Reclaiming value and hope in the new year
2.1 | January 3, 2021 | Faith, Hope and Love
Happy new year 2021.
Let’s hope that it’s well begun.
I am not sure if you are in the habit of making new year’s resolutions; but if you do, you are probably in good company. If you are still vacillating between options there’s this eccentric 1699 list of resolutions by the 32-year-old Jonathan Swift that hoped “not to boast of my former beauty, or strength, or favor with Ladyes, &c.” or “hearken to Flatteryes.” Or if you are not convinced of this new year, you’d still have this rather insightful resolve of Antonio Gramsci that he published on new year’s day in 1916 in the Italian socialist newspaper Avanti!: “I Hate New Year’s Day.”
Whatever be your choice — in spite of all the pessimism that 2020 has probably given us — I would still urge you to consider 2021 with hope and optimism, even if that means cautious optimism. If you are still caught up in the emotional strain of the past year, there’s some beautiful biblical inspiration from the book of Nehemiah that asks us not to wallow in our sadness, but do the next joyful thing. Still not convinced? Would you rather celebrate your mundane everyday life? You could. Even our everyday passions like football can inspire us to see the beauty in our own lives. This can be a very spiritual encounter too where we discover God in our everyday life. As Ian Peoples SJ writes, “God is in all these normal, seemingly irreligious things, that fill us with life.”
This year as I responded to the numerous new year wishes that I had received, it was already becoming evident why this will in fact be among the most eagerly awaited new years in our lives. There have been a few sceptics in the press (and I am not pointing you to those reads) who ask us to tread with caution, but even in their writing there is a remote desire that we should be doing better. Revisiting these wishes for good health and desires to revaluate our priorities, one realises that what we are in fact doing with these wishes is that we are placing a certain value on the new year. This value centres around an innate hope that is fundamental to our existential condition as human beings. We value hope. It is hope for a better future that drives us forward. Can we afford to give it up?
Talking about value, I have lately been drawn to the work of the UCL economist, Prof. Mariana Mazzucato whose 2018 book The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy (read excerpt) has been in focus during the pandemic. Some of you might be interested to note that early last year Mazzucato was invited by Pope Francis to be part of the Vatican Covid-19 Commission’s economy taskforce.
Mazzucato’s work in economic theory is significant for reconceptualising our notions around value. She argues that value has today predominantly been defined by price, which in turn is manipulated by market demand and supply. Thus what fetches a price (profits) determines value — rather than value determining price. Within the capitalist economy, corporations and businesses that extract value then falsely pass off as value creators. These have huge negative consequences for society; for example, in how big pharma can inflate profits and value because there is a demand for a particular drug. Such mechanisms disregard the reality that value creation is a collective process, and devalues those who really bring value to our economy and society. The pandemic has laid bare for us how value creators like nurses, teachers and other service providers were short-changed by big corporations that received large stimulus packages.
In another illustrative case — and one that Mazzucato loves citing across her lectures — of how we falsely measure the economy or account for GDP centres around how we value caregivers. She wittily suggests that marrying your caregiver or babysitter would in fact bring down GDP as an activity that you were once paying for would now be done freely! On the other hand if we cause pollution, that would increase GDP as we would need to pay for services that clean the environment! These examples sound so frivolous, but really do reveal our flawed notions of value. Think of how we clapped and applauded for frontline workers and homemakers during the pandemic when in reality these value creators are hardly accounted in our economy or society!
For the risk of oversimplifying Mazzucato, I would recommend listening to her TED talk on “What is economic value, and who creates it?”
Dice some anthropology into your economics and you will get fascinating insights into the human condition. The much-loved anthropologist of our times, David Graeber (he sadly passed away last year) laid bare the predicament of our current employment market. In a provocative 2013 essay “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A Work Rant” that he later elaborated into his now-classic 2018 book “Bullshit Jobs: A Theory” (read excerpt) Graeber highlighted the meaninglessness of some pointless employment while inviting society to rethink meaning and value in one’s own vocation. The pandemic later revealed his analysis to be brilliantly true, and Graeber did write about it: “Lessons from coronavirus: Not all jobs are ‘bullshit’” — but yours might be, he remarked.
Indeed, at least half, and perhaps most, of the most valuable work isn’t paid at all, but performed out of love, overwhelmingly by women.
It’s commonplace now to celebrate “essential workers” as heroes, in the same way we are accustomed to doing when speaking of soldiers and the police, putting their lives on the line for the sake of all of us.
…
How about this year we turn it around? How about we give essential workers “special bonuses” worth two or three times their normal annual salary, like we normally do for Wall Street executives, and let the executives make do with occasional waves of applause.
David Graeber
Mazzucato and Graeber are highly critical of our present situation, but that criticism is also meant to look ahead at our lives with hope and meaning.
If I have been critical, it’s because such criticism is badly needed; it is, moreover, a necessary preliminary to the creation of a new economics: an economics of hope. After all, if we cannot dream of a better future and try to make it happen, there is no real reason why we should care about value. And this perhaps is the greatest lesson of all.
Mariana Mazzucato
As much as Mazzucato aims at “putting value back at the centre of economic reasoning,” it contends us to bring value to the centre of our own personal lives and society. In pursuing an economics of hope we then realise that value needs to be community driven; it needs to be articulated together in society. This will hopefully bring us to revaluate our societal struggles, or participate more meaningfully in them. What do the present famers protests in Delhi mean to you? Or how do you see past struggles like Occupy Wall Street that championed for “We are the 99%.” In the end, “We are only as healthy as our neighbours are,” notes Mazzucato.
And hey! You do not have a new year’s resolution yet? Do not worry. Think about value. That could bring a whole new meaning to your new year.
May this new year bring us much hope.
Rinald D’Souza SJ
HISTORIA DOMUS
Postscript
Postscript
Did you make any resolutions for the new year?
Calvin and Hobbes
LINKS
Archives | Read past issues
FAQs | What is Faith, Hope and Love?
Blog | Historia Domus
Do you need a listening ear?
Are you going through a struggle?
There is someone willing to listen to you.
You are not alone.
Faith, Hope and Love
FAITH PERSPECTIVES ON RELIGION, POLITICS, SOCIETY AND CULTURE
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.
But the greatest of these is love. | 1 Cor 13:13
There is the story of a man, trying to clean the opening of a pit where human waste was tossed, who fell in. Of course, he fell headfirst, and when he broke the surface again, his mouth and nose were streaming with vile material. Using the back of his shirt sleeve, he cleaned his face, and considered his predicament. The walls of the pit, brick, were slick from the filth poured down them, and he lacked an immediate means of escape. He tried yelling for help, and after some time another man came and looked in.
How are you doing? the would-be rescuer asked.
Not bad, the man at the bottom of the pit of despair replied. I've been better. You?
The would-be rescuer began listing his miseries and misfortunes, and the man in need of help and rescue listened. When the would-be rescuer finished he asked again: How are you doing?
The man at the bottom of the filth pit said nothing for a moment and then offered: Having listened to you, I'm doing great.
In a way it goes to the much-appreciated Calvin and Hobbes you provided.
May 2021 be a good year for you and yours.
https://iamcolorado.substack.com/