Friday, 23 January 2009

Of Great People & Little People cont...

The chance of being cheated is the spanner in the works of all human endeavour... especially human economy. The justification for the prison of property and economic measurement (money) is just this.

Consider a system without money in which we offered our time freely to the community when it was convenient and when it was needed.

People are actually industrious ... we need only see the impact of unemployment upon people to see that they are not happy doing nothing. Give people the opportunity to contribute to society and the vast majority would be only to happy to do so. There is however a minority of people who might be classified as having "special needs" whose attitude and ability to contribute are impaired either physically or psychologically. These small number are either considered justified in taking more than they contribute (the disabled) or they are cheats.

It is amazing to think that the vast majority of the ones who are otherwise happy to contribute become discouraged by the thought that there are people out there who are cheating. Rather than continue doing what they want (i.e. to contribute) they feel they are being used and express this as anger against the cheats combined with a reduced wish to contribute.

For this simple psychological reason we have the concepts of "property" and "money" to measure how much we contribute (money) and to establish a fixed relationship with what we have earned (property). We feel then that our efforts are solid and we can covert them.

But of course this only little people who think like this. The concepts of "property" and "money" rather than ensuring that cheats do not operate by fixing measures of contribution, actually gives people solid entities with which to fixate their small minded psychology of "fear of being cheated" and makes what is purely psychological seem real. From this stems the appearance amongst people of rich and poor and those who believe in the systems of "property" and "money" find that while they can be sure no-one is cheating find themselves suddenly in a heirachy of wealth in which they can look down on poorer people to feel well off, and up to richer people to feel that they are poor. Suddenly what was a simple matter of being active, sociable and contributing to the society becomes a fixed ball and chain around our lives that fixes us financially and socially.

It is important to realise - and I've analysed it at length over the past year - that all these things especially "status", "property" and "money" do not actually exist they are simply the "rules" of a game that has been evolved in human societies. True they are rules that we must accept, in the same way we accept the offside rules in ball games, but they have no reality outside the game.

Famously some societies have operated without concepts of "property". Some animals are territorial (i.e. have property) and some are not. We tolerate a black-bird in our garden but not another person; a robin will tolerate a sparrow but not another robin; it is funny how territory is species related and many species have overlapping territories on the same land. The territory is not therefore physical (and real) but a game played out "on" the land. This mountain marks the edge of my territory says the human, while the very same mountain may be the center of a lions territory at the same time. Humans don't "own" the actual "land" they simply play a game of ownership with the land. The surface of the Earth existed billions of years ago and will exist for billions more years. What humans "think" about the surface whether as "territory" or "Mother Earth" is irrelevant outside of the social games (context) which make use of these "rules". Just the same as a football lost on a crop field is useless, but the same ball in a football stadium is the source of hopes and dreams.

Money is the same. We accept a certain currency in a certain territory not because of any intrinsic value of that currency but it is simply the accepted game. It began in UK with the Bank of England under William III. By royal decree paper bills took the place of gold. This acceptance has been stretched now so that the bills themselves are used as money and represent not even gold. Logical problem with this however is that the money was used in a barter system of exchanging something for something. Now that the money is nothing, when you buy something you are giving nothing in return for the goods! Gold had been the universally accepted currency before partly because it was scarce, it was magical (position in Alchemy etc), and it didn't decay so was perfect for storage. But it was only because people accepted it in the game of exchange that it had value - by itself its of no use as the rich find out in times of famine. So to say that you are rich is not a real existing quality - it is simply true within the rules of the game like saying you won 3:1 in a football game - its not something real you take home with you afterwards. Go to a country which values cowrie shells and not gold and you are poor.

In the case of "labour" we make real things and so what exists now where before nothing existed surely is because of us and the value added is from us and therefore part of us and we therefore "own" it? Except which part of the final product do you own? Suppose you assembled a chair from parts made by someone else. True you have added something to the work done by the carpenter who added some work to the timber merchant, and before him the lumber-jack and before him the forestry managers and before them the trees themselves and before them the sun and the rain and the soil micro-organism etc etc etc. But each person owes things laterally; to the designers of the tools and the skills that have been passed down generation after generation. And, in some cultures they don't have chairs so all this activity would never happen without the social and cultural norms. In every direction that the worker looks they are fed and drawn in directions that lie outside them. Even the energy that the worker expends in building the chair comes from the sun ultimately. The energy to even think all this comes from the sun - see how his arguments for ownership go after he has starved to death!

The truth is that in reality we depend upon everything around us for what we do. What passes through us as "work" and the things we create are no more ours than anyone elses. This is why the Jews argue and Jesus supports them in this view that the fruits of your labours belong to God (a view echoed in the Hindu 'Bhagavad Gita' and presumably around the globe).

So what is "ownership" then. As argued it is a rule of the game that is played in Europe (and the European colonies), but a rule that is enforced with violence so that if you don't play the game you find yourself abused - as the American Indians and Australian Aboriginals have found. But importantly it is not real.

Now the Great people know it is not real. A great person does not say "give that to me, it belongs to me". A great person says, "why have you taken that, do you need it?". And if we meet someone with a need what is wrong with giving them what they need?

The answer I imagine is that they don't deserve it. And that is based upon a belief in ownership. That we own our work and therefore we earn our pay, and those who have need should work to meet that need, for the need is not mine but theirs. In this argument can be seen the brutality of Western society, that our deepest instincts to kindness, and compassion for our fellow bretheren are foreshadowed by the dark cloud of indoctrination and stinginess that is born of Western economics. This is how the once great men have been brought to squabbling around in the gutter like rats.

We need only see what is happeneing at the moment in the economy to see the inadequacy of the previous argument. Once there were strict rules about payment. We had to pay our taxes else we went to prison, and we had to pay for our goods else we went to prison. The unemployed and disabled had to jump through hoops to gain a small percentage of the government purse. Yet over night the rules have changed. Each person in the country has now given £11,000 of the tax purse to the small group of banks to stop them going broke. Yet if we wanted even our own money back we would not have been able to see a penny of it. This on the back of disasterous wars costing hundreds of billions. None of this money we will ever see the benefits of. Likewise in times of war the property rules can be changed and the government can claim any property they like. None of this is a problem if you see the system as just rules which can be changed whimsically, overnight. But this must be incomprehensible to people who believe that "property" and "ownership" actually exist.

Returning to the argument a couple of paragraphs ago. The core grievance in this argument is the difficulty with which people have had to work to get a living. When money costs this much blood sweat and tears then you are stingy and you don't want others to have it easy. But it only costs this much because so much is taken by the capitalists (consider the bank bonuses for example), so for the working classes to be using the same rules of property to beat each other up for the meagre scraps under the capitalist table is verging on the lunatic. Its all just rules of the game.

I don't know yet whether this stands as a convincing argument to separate the rules of the economic game and of property, and the underlying laws of reality which are that we own nothing of this world since ownership has no reality and that our fear of being cheated and of losing the prisoners dilemma is therefore not a reality but a psychological weakness akin to stinginess. It is this psychology which makes us small people and puts us in the prison of mediocre fulfillment always being between those who are richer and those that are poorer and always being asked to peddle faster to stay alive. Great people on the other hand have little regard for themselves - they see the world around them and give freely as and when needed without ownership of the fruits.

Two things are immediately important in this:
1) this argument cannot be used to be irresponsible however because if we think that we don't own what we do then we don't need to do good things and avoid doing bad things we enter the little mind again because our motive to be careless will be to make our life easier and to make someone elses harder. If we do something then we do it sufficiently, satisfactorily and we do our best always.
2) the second problem always is that we do need to care for our own subsistance else we will die. This argument is the foundations of all right wing attempts to support the stingy small mind. This along with the belief that fellow humans are naturally going to try to cheat us so we need to protect ourselves at all time (our lives 'nasty brutish and short'). In response to the last argument: it is prisoners dilemma again: if everyone thinks they are going to be attacked then it is a self fulfilling argument and we will need to protect ourselves: so the only rational response is to behave generously and give rather than protect. (If there is one thing that modern economics has got right over the Mechantilists is that protectionism is not a working strategy.) So don't we need to protect our own life? This is a very deceptively subtle point. Obviously we do need to protect our own existence. In a desert we need to find water, in a capitalist society we need to gain an income to buy food. Monastics in many societies live on donations as do charities in UK, so there is no universal solution to this problem. Banks at the moment are living on donations! and that is supoposed to be the heart of the economic capitalist system! So certainly the rules are flexible. But we must be careful of one thing: that we do not put our own needs before others. If we take from another to meet our need then we have become small minded again. To be big minded is always to put others first, and at the same time (which requires the skill) survive ourselves.

If one thing is learned from this text it is that co-operation in a community of individuals will ensure the welfare of those individuals at a standard much higher than what we have today. For, while we do enjoy great material gains in this system it is at the cost of complete breakdown in our relationship with the community: everything done under a shadow of distrust with contract, IDs, financial exchanges, laws and a whole deepening layer of pointless bureaucracy that destroys the efficiency and sponteneity of society. The sickness is profound if you have not noticed it. Best demonstrated by pre-developed societies which are characterised by zero levels of crime! Something we cannot comprehend so widespread is this sickness.

One historic solution that is made a very big deal of in the West is the creation of a fixed social structure and the designing of that system around the assumption that everyone will behave like the worst. So rules of property, money and law are introduced to ensure that no-one trusts anyone else from the outset and thereby cheats cannot prosper. (That is cheats who are not in the system!). This is because the system has been designed by little people. Now why is it that the little people have gained the power in the West? I need to consider that point and really what is needed here is a coherent history of the rising of this disasterous idea.

The other solution is to tolerate the cheats and "turn the other cheek". This is the one called "religious" rather than "secular". While secular makes rules for people to live by, the religious are not interested in just playing games. The religious are interested in reality and what is the actual Law of existence. As I hope I've argued (and really this post is just a summary of a very large chunk of this blog) that reality is one where "property" and "labour" and "money" are myths no more meaningful than Monopoly money and owning "Park Lane" in the London version. The reality is that if we avoid self-fulfilling prophesies and assume that others will not cheat (something we have to assume they are assuming of us) then even if we are cheated we have not lost. If we think they might cheat so I'll cheat then we must assume that they will do the same and it becomes a lose/lose.

Where I realise the problem lies is that people really do think like evolutionary biologists: that they view this as a game. What is missing from this is the important fact that we are humans and humans while they can play games are themselves far beyond games. It is like saying that a football pitch is only good for playing games when obviously it is far more - and for example it has a physical reality too unlike football. Human beings (indeed all beings if you follow the Hindu and Buddhist arguments) are "made in the image of God" whatever you think this means it points to there being more to the human being than the obvious. Human's have for example a "moral" compass which transcends common-sense and cultural norms and extends in all of them to an awareness at some level of what is right and wrong. For example all footballers know the offside rule, but to score offside and win the game based on that means more than a lucky avoidance of the rules. It means that we cheated the other players who were playing by the rules in the belief we would do so. This is no longer an aspect of football and of rules, but a moral question of whether we should abuse anothers trust. Everyone has an opinion on that because it is a real question which can only properly be formulated in morality. Do computer programs "trust" even while they play the prisoners dilemma? Some people are more challenged in these matters than others: some so called sociopaths and psychopaths effectively have learning difficulties regarding these features and need special support: but the features to learn are as real as numbers and planetary motion.

So all humans have an awareness of the underlying human reality of trust and compassion but only the Great Men are brave enough to face it. For the rest of us beset by learning difficulties and other weaknesses are only capable of falling into distrust and fear of being cheated and that fear becomes engrained in the weak concepts of property and money: at first used to protect ourselves, but then the sword by which we discover we have been cheated. In reality we cannot be cheated because nothing is ours, and therefore everything is ours. In reality we cannot be hurt, but we must put aside our small minds and become Great Men before we can enjoy this freedom.

Briefly to end this mammoth post a repeat that experience in Scotland I wrote before that seems relevant here. I took a short cut through a mansion in Scotland a few years ago. Through the toparied gardens and fountains it was paradise and truely spectacular especially since I had been hicking for 3 weeks and living rough. An hour later walking up the road I looked back and the mansion and grardens were just a speck of green in the huge expanse of horizon from teh sea to my left across the plains to th mountains on my right. I realised that we have a choice in life: either enjoy the local pleasures but become trapped in that cage and forgo the world around, or to forgo the local pleasures and revel in the freedom of the world around which has no boundary at all. That is the question: to be a Little person, or to be a Great person?

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