Dismantle Civilisation

Here’s an interesting article, exploring the native american term ‘Sumac Kawsay’, or ‘Buen Vivir’:

(Portuguese to Spanish Translation by Blanca Diego.
Spanish to English Translation by Christopher Reid (Decolonial Translation Group)

NOTE: The original article “Sumac Kawsay” was published on the Web site of Foro Social Mundial on 6 February 2009. The Spanish translation by Blanca Diego, “Buen Vivir,” was published on the same site on the same day. English translation by Christopher Reid. The French translation by Angélica Montes, “‘Bien Vivre’, un concept de la pensée décoloniale indigène en Amérique latine,” is available at the Web site of le Mouvement des indigènes de la république (MIR). )

Perhaps because I am a Brazilian, the first time I heard the expression buen vivir I immediately thought of “buena vida (2),” a term which in our country is used pejoratively to refer to an easy and unconcerned life, one filled with little work, plenty of evening strolls and other luxuries, and zero political consciousness.

I was completely mistaken. Buen vivir means nothing of the sort. On the contrary, according to the indigenous peoples of the Andean region, and the Aymara people in particular (3), buen vivir is a solid principle which means life in harmony and equilibrium between men and women, between different communities and, above all, between human beings and the natural environment of which they are part. In practice, this concept implies knowing how to live in community with others while achieving a minimum degree of equality. It means eliminating prejudice and exploitation between people as well as respecting nature and preserving its equilibrium.

According to this definition, the culture in which we are submerged is utterly devoid of buen vivir. We are in complete disequilibrium with ourselves and with nature when we buy more than we actually need; when, without remorse, we exploit the land, water and even other human beings themselves; when we search for exorbitant profits which, the majority of the time, only benefit one person or a very small group of people.

Technologies continue to improve and every day the comforts and conveniences which these offer are increasing, but only for a few people. Meanwhile, for the majority of people what are increasing are poverty, exploitation, prejudice, competition and individualism. This is the logic of the system in which we live. There can be no doubt that we are not practicing buen vivir.

On the other hand, we hear in the news all the time about the spread of the world financial crisis, the dollar’s falling value, the risk associated with dwindling water resources….In sum, they are continuously reminding us of the failure of the system.

In the face of all of this, it seems ironic to hear indigenous people referred to as ‘savages’ whose way of life is backwards and primitive. How can this be, given that they have always known how to live in community with one another, to produce what is necessary for their survival and to live in harmony with nature and with other living beings; to nourish themselves on fruits, legumes and other vegetables, and to understand better than anyone else the secrets of nature and of natural medicine? Furthermore, they have lived in the Americas for thousands of years in a sustainable manner – though they may not have used precisely this same term – long before the so-called “discovery” of America. Is this really what a savage is?

Recently, at the ninth meeting of the World Social Forum which was held in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, in the city of Belém do Pará, a defense of the concept of buen vivir was presented. For those who were there at the Forum, the participation of indigenous peoples was quite significant, and not just because of the rituals and music which they performed, or for the tattoos on their bodies or their colorful clothing. It was also significant because of the consistency of their discourse and the courage they demonstrated in defending what they believe in: ‘good living’ and ‘living well’.

Sumak kawsay, or buen vivir, is a concept which has already been incorporated into the debates of the Ecuadorean Constituent Assembly. Having recently been approved by voters in a popular referendum, buen vivir is guaranteed in Bolivia’s new constitution. Buen vivir was the hallmark of this World Social Forum. Perhaps it will also be the beginning of a possible new world.

ENDNOTES

1) TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: The literal English translation is “good living,” but it is important to observe that buen vivir is itself an imperfect Spanish approximation of the (indigenous Ecuadorean) Kichwa term, sumak kawsay. Meanwhile, in Bolivia, a similar concept stemming from the Aymara Indian cosmovision and language – suma qamaña – is customarily translated into Spanish as vivir bien, or “living well.” The author, a Brazilian thinking and writing in Portuguese, has opted to utilize the Ecuadorean Kichwa/Spanish terms throughout her article rather than attempt a concrete Portuguese translation of the concept.

2) TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: Literally, “(the) good life.”

3) TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: Again, to avoid confusion on the part of the lay reader it must be emphasized that sumak kawsay and buen vivir are specifically Ecuadorean Kichwa and Spanish terms, respectively; they are not the actual terms used by the Aymara and Spanish speakers of Bolivia (see translator’s note 1).

Sumac Kawsay is what we believe is key to building a new society, one which is built on interdependence and communities rather than hyperindividualism, one which views ourselves as part of nature rather then seperate, and one which strives for equality and not for individual power and selfishness.  Dismantling Civilisation is about building our lives and comminites around Sumac Kawsay as our central story, and not around the Civilisation’s story of greed, conquest and expansion.

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They’re all at it: Nicholas Stern, George Monbiot, Mark Lynas, James Hansen, Al Gore…name your environmental campaigner of the day, week or month, and read what they write. No question there is good sense — oh yes, the science is there, and all sorts of backlash and hard words aimed at the powers that be — but the same mistake is made time after time, scattered through the books, articles and papers, like a relentless 2/4 marching forwards to the beat of the system’s internal drumbeat.

We need change: total change. Unequivocal, radical, unprecedented change that tilts us with a giddy rush of welcome adrenaline away from the fiery pits of climatic hell and ecological malevolance.

The writers and the campaigners can see the urgency, they understand it, but they do not accept it! Acceptance of our situation, in all its horror, means acceptance that the very institutions that comprise Industrial Civilisation — the corporations, the political parties, the media conglomerates, the advisory panels — are intrinsically evil, like rafts of malignant tumours that corrupt every bit of goodness they touch. Acceptance of the catastrophe we face means acceptance that these institutions cannot change: they are the very stuff of civilised society, wholly culpable for our condition.

A corporation that doesn’t make a profit will fail; a political party that represents the people has no power; a media conglomerate that no longer sets the agenda cannot control its audience; an advisory body that writes destruction from its agenda no longer speaks for civilisation. They are what they are: change them and they no longer exist.

It is no longer excusable to request, even demand, institutional change. Only people can change. Start speaking to them before it’s too late.

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Obviously, to dismantle civilization we need to stage a revolution. Society cannot be replaced by an ‘un-society,’ that is, a state where humans digress to a lower stage of development and remain unaware of their environment. But what would revolution look like? And what would society be replaced by?

The biggest problem with revolution is that, in the mind of the public, it can often border on anarchy. Most imagine that the state is dismantled and then ruled by whoever has the brute strength and force to overtake the others. This is not the solution, as it is identical to our current state of affairs.

All of the problems with civilization seem to surround power. Someone has too much, someone has too little, and in the end no one is happy. Can we envision a culture constructed without power? How about something like a collective farm, where everyone has his or her own duty and plays an equal part in contributing to the product/society? In turn, they all receive equal shares of the profits/benefits. This type of arrangement is distinct from socialism or communism, as it does not hold one party in charge of harnessing the wealth and distributing it equally. It is simply a responsibility shared by everyone.

Even more productive than pushing the case to dismantle civilization may be brainstorming ways to replace it. What do you think? What would you like to see happen to civilization after it is dismantled?

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By Chris Floyd, on Information ClearingHouse.

Here’s a purely hypothetical scenario. Let’s say you were a dedicated imperial militarist who believed that your country’s security, prestige and financial interests could best be served by war and the ever-present threat of war. Let’s say you had some really hot and juicy operations going on, endless deadly conflicts that were pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into your war machine and entrenching national policy even more deeply in the militarist philosophy – the machtpolitik – that you believe in.

But there’s a problem. The general public – the cow-like herd out there that doesn’t understand grand strategy the way you and your fellow elites do – is growing weary, and wary, of your Long War. The national treasury is bankrupt, the national infrastructure is rotting, the nation’s communities are dying; millions of people are out of work, losing their homes, losing their dreams, spiraling down into want, privation and despair. Yet you have big plans to escalate the war, expand your war machine, and maintain the global dominance that you believe is the right and natural role for your special nation – and its elites. What to do? How to galvanize the truculent, self-absorbed herd into enthusiastically supporting your vital agenda once more?

Well, here’s one purely hypothetical approach you might try. You goad and provoke violent extremist groups into retaliating against your attacks, your civilian-slaughtering invasions and incursions into their territory. Being unable to confront directly your war machine – the largest, most advanced military force in the history of the world, sustained by a tsunami of public money that each year surpasses the military spending of the rest of the world – they naturally respond with “asymmetrical” operations. At first, these are directed at nearby targets: your supply lines, the forces of your local proxies and allies, and other chaos-inducing depredations in the groups’ own regions, designed to foul the lines of your control and drive you out. Just as naturally, you use these attacks to justify an even greater military presence in their regions. The cycle inevitably, inexorably ratchets upwards and outwards, until at last the extremists strike at your homeland – either with your connivance, or your covert acquiescence, or, in any event, with your foreknowledge that such an attack was sure to come. This is the moment you have waited for; this is exactly what you wanted. Now you can whip the herd back into a martial frenzy, keep the Long War going, and push aside the rabble’s petty, small-minded desires for a peaceful, prosperous life at home, minding their own business.

One never knows exactly what goes on behind the imperial drapery in the Potomac palaces, of course; ordinary American citizens were long ago turned into Kremlinologists of their own government, trying to discern — through ceremonial signs, backstairs gossip, and slight deviations in ritualized rhetoric — just what their masters are really up to. But some cynics darkly suspect that scenarios something like the one sketched out above have already been enacted; for instance, in the “new Pearl Harbor” that struck America on September 11, 2001 – one year after a group channeling the views of future Bush Administration bigwigs (including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Scooter Libby and many others) had openly pined for a “new Pear Harbor” to “catalyze” the American people into supporting their militarist agenda, which included an invasion of Iraq – whether Saddam Hussein was in power or not.

But leaving aside for now the ever-thorny matter of divining the varying proportion of connivance, acquiescence, foreknowledge, exploitation, incompetence and fate involved in 9/11, we can say this as an established fact: It is the policy of the United States government to provoke violent extremist groups into action. Once they are in play, their responses can then be used in whatever way the government that provoked them sees fit. And we also know that these provocations are being used, as a matter of deliberate policy, to rouse violent groups on the “Af-Pak” front to launch terrorist attacks.

In other words, just as I first wrote in the Moscow Times more than six years ago (and followed up three years later), the United States is deliberately fomenting terrorist attacks in order to pursue its political and military agendas.

[For more on how these policies and similar uses of terrorism and death squads have been realized in Iraq and elsewhere, see "A Furnace Seal'd: The Wondrous Death Squads of the American Elite," "Ulster on the Euphrates: The Anglo-American Dirty War in Iraq," and "Willing Executioners: America's Bipartisan Atrocity Deepens in Somalia."]

Eagle-eyed Jason Ditz at Antiwar.com draws the connection between this policy and the most recent “asymmetrical” strike by a “tickled” terrorist group in Pakistan: the deadly attack on a police center in Lahore by the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The group, led by Baitullah Mehsud, said the attack was in retaliation for the American campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan’s frontier regions – strikes which have killed many civilians along with usually unidentified “militants.” As Ditz notes, one goal of the campaign – which has been intensified by Barack Obama – is precisely the aforementioned fomenting of terrorist activity:

The Obama Administration has launched an ever growing number of attacks in the FATA, generally aimed at Mehsud’s training facilities in North and South Waziristan. In September, then-CIA Director Michael Hayden said the attacks were an attempt to “provoke a reaction” from the militant groups led by Mehsud. It appears that now, six months later, they have finally done so. [Hayden described this bloodsoaked strategy as "tickling" terrorists into a response.]

What’s more, Mehsud has now vowed to carry the fight back to American soil. As The Times notes (via Antiwar.com):

“Soon we will launch an attack in Washington that will amaze everyone in the world,” [Mehsud declared.] “The maximum they can do is martyr me. But we will exact our revenge on them from inside America.”

Whether or not the rag-tag TTP could actually carry out such a threat is another matter, as Juan Cole notes. But that is not really the point. The point is that once again, a violent group has been knowingly prodded into murderous action. Even better, it has now set itself up as a “deadly terrorist threat” to the sacred Homeland itself: yet another made-to-order supervillain from central casting.

And remarkably, this new, open threat to bring terror to the American heartland comes just days after Barack Obama announced his vaunted surge in the Af-Pak War, citing – what else? – the need to protect the United States from terrorists based in Afghanistan and Pakistan as his chief reason for escalating and expanding the conflict. Yet another astonishing coincidence to justify the militarist agenda, which needs a constant supply of PR-plausible villains and hyped-up, nation-rattling threats like a junkie needs smack. And once again, we are left to puzzle out the varying proportion of connivance, acquiescence, exploitation, luck, etc., involved in this serendipitous pairing of declarations from Obama and Mehsud.

II.
It is worth looking again at the implications of this policy of terrorist-tickling. As we noted recently, such things are not just counters on the Great Gameboard: they are deadly realities that kill, maim and despoil multitudes of innocent people around the world. So let’s go back to the first glimmers of this strategy in its Terror War context. This is from the Moscow Times article in November 2001:

In [a Los Angeles Times] article by military analyst William Arkin… [comes] the revelation of Rumsfeld’s plan to create “a super-Intelligence Support Activity” that will “bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception.” According to a classified document prepared for [Donald] Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, the new organization – the “Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)” – will carry out secret missions designed to “stimulate reactions” among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to “counterattack” by U.S. forces.

In other words – and let’s say this plainly, clearly and soberly, so that no one can mistake the intention of Rumsfeld’s plan – the United States government is planning to use “cover and deception” and secret military operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people. Let’s say it again: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the other members of the unelected regime in Washington plan to deliberately foment the murder of innocent people – your family, your friends, your lovers, you – in order to further their geopolitical ambitions.

For P2OG is not designed solely to flush out terrorists and bring them to justice – a laudable goal in itself, although the Rumsfeld way of combating terrorism by causing it is pure moral lunacy… No, it seems the Pee-Twos have bigger fish to fry. Once they have sparked terrorists into action – by killing their family members? luring them with loot? fueling them with drugs? plying them with jihad propaganda? messing with their mamas? or with agents provocateurs, perhaps, who infiltrate groups then plan and direct the attacks themselves? – they can then take measures against the “states/sub-state actors accountable” for “harboring” the Rumsfeld-roused gangs. What kind of measures exactly? Well, the classified Pentagon program puts it this way: “Their sovereignty will be at risk.”

The Pee-Twos will thus come in handy whenever the Regime hankers to add a little oil-laden real estate or a new military base to the Empire’s burgeoning portfolio. Just find a nest of violent malcontents, stir ‘em with a stick, and presto: instant “justification” for whatever level of intervention/conquest/rapine you might desire.

When the Obama Administration speaks of “continuity” in American foreign policy, this is an integral part of what they are talking about. So look to see much more on TTP and the demon de jure, Baitullah Mehsud, as the bipartisan Long War grinds on and on, with its ever-present need for “catalyzing” – and terrorizing – the American people into support for the militarist project.

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Yesterday was the 90^th anniversary of Armistice Day – the day the Great War ended in 1918. Millions had been killed in the trenches, leaving a great scar on the societies involved. Even now the trauma runs deep, with the annual memorials attracting deep emotions and attention. Yet even when presented with the horrors of this and other wars, most people and the media present it in the context of those people dying in the name of the freedom we currently enjoy, a supreme sacrifice and duty. Although many may have had nobler intent, what they were actually fighting for was certainly not freedom in the true sense of the word.

Wars are fought because of domination. Every conflict in human history has this as the root cause – that one group of people seek to enslave another or rise up to repel it and climb up in the hierarchy. The prime mandate of civilisation and its empires is to constantly grow, and that inevitably will lead to empires attempting to take control of each other and their resources in order to expand.

The Great War is a prime example of this. Two blocs of empires formed – the British, French, Russian and in due course American empires versus the German, Austro-Hungarian and (at first) Italian empires – in order to fight over the global hierarchy. The German and Austro-Hungarian empires were suppressed and lower in the hierarchy by the other empires, and sought to challenge this in order to become more dominant. The other more dominant empires came together in order to put down this challenge, and the people and land of Europe became the bloody battleground on which it was decided. Millions of conscripts were sent in the name of their respective countries to kill and be killed in horrific conditions in a near stalemate, all in the name of imperial expansion. Eventually the ‘Allied’ bloc was victorious, allowing them to become even more globally dominant and remain so to the present day.

Various wars since have copied this pattern, the Vietnam and Korean Wars as proxies of the Cold War between the American and Soviet empires with the Soviets eventually falling, the Gulf wars to secure resources for continued expansion and other smaller wars too. Even the Second World War follows this pattern, with the Allied empires against the fascist Axis empires. It is often pointed out that this war above all was about preserving individual freedom which to an extent is true, but this war was still about imperial dominance, with one of the belligerents simply being further down the road of the states evolution towards fascism (as mentioned in posts previously how current democracies always eventually succumb to fascism). Wars are fought for empire, for their expansion into other countries for its people or resources, and they always ultimately serve civilisation’s purposes.

So when the media calls for the remembrance of the wars, do so, but remember not the supposed fight for our freedom and liberty, not the patriotism or the sense of ‘duty’, but remember the people who died as the victims of civilisation. These people were willing to fight for a system that in reality only exploited them for its continued existence, and ensured more wars will occur in future. We need to remove our trust from this rotten system, and build a better alternative not based on domination, enslavement and growth, but cooperation, equality and sustainability.

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As the post ‘The Fallacy of Democracy’ discussed, the current form of government we call ‘democracy’ is deeply flawed to the point where it barely approaches meeting its own meaning – rule by the people. The Empire will always win, as no candidate proposing real change would ever be able to credibly run for any office or would be stopped by the elite. So how can we ever achieve a real democracy with people deciding their own futures, and how can this happen despite the overpowering nature of the current system? To answer this it’s necessary to analyse that current system and how it arose.

To put in the simplest manner possible, our governments only exist in order to stop the poor murdering the rich, the slaves killing their masters. If there was no government or official militia (police or armed forces), the huge number of exploited people would no doubt rise up and revolt and demand equality. To stop this from happening, from the very beginning the masters hired and formed militias with their stolen wealth, with which they kept the slaves orderly with the fear of these militias. This is how governments and nation-states start, as the militia and mediator between masters and slaves.

Eventually, as wealth became ever more concentrated by the rich, the governments make concessions to pacify the poor, such as social reforms, the welfare state, 8 hour days etc. Although seemingly revolutionary, these only serve to capture some of the crumbs from the table of rich to distribute to the poor. After a significant amount of time, the people even demand a say in how the government is run. This was a difficult crisis for the elite to manage, but one that was solved very cleverly – the people could vote for a few centralised ‘parties’, whose existence is only enabled with the permission and approval of the elite. This way it seems we have a democracy, yet in fact have very little say in the way things change. Candidate X may tend towards more concessions for the poor, candidate Y will favour concessions for the elite. The pendulum swings endlessly between the two, always ensuring in the long-term the middle ground where just enough wealth is sacrificed by the elite to pacify the poor but not too much so as to prevent the growth of their own fortunes.

With the odds so stacked against us in the current system, we have to create a new system in which to rewild in. But how do we avoid the mistakes of the past and lay to rest the hierarchical model of government?

It’s all a matter of scale. Beyond a certain number of people in a group (it’s been found to be around 200 people in many studies) it becomes impossible to know everyone in the group personally. As a result, in order for some sort of order to develop in decision making some sort of hierarchy forms to unify that large group. Unless this occurs on the basis of smaller sub-groups and delegation, this is the first step down a slippery road to domination and slavery based system of organising ourselves. An egalitarian society based on the unified group model will inevitably succumb to authoritarianism – every republic, however noble its first principles, will slip towards fascism as time passes.

The alternative is the tribe model, the model which has lasted for hundreds and thousands of years for many societies even today. In a tribe setting, each group will be below 200 people and so will contain very little hierarchy. A representative/facilitator character exists to co-ordinate the group in coming to communal decisions, and also in some areas acts as a delegate to a larger confederacy. In this ‘federation’ each group maintains its identity but could co-operate with neighbouring groups without being unified with them. This again serves to avoid hierarchy as much as possible. There is no core armed group acting as an enforcing militia – the entire group enforces decisions reached amongst itself. And most importantly there is equality, no persons become rich at the expense of others. This is the core principle to the continued existence of this system, and is why many tribes collapse when they come in contact with civilisation, as this foundation stone is infected and destroyed by our ego-based way of thinking.

How can we retribalise now though? It seems impossible to return to this way of living so far down the road of civilisation, and questions of population density and co-ordination of all these groups arise. Although forming a tribe seems like a difficult proposition, the same concept is at work when many people speak of recreating communities and community based living. However one might want to term it, small groups concerned with the local area they occupy are at the core of retribalising and rewilding. These communities can be as simple as a local residents association, a gardening group or similar. As long as it’s local and small, it is sowing the seeds for a new way of organising ourselves. As the economic, resource and ecological crisis begin to hit, it is our job to get these groups to take an ever increasing interest and duty in caring and caretaking for its local area. If many small communities do this, a network can form to take care of our own needs without relying on the current system and its government so much.

So here’s how to begin the implementation of real democracy: see governments for what they really are – mechanisms to keep us in our place; join and form small, local groups in your area with a concern for that area; create a group which for example takes turns to give a Permaculture makeover to each of your gardens and local area and swaps seeds, tools etc.; network with other similar groups and encourage their development; and finally consider alternative economies to support these new networks. This is a new and untested plan, but could eventually lead to the emergence of a completely different way for people to organise themselves outside of the hierarchical/slave system – a true democracy as practiced for hundreds of generations before civilisation.

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In America, there’s a lot of hoopla going on right now about the upcoming election. American citizens are given several choices for a presidential leader, and must choose the one that they feel represents them the most. Then a new dude gets elected and we’re all happy and get on with the next four years of our lives.

Democracy is one of the biggest delusions we have been taught to believe. You want to know why? First of all, the elections are controlled by the people already in power. The people who have the most access to campaign resources (and the most money to buy them) will obviously have the most successful campaign.  Second, we are given two choices for a leader. Two. Yes, I know there are a whole list of independent candidates on each ballot, but election propaganda sets up political freedom as an either/or choice; You pick this guy because you hate that guy. And since the majority of Americans vote for one of the two main candidates, even if you do support a minority party, your vote pretty much doesn’t count and usually ends up working against you in the end.

And the more subtle fallacy at work? A president is not elected based on popular vote. It’s electoral votes that count. So it’s easy for the people in power to do their research and figure out how they can manipulate the votes in certain areas and get a chosen candidate elected. And if that doesn’t work, then they can just “lose” or “misplace” a few thousand votes and call it good.

Of course, there is still a bunch of red tape rigamaroll invented to trick people into thinking their votes are very important. Voters must be registered. All votes are anonymous. Voters must go to the proper precinct to vote. All of this crap, and the president isn’t even chosen by us! Not to mention that the current voting process makes it impossible for low-income individuals to vote. How do they know where to get their registration forms if they don’t have a phone or internet access? How do they pick one up if they don’t have a car? How do they vote if they have to work a 10-hour shift that day, and don’t have the postage to send in an absentee ballot?

But I digress. I’ll lay my cards on the table and admit that I’m planning on voting on November 4th, and I’m really excited about the idea of having Barack Obama as a leader. But on the other hand, I know that nothing I think or say or do matters when the same old boys club is going to be reigning in the White House until the end of time. And I wish everyone else could see that too. Some do, but they still allow elections to divide them and break them down. Can’t we start believing in something other than the republic? How about ourselves? Or our communities? Or anything else that hasn’t already become corrupted by out-of-control, unbridled power?

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The other day I was innocently consuming a sandwich at the sub chain Jimmy John’s, when I came across this interesting poster:

How Much Is Enough?

An American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow-finned tuna. The banker complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The Mexican replied: “Only a little while.” The banker then asked why he didn’t stay out longer and catch more fish. The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs.

The banker was puzzled and then asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”

The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, swim a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, Señor.“

The banker scoffed, “I have an MBA from Harvard and could help you. You should spend more time fishing, and with the proceeds you could buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats. Eventually you’ll have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middle man, you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then Los Angeles, and eventually to New York City where you will run your expanding enterprise.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, Señor, how long will this all take?”

To which the banker replied, “Five to ten years.”

“But what then, Señor?”

The banker laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right, you would announce an IPO and sell your company’s stock to the public and become very rich. You would be worth millions!”

“Millions, Señor? Then what?”

The banker said, “Then you would retire, move to a small coastal fishing village, take siesta with your wife, play with your kids, stroll to the village in the evenings where you would sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”

I think this poster really hits home, and sheds light on the fraud known as “the American dream.” It seems as if, everywhere I look, there are massive hierarchies enforced for the purpose of enslaving the American people.  Mega-corporations pay workers minimum hourly wages, while the people at the top of the pyramid enjoy luxuries that we could never dream of. All the while, the workers at the bottom are tricked into believing they are “making something of themselves” by working. After all, if you don’t accumulate wealth and assets in this society, what else is there to live for?

I recently ventured employment at a local clothing store in order to engage with the public a bit more, as well as make some extra money for my upcoming wedding. I was shocked to find that the store paid its workers only $8.00 an hour (which we all know gets whittled to about $7.50 after taxes and Medicare), and not only that, it works them to the bone. The “associate handbook” was filled with rules dictating the minutiae of its employees daily schedules – one break for every 3 hours worked, 1/2 hour lunch break, on-call shifts during which you may or may not be required to work.

You may read these things and think, “So what? That’s not so bad. In this country, working hard is a value, I work hard every day” and so on. But that’s the whole point; the fact that we accept these working conditions as normal and expected just goes to show how little we understand about the disastrous affects of hierarchical work environments.

As written elsewhere on this site by the admin, “in modern civilisation, individuals must work to earn money to pay rent, mortgage, taxes or to buy food. For most on the lower rungs of the hierarchy, there is little choice but wage slavery. It is a crime not to have money (vagrancy). The reward system of ‘money’ makes it all the easier to enslave the masses without flagrant violence, especially as nowadays the bottom rungs of the ladder are occupied by other peoples in other lands, where open violence is more commonplace.”

Aren’t we all just like the investment banker in the story – tricked into thinking that we have to accumulate wealth in order to be happy? And don’t we then devote our lives and spirits to corporations?

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It’s that time already – four years have passed, and once again the eyes of the media have focused on the Olympic Games, this time in Beijing.  The usual rhetoric of the nations of the earth coming together in peace to celebrate humanity through sport has been dusted off and wheeled out, and the host has set out to put on a show bigger and better than all the ones proceeding it.  It’s as if some disease has swept across the earth and has infected people with a rose-tinted view of the problems of society and this civilisation, with the media and politicians working overtime to spread it and take advantage.  Cynics like myself are brushed aside as everyone rushes to bask in the self-righteous glory of the games.  So why should one be suspicious of the Olympics and not join in with the ‘Olympic Spirit’?

Far from bringing regeneration and prosperity to the people of the host city and country, all too often the poor are swept aside, their homes and livelihoods demolished in order to build the vast stadiums and ‘villages’ for athletes.  To put salt in the wound, these facilities are used often for a grand total of two weeks before being abandoned and disused afterwards as the host becomes too impoverished from hosting the games to maintain them.  Whole lives destroyed for two weeks of sport.  Is it really in the ‘Olympic Spirit’ to evict so many from their homes, often violently?  An aim of the games is to promote culture, however Beijing has illustrated how the old ways of life have been annihilated in order to illustrate China’s modernisation, with ancient neighbourhoods and building styles removed.  In the UK, no new money is available for the 2012 Games from the government, so all the money must come from the existing budget for parks, museums and libraries, which will inevitably lead to many of them closing.  As a result, the Games will succeed in eroding culture rather than enhancing it – hardly in the ‘Olympic Spirit’ either.

There have been repeated calls to “keep politics out of sport” in the run up to Beijing.  It seems lost on the people who say this that the Olympics is one of the most politicised events in the world.  How could an event in which individual nation-states aggressively compete with each other to outperform each other to try and show themselves as the best nation-state or ideology in the world NOT be political?  The level of state-mania is almost palatable, with the athletes so closely identifying themselves as mere extensions of their inherited nation-state, all performing with patriotism at the heart of their exertions.  This is especially notable at the Beijing Olympics, with the ‘communist’ Chinese government trying to show the supremacy of their ideology, and with the United States trying to in turn prove them wrong.  The whole Games has become a vehicle for nation-states to try and justify themselves and establish a hierarchy in the world.

This comes closer to the underlying, subconscious aim of the Games.  The ‘Olympic Spirit’ does not stand up to scrutiny for the reasons above, it is a smokescreen that stops people questioning the real aim of he Games.  It is not to achieve ones best in athletic pursuits, nor is it too spread the ‘Olympic Spirit’ so popularised.  It is to no less than to illustrate the ‘Victory’ of this civilisation over primitive societies.  It is to exhibit this civilisation’s assumed monopoly of high culture, to deepen the perception that humans can only achieve their best in civilised society and that more primitive societies cannot allow us to fulfil our true potential.  It is to further establish the model of hierarchy, with nation-states competing for the top spot, and in turn the idea of classes of people and finally humans above nature.  It may not seem obvious, but the underlying feeling and ideas of the Olympic Games is to allow civilisation to celebrate itself and assert its dominance.

Every four years the standard-bearers of civilisation come together to whitewash its crimes with statements of peace and goodwill to all humanity, and after two weeks return home to continue waging genocide on people and planet.  This self-congratulating penance encourages people to keep turning their eyes away from the madness of our way of life.  We watch in awe of athletes leaping hurdles whilst the world burns.

So what can we do?  Seeing through the lies of the ‘Olympic Spirit’ and not buying into it is necessary on a large scale.  The people whose homes and livelihoods are to be destroyed to build the structures must see it and resist, and the rest of us who watch whilst our culture is swept away must see it and resist.  We cannot stand by whilst civilisation celebrates itself.  We may not be able to do anything in Beijing, but when the Games come to London in 2012 people have to be reminded that there are those of us who aren’t taken in by the lies, who instead are building a new way of doing things without this civilisation.  This year’s motto is “One World, One Dream” – let’s show them there’s more than one dream of how we should live together on this planet.

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Riane Eisler spotlights gender inequalities in the US, on alternet.org

Nothing, for example, has been said about the fact that poverty in this wealthy nation disproportionately affects women, so much so that, according to U.S. Census figures, women over the age of 65 are twice as likely to be poor as men over 65. Nor have we been told that, unlike the U.S., most industrialized countries have paid parental leave, stipends for caregivers, and even social security credit for the first years of home childcare — measures that vastly improve the lives of women.

This relegation of “women’s issues” to a secondary place is obviously terrible for half of America (actually the majority, since women are 52 percent). But it’s also terrible for the political and family health of our entire nation.

Let’s start with politics. For both the mullahs in Iran and the rightist-fundamentalist alliance in the United States, “getting women back into their traditional place” in a “traditional family” has been a top priority. There’s a basic reason for this. Rigidly male-dominated societies are also authoritarian and violent. Along with the imposition of a brutal dictatorship by the Nazis, their mantra was returning women to their “traditional” roles in a male-dominated family. Nor is it coincidental that the 9-11 terrorists came from cultures where women are terrorized into submission. Or that regressive fundamentalists in the United States (who also believe in top-down rule and “holy wars”) first organized as a powerful political block around a “women’s issue”: the defeat during the 1970s of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Its all part of the heirarchical structure of civilisation.

Yet in the United States, many people who consider themselves progressives still view anything to do with women as secondary. They fail to recognize what regressives do: that the ranking of male over female is a basic model children learn early on for equating difference with superiority or inferiority, with dominating or being dominated — a model that can then easily be generalized to different races, religions, ethnicities, and nations.

In recent years, American regressives have vigorously promoted a family where fathers make the rules and harshly punish disobedience — the kind of family that prepares people to defer to “strong” leaders who brook no dissent and use force to impose their will. Not coincidentally, over these same years aggressive wars were launched, gains for women and minorities were lost, and a “strong” executive branch held itself above the law.

Surely we can learn a lesson from this history: that progressives urgently need a political agenda that no longer relegates “women’s issues” to a secondary — indeed, invisible — place. We need a politics of partnership that recognizes that questioning “traditional” gender roles and relations is foundational to the movement to more democratic and egalitarian relations across the board.

In keeping with our view that society should be run on a local basis, how more local can you get than the home. With more emphasis on local food production and local relationships/community, women have to have an equal footing. The days of ‘the breadwinner’ going out to work, while the woman stays home to look after the children may be gone, along with the abundant energy society. We are being forced to change our society, its an opportunity to ensure equality and justice on all levels of society.

The equal valuing of the two halves of humanity — women and men — will obviously vastly improve girls’ and women’s quality of life. But it’s also essential if we are to move to a more democratic, peaceful, and sustainable future for us all.

Exactly.

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