i shared some of Neville Alexander’s thoughts with regards to capitalism in my first post on his book, ‘Thoughts on the New South Africa’ which you can read over here. This is a second passage which stood out for me.

In it, Neville Alexander speaks against the notion of fighting for top spot and creates a vision of the creatives and visionaries of the country helping create a road map to lead us to where we really should be heading. Just rereading this passage as i typed it out for this blog i was thoroughly excited again by the possibility – Neville feels completely on the same page as me especially in the second paragraph below which talks about removing the competition to be ‘on top’ and replacing it with the competition of creating the best world possible for everyone. This is inspiring stuff.

From the chapter: ‘Enough is as good as a feast.’

Another way is possible

Let us try, however briefly, to sketch some of the consequences of applying the principle of sufficiency as the major moral force shaping post-apartheid South Africa. To begin with, in the domain of education, where the state and other public institutions can legitimately intervene, the content, orientation and delivery of the curriculum at all levels of the system would be changed fundamentally. The psychological pedagogical, ideological and emotional revolution implied by an approach that does not glorify individual or group domination, while allowing for the full development and flowering of the potential inherent in each and every human being, can be imagined and extrapolated very easily. Individual brilliance expressed and deployed on behalf of and for the benefit of society would continue to be one of the drivers of all social progress, including economic development.

In the domain of the media and especially advertising, we would be rid of the brutalities and socially disreputable messages which subject us to the domination of capital. Adverts like the one that is currently popular in South Africa [2012] which claims that everyone wants to be a ‘winner’ and in the ‘first team’, rather than a ‘deputy chairperson’ or a ‘benchwarmer’ – or words to that effect – would become as absurd and counter-productive as they are from the point of view of a more humane social order. The glorification of the ostentatious consumption and high life of so-called celebrities in politics, culture, sport and even religion would cease to be the supposedly inspiring models of ‘the good life’, which they are marketted as being in programmes such as Top Billing and others. All domains of life would be affected in the most profound and possible way.

What a drab and boring vision, I hear the privileged strata exclaiming. On the absolute contrary, I should like to respond to my imagined detractors. Artists, designers, architects, urban planners, in fact all creative individuals and agencies, would be faced with the challenge of finding optimal ways of expressing and realising the entire range of possibilities in every domain of life. This would be the terrain of competition, not for individual glory and unequal reward, but precisely for the common good, the old fashioned commonwealth!

There is more, but go and buy the book and read it for yourself. Neville Alexander seems to be someone who has the community at heart over the individual, something South Africa would do well to grasp as a nation. This may not be a popular view among those already privileged, but for those who have little or nothing, the idea that everyone starts fighting for them i imagine would be a positive one…

[If you missed part I of this book review, click here]