Occupy Language?

One of the perennial benefits of grappling with tricky philosophical texts is the free vocab lesson that comes as part of the process. While trying to get my head around Theodor Adorno’s own personal blend of discursive and rambling philosophy this free lesson was particularly fruitful: not only his writings, but also those of his critics, threw up numerous linguistic gems. Out of all the words that had me reaching for the dictionary there was one that stood out, namely ‘dislocuta’.

In the opening passage of an essay discussing Adorno’s attitude to life after the Holocaust I stumbled on this pithy summary, “Adorno’s comments on the impossibility of poetry after Auschwitz typify the intellectual dislocuta prevalent in post-war Europe.” In a slightly condescending, but ultimately necessary, footnote the author defined the term as, “The anxiety brought about by the restrictive nature of language, and by extension, that brought about by the restrictive nature of any system of meaning.” Adorno recognised the fact that anything he said or wrote relied for its meaning on a linguistic system that was defined historically by those who lived and spoke before the horror of the Holocaust.

It might seem overblown, but this definition immediately made me think of the Occupy protests. Not because any tangible parallel with the Holocaust can be made in our contemporary predicament, but because one of the criticisms brought against the movement again and again is its inability to put into words exactly what it stands for. However, in the definition above we can start to understand the debilitating position of the protesters: the reason that they cannot simply state their aims is that any statement that they give can only be framed in the discourse of a contemporary capitalist society. The only language that is open to them is that of the law and of institutional change. To put forward a solution in these terms would therefore be contradicting their own purpose, which is to change the very system itself. ‘Dislocuta’ does not simply refer to the distress of someone who cannot express themselves, but very precisely, the distress of the individual who cannot put their thoughts into language due to the boundaries of the system of meaning in which they necessarily take part.

Interestingly the fact that a new understanding of the protesters’ predicament can come about simply by learning the meaning of a word serves both to exemplify the situation and to offer an answer to the deadlock. The power that language has over us to frame our thought can be restricting (as experienced by the protesters) and liberating (as experienced by me as I expand my vocabulary). If the protesters wish to have a lasting impact by somehow altering our current economic/social/governmental system they must do so by creating a new framework for meaning. Asking the difficult questions will not be enough, they must also create the language that is needed to answer them.

Bonus Points

Capitalism is supposed to give the public what they demand, the public is demanding that the big banks stop handing out multi-million pound bonuses, but somehow that isn’t happening. This is not a failure of capitalism; it is a failure of the public. Redressing this problem is far from impossible but consumers will need to be a little more business savvy.

Forcing Morals:

I have written previously about the possibility of the evolution of morals in capitalism. The thrust of the idea is that if we have the guts to humanise our demands then companies will be forced to follow. This is already starting to happen in practice:  ‘green’ and fair-trade products are perfect examples of where we have demanded more from the products we buy. Now we can do the same with services. There are some huge food suppliers who will only use fair-trade produce in their products and soon perhaps some of the big banks will refuse to invest in risky ventures, will give investment to small businesses and will even pledge to cap their own bonuses.

Asking the right questions:

Consumers currently demand a range of financial services, but they do not control how the providers distribute their profits. We demand these services and then once they are delivered we return and say ‘oh, by the way, please use the money wisely’ by which time it is too late (and time moves pretty quickly in the world of finance). The power that we, as a group of consumers, exercise over corporations consists solely in our choice of providers and once our money is in their till we have revoked all control.

The answer to this problem is simply to demand a different kind of service. Instead of saying ‘I want secure, affordable banking – and please don’t be greedy along the way’ we must include our ethical demands in our classification of the service. I want secure, affordable, fair banking. Once our ethical demands are part of the product they cannot be compromised. In short, all of our demands must be laid down to begin with (before we part with our cash) and if we want companies to use their money in a specific way then that must become part of the product/service that we demand.

Vote with your feet:

Unfortunately, if you walk down to your local branch of Barclays and threaten to close your account unless Bob Diamond gives up his bonus you will probably leave without an account. But the beauty of capitalism is that you won’t need to stay account-less for long. If the size of the Chief Exec’s pay packet is important to you, then keep this in mind when you are looking for your next bank. Alternatively, why not open an account with Charity Bank? This decision might end up costing you a little more, but if you think of nothing but money when you open an account you are no better than the Chief Exec that thinks of nothing but money as it provides your account.

What the public really needs is full transparency of earnings in the banks (which is partially provided by the recent Equality Act). With this information we could choose our bank on the size of the bonuses they give as well as on the size of their interest rate. In the meantime we must do a little research of our own. I have already mentioned Bob Diamond and it is not too difficult to find out how much some of the other banks are paying their top dogs. If you are one of the millions of people who is angry about the size of bank bonuses then the answer is simple: do your banking with whoever gives out the lowest ones.

Humanist Capitalism

I believe in the strength of an analogy between the evolution of personal aims at an individual level and the aims of business. Our evolution has made us into moral beings and one day the same morality will become central to capitalism.

The Demise of Savagery:

Over the course of a few thousand years human aims have evolved. In the time of ‘savages’ individuals were fighting for two things, namely survival and reproduction. Through the evolutionary benefits of living in groups, humans developed more complex moral systems, building empathy and altruism into our evaluation of worth. The more basic aims of survival and reproduction remained, but they became subconscious as society became central to human life (for the subconsciousness of base human desires see Love-cynics? Feed them to the lions). I recognise that this is a very  brief overview of an intensely complicated topic but I think it is enough to make my point.

The Rise of Humanist Capitalism:

The aims of business in a capitalist world are almost identical to those of the savage; survival and expansion (now measured in financial profit) replace survival and reproduction.  The savage nature of capitalism is an unhappy truth but it does allow for the very happy possibility of capitalist evolution. Just as a modern individual who aimed only for survival and reproduction, without even the pretence of human morals, would be shunned by society and would probably fail in at least his second aim, perhaps in the future businesses driven purely by the search for profits will become socially unacceptable. Many large corporations already see charity work and green initiatives as a vital part of their PR work but hopefully as the world population (who ultimately decide the fate of any business) start to demand more of the companies they buy from these social aims could become more central to the aims of business. It might seem ridiculous to predict that future businesses will have a powerful moral conscious but I think that Homo erectus would have laughed at the idea that people would one day have the complex morals that we now take for granted (assuming you could even explain such a system to them). The move towards incorporating social worth into an evaluation of business success has already begun: Not for Profits.  And businesses have already started to reassess how they measure their own success: Global Business with Prof Michael Porter.

 But Don’t Forget to Ask:

One break in the analogy is where the impetus for social change comes from. For man: Living in groups provided safety, this society then required a moral system to work, these morals then became subsumed into the individual consciousness and we became moral beings. For business: Consumers demand ethical business, it becomes financially beneficial to be ethical, business morals are born and become subsumed into the capitalist consciousness. The ‘selfish gene’, in its search for reproduction, had to allow for genuine moral feeling. Now the selfish capitalist business, in its search for profits, will have no choice but to allow for moral feeling also. Over time (possibly a very long time) the selfish drive for reproduction/profit recedes into the subconscious and our daily understanding of society is only intelligible in moral language. However, for all this to happen the first step is vital and the first step in the evolution of business morals is the consumer demand for ethical business. Whether or not capitalism develops something akin to human feeling is dependent on our demand for it. For our own good we must make such a demand.

Two Dogmas

Much of our political and social dogma consists in just two basic assumptions: that personal freedom is good and that economic growth is good. Both democracy and capitalism are based on giving us more personal freedom, by giving us more choice over our own politics and how we spend our money, and more economic growth, by stimulating competition, production and spending.

Yet each of the two unchallenged mantras (that personal freedom is good and economic growth is good) can be easily undermined by practical research and luckily for us someone has done that research for us.

The curse of personal freedom:

The ability to make our own decisions and not be supressed by anything more powerful than ourselves is seen as perhaps the most basic goal of western society: If we have choice then we will be happy because we will be able to opt for whichever choice benefits us the most.  This idea has led us into a world where we have almost infinite choice is every area of our lives. We can choose from thousands of brands of clothing and hundreds of mobile phones, we can also choose our own religion and sexual preference. However, the American psychologist Barry Schwartz has flipped this all on its head and argued that choice actually brings unhappiness.

He claims that the more we have to choose from the higher our expectations are. The higher our expectations, the more difficult it is to make us happy. I may have the choice of hundreds of mobile phones but whichever one I choose I will always be wondering if another was better. If my new phone is anything but perfect I only have myself to blame because with so much choice out there I should have found the right one.  Schwartz is not naïve and he recognises that a lack of choice is also a bad thing. He argues that the wealthiest in society suffer from too much choice whilst the poorest suffer from too little.

If my hasty five lines haven’t convinced you then just watch the man in action and I guarantee you will come round: The Paradox of Choice.

The Cost of Money:

Overall economic growth is the standard cure-all solution trotted out by every politician regardless of the problem. It is thought that wealth and productivity will solve our problems yet research suggests that the average affluence of a nation is not important. Instead the deciding factor is the wealth gap between the richest and poorest. The wider the gap between the highest earners and the lowest the more social problems we will face. In their book The Spirit Level, Richard G Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, show that there is a direct correlation between almost every social ill and the wealth gap. They also show that not only does the correlation exist but that it is the inequality that causes the problems and not the other way around.

Once again, if my mini-paragraph on the matter is not enough to woo you into dropping the basis of capitalism (and it would be surprising if it was) then have a read for yourself. The book is on Amazon here, and Polly Toynbee from the Guardian has done a nifty review of another of Wilkinson's books here.

One and the same?

Each of these two reassessments of our most basic political thinking can stand alone. However, it may also be the case that the ideas complement one another. If both choice and social inequality cause problems then perhaps they are really part of the same root problem.

Wealth and choice are inextricably linked in the modern world. The more money an individual has the more choice he or she has over how to spend their time, where to live, what to eat, which car to drive etc. Thus, countries with a higher level of social inequality will have some people who have loads of choice and more who have (relatively) very little. Wilkinson and Pickett have shown that inequality leads to unhappiness and Schwartz has shown how. Inequality of wealth leads to inequality of choice, and inequality of choice results in people burdened by the curse of too much choice and people burdened by the curse of too little.

Personal freedom and economic growth are achieved through choice and inequality and it is these two things that together plague our world.

Memeconomics

The Dismal Science:

After the twenty four regular assumptions of the ‘perfect market’ are listed on encycogov, the encyclopaedia of corporate governance, there is another small list of additional assumptions. Buried within this list is additional assumption no.4:

“Each person knows how to rank alternative commodity combinations available to him.”

This is a specific example of the unfounded single-mindedness that exists at the root of our economic systems. All free market economics assumes that there is such a thing as ‘complete information’ which ‘rational agents’ can acquire and use to make decisions, which are somehow objectively right. To put it simply, free market economics, and thus Capitalism, refuse to recognise the fact that different people have different ideals. There is scope within the system to recognise that different people opt for different combinations of commodities, but there is no recognition that some people (even ‘rational agents’) might not value commodities at all.

These people, colloquially known to the suited man as hippies or fools, not only make the free market economist’s job difficult, they show that his field of expertise is not a universal one. Economists generally assume that their profession is an attempt to understand, classify and predict the actions of the population. However, if the population (or one strand of it) reject the idea of giving value solely to commodities the economist is lost.

For example, if a shop owner is selling his goods at an unnecessarily low rate, the economist will assume that it is either an attempt at undercutting the opposition to drive them out of market or the shop owner simply lacks information. The possibility that the man is lonely and, unconcerned for monetary wealth, he is doing anything he can to bring in the punters in order to make some friends, cannot be accounted for within the economic system. When a wealthy businessman ‘finds god’, gives away all his worldly possessions, and becomes a monk, we should not assume an inability to “rank alternative commodity combinations available to him” but recognise his acceptance of a non-capitalist system. My point is that even when it comes to business our decision making has a range of goals and the acquisition of goods and wealth is just one of them.

With the possible exception of Steven Levitt, whose philosophy centres simply on “explaining how people get what they want”, economists are intrinsically single-minded. According to his co-author of the Freakonomics books even Levitt might not make the grade as an all encompassing, open-minded economist because, “Many people – including a fair number of his peers – might not recognize Levitt’s work as economics at all.”

Memeconomics:

So if the actions which economists call irrational or under-informed are normally in fact rational actions aimed at non-wealth-driven goals, what are people’s reasons for action? Well, now we have stumbled upon an interesting, if unfathomably difficult, question. One relatively new concept, which gives us some insight into quite how diverse and unpredictable our reasons for action are, is that of the meme. Memes are units of ideas and memetics is the science dedicated to explaining the existence, spread and destruction of ideas. The terms were coined by Richard Dawkins and attempt to capture the way in which, like our genes, ideas evolve through a process of natural selection. They survive from being passed from host to host through any manner of teaching, preaching or indoctrination. They die and go extinct when nobody believes them anymore.

If you are unfamiliar with memetics I strongly suggest watching this lecture by the American philosopher Dan Dennett (link). In it Dennett draws a wonderfully precise analogy between a physical parasite and a mental one. He gives the example of an ant which is continually climbing to the top of a blade of grass, this is a natural phenomenon that can be seen in nature and is a seemingly unproductive process. For no recognisable reason some ants just climb up blades of grass over and over again. As a society dominated by Darwinism we ask, “What is the biological purpose of that action?” The answer is that there isn’t one; not for the ant at least. In truth, the ant has been infected and hijacked by a brain parasite which literally burrows into the ant’s brain and forces it to climb grass. Now what is the purpose of this I hear you scream! Well, the parasite can only lay its eggs in the stomach of a sheep or a cow, and thus it needs some way of getting in there. The answer: steal an ant as transportation and then climb up grass in order to be eaten by the next passing grazer.

Very quickly we can see a parallel with a frightening amount of human action. It is not too difficult to find human behaviour that seems genetically detrimental. When we see anyone die for their ideas we ask the same question that we asked with the ant, “What is the biological purpose of that action?” Again, we find that there isn’t one. Except of course for the idea: if someone dies in the name of freedom then the idea of freedom is propagated; and if someone forgoes having any children in the name of faith then that faith gains recognition. The moral of the story is that ideas are like viruses. This does not mean that they are all bad, some can help to bring happiness or prosperity, but that they are living things which exist in us and can use us to procreate. Ideas drive us to unbelievable lengths and the fact that we have a communicative society accentuates the point; the ant can only climb alone, we can convince others to climb with us. Imagine if the ant was capable of communicating his desires, soon there would be anthills as high as skyscrapers as the infected ants convinced the others that climbing up is the only ideal worth striving for. An ant-built tower of Babel would not be far behind.

Going back to the question of human action in commerce, we now see that any economic model that assumes that commodities and wealth are man’s only goal is going to miss the mark. The Capitalist ideal of a free-market is a very basic Darwinian model: everyone strives for one goal and those most suited to the environment survive. Capitalism is founded on the thought that it’s a dog eat dog world. But what happens when we encounter phenomena which cannot be explained by such a simple survival-of-the-fittest model? The existence of memes shows that in many cases our original instincts concerning the actions of man are incorrect. Why do the ‘hippy’, the monk, and the lonely shop owner forgo wealth? The same reason the ant climbs to the top of the blade of grass: there is something in their heads that tells them to. Striving for cash is no different though: why does the entrepreneur give up family and friends just to make money? Because he has a brain parasite of sorts too.

What this all leads us to is an undeniable recognition of the various actions of man and their multifarious aims. We are prone to thinking that at the end of the day, even though we go about it in different ways, everyone is striving for the same thing. That thing we tend to dub ‘happiness’, but because of its diverse nature, the concept is all too easily bastardised. The capitalist model assumes that happiness is equivalent to prosperity, the Christian model assumes happiness is equivalent to God, the communist model assumes happiness is equivalent to equality; the list goes on. Of course, none of these belief systems gets it quite right. These systems are examples of the memes that control our minds, they are in no fit position to dictate any omnipresent, human value.

I am not trying to claim that capitalism, Christianity, and all other belief systems are inherently wrong. I only say that we must recognise them for what they are, namely selfish ideas which have evolved through a process of survival of the fittest to control and guide the minds of men. I am also not claiming that we should attempt to kill off these controlling memes, I will not be out in the streets tomorrow with a hand-painted sign which reads “Kill communism” or “Lets make religion extinct”. The most frightening fact of all is that ‘meme’ is just a byword for ‘idea’ and the mind free of memes will also be free of ideas. I only hope that through a recognition of the way that ideas spread through us and guide us, we can become less attached to them. If we see the free-market as a useful idea which has endured in us over time through a process of survival of the fittest, then we will also be ready to let it mutate when it is not doing its job. Just as in the animal kingdom a species will die out if it cannot mutate to a change in its habitat, in the memetic kingdom ideas will die out too. This is not a sad thing to be fought against. No beliefs are absolute and dogma brings nothing but danger. We must accept change in our ideas and see them as one of the many equal species rather than hold them up as immaculate productions of a human God.

A reply to love

I received this reply to my most recent post in an email and thought it deserved some space:

I liked this blog…but I didn’t love it.

I’m afraid I may well be one of these quasi-philosophers that impose their scrooge-like cynicism upon the rest of the kind-hearted souls of the world, but this isn’t because I don’t want people to be happy.  We all know that the world may appear a better place through rose-tinted glasses, but that doesn’t mean that it is so.

I think that the reason that ‘romantic’ love is targeted so much is because of the ideologies that society places on it.  People frequently talk about love in the same breathe as ‘destiny’ and ‘fate’ and coin the phrases ‘meant to be’ and ‘the one’, speaking as if the magical forces of the universe have united their souls with another.  It has become a form of religion, where this mystic force is the saviour of the modern world; it can perform miracles.

But a religion needs a god.  For us tiresome atheists there must be a source for this ultimate power.  Unless the likes of Cheryl Cole and her contemporary counterparts have been brought to Earth from another planet, preaching their gift of love through the medium of song, then who else is there to fight, fight, fight, fight, fight for this love?  Without a benevolent god beaming his love rays upon us surely the evolution of love can be explained pretty neatly through said Darwinism and the analysis of the human psyche.

As you suggest, this does of course suggest that one must analyse all emotions in such a way, and although this is never an easy train of thought, it does follow a line of logic.  It is not the fact that we feel an emotion that is in dispute here, but what causes it.  I’m sure I would shit many a brick if locked in a cell with a lion, but as you snidely comment from the safe side of the bars “don’t worry, you aren’t really afraid; it is just your genes telling you to be scared in order to keep their host alive until they can spawn”, I’d frantically rebuttal “actually, I am terrified, but you’re right as to why…now get me out of here before I get eaten alive!”  There must be complex psychological reasons behind our emotions for we are indeed complex psychological monsters; love is neither more nor less important than the others, it just gets trounced on a little more as people put in on a pedestal.

So of course love exists in some form.  The word has definition and rings clear in our head when we hear it uttered, but it is the dependence and reliance upon finding salvation in the romantic form that seems to shield people from the wider world.  This is now the love of rom-coms and trashy chick-lit that people seem to find great pleasure in escaping to.  These are teaching us how to feel the emotion in a false light.  Whilst they may promote a world of happiness on the surface, it seems that in the long run people strive for a life that is unachievable and unrealistic.  But there I go being all pessimistic again.

Lots of love

R/C, the cynic.

Love-cynics? Feed them to the lions.

Apparent wisdom is often a mask for pure cynicism, and there is nothing more satisfying than recognising a piece of dismal folk-philosophy as such. Not only is there the thrill of dispelling the myth, but you have the added joy of creating optimism along the way.


Perhaps the most common failed-truism currently plaguing the collective mindset is that human emotions, and most notably love, are simply selfish brain settings designed to aid the procreation of our genes. It is a claim against the existence of our very emotions. There are countless references from popular culture in which we are told that love is nothing more than an egocentric tool for bribing sex from another hapless gene-drone and with each one I encounter I lose some faith in the intelligence of humanity.


The uplifting truth is that no scientific explanation of our action can remove its personal meaning. Yes, it is the case that in evolutionary terms one good reason that we posses such amorous sentiments is that they can lead to procreation, along with a statistically safe environment for offspring. However, this scientific fact passes no judgement on, and causes no conflict with, the way we genuinely feel these feelings.


Perhaps it is an attempt to deny the existence of love in order to remove the risk of never finding it - cynicism does also bring safety – but whatever the reason, the use of loosely Darwinian ideas to refuse the existence of erotic love is particularly fashionable. Anyone who tried to claim that mothers do not ‘really’ love their children, but just want their genetic code to survive would be branded a monster. Yet in the social realm of sexual relationships, without any recognition of their ignorant anti-humanism, love-doubters abound.


If you ever meet a pessimist, who tells you that “deep down” no man “really” loves any woman (or visa versa) but that they are just after sex, lock him in a room with a starving lion. Not only would it be fun to rid the world of so negative a person, but you could also whisper calmly through the keyhole, “Don’t worry, you aren’t really afraid; it is just your genes telling you to be scared in order to keep their host alive until they can spawn.” The look on his face would undoubtedly warrant the intricate planning that would be needed for such an elaborate, expensive and might I add hilarious hoax.


Ed Thornton