Occupy Wall Street: No Demand is Big Enough
This week we take a break from the serialization of Sacred Economics: Money, Gift and Society in the Age of Transition to present an article inspired by the protests across the country connected to #occupywallstreet. We will resume with Chapter 13 of Sacred Economics next Thursday.
Looking out upon the withered American Dream, many of us feel a deep sense of betrayal. Unemployment, financial insecurity, and lifelong enslavement to debt are just the tip of the iceberg. We don't want to merely fix the growth machine and bring profit and product to every corner of the earth. We want to fundamentally change the course of civilization. For the American Dream betrayed even those who achieved it, lonely in their overtime careers and their McMansions, narcotized to the ongoing ruination of nature and culture but aching because of it, endlessly consuming and accumulating to quell the insistent voice, "I wasn't put here on earth to sell product." "I wasn't put here on earth to increase market share." "I wasn't put here on earth to make numbers grow."
We protest not only at our exclusion from the American Dream; we protest at its bleakness. If it cannot include everyone on earth, every ecosystem and bioregion, every people and culture in its richness; if the wealth of one must be the debt of another; if it entails sweatshops and underclasses and fracking and all the rest of the ugliness our system has created, then we want none of it.
No one deserves to live in a world built upon the degradation of human beings, forests, waters, and the rest of our living planet. Speaking to our brethren on Wall Street, no one deserves to spend their lives playing with numbers while the world burns. Ultimately, we are protesting not only on behalf of the 99% left behind, but on behalf of the 1% as well. We have no enemies. We want everyone to wake up to the beauty of what we can create.
Occupy Wall Street has been criticized for its lack of clear demands, but how do we issue demands, when what we really want is nothing less than the more beautiful world our hearts tell us is possible? No demand is big enough. We could make lists of demands for new public policies: tax the wealthy, raise the minimum wage, protect the environment, end the wars, regulate the banks. While we know these are positive steps, they aren't quite what motivated people to occupy Wall Street. What needs attention is something deeper: the power structures, ideologies, and institutions that prevented these steps from being taken years ago; indeed, that made these steps even necessary. Our leaders are beholden to impersonal forces, such as that of money, that compel them to do what no sane human being would choose. Disconnected from the actual effects of their policies, they live in a world of insincerity and pretense. It is time to bring a countervailing force to bear, and not just a force but a call. Our message is, "Stop pretending. You know what to do. Start doing it." Occupy Wall Street is about exposing the truth. We can trust its power. When a policeman pepper sprays helpless women, we don't beat him up and scare him into not doing it again; we show the world. Much worse than pepper spray is being perpetrated on our planet in service of money. Let us allow nothing happening on earth to be hidden.
If politicians are disconnected from the real world of human suffering and ecosystem collapse, all the more disconnected are the financial wizards of Wall Street. Behind their computer screens, they occupy a world of pure symbol, manipulating numbers and computer bits. Occupy Wall Street punctures their bubble of pretense as well, reconnects them with the human consequences of the god they serve, and perhaps with their own consciences and humanity too. Only in a hallucination could someone imagine that the unsustainable can last forever; in puncturing their bubble, we remind them that the money game is nearing its end. It can be perpetuated for a while longer, perhaps, but only at great and growing cost. We, the 99%, are paying that cost right now, and as the environment and the social fabric decay, the 1% will soon feel it too. We want those who operate and serve the financial system to wake up and see before it is too late.
We can also point out to them that they sooner or later they will have no choice. The god they serve, the financial system, is a dying god. Reading various insider financial websites, I perceive that the authorities are flailing, panicking, desperately implementing solutions they themselves know are temporary just to kick the problem down the road a few years or a few months. The strategy of lending even more money to a debtor who cannot pay his debts is doomed, its eventual failure a mathematical certainty. Like all our institutions of exponential growth, it is unsustainable. Once you have stripped the debtor of all assets - home equity, savings, pension - and turned every last dollar of his or her disposable income toward debt service, once you have forced the debtor into austerity and laid claim even to his future income (or in the case of nations, tax revenues), then there is nothing left to take. We are nearing that point, the point of peak debt. The money machine, ever hungry, seeks to liquidate whatever scraps remain of the natural commons and social equity to reignite economic growth. If GDP rises, so does our ability to service debt. But is growth really what we want? Can we really cheer an increase in housing starts, when there are 19 million vacant housing units on the market already? Can we really applaud a new oil field, when the atmosphere is past the limit of how much waste it can absorb? Is more stuff really what the world needs right now? Or can we envision a world instead with more play and less work, more sharing and less buying, more public space and less indoors, more nature and less product?
So far, government policy has been to try somehow to keep the debts on the books, but every debt bubble in history ultimately collapses; ours is no different. The question is, how much misery will we endure, and how much will we inflict, before we succumb to the inevitable? And secondly, how can we make a gentle, non-violent transition to a steady-state or degrowth world? Too many revolutions before us have succeeded only to institute a different but more horrible version of the very thing they overthrew. We look to a different kind of revolution. At risk of revealing the stars in my eyes, let me call it a revolution of love.
What else but love would motivate any person to abandon the quest to maximize rational self-interest? Love, the felt experience of connection to other beings, contradicts the laws of economics as we know them. Ultimately, we want to create a money system, and an economy, that is the ally not the enemy of love. We don't want to forever fight the money power to create good in the world; we want to change the money power so that we don't need to fight it. I will not in this essay describe my vision - one of many - of a money system aligned with the good in all of us. I will only say that such a shift can only happen atop an even deeper shift, a transformation of human consciousness. Happily, just such a transformation is underway today. We see it in anyone who had dedicated their lives to serving, healing, and protecting other beings: people, cultures, whales, children, ecosystems, the waters, the forests, the planet.
In the ecological age, we are beginning to understand that we are connected beings, that the welfare of any species or people is aligned with our own. Our money system is inconsistent with this understanding, which is dawning among all 100 percent of us, each in a different way. I think the ultimate purpose of Occupy Wall Street, or the great archetype it taps into, is the revolution of love. If the 99% defeat the 1%, they will like the Bolsheviks ultimately create a new 1% in their place. So let us not defeat them; let us open them and invite them to join us.
If Occupy Wall Street has a demand, it should be this: wake up! The game is nearly over. Jump ship while there is still time. In my work I meet many people of wealth who have done that, exiting the money game and devoting their time to giving away money as beautifully as they can. And I meet many more people who have the skills and good fortune to earn wealth if they wanted to, but who likewise refuse to participate in the money game. So if I sound idealistic, keep in mind that many people have had a change of heart already.
Some might call these ideas impractical (though I think that nothing other than a change of heart is practical), and seek to issue concrete demands. Unfortunately, though no demand is big enough, yet equally any demand we would care to make is also too big. Everything we want is on the very margin of mainstream political discourse, or outside it altogether. For example, it might be within the range of respectable policy options to tighten standards on industrial-scale confinement meat operations; but how about ending the practice completely? Congress wrangles about whether or not to reduce troop levels by a few thousand here and there, but what about ending the garrisoning of the planet? Any demand that we could make that is within the realm of political reality is too small. Any demand we could make that reflects what we truly want is politically unrealistic.
Shall we fight hard for something we don't even want? It is fine to make demands, but the movement cannot get hung up on them, much less on practicality, because any remotely achievable demand is far less than what our planet needs. "Practical" is not an option. We must seek the extraordinary.
We might come up with a list of demands, something we can all stand behind, albeit each with a secret reservation in his or her heart that says, "I wanted more than that." I encourage those in the movement to recognize such demands as stepping stones, or landmarks, perhaps, on the road to an economy of love. Let us never mortgage a greater to a lesser. The means of the movement, more than the ends, will be the genesis of what comes after the debt pyramid collapses. Occupy Wall Street is practicing new forms of non-hierarchical collaboration, peer-to-peer organization, and playful action that someday, maybe, we can build a world on.
We must learn the lessons of Egypt, where a people's movement started with the amorphous demand to end intolerable conditions, and, as it discovered its power, soon turned to demand the ouster of the president. That demand would have been too big at the outset, too impossible; yet at the end it proved to be too small. The dictator left, the protestors went home without creating any lasting structures of people power, and, while some things changed, the basic political and economic infrastructure of Egypt did not.
Occupy Wall Street should not be content with half-measures, even as it encourages and applauds the tiny hundredth-measures that might come first. It should not let such concessions sap the strength of the movement or seduce it into neglecting to foster its organizational network. Occupy Wall Street is the first manifestation in a long time of "people power" in America. For too long, democracy has, for most people, meant meaningless choices in a box. The Wall Street occupation is stepping out of the box.
Our job is to take a stand for a world that is truly beautiful, fair, and just, a planet and a civilization that is healing. For a politician or a financier, even a small step in this direction takes courage, for it goes against the gradient of money and all that is attached to it. I think that the task of Occupy Wall Street is to provide a context for that courage, and a call to that courage. With each step taken, the necessity of far larger steps will become apparent, along with the courage to take them.
To those holding the reins of power, let us say, We will be your witnesses and your truthtellers. We will not allow you to live in a bubble. We will not go away. We will show you who you are hurting and how. We will make it awkward to do business, until your conscience cannot stand it any longer. We know, in the beginning, many of you will try to escape us; perhaps you will leave Wall Street for suburban corporate offices on private land where there is no "street" for us to hit. You might also retreat further into your ideologies of globalism and growth that deny the obvious. But nothing will stop us, because our tactics will constantly shift. In one way or another, we will speak the truth and we will speak it loudly. Where speaking the truth becomes illegal, we will break the law. We will not wait to be invited. We will enter, in some way, every physical and ideological fortress.
The truth is dwindling rain forests, spreading deserts, mass tree die-offs on every continent; looted pensions, groaning burdens of student debt, people working two or three dead end jobs; children eating dirt in Haiti, elders choosing between food and medicine... the list is endless, and we will make it no longer possible to hold it in disconnection from the money system. That is why we converge on Wall Street, and anywhere that finance holds sway. You have lulled us into complacency for long enough with illusions and false hopes. We the people are awakening and we will not go back to sleep.
Image by edenpictures, courtesy of Creative Commons license.
Tweet- 10-6-11
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Comments
Towards the Economy of Love
heart to heart unfolding
charles...thank you so much for so powerfully and beautifully articulating several conversations
we had in the 90's regarding just this thing...there is only
one revolution worth fighting and that's the opening of the heart...take back the seeds, take back the deeds...let's entertain each other....today i will dance in full costume in a harvest parade
in our small wisconsin town and with every step i will send waves of
heart vibrations out surrounding our planet with love...i will offer my sweat to the 99% of all species...break the chains that bind be they real or in the mind...
the media and 1% will not be able to stop this now and neitehr
will they turn it into a joke...instead our shared laughter will shake empires and invite deep release into a heart centered future just around the corner...we all know what to do indeed!
Precisely
policy demands
Shallow Activism: Forgetting the Earth beneath Wall St.
Not For the Wanting Of
I have often pondered beyond the "principled ideology" towards the more inherent sense of actual organic satisfaction, and/or lack of, that seems to determine to what degree one is willing to compromise quality for quantity, or uphold it at any cost.
At what point does any human being loose complete satisfaction and continued enlivenment beyond a little food, clothing, shelter, the work to maintain such only, and the consequent "recreation" of communion with others with all the left over time and energy. Where has the actual satisfaction gone?
Is it really monetary policy, and/or governmental irresponsibility that has "bewildered" the masses ... the petty false sense of convenience that modern technological convenience from the earliest industrial age offered ... to verily sacrifice the very "labors of love" that builds character and community in the name of 'mere machination.
Has any social revolution ever really caused such inherent satisfaction, or brought it back from its primordial virtue{s}? Are all such problematic scenarios not universal predicaments that only came about with majorities of participation from the "common man."
That there has been "collective enamor-ment" at all levels of the collective society with such illusions of linear progression ... monetary policy and governmental adaptations merely capitalizing on the already pervasive trends of an ever demanding dissatisfied populace as we all chase the inertial momentums of so-called modern progressive life for it's own sake.
That all of the prophesy for change is 'but relative to the pathology of loss of original inherent satisfaction with organic life itself that pervades every nook and cranny.
Everyone guilty, no one to blame. That most of us to some degree or other, including Charles {author} and Daniel {Pinchbeck} who have hinted at in their open writings that even a decade or so ago they themselves {ourselves also} were not to varying degrees bewildered to the same "mammon-maya" to different degrees.
That the powers that be are not solely responsible for leading the cattle anywhere, that so many of us to different degrees have and still do, act as if the illusion of progress away from indigenous and inherent organic-to-cosmic entrainment in all of it's "so-called" evolutionary fairy tale have us at a loss as to how we have ended up here/now as a collective .. forever dissatisfied with each so called progressive step/trend embraced.
The very so-called creative passions that have scapegoated and loop-holed the very inner integrity of hands-on community and society to the point where so many of us even in the name of progressive change are 'but coming full circle to such inherent loss, rather realizing a new age beyond the cosmic rebooting {2012} of such fruitless momentum.
To idealize love as a principle beyond the integrity of it's own purpose, forever only realized through hands on organic struggle with "all other possibility" ... that both Wall Street and Government can protest us saying ... well you all went along for the ride ... enjoying all of the toys and convenience that having "credit" has provided you.
Love will only come through when the guilt and blame are universally shared. Not an easy thing as we all have different degrees of attachments to past along with ideological future change to work out, integrate and hopefully achieve the appropriate balance amongst a truly global collective.
How can one make demands when it is demanding itself that has us all in this very state of conflict.
Where has organic satisfaction gone .. how is not change itself but another version of such inherent loss.
Has not "Eden" always been there ... each of us leaving 'but one apple at a time.
"Wonder is what Mystery would do if it was conscious" ...
"Wandering is for every other possibility"
Pippalayana Muni
Not for the wanting of & No demand is big enough
Several here have alluded to the core problem, Consciousness. Some say it is happening. Frankly, it is not happening on any large scale needed for societal shift. Ouspensky alludes to this issue in his small tome "On The Possible Psychological Evolution of Man". He postulates three states of being, sleeping sleep, waking sleep and Consciousness. Most people live their lives in waking sleep and sleeping sleep, and the conundrum is they believe they are awake when they arise from their sleep. Thus, believing they are already awake, they will not search to become conscious because they believe they already are in that state.
All the great teachers have alluded to this problem. Jesus' parable of the wide way and narrow way says few find the narrow way that leads to life, which many of you are wishing for. Lao Tzu speaks to this in his discussion of the Way. No. 46 is especially instructive as translated by Ursula Le Guin, as beautiful a translation as I know.
<snip>
...The greatest evil: wanting more
...The worst luck: discontent.
...Greed is the curse of life.
To know enough's enough is enough to know. Lao Tzu, No. 46
In the Gospel of Thomas, unearthed at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, verse 3 speaks to this difficulty. Knowing who you really are. If you don't, you are in poverty and you are poverty. Most of the world is in poverty and they ARE poverty.
The Buddha speaks to your issue in the following:
"These children and riches are mine"; thinking thus the fool is troubled. Since no one even owns himself, what is the sense in "my children and riches"? Verily, it is the law of humanity that though one accumulates hundreds of thousands of worldly goods, one still succumbs to the spell of death. All hoardings will be dispersed, whatever rises will be cast down, all meetings must end in separation, life must finally end in death. Buddha. Udanavarga I.20-22.
I hold little hope that humanity will awaken from its dreaming awake state. For 2500 years, despite great teachers, little of difference has happened except we have better methods of scourging the planet and killing each other. I'm not sorry for the dour post because I think it is the reality of mankind's future. We have far, far to go to get Conscious. Many lifetimes of incarnation to become Conscious.
Cre8tive Clyde
Wow
I am thrilled
...
gratitude
Spot FN on! Thank you.
OWS Demands:
A Splinter in Our Minds
Jonathan Zap of zaporacle.com I am heartened by the realization expressed here that the discontent has both contemporary causes but also archetypal roots. There is a general discontent with this plane of reality that easy credit helped to self-medicate, but which now, with forced withdrawal is surfacing more powerfully. In http://www.zaporacle.com/a-splinter-in-your-mind/ I wrote: We also have a part of our intuition that registers a general wrongness about this world. Hamlet says, “This time is out of joint.” And “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” Some of the most memorable spoken lines of our era are from the first Matrix movie, “There is a splinter in your mind you can’t get out.” and “It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.” The Matrix and Tolkien’s mythology share a belief with the ancient Gnostics that the realm we have incarnated in is largely a diabolical deception or intrinsically corrupted plane. Tolkien wrote in his notes, “But nothing, as has been said, utterly avoids the Shadow upon Arda (earth) or is wholly unmarred, so as to proceed unhindered upon its right courses.”
In Return of the King, Gandalf says to Aragorn as he points out a tree growing out of the snow, “Turn your face from the green world, and look where all seems barren and cold! Yet the life within may then lie sleeping through many long years, and none can foretell the time in which it will awake.”
do not forget about peak oil
nice blog
revolution of love
One of the things that came to me in thinking and talking about this movement is that so many of the people are saying "we want jobs, we want higher minimum wage, we want this, we want that." And none of the things they wanted were things that I wanted.
I don't want to trade my life energy for money, or for more money; I want to give of my gifts to a more beautiful world.
Money is only energy of other men or woman.
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Energy and power
Charles wrote an article covering some of these same ideas, called "Peak Oil, Peak Debt, and the Concentration of Power", which you may find interesting: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8350
Impressive as always,
What comes after peak money?
So, it looks like shutting down Wall Street might be beneficial for society, but then it may be too small a demand. Coming to think about it again, I question even the validity of asking members of the movement, "what is your demand". As if the asker were in a position to fulfill any. It rather suggests undertones, as if negotiating with hijackers. The wording itself implies media spin. A more valid question could be "why are you here", "what is your message", or "what do you want others to know and to do?" Looking very much forward to the emerging conversation.
How about NO money
This post is brilliant
a timely message about #OWS
thank you for this.
Last week I had the pleasure of staying at a friends new apt. in lower Manhattan. Turns out his building was smack in the middle between the OccupyWallSt @ Zuccotti Park and the WTC site/memorial. (his roommate has been there since the 90's & also was in the apt. as the towers fell, his recounting of that day was harrowing and has clearly changed his constitution).
I had my copy of Sacred Economics in hand as I walked by both of these places and thought of the "Age of Transition" idea as it unfolded in front of my eyes.
Though, there is a still a disconnect for me. As I read this article I can't imagine a NYC or Western World that isn't infatuated with infinite growth.
I hope to be able to share these insights with younger folks and do what I can to create the gifts that need to be given. No policy change can do that. I do appreciate this greatly,
Thank You.
Scott N. Amore
Naively Optimistic
Charles' analyses of our cultural malaise are always insightful, but his vision is colored by unrealistic idealism and optimism. The #Occupy Wall Street/We Are the 99% movement is comprised mostly of young people who are frustrated and angry at being conned and misled and shut out of the American Dream. They are being joined and supported by what's left of the labor movement which also fights for the right to have what the 1% do (or at least a more equitable share of the wealth).
While the core group in Liberty Plaza NY are demonstrating a more diffused leadership and horizontal decision-making style - like their models in Tunisia, Egypt and Spain, they are not demanding a fundamental change in the course of civilization (as Eisenstein would have us believe), but merely a reordering of power and wealth within the current paradigm.
The best that we can hope for is that this movement will become persistent and powerful enough to push policy-makers toward necessary reforms and slightly reign in the worst excesses of the corporate and financial sectors. But revolutionary it is not - no mass movement that tries to include 99% of the population can be sufficiently pointed to pierce the veil of illusion that blinds us to the truth of the world.
You and the Bourgeoisie will Be the First to Go
@ ViolentRevolution
It's funny, because two years ago I was in a similar place to where you seem to be right now. I thought the caste system couldn't be transitioned without violent revolution. I thought the federal government would fight tooth and nail to maintain its power. That is partially correct, but fundamentally flawed. The government WILL fight to maintain its power, but it will not resort to mass genocide. Believing that large scale violence could transpire is truly paranoid.
Now, drawing from every documented violent revolution over the ENTIRE course of history, show me ONE instance where it resulted in more than an exchange of oppressors. Without seriously bending the truth, examples are non-existent. Just to jog your brain, a few of the reasons why violent insurrection would never work:
1) Our government is diffuse - it's not centrally located in one place. This means any insurrection would require a carefully timed execution in many, many places at once.
2) The American Military would easily crush any violent revolt. EASILY. Governments know what to do with the violent. They aren't quite sure what to do with the peaceful though - not in large numbers.
3) If America went through a violent revolution where the 'guerillas' had some sort of plausible plan, it would likely wreak such destruction on our infrastructure that by the end we'd be living in a third world country.
The beauty of what is happening right now is that things are taking care of themselves. Within 1-2 years (if not sooner) the system in place will cannibalize itself, and, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, we will have the opportunity to put something else in place. Whatever we want.
Calling Mr. Eisenstein an aging hippy (which reveals how blatantly you have no idea what you are talking about) is really quite counterproductive. You come across as a bloodthirsty militant, and that type of thinking won't get us anywhere. It really won't. Like Gandhi, we will use Satyagraha, and we will triumph. The people aren't the enemy here - just a system which promotes the greedy and the mercenary.
Bravo, Mr. Eisenstein. Once again you've eloquently articulated the reality of the situation. Bravo.
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Firstly: Your condesending attitude "oh I used to be like that and then I grew up!" is not an arguement just a dismissal. You want to pretend that the fact that capitalism has so far won, is the same as to say that the efforts of the black panthers, the Algerian anti-colonial struggles, the CNT-FAI in spain, the Zapitistas in Oaxaca, and countless other violent struggles that you don't study, were all for naught, then congradulations on your ignorance. Likewise it isn't even a stretch to apply the same logic to you and say that non-violence has never accomplished anything (which is actually true, if you do some research on India or go there you will learn something about the violent resistance that was taking place there that we white-wash out of history.) Or you can look at some of the leaked CIA documents that describe how it is beneficial for them to get people stuck in non-violent (see “How non-violence protects the state”).
1. Your post-modern trope of diffused government seems to contradict the idea that 1% of the people hold all the wealth, where is the “diffusion” in that? People use that garbage to absolve themselves from the danger real solidarity and struggle requires.
2. The claim that US government is omnipotent is another lie class enemies like you use to maintain the status quo. Look at the wars being fought over-sees and you will see that people that really want to can win against insane odds. Try reading a book instead of smoking weed one night, and learn alittle about the history of guerrilla struggle in Latin America, and you might learn something instead of stagnating in the filth of your own nullity.
3. Maybe it is time for the US to come down a notch, the only way we maintain our first world status is through murder and torture in mass (Read about the Pinochet regime in Chile). This is the clearest case where your class alliances come out, you will do anything to maintain the structure that keeps poor brown people slaving for your privilege (out of sight out mind I suppose).
If this system falls apart without a dedicated group of people willing to defend themselves against the private armies of corporations, what is put in place will just be fascism. Only someone without a lick of historical memory could pretend like things will magically just work out. Fuck your white-washed version of Indian history that you appropriate for your own political agenda, also maybe you should look again at what is happening there, at the Guerrilla soldiers in Nepal that are fighting against the capitalist state which is starving a huge portion of the population for the expense of the fewer and fewer billionaires. But you won't learn about this, because you only read stuff that already validates your class position.
@ ViolentRevolution
Sheesh, you're upset. I get that, but you treat me like I'm the enemy. You bring up some good points, and I think my initial response was a little weak. To be fair, violence has accomplished change, that is undeniable. If violence was really effective though, don't you think we'd live in a more progressive world? To say that non-violence has not accomplished anything is the same as me saying violence has never accomplished anything. I'm not attacking your hypocrisy, just calling you on it.
As for non-violence helping the state, you must obviously know what a general strike is. Imagine a mass general strike on the scale of the entire western world.
You can throw insults at me all day, but I'm afraid life is too short to address them. I didn't say that government is omnipotent, in fact it is not, otherwise they'd come to your house and take you away, and me too, probably.Responding to what you say about people winning against insane odds (by citing the war in afghanistan, or at least I assume you mean that one. There are so many), you gloss over their distinct advantage. If you think fighting a war on your home turf doesn't give you a major advantage, then maybe have skipped 'The Art of War'? Guerilla warfare can be dragged out for decades until the occupying force is drained of all resources. That is happening. Our military is bleeding us dry.
If you think we're destined to live in bombed out hovels unless we rape and exploit the starving masses, that must be a depressing place to be. Yeah, America does horrible things, but our success is not dependant on the failure of others, or at least it doesn't have to be.
Violent revolution only changes the skin of things, and sometimes the mechanism by which atrocities are delivered, but to believe violence will clear the way for lasting peace doesn't make ANY sense. That's like saying you want to start a war against the people who start wars. Stop fighting yourself.
Something I see you doing (at least in your post)is that you are looking to history for models of possible outcomes, but you disregard that we are in a different place than we have ever been before. The circumstances have changed, man, and so too must the strategies evolve to fit the times.
P.S. I like how you tell me repeatedly about how/what I am. Much love, brother.
I don't mean to be brutal,
I don't mean to be brutal, obviously both of us care about making a better world, I really do believe that pieces like the one you are defending bring us farther from that goal. Unless we recognize that the people that have made this situation the way it is should be held responsible, were not going anywhere. You can't ask for reform from a system that really is willing to kill for what it wants. Whether you realize is or not, you also used dismissive insults as well, they are just coded in language that is more polite. I don't want to tip-toe around, I want to really find out where people are at.
I totally agree that non-violence is absolutely necessary, my point is that we need both, and we need to appreciate the history of both if we want to be successful. Moralizing against violent movements is not helpful, like the one sentence the author gives to try to cover the Russian revolution.
The difference between over-seas and here is that we have more resources, and better odds in terms of sustaining something that gets off the ground. There are some great books about how black liberation movements used books like the art of war. I also disagree extremely with your characterization of a general strike as non-violent, especially in wake of the revolutionary activity we've been seeing around the world recently.
I definitely disagree that we could live in the decadence we do without imperialism/colonialism. We don't start wars for fun, or just for icing on the cake. This is a depressing place to be, and unless we recognize that we can't really claim to act in solidarity with people who don't have a choice about that realization.
I use history to reflect on our current situation, because there are lessons to be learned. This is obviously cursory, I don't mean to imply that we can just plaster a past model over our current situation (the same would be true for those who want to simply do the same thing Ghandi did).
Again you twist my words. I
Again you twist my words. I did not say we can live in the decadence we do, etc, without the economic extortion we enact today, but most of us aren't exactly swimming in wealth (we are the 99% remember?) Your point that we need non-violence and violence . . . I'm afraid I can't agree. The world doesn't need more violence, it needs less, and we're not going to get there by commiting more of it. That's like an addict saying they'll quit heroin after one more hit. It ain't happenin'.
I'm not sure if reform is quite the way I think about what I see happening. More like radical evolution. The system cannot sustain its morally bankrupt position for much longer, because that means morally bankrupt people are required to run it, and many of us believe (and I think Mr. Eisenstein would agree with this as well) that we, as beings, are changing very quickly, that is, we are becoming aware. Aware beings won't hurt each other, because hurting someone else is the same as hurting yourself.
None of that is substantiated right now, but wait and see, because it's happening.
Obviously you believe what you believe, that isn't in contention, and I apologize if I have insulted you (intentionally or otherwise). It is not productive to hurl insults back and forth, and that isn't the kind of world I want to live in. I have dealt with a lot of depression, and I'm just coming out of it finally. To me, the world itself is not depressing. The only thing that is depressing is MY relationship to what is happening.
I am passionate about this. You are passionate about this. But where you would kill for your beliefs, I would die for mine. Do you see the difference?
Oh yeah, and a general strike can be non-violent. Often they are supported by violence, but it is not a mutually dependant relationship.
Edit: I'd like to add that Gandhi was non-violent but he had an 'understanding' with some of the violent resistance. Personally I think violence is regressive, but if violent resistance was to occur, I wouldn't attempt to step in the way of that. I'd wait for the dust to settle and then resume doing what I was doing before the violence, because likely we'd be in the same place or worse.
I would die and kill for my
I would die and kill for my beliefes; I don't think the two are mutually exclusive, just as I don't see violence and non-violence as these two complete polar opposites which can never be integrated into a singular struggle. I think any successful revolution will use a variety of tactics. However, where we disagree is that I say there are class enemies who need to be violently suppressedand you say that those perpetuating this coercive system will somehow destroy themselves without intervention. Personally, I think ideas about the evolution of consciousness have been around for a long time, and this current movement is nothing new, and is in fact merely reproducing and reifiying the status quo by investing hope in some transcendental transformation of consciousness which is taking place regardless of our actions. I would rather concentrate on concrete struggles in the here and now--which IS violent and coercive--than look forward to a utopia of evolved consciousness in which an equitable society will finally be possible. If believing in this helps you function in this world that is helpful in your personal life, but to assume that this transformation will solve all systematic problems seems to me just another form of millernarianism, waiting for the messiah. I don't think we are going to change each other's minds.
In the interest of diffusing associative dichotomies, I am a woman, not 'brother' as you suggested. As a militant woman, I find the assumption that violence ideology and action is somehow masculine, and the natural feminine state. Just sayin, not blamin.
Hmm. Violence and violent
Hmm. Violence and violent action is predominantly masculine. Sister :), and it's interesting because we're moving towards a balance between masculine and feminine, and here you are a militant woman. Funny how life is.
Killing and dying aren't mutually exclusive. But there is a polarized difference between someone who would kill versus someone who would only die. Successful revolutions are like successful viruses: they mutate to thrive in a hostile environment. I'm not saying it has to look a certain way, I mean, I certainly don't know how anything is 'supposed' to look.
I'm not suggesting that we wait around until we gain a higher level of consciousness, and let that solve our problems. Becoming aware is a part of the process and not a product of it. We create this world we live in, and violence is but a bad dream.
You're educated and intelligent, and quite attached to your beliefs - of course I won't be changing your mind. I can't predict the future, I have no idea how it will go. I hope it doesn't get violent, but all I can do is stand for peace and spread the vibes. If the solution presents itself to you as fomenting or joining a violent insurrection, good luck with that. Real violence is not fun. The rest of us will be spreading our 'hippy' love, and opening the hearts and minds of the populace by strategic dissemination of knowledge.
Peace, sister. And nothing less.
P.S. to aid in the stereotype, I am a musician.
@ViolentRevolution, too
Perhaps you should inform yourself about the relative effectiveness of violent versus nonviolent uprisings throughout recent history before lecturing to the rest of us. Here's a good place to start: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/10/31-7
What you will learn there and through the link you'll find there is that over the past 100 years nonviolence has been more than twice as successful as violent campaigns.
very 'objective'
"One of the authors of the study, Maria Stephan, is at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict." Ah, yes, a entirely unbiased study based on pure science and total void of any determining ideologies.
Thanks, but I have studied actual historical accounts of various guerilla campaigns and violent revolutions written by by people who participated in them, which I think is much more valuable source material than a study conducted by someone from a Non violence institute about how non violence is statistically superior to violence.
aging hippies
I officially call this thread hijacked
If it wasn't for the overly idealistic, the world would never get better.
When people accuse me (or someone else) of being a Pollyanna, I remind them: Pollyanna had a very good life.
We really do need to create the more beautiful world our hearts believe is possible.
Amen.
No demands
on the fence
a slave rebellion
Couldn't resist!
I am usually a 'silent reader' of forums such as this one... mostly because I have come to a Siddharthian conclusion that the body is more perceptive than the mind.
As I read Charles' article here, two sentences stood out for me...
"What else but love would motivate any person to abandon the quest to maximize rational self-interest? Love, the felt experience of connection to other beings, contradicts the laws of economics as we know them."
Then I came upon this highly interesting and passionate exchange between 'violentrevolution' and 'Ephemophile'... and I just couldn't resist the invitation to 'put in a few words edge-wise'!
But, to begin with, a few clarifications:
a) What I am about to write is not going to be in the form of a coherent whole - a string of 'rational' arguments that build up to a conclusive stand-point; rather, I am going to throw a handful of thoughts at the reader, like a Haiku, for ideas to form within each individual consciousness'.
b) I am not in the least interested in debates - but I like to hear what other people think - and likewise, like to verbalize my thoughts every now and then.
c) I don't believe ANYTHING in life is 'objective'... I have grown up in an ancient culture which has very successfully instilled the idea that life is, after all, a Maya (illusion)!
Some thoughts, edge-wise:
I guess I do, in a way!
But given the 'chance', one which does not go against my own sense of morality, would I REALLY not 'cross-over' and become the 'oppressor'?
During my early years as a school-teacher, a professor who studied behaviours of microbial life-forms visited our school and told us a story about how a particular group of amoebae live in mushroom-shaped colonies, comprised of a 'stem' and a 'top'. Apparently, one group feeds on the other, when there is a food-crisis at hand!
But the interesting point is that they NEVER interchange places, even when the 'eaters' are much less than the ones 'being eaten'.
But I don't know if either of them has actually practiced both forms in tandem?
I have.
I was born to a middle-class Bengali family in Kolkata(Calcutta) that was as deeply and actively entrenched in Gandhian thought and practice of 'non-violence', as it was actively involved with Subhas Chandra Bose's armed-revolutionary politics and the INA (Indian National Army).
I grew up hearing many versions of a family fable - of how my Gandhian grandfather had merely sat quietly at his open window, in a Hindu neighbourhood of Dhaka, during the wee hours of a winter morning just after the partition of India.
His brother and his associates, devout followers of Netaji (Subhas Bose), had planned on waylaying a convoy of Muslim vegetable vendors, to slaughter them as revenge for Hindu's killed the previous night.
As the story goes... my grandfather never uttered a word to stop his brother and his gang... he just sat there - and a hot-headed group of twenty young men gave-in to the power of his 'non-violence' - no Muslim vendor was killed that morning.
I've also witnessed a mob of more than fifty men, about fifty years later, beating up a rickshaw-puller accused of a petty theft almost to death, along with brutally manhandling my mother, who persisted with her 'non-violent' protest against the mindless assault.
I was born in a locality surrounded by two of the most notorious slums of the city. Most of my childhood buddies were from those slums.
Consequently, I learnt the rough-and-tumble ways of 'survival' pretty early in life; was well-trained in making and using hand-grenades and 'bottle-bombs' by the time I was about twelve; learnt to fist-fight my way out of trouble four-five-rowdies-deep, by the time I was fifteen; got into and out of my first serious gang-battle at sixteen.
Obviously, I became the self-appointed 'protector of the oppressed' in my middle-class secondary-school - needless to say my methods werefarfrom being non-violent - and they were bloody effective!
One day, in my tenth standard, I got myself embroiled in a nasty fight, trying to defend a young girl who was being rather odiously eve-teased by some boys of my neighbourhood. Unfortunately, before I realised what was up, the rival group swelled to over twenty boys, against me and one other friend of mine.
We knew we were in deep shit - but had no idea how to get out of it.
Suddenly, to our great relief, a couple of the most feared 'rowdies' of the area, who happened to be my close friends, arrived at the scene.
They were both much older - and, more importantly, they were well-known to everyone as trained, gun-wielding political henchmen.
What ensued was both bizarre and extremely educative.
The two 'goons' did stand by us - and ultimately the whole mob disbursed, without any physical exchange what so ever -and the eve-teasers actually apologised to the girl - and it was the 'goons' who single-handedly affected the resolution...
But they did it through completely non-violent means!
After this incident, I taught myself and somewhat mastered the art of 'non-violent' protest, as a weapon for my role as the 'protector of the oppressed' in school - and that proved to be just as blood-less effective.
These two 'goons' are very good friends of mine, even today. By profession they are much sought-after 'hired killers' - but they are also very amiable human beings - two of the most gentle-men I have ever come across.
However, that is in fact, far from the truth, from my perspective.
First, Gandhi and his politics was never an all-encompassing phenomenon of the Indian freedom struggle - he was just one part of it.
And then, 'Indian Culture' has had much greater stalwarts in it's past, both in political as well as spiritual thought - and our lives and thinking is much more influenced by them.
Gautam Buddha, internationally renowned as a 'spiritual' master, was primarily a political leader (the son of an illustrious king) - and a very successful one at that. His call for 'renouncing' worldly pleasures and taking off to live a life of austerity in the mountains was what finally unshackled the whole of Indian society from the clutches of the Brahminical hegemony of the kings and the priests...
Lord Krshna, the half-mythical half-historic character who propounded theBhagwat Geeta, is by far one of the most colourful and dichotomous characters in this respect.
On one hand, he is the lord and master of all creation - the god-head responsible for maintaining the overall balance - on the other hand, he is the ultimate statesman... his political 'doctrine' is known as Krshna-Neeti (Neeti=policy) - and it has been preached and practiced in India from time immemorial...
Krshna-Neeti: (in a nut-shell)
"A true ruler is one who serves his subjects - resolving each and every problem with total involvement but also with complete un-attachment - through discerningly choosing between the principles of shaam (equality), daan (investment), danda (punishment) & bhed (divide and rule).
The Santaalis, one of the most ancient and totally impoverished tribes of the country, waged a war with bows-and-arrows, against the oppression of the rich Indian land-lords and the British cannons - and they won.
Today, the 'victorious' Santaalis are still one of the poorest and most 'backward' communities of the country.
The LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam)also waged a rather long-drawn-out 'war' with the State mechanism of Srilanka and India - and they had rich supplies of state-of-art arms and ammunition too.
But once the State of Srilanka, covertly but profusely aided by the State of India, actually put their minds to 'getting the job done', in 2009, the LTTE was completely crushed in a matter of a month or two.
... and there were many more 'socialist' militant groups at that time.
They did not succeed in making a more 'just' world.
His 'mortal' representative, theDalai Lama, is in exile thanks to one of the 'strongest' Nations of today.
Who is the judge? Is there anything called 'absolute justice'?
Muslims have the'right' to have four wives...
I have myself met a number of very old ladies in interior Ladakh who have five-six husbands each - and they actually told me in unambiguous terms that one or two out of those five-or-six were the 'favourites', for various reasons...
Hindu's are not supposed to have more than one spouse - a local holy-man in my neighbourhood in an interior Indian village, where I live and work, has four wives - and he has the full support of the community...
The Santaali tribes-people are forbidden to marry outside their tribe - there are innumerable incidents in our area of couples being summarily killed, as punishment for surreptitiously marrying into other communities - but a much respected, educated Santaali gentleman from our neighbourhood, who now teaches at a renowned university, is happily married to an upper-class Brahmin lady, with complete tolerance from his native community...
The Muslims are supposed to be a singularly vile and blood-thirsty group of people - the word Islam means 'peace'...
In Islamic thought, an individual is not supposed to judge another individual - because Allah is the only one who has that authority.
So, as one of the Islamic kalmas dictate - a Muslim is 'not supposed to inflict harm upon another - but if someone comes to inflict harm upon you, don't sit in judgement, slay him!'...
Osama bin Laden was trying very hard to inflict harm upon America - so, I guess Barack Obama did the right thing - he did not sit in judgement, he got his men to slay Laden...
Zoos - and prisons...
Banks - and money-lenders...
Statistics - and half-truths...
Starry-eyed hippies - and radical revolutionaries...
Neils Bohr - and Albert Einstein...
Quantum mechanics - and Maya...
... Is there a 'right' and a 'wrong'?
I have met one saint in my life - his name was Paramananda.
I have asked him a thousand questions about a thousand things, banal, sexual, social or spiritual...
I asked him, because his answers, unlike most others, made perfect sense!
I won't even try to recreate his views on life - because I just don't have the wherewithal for it.
But the crux of all his answers, coloured by my own perception, of course, is somewhat as follows:
... To focus and immerse one self completely in trying to discover the totality of that 'self'
... To facilitate each individual's quest for their 'self'
...The understanding that there are no individuals
... Any honest searcher is bound to encounter such feelings - the point is to see whether that is all that is there - or is there more within the 'self' - if one does not encounter hatred and intolerance, then he/she is not looking - they are merely believing.
... Yes, but not a simplistic, rational one.
The end is Love.
Not the lustful, self-aggrandising feeling of 'attraction' towards another 'individual' - but an all-encompassing sensation of immersion and 'one-ness' - a complete state of selflessness.
...No.
If it was, then the 'game' of creation would cease to exist.
... The point is to aspire to achieve it - because that is the only way by which 'individuals' can actually partake in the GAME!
Cheers!
Aaditto.
Question to Aaditto
Hey brother,
Could you explain what you meant with the LTTE / GOSL example? I used to live there up until Feb 2008. In Jan 2008 they, the government, promised to kill at least 10 Tigers a day. They stuck to their promise and 1,5 years later they said the war was over. "Getting the job done" meant slaying about 20,000 civilians in the process and dislocating another 300,000. It was a fucking genocide.
LOVE,
Tomi
PS. If you're interested just Google it. There are plenty of petitions and various sites regarding the topic. E.g. this one:
http://www.act-now.info/Site/Online_boycott.html
Response to astikain's question
Yes, my friend,
It was a total fucking genocide indeed!
As I had mentioned in my note, I wasn't really 'trying to make any points'...
However, I refered to the LTTE case to point to a certain 'reality'...
... The fact that the survival/ success of any 'force' - viollent/ non-viollent - when up against a State Mechanism, is FINALLY a puppet in the hands of the 'POLITICAL' juggernaut ...
When a State WANTS to get rid of such a force - they get rid of it - by hook or crook!
- Aaditto.
We have everything
I think the problem is
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