I really just wanted to address some posts briefly at first, but this thread has sent me on a radical thought tangent of massive essay length. I apologize in advance, but am thinking about turning it into a 20 minute speech with humorous slides for the TOM convention. Honestly, you won't be missing anything but some of my darker world views if you skip reading it. I'll just say to Keith Whitener that I feel we are thinking along somewhat similar lines, I'm just more bitter about it - perhaps to my detriment. Fredericks, I see your point and agree there is a chance for mankind to both fully appreciate everything while not turning into mind mush, I just don't see how likely that is given the state of people. Also, my name is actually spelled Josef, but you can call me whatever you want because you're awesome. Everybody else better recognize the F!
So, to my long ass tangent. While I know fundamentally that we are moreso today than ever facing the great need to do so, I don't think its likely that we'll ever again live in a way that makes literal sense on this planet, given the long term effects of culture. This is my most bitter pill, truly, and always will be. I believe we are now, on the whole, living out of whack with a way of life that kept us going long enough to be alive in staggering numbers as a species today. I also believe that if we put the same effort into fixing the web of problems this whackness creates as we do into killing each other for money and pride, or even just spent as much time pondering that as we do the Bottom Line, we could maybe go a good ways towards fixing it. The rub is that I simply don't believe we will.
At this point in advanced history, there are very few key people who hold a massive sway over everything, no matter how paranoid that sounds. Only They, acting in concert, would need to change their minds for any changes to really take purchase on the world at large, no matter how much power we the people are led to believe we have in our forcibly unheard voices. It is only among those with the hoarded power, aka, 1% of humanity, aka, the uber rich and powerful, that change can be truly affected, and of those few who could really change things, the sad fact is that they simply never would. It's far too amusing and profitable to ever let go of the status quo, for those that benefit from The Way Things Are. And I'm not even talking Tom Scharpling/Doddy from Miami rich and powerful. 20$ snickers bars aside, the Rich are not the Wealthy and I believe that is an important, if not obvious, definition. The Rich are still mostly "us", especially if they weren't born that way. The Wealthy are something else entirely, from conception. They have no interest in us beyond being fodder for their insane incestuous legacies. They are to be feared.
Worse still, without resorting to something as archaic and uncivilized as actual revolt, we the proletariat have absolutely no real power to exert over this system that profits so few and harms so many. We are all forced to rely on it for our very livelihoods, that is to say the livelihoods of those of us who wish to participate in society and live "on the grid", and in that way become compromised by it, subject to it, less able to resist it. Short of moving to a solar powered shack in Montana, we can fight in our small ways, trying to beat injustices on a grassroots collective level, but it never will go anywhere even close to as widespread as it would need to be to inspire civilians to make the concerted effort. We stand divided across the boards on issues that have very little to do with surviving and thriving as a species at all, lost in our own worlds. Worlds, that are then in turn lost in slightly larger worlds that are at conflict with other worlds, and so on. In this way, the small groups that care and want to help are unable to ever bridge these complicated divides and thus are marginalized by worlds so much louder. These cells of change even become thought of in the minds of the people as an annoyance. I believe this is because these ideas on a subconscious level threaten the status quo that ostensibly keeps everyone it claims for itself Safe and Secure, which nobody wants messed with and for good reason. Revolutionary ideas and the actions that follow remind people too painfully of the whackness burning its way deep into their guts, the whackness they couldn't help but buy in to, that is now throwing them off kilter and making them something not quite human. It's basically the plot of District 9, without the cat food.
Now to prove my point that we are screwed, lets imagine for example that there even was an idea centered around creating and living with the world as it should be, that could be delivered in just the right message to break through all of that conditioning that divides us, enough to be really heard. Lets say then that it was able to implant itself in enough peoples minds to make them work together, creating a a power to be reckoned with, a power that can change things. Unless this group is planning on change through fear like a terrorist group (let's say it isn't, for the sake of argument) then it would have to be at least twice as powerful as the most influential corporate lobby today. This is already a fairly near impossible task, but let's just say that happens anyhow, and this force of change manages to get above the all the cynicism and the threat of punishment for acting collectively against the systems wishes, finally getting their communal step in the right direction towards peace, harmony, and the well-being of everyone put on the table of humanity.
No matter what this idea is, by it's very existence it is acting in defiance of the original Big Idea of The Man. This Big Idea as I understand it is essentially to make the man The Man by being as ruthless and dominating as possible on all playing fields, most particularly ownership of everything important, thereby becoming as rich and powerful as possible. The Big Idea then (now) is to retain that power, influence and control for as long as possible, just because. At this point, I think you would be hard pressed to deny that one of the main characteristics of The Man would be that he fights to hold on to what is his, and always has better lawyers and armies. Any fighting chance we had as a people separated from these monsters of industry, I believe went out to pasture with the Model T Ford. There are no guns left to fight with, because they stockpiled them YEARS ago, and put up walls with guns on them to keep everyone else out and away. It's basically the plot of There Will Be Blood, without the religious thing.
The basics we require as humans, the things that make us feel disenfranchised and weird when we don't have them, are being driven further and further out of our hands every day. Nobody eats for free now and many don't eat at all, when everyone used to eat for free by rote in the past, without the shame of welfare. The food we do have, is being corrupted and proprietised by people who have no concern for the past or the future, but only the Benefit of the Now, when razing the ground and corrupting the flesh of flora and fauna alike is the best money making venture. Clean water, clean oceans, are quite nearly a thing of the past, because of industrial/commercial neglect of duty. We used to love each other because having family and friends meant you survived, not because we chose to feel for each other based on our flippant emotions. These same emotions are now controlled on so many more levels by so many outside forces, all of them openly endeavoring to change who you are at your core, solely so you buy more shit, act a certain way, and don't think too much about it.
Granted, this all sounds like the ravings of an LSD hippy even to me as I write it, but I challenge anyone to say it isn't true. We as a whole have given up our rights to some of the most basic things in the world, essentials that brought us up and made us genuine marvels of existence. The trade off we made for an increased longevity of life (though never so long as to not turn a profit) and pasteurized supermarket orange juice in a ready to pour bottle was too great to pass up, the Benefit of the Now was too appealing. What passing alien species could even blame humanity for that? They would only fault the small portion of our nature that is terrible and rapacious, as the flaw that doomed us all.
When I think about how it, the best way I can ever imagine life making sense again for everyone, as improbable as it may be at this point, would be to cherry pick from the best that we have achieved, our knowledge, our technology, our functioning social systems, etc. and then work carefully and dilligently to incorporate that into the way of life our biological nature calls for, the same one that allowed us to live as care takers and receivers of the earth for millennia, save for the last relatively few years. Not all of the societal tenets we have now would work in this environment obviously, but instead of compromising the basics like we do now, those tenets would be the compromise. I think it is the single most important thing we could do to never again give up personal control of our basic needs as implied by our nature, that being to simply live in balance with our world and ourselves.
The gut wrenching thing about that is, to even start to do even half of what that kind of change would require, would be a monumental, impossibly large task. The concept stage alone would take way longer than it will take for someone to figure out a way to scrape out the rest of the resources of the planet to manufacture hologram DVD players that let you talk to other hologram DVD players in real time. No matter how I shake it down, it's an impossible dream that simultaneously is the only one that makes sense, a paradox that can only read "we are screwed".
To me that fact isn't to be marveled over, but to be horrified by and then delusionally forgotten, so one can go happily enough about ignoring this madness, donating just enough to charity to get that nagging thought off ones back, chatting with your Indonesian friend over DVD hologram, eating our delicious, nutritionally bereft food, and secretly knowing that in some way beyond our control, it is dooming us all straight to fucking extinction.
I truly think with that as the situation, and happiness as a necessity above all others, we might as well just enjoy the basket ride and stop thinking too much about how the sausage gets made. What other recourse do we have? If you have one, I'm game, believe me.
