Photo by George Pagan III on Unsplash

What’s wrong with our systems and what’s wrong with proposed reforms.

Original sin is the underpinning of our thinking, both political and economic. You don’t need to be religious to believe that people are evil by Nature. The unspoken assumption is that people are inherently evil, and need carrots and sticks to make them behave properly.

Way too many of us, religious or not, believe this.

The idea is pernicious nonsense. WE aren’t inherently evil. People are, generally, nice. But we live under systems that squash their good natures and encourage—even force them—to be greedy, selfish and cruel.

Crony capitalism (which is the real-world variety) allows and perhaps ensures that the worst of us make the decisions for all of us—what is produced, how much, and who gets it—to satisfy unlimited greed and power lust, and to be “a winner.”

Without this system, we are told, people would be lazy and do nothing and we would all starve. We’ve been listening to this bullcrap our whole lives, a gaslighting that never ends.

It’s a wonder we can think at all.

Eyes Open

When we are well rested, not distracted, and prepared to think, we can see our situation and figure out what to do. Our entire civilization is constructed in a way to minimize the chances of this ever happening.

And yet, the civilization is about to fail in this because you are about to pause, and think, and decide.

Let’s do this together. Let’s start with a very basic question, one that you may have never asked yourself.

What does life demand of us? Not what does your spouse, your boss, or your “country” demand of you. What does LIFE demand of us?

To live, we need food and an environment that sustains us — the environment of the planet we evolved on. That’s most of it right there.

To live a decent life, we need a bit more. We require care for our health (medicine can be life-saving) and human companionship. We have a desire for community and to express ourselves. What I am describing here is applicable to all times and to all cultures.

In modern civilization, we cannot get what we need without working. Which we believe is sensible and fair. Nothing could be further from the truth or more unnatural. We live in an artificial world of invented Hunger Games and this is the biggest problem. Not only are we on an endless treadmill in search of money for food, but we are simultaneously ruining the environment that sustains us.

How we live isn’t sensible. It’s not even sane. We spend most of our lives virtually enslaved, exhausting ourselves producing what amounts to crap primarily for the purpose of further enriching a handful of clueless layabouts, and dooming our own children. In return, we get enough to survive and buy a few distracting baubles, and do it again tomorrow — probably until we die.

That is a completely wasted life with a few moments of joy squeezed in on weekends and, if we live long enough and things go our way, in our last few years after retirement.

Alternatives

We don’t realize that we do not need to live this way. We are obedient and unimaginative and pacified.
In our giant world of 1984, we aren’t Winston Smith. We are everyone else — we started out and continue loving Big Brother.

We look to a daddy figure to take care of us, and here in America we get abusive parents — we are raised and tended to by an evil Uncle Sam.

But we have a choice. We can refuse to obey and live as free human beings. We can grow our own food, reclaim our time and lives, share with others, fully experience this tiny stretch of time of consciousness, enjoy the company of others, express ourselves.

We can do this without any bosses or money. Our changes needn’t be mere reforms. The way we live now is so fundamentally wrong that nearly all of it needs to go. Money is one of those things.

Life need not be transactional. But everything is. This is a bad habit which comes from our insane way of living. Our entire lives are dedicated to money and transaction and so greed has become the focus.

That’s no life at all, even if you “win” the competition. The merely transactional life is not worth living.

But to live a human life, as opposed to one in service to an insane system, you need only produce food, share it, and then simply go out into the world and be yourself.

We are so messed up that many of us don’t know what to do without work. We don’t feel useful — as if producing crap is the only reason to live. But the purpose of life is to live amiably with others and to experience life fully.

This doesn’t require paid “work” or mountains of stuff . It requires biological necessities (like food) and time.

In the world we could choose, we would finally have time. We would be free of the systems that waste our lives and ruin the Earth. Our species figured out how to be free of cruel and stupid systems.

All we need to do is stop and do something else. The systems aren’t powerful or irresistible. It’s true that crony capitalism and dictatorship and communism has armed enforcers.

But those enforcers are ordinary people — our spouses, and friends, and relatives and loved ones. Sometimes the “enemy” is US! So, we can talk with the enforcers and help them to see clearly. In any case, there aren’t enough enforcers to stop us from taking our freedom and living as we choose once we decide to.

There will be a cost, a terrible cost, but the alternative is to never live and to doom future generations. That is not acceptable.

What do we need? Nonviolent noncooperation — a peaceful revolution. We need to embody good values, not transactions but love. Not greed but generosity. Not bigotry but amity. Not violence but gentleness. Not anger but wonder. Not hatred but camaraderie.

We need to be a society of sane caring people, a genuine civilization of civilized people. We can do this. In fact, this is our Nature and a great deal of effort has been made by fools to prevent us from living as human beings.

Remember: despotism and villainy of all sorts are ended and removed by The People all the time. It happened to the Soviet Union, to a slew of Mideast dictators, to Marcos and Ceaușescu and Milosevic and Bolsonaro.

The tiny privileged minority want us to forget People Power, to feel defeated, to give up in advance. But there are literally BILLIONS of people who want to be free and we are enslaved by a few thousand clueless fools who were mostly born into positions of privilege. They have no special abilities and they are kind of stupid because they’ve never needed to struggle or learn.

Our enemies aren’t really powerful or smart. We do everything and so we have the power — the power to grind the nonsense and cruelty to a halt. All we need to do is spread this truth and begin acting on it.

Tyranny everywhere can end. We are born to be communities of free people. We must reclaim our birthright.

Today’s protests in the United States and elsewhere are the start of this awakening. Take part. Speed things up. This is the critical moment, the opportunity.