This page provides a glossary of terms beginning ‘S’. Each term usually provides links to other relevant materials on the FRAW site, and/or to Wikipedia and other on-line sources.
‘Simple living’, sometimes more descriptively described as ‘voluntary simplicity’, is an attempt by an individual to live a less consuming, or materially and technologically simple lifestyle to achieve a desired ecological or spiritual goal. Minimally this might involve ethical consumption, escalating through various lifestyle choices towards a more serious attempt to achieve a wholly low impact lifestyle. Simple living doesn’t necessarily avoid aspects of conspicuous consumption since the lifestyle itself can hold a certain status. The objective measure of a simple lifestyle is the ecological footprint which can be achieved, although often this is not used as a measure of progress since simple lifestyles are often idealistic rather than practical projects. However, while the individual remains within/dependent upon the everyday technological and economic system their efforts to reduce their impact will always be obstructed by the restrictions of that mainstream lifestyle – which is why significantly reducing lifestyle footprints requires ‘Rewilding the People’ to some extent.
Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, or of their forced/involuntary labour. Another term is ‘bondage’ as some forms of slavery involve a person giving up their rights via a legal ‘indenture’ or ‘bond’ (often based around some form of economic debt which is to be paid). Though the most common form of slavery depicted in the media is ‘chattel slavery’ (the ownership of a person as private property by another), a more general term, ‘indentured servitude’, would cover not only those in debt-bondage but also many prisoners who are forced to work-off a ‘debt to society’. In the broadest sense it is possible to talk of ‘wage slavery’, where the mass of people dispossed of land and other forms of subsistence are forced to work for a wage or become destitute. In the modern era, enabled by new technologies and the globalized economy, ‘modern slavery’ involves people trafficked across national borders where they have no rights, then exploited – often in circumstances where their already precarious legal status makes them prey to forms of unlawful work that prevent them seeking sanctuary in the country they are trafficked to. Fundamentally, the basis for slavery is the ability of those in command of concentrated economic power to exert that power over overs to compel their labour: In the ancient world, that compulsion was in form of direct violence; in the modern world, that force in increasingly based around economic or legal structures with compel people to work.
Social contract theory arose in the Eighteenth Century, created by Enlightenment philosophers who sought to define the basis for the modern political state and so give it some measure of legitimacy. The theory presumes that all individuals born in a state accept that they owe the state their loyalty, in return for the state guaranteeing their safety and security. Objectively, however, it can be argued that the social contract theories proposed three centuries enshrined the economic and social inequalities of each state in their drafting, legitimating their existence to this day. For this reason the idea of a vague social contract is more popular on the Political Right since it appeals to tradition without defining entitlements; whereas the dialogue from the Centre towards the Left now focuses more on economic and social ‘human rights’, which are deplored by those on the Right precisely because the state is required to make specific, and legally enforceable social provisions to honour them.
It’s impossible to summarize such a broad political philosophy in a paragraph, but… Socialism is a diverse political ideology across the Left of politics which stresses the importance of social well-being over and above private interests – traditionally encompassed by the phrase, ‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their need’. Socialism proposes a strong representative ruling state which administers public assets for the nation. While there are blurred boundaries between the fringes of the Socialist spectrum – such as Marxism, Anarchism, and the ‘more Socialist’ versions of social democracy – in general Socialism seeks to provide a social safety-net for all, eliminating the abject poverty and extreme inequality which typified the early Nineteenth Century Liberal economic systems under which Socialist philosophy arose.
A belief that a society must be governed by a strong central state. This may be a democratic state or a monarchy/class oligarchy. Anarchism is opposed to central rule. Where a state is governed by class or corporate minorities, Statism is an essential tool to allow that minority to control society through its three principal components: The legal system; the political system; and the police and military. For without a political system to create the legal structures of private interests and property rights, courts to enforce those rights over society, and a security organization to enforce those decisions upon the mass of the population, the modern materialist society where a small fraction own most of the wealth could not exist – and hence why anarchists describe themselves as being ‘anti-state’.
Just as traditional print media have been used to incite violence across society through the narratives they create, new digital media – due to their ability to microtarget an audience using algorithms – have been implicated in growing levels of political, religious, and racial violence through the radicalization of sections of the population. The rhetoric of media figures which (usually fallaciously) associate social issues with the existence of certain groups in society creates a social or moral panic; and though media figures may not directly call for violence, those social fears can be acted-out by those most radicalized as violent acts towards that group. Often those pushing hostile narratives will deny or disavow any connection to this violence, but their ‘othering’ of certain groups in support of that narrative begs the question as to how they could not have know that violence might have been a likely outcome.
Most people understand what advertizing is, and that ‘marketing’ is a more targeted form of that. In contrast, ‘public relations’, as originated by people such as Edward Bernays since the 1950s, seeks to change people’s actual perceptions of the world rather than just their purchasing choices – and reflects the nature of how most political communication works today. In contrast, ‘strategic communications’ actively targets very small groups or individuals – in a process called ‘microtargeting’ – using a wide variety of data sources to understand their psychological pressure points. Unlike classic advertizing this isn’t just to convey positive message, but increasingly it’s about conveying negative message to opposing political or economic viewpoints in order to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt (a.k.a ‘FUD’) – thereby negating the actions of the opposition.
The digital economy does not provide ‘free’ services to the public, and the public are not the ‘customer’. In the digital economy the public are the ‘product’, and the ‘customers’ are the governments and corporations who pay digital platforms for access to data, for placing advertizing or messaging in front of certain groups, or for access to the on-line markets where they can sell goods to the public. Increasingly this means that the service which the public receives is defined by their role as the product, with increasing levels of surveillance and on-line manipulation of the content they see, rather than a focus on the quality of the service they receive. As government are increasingly moving public services onto these same platforms, in effect the platforms become the prime intermediary across society, extracting an economic levy for all activity which takes place – hence why this system is increasingly called, ‘Neofeudalism’.
An idea, especially in post-modernist philosophy, that views the components of society as symbols which people implicitly understand as separate from their material or use value. Symbolism is a tool for breaking down politics and the mass media into concepts, assumptions, or beliefs, which are used to control the perceptions of the public – especially through mechanisms such as marketing and public relations. Many forms of symbolic value, enforced through cultural or religious norms, can be deeply damaging to the individuals within society – from misogyny and gender prejudice, to nationalism and racism – and are often used as the justification for moral, and even legal discrimination by the state.