Thursday, 19 September 2013

The future is Wilde and Black



Increasingly we agree that "if you don’t own and buy a lot of stuff, you don’t have value" (Story of Stuff Project, 2007). A lot of Uncommon Forum members have taken this sentiment to heart. The depressed, if they're unemployed, consider themselves useless; if they're in work that feels like a treadmill they get no pleasure from their 'stuff'. 

Kuttainen (2013) talked about utopian and dystopian narratives, one that says all's well with the world (laissez-faire) and one that sees people as helpless parts of the machinery. Between complex governments and enormous corporations, it's impossible to know who's actually making the soul- and planet-destroying decisions.

While we're thinking about 'progress' in terms of economic growth the question is indeed, as Dicken (2007) writes, "Where will the jobs come from?" (p.440). Job-creation requires "planned obsolescence" (Kuttainen, 2013). At the same time as The Economist (2012) salivates over the idea of technology making better products more cheaply, relocating production "to low-cost developing countries" (Dicken, 2007, p.440) means we have an investment in keeping some people very poor, stealing their resources and labour and repaying them with toxic rubbish – some 99 per cent of all consumer 'durables' within six months of purchase. (Story of Stuff Project, 2007).

This is not a modern issue. Oscar Wilde's (1891) utopian ideals were echoed a century later by Bob Black, who pointed out that a lot of work was both unsafe for the workers and unnecessary for the wellbeing of society (Black, 1991).

People -- or just part of the process?

Wilde's and Black's recommendations seem far-fetched, crazy, unworkable. Wilde pre-empted this criticism when he wrote: 

A practical scheme is either a scheme that is already in existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under existing conditions. But it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects to; and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish. The conditions will be done away with, and human nature will change. (Wilde, 1891)

I hope he was right.



REFERENCES

Black, B. (1991) The Abolition of Work. Retrieved from http://www.inspiracy.com/black/abolition/abolitionofwork.html

Dicken, P. (2007) Winning and Losing: An Introduction. In Global Shift: Mapping the Changing Contours of the World Economy, pp.437-452. London, UK: Sage Publications Ltd.

Economist, The (2012) The Third Industrial Revolution. Retrieved from www.economist.com/node/21553017/

Kuttainen, V. (2013) BA1002: Networks, Narratives, and the Making of Place. Lecture 8: Stuff: Markets & Manufacture.
Story of Stuff Project (2007). The Story of Stuff: Official Version. Berkeley, CA: Free Range Studio. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM
Wilde, O. (1891). The Soul of Man Under Socialism. Retrieved from http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/wilde-oscar/soul-man/



Image: http://www.gmellerbeck.com/slavery_in_reality.html


3 comments:

  1. Hey Vicky

    I am leaving the best for last!

    This blogging has been an interesting but for myself at least a strange and sometimes uncomfortable exercise. As I have said in my first blog, I am a cyber-flanuer, ‘lurking’ in the background, reading other peoples blogs, having a quiet chuckle or reflecting on my life.

    Your blog for example, immediately prompted the picture in my mind of the children walking on the plank into the meat grinder in Pink Floyd’s the Wall and singing: “We don’t need no education…”, perhaps this is what the third industrial revolution is all about!

    Anyhow, I am trying not to see the future too Wilde or Black…


    Reference

    Anonymous. (2012, April 21). The third industrial revolution, The Economist. Retrieved from https://learnjcu.jcu.edu.au/bbcswebdav/pid-1176501-dt-content-rid-837469_1/xid-837469_1

    ReplyDelete
  2. I predict the next comment will be a mysterious international one from someone known as Silverdart...

    ReplyDelete
  3. I feel feel like a cyber spy that has been caught in the act
    also Brave new world comes to mind Silver Dart :)

    ReplyDelete