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Half Actualized: Why getting better is getting slowed down

Posted on June 27, 2018

Written by Rachel Plett

Maslow’s Hierarchy is a triangle-shaped theory of psychological health. It’s probably popped up at least once in your feed, posted by one of your self-help guru friends. It starts with clean water and enough sleep, and ends with being the best you can be and finally founding that iguana cafe you’ve always dreamed about starting. You know, the one where folks can get a good latte and cuddle with big lizards at the same time. What’s less-known is that later in life Maslow added another tier to his self-help pyramid called self-transcendence. Props to Abe for adding the dimension of caring for others; but in asserting that caring for others comes after, or is morally superior to, caring for and discovering yourself, the man made a mistake. By defining self-actualization as a precursor to self-transcendence, Maslow reveals the ways in which his thinking is touched by his era and gender. All this would be NBD if this categorical error was confined to one humanist psychologist, however, this particular bias extends beyond psychology into our social, governmental and monetary systems, where it has had a profound impact on the ways in which we organize societies, governments, and markets – that is where things begin to get problematic.

Before getting into the history and economics, let’s take a look at the logic and assumptions behind putting self-transcendence at the top of the pyramid. Self-actualization is defined, simply, as the discovery and fulfillment of one’s talents and potentialities. It is essentially exploring and understanding what you’re good at and who you’re capable of being. Self-transcendence is doing something for the sake of someone else, or because of a moral/ideological stance; most moral/ideological stances are beliefs rooted in how one should treat “others.” There’s nothing in the definition of self-actualization that would make it a defacto precursor to self-transcendence. If anything, self-transcendence reads best as a subcategory of self-actualization; a good way to discover your talents and potential.

The issue with thinking about self-actualization as we currently do is that it’s regularly reinterpreted as self-interest – interest in one’s self, personal advantages, growth, and improvement. However, knowing yourself and looking out for yourself are not the same thing. Knowing yourself (self-actualization) is the goal; focusing on yourself (self-interest) and sharing with others (self-transcendence) are the parallel means of achieving that goal. In reality, everything we know about ourselves stems from our reflections on the other’s reactions to what we do. In the words of the excellent hippy Alan Watts, “Self and other define each other mutually.”

On an individual level, putting self-transcendence at the top implicitly suggests that meaning and the personal growth, joy, and satisfaction that comes with caring for others should be postponed until after one has hurdled a long (often growing) list of self-interested goal posts. This sets up a toxic “I can’t be good until I’m good enough” cycle.

It also contributes to a misalignment of self-interest and self-transcendence within society – where one is imperative and the other is impossible. The attainability of self-transcendence within society – more often referred to as altruism – is an ongoing debate that, all to often, elevates altruism to an unrealistic, unrealizable “God status” that one can’t, and shouldn’t be held accountable to. What is worse, some scoff at the whole idea as being a religious fantasy, a psychological balm devised to make this “dog eat dog” world bearable. By making altruism appear as something so unattainable or unreal, we say to each other that the best you can be is Kanye, while dismissing the path to becoming Mother Teresa, Ghandi, or MLK Jr. as impossible. So we reward absorption, enrichment, and dominance with our time, money, and attention, and wring our hands together in bewilderment, wondering why, with all this wealth, the world isn’t getting better faster.

Photo by Jose Martin Ramirez

One (if not the biggest) hindrance to this envisioned better world is the fact that we – western, politically democratic and economically liberal societies – have institutionalized the subordination of self-transcendence (caring) in relation to self-interest by relying, almost exclusively, on tax dollars and donations to fund the work and economics of caring. This institutional arrangement creates a perverse incentive system that puts economic quotas on caring and turns self-transcendence into a luxury experience reserved for the well-off, rather than presenting it as an inborn motivation that each of us should be rewarded for acting upon. The alliance of market capitalism and philanthropy is the institutionalization of the “do good after you’ve done well” relationship discussed earlier, and while the desire to recycle one’s excess should be lauded, there are a few issues that emerge from this arrangement. One of the most obvious being high net worth individuals, removed as they are from need and the social issues they aim to impact, generally lack the knowledge and on the ground insight to effectively impact the problems they aim to solve. Another issue is the fragmentation of the capital market that funds the caring economy. According to the SSIR, $390 billion in philanthropic donations are made annually, plus many hundreds of billions in government grants and contracts. However, because those contributions come from hundreds of different foundations, faith organizations, as well as state and federal governments, they create a capital market that is inherently volatile and subject to the whims and pressures of those with political and economic power, rather than being responsive to the needs and demands of the issues and communities actually being targeted. Finally, by setting up a system where the money for care work comes from donations or tax dollars, the system ensures that self-transcendent activities and enterprises have to survive on a trickle of the economic rewards generated by the provision economy, our self-interested endeavours, rather than growing organically to meet our demand for a better world.

If self-interest and self-transcendence are companion paths to self-actualization, and provision and caring are dual requirements for our health and wellbeing, how have we made it to 2018 with an efficient economic system for one and a proverbial cash pinata for the other? Part of the answer is the rise in monogamy and the domestication and disenfranchisement of women. This shift in norms and the social contract coincided with the rise of agriculture and private land ownership. Compared to the 300,000 years of humankind, monogamy is a relatively new social innovation. Current research suggests that monogamy did not emerge as a normative behavior until around 12,000 years ago; the same time society transitioned from hunter-gatherer tribes to agrarian settlements. With this transition came growing obsession with the concept of property and women got folded into this narrative. With few exceptions, these emerging agrarian societies began to treat both women and land like assets; units of productivity traded among families rather than independent citizens. As financial and governing institutions began to crystallize, women were famously excluded from the conversation; they were denied the rights to representation, vote, and own property. Furthermore, as the delegation of the of society’s three fundamental activities – protection, provision, and caring – formalized, women’s biology predisposed them to become the primary participants in the caring economy. The benefits and injustices of this arrangement are hotly debated and not the focus of this article (many others have covered this debate and done it better). The focus of this article is the impact this arrangement has had on the evolution of our economic systems and financial institutions; what we’ve gotten right and what we’ve neglected to build in.

Photo by Rob Curran

Despite what the ideologues would have you believe, capitalism is not a natural order. It’s a social system that has evolved over thousands of years. From the first green revolution to the current data disruption, it has been enabled and renegotiated with every productivity evolution. Capitalism is a cultural system rooted in the need for individuals and investors to turn a profit. This system orchestrates a positive feedback loop where greater efficiency means more productivity (more stuff), lower prices, more demand, more money, and ultimately greater efficiency again. By design, capitalism rewards provision and motivates self-interest. It’s the best system we have for incentivizing increases in efficiency and productivity that make it possible to provide a growing variety of better quality products and services to global markets. This excess doesn’t always make it to where it’s needed, but it is produced and distributed at peak efficiency. This efficiency is a testament to the success of capitalism as a social system.

If all we required is provision to be healthy and happy, then capitalism is the only economic system we would ever need. For a growing majority, however, wellbeing no longer hinges on provision. Increasingly, our individual and collective happiness hinges on the opportunity we have to hope, find meaning, and forge durable connections; all outcomes that are tied to caring and self-transcendence. That we are drowning in an overabundance of products and options while fretting about the fraying edges of our social fabric, and struggling with loneliness, existential anxiety, and growing tribal animosity is a testament to the fact that uses for capitalism are limited to efficiency and provision and it is failing when it comes to incentivising and rewarding prosocial outcomes that are continually growing in demand.

Social liberals blame this unraveling on social media, and social conservatives point to the decline of family values, but everyone agrees that when both adults in a home “work”, time pressure and stress increase. But, there it is, in that word, “work.” We don’t see self-transcendence as a viable economic motivator. We don’t see care-work as work. We definitely don’t treat caregiving professions like good jobs and the reason for that is simple. The major formal institution that governs exchanges of the care economy’s value is marriage. In this system women and the value generated by the work they do, are traded as an asset between father and groom. But people aren’t assets, and being a care-worker should not economically shackle one person to another, nor should the economy that incentivizes this kind of work be confined by the profit motives of the provision economy and/or the political jockeying of political and religious leaders. Caring needs its own economy, one that can grow or shrink with demand; one that can take into consideration the idiosyncrasies of care-work that prohibit it from fitting comfortably into the dynamics of capitalism.

Traditionally, women have done most of the of the work in the care economy: caring for children; caring for the sick and aging, organizing communities, fortifying social safety nets and norms, and investing in education. In some cultures, if the productivity of one woman wasn’t enough you got another wife – in others, you bought a slave. Either way, the development of socioeconomic contracts that can efficiently broker the exchange of value within the care economy have been stunted by the fact that, for most of our history, care workers have been treated and traded like property. Even when institutions have stepped in, those institutions have been devoid of female leadership. Religious organizations like the Catholic Church were among the first to bring a formal structure beyond matrimony to the care economy; while nuns were the primary purveyors of care, women were barred from priesthood and therefore from the design process of one of the first civil society institutions. The same is true for government. At the time governments began establishing social programs women didn’t even have the vote, let alone equal representation in civil society and government. So, while the policies and norms were laid down for the system we have now, almost none of the primary actors informed or deliberated on the process. Man to man exclusion has led to demonstration, revolt, revolution, and war, and while this may have been disruptive and bloody, it has driven market economics of the provision economy to evolve in ways that the economics of the care economy have not.

The communist/capitalist debate is hack. Today, the majority of countries have mixed market economies – a mixture of command (government controlled) and market (privately held) structures. However, as we discussed earlier, the care economy is mostly a command economy with limited accountability to end consumers. There are other and better answers to the question of: “how do we incentivize self-transcendence and economically reward the work of caring?” (other than through taxes and tithing). Hope, generosity, empathy, idealism, love… These are all powerful, self-transcendent motivators. The fact that we haven’t designed an efficient system to tap into and empower them is proof of the limited amount of innovation and insight that comes from excluding more than half the population – the half tasked with self-transcendent work – from the design process; not proof that the motivation is not genuine or actionable. Self-transcendence is only second to self-interest because our founding fathers and famous philosophers wrote it to be so, while their wives were busy transcending themselves every day in caring for their families, friends, and community.

Give it a little time. Us ladies are just getting to the table.

GreenWar: Because the Earth is worth the fight!

Posted on June 25, 2018

Photos courtesy of GreenWar

Presentation by Selçuk Balamir, Mathieu Grosche and Shabnam Zeraati

GreenWar – Corporate Identity from GreenWar on Vimeo.

Wars have always caused major destruction and loss. But they have many positive externalities as well. We would not have tin cans if Napoleon had not urged his engineers to invent a way to conserve food. We would not have computers, if the Germans had not wanted to conquer the world. And even the internet was invented by the Pentagon.

So let’s face it: wars are here to stay. It is quite unrealistic to anticipate the end of wars in the 21st century. At the same time however, it is equally impossible to ignore the environmental challenges in front of us: if we expect to keep on fighting throughout this century, we cannot just sit and do nothing about the climate crisis, deforestation, disappearing species and so on.

Our sustainable military development company GreenWar is an innovative brand adopting a unique strategic position in the industry. We see ourselves at the crossroads of arms manufacturing and eco-design. We can help you make environmentally-friendly, energy-conserving, carbon-neutral, ecological conflicts.

But of course this does not mean the end of casualties. Quite the opposite actually! At GreenWar, we see well beyond the simple human criteria. We are in a global ecosystem where each and every being contributes to the cycle of life, where “human loss” equals “unleashing springtime”. Death should not be perceived as a loss, but as an essential part of natural cycles. Cradle-to-grave and all that.

For us “sustainability” means to satisfy the need of the present generation to wage wars, without compromising the need of future generations to wage theirs. At GreenWar, ecology is a war that never ends.

Photos courtesy of GreenWar

Here is our flagship product. Bullet for the Earth is made out of eco-friendly materials and it contains seeds that grow after use. Thus every shot gives a chance to make a tree grow. Would soldiers not be more motivated, if ammunition contained rare plant seeds? After all, they would contribute actively to the cycle of life. Enemies could become trees, a true benefit for all.

Many scenarios are possible; lost bullets, bodies left in battlefields and mass graves might all potentially give life to whole forests. An offshoot can also be sent to the soldier’s family along with his ID tag, making it possible to plant it in one’s garden, keeping the memory alive for generations. The seeds contained in the bullet are of different species. Hence a large variety of forests will take place after every war.

Next year we are launching our new product: seed bombs. Much more effective than individual bullets. Drop one and let a thousand flowers blossom!

Photos courtesy of GreenWar

We run a partnership programme with Monsanto, famous for their terminator seeds, to develop genetically modified seeds specially designed for particular conflict zones. India-Pakistan, Israel-Palestine, the Balkans… you name it. We make it.

We are also pleased to have worked with the Obama administration, which obviously did not impede the US war efforts, but nonetheless opted for more environmentally-friendly alternatives. I watched Mr. President himself give a little gesture towards Mother Nature: a fighter jet that runs on biofuels. Named the Green Hornet, it was Launched on Earth Day.

Fortunately, the US is not the only one seeking solutions! A few years ago, we were invited to this charming event at the European Parliament, the best place in the universe. It was such a timely initiative, considering that 2010 was the year of biodiversity.

However, I must admit that I was utterly disappointed when we were told that we should not expect fancy new weapons. Instead, the panelists spoke about awareness-raising campaigns reminding soldiers to switch off the light before leaving the room. If European soldiers are getting killed during convoys transporting bad, unsustainable diesel fuel to military bases, it is because of the unsustainable soldiers that forget to turn off the lights. Henceforth, the panelists agreed on the need to invest in renewables.

The world is a pretty dangerous place, but it doesn’t have to be this way anymore. We strongly believe that wars of the third millennium can be ecological, humanistic and poetical. Men should have no reluctance about going to war, they should have a good reason: ecology. Because the Earth is worth the fight!

Contributing Writers THE CITY - April 2018

Who you calling a bitch?

Posted on April 30, 2018

Female rappers on the sexual dynamics of street culture

Written by Dorothy Carlos

“Instinct leads me to another flow

Every time I hear a brother call a girl a bitch or a ho

Trying to make a sister feel low

You know all of that gots to go”

In Queen Latifah’s Grammy award-winning song “U.N.I.T.Y.” off her 1993 album Black Reign, she speaks out against street harassment which is pervasive in cities. In the song, she responds to being groped by a man passing her on the street by punching him in the eye. Catcalling, as well as other acts of sexual harassment, are often criticized by female rappers from the late 1980s to now. In fact, the gendered experience of the city – a field of sexuation one has to navigate – has been one of the major themes of female rap since its beginning.

Everyone from Monie Love to Roxanne Shante has explored the mistreatment of women in the streets through their music. Salt N Peppa discusses the issue on the track “Tramp” from Hot, Cool, and Vicious, warning fellow women that if they respond to a catcalling they might become a “victim of circumstance” and be subject to harassment.

The cross-street proposition of the catcall communicates little else but a crude libidinal drive. What could possibly prompt someone to pursue a romantic/sexual interest via catcalls? One couldn’t possibly expect a positive reaction from yelling at a stranger on the street.

Female rappers articulate the fundamental antagonisms of social life, both gendered and class-based. They serve as a counter to what is going on in male hip-hop culture: a hypersexualization of women in order to gain social capital. Because of the way young men from impoverished neighborhoods, especially young black men, are forced to navigate a power structure which will be largely against them, they grasp at power by means of the social domination of others via catcalls and additional forms of sexual harassment.

Personally, I don’t know any rap songs about a love that isn’t broken or perverted. Slum Village’s “Fall in Love” from 2000 is exemplary of the way love is navigated in hip-hop music and in poor neighborhoods:

“Don’t sell yourself to fall in love”. Although one could argue that love in our society, in general, has been replaced with sexuality, the vulnerability of love is not easily found in rap music, which is often an expression of the hardness and resilience of an individual who comes from a broken environment.

Photo by Robert Katzki

While there are factors that are unique to our historical epoch, such as the building and subsequent neglect of segregated housing by the US govt, this is a broader issue of capitalist modernity. In the Metropolis and Mental Life, Georg Simmel discusses the blase attitude of individuals living in cities at the beginning of the twentieth century. The manifestation of this is the reduction of social interactions to capitalistic exchanges between city dwellers. For example, in smaller communities you might have a personal relationship with someone who produces a product for you such as a baker; in a metropolis, a personal relationship is unlikely to develop because of the fact that consumers are unknown to the producers. Interactions become matter-of-fact and people of the metropolis develop a hardness towards others.

Simmel did not live long enough to see the crushing effects Robert Moses had on the socio-economic landscape of cities all across the United States, but perhaps his essay was a prophecy of what is to come for modern cities. In the 1930s the imperious approach of Moses prompted a radical reorganization of cities; concentrating poverty in housing projects as a means to abolish it from the city as a whole. Areas with housing projects, such as the South Bronx in New York City, which was directly impoverished by Moses’ construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway, are extremely underserved by the state and harassed by police.

In the aftermath of the famous Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954, Northern states, where the biggest cities were located, believed the ruling did not apply to them and made no attempt to desegregate. Even though de facto segregation was just as prevalent in the North as it was in the South, there were no laws enforcing it. There were schools for black neighborhoods and schools for white neighborhoods and this was a just product of the city structure, making it easy to perpetuate the lack of support for poor neighborhoods.

In an environment where individuals with little social and economic power are constantly in survival mode trying to make ends meet, love is compromised, and sex gladly takes its place. This is obvious if one pays attention to the explicitly sexual lyrics that make up a lot of contemporary hip-hop.

Many of the more contemporary female rappers sexualize themselves as part of their rap persona—reinforcing this idea of sex as a means to gain social capital; consider rappers such as Trina, Nicki Minaj, and Cardi B, to name a few.

When asked about how to gain self-confidence, Cardi B told Hypebae: “If you feel you’re ugly just walk around the projects or something and see how many niggas holla at you.” Cardi B herself is from the Bronx and her community most likely began to experience the effects of the construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway decades ago. Although parts of the female rap community have accepted the culture of sexual harassment, I believe this to be almost inevitable if you come from an impoverished, urban environment.

Within the sexual maze of the metropolis, women are caught somewhere in the middle as men try to navigate their sexuality. Because women are not as bound to heteronormative standards, they aren’t controlled by the system in the same way as men, largely due to the fact that women as a whole are often oppressed for being sexual regardless of whether or not they operate within heterosexuality. Although artists like Trina, Nicki Minaj, and Cardi B have succeeded in gaining power via their sexuality, they compromise their own identity by hyper-sexualizing themselves in order to do so. Ultimately the women caught in situations of urban poverty are oppressed by the state in the same way men are. However, when women try to grasp at power via sexual domination they are likely to face oppression from their own communities, as well.

Contributing Writers THE CITY - April 2018

The Reality of Mixed-Income Housing

Posted on April 29, 2018

Written by Rosalie Lucretia Ekstein, M.Sc.

Over time the development and growth of cities has been largely organic in nature. People are drawn to other people and resources. Especially when there are lots of pull-factors, this can lead to large concentrations of people in one place. That this might result in problems is no new insight. In Medieval times, for instance, the elite often perceived the poor as a risk simply because they lived nearby. On one hand this was sometimes ideological and political, but on the other hand, there was an objective threat as well, due to their poor hygiene. Living together in impoverished conditions, allowed diseases to spread easily amongst the poor, with many of these diseases being life-threatening, it’s not hard to imagine that the elite was worried about staying safe. Further, the concentration of different social groups on tight space led the elites to worry about their valuables and upcoming criminal behavior amongst the poor. Early forms of urban planning and healthcare hence focussed on combating disease and crime to protect the elites. Later, with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution factories and housing for workers had to be built. This posed new challenges for urban planning as novel threats arose.

There are multiple ways to deal with a growing population and both the real as perceived problems that come with it. Urban planning is still very much alive. Gentrification, mixed-use development, and mixed-income housing are important concerns faced by urban planners today. Just like in the Middle Ages, one can question which individuals benefit from which forms of urban planning, as well as the motivations behind the plans that currently change the face of our cities worldwide. Mixed-income housing, the focus of this article, refers to the process of building an area with houses in different price ranges in order to attract people from different socioeconomic groups. Policy makers and public administrators seem to only focus on the sunny side of mixed-income housing. Let’s have a look at the motivations and the social reality of it.

One motivation for mixed-income housing seems to be countering segregation. Segregation, on the other hand, refers to the process of people with a similar demographic and socio-economic background grouping or being grouped together, either willingly or forced. In the United States, for instance, this has happened to the African American community, who was forced into segregation through institutional racism. Also in the Netherlands racist implications of certain housing regulations are slowly coming to the surface. Another factor that contributed to segregation is the “white flight” a term that originated in the U.S. during the 1950’s and 60’s and refers to whites migrating from the city center to the suburbs. The definition has evolved and can adopt different connotations depending on the context, but it always refers to a change of population from whites to people of color. These trends have led to the emergence of relatively homogenous neighborhoods in bigger cities around the globe.

Evidence shows that economically deprived segregated neighborhoods had higher numbers of crime, noise, and litter. Often only neighborhoods with people from low socioeconomic status are considered problematic, according to many policymakers, politicians, and people from high or even middle socioeconomic status. It is true that in those areas one will find a different situation than in richer areas. One of the problems is crime. Yet, the crime rates might be heavily influenced by structural forces, such as institutional racism, and hence shouldn’t be seen as an actual reflection of what is going on. For example, the rate of incarceration for African Americans is far higher than for any other ethnic group in the U.S. The reason for this is not an objective feature of African Americans that leads them to be more prone to commit crimes, but an implicit racial bias of American institutions, specifically amongst the police forces. Another problem is the neighborhood effect and the resulting lack of certain forms of social capital. The neighborhood effect is a concept introduced by William Julius Wilson in 1987, which supposes an effect on individuals as a result of the neighborhood they live in. There is quite some research that shows us that where you live, influences your chances in life, whether it be health, voting behavior, or chances for upward mobility, and plenty of research that criticizes this idea as well. Social capital, a concept introduced by sociologist David Émile Durkheim in the 19th century, can improve an individual’s position within a network, or neighborhood. Just like economic capital, can influence an individual’s well being, social capital similarly affects one’s chances in life through social ties, networks, knowledge etc.

Photo by Vladimir Chuchadeev

A quick anecdotal comparison might better illustrate this point: When I was at university, there was a young man in my class whose family moved here from Afghanistan. Nobody in his family spoke Dutch and there were few social ties to local people with resources. He made it to university, but struggled with financing, language, skills and even health. For me, my parents financed my entire education. When I struggled with math, they knew someone who could tutor me. When I was sick, my parents knew a specialist, while this young man, on the other hand, had great troubles simply being understood by his physician and was forced to miss classes due to health problems that in my case, would have been resolved the next day. Up to this day, I think he was smarter than me, but he didn’t have the chances that I was granted. He couldn’t pass the first year, while I received my master’s degree. After all, living a segregated life can severely influence the chances of an individual in a negative way. Of course, this hasn’t gone unnoticed by social scientists, politicians, and policymakers who try to intervene.

But there’s another side to this story, which focuses more on the experience of people from outside. It has been suggested that individuals who haven’t lived in segregated areas, lack the first-hand experience and also might be biased in their interpretation of the existing problems. People often interpret the world from a value specific standpoint that they take as being universal. However, if one would take a look at other cultures, times, or meta-ethics, the conclusion would be that there is no such thing as a universal set of norms and values. Instead, it seems to be a pragmatic notion that enables a person to judge others. What I find ‘unacceptable’ could be totally fine for you, and I have no right to tell you that what you’re doing is ‘antisocial’. If you are in a rich area, it will tend to look tidy and be quiet. If you go you a less privileged area, you are likely to hear music, see more damaged houses or vehicles, and people sitting outside, talking louder than what you might be used to, and perhaps even drinking. It never bothered me that much. However, it does bother other people a lot. Dutch people have all kinds of nasty words for inhabitants of areas like that, including some racial slurs. In the U.S. as well, for example Harlem and The Bronx, have had bad reputations not only due to objective criteria, but due to many subjective ones as well. The idea is that ‘deprived’ neighborhoods have more ‘problems’. I could write a whole paper on what these perceived problems are and why they might not be problems, what matters is that in the minds of policymakers and politicians these neighborhoods are problematic. The fact that there are complex social forces at work here which play a large part in this, is easily overseen or simply unknown (even though within social science, there is so much research regarding these topics!). Also, in these deprived neighborhoods, a term which in itself speaks volumes about this bias, social control, social ties, and cohesion still exist, but in different forms. Research usually doesn’t focus on things like the ability to get non-European hair done, or how residents might share food with each other, or how peers support each other emotionally. So the question here is determining which factors play a role in the life quality of inhabitants and which factors might be biased towards a subjective and value specific norm. The idea that these neighborhoods are just problematic and have nothing valuable in themselves and therefore should be torn down to make room for new houses and new people, might be crude. There’s a risk of tearing down social cohesion and ties, which still matter a lot for people and could even contribute to their welfare, well being, safety, and chances in life.

Mixed-income housing is an idea based on the exchange of social capital between groups, and the possibility for those problematically called lower socioeconomic groups to elevate themselves. This is the recipe: you take one piece of land, you put in some cheap flats, some nicer apartments, and some bigger houses. The first would be for rent and the latter for buying. What happens is that the people that used to live there, are being forced out of their homes. Only a small portion of them can move back, due to a significantly smaller amount of cheap housing. So instead of being surrounded by your peers, you will be confronted with different people for once. Then, of course, you will start to mingle with them. Friendships are formed and people can learn from each other (i.e. the rich will elevate the poor, by increasing their social capital). Sounds neat huh? Guess what: it hasn’t happened so far. It seems to be mere wishful thinking because the sad reality is that even if people live on the same street, they are still segregated. In the Netherlands, sociological research shows that the average income of the neighborhood does go up after establishing mixed-income housing, however, those individuals who came from a low socioeconomic status are not being elevated into said status.

Even though residents’ chances for a better income does not rise, many politicians and policymakers still believe in the supposed neighborhood effect. Between 2008 and 2012, the Netherlands invested hundreds of millions in neighborhoods which were deemed ‘highly problematic’. There was a top 40 of problematic areas, called the ‘Vogelaarwijken’. I have lived in number two on that list during my own sociology study, after growing up in quite a rich area, and I have never been in a warmer, friendlier, and yes even safer area. The people knew each other and took care of each other. Then the whole block got restructured and the prices doubled. The social fabric of that place has been torn down. In the U.S. as well, there is plenty of research pointing into this direction. For example, the work of Ellickson (2009) shows that mixed-income projects in Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco, did not bring about the desired outcome. He concludes that “the benefits of social integration are seldom as great as advocates of mixed-income projects suppose. The high costs of producing these project thus can rarely be justified on this basis”. Sociological research has not only shown that the neighborhood effect does not seem to exist, but that people with low socioeconomic status might actually be worse off after moving into areas characterized by mixed-income housing. Instead of exchanging social capital, people in the social housing are confronted with the social and economic distance they have from their neighbors.

It seems that there are many flaws in the assumptions underlying mixed-income housing policies and the results are by no means successful enough to justify the fact that these policies are still being used worldwide. The rise and continuation of these policies can be explained by the political influence of those who gain from supplying these developments, and not by positive results for the population inhabiting the area. Too often it seems to be the case that the underlying assumptions of policy and planning are ideological instead of factual, and only seem to represent the view and needs of the already privileged.

Contributing Writers POLITICAL UTOPIAS - March 2018

PLANNING EVOLUTION? Why we cannot blueprint our progression

Posted on March 29, 2018

Written by Brennan Reichmann

On April 12th, 1961, a human being broke through the atmosphere of planet Earth. That same year a few months prior, following an aviation accident, two nuclear bombs fell on North Carolina, only two loose wires spared the accidental target from utter destruction.

If one takes the time to fully examine and weigh human history, one may notice a correlating trend between human scientific progress, and the exponential growth of potential human devastation. The progress and evolution in medicine, engineering, and the natural sciences has gone hand-in-hand with advancements in weapons technology. We live in a constant state of development. Yet, this also entails the exponential research and expansion of nuclear power as means of harnessed and weaponized energy. Albert Einstein realized the dangers of these developments, “As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable. That is not an attempt to say when it will come, but only that it is sure to come. That was true before the atomic bomb was made. What has changed is the destructiveness of war.”

Humans have been capable of devastation long before we were capable of much else. This was once instinctual and reactive, until we saw the development of the human frontal lobe, from whereupon language and society began to mold. From here, we witnessed violence evolve into a new state, a state of intent. Harm was now more than survival. When we created hammers, we simultaneously and inadvertently created a weapon more ergonomic and capable of damage than simply having a large rock in your hand. We stimulated progress in either direction at once, and this has remained the case for most human advancement up to now. Not necessarily always so acutely or directly, but that factor of coinciding progress remains.

At our core, we are all individually striving for forward progression. That definition is, of course, subjective, but it can be agreed that no human acts with regressive intent, even if the action is consciously calculated to be, say, two steps back. Humanity has never produced results of any kind, without there being a forward driving intention. Progress is hardwired into our fundamental human instincts. Our survival instinct fuels our need to creatively progress. This need for progression is responsible for our evolved state of violence, but also for our evolved state of learning. Human minds are evolving every day, striving to adapt to new and ever-present circumstances. Hence, derived from the very same source, our capabilities grow in both directions – towards progression and destruction.

Photo by Mickey O’Neil

Humanity is racing against itself. As we push ourselves deeper into the space frontier, the technological transcendence of the human body and mind is within our near future, out of the sheer necessity to continue our progression in the solar system. We integrate ourselves into technology more and more every day, propelling human evolution down a twisted, capitalistic, classist, and yet scientifically progressive path of technological advancement. As we dive deeper into virtual reality and artificial intelligence, we get closer to humanity’s full emancipation from biological restraints. A research and development team from Japan recently formulated the algorithm necessary to eventually transfer human consciousness onto a hard drive. This should allow for our consciousness to be ‘turned on and off’ as easily as a computer. The only component they are still lacking is the means of implementing the algorithm. Once completed though, humans would no longer require a biological body. Worries about diseases, famine, and death would become irrelevant, while things like deep space exploration would come within reach. This example illustrates human progress towards not only the preservation of our species, but its advancement and direct evolution.

Simultaneous to this rapid technological development is the development of treacherous weaponry designed for mass destruction. Within the past century, we have gone from harnessing automatic fire via gunpowder, to mass-destruction through radioactive and cyber warfare. There is enough active and armed weaponry on this planet lying in wait to entirely obliterate all human matter in the solar system. Our ability and knowledge on nuclear fission teeter on the same balance as our ability to further our knowledge on how to install consciousness onto a hard drive. Therefore, it is impossible to further expand our knowledge of one, while restraining progress for the other. Our future lies in the hands of progress, both in terms of creation and destruction.

Humanity will see its next stage of life in the near future. Every day, we strive towards certain aspirations and certain dreadful possibilities, and this self-prescribed balance will exact our salvation or downfall. As humanity sees itself progress deeper into a state of earthly chaos, marked by disease, resource shortage, and overpopulation, we will see a coinciding trend of rapid scientific development. Alongside, we will experience growing tensions due to increased possibilities and means for complete destruction. Where and how we progress is entirely up to us. Living in a universe of unlimited potentials and uncertainties, this applied balance seems almost instinctual for humans – to create order and structure, to carve a beaten road through the universe of unknowns.

Photo by Tim Mossholder

This attempt to control, to consciously decide on human evolution, is what has placed us in this teetering balance between progress and destruction. This attempt, though, is a primitive and redundant effort, stemming from our natural instincts to preserve and survive. Outdated and useless, a call to direct action implies, that there is need for decision in order for natural progress to occur. If humanity were to remove the restrictions on progress, we might see our progress freed what we deem necessary for the survival of our species. This is mere speculation, but it can be recognized that our greatest feats of innovation and progress have occurred by ‘accident’. Flight, telecommunication, propulsion – all of these achieved by humans, pursuing goals outside the boundaries of what was deemed necessary for our survival. It is a fallacy to assume that we can decide on that which we don’t know, simply because we have the ability to decide. Rather, it is left to our ability to pursue uncertainty that in turn fuels our progress. In layman’s terms: you cannot know what you don’t know, but you can know that you don’t know. Acknowledging this is the first step towards progress.

To take a decisive position on the path of the unfolding universe would be to limit yourself. There is no way to solidify a response to the unknown natural process that will determine our future, in which we will either evolve or vanish. Any attempt to do so would suggest that one thinks themself wise enough to direct this process. We are not here to make it happen. We are here to see what happens. That alone will guide us down a path of creative and destructive progress.

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