Affirmative World View

The affirmative world view

The affirmative world view is a certain way of envisioning the world that causes it to become like the vision. If a critical mass of people share a certain set of assumptions and goals for a person's role in the world, then they will live as if such a world exists. Living as if something exists can be a force, pro actively developing its own reality.

In the abstract, this is a pretty far-fetched idea. A bit of metaphysical nonsense which might be true and might not, but we have more important and relevant things to think about. I want to propose a case study; a set of assumptions and commonly held beliefs which started out only being held by a few but ended up driving the change and creating the conditions for this world view to become predominant. What began as a few people holding a vague belief, but still acting as if it were real, affirmed that such a world was eventually possible.

The case study is, of course, modern capitalism. What started as a vague notion in the seventeenth century that division of labor, economies of scale, investment of capital and of course, individuals making economic decisions in their own self-interest was a rational way to run the world, became the norm. What did those early capitalists think about? Was it how to someday run a multi-national corporation? No, they thought about how to grow from an individual into a factory, into a company into larger manifestations of this new kind of system all stemming from the agent and the idea.

Today we live in a world that has been actively re-envisioned by millions of capitalists to the point that it is established almost everywhere. We are so far into it that we forget it rests on some very fragile assumptions. We forget money is really just trust in institutions which are really just made up of people. We forget that our consumer purchases contribute to the wellbeing of millions of people all over the world, (as well as the inequality and ecological difficulties they experience.) We also forget that money is an end in itself for many people, (although it doesn't have to be.) These assumptions are held widely enough to create and perpetuate capitalism.

Many ideas are dismissed because 'people don't think that way' or 'the world doesn't work that way'. For most of them this is true, they won't work and this isn't a rallying cry for every 3am genius on the internet. But an idea that works, a set of assumptions that makes a lot of sense, a world view that encompasses enough hope and opportunity and meaning and foundation will reshape the world as soon as we start living in affirmation of that vague notion.

My notion is a belief in people. I believe in people's minds, I believe in people's motivations and I believe in people's ability to realize their dreams. I believe in people's ability to make responsible choices about their future and the world if only they are given an opportunity to make that choice. I believe in our need to connect spiritually with each other once we know that is necessary and wonderful. I believe in our pride and self-confidence if that can be also open and humble and free from attack or fear. I believe in people's ability to organize themselves if they have a sense of their own power. I believe we will direct our life energy towards the greater good if we do not constantly see the meaningless allure of endless consumption and status symbols. I believe self-interest is the same thing as community interest if we believe it to be so.

When Smith described the division of labor as the driver of economic development, industry had barely scratched the surface of how specialized and productive labor could be. Once industry knew that this was the key to unlocking the productive power of their factories, it became obsessed with analyzing every detail of how tasks were divided. Entire realms of profit were discovered in the tiniest corrections of understanding a movement or a piece. Some early capitalists were like explorers on epic journeys towards greater efficiency. They believed the key to unlocking productive power lay in the details of the actions of production and they were right, and they affirmed that the world worked in such a way, that the world would become organized around such principles.

In order to believe in people, we must recognize that the value is only the name on the door. The much greater question that we will explore and struggle with and reshape and develop is how to believe in people. We too must embark on epic journey's towards new and exotic looking ways of believing in ourselves, our friends and our networks. These journey's are so exciting because they are often venturing into the unknown, and we might encounter very real and threatening dangers along the way. And yet we will keep exploring because we will also start bring back wildly effective and exciting things. We will also keep exploring because we have affirmed that the driving force, the energy of the world we want to live in is here, waiting for us to find it.