Reconceptualizing Masculinity

Excerpt from my contribution to an email thread on the sds Men's Auxillary listserv:
Hey guys,
this is an awesome thread, and thank you both so much for putting yourselves out there like that, it is really inspiring. I hope the thread continues after my addition to it.

To throw my two cents in about the difference between objectification and attraction: I think objectification is one-dimensional physical attraction that tricks us into making an effort to dehumanize the person being objectified (through thinking of them simply as a body, or a body part or through not thinking about the impact of the situation on them, etc.) Attraction, on the other hand, is about the whole person. When I am attracted to someone, it is more than just their physical appearance, it is their personality and mind. Through observing the way I am feeling about someone, I have literally seen myself find them more physically attractive as I get to know them and find them to be more mentally awesome. And I have seen the reverse of that too, I have found unpleasant people become less physically appealing to me as I get to know them.

I have come to see that claims of being horny and wanting to get laid are a socially acceptable way for men to express their loneliness. Getting with someone for a short period of time, while alot of fun, is so fleeting it. It also lacks the emotional depth that I have found in long-term, loving relationships... and I cannot express in words the incredible feeling of fulfillment that I get from that.

One strategy I have found, that has helped me a great deal, is to interpret my sex-drive not just as an impulse to have sex but as an impulse to emotionally connect with a partner. I am so SOOOOOO much happier for it. Instead of focusing solely on sex, like I used to, I now focus on building a strong emotional bond and sense of understanding between me and my partner (which has the added side effect of making the sex much better, especially when you know someone well enough to be able to read their emotions and extrapolate what is going on in their heads). Now my refocused sex drive pushes me to fight the objectification of people in my mind and work really hard at getting to know them and connect before I go to bed with them.
That has been one way I have been challenging the negative ways I am socialized, and reconceptualizing my masculinity.

Sorry this is already a long email, but I am going to address the point of hypersexualization. I see the way our culture teaches men to be hypersexualized as an oppression, one that causes harm to both men and women. Feeling that I have to act hypersexualized to live up to my identity as a man has really messed with me and my relationships. I would also venture to say that women are taught to be hyposexual (something that awesome classes like FemSex fight against by teaching women about female sexuality). These cultural conditionings need to be changed from what seems like a predator/prey relationship between men and women to something more akin to a symbiotic relationship (gotta love analogies from biology class).

My guess as to why so many people condemn sexual activity is that they see the problems that arise from hypersexualization and think that discouraging sex will prevent it (this does not seem to be an effective strategy). Also from a functionalist point of view, before condoms and effective birth control existed, too much sex created too many babies which could destabilize societies, so these societies responded by developing customs to decrease the amount of sex people had.

Some questions to throw out there in the hopes this convo will continue.
*What are some nasty situations people have had that were caused/exacerbated by these issues?
*What are some effective ways people have found to reconceptualize mascuility/male sexuality and live healthier lives?
*How would an ideal feminist guy act in a relationship and treat their partner? How would he start the relationship? Has anyone managed to try this stuff? Lets hear some success stories!
*Men are socialized to not show emotions, how does this interact with hypersexualized male sexuality? How does it affect you?


Lets get some more voices out here, even just talking about this stuff is healing in itself.

peace and love
Will
Berkeley sds

Love 6: A Search

Ok, I promise this is the last blog post on love.
I found a quote that managed to articulate what was still nagging me in this love train of thought. Those moments - when I find others perfectly articulating my thoughts when I cannot - are very special and take my breath away.

"You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly." - Sam Keen

There is such beauty in that phrasing. I understand how people can love deeply flawed people, how even after severe heartbreak forgiveness can overtake one's heart. Love grows anew like the stubborn forest after the fire. With gripping roots intact, it sprouts news trunks, branches and leaves. I understand how abused women can stay with their men. Because love is that powerful, it can and does make people do things that would objectively be against their self-interest. It forces forgiveness upon even stubborn hearts and sews up the deep gashes of heartbreak.

I think I understand now, that she never loved me fully. She was searching for the perfect person, and it was the doubt that I was not he which drove us apart. If she had truly loved me, then she would have seen me as perfectly as I saw her despite the fact that we are both quite imperfect. I fear that most people do not understand this concept. Love does not just develop on its own accord, it is a choice, whether conscious or unconscious. I cannot exactly articulate why it is a choice or exactly what that choice is, the best I can explain is that it is a choice between selfishness and selflessness. Selfishness is to fear the opportunity cost of love, while selflessness is to embrace love. I remember making the choice, to really throw myself into it and love not just for myself, but for her. It may have bought me heartache, but it has brought me more happiness than I can express. Even in the midst of love's melancholy there is a wellspring of joy.

I daresay that I hope to never find the perfect person. I never want to be burdened with a search for them, I think it would be like passing through the fires of hell. As Bob Dylan wrote in his song "Abandoned Love": "The pot of gold is only make believe. The treasure can't be found by men who search." No, I am arrogant enough to hope to be blessed a second time with seeing an imperfect person perfectly.

Love 3: The sweet compulsion of generosity

To continue the blog series I inadvertently started, embracing love, even to the tiny degree I have managed, brings one a vibrant new life. Identifying oneself as primarily a part of something bigger is so incredibly liberating. Acting out of self interest and selfish desires seems hollow now, like a bewitched tree that will only bear rotten fruit. American culture beats utility maximization, money-seeking and selfishness into our heads and claims they will make us happy. Go shopping to make yourself feel better. Eat to get happy. Watch TV to escape the emptiness you feel. Well, these are false logics, I tell you, they are merely a pain killer and fail to address the real cause of our anguish. In fact, it is our faith in these prescriptions and the soul-sucking lifestyle of America that have caused our pain.

Librating ourselves from this pain is surprisingly easy. Generosity springs like a fountain from the embrace of love. Love makes generosity inevitable, a sweet compulsion that brings the gifts of happiness, secruity, strong social bonds with people, and a fulfillment that is so glorious it is hard to describe. Indeed, the life of generosity is the life of happiness. A quote from "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran comes to mind, " And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue; They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space." That quote has been stuck in my mind for over a year, one of those puzzles that my mind runs circles around... and it finally clicked while I was writing this. It is inherently human to give, an inescapable aspect of our nature. You might try to escape the compulsion to give my being selfish, but your reward is always anguish. To try such is like the myrtle in yonder valley not breathing its fragrance, it is contrary to its nature and it would probably suffer from it.

I have started looking for opportunities to give. Not just give from my meager possessions, but give of myself. This mostly manifests itself as helping people. I try to help whenever I am asked. But the gems of the experience are when I can help someone without being asked, through understanding what is going on in their heads and lending a hand. It really makes people feel good.

But many of us flee from this kind of risk. Because it is a risk, to attempt to give as a way of life. There is always the fear of rejection, and the fear that we are missing out on something. Fear of rejection is understandable, many people do not like to accept generosity. But the fear that we are missing out on something is much more insidious. It is akin to the idea of "opportunity cost," and has the nasty habit of eating away at our joy while sowing the seeds of nagging doubt. This fear is the sickened finger of selfishness trying to tear us down, prevent us from embracing love fully. Another great line from The Prophet reads: "Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, thirst that is unquenchable?" Fearing that we will not have something in the future or that we don't have the best of something is a sign of feeling insecure and entitled at the same time. Watch out for this, it has destroyed much good in my life and I would hate to see it happen to you.

Love 2: Conquering Death

Building on the last post, I think that our culture's pernicious fear of death comes from our lack of embracing love. For, if we truly love, then we do not see ourselves as a sea of individuals but as a single ocean. A hand with fingers as opposed to separate fingers. As one cell among trillions in a multi-cellular. If I claimed that each of my cells was independent from the other cells, people would call me crazy. But, they are as independent of each other as humans are from each other and the rest of our environment. The fact that we do not see that is but a cultural blindfold.

Love is our cellular bond. It is what drives people to see themselves not as one individual that has a finite existence, but as part of a community that has existed for millions of years, and will be around when everyone we know is long gone. If we see ourselves this way, we do not fear our own death. Our identity is vested in something immortal instead of in our flesh and blood.

Accounts I have heard from soldiers, rescue personel, police and fire fighters makes me think that their subcultures are closer to achieving this than most of Western culture. Their job is to protect and help others (debatable how well the violent ones achieve that, but that discussion is for another day; the point is they see this as their job). They have embraced a love of their community and are willing to sacrafice their lives for others.

Now, this is not to say that people should not fear immediate dangers to their well-being. What I am talking about is the philisophical fear of death that makes people wish for immortality. It is this fear that caused people to develop the idea of an after-life; as an attempt to quell the thought of non-existance.

I remember when I was in middle school, I was deeply troubled by the thought of death, and I never found the idea of an after-life all that credible. Years of contemplation followed and slowly transformed into my attempts to explain the universe. I did really like the idea that heaven existed and it would be this paradise with all my loved ones, like one giant endless party. It would be pretty nice, but it felt wrong. It felt like false hope. This triggered a thought in my head that is very hard to put into words. I started to question the very idea that I was a singular unit. The idea of a soul, of an individual, of a person, is singularity. I was told by my culture that we are a single static being with neat boundaries and a single soul. My whole world came crashing down, slowly at first, while I still didn't realize that I was breaking down the foundational belief our cultural point of view is built upon. That is bound to have a tumultuous effect on one's mind. So sophmore year of high school was kind of rough.

Reality pushed me to see myself as something dynamic. The following is a summation of several years of contemplation from my adolecense: "I was certainly bigger than I used to be, and generally calmer. I have changed over time... I am not static. My cells turn-over at a fairly fast rate, I intake and expell lots of material. I am greatly affected by everything happening around me, absorbing ideas and behavioral patterns from other people. Maybe the boundaries of my individuality are not so clear cut as they are made out to be. I am as dependent on them for food, shelter, protection and love as the cells of my body are to each other. All this conflicts with the idea of a person having one soul. Why should each cell not have a soul, and I am just a conglomeration of the souls of my cells?" And that last question did it. BAM! My concept of individuality was in ruins and I was left a directionless 14-15 year old. But the seeds of my new framework were there. The best way I can put what I have settled on is: that I am but one small section of strata of a continum from the small to the large in the oneness of everything and everyone. And, without love to glue it all together, none of us would exist. Embracing love has allowed me the contentment of knowing that death is just a reordering of my strata, not the end all be all; I will still be around, because there is no destroying the unity that I find myself to be a part of.

This old saying is true in so many ways:
"Love is truly the only way to conquer death"

Nature of Money

The nature of money is something i spend way too much time contemplating.

It is the basis of capitalism: liquid, imaginary capital that eases the process of trading goods and services. Western civilization is not the only culture to have developed the concept of money either. I remember learning about a culture in a class in Anthropology that I took at Brown. The culture used certain types of rocks as money. Some were small enough to be handled, but there were also boulders that were in circulation. The larger the stone, the more it was worth. Needless to say, they would not move a several ton boulder when it was used in trade. Everyone just REMEMBERED who owned it at any given time. No one could steal it, because it wasn't just a giant rock, it was an cultural meme and a consensus on whose it was. You cannot steal something when in reality it is just a consensus among a group of people. Money is such a weird concept.

In my mind I have defined it in many different ways... it can be a representation of labor, a representation of power, a kind of score in a weird competitive game, a cultural status marker, a representation of a good, and even a representation of consent. But, it is always just a symbol, something people think is important. When that consensus falters, so does the economic system that is built upon the it. It is ironic that the entire capitalist system, which happens to be very secular (if not in name than de facto), relies on faith. Faith that money does represent something more than a number on a screen or a piece of cotton paper that has no functional use. The only reason money has value is because we believe it does, the same reason that boulder was the proverbial pot of gold. The consent and faith of a large group of people gives things value. If people stopped believing that those boulders had value, or consented that one person "owned" them, then they would be as worthless as any other boulder.

Right now, I work because I need to increase an electronic number, that I can check over the internet. I distribute a quantity of this number to others to get various things like food, housing, and electricity. This signifies both my faith that increasing my number is worth spending 50 hours a week at work, and the belief of others that they want a quantity of my number enough to give me things I need to live. This just strikes me as weird arrangement. It reminds me of the story of the a guy who sold his most of his stuff to buy a virtual space station in an online computer game for $20,000. He is now a millionaire because he turned the space station into an imaginary shopping mall where people buy virtual goods for real money. It is just decreasing your number to buy an idea, and that idea ends up increasing your number because lots of other people like to interact with the idea. Then you can use that increased number to buy real things.

I was reading some money the other day and every bill has this phrase on it: "This note is legal tender for all debts public and private." This statement is meant to reinforce the belief that money has value. And it is an authoritative message, coming from the organization that has the consent of the general population. (Non-sequitor: This also signifies the value we put in printed documents and writing. If something is written down, it is generally considered to be more powerful. Ex: Written vs verbal contracts, religions of the book vs other non-text based religions, use of documents to prove stuff like your identity.. etc.). The point is that institutions have put effort into maintaining and reinforcing people's confidence in money, it is not natural or inherent in humans, it is a cultural meme that has been maticulously constructed and maintained in the minds of the general population.

To sum up...
Money is a multi-faceted symbol of faith, it symbolizes the fact that billions of people put their faith in the idea that money is something real. Belief has made it real and a power in our current culture. Money has value because we all agree it has value. That is the power of consent, the power of belief. It can make a useless boulder or a worthless piece of cotton paper into valuable items that people seek to possess. If anyone doubts the malleability of human culture, they should take a long deep look at the idea of money. When people claim a social system will not work because of X, Y and Z, they are really just writing a self-fulfilling prophecy. Of course it will not work if we think it will fail. In truth, we can have any kind of society we want, we just have to believe in it.

A Revolution is Just a Spinning of the Wheel

I mistrust the notion of revolution.  Far too many people put stock in it as an effective way to change society, but even a brief gloss-over of history tells me that it is not particularly effective. Take Russia for example.  They have had several revolutions in the past 200 years both violent and peaceful, yet they still have an authoritarian government, it may be composed of different people, but it is still essentially the same as the Tsar monarchy or the Soviet-style government. China too, several revolutions, still authoritarian.  Then there are countless third world countries that have had revolutions galore, and we can see how well that has worked out for them. We could take the French revolution as the archetype of revolution.  They overthrew an absolute monarch and large, powerful factions such as the Sansculottes pushed for direct democracy.  The core of the intellectual support for the French revolution supported more democracy, and indeed has inspired the rest of the world with its idealism.  Yet they ended up empowering Napoleon in the near absolute power of an Emperor.   If there were to be a revolution in the typical sense in America, I do not believe it would achieve the ends we desire. 

I am reminded of the analysis provided in 1984 about before Oceania's type of government:  there were always revolutions that would overthrow one group of oligarchs and replace them with another group.  Indeed, a republic is designed to institutionalize this process, stabilizing the switching of control and reducing disruption.  It also stabilizes the groups who maintain power, allowing them to entrench themselves more effectively and simply change places with each other every few years.  Kind of scary to think that a republic, what we have now in America, is an institutionalization of the cycle of revolution.  I am not particularly interesting in changing who has the reigns of power, which may be why I am never had a particular interest in working to elect politicians or bothering rich people to do things.

  

True to its definition, revolution is just the spinning of the wheel, you always end up where you started.  Myself, I am not interested in spinning my wheels... what I want to do is change the wheel itself.  History, again, can aid in understanding this.  There have been numerous wheel-changing events in history, among the most prominent are the industrial revolution and the enlightenment.  They both defined the lenses that the world has been seen through since they came about.  What is phenomenal about them is that they were not specifically directed at the power structures themselves, they were simple shifts in our view of the world and how one acts in it.  

I have come across the idea of wheel changing events before; something that happens that changes everything.  For indigenous populations, exposure to western civilization has been wheel-changing, their cultures are disrupted, and they are often forced to abandon their way of life.  Forced in the military sense, or in the generational shift-sense when the next generation has to stop living the way they did to survive.   But, the best description of a wheel-changing event that I have come across yet comes from literature.  The Riverworld series describes how an ancient society accidentally developed an artificial soul generator that automatically bound souls to new sentient beings.  So, this society changed its newborns without even knowing it, and in the space of only a couple generations, all the beings without these souls were gone because of old age.   This is a great metaphor for generational change.  One generation develops something, the next generation is imbued with it and it becomes an indestructible part of our society.

This seems to be the main wheel-changing method that humanity has at its disposal, and it can be boiled down to mass education, motivation, and changes in each of our ways of life.  To change society, you really have to change the way people think and act, because what else is society but the aggregate of all of our thoughts and actions.  

The industrial revolution was a revolution of mind, it shifted the priorities in life more directly toward profit, productivity and self-interest away from the typical human priority of social networking and the reciprocal economy.  It manifested itself in the day to day behavior of people and in their way of life.  It was compelling enough to spread like a plague across the earth, infecting all those it touched.  

I also think that the 60s was a wheel-changing event in opposition to the industrial revolution's, as it prompted people to change their priorities away from profit.  In fact, I believe that the old sds's long-haul strategy of radicalizing (educating) young people was key in the effectiveness of this specific event.  Without a de-centralized yet organized education and motivation effort, wheel-changing events are much harder to produce.  

Without this hard work of changing minds, we will not see success in our movement.  In the eternal words of Monty Python: "Power is derived from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony."  Too often people on the left focus on the power structures in a society, when we should be focusing on the real power in human society - each other.

Dueling Logics

I have been toying around with an idea I call "dueling logics." I call it that because it seems there are several ideas and notions that are at odds with each other, that different groups put their weight behind and that everyone thinks are mutually exclusive to each other. I will give some background on how I came upon this idea. It all came about from the unanswerable question "can God make a rock he herself could not life?" My answer is yes, if we assume God is all powerful. then she does not have to follow the laws of logic. Well, after occasionally contemplating this for a couple years, I free-associated it to the notion that competing logics are either right or wrong and mutually exclusive to their competitors. For example, either violence does not work and so non-violence does, or vice versa. Or the logic of fear that pushes mistrust of others as security and the logic of hope that pushes generosity as security. Or authoritarianism and anti-authoritarianism. And among these dueling logics, they all claim that the other logic is faulty and that their's is true.
Well, it occurred to me, maybe the laws of logic are breakable in one sense... maybe they both co-exist and both hold elements of truth in them despite the fact they claim to be fundamentally incompatable.

I will use the example of violence and non-violence cause I have alot of experience thinking about it. Violence purports to be able to scare people into consent and that non-violence will be unable to accomplish that consent. Non-violence purports to be able to create consent through understanding and generosity, and that violence simply rifts the bonds that allow provide security. Well, I do not see why both logics are mutually exclusive, I think they both hold some truth and some untruth (I do favor non-violence, and think it is more practical and full of truth). There is truth in the fact that violence does get people's consent to stop doing or do something. It has lots of bad repercussions, but for the single-minded pursuit of an objective, I can see where many people would fall into it's trap. Non-violence needs to recognize this truth if it is to further develop a strategy to remove the use of violence from conflicts. Similarly, violence needs to recognize that there is a large amount of "collateral damage" when violence is used, not just in unintended material damage and death but in the emotional scarring of people as well as entire societies. Using non-violence would prevent these negative repercussions.

So, that is something I have been trying to do, find the truth that underlies all sides of "dueling logics" even if I disagree with those sides. The fact that a large number of people put faith in some ideas means that they cannot be entirely devoid of truth. Logics, no matter how much they claim to be mutually exclusive, are not and we should not believe they are.

It is also interesting that modern religions claim to be mutually exclusive to each other. If you believe in one, you don't believe in the others. This was not always the case. Back during the Roman empire, the Pantheon of Gods accepted outsiders among their ranks, so in a Roman city you might see an Egyptian God prayed to by the same people who pray to a Greek God. People did not see this as odd or contradictory because mutual exclusivity was not an intergral part of religions back then. People could piece together their own religion from the different strands avaliable.
Interestingly enough, I can't remember too many religious wars back then either.

Walk the Earth as Humans

Building upon the thinking in my previous post, motivation to profit has started to seem like the crutch on which capitalism leans. In "The Age of Revolution" Hobsbawm talks about how employers during the early stages of the transition to capitalism would complain about the "laziness" of their employees. These people would work enough to make ends meet, and then stop. They were not used to the consistent work of industry, where one needs to be on time and to stay the whole time. Workers were more used to the farm and rural mentality of working whenever, and making your own hours. The combination of lack of motivation to work extra and to stay working annoyed the employers... because it cut their efficiency and profits. And this didn't happen just in urban centers of proto-capitalist economies, it happened in colonies and the outskirts of "civilization" too. It is a stereotype in my mind that British colonial officials would always complain about the laziness of the indigenous people. Anthropology pointed out to me that our civilization stereotypes indigenous societies as lazy and unproductive too.

Once the capitalist motivation of profit took hold in people with authority and power, they sought to use other people as tools to profit, and when these people stubbornly resisted by not conforming to capitalist ideals of a worker. But, as people had become tools to profit in the eyes of business owners and employers, they justified terrible repressions. Material starvation was one tecnique that was used to get more work out of their workers. They cut wages, to force them to work longer, and used the law. When the workers fought back by forming unions, these were attacked by the methods of coercion at the disposal of the powerful. This began the protracted war over labor rights which continues to this day. Another method to motivate people was to place immense obligations on their shoulders, such as military service and debt.

But the most effective method they used was cultural re-education. The early capitalists wanted everyone to think like they did, that profit is what they should seek and self-interest is the primary motivator. After three centuries of capitalistic re-education of society and culture shifting, we can see the success of this approach. Our entire civilization is now based on money as a motivator. It is true, there has been significant resistence to this belief, which is why it is not too surprising how many people still live in poverty. Fear of making ends meet, of feeding your family and keeping a roof over their heads is an immensely powerful motivator, and it ensures that people continue to buy into the capitalism by selling their labor and conforming to the rules.

Martin Luther King said something like "Humanity has learned to swim in the sea like a fish and fly in the sky like a bird, but we still can't walk the earth like a man." I think to put it more correctly, we forgot how to walk like a person. This analogy is very astute and gets to the heart of the problem. Humans were not meant to live this way, it is physcially and mentally destructive. Placing profit over people corrupts people's souls, and is mentally oppressive to those who think that way. Walking the earth, as MLK implies, would require us to treat people as an end in themselves instead of a tool. Something that I think most lefties dont realize is that capitalism is an oppression on the affleuent and power as well as on the down-trodden and working class. Where the majority of people suffer from material poverty, the rich suffer from a spiritual poverty that I find to be much more oppressive. And by spiritual I don't mean faith in God, or religion, I mean how much fulfillment one gets out of life; how people treat each other and the ramifications that has on their minds; lack of a deeper meaning than materialism; and suffering from a severe disconnection with other people.

Spiritual poverty is generated because people are not meant to live this way. Humans are social creatures and we have certain dispositions toward each other that capitalism disrupts. Generosity, connection, reciprocacy, and the social glue that holds a society together are all hard-wired into our brains, and when capitalism disrupts them it lays a yoke upon the mind of a person. This burden is so heavy it causes us to flee to transient pleasures to dull the pain and try to escape.

In Kentucky, people took care of each other. It is true that poverty took its toll with alcoholism, drugs, alienation and mental illness. But poverty also brings people together, it connects them and can build strong social ties. Lack of material comfort does not seem too harsh if one's family and friends are there, protecting each other. The affluent world I gained a view of at Brown was much worse, in my opinion. In the words of the Union song "Bread and Roses" by Bobbie McGee, "Hearts starve as well as bodies." And I see starvation of the heart to be a common affliction among the rich.

The capitalist motivation meme seems to have taken on a life of its own. It spurrs us into spending our collective time and energy on things that are not important, into things and not into people. Last time I was flying I had a window seat, and as I looked down, I noticed that I could always see something made by people. We have built so much, and yet we don't realize that it is more important to put effort into people. This does give me hope though. If we could push ourselves to do all this, build this entire world in a couple centuries, then we could push ourselves to do anything. Human culture is surprisingly flexible and powerful, we have drifted so far from our nature, and its impact is also quite impressive.

Capitalism (the Game!)

The more I think about capitalism, the more it seems to fit into the "game" category. Except it is perhaps the most complex game out there, and your survival depends on playing it. I think the most game-esque part of capitalism is the stock market, where you watch a bunch of numbers go up and down and you try to make more money based on when you buy and sell. Almost all of the people playing have more than enough money to live comfortably, but they are still focused on raising their own personal score. It is a symptom of a culture that is obsessed with over-accumulation.


Consumerism. That was the answer capitalism developed to answer the problem of the "stationary state." This idea was introduced to me by a book by Eric Hobsbawm titled "The Age of Revolution." As profit is the main motivator in the game of capitalism, if people are not motivated to profit, they will quite soon reach a point where they are quite satisfied with their position in life, and no longer seek to profit.  This is a stationary state, where people no longer seek to profit because they have enough.  I have fallen into such a state, I really have no motivation to make money and my living conditions are pretty good. I am not being a very good consumer, and I could see that the capitalism system would be in deep trouble if most people acted the way I am.  To avoid this pitfall, that would have reduced profits, consumerism evolved.

It actually reminds me of many video games. In Dungeons and Dragons based games like Diablo II and Nethack you walk around killing evil things, getting gold and new equipment. That is all the game is, getting new stuff by killing things... it is almost like gambling, because every time you kill something you have a chance to get something really good. It can be pretty addicting. I wonder how many of you thought I could compare capitalism to Diablo II. In games like Age of Empires II and Starcraft your objective is to conquer your competitor, but to do that, you have to develop an economy where you accumulate resources and assets. If you manage your assests affectively, you win. If not, then you lose. In Thief, you have to steal a certain amount of money. They are all focused on counters... little numbers that tell you how well you are doing. Sounds like the stock market to me.

I was looking at my bank statement the other day and asking myself how much happier I would be if my account was larger. Would I be happier if it were twice as much? How about 100 times as much? What would be the point of having that? What would I do with it? Why are so many people happier when the number on their bank statements are higher? I am still not sure why, which is a failing on my part, failing to understand other people. The only possible explanation I have been able to come up with is that they are approaching it the way I approach games, in that it is fun to test one's skills and see how good one can get. Well, I hate to be the one to say it, but basing a way of life on what amounts to a game is a horrible, HORRIBLE idea. Games were meant as training for real life, not to become real life! It seems that this is another example of goal displacement.

The truth is, the only reason I would be happier if the number on my bank account was bigger would be because it meant I got to give my money away to my friends and family. To help them in whatever way I could figure out.  And once I did that, the number would fall sharply.  I see no other reason why I would want alot of money. Some would respond to that by saying, "oh, but then you wouldn't have to work." But I like work! I would get depressed if I did not have something to do, something to really sink my teeth into. I have done experiments on myself, "Sloth" makes me unhappy. I am quite certain I would just end up giving my money away if I had any extra beyond what I would want to have on hand during an emergency. I don't want to have any more, I do not want that burden. As Kahlil Gibran said in "The Prophet": "The fear of thirst when your well is full is the thirst that is unquenchable."

No, the meaning of my life is not profit, something I am greatly thankful to my parents for imbuing in me. The meaning of life (well, atleast mine) is other people. And I see no other motivator that could bring me as much fulfillment and happiness as that one.

The Dread of Thirst

One of my favorite quotes of all time. "The dread of thirst when your well is full is the thirst that is unquenchable." from "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran.

This is a great analogy for our current economic crisis. Fear of loss dominates the market right now, and caused the bank-runs and near collapse of AIG that we have witnessed. And that fear will consume the trust that keeps the market afloat until it is addressed. The ironic thing is, people with stocks are generally well-off. They have the material comforts they need, but it is still not enough, they still thirst for more. This thirst causes them to, as a group, act in ways that will cause pain , alienation, and mistrust which inherently dirupt human social interactions, including the market.

It is not only the unquenchable thirst that capitalism creates, but the inequity which it distributes wealth that has caused this economic trouble. As the average person finds it harder and harder to purchase their necessities, there will be less spending and fewer people spending. And that will hurt the economy. Let me put it another way, concentrating wealth in the hands of fewer people will decrease economic prosperity.

The foundation of the global economy rest on the necessities. Food, clothing, shelter, and each other. The more people who can have all of these, the higher the GDP. When more people do not have these fundamentals, fear begins to infect society. The thirst for more starts triggering the fear of less, and in our society, this seems to cause people to act selfishly. It is the selfish impulse to limit one's losses that has caused these banks to fail. I believe, that if enough people decided to have confidence in an organization, it would not fall apart. Belief in a social system is what keeps in afloat, whatever the system. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If people believe something stable, then it continues to survive even if it is inherently unstable. And so if dread of want, loss and, yes, thirst begin to prevail the social system becomes unstable because people have lost faith in it.

Bucky said something like this the other day, "For all the fancy math that economists do, it is amazing how much emotions and belief factor into how the economy is doing."

For our own sakes, I want us to stop dreading thirst.

RYM and societal change.

RYM.  The Revolutionary Youth Movement.  It is something I have been thinking about alot lately, analyzing and reflecting upon its historical impact. 

RYM was a strategic vision that SDS laid out in the 60s, not to be confused with the sds sectarian groups that named themselves RYM I (which eventually became the weathermen) and RYM II (that went maoist and communist and eventually gave birth to countless splinter groups).  Now, I don't think I am getting this exactly correct... but what Michael Lerner described in one of his unpublished books is the basis for this understanding of RYM...  The strategy was simple and very long-term.  The idea was education based: you make a concerted and structured effort to teach as many young people as possible about progressive politics, ethics, and ideas.  You convince them and give them a reason for investing themselves in those politics. When they leave school they will go into the world and spread the ideas, and live their lives by them as much as is possible inside the system.  This will have a culture shifting impact.  Their actions will shift the perceptions of those around them.  Their contributions to their communities will change localities.  

This strategy combines the finest strengths of the left.  Strength of ideas, education, embodiment of principles, decentralized structure and grassroots action are all combined into an extremely long-term strategy that appears to have been quite effective.  It acknowledged the shifts that always occur when generations turn-over.  As new generations come and older ones leave, culture changes.  RYM takes advantage of this natural process of culture change by attempting to reform society by reshaping the minds of new generations.  

Unfortunately, RYM was only practiced for... perhaps the better part of a decade, if not less.  But it's impact is striking.  Take the issue of racism for example.  50 years ago, racism was the dominant viewpoint among large swaths of the American public, including in my hometown of Edmonton.  But now, racism has been forced underground.  It is now a shameful thing to be seen as or acting as a racist.  

But aside from issue oriented changes, I would also like to see how 5 to 10 years of RYM affected the life of a single person... me.  I am proud to say my parents were both products of RYM, whether they know it or not.   The ideas they garnered from the 60s allowed them to move to rural Kentucky and raise me there.  My mom's strong strain of feminism probably would have not been able to develop had it not been for RYM, and I would have lost one of the major positive influences on the way I structure my behavior toward everyone.  My Dad's political side also had an immense impact on shaping my perspective and direction in life.   

The compassion and dedication both of my parents have shown through their social work were, in part, inspired by their politics which were shaped by RYM.   Their dedication to helping others, even if you have to live "in the trenches" as my Dad has said, has consistently inspired me to live up to their example.  

Now lets look at the town I grew up in.  It is a town of 1500 people in rural Kentucky.  The poverty rate is nearly 25%. According to my Dad, there were duels in the streets in the 50s.  However, over the past 3 decades things have calmed down.  There are still plenty of problems, but since the influx in the 70s of hippies and people shaped by RYM, the culture of the county has changed.  Many of these hippie settlers have become community leaders.  Their children have gone on to change the minds of their peers and further the reverberating effects of RYM.  I can see the culture-shifting affects in my hometown of the concerted efforts of relatively small group of tens of thousands of young adults over the course of several years trying to institute RYM.  If between 5 and 10 years of instituting RYM can so drastically change our society that a small rural town in the middle of no where Kentucky is impacted this much, then imagine what a organized effort of 20 years of RYM could do.  With this technique we could restructure the very foundations upon which our society rests over the course of the next 100 years.  

Strategy for Changing the US... Take 1

I wrote most of this about a month ago, and was going to add more, but life became really busy, so I decided to publish this as is, since it has been a month an a half since I wrote something.

The question in front of us is not naming the system, or even understanding it, but figuring out how to rebuild it and our society to reflect our highest vision. The people exist to do it. The resources exist to do it. The motivation exists to do it. The only reason it has not happened is because we don't agree on how to do it and we are not organized enough to implement it. We need to understand

This is my first try at setting down a skeletal strategy to restructure our entire society to make it more human, democratic, sustainable, and a generally affirming way of life. This strategy is still in bits and pieces at this point, but I think there is some worth in writing it down so i dont forget.

1. Create local democratic structures. Not sure what these will look specifically, but I imagine them as General Assemblies for non-administrative decision-making, with working groups (open to everyone) to execute tasks. If working groups become too large (What a problem that would be! Too much participation, is it possible?), then they can be split into several working groups that coordinate activity. The judicial system would stop being punitive, and become a rehabilitating presence. It would consist of a system where people would share their grievances and perspectives with each other, as well as consensus-based sentencing.

This really needs further study and experimentation in my opinion, hopefully with some resources behind this endeavor.

2. Non-violent Army. Just a really cool idea that has been stuck in my head for a few years now. They would have the discipline and cohesion of a regular army, minus the extreme hierarchy and violence. They would put their lives on the line for others, just like violent army soldiers and they would be extensively trained in conflict resolution, non-violent tactics and strategy, as well as human behavior. The non-violent army would be trained to confront violent forces as well as other non-violent forces. They would go on campaigns against various injustices across the country, mobilizing thousands. Again, resources are the key problem, as well as research into how to do it. The know-how is extremely important. Hopefully we will be able to create the equivalent of army manuals for the nv army.

3. Parallel Structures. With some local democratic institutions in place, these towns and counties could start forming parallel structures to state and federal governments. These would do everything that an organization composed of the entire community should do, including provide social services (police, hospitals, firefighters, general social support, protection and help)

The Way Out of Madness

I believe it was Martin Luther King who said "The curve of the universe is toward Justice." and Gandhi who told us to look back at history when we despair and see how "the way of truth and love has always won" in the end. Indeed, Love is the foundation of human society, so how it be any other way.

It is utter madness to me, all the violence and hatred that is infecting us. A pandemic of Madness on a scale that has scarce been seen in the annuals of human existence. But the cure does exist. In all its many forms, it has existed since the beginning. However unrefined it may be at this point in history, it has caused the collapse of empires and the restructuring of societies. Always has this cure been based on love, never on hate or apathy. This cure has been wielded by the greats of history to make their worlds better. The Plebeians of Athens used it to bring greater equality to their city. Jesus wielded it against the Romans and the corrupted officials of his land. Buddha used it against the corruption he saw in his own society. Gandhi used it in India, MLK used it in America.
The way out of Madness, the cure to the sickness of hatred is to embrace the love that all human organization and life is built upon. Understanding why this is, is the quintessential necessity behind vaccinating future generations against the diseases of the soul that our world is experiencing.

The way out of Madness is not just an idealistic approach, it is entirely practical. Humans are hard-wired to love, to want to be together, and to live for each other. This is the reason that isolation is a universal punishment across human societies.
Many will throw out examples of people who fail to live up to this ideal, i.e. misanthropes, psychopaths, etc. Unfortunately, there are many people who are so damaged by their experiences, so unable to cope with the horrible situations they are in, that they have fallen for false logics which compel them to do yet more damage to themselves and those around them. To heal these we must not ostracize them or isolate them, we must embrace them and show them the love that every human deserves. This is the idea behind rehabilitation prisons, and why punitive prisons consistently fail to prevent crime. The design of human nature makes this an inevitable fact.

The way out of Madness encompasses non-violence, as violence will only enrage and firm up the will of one's opponent. Violence will only drive a wedge between brothers and force them to believe each other to be less than human. Indeed, the way out of Madness is to believe that we are all humans and treat each other with the dignity that all humans deserve.

The full breadth of the way out of Madness is so expansive that it could not be contained within an entire encyclopedia set. But it can be boiled down to its essence, which is The Golden Rule.
Love all as you would have them love you.

Funeral

I was in Pennsylvania for my Grandfather's funeral for alittle over a week. It was really wonderful to see all of my family, and it was reaffirming at this sad time. All 10 of my cousins on that side of the family were there, along with my brother, which is a first. The 12 of us have never been together in one place before. I just wish that we hadn't been brought together by such a sad occasion. But, I have the feeling that we will all be together again in early June for my cousin Rich's wedding.

I was a a pallbearer along with my brother and my other male cousins (all seven of us). I am glad that we were all there, not just because it was good to be together, but because the coffin was very heavy. It was made of very beautiful mahogany, which was my Grandpa's favorite wood. The ceremony in the church and at the cemetery were surprisingly reaffirming. They brought our family and Grandpa's extended community together to share our grief and support each other. Looking at it from an anthropological standpoint, this ceremony is not only meant to be a send-off to the person who has passed away, but to bring people together; to reinforce a community of people who have suffered a severe loss, and to provide an outlet for grief. It is a ritual that had a palpable affect on the mood of my family. It helped everyone overcome the loss and united us to support each other. Whoever devised such a ritual obviously had a great deal of insight into human society and what people need when they sustain such a loss.

I believe the spirit of my Grandpa was present in the funeral. He devoted so much himself to his family, he gave everything to us and treated us wonderfully. His kindness and generosity helped to make our family strong and loving. It is fitting then that his funeral served to reinforce us and to help us. I think he would have been very happy to know that even in death he could help his family and give them strength. At the cemetery was very cold and windy, half of the people gathered were shivering. But, at the end, the sun came out and took the chill out of the air. It was such a magical moment, like he was saying goodbye.

My Grandfather will always serve as an example to me of how I should live my life. He had his priorities straight, with his family always coming first. Generosity, kindness, and humor were among his most notable traits. His selflessness bore fruits so rich and sweet that he managed to hang onto life for years while living in a very difficult state. I hope that one day I will be able to emulate his generosity and selflessness.