Drifting

Every often I feel like a person adrift in the world. Since I live on a sailboat without a fixed address that is true in the most literal sense. But in this case my feeling isn't about my physical relationship but rather a worldview, a sense of place. I don't really belong anywhere. No place is home.

This presents several puzzling issues. We are all social creatures, formed by the times, society, and families we grow up with. The language(s) we learn, the churches we attend, and the media we experience shape much of how we see the world. That shaping can be restrictive in the extreme; for example that of religious fundamentalism or xenophobia, sexism, and racism. Raised in such societies even the victims (women, minorities, or the underclass) will accept the abuse they endure as appropriate, just, and even moral. The Divine right of kings was a belief held, not just by the kings, but by the subjects of kings as well. How does anyone come to feel out of place in the society that formed them? Yet the fact remains many, including myself, do. Sometimes to the point of rejecting much of what forms the basics of the society.

In my case those basics include religion, capitalism, and democracy; pretty much the whole gambit of modern western society.

Like most I was raised a religious person, an Evangelical Christian fundamentalist. That put me at the very center of the current religious foundation of the US. Human kind is fallen and damned. A small remanent will be rescued in accordance with the fall / sacrifice / redemption story of Christianity. The rest will be judged, condemned, and lost. "Lost", to the fundamentalist, means tortured in hell forever. This was the first of the fundamentalist doctrines I eventually rejected, and the first step to ultimately abandoning all of them.

Yet that Christian Fundamentalism still underscores much of American politics. The ridged law-and-order mentality that twists our judicial system, stuffs prisons to overflowing, and shrugs at the abuse of migrant workers has its foundation in a judgmental and unforgiving god. Much of our war mentality grows from worshiping a god who ordered the annihilation of "his people's" enemies; and the assumption that the Christians of the USA now constitute "his people". The continued discrimination of women and gay people is rooted in the interpretation of god's supposed reasons for creating sex. The USA's continuing war on the poor is a twist on the law-and-order mindset. The poor aren't (usually) considered criminals per-say. But they haven't obeyed the godly rules of capitalism as they should. Their punishment is that of being poor, and it is rightly deserved.

Rejecting the religion of the USA as mythology, mean-spirited and evil, makes it difficult to accept the politics based on that religion as anything other than mythology, mean-spirited and evil. Though mythology should be a tool for passing wisdom from one generation to the next, the religion of the US has turned mythology into dogma, the antithesis of wisdom. Ours is a society increasingly "sharp" but fundamentally ignorant and dim witted. We often do what we want to do with little thought given as to what we should do. Since I try to live my life the other way around, only doing what I want if there is a certain element of wisdom to it as well, our is a society more and more distant to me.

Media, in what ever form, has always been a way for a society to tell its stories, to share the wisdom of its mythology. Media in the US had taken on an entirely different roll. It celebrates those doing what they want while eschewing anything remotely celebrating wisdom. That media is paid for with advertiser's propaganda, the worst kind of mythology ever invented. The combination may make commercially produced "reality" programing perhaps the ugliest story telling in the history of mankind.

It is also extremely profitable, part of the reason capitalism is no more attractive than is religion. (In the US the two are deeply intertwined, making it a bit misleading to treat them as totally different enterprises. Something to keep in the back of the mind.) American Capitalism is based on two premises. One is that wealth is equal to value. The second is that accumulating wealth is superior to creating wealth. Both are deeply destructive.

In our society an expensive thing is automatically a valuable thing, yet nothing could be further from wisdom. Indeed, many of the expensive things have remarkably little value at all. A $10,000 watch or a $30,000 necklace are expensive, far beyond the purchasing power of most of the people in the world. Yet neither has any real value. There are plenty of ways to tell what time it is without the watch. The necklace doesn't do anything useful at all. Indeed, the only real attribute of either is that they suggest that the wearer is wealthy, and therefore is a person of value. It is an illusion.

Wealth and value are completely different characteristics. A wealthy person is no more likely to be a person of value then a poor one a person without value. But capitalism, borrowing some of the mythology of American religion, tries to insist otherwise. The elitism of American religion, that of the chosen people being the only ones worthy of god; are echoed by capitalism, where the rich are the only ones worthy of value. As the chosen of god are beyond the criticisms of those who will be condemned by that same god, so are the the wealthy beyond the criticism of those who are poor. Of course the once criticism, above all, that must be suppressed is that the wealthy do not, in truth, deserve their wealth.

In other words accumulating wealth is superior to creating wealth. This is the driving principle behind capitalism, where the lender of money collects interest, gets to lend more money, collects more interest, and thus slowly appropriates the wealth created by the borrowers of money to himself. This is how they accumulate wealth without actually creating any wealth. (Remember, here we are only talking about wealth. Whether or not any of this has any value is an entirely different debate.) Unless very well constructed regulations are in place and enforced, the lender of the money will collect ever larger percentages on the money loaned through increases in interest, fees, and penalties. Our society long ago dismissed any such regulations as necessary (let alone enforcement) and has, as a result, transferred the majority of the wealth of the country into the hands of this new aristocity; the aristocity of the money lender.

Rejecting capitalism puts one far adrift from US society, as "free markets" are assumed to be integral to capitalism. A "free" economy is viewed as the only basis for a free society. Again, two false assumptions. The only free part of capitalism is the freedom of the capitalist to appropriate as much wealth as quickly as possible. There is no inherent check, balance, or counterweight to that accumulation, no "ENOUGH". A world where one person (or family) has accumulated and is living off of the accumulated wealth of the entire planet while the rest of the population dies of starvation is the final state of a world of capitalism. A free market is an entirely different animal.

In a free market the person who creates wealth profits from that creation, sharing it with the rest of society through an exchange of other wealth (be that a medium like money or the trading of goods for goods). But free markets (like capitalism) are not a natural phenomena. They don't exits until people make them up. They are products of regulations, of social contracts, of accepted norms. They are, in fact, the products of governments.

The government of the United States is a carefully constructed sham of democracy. The Founding Fathers built a system where power was very carefully divided between three branches, the Executive, Legislative and Judaical. But that same system was also created, with equal care, to ensure only the only the wealthy, only the land owners, only those beholding to the capitalist or a capitalist themselves, would populate those three branches.It is a system that endures to this very day. With few exceptions at any layer of government, only wealthy hold office.

In those rare cases where the less than wealthy slip into the ranks (after all no system is ever perfect) the system is rigged (some might suggest the word is "corrupt") to treat that person as wealthy, eventually let them accumulate some of society's wealth for themselves, and thus become part of the aristosity they once might have campaigned against. This ensures the system of the wealthy governing for their own benefit endures.

This is not to suggest that a pure democracy would be much better. In its worst renditions the 49.9% are the subjects of the 50.1%. Such a society would be complete unstable and would soon resort to civil war. Then again, a 33.3% vs 33.3% vs 33.4% democracy would be equally unstable. Human kinds best answer, so far, has always been a powerful minority dictating to the rest with some limits set as to what the dictators get to decide. The US constitution is a good effort to set such a limit, both on what the dictators themselves get to decide as well as how bad the majority can abuse the minority.

A longer view of history suggests that the US is actually doing a pretty good job of evolving an ever more just society. From the Revolutionary War through the Civil War, worker revolutions, unions, the Suffrage movement, wometn's rights, civil rights, the end of Jim Crow ... this is all good and encouraging progress. But the progress is uneven and, for most of my adult life anyway, has been slowing and is now showing signs of reversing. Progress, a more just society, always costs someone something. It is costing the new aristocity money, and they are nothing if not greedy. Perhaps this is just a bump in the road of a progressive society, though it looks more to me like a cliff. One whose lip we have already stumbled over.

For myself I need no religion. That, however, is the most personal of things. The religion of others is of no concern to me as long as that religion is not used as an excuse to do harm. (Okay, virtually all religion fails right there, but not all religious people need the excuse.)

I am not a capitalist. It is the system that has brought a new kind of dictatorship to the world. Eventually it will be unmasked for what it is. Those who are the victims will revolt. The system will be removed, something different will grow in its place.

And democracy? To me democracy is a bit like a jail, a necessary assault on individuals who has stepped over the line. Jails are used to limit the damage we do to each other and reign in the excesses of the few. But they are far from perfect and I am not pro-jail. But, so far, we have yet to invent any better solution for people who will abuse others. Democracy serves the exact same purpose; limiting the damage we do to each other and reigning in the excesses of the few. And at the moment democracy in the US is failing as badly as its jails.