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On Rejecting "The
System"
By Emily Spence
09/01/08 "ICH"
-- - - In the natural world, a mother bear, during a
particularly harsh winter in which it is hard to capture prey,
will often eat one of her cubs. It will nearly always be the
runt unless the larger one is sickly. If she is still hungry and
unable to locate food from other species later that same winter,
she will consume the remaining one. Thereby she will guarantee
her survival as the alternative would be all three bears dying
-- the helpless cubs unable to live on their own and herself.
However, she, by using her offspring for nourishment, will help
ensure that she can carry on to produce further offspring in,
hopefully, more auspicious circumstances. By such a manner, her
species manages to endure.
All considered, life in the natural world, although often
brutal, is neither moral, nor immoral. No animal sits around in
a circle of his peers debating the relative rightness or
wrongness of the act of eating one's own progeny, nor the ones
of other species. At the same time, humans, in certain groups,
can also forego ethical underpinnings in their actions.
For example, the Nazis, in a calculated fashion, rounded up
children and adults from supposedly undesirably ethnic groups
for systematic slaughter. So did European invaders with
indigenous people in the Americas. So did Pol Pot in Southeast
Asia and so did ancient Romans. There is nothing new in this
regard. This sort of behavior has been occurring for times
immemorial amongst humankind. So has cannibalism when life gets
tough...
As the author Peter Goodchild shared with me, "I sometimes think
about a book called The Siege of Leningrad. The healthy people
walking the streets were the butchers. But the meat they had to
offer wasn't beef, and it wasn't pork, and it wasn't lamb. You
figure out the rest."
Then, too, humans periodically face the types of decisions as
did the pioneers at Donner Pass [1] -- a walk in the park in
some ways compared to the Leningrad events in that there was no
deliberate murder involved. As such, much of the difference
between the two events hinges on intention and deliberate
proactive choices rather than a passive stance to simply make do
as had the survivors at Donner Pass. Meanwhile, the aggression
inherent in deliberate slaughter of one's own kind reminds about
how well "laws of the jungle" still are extant amongst people
unless we are well taught that life, itself, has value beyond
self-serving sorts.
Meanwhile, not all people, who are at risk for starvation,
resort to dire unconscionable actions. Oddly, we sometimes even
see quite the opposite type of behavior wherein underfed people
consciously try to share whatever little they have with others.
Perhaps surprisingly, such demonstrations are not rare.
As Garda Ghista, the editor of World Prout Assembly, suggests,
"One day I had gone with my auto rickshaw driver to the slums,
to take photos of the very poorest people, the poorest of the
poor who had nothing -- no home, no anything. It was to raise
funds for a service project, a children's home, and I needed the
photos for the flyer. So we would stop, for example, on a bridge
where, on a ten by twenty foot piece of land along the bridge,
some cloths were stretched across two poles, and people were
living under them. There was no running water in sight. There
was no anything. but, when I stepped out of the rickshaw and
took out my camera, all these homeless, water-less, nearly
foodless, nearly clothes-less people started moving towards me,
with utter joy on their faces.
"I simply could not take the picture. I needed photos of
miserable looking people in desperate poverty. They just didn't
look miserable. None of them did. It happened time and again, as
when my rickshaw drove past the rock quarries where women with
axes hammer at granite rock for ten to twelve hours a day,
backbreaking labor - but again, when they saw me and the camera,
they moved slowly toward me smiling.
"There is an NGO called Transparency International which rates
corruption levels in countries. Bangladesh was coming out number
one every year. (I haven't checked recently.) At the same time,
an institute in Great Britain assessed "happiness" levels of
populations, and determined that the people of Bangladesh were
the happiest in the world.
"We Westerners do not understand all the love that exists in
people there - whole families sleeping in one room. It is not a
hardship for them. It is the only way to be. It is about staying
close and intimate. To them, the way we stick each baby in a
separate room is something primitive and backward.
"Here so many Americans forgot how to talk - maybe due to
watching so much TV. Even the TV programs and movies have such
low levels of conversation. In contrast, go to India or Middle
Eastern countries and speaking in poetry is something natural to
the people. It is, also, loved and respected.
"When I worked in a college in the Middle East, the students
(local Bedu) would sometimes come to my desk to make a phone
call. Who would they phone? Again and again, it would be their
mothers.
"We, here in the US, can hardly imagine the closeness of the
families and the other more extended groups found in third world
countries. When my Bedu friends took me to the desert, we used
to sit on the ground, and the father would immediately go and
milk the camel and bring me a huge bowl of fresh camel's milk.
Simultaneously, the mother (of my student) would cut up fruit
and put it in my mouth.
"Does it happen here in the US? ...and in India, when I visited
a family there and at dinner said that I am full, then that
mother took the spoon and began feeding me spoon by spoon,
putting the spoon in my mouth, ignoring my protestations. Will
it happen here? So who is more civilized and who is more happy?
I never saw such love, hospitality and happiness as I saw in the
Middle East and South Asia. For this very reason, what the
American Empire has done to my friends there is painful beyond
measure."
My response to this is that, when people need each other to
survive, they tend to act more kindly to everyone else,
including outsiders. Indeed, they are especially generous
towards those who serve their interests as does a teacher for
their son.
Conversely, they tend to develop a state of anomy, callousness,
apathy, contempt and disregard in relation to the welfare of
others when it is not in one's own interest to support them.
This second state, one of almost complete alienation and
independence rather than interdependence, has been shown time
and again in various situations.
One of the most notorious episodes involved the murder of Kitty
Genovese in NYC [2]. In addition, the Kitty Genovese incident
would seem to indicate that the more people that exist
concentrated together, the less likely that individual worth has
much merit. Congestion studies amongst many species bear this
out as does, in general, crime rates in crowded VS uncrowded
regions when variables such as socioeconomic class are factored
into the mix [3].
The implications relative to urban settings and overpopulation,
in general, are clear. As Larry Winn states, "Imagine a group of
humans, indeterminate in number, confined in a place of fixed
dimensions, wanting for nothing. They have plenty to eat, plenty
of water, plenty of places to live, and only the dimmest sort of
apprehension of a larger world. They might even think of "the
outside" as a kind of malicious fiction perpetrated by
malcontents. It's a circumstance not unlike the one "sustainable
development" is supposed to create for us. Also, not unlike the
universes of John Calhoun's rats. [4]"
He goes on to conclude in the same article, "...the rats in
Calhoun's experiments developed social pathologies similar to
the behavior of humans trapped in cities. Among the males,
behavioral disturbances included sexual deviation and
cannibalism. Even the most normal males in the group
occasionally went berserk, attacking less dominant males,
juveniles and females. Failures of reproductive function in the
females - the rat equivalence of neglect, abuse and endangerment
- were so severe that the colonies would have died out
eventually, had they been permitted to continue."
At the same time, one could only barely suppose that such
happenings as Kitty Genovese's type or as Larry Winn's
description would have a high rate of prevalent to transpire in
a small remote villages wherein personal relations are more all
inclusive, intimate, relevant and indispensable for maintenance
of optimal social welfare. With less people in a community,
there tends to exist stronger intact ties across the board
--even with strangers, who are merely passing through the
environs.
In addition, I predict that, with material affluence on the
increase in Bangladesh and elsewhere due to globalization of
industries, many people there will become more like much of the
US population -- self-absorbed, largely indifferent to the
welfare of the poor, insular, impressed by wealth and signs of
wealth (as exhibited by Hollywood starlets and major sports
figures), driven to get as much for themselves and their
families at the exclusion of others as could be possible, etc.
This is largely because cultural values are predicated on
whatever serves to maximally support life in a particular set of
circumstances.
In other words, people will more readily commune with each other
and share if these sorts of behaviors foster their own
well-being. If taking as much for oneself with disregard for
others does it, then this model, instead, will be the one
habitually learned and supported by the public at large. (Just
as "necessity is the mother of invention," it is also the mother
of behavioral patterns developing one way VS. another.)
As such, people tend to work together to get water, feed each
other, and provide for other material needs in these societies
wherein it is necessary for many people to work together as a
precondition to fulfill common aims (without which doing they
would all die). Opposed to this are the conditions wherein
success is primarily and almost exclusively tied to personal
fiscal gain rather than mutual philanthropy.
With this alternative in place, there is little loyalty to
companions, employees, nor employers. Instead, the overriding
concern is simply advancement of one's own profit and this aim,
alone. Hoarding behaviors will, then, be on the rise, too. At
the same time, the gap between the haves and have-nots will,
also, enlarge. All the while, people will be seen not as having
much merit in and of themselves as they will largely be viewed
as expendable commodities -- as means to an end to add to one's
own financial and other assets.
This being the case, the number of millionaires in the world
swelled to 8.7 million. Meanwhile, is there any mystery about
whatever most of them are trying to do rather than spread their
wealth in service to humanity or improvement of the natural
environment? No. Instead of promoting widespread benefits, they
are, for the most part, striving to become billionaires (called
"kleptocrats" in a related Wikipedia citation below as they are
thievishly parasitic on the body politic).
Indeed, many are wildly successful in achieving this objective.
'The number of billionaires around the world rose by 102 to a
record 793... and their combined wealth grew 18 percent to $2.6
trillion, according to "Forbes" magazine's 2006 rankings of the
world's richest people [5].' In addition, their group has been
expanding steadily. All the while they, also, command vast
stores of resources (obtained through their purchasing power),
manipulate their governments (through lobbies and other means)
and control others (via military might and other kinds) to keep
everything solidly behind their acts of racking in ever more
dollars and possessions, including huge tracts of land and
factories, for themselves.
The flip side to this situation is that US jobs are disappearing
overseas to second and third world countries in which the
populations are paid measly salaries of ~ a dollar a day for
their hard work. Moreover, these laborers will get fired if they
dare to complain about their income, work conditions, or other
aspects of their jobs. Furthermore, they are, for the most part,
easily replaced as there often exists the condition of large
unemployment in their locations. Therefore, they'd better,
meekly and gratefully, do as they're told by management.
Meanwhile, the goods that they produce are sold to eager
consumers in first world countries, consumers whose own
economies are crumbling due to a growing deficit of work at
reasonable wages. For example, one in five Americans now lives
on less than seven dollars a day according to fairly recent US
census figures [6]. All the same, it is primarily the near poor,
who give the most to charities -- not the middle and upper
classes. It is because they are almost poverty struck and know
the degree that being so can be horrendously grim to the point
of being even life threatening.
All of the above in consideration, it might be easy to conclude
that capitalism, itself, is antithetical to altruism and
benevolent regard for life as its economic program is based on
buying low (i.e., raw products, human labor, etc.) and selling
high to get ahead FOR ONESELF. As such, there is no mutual
regard or tender support for others as this way to go forward
is, essentially, carried out by progressively taking greater
advantage of others, including other species that are used to
make products. At the same time, these predatory conditions are
especially evident in countries, like the US, governed by
plutocratic corpocracies.
One needn't even look at cities, like New Orleans in the
aftermath of Katrina or Detroit in relation to GM plant
closings, to see the damage done by such malevolent business and
government structures. Any public school in a ghetto, a crowded
homeless shelter, hoards of street people in every major urban
environment (80,000 in LA alone of whom ~ 1/2 are mentally ill),
overwrought food banks strung out across the land, the rate of
home foreclosures, the depreciation of the country's currency
and myriad other indicators can amply serve in and by themselves
as proof.
So what are we to do in the face of such daunting circumstances?
Is the best way to proceed in such a rapacious backdrop to
simply claw one's own way to the top of the economic ladder,
scratch out the competition and forget about everyone else left
behind? Should we just shrug our shoulders and passively go
along with the damaging industrial and governmental plans that
are in place because that is all that we know? Certainly not!
In terms of the way to proceed given the conditions that we have
in our societies and our personal lives in connection to the
social order, I often go back to a comment that E. O. Wilson
made to me when I asked him, around fifteen years ago, about the
most important action that we could undertake to stymie
environmental collapse. His reply was simple. It was that we
must educate as many others as possible to the truths regarding
the happenings. This, in his opinion at the time, would
ultimately provide the best assurance of improvements across the
board. In addition, his viewpoint would seem to apply to other
areas of concern besides environmental ones.
At the same time, I realize that I, individually and in group
efforts, must always resist corrupt authority and any wrongful
control (i.e., arising from my dependence on repugnant
transnational corporations like Exxon, Monsanto, Bayer and so
many others) as best as possible. Yes, many of us are cogs in
the wheel (a reference to Mordechai Vanunu’s “I’M YOUR SPY” at
vanunu.org) as we are well integrated into and play a role in
destructive systems on which we are reliant for our livelihoods,
life maintaining goods and services, etc. So, we keep the status
quo (including their affiliated big corporations and political
arrangements) as is on an ongoing basis.
However, we can, as Peter Goodchild writes in his essays and
many others suggest, get out of it all as much as possible, wean
ourselves from some damaging behaviors and develop better
methods of self-sufficiency. In other words, we can minimize our
involvement with whatever it is that we abhor. We can also
always make a point to deliberately stand up for whatever is
right when given a reasonable opportunity to do so. There are
plenty of ways available through volunteer activities, letter
writing campaigns and other forms of protest.
Nonetheless, I realize that I. F. Stone’s comment (located
below) is probably dead-on correct for a wide array of goals
that many people would want to support towards creating a
constructive future. Yet, in the end, it all boils down to a
matter of conscience. As such, one has to do whatever one does
simply because it does seem right and because there is no better
alternative even when the outcomes AREN’T likely to be the sorts
that one would ideally wish to have transpire. Then again,
getting overly concerned about results in endeavors can take
one’s attention away from any hard struggle towards betterment,
itself. So, one deliberately has to maintain focus on the
beneficial action, whatever it comprises, regardless of any
other factors.
So, yes, we’re “stuck” in some ways because we need oil, drugs,
food (of which the majority is GM), clothing (often made by
poorly paid laborers), etc. This being the case, though, does
not excuse us one iota, I would think, from doing whatever we
can, even if small and seemingly inconsequential, to improve the
way that we go about our lives.
Even if imperfect at it, we owe it to ourselves and each other
to strive to create a better world as best as we can given our
underlying circumstances. Then, who knows? Maybe at a certain
point, we can, as Stone implies, reach a point in the far ahead
times where some benefit has accrued on account of our seminal
action. Maybe we can be one of the snowflakes that provides the
weight to reach that final tipping point: The NAA Voice,
www.naaweb.org/TheNAAVoice/TheNAAVoice121406.htm.
“The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are going
to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose
and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In
order for somebody to win an important, major fight 100 years
hence, a lot of other people have got to be willing - for the
sheer fun and joy of it - to go right ahead and fight, knowing
you’re going to lose. You mustn’t feel like a martyr. You’ve got
to enjoy it.” -I. F. Stone
[1] For details, please refer to: Donner Party - Wikipedia, the
free encyclopedia, (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donner_Party).
[2] To learn more about this incident, please see: Kitty
Genovese@Everything2.com (everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=132928),
Bystander effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect),
Kitty Genovese - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genovese),
Thirty-Eight Saw Murder
(www.selu.edu/Academics/Faculty/scraig/ gansberg.h) and A
Picture History of Kew Gardens, NY - Kitty Genovese - The ... (www.oldkewgardens.com/ss-nytimes-3.html).
[3] An overview of this topic is
supplied at: The Real Picture of Land-Use Density and Crime: A
GIS Applic... (http://gis.esri.com/library/userconf/proc00/professional/papers/PAP508/p508.htm).
[4] A description of John Calhoun's
findings, along with their implications, is located at: Universe
25 (www.suite101.com/article.cfm/frontier_theory/100).
[5] Data on wealth can be found at:
FOXNews.com - Number of Billionaires Up to Record 793 - Busi...
(http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,187400,00.html), Number of
billionaires grows, Gates stays on top - Mar. 9, 2... (http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/09/news/newsmakers/billionaires_forbes/index.htm),
Billionaire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billionaire),
Number of Billionaires (http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2005/MichelleLee.shtml)
and Number of Millionaires in the World Swells to 8.7 Million |
... (mostlywater.org/node/7492).
[6] Related information can be
found at: Thomas Paine's Corner: American Dream Now a Nightmare
for Mi... (civillibertarian.blogspot.com/2007/04/american-d) and
Some Statistics on Poverty in America (
www.soundvision.com/Info/poor/statistics.asp ).
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