Discuss: Breaking the Spell of Money

We have seen revolutions in arms topple governments and re-establish - or establish for the first time - democratic rule (which ought to be an oxymoron, but I’m going to let it go till another time.)  What Breaking the Spell Of Money addresses is the necessary break-point around which a revolution of values must occur.  I’ve been fuming at Obama from the git-go for either setting aside values he had espoused as a community organizer or completely repudiating them by embracing our costly and pernicious military adventures.  For a moment, we, as a nation, caught our breath as a new president, presumably value-rich and community-oriented, would begin to overthrow the stranglehold of corporate power and the military might it helps support.  Yet instead of talking about shrinking these things down, he clearly wished to grow them.  I could not listen to his inaugural address, as it pointed down the same path Bush, Cheney, and his “grisly gang” had taken us.  He said nothing of the community gardens that would foster health and neighborly cooperation; he ommitted to talk about the native talents of Americans, who could make things their fellow citizens might care to use; he seemed oblivious of of that delicate, but essential compact between well-intentioned people that revolves around seeking the best possible solutions that will do the least possible harm.

And so it has happened.  We find ourselves embroiled in perhaps nastier sharpshooting, both domestically and on foreign soil, than we saw during the Bush years.  And precisely because Obama awakened a sense of possibility, his dismal showing as a national community organizer has hit home even more profoundly.  We expected nothing from Bush and his gang. 

However, I don’t wish to merely critique a president.  He has, however, given us, as a nation, to believe that our solutions do lie in getting and spending.  In spite of his good wife’s gardening, there isn’t much of a “buy local” culture around the White House.  And, aside from a few solar panels, I don’t see alternative energies being discussed or implemented.  And rather than push for the health care that would help the most people, our president hedged his bets and gave us just a taste of it.  Those who can afford health care, however, won’t necessarily benefit from it.  Claims can be denied - or adjusted - to suit insurance providers.  In some cases, these adjustments can be deadly.

In rejecting the values of a global economy, of corporate rule and military abundance, a lot of us will alienate fellow citizens who won’t follow us there - just as the peace marches divided well-meaning conservatives from get-off your-duff activists.  A lot of people will find themselves marginalized in a culture that has always moved too fast.  However, if the rest do not catch up, all of our lives will be incurably degraded.  We have already passed the zero-sum point in global warming.  Not being above an “I-told-you-so” spirit, I wouldn’t at all mind leaving climate change deniers to the vicisstudes of wind and weather.  But we are likely to be lumped together.  And I wonder what that’ll be like.  The better angels of our nature should always offset the tempations of revenge.  Yet it seems to me that those who would force our backs to the wall would be the very first to abandon us there.  Assuming there is ever a new “us and them” paradigm, in which the sensibly self-denying have the upper hand, it’ll be interesting to see how the guilty are punished.  Perhaps all of us will be so sorely needed that anybody will get a chance to redeem himself.  I hope so.

Good comment Brett. Obama is a fraud. Those who cannot see that may doom themselves to swallowing his hogwash another four years. One of the pillars of our predicament is a large population incapable of clear and original thought, but prone to swallow slickly constructed lies. Education, among all the other major institutions of our culture, has failed us miserably. Our over all population here in America has imbibed so many gross distortions of the truth that they are not to be counted on to be of much use until they come to their senses (if ever) and repudiate the lies they have been sold. Our glorious military, indeed. Our outstanding democracy, etc. etc….  Wake up folks! That kool aid goes down real easy, but it leaves an awful hangover…

SRS,

In the last line of your Log from Andrews Forest, you “vow to repay the earth’s gifts in whatever way you can”.  This essay, it seems to me, is a big part of that repayment.  Your commentary on economics, culture, and psychology is well-articulated and profoundly comprehensive.  This is a good example of the kind of “mind” we need to develop in order to envision and realize a flourishing future for all life on earth.

very well done. superb.

When I wrote my first book, Economics as if the Earth Really Mattered, back in 1995, I said that business as usual is killing the Earth, and that the economy isn’t something that is god-given, handed down from “on high”, it was created by human beings and could be changed by human beings. Yet most people, then, as now somehow behave as if it were otherwise. I had hoped, in that book, to awaken more people than I did to the true cost of this so-called civilization we now live in. Things are so much worse now than they were then, in so many ways. Corporate control, huge then, has been mega-super-sized. Though there is now a resurgence of valuing local, esp. local food, we have lost much of our local and regional infrastructure from food to energy, even to transportation.

I hope this article, so well-written and right-on, can play a role in revitalizing, reawakening what is of real value, from goods to relationships, to understanding the primacy of the natural systems, the Earth, upon which all life depends.

I am most appreciative of this (your) piece—and want to say THANK YOU. I am a martial arts teacher (and a fan of Orion) and this piece has “self-defense” written all over it.

I am forwarding it to more than 100 of my clients (martial arts school owners) as I feel it’s a great way to begin some dialog about what self-defense really is, in today’s world.

We (martial artists) spend an inordinate amount of time training our bodies as tools for personal protection and/or the protection of others, but in my opinion it’s not the punch in the nose that should be our concern, but the pollution of our minds and our values.

“Breaking the Spell of Money” represents issues that are, in today’s world, far more relevant to self-defense than the block, the kick, and the punch.

Again, thank you!

Rarely do you see it all said so concisely and so cogently.

Bravo!

This is a global problem which requires a global solution. If only Americans would spend less time contemplating themselves and more time considering their role as members of a global community.