What does it mean to care about other people? From my experience, caring about other people means you want them to meet – and will help them meet – the physiological and safety needs in Maslow’s hierarchy. These are the things we need to survive in life and, assuming those needs are met, we can go on to fulfilling the other needs, eventually achieving a meaningful and happy life. In short, caring about someone means you feel personally responsible for their well-being.
When Noam Chomsky says that the public education system and social security depend on people caring about one another, he’s not wrong. Let’s broaden this idea to social programs in general: accessible health care, food assistance, public education, even a living wage.
All of these programs assume that it’s important to every individual that every other individual have access to health care, food, education, etc. It assumes that you want the person a few towns over who you’ve never met before to be able to afford to feed his family, even though you personally don’t need assistance. It assumes that you want the children in your community to receive a good education, even if you personally might not have kids (and would probably send them to private school if you did). It assumes that you’re willing to sacrifice a little of your personal wealth and convenience for the good of the community at large and the people who are a part of it.
I believe most people want to care about other people.
But in a system that promotes personal success at the expense of others, caring about people is actually self-destructive. While capitalism in its ideal form might mean free markets, private ownership, and potential for upward mobility, the reality of how the system works is really much different.
The richest eight men in the world own as much wealth as 3.6 billion of the world’s poorest people (roughly half of the world’s population). Top executives at banks that essentially caused the 2008 economic crisis received bonuses amounting to $1.6 billion of American government money while victims of the crisis lost their homes and jobs. Super PACs have turned the United States government into a corporatocracy, essentially disenfranchising anyone who doesn’t have enough money to buy a politician. But we already know all this.
What most people either fail to realize or intentionally ignore is that this system is destroying our very humanity. It’s conditioning us to believe that our comforts and conveniences are more important than the health, personal security, and basic needs of others.
It’s why we turn a blind eye to the fact that workers making our iPhones live and work in dangerous and dehumanizing conditions.
It’s why we sent our factories overseas – so we don’t have to see the sweatshop children whose lives are being destroyed so they can produce our clothing at low cost.
It’s why we ignore the fact that minority groups are systematically oppressed in order to keep the low-wage jobs occupied and the prisons full – allowing the privileged few to live well and obtain the higher-skilled jobs.
It’s why we ignore animal torture in factory farming. It’s why we exploit women’s bodies in advertising and at parties.
It’s why we sexualize minority women in the media. It’s why we pollute the air with exhaust fumes and the oceans with plastic.
All of these things mean short-term low costs and high revenue – the holy grail of a competitive “free” market.
We don’t feel responsibility for other people or for the environment because we’ve trained ourselves not to, telling ourselves that the destruction we reap is what’s necessary in order to stay afloat in the market. And that it’s good for the customers because it makes products more affordable. And that we supply jobs to people in developing countries. And that success is merit-based. And that everyone has equal opportunity, just not equal outcome. And… the list goes on.
It’s deeply ingrained in our culture that success is individual and we refuse to acknowledge the people we had to exploit in order to reach that success. Capitalism has made it almost impossible for us to see that we, as people, are just one part of a bigger whole, and that caring for others elevates all of humanity, including ourselves. Capitalism as a system causes those who’ve “made it” to see those who haven’t succeeded as taking their hard-earned money through a legal form of theft called “social programs” – and because success is merit-based, it means their failure to succeed should be their own fault.
Social programs can never work in a capitalist system because the entire mindset that capitalism relies on and develops can never allow social programs to succeed. If we really want to end poverty, exploitation, and oppression, we can’t just try to make things better within the current system – the entire system and mindset need to change.
