Yes. Nailed. Great article. Great art.
Our society is set up as “the lotto society”. A very few “win”, mainly through connections, luck, timing. The masses get little of what they need including healthy food, education, shelter and nurturing, all of which is replaced with drone education, drone jobs, impoverishment, immiseration and general dehumanization. Its the inevitable result of neoliberal political-economic philosophy. Beware technocrats pretending the solutions to our ills are simple technical adjustments. Moral assumptions underlie all of those technical tinkerings. Horrendous, immoral assumptions. The technocrat pretends to be above politics the same way the mainstream media pretends our economic system is not a crony system but a meritocracy. The assumptions that underlie the explications and descriptions of what is; that is where the truth is hidden and where we need to direct peoples’ attention. Giving arbitrarily massive financial advantage to a tiny sector of society is immoral. It does not promote the general welfare. Those people who’ve won that particular lottery are not special and have not earned it. They picked the correct lotto numbers, or worse, are looters and thieves.
We need a society that’s focus is the general welfare, not one where life is a battle over a tiny pie that only a few can win. The pie is as large as we want to make it. Beware technocrats who bloodlessly intone the conventional mantras while denying the reality of the meaningless suffering all around; suffering they pretend either doesn’t exist or is somehow equally shared by billionaire and unemployed alike. Society exists to care for its people. Not to go to the moon. Not to dominate a small world with a large military. Until our leadership is forced to remember these facts and made to live by them this war will continue. And it will continue to get worse for more and more while the few continue to amass more and more power and wealth. Unfortunately too many of the people are not yet ready to drop the vanity and pride that tells them they deserve while others do not. More and more will need to lose everything until enough begin to recall the lessons our ancestors learned that motivated them to fight against the hyper-capitalist crony owners. There is no system that can fairly determine who has merit and who does not. And even if we could devise one, what would that say about us that we are comfortable taking a large part of humanity and throwing them in the garbage? How does that make us any better than the monsters of history? If we are not striving for enlightened moral existence then why did we leave the forest in the first place? Capitalists used to claim their way would lead to the best possible outcome for all. They no longer pretend that. It was a lie all along anyway, but now they don’t feel they need to uphold the lie. They think they’ve definitively won. That is why our economic controllers will continue to rob us and ensnare us in debt-peonage. It will continue until we collectively decide to make a revaluation of values and throw the moneylenders and their enablers out of the temple of humanity.
“We need.” Those words don’t change the world. A century ago people fought and died for these things. Soon we may have to again. I’m starting to think we’re about one Republican president away from bloody revolution.
Winning does not scale.Should be carved into stone on every university and government building.
But I want a Moon pie.
My family’s kept a lot of mouths fed by working on the space program. And if humanity is worth preserving, having a way to spread beyond this single planet would be a good idea.
I think you’re missing my point, but Moon pies are delicious so I’ll let it slide ;).
Not that I’m advocating ignoring the problem of removing the finger wealth from the scales of economic justice, but if you redefine your American dream to “spend time with friends cooking good meals, having interesting conversations, making cool stuff and helping others” and you’ll be happier than most.
I’m with you as long as we can add “And not have to worry about paying the bills” onto the end there.
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