Chapter 43: More Food for Thought
1) Over and over again through uncounted generations, humans have shown that hierarchical social and economic paradigms result in oppressive societies that are not conducive to human happiness and well-being or environmental sustainability. Dysfunction and abuse of power and position become institutionalized and set in stone. Such models are therefore contrary to the positive aspects of human nature. As a result, we do well to abandon such paradigms altogether in favor of peer-based ones.
We are also capable of symbiosis. Every human being has a contribution to make by being their unique self and doing their best, just as the organs of an organism or diverse species interact in nature. By God, evolution or any other route, it is logical to postulate that the diversity of human beings is constructed in such a way that we can fit ourselves together as pieces of a puzzle to form a symbiotic, mutually complementary whole greater than the sum of the parts, and in which each individual is uplifted and supported by their fellows.
2) The use of the terms "free enterprise" and "private enterprise" is misleading, invoking the false image of individuals freely pursuing their lives. In reality, in the 21st Century, it refers for the most part to the business endeavors of ultra-wealthy individuals, large businesses and mega-corporations, which is in fact inimical to the ability of individuals to pursue their lives freely.
This is especially evident where the pernicious, insidious concept of "corporate personhood" is accepted and applied. In such contexts, the concept of "free enterprise" or "private enterprise" come to represent the enforcement of the "rights" of the employer, especially when the employer is a powerful corporation, over the rights of individuals, employees and those who seek to pursue their life, liberty and happiness outside and independent of the capitalist system.
The misperception of these terms as representing the rights of individuals is key in maintaining a docile and compliant populace. This is clearly demonstrated by the current trend of the regime in power in the United States to uphold, enforce and “protect” the "rights" and "religious freedom" of employers to withhold healthcare from employees, discriminate in pay and in hiring, and terminate employees based on the religious beliefs or ideology of the employer. Similar laws under the same banner are being enacted to protect the "religious freedom" of lenders, businesses and landlords by allowing them to similarly discriminate against customers and applicants. Yet there is absolutely no corresponding legislation or interpretation upholding and supporting the religious freedom and rights of the employee or applicant, the individual member of the community.
In this way, the laws and Constitutional protections of individuals against discrimination are circumvented through legalistic sophistry and the conscious, deliberate distortion, abuse and misinterpretation of those protections to distort them into protecting corporations and the neo-Feudal Lords at the expense of the human individual.
This entire movement in the name of "religious freedom" is in fact nothing other than a move to consolidate the power of the ruling elite over the People and to strip the People of their rights, protections and freedoms. It is a consolidation of the Feudalistic power structure, skillfully concealed behind slogans and terminology known to strike sympathetic, patriotic visceral chords in the well-programmed hearts and minds of certain segments of the population.
It is important to research and question all legislation and other measures made in the name of appealing archetypal values and expressed in terms like "religious freedom," "free enterprise," "national security," "make our country great again," "Manifest Destiny," "family values," "at-will employment," “racial purity,” “pro-life,” and many others. Who would want to oppose "religious freedom?" The very thought goes against the deepest instincts of anyone brought up to believe in freedom and democracy.
Yet those very terms are cleverly and skillfully used by expert propagandists to cover draconian totalitarian agendas by making them feel palatable and sympathetic. We must look past humanistic sounding buzzwords and see the real actions and intentions underneath, what is actually being done. Among those of us dedicated to the Transition, we might do well to resist the use of these terms and refer to them in more realistically descriptive terms such as the "power of employers to discriminate."
3) One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. Yet we humans have an aspect of our nature that resists abandoning the familiar, even when it is causing us harm or not working.
Capitalist paradigms have consistently proven themselves to be dysfunctional and harmful over time. Attempting to adjust or repair them by legislating limits and constraints upon these paradigms produces only incomplete, temporary improvements that sooner or later yield to the will of the emerging new neo-Feudal ruling elite as their control and power inevitably consolidates. It is an unproductive, dangerous waste of time and effort to attempt to make these paradigms serve the well-being of the People. The only true remedy is to abandon these paradigms and systems altogether, to create new ones designed to foster a thriving community of symbiotic, empowered, thriving individuals.
4) Under Capitalist paradigms, fewer and fewer people over time come to control more and more land and resources, including the necessities of life, prices, wages and salaries. Ultimately the same tiny segment of the population controls what people are paid and what they must pay.
In these paradigms, the emerging neo-Feudal lords - the ultra wealthy and the heads of corporations - are not in any way answerable or accountable to the People. At the same time, they come to exert a massively disproportionate amount of influence over those in government who theoretically are answerable to the People.
Caprice and greed run unchecked and rampant. There is nothing under Capitalist paradigms to prevent it. In fact these behaviors are strongly reinforced.
We need not look hard to find numerous examples. Recently there was the previously mentioned case of notorious pharmaceutical company CEO Martin Shkreli of Turing Pharmaceuticals who arbitrarily jacked up the price of Daraprim by nearly 6,000 percent as soon as he got control of the rights. Even more recently, Nirmal Mulye, CEO of yet another pharmaceutical corporation, Nostrum Laboratories raised the price of a bottle of nitrofurantoin, an essential antibiotic medication (which has been around since 1954) from the already exorbitant price of $475 to nearly $2,500 and subsequently stated in Financial Times that he is perfectly within his rights to raise his prices as high as possible to maximize profits. He stated that he has a “moral imperative” to reward his shareholders, and justified the behavior of Shkreli. Sadly, Capitalism actively reinforces this behavior. Though these men are in fact terrorists and criminals against humanity, their actions are not considered a crime or even immoral under Capitalism, though Shkreli is currently in prison for other crimes that are defined as crimes under Capitalism.
We also see numerous examples in which petroleum and other companies reduce production and raise prices because they are angry at their customers over some political or ethnic issue. When a small group of people control the vast majority of vital resources and command most of the workforce, those serving in government find in practice that they must cooperate with the pressures and demands of that ruling group if they want to get anything done. This small group of people are not answerable to the People or their representatives. They control vital resources as their “private property” and thus exert a power of influence that cannot be ignored or defied. This is so even for an elected government that is theoretically answerable to the People.
In practical terms, those in control of the economic pyramid have the power to blackmail both the people and those in government, since they can effectively paralyze, block, and render ineffective, any move that government attempts to make which displeases them. All they have to do is signal an intention to withhold production, close or relocate facilities to another country, or raise prices enough to cause a crisis. At the other end of this dynamic are massive campaign contributions and support of candidates via lobbyists, and other forms of enticement extended to politicians by the ultra-wealthy and their corporations.
Of course, in Capitalist paradigms where one's rights, freedoms, options, respect, and quality of life depend mostly upon one's financial status, the Feudal Lords of the Corporatocracy rarely need to resort to blackmail and coercion. Most politicians willingly comply with the demands and agendas of those with the most money and power, which by the nature of the paradigm comes at the expense of the rest of the population.
In practice, a Capitalistic paradigm inevitably generates a neo-Feudal power structure, an economic pyramid which effectively erodes and undermines the power and rights of the People, no matter how clearly they are written into the Constitution or other foundational documents of the country. Capitalist paradigms are fundamentally and functionally incompatible with, and inimical to, a free, democratic, empowered, symbiotic thriving society of empowered, free, thriving individuals.
5) Under the stresses of the world as it is today, with most individuals are forced into a life of unrelenting, slowly-losing struggle for survival. Resentments, anger, even rage are endemic and epidemic at high levels in most of the population. Humans have a tendency to seek an object or target upon whom to focus these emotions, potentially to defend themselves against a threat, to avenge themselves over wrongs suffered, or simply to vent and purge upon.
The neo-Feudal lords of the Corporatocracy have learned over generations to be very skillful advertisers, manipulators, and propagandists. They are keenly adept at using advertising to generate a strong emotional sense of need for manufactured products. As previously mentioned, we have seen this dynamic lead to long lines of people assembling at stores and outlets in the middle of the night to fight one another over this year's latest hottest item, especially around the time of gift-giving holidays.
These same propaganda techniques are also employed to keep sectors of the population focusing their blame, resentment, anger, and rage over the injustice and inequity of the economic struggle for survival, upon one another across every possible line of demarcation. Black, white, brown, Asian, all blame and focus their rage and distrust upon each other. Turks and Armenians. Native born and immigrants. Religion versus religion versus secular. Conservative versus liberal. Young versus middle aged versus elderly. Educated versus less-educated. If it can be turned into a basis for "us vs. them" emotions and ideation, then it most certainly has been fanned into a fever pitch ready to boil over at the slightest provocation.
A divided population is a disempowered, easily-controlled population. Dictators and despots throughout history have known that their draconian modes of governing will inevitably give rise to resentment and rage among the population. Such power elites fear nothing more than they fear a united, informed, freely-thinking empowered populace. One time-honored solution for the despot who wishes to stay in power has always been to present the populace with a manufactured enemy image upon whom to focus that rage, anger, and resentment. Dictators will then present themselves as the ones who will protect the population against "them." Hitler used the Jews. Saddam Hussein used the Kurds and "insurgents." The McCarthyists of the Cold War used "Communists" and "Communist sympathizers." The list is as long as history itself and is getting longer every day.
We who seek to create a truly free, compassionate, empowering, thriving, symbiotic win-win culture and paradigm must steadfastly, impermeably resist all such urges to turn upon each other. We will only thrive if we discipline ourselves to work in concert to overthrow the paradigm and systems that are the true cause of our stress and oppression and then replace them with paradigms and systems intended and designed to promote the thriving, empowerment, and symbiosis among all individuals and sub-groups. We must school ourselves to do this with mutual respect.
The native born and the immigrant, the ones like us and the ones different from us, all races and religions, conservative and liberal, will only have a chance at a future as free individuals in a free and democratic community if we override and cast aside all such motives as blame, revenge, payback, or purging. That black, white, Latino, Asian, native, immigrant, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Shi’a, Sunni, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, college grad, high school dropout, man, woman, young, middle aged, old person standing with you in line at the supermarket is your potential ally, comrade, backup, friend. Most of them will come through most of the time. Let us treat each other accordingly! When we fight and struggle against one another, we are freely giving away our lives and power to those who seek to control us to satisfy their obsessive power and wealth compulsions and other dysfunctionalities.
6) Many of us have been taught from birth to believe that anybody can "make it" under capitalist paradigms with enough hard work and discipline. By the time many people reach the age of legal adulthood and are thrust into the financial battlefield, they have internalized this belief. It becomes as much a given to them as gravitation, electromagnetism, birth and death. That belief is a vital component in the propaganda construct that keeps almost all members of the community compliant with and struggling within the "game" according to the rules imposed by the neo-Feudal lords of the Corporatocracy.
We believe that if we just play the game a little longer, work a little harder, maybe come up with the next entrepreneurial breakthrough, the “big score,” we will achieve "financial freedom" AKA the ability to buy our freedom, life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness with little concern of having it taken away from us anytime soon.
As previously covered, this is in fact as much an illusion or con as is the belief that anybody can win big in a casino. Yet it bears reiterating since it goes against long-held misconceptions of “reality.” In both contexts there are copious examples of people who did "win big" or "make it." Yet in practice, there is not room high enough on the pyramid for more than a very few to "make it," just as odds are very poor for any given player "winning big" in a casino. Some members of the Community will resist committing to the Transition because of the belief that if they just play the game by the rules a little longer, they’ll be in a good enough position that it won't matter.
Alongside that, since the days of the Cold War, another propaganda thread has left many in capitalist countries with the unquestioned belief that anything that isn't capitalism, (which is unquestioningly equated with freedom and democracy) must be communism which is equated with totalitarianism and dictatorship. Yet most people have never been informed of what any of these words actually mean in theory or in practice. They have only been conditioned to respond to them in certain ways.
In reality, capitalism is a construct that creates, promotes and protects wolves in sheep's clothing, a sinister Wizard of Oz scenario. However, as in the Wizard of Oz story in which Dorothy only needs click her heels together to return home once she knows the truth, the People can bring an end to the feudalistic capitalist pyramid by changing the way "the game" is played from the bottom up. To reclaim power over our own lives, we need simply do our jobs while eliminating and rendering obsolete the chain of command and those in its higher echelons, ignoring them and excising the entropic sludge of currency along with the need for it. We must be resolute and prepared to do this while refusing to be intimidated, coerced or seduced into returning to capitalist ways of doing things.
We must be diligent inside ourselves and among us, to keep the realities clearly in sight while consciously rejecting and tuning out the myths that have kept us compliant in supporting the pyramid and our own exploitation for generations. We must become and remain conscious of this dynamic in ourselves as humans.
Many of us may well encounter inner processes similar to those of victims in abusive relationships who have a notoriously difficult time rising up to escape, resist, or otherwise end such relationships. Victims often choose to stay in a dysfunctional relationship rather than confront the unknown, the prospect of change, and also due to fear instilled by their abusers as to what will happen to them if they were to leave.
This dynamic is similar to the Biblical story of the ancient Israelis who, enduring the hardships of wandering in Sinai after escaping slavery in Egypt, in a weak moment yearned and begged to return to bondage in Egypt rather than face the arduous and daunting journey ahead of them. In all of these examples, the wisest course is to stay the course, keep moving forward into the new Paradigm even when it is most daunting.
We also do well to anticipate that those deposed former Feudal Lords of the Corporatocracy will most certainly attempt to seduce us former serfs and vassals back into the old paradigm by playing upon these human emotional responses. In order to prevail, we must understand, identify, neutralize, resist, and ignore those voices in ourselves and in our surroundings.
7) There are those who believe that to depart from capitalist paradigms is to accept a life of poverty or primitive existence, return to the Stone Age, invite privation, abandon our individuality and self-expression or have it savagely wrested from us for the sake of forced robotic conformism. In fact, nothing could be further and more opposite from the truth!
This is more propaganda, strengthened by examples of improperly implemented paradigms flying the banner of Communism but which were not truly Communist any more than a Capitalist Democracy is truly Democratic. Images of bleak East German streets and the killing fields of Cambodia have been burned into millions of peoples' minds as the inevitable result of anything other than capitalism. Yet the images of equally bleak U.S. streets or the tortures, murders and other crimes of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, which overthrew the democratically-elected Chilean government at the behest of multinational mega-Corporations through CIA intervention, do not trigger the same response.
As a point in fact, the "Communism" implemented under the cited regimes was not the true classless society envisioned by Marx, Engels, Lenin or Mao. It was rather a class-stratified society broken down into a ruling elite and the rest of the population, just as is the case under Capitalist paradigms.
In practice, egalitarian and synergistic communities offer the prospect of a much higher quality of life on every possible dynamic or metric than is possible under either Capitalistic or Stalinistic paradigms. As is shown elsewhere in this writing, Capitalism can only function if a small segment of the population enslaves the majority of the population while withholding access to vital resources using currency as a barrier.
Capitalism offers the illusion of prosperity, freedom, and quality of life as opiates offer the illusion of bliss and stimulants offer the illusion of boundless energy. Similarly to these drugs, Capitalist paradigms and systems give brief spurts of short-lived illusory seeming prosperity in the midst of an ongoing reality of vain struggle against the denial of one's very existence. This functions just as these kinds of drugs, which offer brief spurts of bliss or energy in the midst of an ongoing reality of struggling just to not feel sick.
True economics of, by, and for the People, coupled with government of, by, and for the People in a peer-based, synergistic, symbiotic paradigm offers a level of prosperity, well-being, self-actualization and expression, safety, security and thriving that is accessible to only those at the very top of the pyramid under Capitalist paradigms. Once again, if we are to ever thrive, we must identify the illusions and make ourselves impervious to them.