by From Richard Norgaard Economistic beliefs are not detrimental because they are mere beliefs. People need a belief system to live together. Yuval Harari develops this argument around the following statement. “Any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city, or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imagination” (Yuval Harari, 2014, p. 30) Many critiques of the recent neoliberal economy make the same point that neoliberalism survives on a set of necessary public beliefs, but most critics imply that those who profit from the system orchestrate the beliefs. While not denying that those who most benefit from particular beliefs have helped push them on the masses, the process by which beliefs come to
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from Richard Norgaard
Economistic beliefs are not detrimental because they are mere beliefs. People need a belief system to live together. Yuval Harari develops this argument around the following statement.
“Any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city, or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imagination” (Yuval Harari, 2014, p. 30)
Many critiques of the recent neoliberal economy make the same point that neoliberalism survives on a set of necessary public beliefs, but most critics imply that those who profit from the system orchestrate the beliefs. While not denying that those who most benefit from particular beliefs have helped push them on the masses, the process by which beliefs come to be held and sustained is more complex than this. People need beliefs to explain the system in which they live, and they need beliefs to rationalize their decisions and those of others. Furthermore, people are able to choose between alternative beliefs and rationalizations being pushed by religious organizations, interest groups, and social commentators. The dominant choice of Europeans and North Americans switched during the 20th century from Judeo-Christian explanations to neoliberal economism. And the rest of the world also made this shift on their own time scales starting from their own religious bases. Economism and the Econocene