the neoliberal era, we can most assuredly "live our best life" in favor of personal reflection & time > money, but isn't that just another term for leisure, which is a product of the neoliberal currents we are trying to swim against? It's at least a balancing act, if not the Catch-22 of the "neoliberal" generation.
This article had me in the first half... I like the argument, a counterpoint to another article I read years ago that proposed the diametrical opposite advice on trying to live as an artist: a day job you hate will not make you a better artist under moonlight; quite the contrary, it will make you hate yourself, and self-hate can only take you so far as an artist.
Trying to find self-worth outside the framework of monetary value can be described as swimming against the current... I quit my day job because it made me feel quite dismal, and I'm feeling that current pull at me now more than ever. With enough money you can actually not feel that current at all, so perhaps if I get to that point I can suspend my disbelief in the way you describe, undo that trick of the mind. But IMHO, it's not the kind of knot you can untie once, but over and over, day in, day out. Just keep swimming...
I don't call that an optimal system...
I loved this, and it was the first time I’ve seen the term neoliberalism used in a positive manner. I’ve most often heard it used like a curse, and to mean very different things. (I would have agreed with your editor until now!)
As for the rest, I very much agree with your analysis. A system that provides prosperity and security is one in which any of us can carve out some kind of human flourishing that exists beyond it. Very well said!!!!
What did Nabokov say? “The isms go, the ist dies, art remains.”
Perhaps put a little less bleakly, as you say Machiavelli had the foresight to simply cut the Gordion’s knot. I imagine history will do the same.