The neurotic clean-living society breaks us down one by one. Society blames the individual and at the same time idealizes individual care. If the individual takes care of himself, structural problems are assumed to cease, for example if the individual buys organic Swedish meat, the entire environmental problem is assumed to cease. The individual who does not buy organic meat, on the other hand, is solely responsible for a global environmental catastrophe. The clean-living society encompasses, in short, all areas of life: smoking, alcohol consumption, eating habits, exercise hysteria, performance requirements, parental ideals, overdiagnosis of children, retirement savings and demands for political correctness.
Luke 7:47
In Luke 7:47 it is wisely stated: «He who is forgiven little, loves little.» We live in a clean-living society where some who have had a safer or less challenging life than others may have less personal debt to wear. But all people have something good and something bad in them. As citizens of society, we have participated in all the worst crimes including theft, violence and rape. We are all part of a capitalist production process where the worker is not fully paid for the economic benefit of his work. In poor countries, the worker's existence is at a slave-like level. And we have all bought goods produced by people in such countries. Those who make jeans often die prematurely. Anyone who has taken a bus has consumed oil produced through violence and theft from the indigenous population in the poor South. Anyone who has bought a mobile phone or video game console has probably had a product manufactured through the rapes and deaths caused by soldiers in the civil war in Congo-Kinshasa between 1998 and 2003. This war was about control over the minerals needed for our mobile phones.
Mistakes happen even in a fair world
But even in a perfectly just world, anyone who wants jobs, traffic or housing at all would be guilty of murder and physical and mental harm to others. Because some will get hurt even in a perfectly just society. If we want to live, we cannot avoid committing even the worst atrocities as a collective.
We obviously need to punish serious criminals in the form of fixed-term compulsory care. But research and history show that Harsh punishments do not reduce crime or recidivists.
So with our collective guilt in mind, maybe we shouldn't judge each other so much for minor misdemeanors in the clean-living society? Our civilization is a thin veneer. Before China became a capitalist society, there was famine in the country. Then suddenly corpses were found along the roads that people had eaten on.
The stress is widespread
Many of us are extremely stressed financially, socially or at work. The more stressed we are for a longer period of time, the most people's brains work worse. Stressed people make mistakes especially in clean living society. Humanum errare est! (It is human to err.) the ancient Romans already noted. And if in all this stress you somehow make a financial mistake, such as going into debt, you risk a lifetime of financial misery. It depends on you and not because you got into a difficult situation caused by structural problems. Another example: If you choose an electricity company that charges a lot, it is not the electricity company that was greedy, but you who were too lazy to choose the right electricity company. That's the message.
Increasing demands on the individual
The market places ever greater demands on the individual, but so do politics and non-profit movements. It is a neurotic and untrue attitude. Only with joint efforts can we solve common problems. All this morality is not about goodness. It is about discipline and organization. The market does not want a questioning of the order of working life and the economy. Therefore, it brings forward seemingly inevitable connections between economic and occupational subordination and all kinds of moral life advice. The market simply wants anxious, worried and oppressed people. I am of course in favor of normal care. But the smallest mistake cannot lead to the individual being held responsible for all of society's structural shortcomings or seen as a worse person than those who did not have the same misfortune.
«Judge not, and ye shall not be judged.» (Luke 6:37)
The philosopher Foucault spoke of how as feudal punishments softened towards the end of the 1700th century and the beginning of the 1800th century, society moved from disciplining our bodies through physical punishments to disciplining our souls. Facebook and social media have taken this a step further in the clean living society. In the post-war period until 1980, wages increased somewhat enormously. Since then, purchasing power in most developed countries has stagnated or declined. This was neoliberalism's way of dealing with the unemployment and inflation that arose when America's world currency, the dollar, abandoned the gold standard in the late 1970s. It ushered in an era that continues to this day of ever-cutting welfare, reduced pensions and perpetual attacks on workers' wages and working conditions. After 40 years of these policies, the people are significantly worse off than during the time of their Keynesian generational predecessors.
The people discipline themselves
In the beginning, many people did not know how to use Facebook and exposed personal mistakes there. But they were punished socially or by their employers for this. Most users of social media therefore mostly only talk about the good times in their lives. They compete to get the most likes for their happy pictures. The happy pictures of the social media make us repress that everyone with the austerity policies of the last decades is probably working too hard for less pay than their representatives. Those who don't have a job don't have it easy either. For the unemployed and on sick leave, it is important not to blame themselves for poor finances, lack of stimulating leisure time or involuntary isolation. It is important for all of us to remember that life is not as easy as it seems on social media.
We are volunteer, free labor for social media
Of course, there are posts in social media that seem to tip about culture/entertainment, important social issues or other good things. Of course, there are also many posts that unfortunately want to drive public opinion towards intolerance and strict moralism. But the content of all these posts is that they are produced by the users of social media. These users are not always aware that they are voluntary, free labor for those who own the social media. If the product is free, you as a consumer are probably the product. Facebook and social media have become very effective tools where we discipline ourselves to accept the luxury life of the billionaires and our own stress, pressure and hustle.
We need to be allowed to be irrational too
At the same time, we live in consumer and societal systems that increasingly focus on and get used to friendly, simple, functional usability. This is in a way good. It also accustoms us to the ever-present requirement in the clean-living society to constantly be maximally both friendly and helpful. But human nature has a large element of irrationality that must also be lived out so that our brains don't break down. Of course, life is not only about demanding one's right, but also about doing one's duty towards e.g. his employer and fellow human beings. But the control via mainstream and social media cannot ask us to be one hundred percent saints. We cannot in law regulate more and more detailed issues to create the perfect human being.
How do we achieve cleanliness without the clean living society
By reintroducing the right to housing and the right and duty to perform a job to the best of our ability, by increasing economic redistribution and improving society's social care for its needy, people would probably behave better socially, feel better mentally and physically and perform improve at work. It suggests several decades of research collected in the book «The spirit of equality».
The truth is that man never becomes completely morally perfect. We learn throughout life by trying and failing.
As the philosopher Kierkegaard said, we live life in advance and get conclusions afterwards. It is not possible to demand of man that he should only do the right thing all the time.
Pure living society is breaking us all down one by one.
Recess
Moralism prevails over practical politics.
30 habits that make you happier
Anxiety and the unequal high performance society
Treat yourself to rest and pleasure quite often
Create a good position for yourself despite the social situation
In deed. Even within the purportedly system-critical movements this thrives, see http://www.folkrorelser.org/texter/folklighet-mindre-moral.html. There are two currents, namely, of which the moralizing has unfortunately become much stronger and more pronounced after the collapse of the labor movement.
Or as it says on the link:
“The one tradition can be called the republican, with roots in the peasant and artisan revolts of the Middle Ages that reached their apotheosis in the French Revolution. The other could be called the evangelical, with roots in the anti-clerical movements of the Middle Ages that found their outlet in the Reformation and the English Revolution and its continuation in the American. The essence of the republican movement is that "we are the people and we are right". The essence of the evangelical movement is bearing witness against sin” and individual perfectionism.
These two currents have continued to exert influence within various movements. The republican current has been strong within the labor movement and the national movements in the Atlantic world. The evangelical has – for historical reasons – been strong within the movements that originated in the Anglo-Saxon area, e.g. the environmental movements, peace movements and women's movements of the Atlantic world.”
Etc.
Interesting! The Swedish Tenants' Association, which constantly accepts larger and larger rent increases, is doing what I fear with the trend of neo-moralism. They look for the slightest flaw in anyone who wants to lower the rents and throw him out of the movement.
Yes, there is a moral culpability of people to bear the responsibility for climate and environmental threats
There is a crisis about the earth's future resources.
Basically, this is very much about a very skewed distribution of assets and resources
Great monetary wealth has accumulated in banks and a global financial elite.
Many meetings during Davos week deal with growing income inequality, banks' indebtedness, welfare cuts, voters' distrust of politicians and sustainable growth.
EU member states lose SEK 9 billion every year due to tax evasion and tax evasion. That is ten times Sweden's state budget. At the same time that ordinary people and small business owners pay taxes, large corporations and wealthy individuals engage in aggressive tax planning.
Erosion of social cohesion and polarized societies provoke conflict
We are faced with aggressive and extreme groups that intervene with violence in society while others end up in impoverishment, stress and mental illness.
The costs and suffering of the crises are extremely unevenly distributed around the world.
Among other things, the number of people in need of humanitarian aid has increased from 81 million in 2014 to 339,2 million in 2023
Furthermore, the number of people forced to flee their homes has increased from under 60 million in 2014 to over 100 million – 80 percent of whom have fled from one of the countries in the report.
"The landscape in the short term is dominated by energy issues, food, debt and disasters. Those who are already most vulnerable suffer and that category is on the rise, both in rich and poor countries," says Saadia Zahidi, CEO of the World Economic Forum in a comment.
The combination of the effects of climate change, the loss of biodiversity, food security and our use of natural resources is a dangerous mix.
The term economy comes from oikonomia which in its meaning means "THE HOUSE WITH ITS LAWS".
The house is our planet. Created for humanity's sustenance and coexistence
Just