Wasted Possibilities

Freedom

There are potentially as many ways to view life, and it’s various values and possibilities, as there are human beings to consider the question. What holds most societies together, however, is that only one possibility (and its various within-the-box variations) predominates, and that most members of that society more or less conform to its strictures. For those who do not buy into, in some dimension or another, the standard societal paradigm, ostracism, poverty, neurosis, even madness may occur to that individual, or individuals. It’s not fun to not believe in what all around you believe in – nor is it hardly ever a successful strategy for survival. Either you follow the herd, or you risk becoming terminally lost, and apart. The post-modern world leaves little latitude for self-reliant, reclusive existence. To the contrary, most things are either downright owned, or at least substantially controlled, by the corporations.

The American paradigm has long (at least since the conclusion of the Civil War, and in many ways even prior to) been one of exercising a strong work ethic in conjunction with capitalistic enterprise. Either you bartered what skills you have, and/or what you may have produced, for monetary remuneration, or else you invested your capital (should you be lucky enough to have some) in capitalistic endeavors hoping to realize a profit. No other legitimate (as judged by the society around you) way of life existed, or yet exists, in which you may - without significant social discombobulation - survive in America. This society expects that you will either work for others to receive your bread, or that you invest what capital you have in a method sufficient to maintain your minimally acceptable lifestyle. As human greed stands as the basis of such a system of economic survival, either you practice and allow for personal greed within your individual philosophy, or else your road will be hard, and your days very long.

Contrariwise, were you either a member of, say, the Soviet Union (so long as it existed), or a native American Indian, for instance, your options, while still just as restricted, would have been entirely different. Ayn Rand, that pseudo-philosopher currently popular among the Conservatives in particular, was by nature and inclination outraged at having to live under the Soviet System wherein, for the normal Soviet citizen, greed and hubris were less revered than was the ability to conform to a socio-economic system based ostensibly upon societal cooperation. What were considered to be good qualities there were not necessarily good qualities here, and visa-versa. Never mind the 1001 various objections and exceptions that occur in praxis as opposed to how reality plays out, the two systems were diametrically opposed as to their basic philosophies, and systems of societal rewards and punishments. They require very different mind-sets.

It is of course possible to endlessly argue the worth of one system vis-à-vis the other, and to compare various societies utilizing any number of various criteria, but the Soviet System failed basically because it, from the outset (unconsciously and surreptitiously perhaps) bought into Western Ideals of success. In other words, the Soviet system attempted to compete utilizing the Western paradigm of success, which its system was not at all prepared to (nor was it designed to) handle. Communism is neither an express avenue to material success, nor was it capable of producing the vast resources necessary to military domination. That it had chosen either criteria by which to compete is wherein its ultimate failure was nested. The most obvious other measure of success the Soviet system might have propounded, would have been the spiritual and communal possibilities for a satisfying existence. While for many, for example, within Cuba today, the communal possibilities of communism obviously suffice to satisfy the urges of humankind – witness, if you will, the situation surrounding Elian Gonzales – the spiritual possibilities for Soviet success were completely shut down and amputated by its atheistic approach (Godlessness, as the Republicans are so quick to label it).

Meanwhile, within the United States, we have long harbored a spiritual belief that in many ways belies our economic existence, creating in the process much tension twixt one set of beliefs versus those of the other. Greed is necessary to capitalistic survival, but is simultaneously more traditionally thought of as being sinful by the Christian (and almost any other lasting religious) belief. Ergo, within America, the tension between sense and sensibility, between nature and form, is stretched to the maximum, exacerbated by our love of God, coincident with our love of the material. How the two may contribute one to the other was sufficiently explored by Max Weber, about a century ago, in his seminal treatise: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. For that reason have the God Inc. enterprises within America begun to preach capitalistic success right along with a twisted and disproportionate emphasis upon sexual, as opposed to societal, ethic.

Recently within America those tensions have caught up with each other, and now we find ourselves in a hell of a mix. As soulless automatons we attempt to live out and succeed with our lives by capitalistic standards, while at the same moment attempting to assuage our huge burden of neurotic impulses brought about by the capitalistic lifestyle. In order to advance as self-realized or actualized human beings, we must somehow find a way to synthesize the necessities of life with the more natural and spontaneous joys which physical existence has to offer within the spiritual realms. That tension shall not be lightly reduced.

In addition to the damage caused to our psychological health by the standard American societal paradigm, we find any number of contradictions apparent to our psychological selves as well. While the tensions between God and mammon are somewhat ameliorated by the Protestant ethic, it only works so long as we are willing to forgo our psychological freedoms to advance as human beings, and are willing to subject ourselves to the strictest of both secular and spiritual authority. To live as truly free human beings, we must somehow transcend this rather ridiculous, but frightening, predicament.

Many of those who today wander the streets of America are those who have discovered no reasonable accommodation within the standard paradigm, or whose talents and genius are not somehow recognized by the capitalistic economy. Drugs and booze frequently contribute to the dilemma in major proportions, and those who, for whatever reason, find themselves incompatible with the dog-eat-dog-hallelujah environment, or basic insanity of America, engendered by a societal paradigm which turns flesh into objects and which ruins the earth, stand to remain miserable and lost.