HUMAN BEING
The interminable passing of money from hand to hand, the awareness that
one either seeks to profit or is sought to be profited from, the competition
that underlies all, induces unbreachable cognition that money is more important
than the other as far as survival is concerned, and is thus a causing principle
of separation between individual and individual, creating with adequate possession
thereof, effectual illusion of self-sufficiency. Drive to succeed or to achieve
is predominantly, invariably related to coincident acquisition of monetary
wealth; as one has more, the desired lifestyle can be realized and augmented
without end, generally as a growing measure of private property, or as increasing
freedom to command others, rather that be commanded; when one has enough,
if they so desire, they can retire from the chaos of the rat race, from reality
of productive effort, commanding their leisure as they may. For the unsuccessful
many, a job may be just a job, an unfulfilling somnambulism of the spirit
that desperately, or forlornly, seeks an after-job compensation and that
for the futureless moment perhaps puts bread on the table, clothes on the
back, and a roof over the head — no matter how absurd the laboring
may be, all are indoctrinated to be thankful for their opportunity to exist.
Joy is too rarely found in the productive functioning of society. Resemblances
of cooperation arise mainly because of the intermediary coercion of money,
thus lacking the free willfulness that defines genuine cooperation. For the
many, there is no harmony of Spirit with others, no true building in common,
no potentiality but aggrandizement of ego — a limitation, the evoking
of misdirected greed and insatiable starvation, for fulfillment of being.
We know that work is done for the money received, and we know that things are bought with money possessed. We see the streets crowded with automobiles of varying color, age, style, and cost, and it seems the given, that which somehow should naturally be in existence. Would we not wish to be seen in the most stylish vehicle, live in the most finished and ample residence, wear the sharpest attire, were they not choosable as easily as their alternative, and were there no global consequences to the billion-fold replication of such desire? Within a money managed system we are free to secure our share of the money pool through whatever manner we might attain to, even illegal if we are not caught. We can direct our endeavors toward whatever we think might give us the greatest recompense, and we can purchase with that share whatever exists to be purchased among the things available and the labors that others will perform for money. When we have a large enough share we can create our lifestyle, as is our fancy, and command our leisure as we might. Our life with other human beings is almost in every aspect intermediated by this universal struggle to acquire that share which can be obtained, sometimes in cooperation to better obtain, but more often in the relation of confrontation, profiting from another or being profited from.
Changing our vision from one which takes everything for granted, from one accepting reality as the way it is simply because it presents itself ubiquitously, unto one which observes for the particular deformation of the possible, the imaginable, that this pursuit of profit entails, is a gradual process. But when it has advanced we can see the same statement of inefficiency, of waste, of pandering, again and again: in the simplest commercial message broadcast over the visual media which the lack of alternative social opportunity casts so many into the viewing of repeatedly, in the gleaming new technological marvel of individual transportation which costs more than the lifetime wages of the average human being, in the modern shopping malls which present their version of the attainment of celestial being, in the superfluous actions of human beings, the drugs, the multiplicity of efforts, in the words of the deceiving, the structure of armies. Once the vision is acquired and given a logical explanation, it remains ever disturbing and unshakable, indicating the direction not of progress, but of that which must ultimately change if we are to further progress.
We know that work should logically be performed in order to deserve participation in the fruits of work performed by others. But the usage of money, a cultural tool evolved by humankind, to manage the process of distributing to one and another their needs and desires, has consequence particular to the usage thereof. In the more distorted versions of capitalism the bureaucracy of government can evolve predominantly toward a self-serving chain of influence peddling and group appropriation of the surplus production of society, politicism disguised as capitalism, transference of economic incentive toward party membership rather than production innovation. In less distorted versions, ability to measure the costs of production has been the means to evolve production processes, to juggle the inputs according to the supply-demand values to achieve the greatest possible profit. It is this fixed attention upon the monetary aspect of production costs which has resulted in the traditional growth of the pyramid; it is, very much like the incentive of profit, a consideration quite of the moment, consisting of little more than bottom line analysis, for the month, for the year.
But man is related to man in far more ways than the intermediating principal of money, through breathing of common air, enduring the global climate patterns, sharing the seas, and in dependence upon a single natural resource base. The pollutions being generated from industrial processes and energy utilization are not considered as a cost factor, either in the ultimate reduction of ecological viability or in the cost of reducing their impact to a sustainable global level. Within capitalism a capital expenditure should always be thusly considered, an investment to be made toward a future consequence, and subtraction from the capital account is never considered a profit, but rather, a violation of accounting if such is done. The exhaustion of capital is also to be avoided for it usually results in incapacity to continue functioning, the opposite generally being the desired, the incrementation of capital. Modern capitalist growth is based significantly upon the transference of real cost into the future and upon the depletion of capital, that of the non renewable natural resources, and upon a misaccounting of the future value of those resources: first, because that future will possess less of the resources now being depleted, and secondly, because that future will know from necessity a wiser usage.
We must answer toward what future is the depletion of our energy capital account being directed. Granted, through this effort we have attained the tools of technology, the work of applied science, capacities without which we cannot nor should not imagine civilization. We do not squander all of our energy capital, but we are exhausting it more and more rapidly. Are we promising a return on our investment of greater proportion than our expenditure, and what will the nature of this return be? It is hard to conjure a more beneficial usage of petroleum than that of the wheat harvesting thresher, allowing a machine and a man to replace the work of many men who are thus made free to pursue other works, a combination of technology and energy which is the very basis of modern civilization, a work which will need to be performed for as long as mankind exists. In comparison to this, the automobile replaces energy expenditure all too often potentially equivalent to but the human pedaling of a bicycle, but at a cost of labor-displacement-potential manifoldly greater. Is our direction one of increasing or decreasing cumulative social efficiency?
Humans have many things that they need to use in order to live well, but few that they need to possess, no more than the clothes on their body in reality. To avoid the inability that a lack of money entails, security can only partially be attained through money, as one never knows if what one has will be enough to continue the lifestyle through whatever might become; we are each forced to depend entirely upon our own resources, to possess those articles which we would use, to divide ourselves into living groups of smaller and smaller numbers, for we share very little but the streets and the air we breath. We resign ourselves to forever live in a world of scarcity, where some have so much more than others who obviously have not enough for the barest equity of life potential: because it is the nature of a pool of money to fall into unequal shares, even if it were to be once evenly redistributed. Money falls into those hands that are most able to appropriate, beyond any strict regard for the worth of one's labor, although we like to maintain that there is a relevant connection between the effort and the reward.
It has long been habit of the toiling individual to equivalate money with the earning of it, to consider money of another to be as worthfully obtained as their own. This perception is correlated to a belief in the inherent usefulness of effort, that it serves a social purpose beyond simply the required acquisition of money, an attitude that necessarily affects success of capitalist undertaking. The correlation is tenuous, and dependent upon individual evaluation of total society, the particular manner through which one participates, and the degree to which that participation is rewarded. In those economies of politicism, where graft is not known with a derogatory concept but acknowledged as the expected, the obviousness of the inequivalence of money gaining to honest work weakens the spirit of the greater population, leaving them with distrust and malaise from immersion in a system that only pretends to the incentives of capitalism.
The rough equivalence to laboring is threatened on a global scale in turn threatening the utility of money as an economic management tool: by the disproportionate gains obtained from the selling of petroleum, to a large degree entirely unrelated to the difficulty of procurement, depending instead upon the manners by which it is appropriated, whether through private or national claims: it is not inheritance common to humankind, but diverted unto private or regional benefit. The drug trade further aggravates this deterioration of the honesty of money through its extravagant measure of easy profits.
Those most able to possess the possibilities of contemporary material society are those most able to develop a manner of acquiring money. This seems logical when we maintain the simple belief that money is more awarded to those whose work is socially worth more. But the vast accumulations of capital generally have very little to do with the effort expended; they are derived from the prerogatives of ownership of the means of production, from appropriation of value created by the many for which they are not entirely compensated, the profit: whether gained directly from the producer or indirectly, the source remains the same. The theory of pure capitalism is that accumulations of power gravitate mainly to individuals most worthy of wielding it, because competition of the marketplace derives from incessant jostling those creations most valued by humanity, and they who achieve this creation are those who exceptionally gain.
As a consequence of the reliance upon the separating principle of money, the ego nature of each being is that which society lauds, forcing the maximum reliance upon this dimension of personality, this restriction of individual potential to the struggle for self-survival. Only insignificant escape is there from the circumambience of modern culture; it is not so much a conspiratorial effort at propaganda, as it is the surpassing achievement thereof, through the pervasive pursuit of profit that determines and distorts virtually every endeavor, and through equating of the quality of life to that which money now does obtain, whether explicitly or implicitly. Any susceptibility of the ego is assiduously plied for the gain it will render, with naught concern for the morality evoked: focus upon orgasmic sexual desire, so lucratively titillating, has elevated the act into the very consummation of existence, with an entrenchment within behavior inextricably deeper than awareness and will. In the streets and in the places, always visible and everywhere seen, is the superfluity of production, the want of integrated concern for social utility —a burning fire of consumption that reaches for the wood to be added unto it. To turn one's eyes from the brightness of the flame, is to see a society transfixed by that flame, beguiled by every enchantment that provides avoidance of the crucible of reality.
We have been taught to equivalate freedom to a degree greater than we would like to realize with the right to purchase what is available and the right to gain the money to make those purchases as best we might contrive — the mythical unlimited opportunity of individualism. Surely it is the consequence of cumulative political propaganda which structures our consciousness so fiercely with attachment to the concept of the marketplace economy, unplanned but through oligopolistic or monopolistic concentrations of capital, often chaotic, and ever in need of governmental regulation to attempt compensation for the social iniquities which naturally arise within such a system. But it has the word "free" attached, in the concept of "free enterprise", and there is no other concept for which the capitalist forces are equally prepared to war for. And this is without bothering to understand the meaning of freedom, in a real human context. There are genuine liberties not to be taken lightly which prevail to different degrees within the so called capitalist countries that stand attractive in comparison to the past history of the totalitarian nations: the right to participate in the election of leadership, however occasional and half hearted be that process, the right to hold the government somewhat accountable for its actions; the right to legal process which is not overly determined by the force of wealth; the right to due processes of law in search and seizure. We can enjoy a degree of freedom, but not appreciate how that degree is allowed by a disproportionate share of material capital; the mistake in thinking occurs when we allow ourselves to be persuaded that we enjoy a quality of existence marked with the name of freedom, as if it were a condition of being obtainable and holdable.
To choose irrevocably an economic system which essentially subjects each person to confrontation against the otherness of society, in a struggle for survival of the fittest, which holds that the prosperity of a species is best obtained by the struggle within that species, member against member, rather than through cooperation, is to choose against any evolutionary redefinition. There is but one freedom we have, and that is to recognize the limitations to our being in the form of Ignorance, however might be the particular mask thereof presented, and struggle to gain but a further increment of our liberation, even if that gain be gotten only in our descendants.
The souls of humankind are multitudinous, and yet they are One, having each sprung from the same ground of being, the Divine. This One, though it is differentiated into myriad hearts, is always aware of the totality of individual suffering and yearning, aware of the Evolution, step by step. It is an Evolution that is faithful only to Itself, That knows no chosen few but for a passing moment, and change is inevitably the Way.
The world does not exist for the realization of capitalism, but capitalism does exist for the realization of the world. The existence of the pyramid cannot be justified by the uniqueness of its creations, but is dependant also upon the ultimate utilization thereof. When the consciousness of the world as a flat map finally fulfills its destiny and attains the sufficiency of the knowledges of technology, it must awaken, and know that the Winds come from every curve of the spherical world, and know that only a social and economic realization which truly pursues the entirety of humankind, can overcome the impasse in the furthering of civilization.
--Morningthunder