FEB 2013

APRIL 2013

SOMETHING... POWERFUL

.....
14-min youtube:.WW3 IS COMING

 

from 'Capitalism as Disease'

...Of course, there have always been two kinds of people—humanitarians and inhumanitarians. And a majority of the people in a mean society do not have to be mean. The amount of meanness perpetrated, not the number of people who perpetrate it, is the definitive element. The meanness evident in America is overwhelming. Civil behavior is almost entirely absent. Barbarians are at the helm of the ship of state and have been for a long time.

The meanness that has afflicted America is responsible for its domestic violence. It is also responsible for the violence Americans inflict internationally. Meanness cannot be compartmentalized. There is no such thing as a nice, mean fellow. No mean person is nice; nice guys are never mean.

The germ that carries this affliction is the predominant political economy fostered by the commercial, political, and economic communities. Capitalism is an extractive activity that exploits workers and consumers and has never succeeded in serving the needs of any nation’s entire population. Marketing is a universal lie. People always fall through the cracks in institutions and the institutional elite care nothing about those who drop. Capitalist societies always consist of first and second class citizens; they are characterized by people who agree with Henry Vanderbilt’s statement, “The public be damned.” And the public is and always has been. America’s elite have never sacrificed anything for this people in general.
Commercial competition does not foster concern for others. Individualism fosters antagonism. Looking out for number one always ends up denying what is needed to number two. Charity is not a commercial virtue. Capitalism is institutionalized meanness. It is the primeval miasma manifested in greed. It is the disease that makes human beings inhumane, and it is fatal.

Why then would those in other nations look up to America and want to emulate its culture of meanness? Why aren’t they revolted by it? Why won’t they simply stop being led by their noses?

There can only be one answer. The meanness has not only afflicted America, it has afflicted others too. The primeval miasma transcends national borders. That is the tragedy of being human. See youtubes: HERE then HERE, then for 'WW3 IS COMING': HERE

 

 

 

MORE . IDLE . REFLECTION

Looking back the other day at some of the articles I've saved from the net, I found a pleasingly concise description of what, essentially - almost two-and-a-half decades ago - tipped me to finally throw-in the towel so far as work was concerned. It was one reason, anyhow... and at the time was more an intuitive verdict than an intellectual one as implied by the practical nature of the issue►.

Another reason was acknowledging that I'm by nature an idler - which I've known since even before I was 5. The term 'idler' may not be quite precise here, but it's the nearest word I know that describes the disposition. At any rate, as well as an aversion for what's normally regarded as work, my response is to go into idle mode whenever confronted by conformists, traditionalists or anyone who likes rules, rituals, institutions and so on. In my experience, most of these are either entirely irrational or heavily biased against the interests of people like me. And if I look around in certain directions, all I see is the result of this bias: people fighting one another... I don't just mean wars and conflicts around the world - though that's part of it (and there's more than enough of those, to be sure) - but in everyday life: ie: cops against demonstrators, public against politicians, medics against the tobacco/alcohol/food industries, workers against bosses, profits against fairness.... exploitation versus resistance, untold opulence v abject poverty.... on and on it goes.

I look in other directions and see none of this. I see instead only the world I knew as a truant from school - those halcyon days of light and pleasure that few ordinary people get to enjoy. So why not, I thought, truant from work? And why not do so for the rest of my life? Bold questions indeed!

My work back in those final days of employment was technical, and struggle didn't come into it - apart from the effort of getting to work in worsening traffic. Nor did I ever have any real ambition, and was always bemused by people around me vying for various promotions or senior positions that struck me as eminently disagreeable and tiresome.

Though pleasant enough in the job ratings, after a decade in technical operations I thought: what the hell is this all about, this life (of work)? Surely, our old friend Epicurus had a point:

For Epicurus, the purpose of philosophy was to attain the happy, tranquil life, characterized by ataraxia—peace and freedom from fear—and aponia—the absence of pain—and by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends. He taught that pleasure and pain are the measures of what is good and evil; death is the end of both body and soul and should therefore not be feared; the gods do not reward or punish humans; the universe is infinite and eternal; and events in the world are ultimately based on the motions and interactions of atoms moving in empty space.

(I just nicked that from Wikipedia).

So although neither wealthy nor particularly motivated, I nevertheless decided that my best option would be to jump ship, as it were... and the rest is history.

BUT if that's the background from 25-years ago, how about these out-takes from an article now in 2013:

◄ here

And there we have: The same stale rhetoric, the same old hassle... as ever: The relentless Capitalist Disease. And I actually ESCAPED! Reflecting now, I'm amazed how easy it was.

THE MONUMENTAL CONFIDENCE TRICK

But then, with the kind of self-confidence I was dished-up with - or left with - as a kid, how could I not be amazed? True, when operating alone my internalised self-reliance has always been solid; the world of practical, scientific reality was always at my elbow: maybe I was born with a dexterity that eludes so many people: an ability to fix things, build things, achieve things practical. ONLY in the world of other people was my self-sufficiency challenged, attenuated, thwarted. I'm not talking about social or personal interactions and relationships here - this concerns only the institutional, the world of work, of effort, of oppression... and the difficulty was never down to shyness, ignorance or incompetence - though precisely how it was inculcated is a little obscure to me now. Certainly it stems from infant school, junior school, etc; and perhaps the process is too subtle to notice, or is contained in a succession of minor incidents too trivial to recall. It's an impediment, though, a hindrance, that I believe infected most of my peers too in those drearily protracted monochrome days of school back in the 50s. In those times, school existed - so it seemed - for some purpose other than to benefit us kids... as if, rather, it was to tame us, clip our wings, curb our aspirations, trammel our hopes, crush our inventiveness, quell our enthusiasm for learning and above all becoming... in short: to prevent our dangerous young creative minds from expanding to experience genuine autonomy... and from any risk of us one day challenging an iniquitous status quo and its economy designed for the exclusive benefit of a corrupt corporate elite.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

from CLASS STRUGGLE

"...things capitalists want from government: public subsidy of the infrastructure on which profitability depends; they want wealth transferred to them via military spending; they want militarily-enforced access to foreign markets, raw materials, and labor; and they want suppression of dissent when it becomes economically disruptive. So we can include popular resistance to corporate welfare, military spending, imperialist wars, and government authoritarianism as further instances of class struggle.

...the important thing is learning to see the myriad ways that capitalists try to advance their interests at the expense of everyone else. This doesn’t mean that everything in social life can be reduced to class struggle, but that everything in social life should be examined to see if and how it involves a playing-out of class interests.

There is fierce resistance to thinking along these lines, precisely because class analysis threatens to unite the great majority of working people who are otherwise divided in a fight over crumbs. Class analysis also threatens to break down the nationalism upon which capitalists depend to raise armies to help exploit the people and resources of other countries. Even unions, supposed agents of workers, often resist class analysis because it exposes the limits of accommodationism.

Resistance to thinking about class struggle is powerful, but the power of class analysis is hard to resist, once one grasps it....

Selling off utilities, forests, and roads is not about saving taxpayers money. It’s about giving capitalists control of these assets so they can be used to generate profits."

AND

Labor is the only commodity under capitalism that is not allowed to establish its own price, but rather have its price dictated by the buyer. Unions are the way to establish the price of labor fairly. The war against labor is a war of values, based upon the notion held by the ownership class that owning shows initiative and hustle, while working for someone else means your are stupid and lazy. Their argument is completely upside down, because they are the indolent ones, living at leisure off of our hard work.

   

SOMETHING POWERFUL

 
 

THIS is reality

The pictures (swipe) above are symbolic of everywhere that exists. We all know this, yet we forget it. We prefer - as our genetic compulsions dictate - to dwell on the minutiae of temporal trivia in our immediate vicinity.... (even 'WW3 IS COMING ' is minutiae).

The pictures below are symbolic of our future, when we've long ceased to accord exclusively with genetic programming (and weird follies like WW3), and have emerged from our cocoons to know true freedom and autonomy. THAT's when we'll finally experience reality... THAT's when we'll no longer be primitives. (Maybe a few of us are already part-way there?)

 

IMAGINE . . .

( From 'BLACK HOLE' & 'TITAN'S SKY' )

 

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