By Joe Mancini
Published in June 2020
Before Covid-19, we were already in a Social Recession. For example, each year mental health or addiction issues affect 20% of the population. We tolerate that 34% of Ontario high-school students deal with moderate-to-serious distress like anxiety and depression. Our culture has a radiating frustration that you see in those angry protests against the shutdown. The Social Recession is not new; it is the consequence of an increasing dependence on materialistic values as the foundational organizing principle for society.
What is the Social Recession?
The Social Recession is the weary feeling we have that our culture turns its back on supporting important underlying personal and social connections. In our culture, is enough time given to truly support families and the raising of children? Do we have time to reflect and integrate the Indigenous world view which calls us to protect the forests, air, water and soil? Do we have the patience to allow for a sharing culture to emerge in neighbourhoods? Do we have the ability to promote a culture of mutual aid, where each person is responsible for putting the community above themselves? Do we support cultural mechanisms to teach the use of tools wisely for building our neighbourhoods and community? Can we cooperate together to build or share housing to reduce homelessness?
The Covid shutdown has been unprecedented, putting a halt to almost all commuting, shopping, schooling, working, vacationing and traveling. This situation is completely unique and it’s a revelation, like being on a retreat from daily distractions. This new reality offers time to think about the meaning of family, community, work and the natural world we depend on.
An Overproduction of Negative Social Outcomes
It puts into perspective the machinery of society that overproduces commuting, shopping, travelling etc. The revelation reveals a society of disconnections and misplaced priorities. In this lull we have to think about the overwhelming negative social outcomes. We have time to rethink why we have acclimatized ourselves to a constant Social Recession in the midst of abundance and busy work.
A retreat is a perfect mechanism to uncover the problems of materialism and why our reliance on making money, increasing status, purchasing bigger and better things, are barriers to good relationships. Materialism skews our values, we lose our sense of purpose, autonomy and the benefit of social connections. Our potential wellbeing diminishes in a flood of goods and services.
Precarious Work Dependent on Consumerism
At the heart of materialism is the desperate necessity for the economy to produce work hours. The result is a cycle of consumerism with jobs that are precarious and non-satisfying. For example, data from the US economy shows that about twenty million jobs were created after the 2008 Great Recession. Yet in three weeks, more than twenty million jobs were eliminated. The same is true in Canada where three million jobs were created in the past ten years and more than three million jobs have been eliminated in a matter of weeks.
We have woken up to realize that we don’t have a jobs policy. This past round of job creation has not only been precarious, but this extra work is undermining the Earth’s fragile ecology. Even though important jobs in manufacturing, health, community services, and agriculture are at best prioritized as secondary. Why else are these sectors scrambling to adapt to the Covid situation.
To address the Social Recession, we need to zero in on how our economy is wasteful. We need to find savings by harnessing internal resources. We need to strengthen community at the grassroots.
Take the $7.5 Billion that is spent on advertising in Canada, mostly through the Internet. What about the poor social outcomes that come from creating unrealistic images of wealth, status and power that will not be attained, only desired? The trick of advertising is to keep everyone on a constant consumer treadmill, while Covid has shown this faux exercising to be exhausting. Is this useful spending?
How about the time spent on commuting? In 2016 about 1.5 million Canadians spent at least 2 hours commuting from home to work and back each day. How many others spend an hour commuting each day? What about the loss to personal time, the constant stress of driving, and the cost to relationships? Covid gives us time to rethink the cost of commuting, Climate Change makes it imperative.
Homelessness Rising
Homelessness is the opposite problem. In cities across North America and in our own city the number of homeless people continues to rise. This is a misallocation of resources, leaving many without access to shelter. There is a significant cost to police, health, municipalities and social services who spend precious resources blocking access to buildings, moving people around, dealing with drug addictions and worsening physical health, and playing musical chairs with limited housing units. The worst is the drift to criminality for those shut out. In the midst of gangs, drugs, abject poverty and violence, the homeless are dispossessed without the means to flee or find alternatives. Each year, in downtowns the social cost keeps adding up and the response is not up to the challenge.
The excesses of a consumer society do little to build the common good. Why attempt to build community when everyone is distracted by the anxious need to be entertained. Communities don’t hold together, so why root and invest one’s energy into a neighbourhood, especially when there is always a better one around the corner. Who bothers to search out work where pay is secondary to the quality of the relationships and the service to the community. As Tim Kasser points out in The High Cost of Materialism, people’s fragile self-worth, their poor relationships, their insecurities, these are all to be exploited by the consumerist system hoping for people to choose rootlessness over building the community around them. This is the root of the Social Recession.
How to Build Community in a Covid World?
Growing carbon emissions, increasing debt, poor social outcomes are all pointing us to recommit to reworking the economy. How do we exit from what Tim Jackson calls “the iron cage of consumerism?” The transition will integrate environmental protection with a deeper focus on building families and neighbourhoods by asking these kinds of questions. How can we strengthen communities? How can we burn less carbon? How can we strengthen the connections between each other? How can we lessen the material waste of overconsumption?
Here is a short list of immediate projects. We have learned from Covid and Climate Change that we must reduce commuting and especially travel by air until real carbon alternatives are found. If we work less hours, there is more time to get around by bike, to cook at home and to produce food in our neighbourhoods. Working less results in freed up hours that can be used to develop new skills and interests. This is a positive way of building neighbourhood connections and social trust.
We need to reinspire job creation aimed at expanding urban agriculture, jobs focused on making buildings more energy efficient, jobs to create community resources to help people live in the community with less money, jobs that plant forests and naturalize paved over environments. These are all jobs that meaningfully start to address Climate Change and make our communities better. This the work we can do to overcome the Social Recession.
Recommitting to Building Relationships
If we want to change the conditions of the Social Recession, we have to create time to support each other. The goal of the economy and consumerism is to keep our relationships guarded and on edge. During the lockdown, where shopping was almost prohibited, it brought into focus meaningful family connections. The lockdown demonstrated the importance of building a society where trust and companionship is a primary goal. There is a great deal of room to expand our ability to help people through troubled times. We need is to reduce the demands of the economy for the sake of building our communities. At The Working Centre we see the importance of allowing people the space to problem solve together. Each day, in all our public spaces, we combine useful tools with a community commitment to listen and support people to overcome issues that get in the way. This is the kind of work that builds community and enhances our social relationships.
The Work Ahead
The flashing signs all around us call for a rethinking of our economic direction. Our model of growth is leading to increased ecological degradation and the decline of community and social connections. We need a renewed commitment to enhance well-being at the community level.
Juliet Schor in True Wealth (2011) noted that, “we will not arrest ecological decline or regain financial health without also introducing a different rhythm of work, consumption and daily life, as well as alterations in a number of system-wide structures.
This week, countries around the world are making renewable energy investments. For example, the European Commission is creating a euro-recovery plan focused on promoting electric vehicle sales, renewable energy projects and making new, green technologies economically viable. The U.K. will invest $2.4 billion to promote cycling and walking. South Korea plans to double solar incentives to promote rooftop systems in homes and commercial buildings. China will build more than 78,000 electric-vehicle charging stations. Renewable energy is a softer path towards creating a society that is distributive, regenerative and where limits and relationships are central.
In the next edition, we will look at positive ideas that will substantially reduce our dependence on the burning of fossil fuel and also create wider and deeper community. We have to work together to find the savings to invest in a different future. How can we quickly replace carbon burning vehicles with bikes, trucks, and cars, while investing in solar and wind renewable energy? The same kind of thinking has to be applied to urban agriculture and as well, developing alternatives to our overprocessed food economy. We can apply the same thinking to building sustainable structures of connectedness in our neighbourhoods.
The Covid shutdown has opened up immense possibilities for a new future. We can overcome the Social Recession with new thinking, acting and building relationships towards a better common future.
