I am another child of the 60s who did not buy into the "wanting it all" aberration. There is no peace down that road, only constant struggle. While I agree that our society has degraded to this mentality, it is important to note the existence of many who have not.

"Well, who among us is not moved in some way by that "wanting it all?"

Well, me and a vast number of other people as well. Many, no, really all indigenous, long lived cultures I am aware of abhorred exclusive ownership of shared land and resources, and a whole lot of fellow citizens I meet agree with me that they want enough, not more, and enough means modest. For my purposes conspicuous consumption is a symptom of a diseased society, along with using fear to control populations that makes it possible. It is a silly question to anyone but the sociopathically inclined. Having too much just drives people away and makes existence depressing, without real friends.
Really, lots and lots of people think this way.

herb

The Cetaceans many of which have larger and most sophisticated brains than humans.

Is it not Zen Buddhism that offers the answer of cessation of want as the true liberator of the soul? Desire feeds all fury. Next time some silly President asks you to do your part by "going shopping" to keep the game going, think twice. Ditto on following those stock prices as if they were any kind of barometer of your well being. They aren't.

Would it feel like stepping outside of the atmosphere itself to disrobe from materialistic thought? I'm sure it would. But that is what it would take to dislodge ourselves from our fate by obese consumption.

Michael, nice to see your writing here! I know you from GEO.coop. I think your reference to personal and cultural transformation to reconstitute our "common core" using Freire's ideas is interesting and important. An example that I've delved into a bit recently is the Mondragon industrial Co-op Corp. They are no government co-op offshoot. They were founded in Franco's Fascist Spain, a child of Hitler-Mussolini military assistance. Padre Arizmendiarrieta, a young Basque journalist who survived the war against Franco's forces, started a more public and grassroots polytechnical institute in his town. He taught the sociology of grassroots democracy, and five graduates became engineers who started the first Mondragon factory. Arizmendi's teaching lead them to want to create a co-operative firm, which they did with his help. They grew and diversified to become what they are today, a dynamic network of co-operatives which includes a co-op university. In Brazil, the MST have grown from the original inspiration of Joao Pedro Stedile who got his masters in Mexico and came back understanding the legalities of squatter occupation for farmland. They now utilize Freire's teachings as they have expanded all over Brazil, starting settlements and then co-operatives. They have started their own co-op association. MST even has a project to teach the settlements to build their own micro wind turbines.
In the US, I owe some credit to the Food Co-ops in New York City for contributing strongly to the transformation of my activist vision. Organic Valley farms shows that a similar vision occurred there recently, since they only began in the 1980s. Going from oppressed to socially responsible and liberated isn't necessarily easy, but like most things, it's about making the necessary effort that then makes it much easier to understand. William Greider, Marjorie kelly, and Nadeau and Thompson have written some decent books on the subject, for example.

To simplify, most know when they are being grossly underpaid for an hours work and do not want to be overpaid but justly paid. The overpaid lords do not get it.

Television is a huge unifier of thought, and not our own. We defer to 'experts' on so much. All of us worker ants. The ways of deception and manipulation are advanced art forms and almost unrecognizable these days. You could make significant amount of money if you could read peoples minds. Barring that, being able to influence others thought and mold their minds is the second best thing. Also look At how many poor play the lottery. They need to cling to the great hope bar all because the path to actual success is incomprehensible.

An interesting article highlighting the obvious. All people need to abandon this hierarchical system of gaining ego gratification and stuff - the 1% and those of the 99% whose complaint is that they aren't part of the 1%.

We need to cease being advanced monkeys and finally take the plunge to become "man." This includes manifesting our realizations into behaviour and consciousness - the realization that those with power and stuff aren't happy, that this pursuit will result in devastation, and most importantly that a better alternative will become obvious to those who finally become man.

Well, I don't know that "man" is the right term.

The assumption we evolutionists make is to believe we have reached the goal of "man." Adam devolved into a fearful, selfish, vain being no different from the beings God had created before him "to go forth and replenish the earth". It may well be allegorical but it is basically about advancing us rather than our stuff.

I think the problem is that most people just don't understand whats going on. If they think that the playing field is level its because they haven't thought about it enough and they don't have adequate knowledge, or more often, have false knowledge. Americans are probably more programmed than any people In all history.

"... For the oppressed to be able to wage the struggle for their liberation, they must perceive the reality of oppression not as a closed world from which there is no exit, but as a limiting condition which they can transform."

The oppressed must first wage a struggle for liberation from hunger. Only then, perceiving reality of oppression from enclosed cardboard world, until opened as cold liberating dawn penetrates under the overpass, illuminating concrete limitations for transformative release of what once was at root of conditional hunger itself.

Duality, duly revealed in creation and re-creation, in harmony of authentic composition with this piece.

Again, let's agree on this common core: Republicans/Conservatives have proven themselves to be POLITICAL & CORPORATE PSYCHOPATHS. Everything else follows from there in terms of how we strategize moving forward.

What a fool you are! What an intoxicating innocence. How can you be so naive?

Do you think the democrats are not ALSO beholden to politcal and corporate machines? Its bad cop good cop, and youre falling for it.

If you dont believe me, listen to Malcolm X: http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Oh, and do f*cking notice that he isnt calling for Republicans. The problem is not one party or the other, but the ENTIRE POLITICAL SYSTEM, which is rigged against the american people, regardless of color, and the system only supports the economic elites at the top of the pyramid.

The elites rule both parties. I dont know what color you are, but thats irrelevant: I know what class you are, and youre not of the elite. Youre just a sad chump who thinks the whole fictional nonexistent Republican/Democrat political devide.

They both want the same goddamn thing. They both want the continuation of capitalism, and the cutting of welfare and food stamps for the needy, even as the ranks of the needy grow every year because of bipartisan support for free trade.

For more, please see my article, "HONORING DR. KING'S LEGACY: A PROGRESSIVE POLITICAL THEOLOGY" - especially since this marks the beginning of "Black History Month." Cheers, Ron
http://open.salon.com/blog/...

I propose that the condition of insatiable acquisitiveness be it for power, money or old newspapers be recognized as a mental disorder that presents a danger to others.

I think "Dualism" bases it's conclusions upon the same "Us vs Them" mentality that's been the fundamental problem since civilization began -- that there's one "side" who want one thing and another "side" that wants the opposite. It's the same overly simplistic nonsense that propels such inanities as "Tastes Great / Less Filling" as a means of selling beer.

No one is going to solve the social or political dilemmas of this world unless and until the debate changes from the Black and White contrast of "Us vs Them" to the more complex but far more realistic concept that all human existence consists of infinite shades of gray.

There can be no "one-size-fits-all" solution because humanity is not divided into separate camps of those who want it all versus those who don't and that what everyone's concept of "having it all", varies greatly across the broad spectrum of human culture.

Furthermore, I take issue with the sweeping generalization that those who don't "have it all" are envious of those who do. There are many people whose vision of utopia does not involve a whole lot of "stuff" while others can't seem to get enough "stuff" and whether those with less are envious of those with more is an assumption at best as there are many people who are quite content living relatively simple and "stuff-less" lives - not because they have to but rather because they want to.

The discussion ought to focus on the needs of individuals rather than on pitting one group against another but that never seems to happen both because it would require the "Us vs Them" narrative to be discarded (and thus there would be no particular group left at which to point fingers) coupled with the fact that broad introspection takes time and is difficult and many simply do not wish to expend the effort.

Yes there's a "One Percent" and there are political parties and religions of varying stripes and many other "points of separation". But to truly solve humanity's problems would require everyone to sit down and discuss all of their needs and desires in order to better understand the inherent complexity of human existence and to learn to treat humanity as a sophisticated entity with a plethora of varying concerns, desires and requirements concerning how much "stuff" people think would make them happy instead of trying to divide it all into some "A-Team versus B-Team" affair.

I don't presume to know just how to go about doing this but I do know that choosing up sides usually causes more problems than it solves and cannot be the answer.

Given all the propaganda, advertising, and the prevailing protestant work ethic, and given that our subconscious minds do not distinguish if something is true or false, it is no wonder that Natoli has come to his conclusions. I believe, that if people were not consciously and unconsciously bombarded by manipulative information, that we would all have a better America.

This piece focuses too exclusively on the minds of Americans. Most of "the oppressed" do not live in this country and do not share the cartoon-like "moral dualism" that afflicts almost everyone here. Being victims of imperialism does not mean the world's masses, as tings now stand, speak with one voice or are free from dangerous illusions, but neither do they follow the thought-patterns described in this piece.

Another way to talk about American "moral dualism" is to focus on the vulgar dialectic of transcendance that infects American discourse. This thoroughly secularized "spiritual" paradigm for the most part recoils in horror from materialism and requires all human beings to posit political virtue as the product of a private spiritual or quasi-spiritual struggle for personal superiority.

Whether one's example is Mother Teresa, Thoreau, Gandhi, John Galt, Tom
Brokaw, or John Wayne, the obtuseness resulting from this pervading narrative is probably the main instrument in reducing the left in this country to powerlessness.

It prevents the 99% from arriving at a realistic appraisal of the class struggle that stands in the way of optimizing the lifespan of our species.

Moreover the debate about human intrinsic goodness versus that "sense of sin" that every young professor of literature invokes in his seductions of students, is irrelevant to the realities of political action and social life. Hawthorne and Melville vs. Emerson and Thoreau is a historical sideshow, not the main event.

Morality, whether "dualist" or otherwise, is first of all simply a rationalization for all the cruelties to which most individuals have historically submitted in the name of large-scale society, and secondarily a condition that humanity aspires tp create, rather than a precondition for society.

That the "masses" may have more than one voice is certain, since individuality is a biological condition. However, the psychological condition of people in response to shared socioeconomic circumstances has a limited range of options, say, in Guadalajara where NAFTA put a lot of Mexican people to work in low wage conditions, or in China. China perhaps shows a more hopeful side, since one writer in Nat Geo cites about 100,000 protests there per year. Yet, the basic dynamic pointed out by Marx holds- Employer-employee. Scholars talk of a "corporate-consumer culture" because most people have stopped being artisans making their own shoes, metalwork, and clothes as small businesspeople, and instead depend on corporations in the industrialized system. Read Marx-Engels Manifesto, Ivan Illich on Tools for Conviviality, and Richard Robbins Culture and the Problems of Capitalism for starters. As for "obtuseness," the model makes a difference. John Wayne represented the dominant, imperialistic system, while Gandhi challenged it with a profound and holistic authenticity. Produce and protest with a spiritual basis was most of his message. As for literary education, I agree in part. However, it is not principally the literature, it is the INTERPRETATION of those works. Heard of Marxist theory? I prefer more modern approaches, Gandhian, for example, or American economist David Ellerman or Sociologist Joyce Rothschild. Or Cornell West, for that matter. Thus Moby Dick has racial symbolism, but can be given modern interpretation in light of fishing co-operatives and Greenpeace's efforts to achieve ecologically-based moratoriums. Mark RegoM

One problem is this, these articles are being written in a very intellectual language. A language which the ordinary person not only cant understand, but also cant empathize. This lowers the waking-up effects of such informative pieces greatly.

Things must be told in simple, understandable terms, over things which ordinary people can easily see in the world around themselves. This would help people to wake up and start to act.

Unity !00, I agree with you, more than you might think. I am trying to do this in my blogging at http://geo.coop/blogs/micha.... I would appreciate as much feedback as you would like to give me along these lines.

michael

When I was a kid, a LONG time ago, I played football and ran track.I played football for 2 different schools.The first school I played for lost every game. The second school I played for won one game. But myself, and most of the other kids looked at our experience from the perspective of " did you give it your all, try your best?" I mean, there are not that many ways to look at it. We only got killed once, 31-0. When I ran the hurdles, I came in first twice in 2 years. But in track, you are also running against the clock. I gradually got my time down to 21 flat in the low hurdles and 15.1 in the high hurdles. Not bad, but not good enough for first place, as my father constantly reminded me.
What I'm getting at here is that in the culture at the time, winning wasn't everything. By the way, also at the time, in football you played both ways. I never heard my coach say "You guys are losers". We never took winning that seriously, nor did the coaches or most of the parents. We played for the joy of playing, of challenging ourselves.

Yeah, those were the days. Meanwhile, Rich Conservatives started funding Think Tanks- like Richard Mellon Scaife who funded The Heritage Foundation- and economists who followed M Friedman and the Chicago School, using Adam Smith's basic ideas, and voila, Ronald Reagan got elected and the Republicans embraced corporate ideology. Their ideas have controlled much of the rest of the political process and advertising culture since then. The Dems included since at least Clinton, tragically.

I'll give it a try.

Our two candidate (51% takes all) elections don't work well. You (and the people that line up opposed to you on some issue) shall forever get the lesser of two evils, or 50% of the time you get the greater of two evils. Our election system has failed us.

Our government keeps dealing you structural unemployment, just as it did in the 1930s and in times before that. It doesn't matter what job you train for, there will always be too many trainees and not enough jobs. So, you, your kids and your grandchildren will always face some risk of living on the street. There should be enough housing and food for everyone. Our government has failed us.

Also, our government allows us to buy poison at the store. That's how we get cancer and diabetes. Then we die. Our government has failed us.

Our government is slowly murdering our planet.

Our government is at DefCon 1, where DefCon 5 is the end. We're a bunch of hostages ready for immediate mass extermination, but the guys holding us hostage are economic friends with this country's mass exterminators.

You can be a lucky (or unlucky) coward in your lifetime or you can be righteous and proactive. Cut your own deals with your friends, that you won't tolerate the structural unemployment of good people within your circle. Study inherently corruption-resistant election systems such as Cambridge, Mass. City Council elections, then run your own exclusive community's elections. Cut the bad old government's malign influence out wherever possible.

OK, we 99%'ers need a bitter divorce from our abusive 1% BOTU's (Bastards Of The Universe).