This mess we’re in – Part 2 | The Health Culture

Part one of this post noted Paul Krugman’s take on the health care legislative process and the political practice of soliciting money in exchange for votes. Beneath these surface issues, however, there’s a deeper sense of disillusion with 20th century progress and with a lack of purpose to modern life.
We may tinker with a dysfunctional political process – whether it’s the filibuster or corporate lobbying – but our efforts may amount to little more than putting a finger in the dyke. Americans are increasingly dissatisfied with the inability of their government to be effective. The problem is not simply a matter of two political parties with opposing ideologies and the influential economic interests that politicians represent.

Business as usual

The negative side-effects of modern science and technology – nuclear accidents, bioterrorism, myriad forms of pollution, the impact of industrialized agriculture on the land, livestock, and food supply – have escaped our control. There’s not enough financial motivation to value the public good over business profits. As a result, we all suffer, especially when it comes to health and the environment.
People die from the side-effects of drugs or from driving Ford Pintos, but this can be calculated into the cost of doing business. People die because their health insurance is cancelled when they get sick, yet insurance companies see nothing wrong with this. Corporate obligations are limited by law to the interests of shareholders. What we’ve just witnessed in the health care reform spectacle is business interests using their economic resources to make sure government doesn’t interfere with business as usual.

That’s what’s been so troubling about the whole process. We were forced to recognize the helplessness – or unwillingness — of our elected officials when it comes to representing our welfare. They were no match for the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. We can hope for change in the form of new filibuster rules or campaign finance reform, but who knows if that would really change anything – or if that’s even possible.

Yearning for a moral purpose

The disappointment goes deeper than frustration with an ineffective political process. Our forebears were optimistic about a future filled with the wonders science and technology could create — a world of unending progress, material goods that met everyone’s needs, increased leisure, and satisfying lives. But progress has been a disappointing experience, as a recent essay in The Economist points out (emphasis added):

In the rich world the idea of progress has become impoverished. Through complacency and bitter experience, the scope of progress has narrowed. …

[A]mong developed-world countries, there is only a weak correlation between happiness and GDP. And, although wealth has been soaring over the past half a century, happiness, measured by national surveys, has hardly budged.

That is probably largely because of status-consciousness. It is good to go up in the world, but much less so if everyone around you is going up in it too. Once they have filled their bellies and put a roof over their heads, people want more of what Fred Hirsch … called “positional goods”. … As wealth grows, the competition for such status symbols only becomes more intense.

And it is not just that material progress does not seem to be delivering the emotional goods. People also fear that mankind is failing to manage it properly–with the result that, in important ways, their children may not be better off than they are. The forests are disappearing; the ice is melting; social bonds are crumbling; privacy is eroding; life is becoming a dismal slog in an ugly world. …

[P]eople yearn for a sense of moral purpose. In a world preoccupied with consumerism and petty self-interest, that gives life dignity. People want to determine how the world works, not always to be determined by it. It means that people’s behaviour should be shaped not by who is most powerful, or by who stands to lose and gain, but by what is right despite the costs.

In the next post, supercapitalism and the need to surpass narrow self-interests and consumer desires.

Sources:

( Links will open in a separate window or tab.)

Onwards and upwards, The Economist, December 17, 2009