To know what to do is not enough

The monster facing us, as usual, is us.

Shades of Forbidden Planet! Good luck, Ian.

Do you plan on making it for sale, or releasing it for free in e-book format? Either way I’d like to read it; we disagree on plenty, but I love your writing and thought.

Evolution is fundamentally a competition. If has rewarded those organisms that exploit their environment most effectively. It isn’t a goal it is just the result of the way things work. I agree that we have the tools to create a better existence, if we can modify our basic nature of individual self-interest. Unfortunately, I doubt that we will avoid descending into a really bad place before we realize that we must change. Today’s winners aren’t going to relinquish their privilege voluntarily. I doubt that any movement is possible to displace them. But the trends are clear, we are descending into chaos and that will level all of us– then it may be possible to create a better world.

” just as most addicts are happier once they’ve broken their addiction, or rather once they’ve gone through withdrawal and rebuilt their lives.”

Yes, most addicts are happier once they have rebuilt their lives, but most are vastly more unhappy during that process, which is why so few actually do it. Your point about abandoning our present form of consumerism for one which valued different things and which would be more friendly to our planet being a change which would lead to a more contented society is, I think, entirely valid, but the process of change would be intolerable to those who are accustomed to this form of consumerism. Which is, of course, your point, phrased differently.

Ian Welsh *
January 3, 2013
If it isn’t published through a publisher it won’t sell squat, and in that case making it a formal book simply damages my future publishing prospects (I have a fiction book under way as well.)
That said, I do expect it to be published, but y’know, never count your birds, etc…
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Hmm, that’s a very interesting comment coming from you; a bit surprising actually.
But each to their own and all that.
Cheers and I wish you and your book well…

^ I just spent 10 minutes trying to address your reply and I’m done for the evening.
I’ll better express my thoughts tomorrow. Cheers Ian…

I feel like a significant contributing factor is a problem of the leadership on the progressive left, unions especially that themselves adopt heirarchical models and have foregone methods and approaches to organizing and negotiating that essentially segregate rather unify. This is of course an old complaint/debate (IWW vs. AFL-CIO), but I note two recent items that make the case eloquently:

Article:

http://www.tnr.com/blog/alec-macgillis/111488/the-man-who-tried-save-organized-labor

Doug Henwood radio interview (12/06/12):

http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html#S120612

…and now for something completely fascist:

“FBI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) … reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat … These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy

Hi Ian – Your book sounds interesting. I got to your web site by chance, following a link on Naked Capitalism which is one of my daily reads, otherwise I’m not much of a politico. But I was struck by your comments about self-publishing. You should not be so pessimistic about your prospects for making money and distributing a book by self-publishing. Book publishing industry is in crisis state which, as political scientist type you should know means it is a time of great opportunity. Writing your blog & publishing your own e-book, you can make tremendous headway without courting any favors from the likes of Simon or Shuster. Economics of e-book published on Amazon are far more attractive for an author than what would otherwise be available through a traditional publisher. In other words, it sounds to me like you need to take some of your general theorizing about the obstacles to prosperity and put them into action yourself. By the way, this is not just about the money – prosperity as I see from your brief post may require individual engagement and dropping the veil of passivity….

I blog about the need to change and open our minds about public education and love this quote: “… choosing choices without creating choices is not choice, it is the illusion of choice.”
As you probably realize, “choice” is one of the “reforms” beloved of political conservatives. Yet “choice” as it is defined by the conservatives is “choosing choices without creating choices”… it assumes that parents enrolling their child in another version of “school” are making a “choice” when the only parents making a “choice” are home school parents and “un-school” parents… parents who are engaging in DIY schooling that reflects their personal values and sensibilities or the values and sensibilities they share with another group of parents.

One reason it is difficult to change the way we “do school” is also touched on in your essay. It is because “The people who have power and money and influence in the status quo are not sure that in a new world (i.e. in a new form of schooling), with a new economy, and the new ethics which must undergird that new economy, they (or their children) will be on top.”

Here’s the real dilemma in my mind: can we make the changes in people’s thinking that you (and I) desire through the political process…. or must we experience a disaster first? We can only increase affluence if we intervene early in the lives of children born in poverty— but are we willing to increase our taxes to make that happen? Or do we need to have some insurrection involving the underclass to get people’s attention and engage their common sense?

@Everything’s Jake
The article on labor activist Jerry Tucker is inspirational and needs more exposure. He walked the walk and was the kind of person that Ian is talking about who is the opposite of the kind of people we have in leadership positions now. He ruffled feathers but not as much as anti union corruption writer, Bob Fitch, who is discussed by Doug Henwood in your second link to Henwood’s “Left Business Observer”. Dimitry Orlov at Club Orlov writes eloquently about the anarchist model i.e. anti-hierarchy and how it is often the most efficient way of getting things done. You may choose a temporary “leader” to get the project or task done, but then for the next task you may have another head of your project. http://cluborlov.blogspot.ca/2012/10/in-praise-of-anarchy-part-i.html
While surfing “Left Business Observer”, be sure to listen to Doug’s latest interview with Sasha Lilley on her collection of essays “Catastrophism” and “why basing politics on disaster scenarios isn’t such a good idea.” According to her not much gets changed in times of crisis as far as left goals of economic equality i.e. prosperity for all. The exception seems to be the 1930s. (She points out though that the number of lynchings went down in the South in the 1920s and went up in the 1930s.) In the prosperous 1960s, we got the civil rights, women’s rights, and peace movements. That’s why the fascists hate prosperity for all. It brings out the best in us and that includes not wanting the fascists to be on top anymore.

Ian, I wish you much success on your book. I’m very pessimistic about our future, and I think the only thing that will wake us up is if some kind of catastrophe occurs that affects all of us – even the oligarch psychopaths that are ruling this country. Granted, more people are waking up to the realities of climate change, kleptocracy, propaganda and the nature of our foreign policy killing machine, but too many are still in denial. (It couldn’t happen here!)

So many people feel powerless to do anything about making our society a better one, and I think this is due in part to what the mainstream media propaganda feeds us. “Things are getting better” – so no need to worry about doing anything to change it. I think we’re addicted to denial.

Your message, and others like it, need to be broadcast loud and clear. I could go on and on, but you do it better.

Off topic: Did you know that the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama is anti-Muslim?

Change of subject: http://muslimvillage.com/2013/01/06/33744/tens-of-thousands-rally-with-fatah-in-gaza/

I have suddenly become confused.

A good piece Ian –very thoughtful — and I wish you well with your book. A few comments…
“people who have power and money and influence in the status quo ……are creatures of the current world, and …. are unsteady masters ….. Their ethics and morals, their way of business, of living, of apportioning power and influence and money must go if there is to be widespread affluence.”

It is not just the individual but institutional /corporate entities which make both the rules and impose them, and these rules/actions have both a life and responsibility of their own –a collective ethic and morality which owe much to the values of constituent individuals but also develop an on-going life and ‘moral’ existence of their own. Some might say a dominant position. Individuals find themselves adjusting/relinquishing/subordinating their views in tiny amounts as they become acculturated to that of their employer or primary commercial influence. They become part of an unthinking, certainly more callous and self-serving, process.

“They will not, they cannot adapt, not as a group. They were not selected for the skills it takes to create a new type of affluent society…… and not just because they have not wanted to. They would be a different elite, made up of different people with different ethics, talents and skills if they did want to.”

Then to change the situation we need to find/create/breed people with ethics and capacities able to create “a new type of affluent society”. The key problem facing our society and time is the old economic distribution problem which has exercised the likes of Marx and a host of others. It is not simply a case of personal choice and right intent. The best of intents are wasted by organizational, societal, political constraints, to say nothing of personal and societal inertia. Social and economic organization is not smooth and the best allocator of resources we have been able to invent to date, the perfect marketplace, is both wasteful and destructive as it is creative and efficient. I fear we are condemned to the process of muddling through life and opportunity, both individually and collectively. In-exactitude and adverse relativities within and between societies is likely to be the best we can do, despite the best of intentions.

“Ordinary people also have the wrong ethics, the wrong morality…….. the ultimate problem of consumerism is that the consumer passively chooses from a menu ….. to benefit those who created the menu. Such a passive people cannot understand that choosing choices without creating choices is not choice, it is the illusion of choice.”

The consumer does not choose passively; by exercising choice collectively, he/she channels and directs resources and changes the menu –future consumption depends on current market receptivity as do patterns of tech development and innovation. Surely, choice is limited by the parameters of what is possible/available from within ( and pleasing to ) the existing system and its controllers, and those groups and individuals which comprise the other side of the equation…ordinary people and consumers. If we are to bypass the illusion of choice, then we are seeking people with perfect knowledge or an external omniscient force able to allocate resources perfectly.

“The part that matters isn’t about the technical requirements of prosperity, it’s about why and when people do what is required to achieve prosperity, and when they don’t. And when, having obtained it, they throw it away.”

Do people know when they are prosperous in an absolute sense? Surely they will know if they are really better off than in some prior time or when they have ‘more’ than their neighbour. But prosperity is a numbers game and “ prosperity for all” is—in my book — to challenge the human condition of basic self-interest and security. And those constraints you mention are sufficient ( in the current paradigm) to preclude widespread affluence –both now and in the future. Of course, we could “start again” and that may be forced upon us all –as wealthy countries and as a world—as a result of intractable, ego-driven politicians and prosperity-destroying, elite-driven, policies — but we will then likely build on what’s already there in a scramble of narrow self-interest. To change this authentic rat-race, what is needed is a deliberate objective process of re-thinking all the facets of the economic problem ….and surely we have come some way beyond “from each according to their capacity and to each according to their needs”.

Re making difficult changes:
We will never change our society until we change our understanding and view of ourselves. We have accepted and internalized a worldview which limits what we can/should/will do.
We didn’t create that worldview ourselves. It was carefully crated and promulgated by those who benefit from the world as it is – the world with them on top.
When we change the way we think about ourselves, we will change our behavior and our world.

Example:
Most people who have quit smoking are just smokers who don’t smoke anymore, like alcoholics on the wagon. It’s difficult, requires a lot of self-discipline and vulnerable to relapse. I ‘quit smoking’ half a dozen times over a 40-year period, sometimes for months at a time. What finally worked for me was when smoking became ‘ego dystonic’ – it no longer fit with my self-image. I simply stopped being a smoker.

When consumption no longer fits our image of what we are and what we want out of life, our habits will change.

Re: Your New Book

Have you investigated a subscription model? You undoubtedly have a large readership, and I suspect that many of them would be willing to contribute generously for an inscribed hardcover. BTW, BoP was a great blog and I still miss it.

@ Formerly T-Bear
January 7, 2013
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Re: your link.
Gave me a chuckle it did. Coincidentally, I had also watched it and came to the same thoughts.
We’ve lost, totally, what this life is all about. *Sigh*…