We Come, We Occupy, We Wonder

I used to advise the president I worked for to always "bump it up," when he was faced with something controversial. By this I meant (and he understood me to say) don't get caught in the grubby little details where you will be attacked by grubby little people. Rise above the swamp and look at the larger picture, the one that matters over time--or over centuries for that matter.

Very fortunately, I worked then for a man who was capable of doing this and who, thereby, earned my loyalty.

Today, I look around for anyone who can understand the concept of "bump it up" let alone put it into play. Where are the leaders who, in the words of Isaac Newton, "stood on the shoulders of giants" and looked far into the future? Or--given that we live in an addled, self-focused world--can at least look beyond just getting elected, reelected, or rich.

If such a person were to emerge, I have my own ideas of what the vista would look like.

First, I would think someone wise and aware of history (instead of trying to rewrite it) would conclude that we are in disarray. Our various protest movements are disjointed efforts to say that something is seriously wrong with the world. And while it might be tempting to think that this unrest might mean that people are becoming more aware, what it really means is that self-interest is riding supreme: the rich have grown attached to their money; the poor can't find work, and the middle class is afraid of losing its creature comforts. No one wants to be the first to give up anything.

Second, I think that the wise person would see that the fixes being proposed are just as self-serving as the irresponsible actions that got us into this mess, not to mention that they are all short-term. Long-term, futuristic solutions evade us because people want to wake up and find the problems solved so they can get back to watching Hoarders or some other reality show--and feel superior to the disturbed people among us.

Personally, I long ago concluded that as a species we have built-in handicaps. We're tribal, meaning that we long for a great leader to emerge who will make decisions we agree with and allow us to continue in our indolence and lack of personal accountability. We are also competitive and rather nasty if we think someone is beating the system in a way that affects us directly. We like to scapegoat and snoop on other people's lives and pay lip servive to morals we don't practice. We also like spectacles, particularly taking public figures apart in the media. It's just who we are and we have a media that panders to it.

If we really think about it, at least as a modern species in the West, we have known only two economic systems (I don't count the hunter-gatherers here). The first was feudalism. It made slaves out of those working the land and produced an aristocratic class fit only to wage war. No one in their right mind would want to go back to that, although there are many in the world living that system right now. The second has been the growth of Capitalism, sprung from the early enterpreneurial merchants in the newly emerging cities (I count Communism and Fascism as bizarre reactions to or distortions of Capitalism).  We seldom question those things that seem self-evidently true because we are used to them as we are now used to two hundred years of Capitalist thinking.

One of the things people don't seem to undestand about Capitalism is that it requires continual growth. The stockholders must be fed, the CEOs don't get their bonuses without growth, and competition cannot be sustained without the continual move forward. When people rhapsodize about a time when people had integrity and pride in their work, they forget that it was during the time of the small city merchants who met a need without the continual striving to be bigger and better and opening branches everywhere. There was time for craftsmanship and customer service then. When capital was removed from the artisan, there was no time left for anything that did not provide a profit. Few people today mention corporate America and integrity in the same breath.

Please let's talk about this.

Capitalism will not be satisfied until the last mineral has been fracted out of the earth, the last animal has been slaughtered in the name of profit, and people have been returned to serving the needs of the aristocracy among us who are fit only to war with one another over what is left of the planet. Is this really what we want?