this idea of life being a competition between us and others or the environment
or a zero sum game is wrong…we are not in competition and the real
striving that happens is not about some false competition between
people or states or societies…
the real battle lies within us…I have said this before but it
bear repeating, life is a battle within us…
I ran track in high school, my best for the 440 was 59.3 or so,
the competition I had wasn’t with the other people to win the race,
but the competition was to improve my time and if I won the race,
in doing so, great but the competition isn’t winning the race, its
improving one’s time… the real battle is to improve ourselves, not
to win the race…we have a false mistaken thought about
the point of our existence…it isn’t about coming in first,
it is about bettering ourselves… that is the real battle…
one might say, but Kropotkin, we have staggering poverty
in all the lands… that is because we believe in and act
upon the notion of a zero sum game…there must be winners
and their must be losers… thus we accept that a few people
(it is accepted that 40 people in the world have more wealth then
3.5 billion people or half the world’s population)
the pie that exists that we take from is a fix and set pie,
but that isn’t true…it is a lie that market forces determine
supply and demand… note that during the current economic boom,
that income hasn’t increased to match the demand…
if you want people to join you, one incentive is to increase
pay… and this hasn’t happened…which tells us the income
isn’t tied to supply and demand…there has been small increase
in pay but nothing to match what supply and demand suggest should
be the increase and certainly the pay raises doesn’t even allow one to
remain even with inflation…
in other words, the game is rigged… and that must end if we are to
achieve what is possible for us…
and what is possible is tied to Maslow’s pyramid… if we can solve the issue
of ensuring people the lower levels of needs, food, clothing, shelter,
warmth, education and health care…(to name a few needs) then
we can also engage with the next level which is security/safety needs,
and that is the value of society/state… to ensure that the basic needs of
its citizens are met… to allow the individual to engage with their own
pursuit of the final goal which is self-actualization…
is the goal to allow people to monopolize wealth or is the goal to
ensure that everyone is taken care of? decide that and we decide
the type of society we have………do we have a zero sum society or
do we have a society that lies beyond the zero sum game?
the competition you speak of can be, society ensuring the well being of
its members and not the monetary value of individual members…
by doing so, we then allow members of that society to engage in
their own individual pursuit of self-fulfillment… to become
Kierkegaardian individuals…
in the pursuit of individual wealth, we cannot be engaged in
our pursuit of our own self-fulfillment because we are to focused
on the nihilism that is capitalism… where the pursuit is wealth
and the increase of material goods instead of an engagement with
our souls, our conscience, our individual betterment in terms of
our improvement of who we are… running a 59.0 440 instead
of a 59.3 440… the goal is our improvement, not to gain
material wealth…that is the real competition we face…
to strive for our higher principles of being human, not the lower
levels…the animal, instinctual level…to achieve peace and love
and hope and harmony and charity is the goal of human existence,
not to achieve the lower levels of human existence, greed, hate,
anger, lust,
and entire reorientation of what it means to be human…
not engage in competition for the goal of winning, but
the compete to improve oneself… to become a higher
human being…great wealth means one has engaged in
the wrong pursuit in life…instead of engaging in what is
best in being a human being, great wealth means you have
pursued the lower, instinctual level of being human…
you have engaged in greed and lust, instead of
peace and love and justice……
the battle is to be more human, not be less human, lower level
human of hate and greed and lust and anger……
a reevaluation of values would and must be in order for us, individually
and collectively…we must engage in what does it mean to be human
and what does that mean for us in asking ourselves one of the
existential questions of existence, “What am I to do?” is the pursuit of
wealth really the best engagement we can have with our existence?
I find it hard to believe that what it means to be human is to engage in
the pursuit of wealth and material goods? really… really?
the pursuit of wealth in fact disguises any attempt we face to discover
what it means to be human… a higher level human…
one might say, that the pursuit of the higher level human being, doesn’t lead
us anywhere… and the pursuit of wealth and material goods have gotten us
where exactly?
I can tell you where, with rampant pollution and overpopulation and global
warming and the loss of precious animals and resources that cannot be
replaced… we are despoiling the earth to feed our greed and lust
and that cannot possibly end well…
a reevaluation of values would suggest that our entire American value
system is based upon the lower, animal level of existence and not upon
the higher, human based level of existence… to make war, as America
has done for over 90% of its existence is an indication of our failed value
system…….
we try to force “American values” upon other people, values we don’t even
believe in anymore like voting rights, freedom, equality, democracy…….
in our hypocrisy, we think we are better then others, we are that
shining city on the hill… and reality says we failed that test
years ago when we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, when we tortured
people, when we passed the “patriot act”, when we curtailed freedoms
in order to be more “secure/safe”…
we are a failed society because of our hypocrisy, we are a failed
society because of our devotion to an economic system
that devalues and degrades human beings and their values…
we engage in nihilism and we don’t even see it……. practice
the pursuit of wealth and you too engage in nihilism…
the devaluation of human beings and their values…
“what are we to do?” is the practice of nihilism really the thing
we are going to practice in America today?
Kropotkin