Chomsky: Occupy Movement "Has Created Something That Didn't Really Exist" in US — Solidarity
Noam Chomsky interviewed by Amy Goodman. Transcript at Democracy Now!
I have written on numerous occasions about the social, political and economic challenge of resolving the trifecta of liberty, equality, and "fraternity." Fraternity has be called "solidarity" in Europe for come time, and that is now catching on in the US, along with the more colloquial "community.'
This is an important rising trend that began in the Sixties and Seventies but was co-opted and sidetracked. Now it is taking off again, for a variety of reasons, some due to conditions and some to enhanced communications technology and the introduction of social media/networking as a communications tool.
7 comments:
Related to his theme:
Digital technology has this great thing that allows infinite replication of data without much use of real resources.
Because this is possible free sharing of stuff that wasn't possible only 2 decades ago at a major level. Since then "communism" (fast! the big red dog is coming!) has only come natural to the Internet in many ways.
Even capitalist corporations have been gradually adopting this model in many ways. And it's displacing a lot of the services industry... This has the potential to disrupt traditional human institutions like 'work' and 'jobs for a living', but when we solve how to overcome that the goods vastly overcome the bads (if there are any beside that).
This proves that the stupid Randian world is unnatural to the human species, when allowed will share for free as we all do everyday sharing valuable work, information and exchanging ideas worth more than what is printed in pay to view media.
Just if we could replicate this at the real goods level... We will need a potential energy revolution and that could start to become true in many ways.
"Just if we could replicate this at the real goods level"
We can and some already have been doing so for some time, e.g, since the Sixties, through the commons, sharing, cooperation, coordination, simplifying, etc. Most of the contemporary economy is just BS that can be eliminated without even missing it since one is enjoying a higher quality of life and greater happiness by being creative with others of like mind and heart. This was the bais of the "hippie" movement that morphed into the green movement, and it's also the basis of Occupy. And it's going to be a lot easier globally through social media and networking. It's already happening. It's a matter of shifting consciousness away from the trivial toward what counts.
"Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, 'The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.'” Luke 17:20-21 (NIV).
(The Greek ENTOS can mean either "within" and "among." I would say it means both here in that "the kingdom" is inclusive. "The kingdom" refers to unitive consciousness.)
Se also The Gospel of Thomas, 113: His disciples said to him, “when will the kingdom come?” [Jesus said,] “It will not arrive through your expecting it. no one is going to say, ‘see, here it is,’ or ‘look, it is over there.’ Rather, the kingdom of the father is spread over the earth, and people do not see it.”
The Gospel of Thomas, 3: "Jesus said: 'If your leaders say to you, see, the kingdom is in the heavens, then the birds will precede you into it. If they say to you, it is in the sea, the fish will precede you. But the kingdom is inside you, and it is outside you. When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will realize that you are children of the living father. But if you do not know who you are, you are in poverty, and you are that poverty.'"
(my rendering of both quotes from GoTh)
This same teaching lies at the core of perennial wisdom. Love is the great unifier, self-interest the great divider. We choose which world we wish to inhabit, the kingdom or the outer darkness.
This has nothing to do with religion or belief either. I bring it in because this lies at the core of all religions, but it is not restricted to them. It is a universal teaching found across time in all places. But it is often forgotten and overshadowed. Awakenings are about regaining it.
It's about choosing what kind of experience one regards as valuable to pursue and adjusting one's consciousness accordingly.
The twin goals of social, political and economic institutions are peace and prosperity. Peace is a spiritual or metaphysical aspiration and prosperity is a material or physical one. Ideal society integrates them.
Great video.
I've been thinking about the PR angle in the Finance debate and the more I think about it the more I think Chomsky has it right.
Whatever the politicians and the 'accepted' experts come out with, no matter how ridiculous from any logical or factual standpoint, the message just gets repeated without or with very little challenge in the media
I heard Rolf (Can you tell what is is yet) Harris being interviewed on the BBC today. He was talking about why he left one of his most successful shows, Animal Hospital, after 10 years. He said " They just wouldn't let me show that I'd learnt anything in 10 years. The policy was always 'you can't say that, you have to ask the 'expert'. I just got fed up"
I don't know whether or not it's part of a big organised evil plot or if they are just crap at what they do but I think we need to go after these presenters and commentators all over the media and start giving them heavier flak
Hmmm, he really doesn't seem to like our leader. But he may not need to worry about that much longer. Seems it doesn't matter much. They all lie and economists and all those finance experts you see everyday on CNBC and Bloommberg every day are among the worst.
Tom I was refereeing more to the 'infinite replication' thing. imagine if you could replicate goods at very low cost (or mostly free).
Then there wouldn't be any excuses for not sharing stuff freely. Right now you will get a lot of excuses for any solidarity-oriented, sharing the wealth without any demand community and some may even have some validity.
There would be no excuses for brainwashing either.
Will add to my last post:
In many ways it could be done already, for example food, is only capitalist institutional arrangement that is preventing it.
Around 50% of the food produced or imported to western nations it's wasted. And by wasted I mean it ends in the trash. This is non-sense and it could be distributed for free in the developed and in the developing world.
There is no reason for famine any longer. Only a retarded system prefers to destroy real wealth (food products) in the name of money (to fix prices, for example).
Because the Internet is mostly anarchic (despite all the efforts of governments and corporations to control it) free sharing and solidarity has come naturally to it. But in the rest of the human sphere where top-down institutions control everything they have prevented this trends from emerging where is possible (or try very hard).
But I've high hopes in this regard, the transmission of information has reaches such point that the dominant structures are losing control, for the good. In not a distant time we may look back and see how hopeless are banks for example, playing their little games of unproductive parasitic activities, but most of the economy will be out of their control.
Hell, it already is happening, if all the services created in the net could be 'quantified' it would challenge a big part of the economy in size. And most of this is not quantified nor monetized at all!
@ Leverage
Yes, I agree. My example is to show that it can be done on a limited scale and is already. The issue is changing consciousness, and then cultural and institutional change flows on this. This has happened historically at times of "awakenings" as historians call them. An awakening is presently taking place, as foreseen by Strauss & Howe and Ravi Batra for instance, that will affect the world socially, politically and economically in ways that we cannot foresee other than in very general outline.
But these are precisely the issues that need discussing. There are theoretical as well as functioning models out there that can be considered, as well as an extensive literature that spans disciplines.
The need is a way to explore options practically and scale up the most promising.
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