Earlier, not appreciating being told that I was stuck in the status quo and
having had a rather bad day in which nothing came together, I posted a
somewhat snarky reply to a posting from Wesburt. I now recognize that
Wesburt is right. I am stuck in the status quo. But then aren't we all?
I would like to assure WesBurt that, when I read it some years ago, the
literature I read was not considered of a kind that defended the status quo.
Perhaps because I've become stuck in time, I rarely change the books on my
shelves, and when I look at them now I see at least a few books that were
once considered leftist, perhaps even a little radical. Marx and Engels,
together and individually, are up there as are Baran and Sweezy (again,
together and individually), Ernest Mandel, Samir Amin, and Michael
Harrington, who several decades ago, saw capitalism coming to an end. In a
box down the basement I still have a rather large collection of Monthly
Reviews. All of that is one side of my reading, though I can't say I've
read it all word for word.
Also on my shelves is another side. Much of it has to do with Russia, a
great power that tried to put Marxist theory into practice. As we know from
history, it was an abysmal failure. All of the high ideals of Marxist
literature were not worth the paper they were written on when so-called
Marxists took power. The same kinds of instincts and hunger for power that
drive people in capitalist society were present in so-called communist
society. What this suggests to me is that it's not theory or ideals that
are important, but human personality, part angel but still mostly brute,
with the brute always winning out when the chips are down. One need not
look only at Russia. China and Cambodia also provide examples. It is
possible that whenever, and wherever, people have tried to transcend
exploitative societies they have done little more than replace them with
exploitative societies of another kind.
That is why I prefer to be stuck in the status quo, if that is indeed my
condition. Even though I can't fully trust it, and even though I accept
that I'm being exploited, I at least have a pretty good idea of what I'm
dealing with. Spare me the ideals and transcendence. Far too many people
have already followed pied pipers to ruin.
Ed Weick
Visit my rebuilt website at:
http://members.eisa.com/~ec086636/
> Hi Ed Weick and folks at Futurework,
>
> This note was written to a private party, but it seemed an
> appropriate contribution to this discussion.
>
> Thanks for your thoughts Ed Weick It seems that you have
> read all of the literature which defends the status quo, but
> have not yet found a way to move beyond the status quo.
> That move is not made easily, nor by more than a few who
> happen to get hooked on the subject by some event in
> their lives.
>
> Here are some of my observations:
>
> One, I have never met a person who seemed evil, who
> would willfully waste the environment, or harm other people.
> But they all act in evil ways if coerced by threats to their
> safety and security. Sad to say, we are all coerced by our
> century old public policy of 4-10% unemployment, 2-3%/year
> decline in the value of our money, and a perennial shortage
> of purchasing power in the lower end of the workforce.
> We are much like the laboratory rats in the biology experiment
> described in the second note at URL:
>
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/3142/IR/items/19990119WesBurtSustain
ab
>
> leFuture.html
>
> Two, There is so much emphasis put on the excessive
> power of governments and corporations that no one pays
> any attention to the fact that the great majority of people
> enter their adult lives as financial cripples. Thomas Paine
> wrote about it in Agrarian Justice, and Rights Of Man
> (Part II) and proposed the necessary corrective action,
> which Japan, Germany, and Western Europe adopted
> after World War II, and the UK and the US have not yet
> fully implemented.
>
> Three, The Bible is probably right in saying, "The poor will
> always be with us." But they should be very few, at the
> margin of capability. To have half of the world's nations
> classified as poor rather proves that people have not read
> the bible themselves, but have let the WHIPS (the Healthy,
> Wealthy, Intelligent, and Powerful minority) keep the
> practical parts of the Bible (the purpose of the three tithes)
> hidden as a secret of the temple.
>
> If there is a great advantage to the WHIPs to charge the
> support of children to each family, why not charge the
> expense of K-12 education to each family, or charge the
> defense budget to each family at $5,000/year/child? All
> three expenses are about the same size, about 5% of GNP.
> But there is no such advantage. It is hard to tell whether
> the WHIPs are really evil, or just innocent of any
> understanding of what in hell they are doing.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Wesburt
