Tuesday, January 13, 2009

my solution: does not compute

click on the title below for a link to my other blog:

my solution: does not compute

note: i was reading Nicholas Von Hoffman's piece originally in the Nation on Alternet and reading some of the comments and these are my two cents...

As the discussion of what the criteria which will indicate the system is "fixed" or that the stimulus plan "worked" e.g the Dow Jones @ 10,000, half of the unemployed reemployed, GDP growth back into the positive, ....Ummm I'm quite honestly hoping none of it will work.
I have no faith that we can ever factor a conscience into this system and without it, it can't help but to act like anything other than a sociopathic monstrosity. The problem is that is how competition works by design. Competing firms try to gain an advantage. Where they exhaust innovation and productivity, inevitably they turn to other measures that incur whatever human or ecological cost it can get away with, whenever is not made responsible for the logical conclusion of it's backdoor exploitation (backdoor being outside the shelf price, costs externalized to taxpayers or affected communities). If we did somehow legislate or otherwise orientate the economy to have sociological factors other than wealth distribution and redistribution, those books would be the first to be cooked, since nobody could possibly be able to undo centuries of self reinforcing authoritarian culture and dysfunctional behavior. A sensitivity training will not change anything.
If we look to the old way, this stop gap measure of failed humanity despite our supposed intelligence, for our solutions....we'll get nothing more than the same old problems repackaged , while offsetting the same predictable day of reckoning, to reappear again in the future. This is magical thinking at it's worst. Wanting to believe a cruel indifferent mechanistic view of the world will grow a heart from the good intentions of the innocents begs the question: Why put so much effort into making ourselves adapt to it when it is so dependent on us to exist? Property is the one illusion barricading us from real considerations of reorganization, but that too is an illusion albeit one that will be contested by your local armed gang of property rights enforcers. Plan on it. While no one can own the earth, and time tells us that it is the earth who owns us, regardless whether embalming fluid slows the process down or not. The legacy of this system now is that of spoiled children having a tantrum, souring the abundance the future might have from the poisionous illusions of privledge and arrogance. This is no time for us to trust others with our best interests. Restored balance approaches but it will require sacrafice, a flowery death of sorts, with the heavens we inherit being that next phase of human existence. Make no mistake that when the time comes the current system will cut you down if it is convenient to it's own immediate ends, so take your pick: As Zapata was famous for saying:¡Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!
This situation is nothing if not a clarion call for a new way of organizing ourselves as a society, without top down solutions that reinforce and benefit those in power, or enabling another set of power hungry operators from exploiting the opportunity.This is a time for the braver among us to start choosing differently, to start making those everyday momentary choices more to the ends of building the next world, not sacraficing our children to the gods of the old world.
Unfortunately, this is where the years of rote education leave us. Outrage after outrage after outrage, and no substantial action, no substantial movement that challenges power and shakes the system to it's foundations, as a day of reckoning emerges from the burnt hull of these crisis. The population has been swindled and satiated for years with excess credit and debt as a psychological drug substitute for real choices and real praxis in our lives. Nobody can make sense of any of the constituent pieces we have been taught to take for granted in our socio-economic existence, thus we see mass entertainment embracing absurdity, as it is increasingly reflected in our day to day activities. Why is it we have to deal with an astounding amount of incompetence in this world? Is it because we weren't meant to do that which is easiest and most convenient for the ruling class?? Is it because our lives are exchanged for slave wages, debts and other schemes to ensure our dependence in their degrading system of labor? That fairy tale of easy wealth from asset price inflation isn't coming back just as credit will never be the same again even if nothing else changes. A real solution looks nothing like the predecessor which lead us to this wasteland.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for posting this, great thoughts! I definitely share your anger reading about "solutions" to the crisis, etc when like you said all the options suck- except changing everything up. It really is such a call for self-organization, and I love that you made the point that "sensitivity training" and all the band-aids on white supremacist capitalist patriarchy won't help. It is what it is.

    It can seem like our options are either supporting bailouts for capitalism to keep jobs or watching the economy wreak havoc on people's lives as if just to say "I told you so." Which is BS, its a false either/or dichotomy, a trick to keep us inactive, and I think the answer is self-organization and tough choices based on your context. Like you said, its gonna be time to take bold action. Some interesting examples come to mind like the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, who do some really exemplary direct action in that it improves people's conditions in the here and now.

    I think it was the International Communist Current who talk about "decadence" in capitalism right now because it can't deliver the reforms and goodies that it could (at least to centers of power) post-WWII and even up to recently. And as you said, its so dependent on us, why fix it?

    The link on Praxis is excellent, thanks for sharing that too!

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