"... On Aug 7, 7:11 pm, Vamadevananda <[email protected]> wrote: ..."
> But that wasn't the point. The point was that the capitalist ' > environment,' at this point in history, is exacerbating such > behaviour, actually causing and bringing out more of it, because that > is what it finds expedient and also because of the ' message ' it is > sending to the billions who find themselves marginalised and > dispossessed, unheard by the powers that be and long muted with their > inexorably miserable fate. I'm sorry, Vam but you sound like Marx when in actuality we are at the other end of the spectrum. Granted, the current capitalist free- market crisis is exacerbating the stress on the social fabric. Crisis always does. Crisis inflames fear which makes people play it closer to the vest, tighter, meaner, cruder. Crisis brings out a few heroes but mostly it energizes the instinct for self preservation. People who are at the edge of sociopathic behavior slip over that edge into sometimes wanton violence. Crime in general rises along with all other pathologies at all levels of society in times of crisis. But it is not as bad as some would have us believe. There are those in the world who would rather heighten our state of fear because fearful people are easier to control but I think we've grown to the point where they are in a minority which is indicated by their increasingly desperate attempts at mongering fear. There's not a voice over twenty in western society which can say they are not better off today than at any previous time. Since 1971 the wealth of the developed world has multiplied fivefold. And now that the U.S. has shown the world that free-market capitalism makes everybody wealthier, everybody is jumping on the bandwagon. If you think the last twenty five years have been spectacular, wait till you see the next quarter century. > What I am suggesting is this : If the room is clean from before, I > would not litter it. Indeed, my suggestion is to do the clean up act. > In the context, it means bringing ' cooperation ' and ' care ' centre > stage, in place of primacy to capital in terms of value and ' power ' > over the fate of humanity, from here on. This must be where Francis sees us as being in the same place and I think it is where we coincide. What you describe as cleaning up, cooperation and care are part and parcel of those core characteristics I think we need to aim at rather than the systems. I think this same concept is embedded in the philosophy of economics from the time of Smith. He named one facet of it as the invisible hand which causes the market place to self-correct. What he didn't count on what the capacity for human greed to outrun the market's safety valves. But in any case, I see us as talking about the same things here. > Mere ' ownership ' of > capital, and concern for more and more profit, is no longer an > adequate qualification for the tasks ahead ! In my mind it never was, albeit it was the controlling factor for a lot of the world. To me capital and the wealth it creates are but a means to achieve success with the tasks ahead. All an economy is is an enabler. It enables us to indulge, investigate, explore, experience everything else. It enables us to more become what we want to be. In the vernacular of the street, it's the grease to life. > To restate : Capital is way overrated, for the future I am speaking > of. We should be looking a lot more closely at what it is doing to > everyone, not just how it is working for the owner of capital. Ahh, here again you seem to be blaming capital for something, perhaps the ruination of the soul? I'm not sure but it sounds important. The difficulty is that capital is neutral. It has no moral or ethical nature. This is in the same sense that guns don't kill people, people kill people. Guns are but the enabler and have no morality but what is created by the person holding the weapon or wielding the checkbook. I might say the same thing in another way. Just as guns are deadly for some, wealth or capital is for others. Some use their power for good, some for bad, some for self-protection, some for hedonistic purposes, some stupidly. I think I've said this before in another way ... it is human creativity that gives character to most of life across a broad spectrum. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""Minds Eye"" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Minds-Eye?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
