Principles for the Swift Transformation of Systems
That Are Out of Time
Part One: The Need for Positive Subversion
There
are presently abroad in the world forces of negative subversion, of
creeping nihilism, that recognize no concern as legitimate, unless it be
one of business; that keep no trust, unless it has a large enough
lobby; that honor no profit, unless it is larger this quarter; whose
surety is the submissive individual, and whose unshakeable faith lies in
the manipulation of global markets and the current fads of
econopolitical crisis management.
We
live in a society of institutions, which, having replaced individual
responsibility, assume the individual irresponsible, and so, by means of
fear, seek to repress the depravity that fear itself creates.
Neurotic
fear is the subconscious result of insufficient self-realization.
Self-realization is the responsibility of each person, and negative
subversion is the result of many persons shirking their responsibility,
by identifying the self with the society, rather than identifying the
society with the self.
The
neurotic fear which allows the individual to relinquish his or her
responsibility to institutions is that which allows him or her to defend
them with blind ferocity, despite their increasing abuse of his or her
individual rights. We live in a society fractioned by special
interests, together playing a zero sum shell game, which serves the
purposes of preserving the status quo and the illusion of individual
freedom at the same time.
The
economy is the basic institution of a society whose basic drive is
material possession, for people strive to possess matter when they do
not possess what matters; material possession is the impoverished
surrogate for self-possession. Our economy is based on the premise that
humanity’s resources are limited, while their desires are unlimited,
and that this situation, by manipulation, can be kept this way.
The
most profitable manufacture of our economy and its media are the
illusions that more is better, that novelty is progress, that
competition is the best means of survival, and that the individual is
powerless in the face of institutions. We are thereby conditioned to be
so chronically discouraged and distracted, that we fail to work for
desperately needed social change.
We
have become a society of neurotic, materialistic monads, who believe
that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and that eternal
vigilance means always looking out for Number One; who believe that
freedom is the ability to choose between thirty brands of toothpaste,
rather that the ability to self-determine and fulfill one’s own
obligations in harmony with the greater whole.
Technology,
the mere replication and amplification of human faculties, threatens us
by its possibly exceeding and replacing them and us. We then, having
fear of our own higher faculties that mere technology cannot readily
replicate, feel further threatened by the sudden need to use them in
resolving the global crisis that technology itself helps to create, then
distracting ourselves with technological toys.
For
the first time in recorded history, human society, through the agency
of technology, is dominated by one international complex of
institutions: the global governmental/military/industial complex. This
international cartel, in trespassing beyond the boundaries of nations,
has also trespassed beyond the boundaries of manageability and morality.
We
are lulled dull by goods and services, until more goods’ production is
no service, and services provided are no good. We have equated quality
of life with quantity of what we can possess. We do not value what we
have — we now consume it, consumed by greed that feeds on gripping fear.
Well
we should fear, when we, the earth’s “elite”, feed on the stark
starvation of humanity, both in the poorer nations and within
ourselves. Perverted by our ruthless lust for power, we in blind
arrogance have raped the earth, and she now brings forth evil prodigies,
gross national products of our false economy.
When
one person slays another person, it is called murder and punished; if
many people kill many other people, it is called “war” and honored. If
one race exterminates another race, it is called “genocide”: if an
international arms race destroys the human race, it is called “national
defense” and condoned.
There
is strength in numbers, whenever humanity does not count. We, in our
ignorant knowledge of nature, have become so separated from our own as
to forget that all of the power and wealth of the world is not worth the
price of one human life. We, who of truth have made trite travesty,
have thereby made of miracles a myth. Such miracles are what we greatly
need, if those of our own making are not to destroy us: not those that
shake the earth, but shake our hearts; not those that create wonder,
but are wonder.
We
have taken everything on the earth, but the responsibility for
destroying it. We, who have created this evil, must with divine help
destroy it, before it destroys us. The evil must end where it began:
within each of us. And our acknowledgement of the negative within is
useless, unless followed by positive action withal. There is no
difference between those who do evil and those who do nothing, assuming
that good will take care of itself. Good will take care of itself, if
evil does not take care of it first.
We,
who have in alienation planned the obsolescence of goods, must together
plan the obsolescence of evils, or suffer soon an obsolescence that was
never planned.
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