EMFs and Narratives of Capitalism

Capitalism has two master narratives. From the left, everyone is encouraged to pursue ever more wealth. Corporations are more important than human beings and enjoy enhanced freedom because corporations are more efficient at making money. There is a strong bias against adopting regulations limiting pollution because the effect would be to impede profit-making. The preference is to externalize all environmental and human costs. A broad mass of contented workers will generate the resources needed to repair the environment and cure the diseases. The poor will ultimately be better off because there will be jobs for everybody who wants to work.

The narrative from the right is quite different. Capitalism calls on us to learn faster by cooperating with one another to make progress at an ever-increasing rate. It encourages us to learn more and develop our talents. The pool of talented new problem-solvers is inexorable and will produce new ideas and new market possibilities. Every country, every company, and every individual is completely free to learn, study, improve, and make progress, without any limits.

Both narratives are the product of a perspective, not a snapshot of reality. They play out at a cosmic level, in an eternal pattern of thesis, antithesis, and resolution. But we don’t live our lives at that level. We live with our two feet on earth, immersed in a semi-random semi-law-governed time-ordered series of events. We know that, sooner or later, we’ll probably get sick and certainly die.

For the sake of argument, assume that your sickness and death will be partly caused by chronic exposure to man-made environmental electromagnetic fields (EMFs). Given the antithetical superstructure of capitalism, can you see how foolish it is to expect anyone else to assume responsibility for protecting you from EMFs? That’s simply not how the system works.