Extended Abstract
In the West, a lot of money is invested in that ordinary people should gain knowledge about financial instruments, what is called “financial literacy” (Remund, 2010) or “financial capability” (Taylor, 2011). “Compared to financial literacy, financial capability is a broader concept that includes financial literacy, financial behaviour and financial self-efficacy” (Xiao & O’Neill 2011, p 712). “Financial capability” is seen as necessary for making financial decisions regarding the future welfare. Such knowledge is also seen as “consumer protection” in the USA and the UK (Sherraden et al. 2015). In Sweden, the authorities give a “financial literacy “course for all groups in society under the name: “Protect Your Financial Future”. At the same time, an urbanization wave is under way that makes people learn less and less about how to handle the various problems that may occur in connection with the natural elements. To be able to forge a nail, grow potatoes, cut down a tree. Such practical knowledge and occupations are not encouraged or paid well. Protecting “the consumer”, and “the investor” has for most part of the 21th century been viewed as more important than protecting man.
Large-scale replace small-scale
In Interpellation 2015/16: 565, Daniel Bäckström (C) raises the question of how Sweden should cope with the food supply in the event of war when more than 50 % of the food is imported today. The vulnerability has increased as the emergency stocks have been phased out, and we have an increasing number of centralized operations, while many farms have closed down. This development, which comes from the rationalization ideology of modernization, based on the idea of the superiority of large-scale operations and overall objective competence, has taken place at the expense of small-scale actions and the individual’s unique problem-solving ability and competence (Sotto 1990). Today, our knowledge of the world comes to a lesser extent from our own voluntary actions and increasingly from structures of formalized knowledge transferred from above. Sotto (1990) calls it a “mass-formalized knowledge” of “technology-scientific character” (p.1)
Prescriptive discourses reduce man to instrument
The formalized knowledge presents itself as the universal solution and gives itself to modern beings as prescriptive discourses. Through the practical use of these discourses, people are reduced to “instruments” or “objects” through which the regulatory content of formalizing knowledge is exercised and transferred (Sotto 1990). This change, which concerns the creation and utilization of knowledge in the modern world, means that man has gone from being an active player in his life to becoming a spectator and financial speculator (Martin 2002) of the formalized knowledge in life. It usually happens via the machines, and when the knowledge is in the machines, and man has this knowledge, man is deprived of the need to act. Man finds himself reduced to making observations of how the norms work in the machines operating in the world, or simulating the world in his place (Sotto 1990).
Man without knowledge and vision
Placed in a situation where man must follow the formalized knowledge that he himself does not produce and does not have to go beyond, he is deprived of knowledge related to his own revelation and his own being (Sotto 1990). The disappearance of the opportunity for man to meet and embrace the world by experiencing himself in real situations when dealing with the elements and society, limits his “action” to mere “vision” of pre-established truths and mechanics. Liberated from his own actions and reduced to a tool for conveying the “truth discourses”, man loses a necessary part of himself, namely the actions that make up the human existential predicate, what Sotto (1990) calls “ontological knowledge”.
Financial capability instead of ontological knowledge
Instead of “ontological knowledge”, man is offered “financial capability”. Instead of having the ability to visualize his future, man gets to speculate about his financial future. In this way, man is blinded about the here and now, and instead of dealing with the problems here and now, man is taught to deal with the financial uncertainty, according to the preestablished universalized knowledge (Bay & Bäckius 1999). Because without ontological knowledge – the existential predicate – man loses his existential certainty and capability to create imaginary visions (Bachelard 1964) about the truly ambiguous future (Bay & Bäckius 1999).
The reason for the devaluation and abandonment of the “ontological knowledge”, modernity with its technological development, but also Capital’s “will to power over others” (Deleuze & Guattari 1972) to manage and control people (Sotto 1990). To direct the gaze to what the power wants it to see, to the empty simulations (Baudrillard 2001), including concepts such as financial “gain”, “fairness” and “confidence”. If the “financially capable” people are occupied with financial speculation and simulation (McGoun 1997) about their financial future, they will have little time and capability to think, feel and deal with the situation here and now, and about where they want and can be tomorrow. Financial literacy and capability are encouraged to uphold the Power system, at the cost of the real visions about the future coming from “ontological knowledge”.
2019.