Can we do better?

After being rushed back to work late last week to start Monday from the “Stay At Home” order, along with the dramatic shift in our economy, I began to think about how this time might present an opportunity for us to change the way we do things, to shift the status quo. 

I’m being pushed to go back to a corporate job to begin the operations of laboratory space. The organization is very “safety-focused” and ensures that they are doing everything in their power to keep us safe. What does that action do? They are going as far as they can to limit our exposure. However, how does that pan out in reality? Let us think about it differently. If I need a bridge to cross a ravine to do my job safely, and the company that I work for says, “we will do everything in our power to protect you and ensure that you make it to the other side.” What happens when everything in their power is a bridge that only spans half of the valley? In other words, what happens when their methods come up short due to a lack of data to determine what is working well and what is not? The only thing being protected in its entirety is the company against a lawsuit. 

This approach is not the fault of the company. This outcome is a bi-product of the machine that we have created and how it is structured. The economy is, by design, intended to be a means of assigning and transferring value. One person/entity takes a risk, and the other takes on debt to back that risk. However, the whole system is optimized to operate on a single variable of dollar value. This statement is not to say that many other factors do not come into play, such as human health, ecological factors, etc. However, it seems to come up short many times in these tangential areas. There are numerous occasions in history where a company knowingly covered things up and or kept doing something that it knew was destructive to humans, material property, or the environment. 

The existential machine that we have created, called the economy is well beyond my, and most everyone on the planet’s comprehension. It is an extraordinarily complex and intricate system of buyers, sellers, investors, and debtors to put it. Due to this level of massive inter-workings, I’m not suggesting that I know what might be better than what we have. I will go so far as to say, the system that we have created has provided great abundance and prosperity, of which I have benefited profoundly in my three decades on this planet. I think what we have is the best of something that could potentially be better. 

It makes sense that what we have created is partially a manifestation of human nature. We create meaning through social interaction. We assign some value once we have a meaning. We needed to form a system for assigning value and then transferring it in a simplified manner compared to bartering. We began by creating commodity money that was backed by a physical good for which it could be redeemed. Now we have moved to fiat money which is legal tender not backed by any tangible product. This approach is okay for assigning and transferring value, but it does not get at the more philosophical question of what should we value?

Again, I am not suggesting that I generally know what is best. I know that we, as humans have specific needs. According to Abraham Maslow, they can be broken down into five categories. The base is physiological (breathing, food, water, sex, sleep, homeostasis, excretion). The next layer up is safety (security: of body, of employment, of resources, of morality, of family, of health, of property). The third layer is love and belonging (friendship, family, sexual intimacy). The last layer before the pinnacle is esteem (self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect of others, respect by others). The pinnacle of his pyramid is self-actualization (morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem-solving, lack of prejudice, acceptance of facts). 

The only reason that I can contemplate what a better system might look like is that I am at the top of the pyramid. Many people who do not have these needs met do not ascend to such a level where contemplation of such topics would be of interest. I bring this hierarchy of needs up for two reasons: 1) It shows some of the requirements that are met by our current society and economy, 2) It helps us to see where some of the gaps might be. 

The economy and our society help us to fulfill many of our needs. We can eat, have clean water, sleep well if we make enough money, and have a general level of well being. Depending on location, we have been afforded the security of many things, including employment and physical safety. Depending on how we were brought into the system, we may have developed self-esteem and confidence through achievement. These are many of the positive attributes of the system that we have created and still enjoy to this day. 

However, it seems as though friendship, family, sexual intimacy, and respect of both self and other are entirely devoid of our current system. I would also add some of our approaches to things that have improved might be flawed. For example, we have made massive advances in healthcare. We often treat symptoms instead of causes or act as though something is a hardware issue when it is the software that is malfunctioning. All of these seem to be, let’s say, “softer” aspects. I would argue the reason we do not incorporate these parts into our economy, and often in our society, is that we cannot measure them very well. 

We have built a massive system based on science and mathematics. These tools have provided us with enormous prosperity. However, as Jordan Peterson says so often, science tells us what is, not what “should be.” These are moral questions. My entire point here is an invitation to contemplate. If our economy is collapsing, what would we like to see rebuilt out of the ashes? Perhaps we need to start at a personal level. If we were to have the ideal life, how would that look? Are we open to the possibility that what we think would be a good life might not be the best thing for us? Take, for example sitting on the beach and drinking Mai Tais all day every day. Sounds nice, right? Perhaps after three days, we would start to lose a lot of our needs out of Maslow’s Hierarchy, the safety of physical health is the primary one that comes to mind. Regardless, this is an open invitation to contemplate and explore some of the most successful, happy, and fulfilled humans of all time. We can also explore societies that are economically prosperous, healthy, and happy. The Scandinavian Countries, for me, are always fascinating. They are largely monarchies, yet seem to do quite well in many of the “soft” and economic categories. 

It seems like we have a fire ravishing from within our society. This pandemic is turning out to be a slow decay of what once was. When something decays, a tree, for example, it becomes the basis for life. First, the ants and woodpeckers move in. Then the chipmunks or squirrels. Finally, the tree falls to the ground, and the grubs and worms join the party. When it is all said and done, the tree rots and decomposes, adding nutrients to the soil. The system that was the tree has died and collapsed, giving way to new life. This notion seems to be a time where old systems will either change dramatically or die off. It is up to us, the little machines in the system that happen to have a consciousness to ask ourselves, “what do we want this new life to consist of and look like?” I invite you to leave a comment below so that we can engage in a thoughtful and productive dialogue.

I welcome you to revisit a few articles to supplement this one. To read more about a life well-lived, read “Distorted Perspective and The Easy Life.” A strong part of a life well-lived seems to be love. I focus on love, it’s importance, and how to be better at it in “Learning to Love.” One of the things that the current system does not value as a specific focus is a community. Here I discuss the importance of such a key element of human existence “The Importance of Community.” Depending on how we think that we might want to change the current system, we might incur a lot more freedom and responsibility. I discuss the tradeoff of a greater amount of freedom here “Are we Prepared for Freedom?”