I have spoken to a number of people about the occupy movement sweeping the globe in recent days. Today I was on a call with Peter Block and John McKnight of Abundant community. The conversation among participants was robust and the insights valuable relating to this event.
Back in February I wrote a post called “Egypt Thou Art Me.” The premise was that we Americans should not watch Egypt’s citizen movement passively but rather be inspired by it and remain mindful of our own strife and internal challenges.
Occupy Wall street is what this blog and that post are about…people having a sense of the need to regain local control and power over their lives. In constitutional terms it is referred to as the sovereign right to economic, social, educational and spiritual liberty.
The occupy movement runs deeper than the redistribution of wealth or compensation. It is a rebellion against a culture organized around interests, rights and entitlements. An increasing number of people are feeling compelled to go because they feel isolated in their lives, without control of economic, social, educational and spiritual issues. They hope to connect and reestablish a local conversation to consider their alternatives. They are finding each other at these events all across the country and world.
To the participants Wall Street and Washington are the same and synonymous with taking away their individual voice. Both have become out of reach or too big to fail or something, and have blatantly ignored our individual citizen and consumer interests in favor of their own. Instinctively occupiers understand that the decisions and governance of these two behemoths are affecting their lives…they feel swept up in it all…powerless and are not willing to take it anymore.
Occupy is an attempt at restoration of citizen local control. It is a rebellion against the value of nothing...where mortgages that have no value are combined and called an asset. Where debt is bundled and is called an asset. Where corporations limit choices and ask more for less. Where political parties argue ideology and maneuver for power and accomplish nothing. Occupiers are no longer willing to tolerate the result of such actions that benefit the few yet so severely impact the many. They seek to reestablish a connection to their own real assets with real value and locally control the transfer of value in those things to money or currency…to engage in local food, business, banking, education, neighborhoods and trade.
They are criticized for not being able to articulate what they want. But they are smart to not get into specifics and stay on a set of principles which only our democracy can address. They understand that if they do get issue specific they will be no better than a political party. Then like all special interests, they will find themselves in an argument, which will divert the point. This movement is not to be underestimated and will not go away anytime soon.
I would generally agree with JMac's assessment. It does no doubt raise certain problems when it comes to desired outcomes, either practical ones or philosophical ones. An unspecified sense of disenchantment or disenfranchisement may help with the psychological health of the Occupier, but it does very little to actually change anything. Perhaps what we have is an opportunity to educate the Occupiers as to how free markets and capitalism serve to redistribute wealth. The Occupiers that have been willing to be interviewed on the various news outlets seem to be looking for Government solutions, not the local solutions JMac pines for. Government is certainly the largest corporation in America. It is the only corporation that is not beholding to its shareholders in any real sense. Furthermore, it has lost a clear Vision and Mission Statement. The Occupiers instinctively know this and are reaching out for clarity. Our current federal leadership is unable to respond because they too have no clear vision of the future. They have been experimenting with a social democracy over the past three years and its timing could not have been worse. I, for one, am not a social democrat. I am a free market conservative. My hope is that as Occupiers become more fully educated about the pros and cons of the two primary methods of wealth redistribution: capitalism and socialism (put another way, free markets and government), they will choose economic freedom and make their way, using their God-given talents, to the best advantage that their individual wills allow.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the occupy movement may be driven by something more current to the human experience than the long history of debating wealth distribution in this country.
ReplyDeleteI think most strongly agree with black bears premise that government services, while well intentioned, have been a disincentive to the development of caring local communities. Although I think most would not limit Washington’s lack of vision and mission on that and other things to the last three years, but rather more like the last 30.
But the country is beginning to see that the recent brand of free market capitalism, also well intentioned, has resulted in bank mergers, chains and big box retailers which have become the face of every community and have equally hindered the development of local commerce and community connection. These conglomerates are having their way…not with each other…but with consumers. They change pricing, fees, terms and packaging at will in order to maintain their profits at the expense of and with little regard for consumers with fewer choices and little recourse. The great sprawling real estate that holds their retail complexes are frightfully isolating. There is nothing in these places except parking spaces and something to buy. The experience is a consumer experience only. There is no local investment by these companies, with taxes often suspended and profits drawn out and redistributed in the best interest of the corporation and anonymous stockholders. There is no alternative local source of human currency or sharing and conversation that connects us as people when dealing with these businesses.
Occupiers and other citizens might be beginning to yearn for the more intimate local connection and markets where unique merchants can prosper and they have more control over how their currency is spent and reinvested. Local merchants, who know our families, share our values and reinvest in our neighborhoods and communities.
Wall Street is a global consumer entity. Occupy Wall Street just might be an early warning about our questioning the consumer culture. If we move from ideology to human experience it is natural that occupiers seek to defend themselves and make the point by turning toward corporate and governmental entities whose policies and practices have left them feeling isolated and less empowered to regain control of their choices and individual sovereignty.
Perhaps what we are getting at is the nature of the current American experience. We are a consumer driven people. But when times are tough we are a fiscally sensible people. Nevertheless, we want stuff. And we want stuff at the lowest price and good (but not necessarily the highest) quality. We're willing to sacrifice a little of this, shave a little off that in order to satisfy our immediate desires. None of us is immune. Furthermore, because of our historic success as a country we think very highly of ourselves. So highly, in fact, that we have collectively decided that we really don't need God anymore: we're doing just fine on our own thank you. Remember it was just in 2007 that the US Government nearly balanced its budget! The status quo ante is not that bad.
ReplyDeleteWe could have plodded along quite nicely, keeping our collective sanity. What changed was the near miss financial collapse. No, there wasn't a collapse but we did freak out rather completely...or should I say rather bipartisanly. And then the perfect storm arrived which was easily a cat 5 hurricane: dissolution with foreign wars, tiring of so much black and white from our decider-in-chief, near financial collapse just prior to the election, a new gifted orator and one party rule. The planets had aligned perfectly and we joyfully lept into a dangerous brew. In politics a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. So, wasted it was not. The process of massive federal governmental "assistance" began.
My clients would meet with me and my advise was always the same: hunker down, cut expenses, don't borrow any money, pay down your debts, save your cash...they all instinctfully agreed. We'd had seven years of plenty, now we were preparing for the seven years of famine. We're three years into the famine (the financial meltdown) and probably have four more years to go. Whoever our elected officials are when we reemerge they will look like geniuses. In reality they will have had very little to do with it. The Occupiers are a fad. The Tea Partiers are a fad. Herman Cain is a fad. President Obama is a fad. They all come and go. What remains is you and me.
Our hope for the future (at least our earthly future) is freedom. But freedom is no easy thing. It requires personal responsibility. It requires tolerance of other minds and other people. But permitting things of which you personally disapprove is no easy task. Yet freedom demands it. Those two things...personal responsibility and tolerance are primarily learned at home from childhood. Both of these are most effectively expressed for the good of society in free markets.
Free markets are a large, inclusive tent. A combination of tough medicine, hard work, great joy, and humiliating failure. In a word free markets are "human". Recently, a politician claimed that "corporations are people too". You're damn right they are. They have purpose, they are varied, productive, produce winners and losers, creative, create fortunes, frustrate us, bring us together, form places where we meet our husbands and wives, help us to form life-long friendships. And when they stop growing...they begin the process of dieing.
I don't know if we can ever go back to a time when our buddies parents ran the Five & Dime. My wife's parents always remembered being driven to school in the winter in a horse drawn bus (generally referred to as a sleigh back then). Times change, people adapt to their environment. Empires collapse. Empires rise. My fear is that we are collapsing. My hope is in you and me.
I think the OWS movement is great, because finally people are rising up and saying "Enough". Enough of a financial system that is rigged so that the wealthiest can't lose. Enough of lowering tax rates for the wealthy. Enough of taking earned benefits from the middle class, while resisting any effort to gain additional revenue from the top 1%. Enough of a rigged political system totally controlled by money. Enough the far right Supreme Court and their terrible Citizen's United decision. Enough of out inequitable health care system and the private health insurance companies who take 20% of every healthcare dollar and provide no service to anyone except their own bottom line.
ReplyDeleteOur posts all speak in our own words about actions, behaviors and governance we believe require more moral clarity and should ultimately be organized to focus on the common good. Unfortunately the only thing organized to focus on the common good anymore is the Library!
ReplyDeleteAnd the Library is a good place to start: in other words EDUCATION.
ReplyDeletePerhaps we could use the Socratic method of learning. As a refresher (courtesy of Wikipedia) the Socratic method is a form of inquiry and debate between individuals with opposing viewpoints based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to illuminate ideas. It is a dialectical method, often involving an oppositional discussion in which the defense of one point of view is pitted against the defense of another; one participant may lead another to contradict him in some way, strengthening the inquirer's own point.
How can government participate in an individual's welfare?
Critical thinking? What is that? What a concept!
ReplyDeleteI was having a conversation with a colleague just the other day about how critical thinking is missing from so many sectors of our society and population. One issue may be that our technology based isolation has kept many from developing and practicing the social skills required to comfortably engage in oppositional discussion.
J McLeod said on October 18, 2011: This movement is not to be underestimated and will not go away anytime soon.
ReplyDeleteWell, people, game on. Protesters are filling the streets as I type. This is a rally for our livelihood, and for the future of our children. I hear the suck of the drain on America...can everyone else not hear it? We've got very few moves left to make. Our children, my children, my very young children, are toast. We need to change things now.
I read through the blog and the comments, and what I mostly heard is some witty rhetorical bantering between 2 guys who are probably about 60. Blackbear's not-so-subtle stabs at the Obama administration and his knocks on Americans who choose not to slather Jesus Christ on their bisquits. Let me take a guess your political and religious parking lot! I think this is J McLeod's point to this blog. Do we have to keep spitting out the learned rhetoric of the parties we affiliate ourselves with? Can we discuss experience, need, and inspiration? Can we discuss what is real for us underneath what we THINK is real for us?
Every problem we find ourselves facing in our daily lives can be traced back to greed. Food is a problem: we eat poorly, the healthy stuff is expensive and inaccessible to the middle class and poor. Problem? Big power in food industries. Seriously, genetically modified staple crops and hormones in our milk! Suddenly every kid I know has asthma, allergies or autism. I'm not saying all these of directly linked back to food, but I am saying that when you find out they are messing with our food and our children are suffering, any Mama Bear is furious. But who do you yell at? Pediatrician shrugs. Homeopath too expensive. They are selling the same crap food at Safeway as before you found out, but baby's gotta eat...so it's nuggets with antibiotics and raspberries with pesticides for dinner again tonight. A parent today is overfilled with information with what is right and healthy and what we should be doing for our children. And then they fill our aisles with packaged crap and make us come back to our job 3 months after having baby. And this is just FOOD. I haven't gotten started with education, health insurance, exorbitant housing prices......we do our best. We work hard. We try had. We stay up side by side in bed on our laptops working late into the night. Lives start cracking. Marriages fissure. Kids act out. All while we get blamed and warned of how we should be doing it. We have no one to blame, directly, so we blame ourselves. We must not be working hard enough, or smart enough. I bought at the wrong time in the market. I feel bad I serve my kid non-organic food, but I just can't pay $14 for a chicken. I should introduce more legumes into our families' diet, but I am so exhausted, and I really need to get back on my laptop.
THIS, my friends, is what I am protesting when I went to the General Strike in Oakland today. This funky, obstrusive, nebulous force that keeps every family I know running at pace 8.0 on their treadmill of life....as we become more unhinged and more unhappy by the minute. We cannot sustain. We cannot keep up with the trickle down effect of corporate greed and abuse of power. There are real people and real lives out here, and we are standing up to share our stories and say ENOUGH.
on occupy, social democracy and capital- ive virtually amended all of my views regarding socialism. although i think its a natural inclination to respond to free market alienation and coercion in extremes i dont think there is essentially any need. i think people who are occupying are responding to a direct lack of representation in an otherwise working democracy. stating the obvious, not many of us have two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in our back pockets to fill the coffers of politicians today. that dis entitles me to the advantages of any other Representation than my feable vote. of course people feel slighted. it feels patronizing to cast that vote. In the history of free market american capitalism it is as plato said wine and cheese one night bread and water the next. ebb and flow, boom and bust essentially its hard to say that its working. it can work it needs to be regulated there is nothing wrong with rewarding success but when corporate interests are lobbying to keep the minimum wage down we cant compete. reward success but not at the expense of hard working families who may not have had the same opportunities to succeed. hey free market conservatives- did you see what just happened back there? i dont want to bail you out again i dont have the money.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the bailout. I had composed an epistle and was letting it ripen. But now I think I'll chill. Suffice it to say that it would be wise to avoid trusting government to effectively redistribute corporate wealth. We are a consumer driven society. Let's trust each other instead. (if you think Apple has too much cash and their execs make way too much money...don't buy an iphone)
ReplyDeleteGreat post by Kristen Brooks!
ReplyDeleteThank you for attending the strike in Oakland. This is a very important movement that is long overdue.