Tony,
You wrote:
Human nature
> in capitalist society is a hard barrier to move aside, or do away with.
> This question of how to move humankind forward to being what was called
> by some, 'socialist man', is a question of how to create a society with
> better people.
>
> People are products of their environment, even if a revolution has just
> occurred. People raised in an abusive environment are widely known
> to be rather abusive themselves, not the other way around.
>
> Conversely, people raised in a cooperative, supportive environment,
> themselves tend to behave that way when they become adults.
>
> Capitalism is a society that makes abusive, non- social behavior into a
> virtue..... 'the virtue of selfishness'. The job of humanity, Crash
> or no Crash, is to turn desired societal human characteristics into the
> opposite of what we have now.
>
My response:
I agree fully with this. Our situation is, however, rather worse that just
selfishness because selfishness implies unilateral, self-centred action
independent of anyone else. What we actually have in today's global market
capitalism is competition. This is worse than pure selfishness because
competition provides a justification for that selfish behaviour. It also
means that anyone choosing to act unselfishly or uncompetitively, loses out.
So not only does it justify selfishness, it actually enforces it. That makes
getting from competition to cooperation doubly difficult. This, I suggest,
more or less sums up the world's current predicament as the Crash
approaches.
In such situations, the key problem is not so much what to do, but how to do
it. In other words, an appropriate basis for cooperation needs to be found
before the participants carry out the necessary action to solve the
problem. For example, take a group of 4 or 5 boys fighting over a packet of
sandwiches. None is strong enough on their own to win outright but, at the
same time, none can give up the fight for fear of losing the chance of a
bite because, if they did, they'd go hungry. Furthermore, if they carry on
fighting for too long, the sandwiches are going to get squashed and become
inedible. The 'what' part of the solution is clear: they need to stop
fighting and share the sandwiches. The 'how' part (i.e. finding the
appropriate basis for cooperation which will allow that to happen) is more
difficult. Any ideas??
best wishes
John
_______________________________________________
Crashlist resources: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base
To change your options or unsubscribe go to:
http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/crashlist
