We are putting forward just one value. Honesty. We strive to be honest about what we do. This means acknowledging our privileges, considering the impact of our decision, and owning the results.
Can an institution within our capitalist society survive if it is honest? Honesty eases the cognitive dissonance and denial that individuals within that institution face. Honesty may reveal weaknesses to the competition. It may also make it more difficult to make decisions internally that make our institution less competitive.
However, capitalist institutions today spend a lot of their resources on PR. The goal of PR is to twist or manufacture the truth, in order to achieve certain objectives. What if PR resources went elsewhere?
Consider Facebook’s values:
- Be Bold
- Focus on Impact
- Move Fast
- Be Open
- Build Social Value
These are PR. What would happen if instead facebook publicly acknowledged that its goal was to be profitable, and the best way to do that was to maximize its market share without destroying the planet (their market) in the process? It is not inconceivable that this kind of honesty would provide a competitive advantage. The public is fed up with the cognitive dissonance accelerated and delivered via the 21st century attention economy. Anger toward biased media outlets are one of very frustrations shared by the American right and the American left. Trump won on a platform of open racism, misogyny, and hatred directed at the liberal elite… as opposed to the deep cognitive dissonance offered by Clinton.
In the past, I’ve written about the music industry, and the desire to empower progressive musicians. Can musicians afford to be more honest than other businesses? Musicians sometimes use authenticity (or the perception of authenticity) to market themselves. Musicians are frequently criticized for “selling out.” Musicians are also frequently criticized peddling unfavorable messages. Think of Kanye West, Meghan Trainor, and countless others.
Many years of working with and for musicians has taught me that being a master musician with a powerful message is not enough sustain a career in music. In order to sustain a career in music, musicians also have to be skilled businesspeople — or collaborate with skilled business people. Consider these honest statements from music or music industry professionals that we usually don’t hear:
- I want my voice to be heard by millions of people. I want to be famous.
- I am part of the entertainment industry. My paycheck is dependent on my ability to entertain, and keep entertaining.
- I am marketer of feelings.
- Musical clickbait is a path to economic success. Clickbait is optimized for clicks, not for honesty.
- Art will not save the planet.
So can we exist in a capitalist society as an honest institution for musicians? Maybe. Note that honesty does not imply full disclosure, or even “the full truth.” We can fulfill our personal value of honesty, while simultaneously not disclosing the motivations for every choice. This is a value itself. The honest way to describe it:
- I will not engage with everyone who criticizes me.
- I will not justify every choice that I make.
- Some of my choices are not just.
- Some of my actions are not consistent.
These sound pretty conservative. I do not know if this is a good position to take. I also do not know if this stance would be accepted by the public. However, I believe that most institutions in capitalist society roughly follow this logic internally, and spend a lot of energy concealing the internal reality from the public.
At the beginning I asked:
Can an institution within our capitalist society survive if it is honest?
My hypothesis is “Probably, although honesty may cause unsustainable public backlash.” Perhaps a deeper and more interesting question is:
Can an institution within our capitalist society survive it is honest and just? That is less clear.
You actually put forth two values: honesty and justice. Honesty, especially the way you flesh it out (e.g., “some of my choices are not just”, “some of my actions are not consistent”), strikes me as powerfully liberating from the tyranny of image, even the image of being a “good person”. That kind of honesty is essential if we are to have any hope of actually acting in any way that isn’t just engineering how other people think about us. To have any hope of actually doing justice. I also hear in the way you word your examples a value of humility: you’re basically saying “I’m going to make mistakes”, “I can’t do everything”. That also might help keep you from the existential crisis of thinking that everyone is “only” in it for the PR!
I imagine you might propose something like a concert of honesty. The musicians would lead in speaking (or singing?) their reasons for doing what they’re doing, both the “I love what I’m doing” and “I gotta put food on the table” (and perhaps “why don’t you people pay us!?”)… but somehow you’d get everyone to reveal their own true rationales, even for being there. If done right, this could be healing. But it would probably be a one-time thing: we do that, but then go back to our same lives. What would it take to actually change both our selves and our systems?