These proposed mechanisms are of course simplifications, but they are firmly established in behavioral science. You also have lots of folks who are very active and productive but still struggle with feelings of anxiety and lacking meaning; consider the many empty treadmills that bourgeois life can put us through.
But the point is that emotional hurt and lower states do have great costs over a lifespan. It has been shown, for instance, that bad parenting can knock 20 years off your life expectancy. [66]
Here’s another example. In an influential 2013 book called Scarcity , the behavioral economists Mullainathan and Shafir presented ample evidence of a “scarcity mindset”. Poverty taxes cognitive resources and causes self-control failure. We literally become dumber and make more short-sighted decisions when we are poor or under economic stress: we eat less healthy, invest less intelligently and we even score lower on IQ tests. When we feel like crap, we get stuck in a scarcity mindset. This is a form of emotional inequality.
On the flipside, you can see how affluent populations tend to develop higher value memes and post-materialist (non-consumerist, environmentalist, etc.) values over time, as has been the case in e.g. the Nordic countries. You feel good, you space out, you have the time to contemplate life, and so forth.
There is good reason to believe this principle of a scarcity mindset extends well beyond economic decision-making and that it is equally valid in other areas of life: love, dating (where dating coaches also warn of a destructive scarcity mindset, using the exact same term), social recognition, making one’s opinions and values heard, and so forth. So inequality of any kind likely produces emotions and general mindsets that steer our many decisions and hence our lives. Inner states and emotions are at the center of how inequality is reproduced across all of its dimensions.
Our streams of thought, our very streams of consciousness, look very different from each other, often steered by emotions. How evenly is shame distributed in the population? What about fear and self-hatred? Frustration and bitterness?
Even if all of us experience these emotions, there are large segments of the population whose very lives are run by these. And how many of us get to feel satisfied, proud and stimulated on a daily basis? And when the insecure, the nervous and the grief-stricken encounter the laid-back, the comfortable, the happy—what are all other, more superficial, forms of equality ultimately worth? How much easier is it not to dominate, exploit and manipulate the emotionally impoverished? On the other hand, what is more empowering than peace of mind? More empowering than a heart in love with life itself?
Whereas all of these emotions of course emerge in larger contexts, in our living conditions and social-psychological circumstances as well as in our personal biological and genetic constitutions, it is not impossible to directly influence and steer the emotional development of human beings.
Even if our emotions are products of economic, social and physiological inequalities, there are, roughly speaking, two forms of services that can be offered: 1) the eliciting and boosting of positive emotions and 2) the support towards successfully coping with, integrating and transmuting negative emotions.
In a listening society, the deeper welfare of the future, we can and should create institutions and structures that work against emotional inequality—not, of course, by making the happy miserable to even out the playing field, but by strengthening our psyches so as to deal with difficult emotions. We should offer good emotional support, training and services to all citizens from the day they are born until their dying breath. If you care about the real , fundamental equality and dignity of humans, no other conclusion is possible or justifiable.
Some of the possible political measures that have been mentioned above, under social and physiological inequality, feed into the struggle for emotional equality. For instance, again, we can affect emotions by developing body postures and body language, by training social and emotional intelligence, by making sure good meditation practices are taught, and by making healthy food more available—for instance, intake of vegetables has been shown to protect against depression, as has physical exercise.
But emotions can be targeted even more directly. For example, all children could be offered simple forms of counseling during their school years, which would help many of them from being taken over by destructive emotions during their early lives and onwards. Schools could use exercises of “positive psychology”, and the general framework of schooling could be designed to elicit more positive emotions. We could have greater possibilities for adults to take a year off and work on their emotional issues and concerns, with places of rest and recluse. And people could be trained to better manage conflicts and rejections, which severely affect our emotional wellbeing and development. At the national level, we could start measuring the prevalence of different emotions and present public statistics to guide public discourse.
The issue here is not to pan out all the solutions—thousands are possible, with so many social technologies that must be invented, implemented, evaluated and refined; and the sky is the limit. The issue here is only to raise awareness of the question of emotional inequality so that the political discussion can begin, and so that it can enter the political agenda.
Even if all emotions are, in some cosmic last instance, “okay”, we really shouldn’t wish for ourselves or our fellow citizens to be trapped by fear, shame, guilt, aggression and envy. Such emotions exacerbate inequalities and suffering in more ways than we could hope to name or think of.
ECOLOGICAL INEQUALITY
Ecological inequality includes such things as access to fresh air, clean water, lush vegetation, beautiful scenery, healthy and non-toxic food, clean living spaces—even sunlight. In many large Chinese cities, a lot of people hardly see the sun, and millions die as a result of air pollution. Many people around the world work in noisy, physically dangerous, dirty and toxic environments, like children in West Africa working on huge piles of waste from electronics, slowly poisoning themselves to retrieve valuable metals and minerals. The brunt of harm caused by environmental degradation is carried very unevenly by populations. You see this in everything from poor climate migrants, to subsistence farming damaged by global warming, to cognitive growth stunted caused by poisoned waterways.
Of course, this kind of inequality is closely tied to the global economic order. The rich can choose to live in nicer and cleaner environments, buy heathier products, go on hikes or health resorts, and so on. This, naturally, translates into other stratifications, such as race and ethnicity; for instance, in the US, in California, it has been shown that blacks and Latinos on average breathe in 40% more air pollution than whites—which naturally affects physiological equality and thus all the rest of it. [67]
And the rich parts of the world generally transpose the most environmentally destructive production processes and industries to the poorer parts. Citizens living in poor areas of urban India have fewer choices in terms of healthy food and environments. This of course in turn affects all other aspects of inequality: economic, social, physiological and emotional.
Even if the expansion of “rights” is far from always the best and most practical way of protecting people’s interests, we should at least discuss the possibility of introducing ecological rights of citizens and/or communities. Rights can lead to rather rigid forms of governance and they are difficult to relate to in terms of cost/benefit analysis, but something along these lines may offer productive venues for future global policies.
As it is relatively easy to see and understand this aspect of inequality, I will not dwell further upon it; suffice to say it is a crucial part of equality, that it is an issue that divides the rich world from the poor, and that it interacts with differences of socio-economic class. And even if a new global order is needed for this to be seriously addressed, there is
of course much that can be done at the local level.
INFORMATIONAL INEQUALITY
The sixth and last form of inequality is one we cannot miss in the Internet Age: informational inequality , the divide between the haves and have-nots of information and knowledge. There has been much written about the “digital divide” which privileges younger generations over older ones, digitized economies with good broadband infrastructure over poor developing countries, and so forth.
The digital divide is, however, not always a straightforward issue of “internet access”. For instance, white US children spend on average 8.5 hours daily in front of a screen, while Hispanic and black children spend about 13 hours (watching more TV, playing video games, social media etc.), with obvious negative effects upon physical and mental health as well as psycho-social development. The relationship to information and IT also reinforces inequalities. Those stuck at the bottom of the “attentionalist economy” are perpetually distracted from projects of self-empowerment. The quality of their information flows and resulting worldviews deteriorates, which feeds into economic and social capital: time is “wasted” and the ability to recognize emotional cues in facial expression shrinks with excessive screen-time. Too much screen-time also seems to increase the likelihood of developing ADHD, which in itself makes it difficult for you to economize that cardinal resource: your attention. [68]
At a more fundamental level, access to useful and reliable information is one of the greatest consequences of economic inequality. Financially strong actors will know the markets, prices, tax evasion strategies and so forth to a much greater extent than the weaker ones.
The well-positioned can buy expertise and process much larger flows of information, which plays out against the weak in favor of the strong. In its most salient form, this is true of the large internet companies, who own and manage vast quantities of personal information about people—increasingly knowing not only the markets, but the behaviors of citizens and consumers, often much better than we know ourselves. Tinder can have literally 800 pages worth of very sensitive personal information if you’ve been on it for a few years.
Hence, informational inequality works through many different mechanisms. One such mechanism revolves around the powers of producers and large companies over consumers, with the latter by necessity having lesser access to relevant information, thus being easily manipulated in a myriad of ways.
And this dissymmetry of informational access plays out in a corresponding manner within the political arena as wealthy groups gain disproportionally large political influence and misuse state institutions to protect their interests, shaping media landscapes and curtailing the transparency of decision-making and bureaucracies.
And beyond that you have the general pattern that some people thrive in the information age, being able to critically evaluate and access vast amounts of information and creating vibrant networks of highly skilled cooperators, whereas the less complex thinkers and less technically apt fall prey to fake news, misinformation and waste their attention, time and money on things that don’t accumulate good results in their lives. This mechanism exacerbates the other forms of inequality, where the less educated and more emotionally desperate are more easily exploited.
It is difficult to see how this rampant informational inequality can be curbed, but it certainly plays a part through its interactions with the other forms. We could imagine a future where internet access is readily available and free around the globe and where basic education would equip us with at least some basic informational savvy, networking skills and critical judgment. We may also envision the growth of transnationally enforced informational rights of world citizens.
What about cultural inequality then? For curious readers, I have reserved this discussion for an endnote. [69]
For now, let’s see what deeper equality would mean.
Chapter 7:
DEEPER EQUALITY
I have now presented six forms of inequality: economic, social, physiological, emotional, ecological and informational—all of which interact with each other. Or conversely, we can speak of uneven distributions of economic, social, physiological, emotional, ecological and informational capital . Taken together with concepts such as cultural and sexual capital, these can be said to constitute a person’s or group’s total capital (or lack thereof).
Most observers have failed to recognize total capital. And this means they have failed to defend and develop real equality. Rather, most of politics today is stuck with a helplessly superficial idea of equality; one that does, in its analytical crudeness, leave millions of children to be crushed under its wheels.
Deeper Resonances
Some readers of a more classical Left persuasion may feel this multidimensional focus obscures the central issue of economic inequality, and that it may be used to provide excuses for it. Yet I would insist the opposite is true: A richer and more inclusive view of inequality serves to highlight the real mechanisms of inequality, hence giving us more and better possibilities to work for a fair and equal world order.
I would argue, moreover, that such a vision strives towards a deeper and more fundamental form of equality, one that reaches deeper into the embodied lives of humans. It doesn’t take anything away from the struggle for economic equality; it just opens more venues for transformation.
Any struggle for equality worth its salt in the coming period must strive to increase equality across all six dimensions. The listening society must be deliberately and sensitively optimized to minimize inequality across all six—given of course it is achieved in a manner consistent with the principles of “game change” rather than “game denial” as discussed in chapter 2, and as long as it doesn’t conflict with the development of freedom, as outlined in chapter 4 and 5. A multidimensional equality is a more real equality, and hence a deeper equality.
I have already suggested how to think about the interactions of the six dimensions of inequality. Let me repeat myself: “Each stage here represents a quantitative difference that causes a qualitative shift. That’s how capital and inequality work. You get more of something, and once you have a certain amount, the whole game shifts and your outlook on life changes.”
The same holds true, naturally, in the “meta-system” of all six forms of inequality as they interact with each other. Your access to information sets limits for your economic success, which sets limits for your physiological wellbeing, which sets limits for your emotional wellbeing, which sets limits for your social life, which sets limits for your access to information… and so on.
Figure: The six dimensions of inequality. Any work to create a fair society is sure to backfire unless all six forms are taken into account and efforts are coordinated across all of them.
These six dimensions of inequality form one great, deep pattern in society. This pattern constitutes a “meta-system”, i.e. a set of interlinked and interdependent systems of inequality that can be compared to each other, but each of which also has unique and non-translatable properties that function by distinct logics and mechanisms. Deep “game change” has occurred whenever a pervasive shift in this “pattern of patterns” is effected.
This meta-system can be shifted from one pattern to another as society evolves or unravels. A useful metaphor for these fundamentally game changing “shifts” can be found in cymatics—an area of study at the cross-section of music, mathematics and the physics of waves.
The basic idea of cymatics is this: If you play a sound at a certain frequency over a fluid or a membrane with powder on it, a sound-wave induced pattern appears in the medium (the fluid or the powder on a membrane). The soundwaves are shaping the medium, upholding a certain pattern of waves. These patterns can be quite beautiful:
Figure: Cymatics, here as white powder on a black vibrating disc to increasing frequencies of sound. As the
frequency goes up, the pattern shifts from one equilibrium to another. I suggest that increases in multi-dimensional equality in society may effect shifts in the patterns of everyday life in a corresponding manner, shifting the dynamics from modern to metamodern life.
The patterns change with the frequency of the sound. You go to a higher frequency, and the same pattern continues to reproduce itself, but with a finer and smaller grid of repetition. But if you increase the frequency enough, the whole pattern suddenly dissolves. And after a certain point, a new pattern emerges; a more complex pattern. You have reached an inherent systemic threshold. And as you increase the frequency further yet, the new pattern becomes more finely meshed until it dissolves and a new level is reached.
This is how cymatics work. You should do a web search for sassier images and videos of this mesmerizing phenomenon. At each stage, the pattern changes. And the same can be said—I would argue—of the games of everyday life: A metamodern pattern will not just be quantitatively “more of the same”, more of what already exists in modern society, but something qualitatively distinct. Although this cymatics image may not be a ready “theory” of inequality, it serves as a general way to grasp how the games of life follow certain recognizable patterns and that these can shift between equilibria—between stages, if you will. The different social dimensions of life can be brought to resonate , as it were, with each other; a “deeper resonance” can chime through society and everyday life.
What we are looking at is a kind of social, transpersonal cymatics. The six dimensions of inequality together form an elegant but tragic pattern of human suffering and degradation. The fabric of suffering and bliss. It is by shifting the game across all fields of development, across all forms of inequality, that a new relative utopia can be realized.
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