the same bird
4 minute read
Life gets complicated. Not least around politics and economics.
We are all faced with challenges that originate from these places.
A perspective that helped me make more sense of life, especially in terms of political division, came when I began to see capitalism and socialism as being conditions on a spectrum as opposed to being opposing principles.
There are some things I want to own privately and some things I'm happy to share with my communities.
Clearly, we can see that there is an issue when individuals take more than they need from the pool of resources that we all share, but this seems less a problem of the ideology and more an issue with the individual. The ideology is just what they use as permission.
Expressions of greed are not uncommonly promoted by a fear of lack. This fear of lack can be engendered as much in an aggressive, dominantly capitalist ideology as it can by a communist one.
If we are driven to survive, then taking more than our fair share to shore up against a wave of poverty is reasonable at one level. With a lack of community or social cohesion, this can become even more acute.
In some ways, it is the dissolution of community and social bonds that leads to greed. And if not that, then it might simply be the result of a lack of compassion or empathy.
In some communities, the sense of cohesion was provided through religious and spiritual organisations. Systems of belief that, at their root, appeared to express a unity between all things.
In such environments, the limits of private and shared ownership should become fairly obvious.
But again, it is not quite so simple.
However, it does seem to be a valid observation that when a culture loses its connection to a deeper sense of connectivity between people and things, then people and things become commodities to be traded and exploited.
There are multiple expressions of this potential deeper connection, and I'm not trying to suggest one over another, only that in societies and cultures where it is absent, people become commodities, NPCs in other people's lives. In any community or culture in which the sanctity of individual sovereignty is not balanced with the interconnectedness of all things, there seems to be a real problem.
I recently saw a condemnation of what was being held up as right-wing, a failure of capitalism, it was called. To my mind, the failure of capitalism is the absence of social conscience, in the same way that the failure of socialism is often realised in the absence of individual responsibility and accountability.
The political system, as it stands, in terms of national and international governance, is a form of corporate feudalism run by gangs.
The billionaires we see as the visible heads of the system are often really little more than personas of an economic body that profits from debt, ill health, division, and indifference.
I don't see that as being capitalist; I just see that as evil, and I think it needs to be named as that. Because to exchange one political system for another, without addressing the problem at that deeper level, evil will just mutate and adopt whatever political clothing we would define as not capitalistic.
I want to be clear, evil is a strong word. I'm not promoting any specific religious or spiritual dogma here, just a desire to seek balance.
Perhaps at the end of the day, it is our capacity to improve our own internal regulation that diminishes the need to consume or engage with such dynamics anyway. And yet none of us are immune to politics or the economic systems at their heart.
One thing does seem clear, though: being able to have the conversation and exchange points of view does seem to be at the root of good health, because if we cannot connect, then that balance of appreciating difference can never be established.
The principle of live and let live is also a fair one to hold, I believe, within reason. And yet thre in lies another problem, because we can disagree on what a fair way to live might be. Maybe it is learning to live with that dilemma that will ultimately change the world for the better.
Let's see.
Peace x
