Forum Post: Why we should not post demands as a group
Posted 12 years ago on Oct. 10, 2011, 3:43 p.m. EST by tingly
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I love where you are all going with this. Here are some of my thoughts, if you care to read them, about why the Occupy movement should not adopt a list of demands as a group.
The current state of affairs that none of us is happy about is not the result of an organized action on the part of people (unless you want to consider a Corporation a person) and it cannot be brought down through organized action. It is too diffuse a monster. It lurks everywhere. The thinking in which we are enmeshed goes deep, really deep. Like to a level of culture, or of what we define as civilization.
Nature is not Euclidean. We should stop trying to plot existence in a Cartesian Coordinate Plane. We are at this point in history as a the result of the adherence to sets of selfish ideals that treat other people and the earth in general as objects to be manipulated for a greater gain instead of beings with whom a relationship can be formed. These selfish ideals constitute the laws of power. They have looked to us to be the laws of nature, of self preservation, even the laws of love because they have been bastardized by the powerful. In fact, the measure to which these laws have been co-opted by someone can be said to be a measure of that person's (or institutions) power (see organized religion, General Electric, Hitler, et al).
In any event, it is in relationship with another that one's value is located, but we forget that space between each other where relationships are formed and look instead to others we revere or respect for approval. While a goal-oriented and plan-of-action based, systematic demolition of the paradigm in which we live might be a nice, tidy thought, the way in which we would systemize it would betray the work we would be trying to do. We don't need to tear anything down anyway. Why be so violent as to demand destruction? We only need to leave off this madness in which we have been participating. The natives of North America did.
Every "advanced" civilization they had prior to the arrival of the Europeans was "inexplicably" abandoned. Sure, to the European, such abandonment is inexplicable, crazy even. It must have been that those natives were really savage at heart. Good thing we got them baptized and introduced them to alcohol so that they can see the joy in screwing over one another for their own self gain. It couldn't have been that the natives noticed something inherently messed up regarding commerce and the sequestering of food and so decided that all the glory of civilization was not worth the cost. No. Couldn't be that.
Okay but, what will a bunch of people protesting something mysterious and blogging about history, philosophy and the state of current events do for all of us? Doesn't the movement need goals; doesn't something have to change in order for us to have a better situation?
Okay but, what will a bunch of people protesting something mysterious and blogging about history, philosophy and the state of current events do for all of us? Doesn't the movement need goals; doesn't something have to change in order for us to have a better situation?
The inequity we rail against cannot have come to us except in a sneaky way. We got here because we pursued individual selfish wants (like funding your retirement or your kids' college education, if you were a middle class American) that can only be earned by externalizing the cost of your wants. The struggle for these wants (and their attainment) blinded us to the course we were actually on as a species. Now that we are gaining an appreciation for where we are (headed towards a disaster like in a boat heading toward a waterfall) we are panicked to find a way to tinker with our civilization’s engine. I say "abandon ship." The current isn't pushing us towards the waterfall; we are propelling ourselves towards it.
Think of a flock of birds or a herd of bison. They fly or run in the patterns they do not to make it to the breeding ground as a group, but because the individual birds, by joining a group, can be protected against enemies and so stand a good chance at passing along their genes. Lions never eat the bison in the center of the pack. What has been going on with humanity follows the same herd mentality law, but with the ultimate path being a path towards our destruction instead of our safety. We keep our families safe from the specters of famine and of squalor (those of us who are adept at screwing others of us over, that is) but steer the human race towards certain death. Why? Because we miss something vital in our pursuit of life. We miss the fact that what we are after is only good if it is good for all. The bison and the birds, if they are acting selfishly, are doing so to preserve the gene pool. Theirs is an altruistic selfishness. We have forsaken our sense of altruism; we have missed the joy that comes in being alive. We are, in our pursuit of a life better lived, proving that we are only obsessed with death. We are killing everything in sight on this planet in the name of self preservation. In that light, how different are any of us from the Nazi foot soldiers of WWII? Perhaps we are forgivable, but certainly we are to blame.