NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
MYTHS OF THE POLITICAL-ECONOMIC WORLD VIEW A MYTH IS a traditional story that offers an explanation of some fact or phenomenon. Myths are neither wholly true nor wholly untrue. They may have been more true in the past than now, but people act as if they are still true, even when they no longer really believe in them. Some modem usages of the word have connotations that suggest that myths are irrelevant or wrong, but this is not necessarily so. Myths are of considerable importance to people, and for some, they may reflect ultimate personal truth.
The critical need is for people to be given the opportunity to find out which myths are meaningful and which are not. A myth is a mental model with which people try to interpret reality and respond to it. Myths have value in enabling us to organize the way we perceive facts and see ourselves and the world. Myths speak through rich symbols, helping to bring order into what may otherwise be a chaos of personal experience. Whether true or not, myths help us make sense of what is going on around us.
Myths can provide a valuable doorway into the value structure of a society or culture and may give insights that are difficult to achieve by more conventional means. Some myths, like belief in fairies, are probably harmless. Others may be dangerous if they distort the way we see the world and the ways we deal with problems. How does one tell the difference? How does one help people recognize the existence of other perspectives of reality without offending deeply held beliefs?
One good way to start examining a myth is to find out what it meant to those who created it (the process of exegesis). Many social and scientific myths of the twentieth century originated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so this is not difficult to do. The next task is to find out what the present-day followers of the tradition of a myth mean by it (the process of hermeneutics). The final task is to compare the myth with the reality it seeks to represent.
This stage often runs into trouble with adherents because to them, a myth cannot be questioned without challenging the believer's self. Most myths present themselves as authoritative and able to account for facts, no matter how completely at variance they may be with the real world. A myth gains its authority not by proving itself but by presenting itself. And the greater the political authority that lies behind the myth and the more often it is presented, the less likely it is to be challenged. Such is the case with many political and scientific myths of the twentieth century. Over the past two hundred years, Western societies have cast aside many of the myths and institutions that had served them for hundreds of years.
The great belief systems-the idea of a divine lawgiver; the sanctity of the family kin group, or tribe; the rituals, customs, conventions, ceremonies, and festivals that gave meaning and purpose to the smaller communities of earlier times-are mostly in ruins. But in the haste to throw off apparently outmoded burdens, people also lost the valuable side of those myths and institutions. The feelings created by people's confidence in their place in nature and in the stability of the social systems that supported them have been vandalized. Many people are left with nothing but the despair engendered by new myths that they do not understand, often because the myths have been imposed on them without explanation. 1 Throughout history, people have felt it necessary to organize life's activities by constructing a frame of reference within which to fit them a world view that explains the hows and whys of daily existence. Such processes have been the essential ingredient of many cultures' responses to the world they perceived. A world view is usually so internalized, from childhood on, that it is seldom challenged.
In the Western world, the belief that neutral and impersonal laws govern what can be done in society and the world is deeply embedded in technology and economics. 2 But if that sort of belief is dominant, things are taken out of the political arena that properly belong there. Such is the outcome of taking seriously many assumptions of mainstream political economics. In reality, most of the assumptions are myths: partly true and partly false. They must therefore be treated with considerable caution. The prime myth in the context of this book claims that lower grade resources will always be available to humankind in a continuing and virtually endless sequence. Since exploitation of resources always, and without exception, requires expenditure of available and accessible energy, as I pointed out in chapter 3, this myth is critically dependent on the continuing availability of energy resources.
For that reason, I will reword it into a more specific form: Lower grade energy resources will always be available to humankind in a continuing and virtually endless sequence. Nicholas George scu-Roger, a trenchant critic of the myth, states: "The favorite thesis of standard and Marxist economists alike... is that the power of technology is without limits. We will always be able not only to find a substitute for a resource which has become scarce, but also to increase the productivity of any kind of energy and material. " 5 William Cotton exposes further flaws in this "favorite thesis": Two non-repeatable achievements had made possible four centuries of magnificent progress. Those two achievements were (I) the discovery of a second hemisphere, and (2) development of technology that could unearth and exploit the planet's energy savings, its fossil fuel deposits. [Humankind's increasingly relentless search for new sources of energy and for more costly energy technologies expresses our wish to deny that achievements like those two were uniquely resultant from bygone circumstances. 6 Part of the problem of evaluating the prime myth is that economists usually think of resources in monetary terms-in other words, as homogeneous. The inadequate information supplied by market prices for resources means that conventional (neoclassical) economics is largely incapable of according resources-especially nonhomogeneous, nonrenewable fossil energy resources-the meaning they actually possess. 7 In order to give the prime myth the attention it deserves, we need to examine some of the myths on which it depends or that are used to derive policies stemming from it.
These myths are deeply ingrained in the Western cultural tradition and are central to many areas of decision making. The reader is invited not to reject those that may be ill founded (and I strongly emphasize this point) but to treat them always as partial truths and partial perceptions of reality. They may be useful under certain limited circumstances, but they should never be used outside those narrow confines. I would also make the point that by the term "resources, " I include ecosystem services along with the conventional meaning of extractable resources. According to some writers, 8 Western culture, shaped by interpretations of the Bible, particularly the early books of the Old Testament, pictured humans as separate from all other creatures and dominating them. 9 Many still feel what is almost a divine imperative to "master" nature. It stems from a linear, hierarchical, authoritarian world view in which God is above, nature is below, and man is in between, set above everything but God (not forgetting that woman is set hierarchically below man). 10 The British theologian C.
S. Lewis suggested that the truth is rather more prosaic: "What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument. " 11 Recent theological studies have shown that the belief of God giving man authority over nature is not necessarily supported by the Bible. 12 The dominant themes go far beyond what is gained from literal interpretation of specific verses (e. g. , Genesis 1). In reality, there are two creation myths in Genesis: the "Yahwistic" (Genesis 2 4, in which man was created out of dust) and the "priestly" (Genesis 1: 24, in which man was "given dominion, " etc. ). The Yahwistic version, dating from around 1000 B.
C. , is closer to a holistic, "systems" view, but it was apparently superseded by the priestly version, dating from around 600 B. C. The latter clearly reflects dominance of political structures, which may have been as strong in the relationships between priests and kings in ancient Hebrew society as they are today between economists and politicians. A full analysis must also combine major themes from both the Old Testament and the New Testament. These do not support the view that humans are above nature but suggest the contrary-that they are part of it. In Genesis 1, God declared plants and animals good independently of humans; they are therefore interdependent. 13 In a sense, God, humanity, and nature exist in a systems relationship.
From a biblical viewpoint, stewardship is the primary function of humanity, whose function is to take care of God's creation, giving special (but not exclusive) attention to itself, including future generations. Stewardship requires extending brotherhood and sisterhood not only to all existing people but also to future and past people, and to all other life forms, in appropriate degrees. 14 The Myth of Primacy of the Individual The conventional political-economic viewpoint depends on two crucial assumptions about the individual: that the individual is the best judge of his or her own interests and that over time, tastes (i. e. , preferences) do not change-or, if they do, they change as a result of better information. These are often summarized as "the independence of individual preferences. " Although these assumptions apparently have the status of received wisdom when seen from one viewpoint, they are at best half-truths. It may be politically expedient to declare that everyone is the best judge of his or her own interest, but few people would not want to undo many of their past mistakes. The fact that many apparently normal people subject themselves voluntarily to various forms of psychoanalysis, or indulge in the search for truth through religion, or follow the forecasts of astrologers, means that in respect to the larger questions that govern their lives, they are far from certain where their true interests lie. 15 The modem liberal view of the place of the individual in the marketplace expressed by such philosophers as Friedrich von Hayek, is interesting in this context.
As described by Bruce Jason, their view is that ''true individualism... is a social individualism. It requires a society with a stable family structure, voluntary community associations, and conformity to tradition and convention... true individualism requires a rigid moral code and a sense of social responsibility. It bears little resemblance to the acquisitive, self-indulgent and amoral spirit of modem individualism... (which) is deficient in its lack of ethics. " 16 This model reflects cultural factors coming from groups rather than individuals.
By breaking down group behavior into "socially responsible" individual behavior, one may pave the way for authoritarian controls on group action, nominally to increase individual freedom. Even though this may be done in the name of freedom, in reality it reduces the power of those with whom individuals are associated and on whom they may depend. Trade unions, under threat in many country...
Free research essays on topics related to: political economic, energy resources, twentieth century, b c, world view
Research essay sample on Myths Of World View
