One time things were done just for fun, sentimental value was actually valued, and there were things considered priceless.
It feels like more than at any time in history, “If it doan mek dollars it doan mek sense.” The commercial value of a thing is very often the determining factor in whether or not it continues to exist.
One time sport was for sport. Now it is big business. If you want funding for your sport, don’t talk about how it develops character, strengthens community spirit or keeps children off the streets. Does it bring a large crowd who will pay to watch or give sponsors some visibility? Can it bring in tourists dollars?
If a child plays a lot of football everybody is asking him if he wants to be a footballer when he grows up. No time for child’s play even when you are a child. If he is not a budding international professional he may have to stop playing until after the Common Entrance.
Children are in school from before they can recognise themselves in the mirror. Mommy, daddy, aunty, uncle, grandma and grandpa all have to go to work to make dollars. Even if there is someone home to care for the child, we want to get that child educated as quickly as possible.
Education used to be valued for the type of person it made you into. Now it is valued almost exclusively for the type of job it can get you into. It’s hard to put a dollar value on character. A good man may easily be poor. It is much easier to say, “A lawyer makes this amount of money. Study law.”
Lawyers and doctors have traditionally been seen as high-status, high-paying professions. They’ve maintained this image. Teacher used to be a high-status profession as well even though it was not high-paying. Teaching is no longer a high status profession. In a world where money matters most, “how much do you make?” Is a more important question than “how much do you contribute?”
It becomes easy to reach the conclusion that citizens should pay for their own education if their education is solely for the purpose of getting them paid and making them rich. If education was valued for the kind of citizen it produced we would think twice about making it harder to access.
With this perspective it will make sense to focus on the subjects which we think will make dollars. We will encourage science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and downgrade the arts, humanities and social sciences. We do highly regard two non-STEM subjects; law and economics. The economist studies things to do with the dollar and so she makes sense. You find a lot of economists in politics.
Politics has traditionally been dominated by members of those professions which were considered to have the highest salaries and the best education like doctors and lawyers. As the generation growing up in the STEM era matures, we may see more engineers, scientists and computer programmers enter politics.
Many politicians are also coming from the ranks of people whose job is finding the best ways to make dollars: entrepreneurs. An entrepreneur and a neuroscientist are the nominees revitalising the US Republican Party.
Whatever profession a politician is from, he or she has a mind shaped by their culture. Their policies will contain the residue of ideas picked up from movies, music, magazines, websites, mentors and peers. They are products of their culture. Culture is the domain of the arts, humanities and social sciences. Culture decides what direction science and technology go in. Culture is at the root of the STEM.
Since we are currently living in a culture of “only dollars make sense”, it makes sense that we like to talk about culture mostly in economic terms. The term “cultural industries” has replaced “culture.”
Like sport, art becomes only useful if it is contributing to the GDP.
The child who will not be reasoned out of his or her interest in art will be encouraged to become a commercial artist. Those are the artists who are seen as sensible and capable of making dollars.
The commercial artist is sometimes well paid to create ads that will entice you to spend your dollars on a particular commodity. Ad agencies use information taken from the humanities and social sciences along with the talent of artists, to create ads that will inspire you to consume.
In a modern capitalist democratic society the idea is that anyone is free to accumulate as much wealth as they can and consume as much as they can also. Objects and experiences once reserved for royalty appear within your grasp.
From the time we are born we are serenaded by a host of heavenly jingles. We are visited by strangers in a rectangular-shaped box bearing gifts. We are anointed by the spirit of consumption.
Religion was once used as the tool to turn down people’s freedom and wealth instincts. Wealth and righteousness were taught to be inversely proportional except for the very elite, whose wealth was ordained by God. Poverty was a virtue and wealth was a sin. Fellow columnist Toni Thorne already wrote an article turning that idea on its head.
Since then the Church has evolved. Churches that preach economic empowerment seem to be some of the most prosperous. It seems that even in religion, if it doan mek dollars it doan mek sense.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. It is a useful management and decision- making tool. Learning the value of things and realising that things cost money is part of growing up.
The problem comes when things that are difficult to measure in digits are devalued because of it, or cease to matter at all.
Adrian Green is a creative communications specialist. Email [email protected].
