House of Eratosthenes

Hawkins really found a humdinger this time. On Huffington Post, one Stephen Mo Hanan has made the point that capitalism is simply beyond saving. An important message, since his viewpoint no doubt represents the same of many others:

The oft-prophesied collapse of capitalism is looming over our world’s daily supply of goods. The global economic system is on the ropes and must not be allowed to fail. So proclaims government, financial marketeers, tottering czars of industry, media mandarins, and just about everybody else who can pay to be heard. But since their efforts to avert failure have so far inspired little confidence, some attention might be given to Plan B. After all, despite its arcane procedures, capitalism is really just an accounting system, a way of ensuring that the world’s work gets done and that those who do it are properly compensated.

Now I’m not stupid enough to forget that capitalism is also a system that has allowed a substantial though relatively small group of human beings to amass titanic wealth and, so to speak, to capitalize on that wealth by exercising transformative power over the whole planet and everyone on it. If they were all wise and benevolent, that might be a satisfactory arrangement; they aren’t, and it isn’t. So any discussion of how human history (let alone human well-being) might continue after the demise of capitalism must get a good fix on the roots of greed and why it has persisted despite the abundant evidence of its perversity.

Ah yes…greed. The House of Eratosthenes Glossary says —

Greedy (adj.):
An undefined word. If it does have a meaning at all, the closest one we’ve been able to extrapolate from the pattern of the word’s actual usage, is: Someone who manifests a desire to keep his property when someone else comes along wanting to take it away. A wealthy person who wants to stay that way (but you’d better click on the word “wealthy” to find out what it really means).

Mo Hanan takes a few paragraphs to say what he really means, but eventually gets around to it…

What if we began to ask whether corporate consumerism was really the ultimate flowering of America’s promise? For one thing, capitalism as we know it would fade away. But since it may be doing that anyway, we might be wise to drop our resistance and bid it a fond farewell. We could thank it for its efficient promotion of the Industrial Revolution, while observing that by creating an interconnected world it has rendered its own creed of frenetic competition obsolete. A satellite can’t go into orbit till its booster rocket falls away. If the accounting system is in flames, let it drop and disintegrate, mission accomplished.

This is the first part of his long column in which that voice in my head, screaming “What in the hell have YOU been watching, Mo Hanan?” finally subsides. I agree with him a hundred and ten percent here. Socialism…anti-capitalism…modern liberalism…call it what you will. It is dedicated to an axiom that whatever has helped us up until this point, is a hindrance from here on out and has to be jettisoned.

I live in a world in which fathers teach their sons how to use guns, even though in these times, you don’t need to know that in order to feed yourself. How to tie knots, even though you don’t need to know that in order to travel. How to change a flat tire, even though a service that will handle that for you, is a phone call away. How to make a car last three hundred thousand miles, even though you’re expected to trade the bucket o’ bolts in after fifty or sixty, seventy tops.

Mo Hanan, and those like him, live in a metrosexual world. A Twilight Zone in which yesterday’s assist is today’s burden and tomorrow’s toxin. He lives in a world in which we’re expected to provide payback to whatever has ferried us, rescued us, lifted us up from disaster, by casually discarding it. To reward life with death.

And his preaching is in favor of brotherly love, and against materialism.

Oh, the irony.

No, we share effectively only when we do so from love, as children spontaneously teach. They teach it not only in those moments when they suddenly share a prized possession, but especially when they share some unexpected aspect of themselves, the harvest of self-discovery. We could travel steadily through life making such offerings of ourselves, giving and receiving delight, except for being conditioned by fear to suspect the worst of each other.

Of course, living can inflict a thousand wounds on our ability (or willingness) to “love one another.” But with the advances since Bible times in our understanding of how the psyche functions, self-realization techniques are widely available to repair the damage done to our inherent nature. Why not make use of them? The world’s work would get organized and performed in a collective spirit of mutual assistance and shared benefit.

Mr. Mo Hanan, you possess a remarkable ability to abandon in a great big hurry whatever dollops of reality contradict this vision of yours, so I’ll pose this question as if you’ve not yet thoroughly noodled on it and it’s not a mere formality: What in the world were the last forty-five years about? What was going on since this vision first gained widespread recognition and acceptance, and the election last month? Was America just s-l-o-w-l-y allowing the lesson to sink in?

What was 1968 about? What was 1980 about? What was 1994 about? Could we have been experiencing the same kind of fatigue with the party-in-charge, leading up to those years, that we displayed in 2008 with their ideological opponents? Or were the people just going off willy-nilly, showing a mindless Pavlovian response to — aggressive marketing?

No, what you’ve managed to ignore here, and I get the impression you have an impressive talent for so ignoring, is the well-established fact that while the capacity to share and give and love is an ingrained part of this mystery-shrouded human psyche, so too is the ego.

Seriously, there is some thought with some horsepower behind it going into Mo Hanan’s column. I’m not entirely sure it’s all his…it has the flavoring of something ripped off from somewhere else, and it is a rather tired message I’ve been hearing over and over again, here and there, since my childhood. But there is some good thinking somehow getting injected in there. It’s just not very well informed. Someone has achieved way too much talent for expurgating ideas he doesn’t like, before he adequately checks ’em out.

Hey, here’s a fun exercise for you during your down time. Every time Mo Hanan talks about loving each other and getting along with each other in this new post-modern era of mutually cooperative human history, in your mind’s mind, insert afterward “with conservatives and Republicans.”

For a chuckle.

But don’t get too humorous with that chuckle. Don’t forget — there are millions upon millions of people who see the world exactly the same way as Mr. Mo Hanan. And they want “everyone” to get along and love each other, to be included. But their definition of everyone excludes quite a few folks, folks just as real as any other, that they don’t want to talk about. Their Utopia is a sort of modern version of Noah’s Ark, built from stem to stern for the express purpose of providing a shelter to an elite crowd…leaving the balance behind. In their world, “everyone” never really means everyone. And they don’t want to admit it.

And always, always, always…their plans for creating this new world, fall apart when the time comes to decide who’s going to be in charge. Because every face on the totem pole thinks it’s going to be the one on top. Everyone in their new Starfleet wants to be a Captain, and nobody wants to clean the Starship latrine. They confront the mystery and the power of the human ego, later rather than sooner — always insisting on the dubious privilege of allowing it to take them by surprise.

That’s why, as you survey all the gear that has given good things to you and those you know, from coffee makers to green (!) automobiles to the weaponry Mo Hanan hates so much, to nuclear reactors…capitalism continues to retain a complete monopoly on providing it. Every nut, every bolt.

So with all due respect, Mr. Mo Hanan, maybe we still have some waiting to do before we talk about jettisoning things.

Not really related, but you’ve got to check this out: http://www.cracked.com/article_16852_5-government-programs-that-backfired-horrifically.html
- JohnJ | 12/09/2008 @ 13:28

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