What is the essential dynamic of the relationship between top down status quo and bottom up grass roots?
Take it down to the basic relationship between energy and form. We are conscious energy pushing out, as the forms of thought and biological structure coalesce in, as well as society being social energies pushing out, as civil and cultural forms coalesce in.
What the current system has been very good at is to co-opting any movements against it and there are evolutionary, structural reasons for this.
For one thing in order for communities to exist, they have to operate as a coherent whole. A social organism within the larger ecosystem of other, interacting communities and other operators. Which means some form of leadership and regulation function, essentially the central nervous system of the group. Then a willingness to follow and police the cooperation and indoctrination among the rest. Everything from customs and culture to language. So this structure goes to the very core of what we are, as social beings. It gives form to our lives.
Thus the leadership is in control of the levers of power and the only thing that will really defeat them is their own failure. Not only do they have to fail, but do so massively, as the people will tolerate a lot, given the sunk costs in the current system and the trauma of change. The ship of state doesn’t turn on a dime.
Yet consider the generational force at work on this system. It has to encourage and inspire each new generation to take up this cultural load and carry it into the future.
Yet the current system is not so much about this leadership/central nervous system of social control, be it tribal chieftains and elders, kings and courts, presidents and legislatures, as it is about that other part of the community. The circulation of value around it to make the system whole and balanced. Capitalism has taken control of this value distribution system and uses it to serve those running it.
This is actually an evolutionary stage. Originally issuing money was entirely a function of government, but like the head and heart, they are separate and serve different functions. The problem with government in control is the issuance of money tended to serve more political needs/wants, than economic efficiency. While there were various mercantilist states, such as the Venetians and the Dutch, where control of the money was a function of trading, the dawn of modern banking as separate from government was when the Rothschilds traded Charles 1, forgiving his debts, if they could run his treasury and the Bank of England was born, laying the foundation for the English empire. Ships and the pound.
We are now reaching the end of this process. For one thing, to control the politicians, they have relented and used the money printing process for political ends. Not to mention using it to strip mine as much value out of the community, rather then just lubricating the process.
For one thing, the younger generations can’t support a system that is already sucking as much value out of them, even before they become productive memebers. Not to mention funding a military designed to fight a war that has been over for thirty years, with public monies that could have been far more productively invested.
So then the question becomes how to start peeling away this layer of dead skin? As I said, much of the work is being done by the system itself, as it grows ever more disconnected from the underlaying society, on the assumption that there is no alternative, so any movements can continue to be co-opted, since they control the medium of exchange, as well as the political power structure.
Yet this corona virus is like a bomb going off in the weapons storage of the ship. They have lost all control over issuing the money and much of it will flow to those already with more than they could possibly imagine, so the people will be even more disenfranchised.
The issue then is to what can possibly replace it. I’ve tried stepping as far back as possible, to see the broader picture and how the roots of the problems go back to the dawn of narrative, all the way up to how we try to treat money as both medium and store, but it is safe to say most people want more immediate and technical answers, so there will be many people with all sorts of solutions. Will they work to stop the bleeding, or will true paradigm shifts be necessary. Time will tell, as we are still very early in the process.
