Off/For: Questioning The Greedmachine
As long as I can think, whether at home, at school or professionally, most people were talking about what they were living off. Only kids, excentrics and some old people would have a . . . different but significantly wider perspective on humanity and life in general.
Yet, even today, after bailouts and soulfree market babbling turning into blown up market bubbles, politicians, economists and most-media want us to believe that the bottomline is all that counts. Let’s print money or get more in debt and to the people we sell a cheap product called hope. Because everybody who is hopeful doesn’t investigate for themselves but against any feeling and ratio continues to believe in politicians, economists and their propaganda instrument, the mainstream media.
“So the question is, do corporate executives, provided they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible? And my answer to that is, no they do not”. Milton Friedman thought this would be a significant indication for freedom: business within the law can and even should be as self-serving as possible. Even Adam Smith (a Moral Philosopher, not an economist) had more doubts about leaving anything in the ‘markets’ (a word that nowadays immediately drowns any further consideration) to greed-driven egotists. Yet exactly that has become the norm. The effects are wellknown: very few rich people get richer, an increasing number of people gets poorer or has already nothing. And let’s not forget that many die. Every day.
Never mind say the selfproclaimed ‘pillars of society’ (about which they according to Friedman neither have to think about nor actually do they do it). This is all temporary, the markets will go up again, say the pillars, who indeed perform this role: not for society but for a system which served them well in the past. No wonder they want to preserve this machine in which profits are dominating everything, just not considering the actual demands of people.
These demands I take it are for by far the most people on earth not greed-driven but go beyond the survival level by which capatalism is fueled. According to the current system, physical survival is the one and only important mover in people’s life.Which then bears another question:is democracy already replaced by capitalism? Is capitalism the only ‘philosophy’, even religion, we need?
Greed needs need.
A need economy will always suggest to people that getting out of need is the only way to happiness. Thus any reckless path to the bounty is a good path. While people have their doubts about that they get more into debt. Herbert Spencer’s social Darwinism, promoting to weed out the ‘unfit’ in a relentless competitive way is accepted today by way too many people including many Christians (denying their own religious background. Jesus was a Pacifist who was not involved neither in politics nor in economy. Indeed, his ‘kingdom was not of this world’. His words. It doesn’t make sense to turn this into anything else.).
No, this is not another boring and distracting debate about Capitalism vs Communism. It is also not a religious discussion wanting to point out any specific group.
There are questions to be asked beyond that kind of fake discussion.Is the only way we can perceive ourselves as needy-greedy failures who compensate their ‘natural’ shortcomings with pretence and bouts of megalomania? Or are we actually wonderfully equipped with an abundance of talents which all too often just don’t fit into the current system – or should I say:scheme? Is our soul not richly endowed with love, compassion and creativity?
Maybe we could stop living off something and start to live for something, and that includes a view on life in general and beyond need. Instead of desperately trying to fit into the greedmachine we might ask ourselves: what abundance do we participate in? What is our definition of success? Why not trusting ourselves and our source instead of hoping?
The choice is not between black and white. It is rather an individual colorful array of choices with an inbuilt awareness of everpresent change! Wisdom is gained by intuitive insights and experiences. Available to everyone although not for free. So why should we agree to the sorry dumbed-down state we are supposed to live by?
Creativity, art and the humanities (including serious creativity and consciousness research on individual and scientific levels) can be present in our lifetime. Selfdestruction doesn’t have to be our fate.
We have everything we need to live up to a joyful fulfilling life. Actually we are abundantly gifted creative and conscious beings. As such we are much better equipped living for something. At our hearts we ARE loving and compassionate and giving beings. So why did we agree into learning suspicion, hate, violence, greed which must effect into destruction?
Humanity can bloom, so let’s get to it! The environment may be gratefully joining in.
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