To Dance with Shiva.
I never understood why Arthur dismissed what seemed to be the impending necessity that the world establish a Resource-Based Economy. Peter Joseph's film, which was excellently researched and factual, (and it is not a matter of opinion that it is factual, because to reduce it to statistical subjectivity is to imply that there exists such a thing as statistical objectivity) was one of only two voices that I ever heard that made sense of the Absurdity of the Great Depression; the other was Alan Watts.
There was no way of making Sense, hither to, of how a simple malfunction in the nation's gambling system could possibly interfere with the production of raw resources if only to meet basic needs. This was never fully resolved in my mind as more than an absurdity, for the more that it was pointed out to me as an absurdity the less I could comprehend how it was that rational brings could have spaced on it.
We have a confusion betwixt money, jobs, and wealth. One can have both money and jobs, but no wealth. Most Americans probably have precisely that, entirely dependent upon their jobs for money but incapable of producing something for their selves. We have had the situation wherein wealth, the only materially significant factor, was satiated, but in both situations we have failed to act sanely. With jobs and wealth it is possible to function; all the necessary work and it's fruits are available to all, including the means to transport them. All that is missing is an agent that is tidally abstract and that can only be used to exploit labour and literally (as Deleuze elaborated on in Capitalism and Schizophrenia) drive people insane. One can have money and wealth with no jobs, as well. The absence of available jobs in a society is invariably a sign of luck, for efficiency within the system has attained such a fever pitch that a new life awaits us all; soon, no one will be required for those old jobs, so that the human mind can ascend to the heights it has been denied for far too long. All that is necessary is that the people who depended upon that labour hitherto have the necessary wealth provided for them whilst the remainder of their 'competitors' (contemporaries) make the transition, as though we were all recovering from an addiction. If one wanted not to micro-manage this ordeal too heavily, a simple providence of the necessary monetary resources, a temporary necessary evil, would suffice. Done.
The only remaining problem seems to be that of incentive. And that is all that it does: it seems, and at this pointy win the argument with Arthur because when one appeals to this notion one had clearly reached the bitter end of one's rational reasoning.
No one can work for an incentive. If one can speak of work causally then the 'incentive' is all ways the greater good of humanity, if not God's Will, which does not, though, as Kierkegaard delineated, exempt us from the Greater Good of Humanity (so this should appease the atheists.). There would be no sense in taking a job there fore or even speaking of 'society' were it not for the altruistic instinct; why not simply refuse the social narrative, allowing the system to topple by one's own example?
There is no way out of Peter Joseph's reasoning. When at the end of the second Zeitgeist film the protagonist of the short sees a starving girl and looks over at a table near by with two people enjoying wine and dinner, there is no individual way of reading this; it is not relative. The human beings at the table have absolutely no business enjoying such a meal when it so surpasses their needs and when hers are within total reach of being satiated; their happiness could only stem from their unawareness of the girl and it is shocking that the protagonist does not have the nerve even to walk right up to them and steal for her. There is simply no pretension that could make the entire set-up a reality, for our society does not cater to sociopaths (we lock them up), and so the power of it is the metaphor for the global situation: that obviously some agents are strangling the wealth that could only be deserved if it could flow to all other agents. The former has the capacity to aid the latter, but ignorance alone (and an impersonal system that keeps any third party in fear) prevents them from realizing. The former suffers spiritually in a way equivalent to the suffering of the latter physically.
Genuinely, there is no ethic I can think of that makes one entitled to the fruits of one's labour. The message of Christianity is, for instance, to strive for a higher Good constantly whilst recognizing with compassion the short-comings of our selves and others. A temporary ethic becomes necessary to adapt to an oppressive status quo, but the end goal can never be imperfect, for a system is only defined as imperfect so long as it will inevitably collapse in on its self. Capitalism has all ready collapsed in on its self. The Great Depression was the moment that we learned not only that capitalism does not work in the abstract but that it had literally made people crazy the entire time. How else would one describe the failure to take the only rational course of action? After all, it is not complicated. It is not ideological. If people can be convinced that to start a riot is rational then every individual can do one's own part to make this vision a reality. As with all reality it never accords perfectly with one's initial projections; why should it? The rationality of the fact that this is advantageous is the incentive. Of course, I use 'fact' loosely in the sense of a riot; I do not mean to attach to it the support I attach to the well-fare of human beings.
So it has been established that we arrive at an ethic that inevitably and invariably topples in on it's own contradictions, on adaptation to an oppressive status quo. We are at once victims and oppressors, and any one who has been in this situation long enough is the more tempted to try to justify it as an absolute or 'end in its self', because victim hood habituates and the position of the oppressor possesses such guilt that one would rather deny it. Yet never have I been exempt from this original sin of having been born into a capitalist society, and not can I take the leap into absurdity and profess a hope in ever arriving at its end except by the dissolution of my involvement in the system its self. One might imagine the story of Christ as an allegory for the departure from this corruption by virtue of what Christ him self practiced: recognizing one's kinship with God and all Humanity, foregoing one's occupation at personal risk, and preaching kindness by example. The historical Christ is entirely arbitrary; history usually is, and I do not deny the paradox therein. The myth is nothing new; it speaks of the Christ IN YOU, which Can be felt as an experience, whereas ideology cannot be as incontrovertible, visceral, and indispensable. The possibility, however, of projecting this archetype onto another, especially some thing as dubious as a historical figure, cannot be ruled out, as Jung described. (We do this all the time with Adolf Hitler, forgetting that depictions of Hitler prior to the Holocaust were relatively positive, and this contradiction is another thorn that the American psyche cannot pluck from its side.)
This is precisely why our Christ is not like our Christians.
That even serial killers are infamous for justifying their own behaviour is evidence that this is a human universal: we strive for ethical sanctity in all our actions, as though instinctively. That the popular appeal to the notion of ethical egoism is that even altruism has a selfish quality, it only proves that humans in their most visceral states want the greater good. Rapists still justify their behaviour, for instance, by imagining that the victim Wanted, or somehow invited, the rape. Sexuality its self is an attempt to dissolve the boundary between one's pleasure and that of another. We invariably enjoy boundary dissolution; if a bad acid trip evidences any thing it is that people are willing to risk it to dance with Shiva. In fact all genuine joy is of mutual benefit to the people involved; to receive with gratitude is not only to be thankful for the material need but all so for the fact that it brings the giver a joy to be generous. This is an inkling of boundary dissolution; it socialises, personalises, and there fore spiritualises an interaction that would other wise be individualistic, schizophrenic, and forced. What, I ask boldly, has the progress of civilization been if not that? All genuine joy comes from this sense of connection, and all other things that pass for satisfaction (in say the smile of a convicted rapist, though we project, of course, that satisfaction upon him or her whenever we pass judgment upon a stranger, by virtue of Shadow Projection) are merely, to speak ironically but again paradoxically, incentive. To be even more clear: incentive is rarely something that when taken to an extreme is smiled upon in this society; the division between the fantasy that one might do good and the reality is too great and schizophrenic.
There are more instances in which our temporary ethic is seen to bristle. I will only expound upon a few of these. One is that religion compels us to love all humanity but it has been distorted to scorn other religions. The Protestant Work Ethic that is still dominant in this country was based on the Biblical notion that he who does not work shall not receive bread. Perhaps a hundred generations ago this was the practical ethic. Now, we have the necessary resources to meet the Basic Needs of everyone. Maslow would have us believe then that what would follow would be a more sane society as people are bolstered everywhere in their Actualisation and there fore their thinking. We are all ways individuals, but no evidence exists of the self-sufficient, self-serving individual.
Both Hinduism, Taoism, and Buddhism (I understand that these are three, while the word is 'both') advise us, if we wish to actualise, to renounce the fruits of our actions. This is of course experimentally effective. One who has done this will admit that there is a freedom in becoming autotelic. As Watts pointed out, we can only desire that which we have had before. But to desire that Greater Good is an exception, for the Other is all ways a mystery to us. Marx all so was right; we enjoy our work intrinsically. We just want up be free of oppression. We want to know that what we are doing we are doing volitionally, that we are in fact serving Humanity, and that we are not losing our own authenticity as individuals in the process. That many do not enjoy work now is evidence that the system in place makes them feel alienated. Autotelic work, which does not bind us to a predictable future, obviously (and I hope this obviousness does not insult the intelligence of the reader) is one of the great joys of living: to be active as a human being without need to answer to an oppressive boss that is justified in being abusive by the fact that the Company can make profit regardless. This Master-Slave dialectic, so long as it persists, disempowers the individual and creates a schizophrenic relation to reality wherein instead of paying attention to the facts at hand, which are only available to the individual (for one is if anything a unique bundle of perceptions, conditions, and experiences) one is in constant fear of what an Other individual Might Think, despite the fact that obviously different points of view will contradict them selves and should be accorded an a priori equality. The moral dilemma is one of either intellectual and moral degradation or the risk of expulsion, and so long as one's loved ones are in any way, financially or emotionally, dependent upon the individual, the dilemma is truly a hellish one. If the dependency is merely emotional, however, it is imperative that the loved ones not attach moral value to the job, because of course the path of moral integration and actualisation may in such an instance lead to termination of work. The schizophrenia comes in in thinking that the one of these: a job, which is an abstract institution, is as important as or more important than one's health, a form of wealth for it involves one's skills.
To conclude I would like to point out that all change, especially collective change, is hard on the individual psyche. Icarus flies too close to the Sun at times, but he is not Sisyphus. To become so idealistic as not to have a temporary ethic is to put one's self in a fruitless danger, for one cannot be an agent for change whilst mentally hospitalised, at least not confidently. The point of course is to shed the cocoon, and inevitably one will grow out of it. Hegel was not necessarily wrong about the march of progress. Even if he can be said to have been we can look to his rivals Kierkegaard and Nietzsche for the three steps on life's way. Invariably what is imperfect caves in under its own imperfections, whether it is a personal moral system, an economic system, or some thing else. In place of it arises something more perfect closer to the ideal, less contradictory and more humane. We do not need to believe in a total perfection in order to accord with Life and Growth.
Dm.A.A.
