One way we are trained is getting ahead in life, which generally means ignoring 99% of what goes on and just focusing on the obstacles between us and our goals. Then since those most effective at this get to dictate how everyone else lives, it becomes an overpowering feedback loop.
Though that train has hit a brick wall.
So how do we go about dismantling the ideology, before it can get back on its feet?
The elemental issue goes to the nature of time. As mobile, intentional creatures, with a narrative based culture, we project out this linear dimension of time, where we are all marching towards some ultimate goal.
The fact though, is that reality is the present and only the present. Change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.
There is no literal dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.
Time is an effect, like temperature, pressure, color, sound. Ideal gas laws correlate volume with temperature and pressure, but we don’t call them the 5th and 6th dimensions of space, because they are only foundational to our emotions, bodily functions and environment, not the sequence of thought.
Reality is a dichotomy of energy and the forms it manifests. Since the energy is the present, it goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past. As consciousness goes past to future, while thoughts and feelings go future to past.
Galaxies are energy radiating toward infinity, while form coalesces toward equilibrium.
We have the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy driving us on, while the central nervous system sorts through the information precipitating out, further condensing it. Motor and steering.
Which suggests consciousness functions a bit like a flame, seeking fuel.
So we are that tension between the anarchy of desire and the tyranny of judgement. The heart and the head.
Logically a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement from which we fell, but the powers that be realized a lot time ago to predicate society on top down authority. Divine right of kings. Though this eventually proved unsustainable, as both kings and Gods ceased to hold their power against masses of humanity.
So government evolved into a public utility, but this required a separation of church and state, culture and civics. Keep in mind that government of the people originated in pantheistic societies, which were in truth, the Ancients idea of multiculturalism, as tribal societies had to integrate into more diverse city states.
Government, as executive and regulatory function, is analogous to the body’s central nervous system, while money and banking are analogous to blood and the circulation system.
When the powers that be lost total control of government, they transitioned to using this circulation function to control society.
As a method of accounting the flows of obligations around society, the medium of money largely functions as a contract between individuals and the community, with the asset backed by a debt. Essentially a glorified voucher system. Though those with the value as inherent, like gold and bitcoin, qualify as commodities.
The problem is that as linear, goal oriented creatures, we tend to see it as the signal to extract and store, from the noise of society and the economy. Yet a medium is dynamic, while a store is static. Blood is a medium, fat is a store. Roads are a medium, parking lots are a store.
So to store the asset, similar amounts of debt have to be generated. One way to do this is to restrict the flow of money in the actual economy, requiring it to run on ever more debt, drawing this “investment” money back into circulation. The other primary method is having the government as debtor of last resort. The capital markets could not function, without the government siphoning up trillions in surplus money.
So the secret sauce of capitalism is austerity and public debt backing private wealth.
Money is an economic lubricant, not a fuel. The problem is not so much injecting it where it is useful, other than when corruption controls this flow, but taking it back out where excesses build up. Logically the government could tax out what it currently borrows, but since our ideology treats it as private property, this is currently impossible.
The functionality of money is in its fungibility. We own it like we own the section of road we are using, or the air and water flowing through our bodies. It is a public utility and has to be treated as such. This isn’t socialism, as society needs both public and private functions, nodes and networks. Like a house has personal and family spaces. We just need to sort out what works best.
The fact is there isn’t enough profitable invesments to store the amount of wealth we feel we need, but we do save for many of the same reasons, such as housing, healthcare, retirement, raising children, etc, that if those could be invested in as community assets and networks, rather than everyone trying to save for them individually, we would have stronger communities and healthier environments, as stores of value and not just resources to be mined.
The irony of our individualistic ethos is the resulting atomized society is more easily controlled by institutional authority and mediated by a parasitic financial system.
Banking is having its, “Let them eat cake” moment and eventually it will have to become a form of public utility. Though this process took government over a hundred years to fully switch.
This is a bit long and slightly off the topic, but the actual moment is rather monumental.
I posted something similar last fall and have been using others essays as ways to further organize my own thinking and generate feedback.
Power is the bull.
The matador is art.
