Note:
Here are four more responses to my invitation in "Coffee, Consciousness and Revolution". More to come.
Joe
------
Hi Joe,
There's an idea out there that the natural progression of the universe is towards higher and higher forms of consciousness. From inanimate matter, to amoeba, to lizard, to tool-using apes. According to this idea, there are different levels of consciousness in humans. At one level is pure survival. Then there is an extension of identification to family and tribe, and then further to all humans and the universe itself. Supposedly, around 20% of the population reached a higher level in the 60s which included concern for other people and the planet.
Currently we are poised to make the next leap and about 5% of the population is one step further up the ladder. If enough people make the jump, we survive. If not, then we may devolve back to a survivalist. primitive mode of life or die out altogether. A good source for this viewpoint is Ken Wilber. I'm not sure which book of his explains this idea, perhaps "A Brief History of Everything".
All that may or may not be true, but to me the main problem is pretty simple. If you do realize the innate rottenness of the culture and want to escape, there is nowhere to go. The entire planet has been colonized by capitalism so that you cannot exist outside of the global economic system. Every remaining tribe of people that does is under siege because the land they live on has exploitive value (timber, oil, etc). In the USA, if I want to survive I have to suppress my natural tendencies and become a cog in the machine.
Where is the freedom if I have to enslave myself to buy food and shelter? If I tried to learn how to live within nature and the land and support myself, I'd have to "buy" the land first and pay tribute (taxes) to the violent thugs who control it (government). Which means I'd have to generate an income and thus I am forced back into the machine. The capitalistic economic system is brilliant in its ability to consume everyone and everything.
Well, I gotta go now. I've got to get back to my work as a minor cog in a big machine.
Keep up the good work,
James
-----
Dear Joe,
Your piece was wonderfully insightful as usual. One of the readers of my blog read your stuff after I suggested it and mentioned you as a possible replacement for the much-missed Molly Ivins. As to your question, it all starts with two things.
First and foremost is turning off the television set. Everything about TV conditions us to be obedient, conformist and to continue consuming. Dennis Miller said it best, back when he was still funny: "The TV beast ate us whole."
I would like to think this was an unforeseen consequence of television, but I have become too old and too cynical not to know better.
Second and more important is for people simply to understand that they have a lot more in common with all the different people in their economic straits -- blacks, browns, conservatives, liberals -- and that it's ridiculous for them to be competing with each other and pitted against each other. The idea that a bigger television, or a newer car, or a bigger house than you need makes your life better plays right into the hands of the folks who don't care what happens to the world as long as their bank account grows.
Imagine a world in which lower-income whites came to the realization that the rich guy in the house on the hill has nothing in common -- other than skin color -- with them.
We can change the world, and I have no doubt the greatest fear of the elite is that we will someday comprehend the sheer power of our numbers and do something with them.
Keep on truckin',
Mike
------
Joe,
Yes, yes and hell yes, but that desire for balance can be assuaged by a proper use of mythology (the myth of American socio-economic mobility), by distraction (it's those damn liberals pushing fag marriage, gun control and a war on Christmas!), by mollification (bread and circuses still works very well).
A number of very strong devices are used to keep us snoozing and tolerating the imbalance. I think the most insidious was on display after September 11th, when Americans were told, essentially, to stand down. Go about your lives, I think the cheerleader in charge said. Travel and spend your money, or the terrorists win. It dawned on me right then that they are scared out of their minds by anything that might just shake this country up a little.
An inspired leader could have used that energy to start great works. The Boy who would be King spoke thus: "Go back to sleep, America. Leave it to your betters,"
It comes back to this: the great fat middle of this country still has it too good to worry much about the imbalance. Too many people's lives are, for the moment, shored up by consumer debt. "Hey, what's with the revolution bullshit? I got my truck and my new high-def plasma TV from Best Buy for two years with no interest. So long as it's just the dumbass kid down the street losing his home because he took that stupid ARM instead of sticking with his 6.5% FHA loan. So long as it's just the middle managers and overpaid GM workers getting laid off and Enron employees getting fucked. So long as it's just someone else's union getting busted or somebody else's pension fund getting destroyed."
I think it's going to take a full-scale collapse of the American Credit Card Culture to bring us around to reality with regards to balance. Right now, the skew is just a little too well disguised.
Warmest regards,
Jeff
------
Joe,
For what it's worth, here's my reaction to your post on revolution today, especially this passage:
The purpose of revolutions is to periodically correct the course of human events toward balance, not because fairness is the natural order of nature or the universe, but simply because the human mind has a built-in element that seeks justice. And justice in the human mind is associated with balance.
There are probably larger biological and evolutionary reasons behind our behavior. But if we are not simply to die like so many bugs on this degraded, rapidly rotting melon called earth, then we must first start begin applying ourselves materially to that inner sense of justice with which every American, Palestinian, Jew, Latin American, Chinese, Eskimo and Zulu is born.
Is that beneath that crusty socialist exterior beats the heart of a natural-law conservative and a closet Thomist.
I know that you're attempting to root the argument (that human beings are born with an innate sense of justice) in evolutionary psychology, but any student of Thomas Aquinas (or Thomas Hobbes, for that matter) would recognize it immediately.
Aquinas's Cardinal Virtues in his theory of natural law were prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude. And his theological virtues, more famous yet, were faith, hope and charity.
We could use extra helpings of all of those right about now.
I don't think it's The End of The World As We Know It or anything like that, frankly, but we've managed to fuck up a bunch of things right good and are overdue for a series of corrections. We are also still in the early stages of a couple of intertwined economic phenomena (globalization and the full flowering of the post-industrial information-based economy) that is going to be every bit as painful and wrenching as the transition from agriculture to industry was for humanity.
Barry
