To add to da Vinci’s wisdom here— and to simply “do anything” is not enough either… We must discriminate between priorities of action, given the combined severity and urgency of problems we face and fact that time and energy is always in short supply. 

We also have to be clear on “why” we’re doing things, and the true intent behind our actions. A lot of activism becomes just about “feeling better” and “being social”, or to serve some aspect of identity as an “activist” that’s “doing something/anything”. It becomes more about meeting our psychological needs, than about genuinely, intellectually and strategically wanting to solve the problems of society.

Alternatively, we also can’t cerebrally live in “theoretical land” forever either, with our proposed visionary models we think society should adopt, perfecting where every nut and bolt will go in an idealized system. We have to be pragmatic too, in facing the here and now cultural and institutional realities/barriers to REACHING those future system goals.

Social connection and gaining a sense of purpose in activism is of course natural and necessary. People want to do something with others who also want to do something. It feels connected, and energizes continued efforts. And we certainly need new visionary models as something we’re moving towards as activists. But at this stage, unless the sum of our actions aren’t also somehow strategically seeking to alter core structural mechanisms of the system we live in now, which are incentivizing ecological decline, economic inequality, and wealth-concentration blocking all progress, then it’s meaningless.

At the core of Israel’s vicious and ongoing Genocide of the Palestinian people —is Religion. It fits perfectly with Biblical prophecies… that Jews are to reclaim “their” land, and ethnically cleanse the area of “enemies of Israel” before Endtimes. Christian/Zionist extremists are actively welcoming in “Armageddon”, World War III scenarios, with “nations against nations”, “famine”, and total mayhem on Earth as the situation in the middle east teeters on the brink of wider world conflict, in order to self-fulfill their insane religious prophecies of Rapture and Jesus’s return.

Many of our U.S. politicians are in fact devout evangelical Christians who back Israel’s every move in this regard, all in the name of God. For to support Israel is to obtain “God’s blessing”, as “God blesses the world through Israel”. 

It’s all one big “religion is f**kng up everything” scenario… Proof that religion is not benign and neutral as people treat it. 

Followers would say the premise of religion is “fellowship and free will”, but History shows us it is just as likely to be used to push oppression and justify atrocities. Others still would say “hey there’s good people and bad people in religion”… No, religion IN AND OF ITSELF is harmful:

It reinforces the neurosis of “Tribal Conflict”.
It creates priorities within people that are nonsensical and/or harmful.
It supplants facts with delusion.
It plays upon our discomforts and ambiguity…it indoctrinates our children.
It insulates people from other ideas/communities.
It insists on an authoritarian form of learning and obedience, “giving” you beliefs instead of giving you the tools to ascertain truths; training people not to ask REAL questions or seek REAL answers, and how NOT to think.
It becomes the focus of policy via lobbyists and authoritarian political agendas.
It’s been abused as a psychological/sociological tool from the beginning, to manipulate the masses to serve establishment-preserving interests.

It is THE most destructive force on the planet, alongside Capitalism.We need to keep setting minds free, to become sane, independent, emergent thinkers… who can become true “participants” in reality and society, rather than victims of some cosmic play or political identity… realizing that life and nature is infinitely wondrous and meaningful enough as it is, without the need to inject mysticism into it.

Sources: Framework: Ideological Sustainability
Image from “Praying for Armageddon” documentary series on how religion influences US foreign policy in the Middle East. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhT7oyDlBIk&fbclid=IwAR1N5ROLYypoEFiNnwinhPwf7jJetNMs5y1nBfJsz_YmQV7DWwMGXGMk4WE

March was Women’s History month. It’s a reminder that fundamental changes can and HAVE been made to society throughout history, when we come together and organize to do so. Our systems are not immutable laws of the cosmos, they are made by us, and we can unmake them, reshape them.

Activists like to say that changing the system isn’t possible, that attempting change within a broken system is futile… but what happens after successful protests, LAW gets made…and that is the enduring part.

Conversely, progress is by no means “inevitable”, it must be fought for. And achievements gained are always susceptible to erosion without our active engagement, as demonstrated by recent undoings of reproductive rights in the US.

Radical change begins and ends with “talking” and the exchange of ideas… another action commonly dismissed as futile and “doing nothing”. But, words are powerful, they are the very means to “meaning”, they give shape to ideas, which come to shape the world we live in quite literally. The more we discuss, the quicker we can find consensus in reality, decide on our collective goals, and work together to change the world.

Cultural Awareness & System Change as Priority of Action

Progress is fundamentally about the communication and sharing of ideas. And if communication is about the finding of mutual agreement, with the intent to then work together towards those common ends, then a focus on finding common ground in our discourse and activism is essential. The more we can share a common world view in this complex, opaque society, the quicker we can affect the radical change needed.

As much as we can envision some new, advanced paradigm of economy beyond the dystopia of today, and want to automatically leap to it, and start “living it” now, in whatever immediate, off-grid, “out-system” ways; we cannot rush over necessary Cultural Awareness & Structural Change needed in order to get there. And we cannot anyway entirely ignore or escape the machine of Capitalism, nor should we, for it runs, owns, and is existentially destroying the planet. We must confront reality and existing systems as they are and regain control of society. There are many avenues for this, but cultural awakening and institutional change should be reconciled as priority.  

Culture on the whole must continue to become aware of the flaws and contradictions of today’s system of Capitalism; learning the economic-wisdom of the mistakes made under it. We must gain understanding of how our systems work so we can stop being manipulated by them, and being confused of their outcomes. We must come to see the humane potentials of our technology for more transparent, automated, and ethical systems of economy and governance…We must become aware of the failures of our human thinking, our failures to think clearly, logically, and holistically about social & ecological problems, and our failures of discourse to share ideas effectively to resolve them.

We must strive for cohesion/agreement around fundamental principles which underly society: Just and democratic processes, equality of rights, science and reason, health and educational opportunities, living sustainably within nature, using our technology wisely to improve our lives and assist our labor, efficiency of economy to deliver the means of life, balancing our need for autonomy with our collectivity, accounting for our human diversity, the desire for peaceful coexistence, to move away from systems of concentrated power and resolving problems through violence, and so on.

Before economic revolution, before a revolution of sharing, before any other, the revolution must first be one of Understanding, and one of cultural cohesion around first principles of society. Progress can only happen to the extent that our collective wisdom will allow. 

Some of the greatest barriers to this cultural awakening come in the form of cognitive bias – people’s selective and subjective preference to certain views and outcomes. It comes in the form of identity-tribalism – where people defend and align their loyalties to groups, ideas, and established institutions, rather than maintaining open, independent, critically thinking world views which evolve over time through new exposure…It comes in the form of propagandized narratives of human nature – that we are selfish, greedy, violent, flawed beings, incapable of cooperative, altruistic existence. Or that as human beings we are not one human species, but separate classes and races, belonging to separate nations and religions, and should be treated differently as such. Or the economic premise that scarcity is some inevitable law of nature. Or narratives around incentive & governance – that the only way to incentivize progress and contribution in society is to do so by force, or through rewarding with extreme wealth and power…and that (any) kind of organized “governance” in society absent private power, will always result in some historical form of “state-oppression”. And so with these cultural world views combined, systems of class-inequality and power are then inevitable, acceptable, and even preferable forms of social organization.

These biases and false narratives must be overcome if we’re to move forward as a civilization.

Now, Institutionally, we need to be pushing for the abolition of Private, Market, Corporate control over society and it’s basic functions of health, education, energy, governance, media, . We cannot expect to run an honest society otherwise, where power is concentrated into the hands of a few. How we can come to endorse and defend such a system only goes to show how vulnerable we are to biased, institutionalized narratives, and the fear of being ostracized by questioning them. This will not realistically be some sweeping detachment of the Market from existing systems in one massive step…we need a transitional mindset/approach, which goes step by step in removing the mechanisms of power; implementing sane, sustainable mechanisms as we go – working towards systems of shared, universal access as the long term goal.

With respect to the Political order, and our inability to even use it to implement new improvement and change into the world (which is it’s entire basis), we need to again, work to detach the private-corporate/market power relationship from its process. Other political-mechanisms specifically within the US system which need to be removed are Superdelegates, the Electoral College, Gerrymandering, lobbying, and getting rid of the party system nonsense altogether. 

We need to create a transparent, independently audited, secure, easy to access, computerized, ranked choice voting system. This would be a massively impactful step in unlocking a pathway for further radical change. Without the corrupting element of financial interests we would actually be able to elect leaders who will pass long overdue legislative changes.

Recapturing our Decision Making process is imperative if we’re to affect lasting, structural, holistic change as a Movement. Despite justified disenfranchisement and loss of faith in political engagement, we must reconcile it as the central mechanism for change we currently have, and be willing to navigate past the identity politics in the interest to revolutionize the process itself, as a critical, preliminary step to social progress.

Environmental Policy should focus on establishing clear, legally binding, pass/fail sustainability-benchmarks to be met by Industry. Sustainability is our prime directive as a civilization. We have a couple decades before Earth’s culminating ecological breakdowns come to term in some very serious existential ways. 

Social justice policy should prioritize a new Economic Bill of Rights to secure an unconditional basic income/living wage for all. Greater economic equality would evaporate the racial/class bigotry which social justice movements are struggling to overcome. Poverty/inequality lie at the roots of racism and discrimination in the world.

Gaining Universal Education and Universal Healthcare are also obvious core, structural changes we need to be organizing pressure campaigns around. For those countries which already have these, they can focus on fixing their political processes and implementing more democratic technologies/methods, as well as focus on anti-corruption initiatives which take on the banks and corporations which continue to control and undermine their governments and media. 

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There is great vision emerging for taking our next steps as a society toward achieving Sustainability, more ethical and efficient systems of economy for resolving the great sufferings & oppressions of the world, and for moving us beyond the scarcity epoch of inequality & concentrated power that has long defined human civilization. In order to fulfill this potential and unlock a pathway for radical, holistic change, we must realize that our culture and institutions must evolve first as an initial step.

Everything has been commodified under Market Society, devaluing all we hold dear. People have become so denatured in their behavior because we don’t “value” anything. Everything is bought and paid for… nothing is inherently sacred or important… we are losing all true, tangible value.

For millennia labor has been intimately linked to reward/survival… but with the onset of free markets, hyper privatization and financialization over the past century, there exists now few constraints as to what is commodified in the pursuit of survival & profit — the planet’s natural resources, our health & medicine, our educational institutions, war armaments, our “ideas” as intellectual property in the form of copyright protections and patents, our most personal intimate “human emotions” have become targets of media outrage, shock, and sensationalism for views and clicks… the free expression of our art & music undergrounds are destined, eventual exploits for the fashion industry & pop culture… our activism has become sanitized as some occupational path for “career activists”… social movements are too easily co-opted or self-sabotaged by financial frameworks and donors… as individuals we’ve been reduced to mere economic units operating and competing like little businesses in our mercenary gig economies… even our very social engagement itself online; our hobbies, and everyday life experiences are opportunities to get “monetized” not to be passed up, as we sell personalities & charisma over true substance. If they could sell the air itself, they would… nothing is sacred.

Because everyone/everything must generate income and profit at all times, inherent value becomes secondary and lost. It’s said that markets best serve the economic process, of tracking value and demand, allocating resources, and enabling progress… in reality markets deeply corrupt value and society:

• Markets seek opportunity to take, steal, or exploit value… the process of “valuation” becomes one of “exchange value”, where material and biological resources are reduced and commodified to “market” value. 
  
• Everything becomes a machination of the profit system. Commodities have a value at a point in time, but they do not have (inherent) value because our financial system frames everything within what is “cost” efficient, profitable, and consumption-generating. 
  
• Money and financial instruments of abstraction (stocks, derivatives, securities, futures, interest) become commodities in and of themselves as core mediums for wealth creation, beyond their basic use as currency and resource allocation.
  
• Value between things like labor and resources are now completely distorted because everything is so artificially inflated and artificially created in the financial operations of society.
  
• Objective value is totally non existent in the Free Market because everything is just a game of competing, inflated, subjective, speculative value.
  
• The concept of “Capital” itself is completely arbitrary and subjective – as long as it expands more capital, liquid cash, and power. 

Defining True “Value/Valuation”
While “value” in society is highly complex and subjective to try to create an objective scale for to implement as a basis for a new system, here are some core components it would include:

• value must be tied to actual “physical referents” of reality; tangible/physical properties of nature (not metaphysical price abstractions)
• it must have a sustainability basis
• factoring in purpose, usefulness, urgency of need, and difficulty to obtain
• and should be based on shared goals

As for our “human value”, our worth should not be based on how much money we work for. In our current system you do not have value if you don’t work for money, and if you don’t have money you don’t have access to basic needs. But human worth should be intrinsic to all people, with basic necessities made unconditionally available along with educational opportunities, never dependent on one’s labor. 

Society tries to tell us that we won’t be “productive” unless we “work jobs”. But we need to rethink our concept of “productivity”. Instead of thinking of it in terms of jobs and products to be sold… we need to think of it in terms of problem solving and meaningful contribution. 

Conclusion
“Value” is the linch pin around which society functions, by which people define themselves, and how society is defined and run. But as long as it’s based on a linkage between labor and income, and the circulation of money in and of itself, we will continue to live in an increasingly arbitrary, destructive, and highly commodified society. 

We cannot forever be a movement of people with different goals, on separate tracks:

TZM Core Principles

Sustainability – establishing a sustainable civilization; global sustainability

Holistic/Structuralist/Systems Thinking & Change – Rethinking Civilization

Radical Change – we need a paradigm shift, “revolutionary” change to society is needed.

Promoting a Scientific World View – emergence, aligning with nature & reality

Using our Science & Technology wisely – humanely, sanely; for the purpose of human well being & sustainability.

Global Cooperation – that it’s too our mutual benefit, symbiotically, to share resources and ideas. The market claims to do this, but is poor at it.

Reducing Suffering – Unrealized potentials in society can end things like poverty/inequality, and by extension slavery, and war…the ultimate mover of morality and rationality is the reduction of suffering.

Universal Access – we advocate working towards systems of universal access, localization of production, use-share arrangements, especially through the application of AI, to dedicate systems to providing resources freely to the public. Autonomous, yet integrated.

That we are not classes and races, but humans, sharing one planet, as one interdependent species.

That resources are not necessarily scarce, but an issue with how we “manage” society and resources.

That human nature is not helplessly “flawed” for greed, corruption, and bigotry; but is adaptable.

That we are flawed, emotional creatures, and in knowing that we must plan for it by “designing” society.

The idea that we can alter human behavior by improving the social condition.

That progress and society need not be coerced and forced, but “enabled/allowed” to flourish, through proper system.

That problems with our economic system itself lie at the root of our problems. Exposing the contradictions of the current system.

Addressing Socioeconomic Inequality as the root source of many compounding social problems like violence, crime, addiction, bigotry, and injustice.

Detach Society from Market forces – that we work to detach markets from the basic functions of society, ie: food/energy, governance, media, health, education, etc. Financial interests seeking profit and power pervert our human institutions. We cannot run an honest society otherwise.

A Train of Thought – principles and world views for a sustainable society; an “implication” for society, a direction society needs to move in.

Providing an Ideological & Methodological (conceptual) Framework – to serve as a logically consistent set of fundamental principles to inform the basis of civilization.

Developing a true “next stage” model to replace Capitalism with.

Independent/free thinking, yet harnessing of shared interest towards common ends.

A Social Movement – aside from being an intellectual community, we physically meet up, have events to engage society, and foster a sense of communal connection. The movement also exists as a vehicle for Civil Disobedience, to pressure structural changes to society.

Transitional – inclusive to all viable routes for change in addition to the core movement focus on culture and awareness, to bridge this larger vision from where we are now…

It takes a crisis.

That’s when the big ideas, the radical ideas that seemed too fringe for the status quo just prior, all of a sudden seem not only plausible but inevitable. “Never let a serious crisis go to waste,” Rahm Emanuel told the Wall St. Journal at the peak of the 2008 financial crisis. Milton Friedman, one of history’s most zealous advocates of laissez-faire capitalism, was wrong about many things- but about crises turning the impossible into the possible, he was most absolutely correct.

Every stable status quo has an equilibrium, an Overton Window of acceptable policies that keep in check any ideological move too far in either direction. In those times, purists and radicals on all sides are confined to the fringes, deemed “unrealistic” by the mainstream. Then, the crisis hits, and everything is up for grabs. This is the highest stakes game of all because a swing in one radical direction is diametrically opposed to a swing in the opposite direction. It becomes a game of the wills. Whose ideas will win?

The crisis is here. The henchmen of the plutocracy are jumping to implement the crisis playbook to finally get what they’ve always wanted- a total consolidation of their wealth and power. Trump is already pushing to suspend the payroll tax, which would undermine Social Security and give the pretext to cut and privatize it- a radical neoliberal idea that was waiting on the fringes for a moment like this to strike.

Then there are the proposals to bail out large corporations, many of which are some of the biggest polluters in our economy, including fracking companies, and companies like airlines who binged on casino-capitalist stock-buybacks during boom times only to now stand like Oliver, hand out to the taxpayers, asking for some more. The environmental crisis long predated the virus, and this shock is exactly the opportunity the planet needs to fully restructure our economy into a sustainable model.

Instead, these short-sighted bailouts, which could be used so much more wisely, are rescuing the old polluters while doing nothing to develop green alternatives. Also, the very private health insurers who ensured that many Americans can’t afford the very healthcare they now most desperately need are meeting with Trump. Do you think they won’t have their hands out too?

The Federal Reserve pumped $1.5 trillion into the financial markets, and we can be sure that’s the first of more. $1.5 trillion, by the way, is incidentally almost the same amount required to eliminate student debt, but of course, “we can’t afford it.”

Regular workers have been left dry, and gig workers have it even worse right now. According to the American Payroll Association, 74% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. With ongoing mass-layoffs, that’s a shocking number of people who are scarily insecure. What’s worse, if they want to observe the public health warnings by staying quarantined, they will need to avoid working and hence getting paid, or they will work anyways out of desperation, and increase the likelihood of getting ill and spreading the virus. With rents, medical debts, student debts, credit card debts potentially defaulting en masse, we have a major crisis on Main St. on our hands. This is the time for comprehensive bailouts for the People. Without them, bankruptcies and homelessness will skyrocket.

We’ve seen this playbook before. During the 2008 financial crisis, the government handed no-strings-attached bailouts to the perpetrators on Wall St. while the people on Main St. were left to suffer from foreclosures and unemployment. ‘Radical’ ideas like medicare for all, the Green New Deal, free education and jobs programs weren’t as ripe then. This time, they are. This isn’t a time for compromise. This is a time to win.

The 2007 book The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein describes a merciless and repeated strategy; after a shock like a natural disaster, market crash, or terrorist attack, public panic and disorientation are exploited by the powers-that-be to institute radical neoliberal policies while citizens are too panicked to effectively respond.

Luckily, it can go both ways. It’s also possible for a crisis to spark a great evolutionary leap for society. The New Deal brought about investments in infrastructure like roads, dams, and rural electrification, a progressive taxation system, collective bargaining rights, banking regulations, consumer protection policies, Social Security, and a host of other sweeping developments that underpin a modern society and sane economy. The New Deal could never have happened without the Great Depression.

So here we are, with a crisis in full swing. Trump’s agenda will clearly reflect the shock doctrine of the moneyed interests. This is no time to sit back and watch. It’s all up for grabs and anything can happen. The good news is that there is a mobilized undercurrent of social movements and radical elected officials with New Deal style policy ideas, as Milton Friedman put it, laying around. We’ve seen a relentless rightward drift of the Overton Window in the generations since Roosevelt, so just before the crisis these ideas were deemed “radical.” But now, it is becoming clear that they’re the only rational and humane ways out of this crisis and into a great evolutionary leap for our system as a whole once the crisis is over.

One way or the other, the era of big government stimulus spending is here, whether it’s used to resuscitate late-stage capitalism or whether its used to bail out and invest in the people and planet. Now is the perfect opportunity to demand and fight for the latter. The Green New Deal is exactly the kind of 21st century upgrade to Rooseveltean economic policy, tailored for the needs of our era. Forget bringing back dirty industries from the dead. Instead, now is the time to create the new, clean industries of the future, and to see the proliferation of transparent and publicly accountable state and municipal banks to finance this revolutionary transformation.

The gravity of this situation cannot be overstated. It is simultaneously the greatest threat and the greatest opportunity in modern history, with the highest stakes for the future of human civilization. Future generations will remember this moment as either the beginning of the end or as the beginning of something new and glorious. Which one, is up to all of us.

The iron is hot. They will not let this crisis go to waste. We better not either.

By Phoenix Goodman

March 26, 2020

originally posted at:
https://medium.com/@phoenix_goodman/the-era-of-big-ideas-is-among-us-4641c8e48659

Too often people become victims and victimizers by their own subjective social perceptions, unconsciously causing undue antagonism and discord for themselves and others. Even the most impartial and honest minds can become emotionally triggered under certain circumstances by careless misperceptions of each other. We get triggered and react to things prematurely, instead of realizing we may lack complete information about a given circumstance. Shaping a better world in our complex social environments demands we suspend our “subjective perceptions” a bit, when we know we lack key information about intent, context, circumstance, etc. The world isn’t as cruel and indifferent as our emotional triggers would have us think, when we simply bear the moment and inquire a little deeper, if at all possible. With this approach we can expand our range of understanding and benevolence in the world.

In a time where new hybrid movements seem to flash up every single day; where special interest causes abound due to the many different, yet connected problems we face; consolidating ourselves and maintaining cohesion in the activist community is critical.

Given that society is a deep, complex synergy of social, biological, economic, environmental, and technical factors; engaging platforms that are holistically thinking facilitates more complete and relevant understandings. The problems out there share a common systemic source, and have common systemic solutions. Ideas and concepts are realized in their full implications within the context of others. There’s a natural synergy of understanding when things are brought together, conceptually.

While ideas must continue to evolve with fresh new approaches, too much reinventing the wheel and launching new initiatives of off-shoots and groups can spread us too thin, and fragment otherwise unified efforts. 

The even greater damage is the erosion of holistic thinking and focus, as many off shoot movements/initiatives tend to focus their approaches to more specific and singular areas, limiting the “big picture” scope of awareness so desperately needed in the world today to confront system-change.

There’s also an (insidious) relativism of ideas and priority that sets in with too much fragmentation. An endless array of movements exhausts people’s bandwidth and coherence of priority on where and how to direct their efforts. Just think of the perpetual splitting off and meiosis of ideologies into new variant “isms”, and “ists”, the countless non-profits seeking your email and donation; the constant duplicity of groups on social media, promising as the new, one true revolutionary platform for change; all the simplistic, sensationalized activism that is quick to go viral, but lacks tangible robust solutions, fragmenting, exhausting, and confusing things.

Perhaps it’s an outcome of people lacking a sense of completion and reward in a long term system-change movement, and to reinvigorate their emotional drive for activism they launch some new initiative. It’s that immediate short term-reward/gratification pathology vs. the deep, structural, long term change needed.

Not to discourage new movements that are genuinely evolving ideas, but redundancy of the same general direction should be avoided. We should consolidate ourselves where we can.

A platform for unified activism is what is needed- one grounded in fundamental principles for improving the world, ie: the reduction of suffering and inequality, sustainability/stabilizing our relationship to nature, applying our science and technology wisely, structural change to society, making corruption punishable, working towards systems of universal access and autonomy, automating labor to end oppression and liberate human potential, reallocating our resources from war and the 1% to advancing society, presenting new models and systems to replace Capitalism with, addressing identity-tribalism, bias, and cults of ignorance, etc.; shared goals and principles, from a shared reality, which bridge across all issues of concern as a complete, holistic approach to society and progress.

It’s time we move beyond “special interest” causes, and come together around a truly structural approach to the whole of society.

The Zeitgeist Movement has attempted to facilitate just this kind of platform for ideological unification from the very beginning. Our true power for change is in the realization of our shared social goals, and the common ground we all really do share. 

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