The edges of the carpets I my house were becoming thin. I wondered why, only to discover that carpet moths were eating away the wool in the carpet, leaving the edge bear. Not knowing what too do, I resorted to google, as always! Most of the sites (except the ones selling carpet-moth pesticide) said that pesticide wasn’t necessary, and that merely disturbing them with the vacuum was good enough to get rid of them. After all, they only live at the edges of carpets, never in the middle where people walk and the floor is constantly disturbed.
Humans are also just like this. If we are not disturbed then we flourish. If the political system is stable, then we flourish. If the economy is stable, we flourish. With stability comes accurate planning, careful consideration, and long-term fruitfulness. Politicians know this, and so to win votes, they try to create a stable system, especially economically. Or at least, a system that appears and feels stable. To do this, they will (and do) do anything they can get away with, like lying about statistics (unemployment, inflation), and so use the media to try to present stability. But of course, they only try to achieve the illusion, the feeling of stability. Only good politicians try to actually create stability, and because of unrealistic expectations of the populace (fuelled by the media and ignorance) and the pressure of corporations, there is no room in the world today for good politicians, except at possibly the local level, the level where they have minimal impact (so is not worth it for corporations to work to change the situation).
But the same is also true: humans don’t flourish in times of instability. The US policy in the Middle East for the pasts few decades is to ensure there is instability. Only if there is instability can the greatest looting of resources (oil) in history continue. Only when people in their day to day lives have to worry about food and shelter, will they not have the energy to concern themselves with political injustice, to come together and organise, to throw off the oppressor and thief that the US and Britain are.
This is nothing new. This knowledge has been known by politicians for generations. It is, by now, official policy: cause chaos to steal resources and power, cause stability to get a happy population and thereby win votes.
This is the way we work. It is the way life woks. Abusing this is the speciality of politicians, corporations and economic theorists. And it is up to you, the person, to be aware of this policy and not let yourself become subject to it: to work to stop it happening to you. I hope that by publishing this I am contributing to people protecting themselves from this evil. I hope those who read it do not use this knowledge for abuse.
He who abuses this is evil. He is a rapist. He is cruel and revels in torture. And sadly, he is rich and powerful.
The logic of our economic system is psychopathic. That's not hyperbole, just material fact. It is increasingly the logic of our political system. That's my theory anyway. This comes about, I believe, in large part from stability. Even without complacency, apathy and powerlessness affecting its members the voting public, along with most of its grassroots leadership, becomes a well-known entity in a stable system. We can tell with great confidence how it will react to many or most things, and this promotes machiavellian thinking among the entities that want to drive or predict the public's responses to everything from policies to elections. Instrumentality becomes mandatory even for those who are not themselves so cold and calculating because to not be so is to give decisive advantage to those who are so.
ReplyDeleteIn a stable system, an awakened public is, I'm afraid, not sufficient to counter this effect or the actions of those whose motivations are not grounded in the common good. The public must not only be awakened but skilled and knowledgeable -- able to think critically and possessed of sufficient and sufficiently-accurate information, and I think also possessed of a good theoretical grounding in political and economic systems, and in the methods and psychology of persuasion.
Thus endeth my activist buzzkill.
-dz
I like it. Tho it's pretty terrifying!
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