Social proof, that is what it all comes down to. Without a significant number of people believing something, it isn't going to happen. Non-violence needs more social proof to be seen as a mainstream solution. Luckily, even the under-developed ideas that currently constitute non-violent thought show how powerful it can be at creating social proof.
The best way to do this is to develop a body of knowledge on how non-violence works, as well as a group of people to go around and exercise these methods. It is only in acting on these ideas and principles in a very public way that we can prove their effectiveness. So, we need to both develop an institute to study the subject (already a few in existence!) and a systematic group to practice and refine methods. There are plenty of groups using non-violence out there, but they do not do it systematically and experimentally, nor do they take meticulous notes on it. Non-violent Peaceforce comes as close to this as I have seen. As much as I love them (they are friggin' amazing!) I wish they would put more effort into smaller scale trainings that would empower locals to fight their own battles as well as be part of the NP network. While I totally dig their interventions in the Phillipines and Sri Lanka, I think there is so much more potential than only in those two places. I want something with the capacity to train thousands in the U.S. every year.
I also think that NP focuses too much on peacekeeping as a third party activity. Part of what makes non-violence so powerful is employing it to fight a conflict, not just as a third party peacekeeper. I want to prove to the public that we can fight and win a war non-violently. And to do that, I think it will take thousands of people across the country using non-violent techniques against violent attackers and winning... and making the point that the only reason they won was because of the use of non-violence.
I will give some examples of what I have in mind... I want an organization that can train:
Unions to be more effective at their struggles.
Groups fighting for civil rights issues (racism, sexism, homophobia)
Poverty fighters
College activists
Copwatches - I want them to have the legal authority to intervene if a police officer is doing something illegal, and they will have to win that.
Environmental activists.
People to deal with day to day conflicts in their own lives...
The list could go on for awhile.
I want to help develop an alternative to the violent military and something that can win against the military-industrial complex. I want to disabuse the global public of its infatuation with and belief in violence. I want to give the movement a weapon more effective than violence so that we can transform this world.
Showing posts with label Capitalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Capitalism. Show all posts
Monday, May 25, 2009
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
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.
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.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
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.
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.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
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.
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.
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