Exciting news! Your favorite blog has become it's own page. Now you can access this blog at anytime by bookmarking http://www.speaking4thedead.com/ . I've also added content at the bottom. After reading the latest post, scroll down to learn interesting things. Just diversifying a bit. More changes to come. Hang with me.
Main Entry
Okay. It's been a while. I've been waiting for the muse to gently whisper in my ear. Well, apparently, she's on vacation in Cancun. I'm on my own while she's drinking Margaritas at the beach. Oy! Given this unfortunate circumstance, I have to improvise. Falling back on my motto of "when in doubt take a Jello shot" I'm going to...wait, silly me. I meant the OTHER motto: "Think globally, act globally." (There's also a third motto that's more esoteric than the others: Love is its own justification.) Anyway, I'm going to espouse a cultural critique of Capitalist America. Be aware that THIS IS NOT MARXIST! I repeat this is NOT Marxist. While I generally find Marx's critique of Capitalism accurate, his prescriptions for the negative aspects of Capitalism are horrendously problematic. As example, refer to the recent history of Russia. That's a failed Marxist system. I, in my brilliance or madness depending on how you choose to perceive it, have begun to develop my own critique and prescription for our Capitalist culture. This post is the first in a series I've titled the Neo Systema or "New System" roughly translated. This first entry lays out the primary problem with Capitalist America as I see it. I call it the Echelon.
Echelon
There is stratification in society. There always has been. From Ancient Egypt with the Pharaoh and attendants to Greece with the Publicans to Roman Emperors and Senators through Feudal Europe with Manor Lords all the way to the present day. Societies, like soil over time, settle into layers. The mechanisms that cause the "layering" of society are various and culturally dependent. India's caste system is deliberate and separated by societal function. Priests will always retain higher status than artists in India because religious function is prized more than artistic function. In the West--Europe specifically--people have been sorted by level of wealth. Landed Aristocracy are generally highest and the homeless (beggars in old language) fit the role of Chandala or "unfit to be touched" in Indian. I'm referring to Feudal Europe so that I can create a contrast to contemporary America because our class system has evolved into something different than anything that came before.
America (U.S.) emerged from England and Holland primarily. We began with the English Aristocratic system with Monarchy and all. We were colonized and at the mercy of the British Empire's legal, economic and governmental system. The Revolutionary War was about throwing off the shackles of England to determine our own fate. After the war, we created a society that was deliberately anti-England and anti-aristocracy. We could not, however, cast away the mindset that created Aristocracy in the first place. Slavery was still an American institution, people began to seize land to assure themselves of status and wealth still mattered as a deciding factor in one's place in society. We had, in essence, created a feudal system here. Plantations were like Manors, slaves were like serfs. Society was stratified into white overseers, poor or foreign white people, a handful of free colored people and enslaved people of color at the bottom. It was very similar to Feudal times.
America remained this way until the Civil War which was essentially another revolution. The Confederacy wanted to keep the societal structure that had worked for them for 200 years. The Union was becoming more industrialized and depended less and less on slave labor. The North wanted the South to "catch up" industrially and move ahead as a unified nation. Ultimately, the Confederates lost and the Union forced it's will upon the rebel South. Now, we could analyze this result as the victory of humanitarians who wanted blacks treated equally over the tyrannical Southern slavers. There was that aspect to the war and many had the best intentions while liberating the slaves and reworking the labor system. Yet, I submit that humanitarianism wasn't the primary driver in the Civil War. My conception is that, like all societies, the driving factor was economic. The northern industrialists needed workers for the scads of factories popping up and they saw the southern slavers as capping what was a lucrative labor market. My assertion is the slaves were freed from the fields to become impoverished factory workers. It's a sort of "freedom," I guess. Poor whites were treated much the same as people of color at this time.
The era of tycoon had dawned. Names like Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Ford and Roosevelt became iconic. Strangely enough, while these families built estates with more-money-than-God fortunes, the life of the average worker was a struggle. Their lives were short, cramped and generally hard. They survived and did their jobs, raised their children, so life really wasn't THAT bad. It's just in comparison to the tycoon and family that things get ridiculously disparate. By their example, the tycoons unleashed a trend of entrepreneurship and wealth building that the World had never seen before. This economic explosion was based on certain values that can be detrimental. One is the division of people into employers and employees, wealthy and poor or great and average. The tycoons became viewed as a better "stock" of people who deserved exceptional treatment because they had amassed huge fortunes. It's somewhat akin to "Divine Right" except instead of kings it became the rich. Another problematic value that helped form the Echelon is the Objectivist idea that the "Great" and creative (and wealthy incidentally) have no real responsibility to society as a whole because society consists of "the mob" as presented in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and "looters and moochers" as presented in Rand's magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged. Basically, Objectivism's message is that society impedes the liberty of "Great" people to be "Great." It also transvalues the great and wealthy into victims of society who give their greatness to the thieving mob intentionally, knowing that they must "sacrifice" themselves to their greatness. This concept is called the "Sanction of the Victim" and one Objectivist goal is for the great and wealthy to abandon this sanction and follow individualistic paths of collecting more wealth (hoarding) and looking after their interests and the interests of those like them. In this one philosophy, born out of literature, the Echelon as a practical concept emerges. The final detrimental value is a business term called "run to failure." This is a management style in which the equipment of a factory or the site of resource excavation or human capital (i.e. workers) are used until they fail. This is done to extract maximum profit from a business venture. When failure occurs, the business picks up and moves on to the next thing. It's almost viral. The "run to failure" methodology pairs nicely with the inherent short term vision of Capitalist economics. As long as one gets as much as one can in their lifetime, screw the future, or so goes the thinking. For examples of this mindset, all you have to do is look around modern life. Global climate change is OCCURRING and some factories keep spewing carbon into the atmosphere. CEO's keep gouging corporations for insane compensation packages while the corporation itself sinks into bankruptcy leaving shareholders out in the cold. We know that fossil fuels are running out but we don't care because it's the future's problem, which is okay, unless you're IN THE FUTURE. These values form the destructive foundation of the Echelon. If things continue as they have, the Echelon could kill off humanity because the future comes sooner or later.
This is my opening statement for the Neo Systema. I realize it's long and I greatly appreciate those of you who have read to this point. The next post will clearly define the Echelon and how it operates and what dangers we truly face. Until then, take a gander at the graph below. It shocked me. We spend nearly 500% more on the military as the next biggest military spender. We could cut military spending by $150 Billion and still be spending twice as much as the closest spender on military items. Priorities a TAD misplaced?
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