How Did We Get Into This Mess by George Monbiot
If you decide to read a book entitled How Did We Get Into This Mess, it’s reasonable to assume that you think there is a mess. This immediately takes you away from the superficial consensus that everything is going ok.
Think about this for a moment. Advertising, the aspect of media that most actively attempts to grab our attention, does so from a posture of comfort. Well-groomed middle-aged couples contemplate retirement plans, walk-in baths and equity release in sunlit taupe living rooms as birds sing in the spacious, well-managed garden.
Young people with no visible student debts congregate in large groups of equal attractiveness on endless, sandy beaches as the sun is forever setting.
Impossibly beautiful couples with impeccably behaved pre-teen children set off for road trips in spotless cars on curiously uncluttered roads.
It’s a world propped up by Instagram influencers, lifestyle magazines, corporate bullshit, infomercials, product placement, newspapers run to billionaire agendas and hectoring “you’ve never had it so good” flag-waving conservative politicians. Problems, if they exist, are caused by the poor, lefties and foreigners.
We should hardly be surprised that advertisers bend the truth a little. After all, their job is to convince us that we need a product we probably hadn’t thought about before. What is unforgivable is the revolving door that only slightly separates government from business, PR and think-tanks. The same people move from newspapers to politics to television, all telling us that everything is OK and all we need to do is keep spending.
This is all a delusion.
People do live longer, there are fewer people in absolute poverty and we do have access to more knowledge than ever before. I wouldn’t want to dismiss this progress. But at the same time, millions of people have been left behind, excluded from the social, material, financial and medical benefits that others enjoy. There is also the small matter of an ecological crisis that threatens to unravel all this progress and civilisation itself.
These are the matters that George Monbiot addresses in this book. He believes we are in a mess and then carefully explains why. The scope of his enquiry is enormous. He examines drug policy, neoliberalism, mental health, freedom, public spaces, education policy, agriculture, work culture, foreign policy, family history, sexual health and trophic cascades. He is always clear-sighted, impeccably researched and elegantly argued.
He asks, why we are so willing to put aside our hard-won freedoms in favour of an easy life? Why we are willing to accept corporate intrusion into our lives and public spaces? Why does education not prepare children to have full and exciting lives? Why are we so supine in the face of the escalating ecological crisis? Why does drugs policy make no sense at all?
Monbiot is a genuinely radical thinker, notable for his willingness to follow the evidence rather than the dogma. If you think something is wrong in the world and would like a guide to help you through the muddle, Monbiot is the writer for you. How Did We Get Into This Mess is an excellent introduction to his thinking.
