Collective Culture

Suitably new things for a rather New Year

Collective Culture has run its course… for now. On to something fresher, with a little more life. This ride is far from over folks… !

Unfair Treatment

by Anaïs van Delft

The working environment is corrupt. Does clarity and honesty exist in the free market, in the working world of capitalism? I wonder…

Free market as a phrase is an illusion. It does not exist. It is a utopia. Capitalism leads towards dictatorship, as monopolies take over the world and employees are not entitled to speak their minds, and therefore become slaves to their employers.

Why do people accept these conditions? Why does no one dare to speak their mind or exercise their rights? Why are people so scared? A fear of something that does not exist, but what could possibly come.

People have become products, milked, sucked dry, used and then thrown away when they are not needed anymore. Our consumer society has gone deep into the working sphere. A person is not appreciated for his or her qualities and the investment and time they’ve put into education is worthless. It’s about achieving, showing off, pumping out more, and faster. An employee is no more than a machine, a robot, a computer, that has to work faster and more and more efficiently. If you cannot keep up, you are useless and consequently thrown away, put aside.

George Orwell’s 1984, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is no future soundtrack, it is reality, we are living it, right now.

The First Wave in a Sea of Shocks

A close friend of mine just lost her job at a design agency and it got me thinking about economic shock therapy, as described in Naomi Klein’s ‘Shock Doctrine’. I will skip the details for privacy reasons, but suffice to say that the situation was handled in a far from appropriate manner. It seems to me, that in the current economic climate, businesses are equipped with the tools to abuse employees and waive any veil of courtesy. There’s executing the law, and then there’s executing the law ethically. They are two very different things and I think that they need to be clearly distinguished.

I am probably more surprised than I should be to see this kind of concerning behaviour in corporations in this country. After all, when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister in the 1980s, she very effectively implemented Milton Friedman’s purist free market, capitalist ideologies. This doubtless is still echoing in British society today, so it is really no surprise to see these ideologies return with a vengeance, on a tidal wave of socio economic shocks.

The climate of fear is almost tangible in offices across the country as people are awaiting the next wave of cutbacks or a further slip in the housing market. These millions of lives, built on debt that the government has tacitly allowed banks and loan companies to lend and lend, to an ill informed public, simply seeking to live the dream that has been constructed so carefully for them. It is no mistake that it’s the same stories both side of the Atlantic. With the US government trying to push through a $700 billion bailout program against the will of the American people, and the British government attempting similar actions, you have to ask some pretty serious questions as to how exactly we reached this state of affairs.

If anything can be said of economies, it is that there is not truly any free in “free market”. It can also be clearly seen that no economy is a random system of events, it is very distinct in its construction. There is no doubt that there are a limited global elite, calculating, strategising and manipulating the so called “free market” to their own ends. When you look at the strong links between the worlds richest businessmen, bankers and investors and the leaders of international governments, it’s a pretty bleak web of corruption and backscratching. This situation is rather transparently presented when you scrutinise the actions of the Bush administration, and the flow of money in and out of Washington and Wall Street.

Something however has clearly gone awry along the way. You think there’d be people out in the streets, burning down cities, setting fire to cars and battling the police, however the majority of people are passively having their fragile worlds shattered. Sitting in front of their TVs, sucking up the soul crushing 9 to 5, worrying about their mortgage, burning out for the next pay rise, and they have been broken down. There has been a systematic effort by governments, through the machine of the media, to create divisions, spread fear, indulge superstitions, misdirect, deceive and speak bare faced lies in order to defend the private interests of themselves and their gang of a few.

A rather significant “gang of a few”, is the Bilderberg Group. To me, this group is embodiment of the global elite. “Attendees of Bilderberg include central bankers, defense experts, mass media press barons, government ministers, prime ministers, royalty, international financiers and political leaders from Europe and North America.” (from Wikipedia). These people are key players on the global stage, make no mistake. Some conspiracy theory critics have said that it’s easy to construct a conspiracy theory around the Bilderberg Group, due to the lack of information and secrecy over their meetings. That is a valid point, however I am more than just a little curious why these powerful figures aren’t sharing all of their “good work” with the masses. Is the herd not enlightened enough to appreciate their good deeds? It’s certainly not for a lack of media contacts that we’re not receiving this information. If a person’s goals and motives are pure, then there should be no need for secrecy. There is no reason why this cannot also be applied to groups like the Bilderberg Group.

There’s no smoke without fire, that’s just a given.