Jackie:
I'm glad you picked up on that point. Nearly ALL of us in this
industrial based, hierarchal, patriarchal economy depend on a "hand
that feeds us." We're told to follow authority, to "go along to
get along," even when we're told to do something unethical. There
aren't many jobs without bosses; and many of the bosses act like
prima-donnas - using fear and money to manipulate people, instead
of motivating people to be self-empowered and creative.
According to Riane Eisler's work ("Chalice & the Blade"), it
doesn't have to be this way. We could learn to share power, and
move toward an economy based on generosity rather than selfishness.
I offer the following excerpt along this thread:
from "Small is Beautiful - Economics as if People Mattered," 1973,
by E. F. Schumacher; pages 32 and 34-35 of the chapter "Peace and
Permanence":
"If human vices such as greed and envy are systematically
cultivated," [as they are in the current economic system] "the
inevitable result is nothing less than a collapse of intelligence.
A man driven by greed or envy loses the power of seeing things as
they really are, of seeing things in their roundness and wholeness,
and his very successes become failures. If whole societies become
infected by these vices, they may indeed achieve astonishing things
but they become increasingly incapable of solving the most
elementary problems of everyday existence. The Gross National
Product may rise rapidly: as measured by statisticians but not as
experienced by actual people, who find themselves oppressed by
increasing frustration, alienation, insecurity, and so forth."
[Sound familiar?] "After a while, even the Gross National Product
refuses to rise any further, not because of scientific or
technological failure, but because of a creeping paralysis of
non-cooperation, as expressed in various types of escapism on the
part, not only of the oppressed and exploited, but even of highly
privileged groups."
"From an economic point of view, the central concept of wisdom is
permanence." [i.e., sustainability] "Nothing makes economic sense
unless its continuance for a long time can be projected without
running into absurdities. There can be 'growth' towards a limited
objective, but there cannot be unlimited, generalized growth. It
is more than likely, as Ghandhi said, that 'Earth provides enough
to satisfy every man's need, but not for every man's greed.'
Permanence is incompatible with a predatory attitude which rejoices
in the fact that 'what were luxuries for our fathers have become
necessities for us.'
The cultivation and expansion of" [material] "needs is the
antithesis of wisdom. It is also the antithesis of freedom and
peace. Every increase of needs tends to increase one's dependence
on outside forces over which one cannot have control, and therefore
increases existential fear. Only by a reduction of needs can one
promote a genuine reduction in those tensions which are the
ultimate causes of strife and war.
The economics of permanence implies a profound reorientation of
science and technology, which have to open their doors to wisdom
and, in fact, have to incorporate wisdom into their very structure.
Scientific and technological 'solutions' which poison the
environment or degrade the social structure and man himself are of
no benefit, no matter how brilliantly conceived or how great their
superficial attraction. Ever-bigger machines, entailing
ever-bigger concentrations of economic power and exerting
ever-greater violence against the environment, do not represent
progress: they are a denial of wisdom. Wisdom demands a new
orientation of science and technology towards the organic, the
gentle, the non-violent, the elegant and beautiful. Peace, as has
often been said, is indivisible - how then could peace be built on
a foundation of reckless science and violent technology? We must
look for a revolution in technology to give us inventions and
machines which reverse the destructive trends now threatening us
all."
