Photo by Luis Villasmil on Unsplash
Hear me out. Prove me wrong. If you can.
Ah, the Protestant work ethic. Keep our hands busy. The Industrial Revolution. Competition that channels our innate greed into productive action.
The rising tide that lifts all boats.
Every day, it becomes increasingly clear to even the slow-witted that this is all a sham. It’s time to make it explicit — so that we as a species change our stupid and self-destructive behavior before it’s too late.
Right now, it nearly is. So we must change fast.
The Consequences Of Our Actions
Much of our behavior leading up to the dire situation we are in today was caused by our benevolence — our goodness. We are exactly the opposite of what we are told we are. People are not evil. We are usually instinctively kind. We must be deceived consistently to fool us into behaving as badly as we’ve been behaving.
We are social creatures who like to go along to get along. Our affable nature led us to go along with self-serving elites who tricked us into serving them, while destroying the biosphere and dooming our own children at the same time.
We’ve been tricked but as the exploitation and abuse, along with climate collapse has become too intrusive to ignore, we are beginning to wake up.
This is a very promising change, but we need to speed up.
Values of the Apocalypse
Our civilization is systems of shit covered by the treacly odor of cheap perfume. The stench is coming through. We all smell it now.
The elitist systems that reward an undeserving few and place the rest of us into the position of lifetime servants is exposed, but we need to understand it better.
Our civilization is built on lies to justify sick values. We are told that we are selfish and that our greed must be harnessed in an endless competition of labor, to produce profit. We get a tiny sliver of the wealth we produce and THIS is how we all benefit.
In other words, we must live entire lifetimes as victims of exploitation with the minimum compensation. The focus of our lives, as civilization operates today, is producing stuff for profit. We value STUFF, not life or our planet. That’s why we are producing the former and destroying the latter.
We need less stuff, and more life and better care for the Earth.
We severely underestimate the cost of STUFF. What happens in production? Tremendous irreplaceable loss.
We lose:
- TIME, the decades we spend in offices and factories, which is the biggest part of our lifetimes
- ENERGY, as our energy is sapped by a lifetime shackled to desks staring at screens, and when (IF) we retire we are old and tired
- BIOSPHERE, because we cause terrible damage to our planet’s biological, chemical and environmental systems, making the Earth virtually uninhabitable
What we get:
- STUFF that provides some distraction for us in our exhausted non-working moments
- MONEY which is what we are selling our entire lifetimes for
- BIOLOGICAL NECESSITIES like food and shelter
In other words, we spend most of our time and energy doing useless work for unnecessary distractions and, in the process, send our lives down the drain and destroy our children’s planet. There is no worse way than the way we “live” today.
And yet we have been brainwashed to believe this is the best way, and possibly the only way. That’s the lie that keeps us in line, even now.
We must blast that lie to smithereens right this moment.
The Alternative
We could live with different values. We could value life and the Earth and recognize that excessive stuff is destructive to everything we value.
What would that look like?
There would be no need for companies and certainly no corporations. We would be energized by love, not greed. So, money would also be superfluous. Transactions would not be central to our lives. Community and caring and creativity would be the focus.
We would produce only what we need — mostly healthy food, but also medicine, shelter and other things — and virtually nothing superfluous.
That is, we would produce 80%-90% less than what we produce today.
This would free up time. We would work a tiny fraction of what we do today, only to produce what we need, and all of it voluntary.
This seems impossible in our current mindset. Why would people work for free? And what about the free riders, those who don’t contribute?
We’d work for free because this minimal voluntary work would be enjoyable and necessary — without overbearing bosses, or abusive demands from management. We would be working for ourselves, our friends and our children. And we’d be doing so much less working that we’d have more time to live our lives as we choose.
Instead of sweating over bills, and threats of deportation, and being called to war, and every possible scare tactic used to control us today — that would all be gone.
We would, instead, spend our now extraordinary amount of free time enjoying each other’s company, doing creative projects, walking in Nature, petting our dogs, and telling stories by a campfire.
Instead of waiting until we retire to start living (IF we live long enough and are able to retire), we would live the entire way through. Our planet would have a chance to repair itself, or we might find ways to assist its healing. We would be using a tiny fraction of the energy we use now — instead of completing climate collapse with continued burning of fossil fuels.
Free riders? Who the hell cares if there are free riders? If, overall, life is better in almost every other way and we avoid the apocalypse we are headed for now, I won’t worry about free riders.
Today, we have a few thousand free riders worldwide taking 90% of what we produce, while we split and fight over the remaining 10% ourselves.
It’s the plutocrats and other elites of the world today that are the big problem.
Ah, Nice Vision. But How Do We Get There?
We are told that we are powerless. This, like the notion that people are inherently evil and greedy, is also a convenient lie that empowers the elites.
We are persuaded to give up in advance. Beyond that, we have no idea how to even challenge our opponents except through systems that are designed to help them, not us. So we have to beat the capitalists at their own game, or win elections when big money finances all the candidates.
We are offered only losing options. And anything else we try, outside the rules that favor elites, is “illegal.”
Because we are humans who are social and kind and like to get along, we recoil against doing something illegal.
We must and can and will get over that. Indeed, the elites are openly flouting laws, defying court orders and defiling the Constitution on a daily basis. There is no law that applies to our opponents. Furthermore, government officials are supposed to be our servants, not our masters.
We will not be restricted by laws, especially when our opponents are given (actually, just taking) free reign.
We will do what the most successful movements in history did: use nonviolent noncooperation to oust tyrants and end cruel inhumane systems.
This works and gives us the advantage because nonviolence plays to our strengths. Violence would play to the strength of the elites.
Indeed, we have already begun. There is an ongoing series of protests, including nationwide protests, which are building the size of the movement. Historically, getting 3.5% of a population involved makes a movement virtually unstoppable. In the United States, that would be about 11 million people.
We seem to be approaching that number already.
But the protests, which puts the elites on notice, is just the first step. Once we build our numbers, we set in motion the real resistance — refusing to help the abusive regime and instead helping each other.
That’s the death blow to tyranny. Why? Because tyrants and elites don’t do anything. They hold power by convincing us to do what they demand.
Who’s ICE? These terrorists who kidnap people without badges or warrants? These criminals who hide behind masks? They are hired mercenaries. But they are also our spouses, children, parents, loved ones, friends and other relatives.
Who are the federal marshals arresting judges? They are hired mercenaries. But they are also our spouses, children, parents, loved ones, friends and other relatives.
Who collects our taxes that fund wars, fund the terrorist activities of ICE, fund the police that mace us or even shoot us when we speak out? They are hired mercenaries. But they are also our spouses, children, parents, loved ones, friends and other relatives.
We have been used as the instruments of our own oppression. Not everyone will join us — some fools will continue to work as goons for the fascists. But their numbers will be sharply diminished and the regime will lose power.
This can happen and, if we choose to follow through, it WILL happen. And that will be glorious. But that alone won’t be enough.
A Positive Vision
What really drives this, or what should drive this, is not fear or (justifiable) anger and a desire for revenge. That’s not the goal. We need to look beyond dis-empowering evil leaders and systems.
We need to envision and build a magnificent society. We need to be free human beings, driven by curiosity and a creative drive and love. We have a vision. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I’m sure others have, too. This video — which I intend to share frequently and widely, gives a glimpse of the future we would have and we must reach for.
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