It's not a paradox at all, if you are a political radical, though, and have arrived at various subversive conclusions about civilization, conclusions that are hardly a big stretch given these basic facts I have outlined. Conclusions like: maybe our civilization is not really designed to benefit the majority? That kind of seems to be true on its face, being the only hypothesis that resolves the supposedly uncanny "paradox". And from there, it seems almost an inevitable conclusion that, if there are those who are benefiting, then they have quite a vested interest in such a design, even though it's very harmful to the majority.
However, the majority of people are sensible creatures, and under normal circumstances do whatever they can to muddle along, to adjust to the "slings and arrows" as they come, and find a way to survive. That's almost axiomatic. Because when that axiom ceases to hold, then circumstances are no longer "normal", and that is when a revolution happens. When an absolute majority (or even a large enough plurality) no longer find any way to adjust themselves to the dominant social order, that social order probably cannot continue much longer without a major transformation, it should go without saying.
All of which makes radicals a very lonely bunch. A radical is always "jumping the gun", and wants to hasten revolutionary social transformations (that he or she reckons are probably inevitable anyways, but can turn out a lot better or worse, depending on how they go and who influences them the most effectively). A radical always wants to shout, "Hello, people, this is NOT really working!" And at some level, all the sensible, "normal" folks already know that anyways, the radical is not revealing any great insights at all. Tell me something I do not already know! But, more importantly, tell me something that is actually useful in the here-and-now.
But unfortunately, the radical does not have anything much that is immediately actionable. He or she can talk til they're blue in the face about direct democracy, proportional representation, or even something as modest as public campaign financing. However, the ordinary mortal can hardly act on such noble ideas in any substantial way from inside their cubicles at work. A normal person wants to get by, and wants something to do that's readily actionable and has some tangible returns on their investment of time and trouble, a perfectly sensible expectation for ordinary mortals to have. But a radical has no such practical options to offer them. So the ordinary mortal mostly rolls their eyes at the radical's antics. "There goes Mr. Marxist again, railing about the ruling class!" the sensible person thinks, and then mostly tunes out anything the radical still has to say about the matter.
(I do not want to muddy the waters at the moment by addressing the fact that those sensible creatures who constitute the majority of humanity have a multitude of coping mechanisms, including all manner of "glass-half-full" mental tricks, with which to discount the bad and emphasize the good in any situation, even to the extreme of engaging in denial and fantasy by doing so. Yes, that is also part of the picture, how could it not be? But it's just a tangent to the points I am trying to make at the moment. Besides, there are already plenty of people brighter than myself who focus on that particular problem anyways.)
Consequently, most radicals discover pretty quickly that focusing on issues that affect people's immediate self-interests and survival are a lot more productive than focusing on more abstract concerns. This often poses a challenge, though, when we are facing problems like environmental threats that do not threaten to immediately leave dead bodies in the streets. No wonder all efforts to forestall catastrophic global warming have so far mostly come to naught. Also, effective organizing always means focusing on those most directly affected by a problem. But also, unfortunately, that usually means organizing people who are the most disadvantaged and have the fewest resources at their disposal. But an effective organizer usually does not sink their efforts too much into the majority of "comfortably well off" or even "fair to middling" folks, but in those minorities (whether socioeconomic, ethnic, or otherwise) who are most oppressed, and consequently have the most to gain, and the least to lose, from fighting for social change.
So far, I am only talking about leftist radicals, though. If you are a rightwing radical, you may get more traction, thanks to some inherent advantages you enjoy. To begin with, you are not challenging a system of social and political relationships. More likely, you are a practical political entrepreneur, whose "market demographic" resides in the majority, not a distinct minority, and you are only asking your audience to focus their attention on some relatively powerless minority, lower on the social ladder, who are getting an even worse break from "the system" than those in your audience -- your audience being the same majority who mostly, so far, are managing to muddle through, although maybe their "muddling" is getting increasingly precarious. But by focusing their wrath on the "welfare cheats", or affirmative action, or some such thing, you can get them riled up about a bogieman/scapegoat who is not "one of them", is in fact "beneath them", and yet, is supposedly drawing away resources that they could be getting.
Again, since "sensible" people always just want to muddle through, are naturally afraid of radical change, and want quick results, it makes all the sense in the world that "punching down" will hold a lot more attraction for them than joining an uncertain movement to challenge the basic structure of social relationships that dominate our society (and, especially, those who sit at the apex of those relationships, those much richer and more powerful than themselves).
The recent article in Jacobin, "The Minsky Millennium" (issue no. 31, Nov 2018), alluded to this problem, when it pointed out that radicals are always awaiting the "moment of truth" when society's internal contradictions become exposed in a way that even the (possibly wobbly but comfortable) majority can no longer pretend to ignore. The trouble is, the article points out, when such moments finally arrive, there is no reason to expect that a radical social transformation in favor of the majority will necessarily ensue, because the quickest and surest solution to the crisis will probably entail attempting to shore up the same original system of social relations in the first place, that keeps the majority on a leash to a tiny but powerful minority. Unless those radicals have already prepared the ground for an alternative model that the majority now believe has some hope of "working" (ie, restoring some tolerable form of stability), they are highly unlikely to embrace it, especially since the proposals that radicals advance usually are among the least likely to "restore business confidence" and any resumption of the (wobbly but possibly tolerable) status quo ante.
Given all this, it's a wonder we are not already living under a much worse sort of fascism than we've reached so far. We should be thankful that, despite it all, the better disposed among us remain a majority, and the audience for the most vicious political entrepreneurs remains relatively small and marginalized.
I don't have any "solutions" to offer to these conundrums at this time, except to suggest, maybe leftists should be a little less angry and little more compassionate -- and grateful -- that despite having our work cut out for ourselves, and the deck heavily stacked against us by the basic dynamics of things, people are nonetheless a lot more kindly disposed towards our way of thinking than we ever had any right to expect! And surely it's not primarily thanks to any merits on our part, brilliant dialectics, or great people skills we can boast of...
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