Tag: materialism

Categories
- Governance - Oppression Development Discourse Justice Oneness

Globalization: Good or Bad?

Friends, listen up. The end of the 20th century discloses to the eyes of humanity a vista of stupendous opportunities and grave perils. Allow me to explain. Some of the more striking phenomena are those associated with globalization, a designation that arouses strong emotions and lends itself to a variety of interpretations. But here is the truth. There is no doubt — and this is true irrespective of one’s views on the subject — that the forces of globalization have set the nations of the world on a new and irreversible course. There is no going back. We’ve passed the point of no return. Economic activity, political structures, and culture are all undergoing profound change. This is not our parent’s world any longer. A global society is being born as barriers that have kept peoples apart crumble and are swept away. Planetary civilization beckons. The transformation is made possible by accelerated technological advance, an early fruit of which is a mode of communication transcending national boundaries and operating at staggering speed. For example, the internet. However thrilling future prospects may be, present patterns of behavior do not inspire confidence in the process. People are critical about the role western governments and corporations have played on the global stage. It is only natural to wonder whether globalization will, in fact, unify the human race without imposing uniformity or simply propel the universalization of the culture of consumerism. Skeptics say globalization involves exporting materialistic values, consumer propaganda, and economic hegemony from the west. Can globalization really be the bearer of prosperity for the masses or the mere expression of the economic interests of a privileged few? Will it lead to the establishment of a just order or the consolidation of existing structures of power? Share your opinions below!

Globalization

 

Categories
- Prevailing Conceptions Discourse Human Nature

Which brand are you?

“The reality of man is his thought…”

The world is in a state of oppression.  This is not an unknown fact – any media source will recount the various expressions of social disintegration throughout the world.  The riots in Turkey, the tension in Egypt, the plotting of terrorists, the violence, the scandals, the corruption…it all seems indistinguishable at a certain point.  A common characteristic to them all is that each is an instance of external oppression.

What about the United States?  By some accounts, we have less terrorism, less corruption, less rioting.  From a certain perspective, we have freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom from threat.  Some can claim we are a less oppressed nation overall.  Perhaps, however, this belief that we are less oppressed is itself one of the greatest oppressions.

The United States is dominated by a culture of consumerism – today’s inheritor of a materialistic worldview.  This is a different type of oppression, insidious, exacting, and stifling.  The discourse of our nation has been hijacked by the interests of corporations and government; so, while it is true that one has a choice – without threat of violent recourse – of whether to side with this or that political party, or support this or that technical recipe, or opt for this or that legalistic procedure, what is not up for debate is the framework within which the political system operates, the value that inevitably comes with advances in technology and who they serve, the circus of legal advocacy that has masqueraded as search for truth.  In other parts of the world, oppression takes the form of brute violence against the physical body, religious hypocrisy that can be detected with little sight, or obvious suppression of the rights of one group of people by another seemingly more powerful group of people; whereas in the United States, the oppression takes the form of a manipulation of identity.  Instead of being able to think about the systems within which our society operates, we are manipulated – through classroom, pulpit, and newsstand – to regard the human being as a consumer.  A consumer of whatever political topic is most convenient for the upcoming campaign; of whatever knowledge and skills are currently the criteria to assume a coveted post within some corporation to uphold our economic status-quo, of whatever foods and medicines are promising the lure of easy fix, of whatever technology can deliver convenience in exchange for adoption of values, of whatever trend is being deposited in the mind.  The question is never “why?”, but always “which?”.  To me, the most striking point – and the one that makes this type of oppression all the more apparent – is that those segments of the population that seek to distinguish themselves by attempting to identify and fight oppression, in fact only distinguish themselves by adopting different types of patterns of consumption.

An oppression that is external – that is violent and ugly and hurtful – is at least one that can be identified.  Hypocrisy, suppression, corruption, can be known and fought.  It is because this oppression targets the body and external conditions of a human being, not his essential reality.  However, when the sights of oppression are trained at the identify of an individual, then his mind becomes restricted, his thoughts become suppressed, his reality is oppressed.  How can one fight an oppression when one does not even know that one is being oppressed?  When one’s identity has been manipulated to regard as normal what is clearly a distortion?

“What “oppression” is more grievous than that a soul seeking the truth…should know not where to go for it and from whom to seek it?”

“The perpetuation of ignorance is a most grievous form of oppression…”

Categories
- Empowerment Development

Development: a Critique

It seems like development projects in the 70’s thought of themselves as Agent Smith showing up at the beginning of the Matrix where the local police are having trouble dealing with Trinity. The extent to which he thought he was “cool” and helping was directly proportional to how ineffective he was. Bloated self-images rarely go hand-in-hand with effective collaboration. Equal footing is essential for collaborators walking a path of service.

You’ve heard of armchair philosophers right? Well, I think that the armchair developers of the 70’s were even more out of touch with the masses of humanity. Publishing peer-reviewed papers on how to ‘modernize’ the ‘3rd world’ didn’t pan out as anticipated. Later, these same academics read several books about relationships and yet, shockingly, still failed to have happy marriages! Practice and experience are indispensable to developing sound theories.

The difference between academic and spiritual communities concerned with development reminds me of the difference between record label agents and your mother. Record label agents may offer your wildest dreams coming true, but your mother always seems to love you more. Genuine solidarity with the oppressed is essential for successful transformation at the grassroots.

Development defined as better health, better housing, better education, better employment, better family life, and better community organization — reminds me of the scene from Zoolander where him and his buddy are jumping around karate-chopping the desktop monitor because the “files are in the computer”. Unfortunately for Zoolander and Development models, things consist of more than just their material parts. Spiritual motivation is intrinsic to human purpose.

Full participation from indigenous populations is like the holy grail of development. In that case, the whole history of development is like King Arthur and his band of merry men in Monty Python’s movie as they fumble along the path searching for the Holy Grail. Co-determination, and not just co-implementation, are necessary for full participation.

Developers contemplating the role of  indigenous people are like little boys scheming ways of falling asleep before their mom asks them to brush their teeth for bed. Closing your eyes to the role of self-determination does not make the problem go away. Genuine learning from rural people facilitates the process of capacity building and empowerment at the grassroots level.

Robert McNamara is to the World Bank development efforts as Ronald Reagan is to modern economic policy: the father of Top Down models. Transformation like money must bubble up before it can trickle down.

tree on the hil

Categories
- Education - Oppression - Prevailing Conceptions Human Nature Justice Power

Economic Mirages

Disproportionate access to nutritious diets, quality housing, industry-recognized education, employment opportunities, and healthcare services would not in itself sow the seeds of rebellion were it not for the possessiveness of the privileged over their resources. Selfishness towards privilege is engendered through  fear of having to share what one possesses. An individual’s right to private property has been scapegoated to obscure a cultural obsession with commodification, and a philosophy that reduces human reality to an uninhabited marketplace. “Pure capitalism” and “Laissez-faire” market are coinages held up to prevent wide-spread questioning of the merits of “economic growth” as the purpose of social life. The view that reality is an exchange of commodities on a social marketplace reduces human relations to products, capital, and profits in a mutually exploitative fashion and has been mistaken for a substantive claim to self-identity by some in the 21st century. A debasing culture, value-system, and worldview has become pervasive. This world view objectifies every element of its surroundings into an object for domination, exploitation, and profit, be it earth, property, product, or people themselves. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand of the market” is as unreal today as it has been impotent historically. Children refuse to accept tales of invisible saviors, why have grown women and statesmen fallen for such costly fairy tales? Theories that scarcely applied to a time when international industries, sophisticated financing, and advertising propaganda were absent, cannot be seriously relied upon for guiding today’s economy.

Limitless consumption is a right, some aver, earned through individual “effort” and the courage to endure economic “risk”. If others lack commodities, it is simply because they are lazy and cowardly. But what does access to education and employment opportunities have to do with effort and entrepreneurial courage? The truth of the matter is that the poor work much harder and with much more resourcefulness than the rich on average. Of course those with superior access and opportunity do not perceive their advantage as having issued from a type of privilege which excludes and denigrates others. More surprisingly, they do not perceive how institutional complacency with this injustice numbers them historically as backwards, ignominious and primitive. How will posterity evaluate the empathy, nobility, and vision of our privileged generation? Unabashed before the specter of their own selfishness, they resort to passivity behind the laws of the status quo that safeguard and drag their feet to create inequality. Material things contain a fire within them. Hoarders suffocate within their smoldering homes. Agency is forfeited. Humans become slaves to possessions. Desire is an inglorious master.

A habit of the mind gone voracious, the insatiable hoarders of commodities become afflicted with the conviction that they can transform everything into objects of their purchasing power. Hence their strictly materialistic conception of reality. A vapid conviction that deprives reality, economic and social , of its intrinsic meaning. Money is the measure of all things, and profit the primary goal. Whereas the opposite should be true: price determines value. The consciousness, now neurotic, feels that what is worthwhile is to have more—always more. Especially to be halted are those ingrates who may steal priceless technologies to barter in exchange for their daily bread. Laws must be enacted – to protect “private property”. And yet, the argument has already become deranged once it is cast in terms of private property or the struggle to justify or redeem it. Private property is a right. That is irrelevant  This is rather a question of oppression, not rights. Oppression is not a right. Exploitation is not a right. Slavery is not a right. Calling these things pure capitalism, lassaiz-faire, or private property does not change their moral nature. Inequalities of access and opportunity do not allow people to work for their own betterment or for that of the community. This is not justice.

The status quo is protected by law and maintained by the institutionalization of inequality. To call for justice amounts to a call for institutional reform. Institutions legislate laws, educate police forces, and mechanize a system of coercing and normalizing the inequality. When caught between his own dignity and the steel of the system, a young worker becomes devitalized, made complacent, and in-animated. He becomes inanimate before the eyes of the law as well as the benefactors of that system that created both his crime and engineered the low estate that forced him into it. The power to devitalize, the specialty of the privileged class, is completely consistent with the ideology of commodification. Inanimate objects are naturally more possessable and manipulable. Psychologically, the drive to possess, and in possessing, to devitalize, is akin to the psychiatric diagnosis of sadism. Sadism is the derivation of pleasure from the domination and objectification of a sentient life form. Sadism therefore is a love of death, since in objectifying and dominating we deprive a life of its inalienable quality – freedom. Love of power, is the source of all evil, and a perversion of human drives. Privatization of possessions is not a path which must lead to the deification of commodities, the rise of consumerism, and the psychological obsession with domination and sadism. This path leads towards a cultural love of death. Therefore, it is necrophilia. Dead men, oppressed objects of the perpetuated system of inequality under which they patiently languish, are owned by the plutocratic minority, lacking any purpose except what is prescribed unto them by their privileged masters.

Categories
- Consultation - Education - Governance - Language Discourse Justice Knowledge Oneness Power

Can Debate Lead to Truth?

Is it possible that a “debate” leads us, the listeners and watchers, to truth? Can a mode of dialogue such as contestational or confrontational debate assist others and people interested in the issues to discover the truth or learn more about the details of the issues? Does this forum conduce to discovery? Does contest and argument even produce results in truth seeking? Does a public setting of competitive public display uncover and disentangle the intellectual subtleties no doubt at the center of what needs to be appreciated to solve the problem? Do enraged egos before a gaping audience foster intellectual loftiness or merely expedience and aggression in a defensive mind? An audience seeking entertainment on “fight night” pay per view, as they do in the determination of political leadership on important social issues will scarcely be able to disambiguate its destiny out of the darkness of the 21st century. With a priority on violence as a form of entertainment, commercialization of political decision making, combat as the ideal form of intellectual activity – with all this, the result will be a world ruled by slogan-filled celebrities suited better for individual aggrandizement than collective vision and responsible leadership.

What is discovered through debate: Who is most skilled and most motivated to aggrandize himself and to dominate others. When important discussions are framed in terms of winners and losers, its is difficult to see how the goal of leadership is collective accomplishment. What are the losers meant to do after the debate? Respect the opinion of the majority, when so much practice has been given to disrespecting each other, and mocking and hating one’s opponents? If the process that produces political and social leadership is divisive how can the result be collective and universal prosperity? Moreover, how can the winner be responsible for the suffering of the losers, when his entire camp was running on disregard for the opinions and detests the values of 50% of the population? What assurance do we have that the partisan desperation created in the electoral process does not carry over into the legislative and governing process post-election? What is to say that the paralysis of the legislative and judicial machinery, and social and economic unrest, and distrust of the government is not a direct corollary to the contestual and partisan manner in our elections and governance systems? This results in an increasing privatization and individualization of isolated aspirations and life initiatives undertaken by individuals for their private family’s prosperity. Why be committed to a people or a system that feeds on violence and contest? The breakdown of the partisan political system results in breakdown of governance and collective social cohesion itself, at once a symptom and a cause of individualistic forms of materialism, consumerism, and entertainment preoccupations.

If people had a government they loved, a collective community to which they belonged, an ideal worth fighting for, and a prospect that united not divided people’s interests against each other there may be more general will and universal participation in matters of importance to collective well being. Without a collective to believe in, what reason do people have not to pursue their own individual happiness and pleasure in isolation to the collective good? In the absence of a cause worth serving, people find entertainment and pastimes to serve themselves, becoming a shadow of what their inherent potential could have destined them to be. Human being, is a mine rich in gems. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures. Our purpose is that all humans shall be regarded as one soul. If the leaders and politicians of this age would lead the people towards fellowship, love, and unity, everyone would finally experience the pleasure of the highly-coveted true liberty, and within the energy of a free conscience discover the exhilaration born of undisturbed peace and inner composure. Productivity on that day will harness the power of unity for explosive levels of global prosperity. It is inevitable that the earth will one day attain this station. ‘All things have I willed for thee, and thee, too, for thine own sake.’

Categories
- Empowerment - Religion - Science Development Knowledge

Science and Religion

All human beings have spiritual capacities that can be revealed to contribute to humanity’s development and betterment.  This process of empowerment occurs through access to knowledge, both self-knowledge and knowledge of reality.  This knowledge is in two repositories of science and religion – for capacity building is concerned both with the qualities of the mind and the unique endowments of the soul.  For example, seeking unbiased truth is a scientific skill, but this skill’s contribution to civilization’s advance requires detachment and truthfulness.

Thus, the advancement of civilization is propelled through these two systems of knowledge, religion and science.  Both evolve over time as humanity has evolved.  Both are practiced collectively by communities.  Both operationalize underlying assumptions.  Religion discerns values through Divine revelation, that define the goals of humankind’s advancement; while science is the instrumentality through which the mind explores reality and attains these goals.

Science without religion looses proper direction and, as we have seen, results in a destructive materialism.  Religion without science looses connection with reality and, as we have seen, becomes blind imitation and superstition.

What are some instances now or throughout history when science and religion have been in harmony?

Categories
- Oppression - Prevailing Conceptions Development

Materialism

Today’s vision of betterment is dogmatically materialistic.  The interpretation of reality that progress equals economic development, and that people’s happiness would only be the result of better health, food, education, living conditions, etc., has consolidated itself to become the deciding factor in the direction of society.  In the West, this relegated spirituality and religion to the realm of personal preference – each individual could hold whatever belief or relationship with transcendence that he wished, but society’s course would not be influenced.  (This fragmentation is already problematic in itself, independent of the content of what is being fragmented.)  Throughout the rest of the world, where the view that human nature is fundamentally spiritual is a common truth, the ideological imperialism of the West marginalized people’s deepest convictions – rather than challenged them directly.  Faith became impotent to direct society, something that it had done for millenia prior.

The field of development was rooted in these underlying materialistic assumptions and values.  Since the end of the World War II up to the present, global development efforts have been judged, by their own standards, a failure, often causing the opposite of their intended, well-intentioned, and idealistic goals – resulting in the widening of the gap between the rich and poor, the plunging into hopelessness of whole peoples, the desolation of vast geographic areas and ecosystems.  Economic activities, rather than knowledge, assume the central role of social existence; while knowledge is reduced to information, and is valuable insomuch as it can aid economic growth.

Even diverse worldwide economic systems, different in their approaches and methods, still nonetheless held the same underlying assumption.  Whether a state-controlled system, seeking to liberate the populous from struggle; or a system of competitism, invoking the “invisible hand” to create a prosperous society if each individual sought his own economic well-being; all yielded similar results: a host of personal and social pathologies, including anxieties, prejudice, apathy, breakdown of family life, ineffective educational systems, and consumer culture, just to start.

Economic growth is not the problem; it is essential, provided it is in the context of building a just and unified world civilization, having both a spiritual and material component.  Materialism’s error was in the arbitrary attempts to divorce humanity’s physical development from its spiritual development.  Both need to advance coherently.

Categories
- Science Justice Oneness

Defender of the Interests of All Humankind: Justice

Ideals are wonderful as they are, but what really can we say are the practical implications for speaking or believing in a principle as lofty as the spiritual concept of ‘Justice’? Are its implications for social and economic development really as profound as they seem to be presented? Are we not hedged in and confined on many sides by practical, real-life constraints about what can be done? What can we do as a student, a mother, a school teacher, an engineer, a sick person, a doctor, a para-military force, a grocery bagger at the local Walmart, a child playing in the dust of a day care sandbox? As organizations, governments, and multi-national corporations, perhaps the question seems as tenuous to answer as it does for the individual. Equally futile it seems for collectives and individuals alike. As individuals or communities, the question begs of itself, it inquires of Justice, the question asks the principle, “What really can be done?” What can one sincere heart do, if she or he wanted to, to assist in the materialization of the structure of justice in the world we live in? The enthusiastic social activist says, “what am I to do?” The vengeful communities of the disadvantaged conglomerated into like-minded and similarly victimized social sub-factions, appropriately named and extant on every college campus, ask, “what are we to do, if we wish to enact the principle of Justice within society?” Finally, the corporation and materially rich institution says to itself, “what”, as it inquires, “am I do to about my conscience – it being that I seek to see Justice realized world-wide before my days on this earth come to an end?” So speaks the voice of Justice as it ponders its destiny during its days in the hearts and minds of women and men, communities, and institutions. So speaks the discourse on Justice as presently manifest in human deliberations, thoughts, and discourses of society.

Practical Implications of the Principle of Justice: From Ideals and Concepts to Realities and Reconstruction

I built this iPad, says the late CEO. I built this iPad for $800 bucks a piece. A cost of this technology was the human lives I destroyed to manufacture the 10 million units I sold on American soil with Chinese sub minimum-wage labor. Suicide, STD’s, family unit decimation, mass relocation, biohazardous dormitories, temporary economic surges with counteracted depressions, itty-bitty living space – these are all my concerns regarding the building of my iPad. iPad is progress, however. iPad is science, speaks the conscious pride of our people, boasted on CNN for all to glory in. Behold, as if to say, our human ingenuity. iPad is a cultural phenomenon, an accomplishment felt for all by all. It redounds to the conscience of the species as a symbol of the transcendent genius of our race. Beggar and orphan alike delight in its beauty and efficiency. CNN reports: Chinese orphan sells kidney for iPad II.

Justice implies that progress cannot be defined in terms of this situation. That which progress consists in must rather be of utility to a larger majority of possible beneficiaries of human struggle within our global population. That which constitutes scientific and social progress must answer the global travesties of shortages of infrastructure in literacy, education, health, peace and security, non-corrupt governance, intellectual open-mindedness and freedom from the ravaging influence of materialism. Misapplication of the priorities and resources of science towards esoteric playthings for the fetishes of an elite minority is no science at all.  Inventing contraptions to satisfy the entertainment quest of an increasingly parasitical technocracy is nothing for our species to take pride in. Addictions progressively increase in the cost to the buyer and in the quantity of stimulant needed to generate the effective euphoria. Western elite technocrats are at the tipping point where fetishes become desperate and insatiable and break under the crushing exhaustion of the world’s collective resource-cash unable to satisfy the irresponsible habits of consumption. Cars and global warming. Alcoholism and social responsibility. Television and activism. Night clubs and emotional integrity. Apple products and Foxconn’s rural genocide. Ultimately, concern for justice prevents humanity from defining progress in a way that endorses sacrificing  the well-being of global prosperity and the planet itself to technological breakthroughs for privileged minorities. In design and planning, Justice ensures that limited resources are not diverted to the pursuit of projects extraneous to a population’s internal social and economic needs in structure, application, or resource-allocation. Need is the imperative here. Massive global need determines the fact that social solidarity, literacy, agriculture, healthcare, and international relations are the topics in which glory can be achieved in inventions. Not hand-held 3G enabled contraptions. Development programs that inculcate just and equitable goals will engage the commitment of the masses of humanity. Mass commitment and coordination is the sole force upon which the generation and application of solutions to universal and important human needs fundamentally depends. Virtues such as honesty, a dedicated work ethic, and united collaboration are harnessed towards the achievement of enormously challenging global achievements. Every member of society, every institution, and every social community or group  has the capacity to learn to trust the unity and cooperation of the collective as a destiny that champions the rights and participation of every contributor, and assures the benefits and basic standards to which all are entitled, and most importantly, that applies the products of science and endeavors that utilize planet earth’s inherited human and material resources for the prosperity of all individuals equally, equitably, and with an unerring justice.

Categories
Development Human Nature Oneness

Rural Life and Industrialization

The region known as the ‘west’ comprises a minority of the population of the globe. The west influences global trends and determines national agendas disproportionately. China and India comprise vaster quantities of human souls than the west. Chinese and Indian individual identities are  shaped by western trends and ways of thought. Resulting contradictions in the values of these peoples provide a telling study. A western conception of the individual proves efficacious to agendas of western businesses and the commodification of value. Traditional values emphasize family authority, moral virtue, public reputation, and social solidarity. In wisdom rural values see dignity, and in respect they see merit, in hospitality honor, in discipline virtue, and in public engagement social responsibility. Materialism infiltrates developing societies, rural life, cultural norms, and is reinforced by a seducing power to undo the fabric of social cohesion. Men seduced by prospects of ‘self-made’ success abandon families in pursuit of daring and romanticized exploits for material prosperity. Insecurity nurtured by images in advertising create fear of inferiority. Competitiveness fills the void. Familial loyalty is not worth the opportunity cost in the face of impending failure to compete. Women objectify themselves for the sexual satisfaction of suitors. Energy and effort wasted on vain pursuits replace a woman’s natural confidence with conceptions of self-worth that are conditional on submission to consumer industry. Instead of submission of each woman to her husband (a condition deplorable in the past), the modern age has seen the rise in submission of millions to a handful of oligarchs who deem what clothing and body habitus is considered attractive. Aesthetic values are conditioned over time with exposure to certain kinds of images since childhood.  Elders unwittingly resist the inevitable proliferation of technology as a highly visible culprit enabling the genocide of their cultural values. Rural communities, where the majority of earth’s inhabitants are housed, lose their cohesion with the upsurge in individualistic desires for consumption and self-advancement. Hysteria follows paranoia with the conception that multitudes are competing for relative self-worth . Psychological manipulation on a mass scale has been linked to patterns of competitive behaviours in the absence of any objective need for certain commodified imports. Insecurity undermines the essential equality of all human beings. Individuals pursue their new conception of self-worth where family unity, social solidarty, and collective prosperity cannot follow. Competition for social fitness where an individual wins versus multitudes of outcompeted misfits, who lose, borrowed from biological evolution, is adopted and popularized as a conception of social reality. Inequality is both the result and motivation of competition. Erosion of rural solidarity is isolated from centers of discourse and policy. Nuclear family unity is relegated to a romantic and outdated past. Youth are the victims of this in the short-term. Posterity struggles with the challenges these deranged generations will create in the long-term.

Categories
- Prevailing Conceptions Discourse

Caricatures of Human Nature

There are multiple models of human nature that have been claimed on various levels throughout the ages, and regardless of whether they are religiously or philosophically associated claims, social models employed by policy makers, rhetorical assertions used to group rationalize behavior, or popular opinions constructed for economic profits of advertisers, they are all highly fragmented conceptions – including such examples as materialism, that humans are sophisticated animals with the illusion of self-consciousness as a result of neurochemistry; hedonism, that human happiness is achieved through consumption and seeking pleasure; individualism, that humans are atomistic, relationships are a means to an end, and society is a mere aggregate of autonomous actors; and competitism, that humans are inherently conflictual and motivated by self-interest.

These caricatures of human reality are not just interesting to discuss, but have real social ramifications.  Their selective and exaggerated views have been reified in human consciousness and social structure, serving to normalize, justify, and encourage the associated patterns of behavior – often egoistic and harmful.  These behaviors, in turn, become models for social structures and institutions, which shape behaviors, and the result is a vicious self-reinforcing feedback cycle.

It’s true, fragmented conceptions of human nature did not originally create these behaviors, but started off simply describing them – after all, human beings did have selfish tendencies prior to Adam Smith.  The problem is when descriptive models of human nature are used for prescriptive purposes.  It is then that problematic models are reified, policies are built around them, self-interested behaviors are encouraged and normalized, and the flawed conception is reinforced.

Categories
- Prevailing Conceptions

Consumer Culture

Today’s consumer culture, a byproduct of the cult of the individual’s materialistic religion, is unapologetic as it reinterprets every aspect of human history and behavior within its single-minded view, as it imposes its ideology through a cultural hegemony, as it infiltrates its value in all social systems and structures – education, media, law, health care, and development being far from immune.  If one analyzes it deeply, it is simply no more than the triumph of animal nature and impulse, free now from any religious restraints, however superstitious they may have been.

One clear example is its effect on language.  Behaviors which at one point were characterized as moral failings are now rewarded, encouraged, and prized.  Selfishness is referred to as a commercial resource; truth is reduced to a negotiable commodity; pride is viewed in terms of social value; manipulation is called advertising.  The loss of meaning in our language reflects the profound loss of meaning in all relationships that make up civilization – breakdown of family life, weakening of community ties, dysfunctional educational systems, institutional power-struggles, the worldwide crisis of authority.  And this is perhaps the greatest crime of consumer culture.

Categories
- Three Protagonists Human Nature Oneness

Cult of the Individual

Society is plagued by a cult of the individual that has gone so far as to see association with other human beings merely as a means through which an individual acquires commodities that satiate his private desires. Presuppositions of the individual’s paramount importance amongst the structures of society, and materialistic assumptions that individuals desire inanimate or personally consumable pleasures enjoyable mostly in private, this cult casts human nature in its own mold of convenience to suit its structural agenda. Ignored and marginalized lies the importance of collective and community life as well as the power and productivity generated by institutional capacity. Dissuaded and castigated remain the achievements and glory of public reputation, community responsibility, and collective destiny. These are less easily commodified and consumed; these are difficult to acquire; these are not deemed valuable in the consumer culture currently propounded. The individual becomes the sacrosanct end and society the denigrated means. Consumer culture’s iron clad grip on the global conscience originated historically as a ruse foisted onto the materially developed populous, propelled in part by a profiteering consumer agenda in whose interests it is for human masses to remain so haplessly addicted, and perpetuated in part by people’s own temptation when confronted with instant gratification. With corporate tycoons as ecclesiastics, financial motivation their will to power, the marketplace as their temple, satiety as its heaven, and commodification as ritual – the cult of the individual has become the orthodoxy of a new materialistic religion.

Categories
- Human Body Human Nature Oneness

The Human Body and the Body Politic

We are in disagreement with self-interested conceptions of human nature and competitive social models. These tend to derive from a materialistic reduction of reality. Humankind’s future does not rest in their espousal, regardless of how popular they may seem at present. Systems known to humankind each comprise a possible candidate on which to model social organization. The human body and not the jungle is a more constructive analogy for the organization of our society. The human body analogy equips us to envision a social order that is harmonious, united, and prosperous. Cooperation of the various parts leads to health, and selfishness of any cell or tissue produces disease states. Through the instrumentality of reciprocity and cooperation each member of the body politic contributes and receives mutual comfort and welfare. One member’s affliction or distress will produce affliction and distress in all members and the whole. The body politic experiences happiness and sadness as a single entity. Can my finger but not myself be in pain? Can acute injury to the eye spare the functions of the broader nervous system? The agency of the sympathetic nervous system, like the inter-human sense of sympathetic emotion, leads to interconnectedness in all matters of pain and pleasure, disease and health, disaster and prosperity. Can the part be distressed but the whole at ease? It is our foundational conviction that society should be organized according to principles of reciprocity, cooperation and interconnectedness. Through the arteries of humankind will then flow the spirit that empowers us to carry forward an ever-advancing civilization.

Categories
Oneness

Consciousness

The bedrock of a strategy that can subsume the world’s population in assuming responsibility for our collective destiny is the consciousness of the absolute oneness of humankind. Deceptively simple though it may be, the concept that humanity constitutes a single unified people presents fundamental challenges to the way most institutions of contemporary society discharge their functions. Whether in the form of the adversarial structure of partisan government, the advocacy principle practiced in civil law, a glorification of the class struggle between diverse social identities, or the competitive spirit dominating so much of modem life–in all these arenas conflict is fetishized as the mainspring of productive human interaction. It represents yet another extension of the materialistic interpretation of life that has progressively consolidated itself over social organization in the past two centuries.