1. Corporate
Capitalism [CC] (as defined in Life, Inc.) has failed. What I mean by that
is that it has failed almost every group in our society. It has succeeded
magnificently for the few elite wealthy who now control the lion’s share of the
income and the wealth in the country. For them, CC is a good system and they
don’t want any significant changes. They would like to make their success more
complete by doing away with all the remaining collective bargaining rights in
the country. They wish to dismantle the social safety net, ie. Social Security
and Medicare also. They have already created a department in the government
whose mission is to control the population, the Department of Homeland
Security. The real purpose of this department is to protect the government from
its own people, not to protect the country from terrorists. CC has failed the young people – the
unemployment rates among the young are at 25% and many of them are facing
permanent unemployment since they are sliding into the group of the long-term
unemployed. CC has failed the middle class. Their incomes have stagnated over
the last 20 years. Their jobs are still being outsourced overseas, or nowadays,
just outrigh-t eliminated. Their homes are being taken away, due to the
unprecedented rates of repossession, still going on. The CC system, has of
course, failed the poor. Their ranks are swelling; education is out of reach
for them and their safety net has been taken away. Their lot is worse than
ever. CC has failed the environment. Global warming is now in a runaway mode.
Important natural resources, such as water, energy, and arable land are now in
increasingly shorter supply.
2. Corporate
Capitalism is in big trouble: I have come across more information that
indicates that Corporate Capitalism may be at the end of the line, although
Marx prematurely predicted that over 100 years ago. This new evidence from Paul
Gilding is much more convincing. He has written a book called “The Great
Disruption”. You can read the information for yourself. He is convinced that
humanity has reached the end of growth. His basic premise, gathered from scientific
data, is that we are now at a state of 1.5 planets, that is, we’re using up 1.5
planets worth of resources to maintain our economy and lifestyle. This trend is
forecast to increase to 2 planets in about 10 years, and the trend is pointing
to 4 planets by 2050. He says this is unsustainable and won’t happen.
a. http://paulgilding.com/
b. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/an-apocalyptic-end-to-worlds-biggest-bubble-2011-10-25?pagenumber=2
3. Crisis
of Capitalism in the 30’s: Back
then, capitalism had again failed the same groups of people it is now failing.
The biggest difference that I see is that the environmental crisis wasn’t
nearly as severe as it is now. FDR’s mission in the 30’s was to rescue
capitalism from its Crisis. The problem is that capitalism tends to
self-destruct if left to its own devices. Wealth is increasingly concentrated
into the hands of an elite few who then attempt to impose control from above,
first by persuasion, but also by force, if necessary. Sooner or later, the
classes that got left behind become aware of the Great Con-job and become
increasingly harder to control. At some point a Crisis erupts. In the 30’s, I
believe there was genuine alarm in the ruling elite that their system was in
danger of being overthrown. FDR, who was from the wealthy class himself, came
to the rescue of the system. The reforms he found necessary was bitter medicine
to the ruling elite. A progressive tax rate was among one the most bitter
pills. The acceptance of unions and collective bargaining was another bitter
pill. FDR did answer to the complainers that he was saving their system for
them, and they ought to be grateful and shut up.
4. Three
Responses to the Crisis: One response to this crisis is protest and an
attempt at changing the system politically. This is the route that the Occupy
Wall Street protesters are taking. I admire them a lot and fully support their
action. I will probably find myself taking food and sleeping bags down to them
some time in the future. I liken that response to a very simple analogy. I remember
when I was in pre-school. There are sand-boxes in the play yard. Lots of kids
are playing in the big sand box and soon the local bully takes over. The bully
begins to run the system and hog all the best toys and coerce everyone else.
There are several responses: a) You can go along with the system and try to get
the best crumbs from the bully. The problem with that response is that bully never
wants to share his toys and will only give you the ones he’s tired of playing
with or the broken toys. B) You can oppose him and pick a fight with him. If he’s
bigger than you, and has a gang assembled, you’re in trouble. But even if you
can successfully fight with him, he’s OK with that too. He’s still the Big Guy
in the sandbox, whether you’re for him or against him. He can live with that –
just as long as he’s the Big Guy. C) You
can pick up your toys and go play in another sand box. Ignore him, don’t play
his games any more, just go away and make up and play your own games in another
sand-box. To follow you over to the new sandbox, he has to leave the nice one
he’s in.
5. Localism:
My personal response to this crisis is localism. I, by myself, have no chance
of overthrowing the system, although that seems to be working in Egypt, Libya,
Tunisia and Syria. Even the Saudi establishment is moving to buy off their
population – the king just gave women the right to vote over there. That’s a
pretty harmless concession because the choice they get to vote for have already
been vetted by the male establishment. Besides, if the good ole’ boys are
counting the votes, as well as checking to see who voted for whom, they’re
guaranteed to win every time. Rigged elections are a favorite window-dressing technique
for almost every autocrat on the planet.
6. How
to Fire the Culture: So my choice, for now, is to fire the system. It
certainly involves a lot less hassle and violence. After all, there’s only one
of me and millions of THEM. There are various ways to opt out and fire the
system:
a. Don’t
bother firing the actors: There are a lot of bad actors in the on-going
drama: Wall Street, dictators like the late Muammar Quaddafi, corporate CEOs, corrupt government,
et. Al. It’s tempting and very common to blame the bad conditions on different
actors in the drama. “If only we had a new government…” “If only we could get
rid of these big corporations…” “If only we go rid of the President…” Unfortunately, getting rid of the various
actors in the drama just leads to the situation that the Who sang about “Say
hello to the New Boss – just like the Old Boss..” I had an “aha” moment after
reading Riane Eisler “The Chalice and the Blade”. She got right to the point.
The villain is the culture – the Dominator Culture that has run much of
humanity for the last 5000 years. She argues: “Fire the culture”. And I agree
with her – get right to the point and fire the culture. I don’t have to accept
this present culture even if there is no apparent alternative right now. I don’t
care if it is the dominant culture – I’ll fire it in my mind and with my
actions. And what happens if enough of us begin to fire the Dominator Culture?
b. How
do you fire the culture? Examine what kind of influences it has in your
life. Where does it have the biggest hold on you?
i.
Well, the culture has a very large hold on a
person through their means of subsistence, that is, the economy. You have to
make a living, and the culture determines how you do so. And as you participate
in making a living, you have to cooperate with the culture in order to do so.
And in this way, the culture exerts a huge influence on you and especially on
your thinking. I don’t have enough time or room to go into great detail. To put
it bluntly – you are going to be loyal and believe in the culture that feeds
you. In these difficult economic times when it’s become harder to feed yourself
(and I don’t just mean food, but everything that makes your life comfortable),
the economic grip of the Dominator Culture on your thinking and belief system
weakens and the protests begin. If you were completely self-sufficient for
food, warmth, shelter, entertainment, etc. like some hermit living out in the
boondocks, the Dominator Culture would have very little, if any hold on you.
You would begin having thoughts that the Culture did not put into your mind.
You would “be off the map”.
ii.
Another way the culture has a grip on us is in
the realm of images and ideas. So another way to fire the Culture is to reject
the media: the newspapers, the movies, the books, the advertising, etc. The
Culture disseminates itself through a physical media. We are all interconnected
today, even more so through the Internet. Everybody, it seems, spends their
days walking around with their face in their Smartphones. Much of what they are
absorbing is the Culture: advertising, shopping, information, etc. from the
corporate sponsors of the Smartphone culture.
iii.
Finally, and I think most important, is the grip
that the Culture has on us through religion. The role of religion is to provide
a way for humans to “re-late” to their existence. Religion comes for two Latin
words: “Re – again, toward and “ligeo” –
literally meaning to relate. Religion gives meaning to life and creates a
picture and a context in which we live. It influences our politics and even our
perceptions. The Dominator Culture has provided at least three Dominator
Religions for humanity to partake of so that It (the Culture) can perpetuate
itself. The Big Three are: Judaism,
Christianity and Islam. These are the big three male-dominant patriarchal (is
that redundant?) religions.
c. Fire
the banks: OK, what practical methods can I (we) take to fire the Culture?
First of all, fire the banks – take your banking out of the big corporate banks
and move it into much smaller regional banks or credit unions. Weren’t credit
unions a product of the 30’s anyway?
i.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/high-fees-heres-how-to-fire-your-bank-2011-10-07 Jennifer Waters – Here’s how to fire your
bank
d. Fire
the currency – make up a local script and start using it. Example: a small
town in PA, Berkeshire? Has come up with its own script and it is being using
it to keep the local wealth local and it seems to be partially working.
i.
http://www.berkshares.org/whatareberkshares.htm
ii.
http://www.ithacahours.org/
iii.
http://www.rushkoff.com/
e. Fire
the investment system – pull your investments out of the giant corporate
Wall Street casino, which is mostly set up to loot retail investors anyway with
their microsecond ultra high speed trading. Pull your investments out of that
system and invest locally. There seem to be more and more local investment
clearing houses springing up in small regions all over the country.
i.
http://locavesting.com/Locavesting_homepage.html
ii.
http://www.l2020.org/index.php?page=investing-opportunities
f.
Fire Big Food. Corporately
produced/processed food is inherently unsafe, innutritious and unhealthy these
days. Farmers’ markets are becoming pretty common these days all over the
country, as well as the new version of the old “Victory Gardens”. Food co-ops
are beginning to invade the big cities. Michelle Obama is using her influence
to bring locally produced produce and food into the big city food deserts. Just
stop purchasing from the big vendors and go to the smaller producers and
especially to local growers.
i.
http://www.farmersmarketla.com/
g. Fire
Carbon Based Power. Energy can be
locally generated right at home. Solar and wind installations are becoming
cheaper and more efficient by the year. Their lack of big commercial success
has a lot to do with the carbon-based cartels undercutting the profitability of
renewables. However, the carbon-based
cartels are becoming increasingly vulnerable. Electric car manufacturers are
springing up, in all places, Silicon Valley
itself. The stranglehold of Big Carbon is slowly beginning to be broken –
partially as a result of the increasing scarcity of carbon-based fuels, as well
as a growing public acceptance of global warming and its cause in carbon-based
energy generation. Lately though, Carbon-Based Power is making a strong bid to
maintain its dominance during the Great Recession. Their argument: “We can’t
afford Green Power – it’s cheaper to stay on Carbon-based power, and besides,
there’s still a lot of it left.” Many Green power companies are finding tough
sledding and some of the start-ups are beginning to fail. I recently came
across an article where carbon recovery and sequestration efforts are quietly
being abandoned by the West. Furthermore, it appears that efforts to build a
huge new pipeline to bring Alberta’s Tar Sands oil to the US are going to
succeed. This should continue to maintain America’s addiction to oil.
i.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20761-uks-carboncapture-failure-is-part-of-a-global-trend.html
ii.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2011-10-30/keystone-pipeline-opposition/51000802/1
h. Fire
Big Media – This one is going to be a little more difficult to pull off.
There are many competing media sources on the planet today, thanks to the
Internet. No single source of news can
achieve a monopoly position any more, and that includes FOX. There are dozens
of sources available to vet any single source. The young are using the social
media to go around the Big Commercial media anyway. One of the problems is
going to be the physical media itself – the physical structure of the Internet
is in the hands of large corporations, and these organizations are vulnerable
to the influence of their owners (primarily profit driven, I think) and
government influence. The Egyptian, Libyan, Iranian and Libyan governments
succeeded in getting the social media turned off in their countries, albeit too
late. However there are some encouraging engineering innovations that may make
it easier to get around these centralized physical media providers. Just lately
I noticed that “micro cell phone” hubs are being marketed. These are a fraction
of the size and power of a large commercial
cell phone hub. These could be put up on rooftops and quickly and easily
taken down and moved, enabling a localized and highly mobile wifi net to be set
up in neighborhoods. Technology is certainly making it easier now to
communicate electronically w/o the large centralized media providers.
i.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcell
ii.
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/10/21/headlines
iii.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_television
i.
Fire Big Medicine. Here is an
establishment that swallows money like a black hole. You can shovel dump truck
loads of money into this establishment w/o making a noticeable dent in the
situation. Certainly these corporations are seeking to hold the health of the
general population hostage – what a dependable and easy way to make a profit!
This stranglehold must be broken also – again, this will be quite difficult.
Much of the technology and infrastructure associated with medical care is very
expensive and must be centralized into a few large facilities in order to take
advantage of numbers. But it seems to me that there might be a way to crack
this monopoly open also. Medical coops? There are a couple of large medical
coops in the country – one of them is in Seattle.
Perhaps the key here is ownership. The coop could and should be owned by the
patient base and the providers. It seems important that the wealth that is
poured into the medical provider establishment remain local.
i.
http://www.ghc.org/
ii.
http://www.ncba.coop/ncba/about-co-ops/co-op-sectors/146-healthcare
j.
Fire the Dominator Religions – I’ve
written extensively about this one.
i.
“The poison comes from the pulpits” Religion
shapes our belief systems, our behavior, our social institutions, our learning,
and even how we perceive the world around us. The Dominator Culture has not
just one, but three patriarchal religions in place to cement its dominance over
humanity. The Big Three have ruthlessly wiped out all manner of indigenous cultures
in its relentless advance. The history of this cultural obliteration is a
reader of human brutality – it constitutes some of the ugliest journals of the
history of humankind. The Dominator Culture realizes how important religion is
to a culture and so it has been very careful to wipe out the last vestiges of
indigenous culture and religion as it advances. In the face of this
obliteration, many brave ethnic groups have struggled to maintain some
semblance of their cultures and religions, including their language. A sometime
amusing by-product of these Dominator Religions is that they are so aggressive
that they are unable to coexist peacefully with themselves. In fact, the two
branches of Islam are apparently eating themselves, as well as the infidels
around them. These religions remind me of a gang of rabid pit-bulls fighting
among themselves. Much of the cultural and political toxins that currently
infect humanity originate in the pulpits of the Big Three. A key step in firing
the Culture is to fire the Big Three. I already have and haven’t looked back
since. Good riddance.
ii.
The Catholic Church has apparently outlived its
usefulness in Europe and the locals there are firing the Church. It still has a
large influence, but it is waning. The Irish government just recently declared
independence from the Church, pissing It off pretty well. There is a big
movement toward local religion and secularism. The young people in the Arab
Spring movements have shown marked disinterest in religious fundamentalism.
Religion has a large influence on the culture, and if the hold of Old Religion
on the culture can be loosened, this will free up the culture for substantial
changes.
1. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ifDsLV9umKCEksHSxf46Jutu0izA?docId=71de3e374e1f4b5e93904f01a6063a73