What Will It Take?

On the verge of so much, will we cower and shrink? Will we fail to seize this opportunity to descend from our heights on our own terms? Many have for some time seen the inevitable decline of the capitalist tradition. Beyond its deep roots in the most despicable human instincts of avarice and self interest, what appears to me as its fatal flaw is distinct from this poisonous origin. The great capitalist institutions like dinosaurs towered above us. For so long it appeared we mammals hardly stood a chance. In this age it seems that scurrying from beneath them will be our first steps to surviving their demise. Who would have predicted that the inheritors of so much could arise from those so meek?

The flaw to which I referred above has accompanied capitalism since it seized the baton from the feudal lords and land owners. When manipulation replaced brute force as the means by which those who were born into a world that they perceived themselves to be the masters of, exerted control over those who were born into the same world perceiving themselves as slaves, capitalism was born. When this means of control proved much more effective at projecting the will of the master into the population at large, a new character appeared on the scene. The master had morphed, from a brutally regimented and tactically guided killer, into an impeccably clean cut intellectual and statistician who managed those beneath him not with blows, but with bits of bread and the promise of a bright future among the ranks of the elite.

How then did this new class of master subdue and subjugate the old? Was there not a struggle? The age in which we have lived is the age of this struggle. An epic clash, punctuated with nuclear blasts that halted the march of armies, and revealed the terminal weakness, in the end, of brute force. Who might have imagined before then that a weapon of such destructive power, the final development of military innovation, once held by two great powers, would reduce warfare to a second class means of domination. Undoubtedly, it is still the choice of imbeciles, motivated by their reflexive fears and visceral responses to personal insult, or their juvenile impatience.

The possible redemption of this violent catastrophe of human endeavor that we call the twentieth century, is the emergence in this next century of an age so great that all that has been lost in reaching it can be counted as well spent. Have we not always justified suffering and sacrifice in this way? Whether on the plains or in the trenches, the greater good, and the promised future always lifted the spirits of those so engaged. Let us make and keep this promise to ourselves. That we will aspire to redeem this century past, by assigning our efforts to the realization of a century that does not attempt to fix the flaws of the past, but instead seeks to overcome them.

What then is the greater flaw in capitalism than avarice? The great flaw of capitalism is that it seeks to deceive. What can never be told the customer, else they would surely cease to exist as one. This is the secret that must be revealed about capitalism; that it lies. It lies actively and proudly and with a smirk on its face. It asks those aware of its deceptions to join in the knowing smiles, and it prays mercilessly upon those who are not so well equipped. In this, I believe, is the first clue to how we might proceed to overcome capitalism. The antonym of capitalism is altruism. Where one seeks to exploit, the other seeks to comfort. Where one seeks to persuade, the other seeks to understand. Where one seeks to profit, the other seeks to empower. Let the mammals rise in the world, and let the dinosaurs collapse under their own weight.

The end of the twentieth century brought us the dot com decade, and the perfection of commerce. As with every creature that inhabits this world, its perfection precedes it decline and demise. If we are to survive to witness coming ages, then we must engage in a decade or more of dot org. Altruism must replace capitalism as our guiding principal. No longer can we seek to exploit resources and people, no longer can we maintain order by promising the oppressed that someday they too may rise to the high position of oppressor. To the contrary, a new age of care and concern for our planet and its inhabitants must replace entirely the model we now know.