Orwell's 1984: Blueprint for US Authoritarianism Today

George Orwell, born 110 years ago as Eric Arthur Blair (June 25, 1903 – January 21, 1950), was an English novelist and journalist, his works marked by clarity, intelligence and wit, awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism, and commitment to democratic socialism.  

Pursuant to arriving at an ethical practice of politics and economics also leads to explore, with forethought, constituent factors that may derail truthful manifestation, identifying the points of frailty where deceit and exploitation may deflect from honest engagement and foster predation and degeneracy from the wellbeing of all.  Recognizing the hypocrisy of Stalin, and the plethora if predators rampant in the socialist and communist movements in Europe, Orwell penned the iconic novel 1984, published in 1947, as a clarion call to the world to beware the tides of neo-exploitation from the bold new movements of socialism and communism running astray of concerns for the wellbeing of humanity.  

How does PROUT compare or contrast with capitalism or communism?  Explore the answers HERE

Abby Martin remarks on the 110th birthday of British visionary George Orwell, highlighting 1984's nightmarish prophecy of a dystopian future, in the context of the modern day surveillance state.  

Political Democracy can and will be fortuitous when Economic Democracy is established. Explore this and other articles covering alternative economics, ethical leadership, economic democracy, and a society without the weal and woe of social and economic vicissitudes HERE What are essential ingredients assuring progressive sustainability bereft of the vicissitudes of economic or political predation, privation or disparity?  Learn more HERE http://gotoplus.me/ProgressiveSustainability

Watch the first movie, featuring Edmund O'Brien and Michael Redgrave, 1956, in full.  

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Population Growth and Control -- Is Overpopulation Depleting Our Potentials?

PROUTist Economics

Population Growth and Control

P.R. Sarkar, Founder of PROUT

The socio-economic environment of society today is extremely restless and disturbed.  In this abnormal environment population growth has been projected as a menacing threat to the existence of human society, but in fact this sort of propaganda is nothing but an evil conspiracy engineered by vested interests.  No problem is greater than the human capacity to solve it.  Like all problems confronting humanity, the problem of population growth should be tackled and solved in a proper way.  

In the natural course of evolution, birth and death maintain the continuity of the never ending flow of creation.  Every day, with the birth of babies, the parents and the other family members naturally enjoy great happiness.  But it is a matter of sorrow that there are some people in the government or other spheres of public life who consider the increase in the birth rate a curse on the society.  This negative attitude is definitely a blot on the human race, which has achieved a degree of intellectual development and scientific knowledge.  

Population Growth

The theory that population increases at a geometric rate while food production increases at an arithmetic rate is completely defective.  Such a situation can only occur in an imbalanced economic system.  

Is the population problem really a natural problem?  The population problem should be considered in the context of two vital factors – the availability of food and the availability of space.  Today human beings have sufficient means to manage their food.  The earth is abundant enough in food resources to feed many times more than the present population.  Due to lack of coordinated cooperation, collective effort, a proper ideology and sound planning, society has been fragmented into many belligerent groups and sub-groups, and rich and poor nations have been created.  As a result of this fissiparous tendency, society is presently incapable of producing enough food to meet human requirements.  The tragedy is that even though there are enough resources to supply nutritious food to all the human beings on the planet, due to the defective socio-economic systems, an efficient method of distribution has not been developed.  

Moreover, there is no shortage of living space on the planet if the existing space is properly utilized.  Because the earth has been balkanized due to so many arbitrary social, economic and political restrictions and the pervasive influence of evil dogma, people are unable to tackle problems in a natural way.  If there were maximum utilization and rational distribution of all natural resources, pressing socio-economic problems could be easily solved.  

It is a law of nature that a mother is provided with sufficient breast milk to feed her newly born baby.  In the same way nature has generously provided sufficient resources to meet the food and other essential requirements of all human beings.  People need to

utilize these natural resources in a proper way.  Shortages of food or space cannot be blamed on nature.  These problems are essentially the results of the mistakes made by human beings.  

It is a fact that the population of the world is rapidly increasing, and consequently many people have become frightened.  In capitalist countries there are sufficient reasons for such fear.  In these countries an increase in the population means a corresponding increase in the poverty of the people.  But there is no reason for such fear in a collective economic system.  In the event of shortages in food and accommodation people will collectively convert barren land into arable land, increase agricultural production by scientific methods and produce food by chemical processes using the potentiality of earth, water and air.  And if this earth loses its productivity, then human beings will migrate to other planets and satellites and settle there.  

If people living in capitalist countries voluntarily adopt birth control methods to avoid economic hardship, perhaps we should not criticize them.  But it should be mentioned here that using birth control methods which deform the bodies of men and women or destroy their reproductive powers forever cannot be supported, because this may cause a violent mental reaction at any moment.    

PROUT’s Solution

Under the present socio-economic conditions, PROUT advocates a comprehensive, clear-cut policy to tackle the population problem.  According to PROUT, population growth will automatically find a natural level if the following four factors exist in society:  

1) There should be economic liberty in society so that people may get a nutritious diet.  In Scandinavia, for example, the purchasing capacity of the people is high and they enjoy a good standard of living.  Because of this they do not face the problem of overpopulation.  

2) Everybody should have the right to enjoy sound health.  If people have a healthy body and mind their glandular system will remain balanced, and they can easily transform their physical energy into psychic energy and their psychic energy into spiritual energy.  Through this effort of channelizing the mind in a spiritual direction, the baser mental propensities are easily controlled.  

3) People should be free from unnecessary mental worries and anxieties.  When one suffers from mental agonies continually, the mind naturally indulges in baser physical enjoyment to get rid of that unwanted condition.  When mental agonies disappear, human beings will enjoy peace of mind and be able to assimilate subtle ideas.  

4) The intellectual standard of humanity will have to be elevated.  With intellectual advancement human beings will develop their all-round psychic potentiality and can easily evolve their psycho-spiritual potentiality.  Through continuous effort human beings will be able to attain the supreme stance, merging their individual unit existence into Cosmic existence.  

Thus, the population problem is not just an economic problem – it includes economic, biological, psychological and intellectual aspects.  

Today people give more importance to the political than to the bio-psychological and economic aspects of population growth.  

The theory that population increases at a geometric rate while food production increases at an arithmetic rate is completely defective.  Such a situation can only occur in an imbalanced economic system. In a progressive and balanced economic system no such problem will exist.

Collective Economy

It is completely wrong to propagate the idea that a rapidly increasing population will affect the collective economic structure.  Today capitalists are trying to check population

growth by propagating birth control because an increasing population is detrimental to capitalism.  In a collective economic structure there will be no need to support birth control. Rather, an increasing population will help in the production of the essential commodities.  

Good varieties of seed, fertile land, adequate nourishment, light, air and water are all essential for good reproduction in both the plant and animal kingdoms.  In this respect human beings are no different from other creatures.  In human society the selection of suitable males and females is desirable for reproduction of a high order.  Until human beings are produced in scientific laboratories, it will be detrimental to society if this matter is neglected.  

If people of sublime intelligence and brilliance reproduce more offspring, it will be very beneficial for society.  The responsibility for nurturing and bringing up these children will have to be taken by the society or the government.  Similarly, it will be harmful for society if mentally deficient, naturally delinquent or insane persons produce many children.  In fact, society will be benefited by the permanent destruction of their reproductive capacity, providing this does not cause any harmful reaction.  

Science has reached such a stage that it can usher in a new era.  It can produce synthetic food in the form of tablets to help solve the food problems of the world.  A single food tablet can be sufficient to provide sustenance for a whole day, so we need not fear population increases.  Future generations will spend more of their time and energy on subtle psychic and spiritual activities, so their demand for physical food will decrease.  

Through oceanographic research abundant food resources have been discovered within the ocean and on the sea bed.  With the application of science and technology we can harness these resources to meet the challenge of the food problem.  The crisis faced by society today indicates that humanity is not encouraging the maximum utilization and rational distribution of the world's potentialities.  Science today is being used to develop increasingly destructive weapons of war rather than for benevolent and constructive purposes.  

Society will have to adopt a collective economic system for maximum production and economic security in order to control accumulation; ensure the rational distribution of collective wealth through a well-knit cooperative system; implement decentralized socio-economic planning; and secure the maximum utilization of all types of mundane, supramundane and spiritual potentialities.  So far society has not adopted such an approach so it has been unable to solve the food problem.  

Instead, certain inhuman birth control practices have been forcibly promoted.  Not only are such practices detrimental to a healthy human body and mind, they cause physical deformity, disturbances and misunderstandings in family life, and mental derangement and debility.  Those inflicted with such psychic ailments lose the courage to face adversity in life and the power to fight for social justice.

Imposing a fear of population growth is nothing but a cunning conspiracy by vested interests to misguide people and exploit society.  Optimistic people throughout the world will have to unite and raise their voices against such a heinous conspiracy, and work together to construct a just and benevolent society.

1981, Calcutta, from Proutist Economics  

Political Democracy can and will be fortuitous when Economic Democracy is established. Explore this and other articles covering alternative economics, ethical leadership, economic democracy, and a society without the weal and woe of social and economic vicissitudes HERE How does PROUT compare or contrast with capitalism or communism?  Explore the answers HERE What are essential ingredients assuring progressive sustainability bereft of the vicissitudes of economic or political predation, privation or disparity?  Learn more HERE http://gotoplus.me/ProgressiveSustainability

Universal Principles for a Healthy Society Today

Cardinal Human Values

What are some of the Universal Principles possible for a  lastingly healthy society, in every realm of life?  

At some point, on the evolutionary scale, single-celled organisms came forth in cooperation and unity to arrive at greater gestalts together, developing more complex organisms, more evolved than themselves individually with greater capacities, which came to ensconce into a new organism with intents and capacities unique to itself, and often replicating into similar organisms sauntering forth in cooperation to arrive at new gestalts in cooperative intelligence at greater thresholds of evolutionary excellence, including us, you and me. 

Such thresholds of evolutionary progress arrived at their excellencies through the tried and true exercise of proven universal practical principles which have carried us to where we are today, as a species, right along with all the other organisms alive today.  So, what's next?

We've come up with some relatively universal principles and concerns for making a more progressively evolving human society for the wellbeing of all and welcome your insights for furthering success for a healthier society.  Please explore these, ponder them and witness how they may, and perhaps already have, prove practical for a more progressively evolving society.

* Lasting and adaptable principles must be comprehensive, covering all core facets of a political philosophy, including: values base, theory of history, political system, economic system, ecological philosophy, social and cultural concepts, future vision, and methodology of change.  

* It is optimal, indeed necessary to synthesize into one theoretical framework a wide array of progressive concerns, such as: cooperatives, economic democracy, bioregionalism, economic decentralization, social justice, environmental protection, guaranteed basic necessities, social equity, world government, fair trade, rights of species, spiritual values, global peace, cultural autonomy, and sustainable development.  

* To positively affect the wellbeing of all in a progressively responsive and upgrading manner, offering viable alternatives to materialist-based political philosophies -- such as anarchism, communism, and capitalism -- is necessary.  Any worthwhile and relevant social, economic or political philosophy, starting from a new, post-materialist worldview, must give rise to a profoundly different wholistic political vision from that of existing political paradigms.  

* Viable social, political and economic alternatives must have a values base grounded in the holistic cosmology found in such diverse places as the perennial philosophy of the wisdom traditions, indigenous peoples' spirituality, deep ecology, and the philosophical implications of quantum physics and modern cosmology.

* Alternative paradigms should be compatible with an emerging shift in planetary consciousness synthesizing the strengths of Western, Eastern, indigenous, and holistic scientific contributions to human knowledge.

* Progressive alternatives must be designed to serve the totality of human nature: physical, mental and spiritual.  It should not neglect or suppress the development of any facet of human nature, rather promote their balanced and integrated expression.

* Viable paradigms should not privilege material development above spiritual development, nor spiritual development above material development, but recognizes their interdependent contributions to nurturing a healthy, balanced, and fulfilled human society.

* Doctrines and policies must arise from, and get validated by, practice; policies of the present must be proactively changed in response to changing social and economic conditions.

* We must expand the concept of humanism beyond a concern for human welfare and attainment to a new humanism concerned for the welfare of all living beings.  A new humanism must assert that the welfare of individuals, groups, and species cannot be separated from the welfare of the whole.

* Ideas of progress must be conceptualized based beyond material and technological change to one based on improvement in the all around welfare of human beings, society and all life at large.  Progress is best indicated at a material level by an increase in people's quality of life; at the mental level by expansion of neohumanist consciousness; and at the spiritual level by growth of love, inner peace, and cosmic disposition.

* Core social ideals -- such as economic democracy, social equity, world peace, and ecological protection -- in a progressive paradigm must provide a practical framework for their attainment.

* Progressive solutions must not be or operate as a reaction to social problems, rather as a positive effort to envision and build a wholesome, viable and sustainable human society.  It should not stem from a critique of current global realities, but rather start from the seeds of life and the needs of human beings to find holistic fulfillment.

* We should not place collective interests above individual interests, nor individual interests above collective interests, rather perceive individual and collective interests as being inherently interrelated.  The well-being of individuals lies in the development of the collective, and collective well-being lies in the development of individuals.

* The liberation of society can only arise from the liberated consciousness of individuals.  We therefore do not give primacy to political change, rather stress cultural change, proper education of the human intellect, moral development, and spiritual growth.  Change in political power should be driven by a change of collective consciousness, not imposed by new wave vested parties.

* Fundamental shifts in the locus of power are necessary, such that the locus of economic, social and cultural power must devolve from transnational corporations and nation-states to local and regional levels, and the locus of political and military power be taken from nation-states and invested in a world confederation.

* Profit as the core motive for economic activity must be rejected, replaced.  While profit is an important practical consideration in operating enterprises, it must not supersede in importance such concerns as consumer needs, community well-being, resource sustainability, environmental health, social equity, and worker fulfillment.

* Remedial solutions cannot be characterized as either conservative or liberal; neither can they be called libertarian, socialist, or anarchist.  Lasting solutions must arise from their own values base, transcend the left-right political spectrum, and acknowledge the strengths of many social philosophies.

* Progressive solutions must conceive of a deep sustainability based in maintaining balance at all levels of material, mental, and spiritual development in society.

* Lasting solutions model the way nature works.  Those with knowledge of ecological science, complexity theory, systems theory, or the philosophical implications of quantum physics will experience a familiarity with the necessary values, principles, and operational structure that will provide lasting solutions through the myriad changes life presents.

* We call for neither a free market nor a command economy, but a regulated and planned market economy that does not support control of enterprises by large corporations or by the state, but by cooperative, small private entrepreneurs, and -- in the case of key industries -- by public boards.

* We affirm the relativism of post-modernism with respect to the phenomenological world, though reject the notion that there is no basis for universal values; we assert that a sound and durable value base lies in the transcendental ground of material existence.

What about some additional basic design principles?  What are your insights and wisdom?  

Political Democracy can and will be fortuitous when Economic Democracy is established. Explore this and other articles covering alternative economics, ethical leadership, economic democracy, and a society without the weal and woe of social and economic vicissitudes HERE How does PROUT compare or contrast with capitalism or communism?  Explore the answers HERE What are essential ingredients assuring progressive sustainability bereft of the vicissitudes of economic or political predation, privation or disparity?  Learn more HERE http://gotoplus.me/ProgressiveSustainability

Voices of the Occupation: What they'll take away

 

On Tuesday, in the hours before Occupy L.A. was ejected from the grounds of City Hall, Margot Roosevelt photographed participants and interviewed them about what had brought them to the protest and what message they hoped people would take away from it.  Their statements have been edited for length.

Allen Lasley, 26

Anaheim HillsMy mother was a single parent for me and my sister.  When I was young, she was going to college and working two jobs — at McDonald's and at a dry cleaners.  She still had to steal food. I was 4 years old when I realized something was seriously wrong.

Every experience I've had since then has been struggling to survive.  I went into the Marine Corps when I was 17.  I did two tours in Iraq.  I came back realizing how messed up this country is, how we fight unjust wars for political assets.

In my head, as a kid, I thought if you work hard, you can achieve the American dream. I'd worked my entire life.  But now I spend 12 hours a day filling out applications.  I go to the unemployment office.  My resume is on Monster.com. I've never been called to an interview.  Not one time.  I've lived at homeless shelters even though I get some military benefits.

I came to be a part of changing humanity for the better.  When I first came down here I stayed up all night.  I wanted to see what kind of people were here.  The most intelligent people I ever met reside here.  Everybody has the same story of getting screwed over by the government.  Many veterans have gone through what I have and can't find work.  That is the No. 1 thing for most people.  There are just no jobs. I came here and these people gave me hope for humanity I had never felt before.

What people should take away is that we the people are the powers that be.

I believe power should be used to create equality.  We want a level playing field.  We don't want a small percentage of people to control everything going on around us.

Matt Wegner, 53

Lake Arrowhead

I was foreclosed on.  That is partly why I'm here.  I'll never own again.  I refused to renew my [real estate] broker's license after seeing people foreclosed on and pushed into the street.  I can no longer ethically practice real estate.

I've been wearing this sign on my back:   “Greed is a Disease.”  It is a sickness.  It is destroying the lives of people.  What is the opposite?  Generosity.  We have to stop taking and start giving.  That is the mind shift I am trying to bring to the world.

I was hoping Villaraigosa would be the first mayor to say, “We are on your side,” rather than sending police to say, “Oh, we are going to evict you.”  You can't evict an idea.  You can't handcuff the truth.

Kern Masser, 18

Originally from Bakersfield, but then moved to his sister's place in Eureka

A lot of things are wrong.  I tried to get a job after high school and no one would hire me because I had never had a job before.  It is an endless cycle.  I applied for 20 jobs in six months.  I can't go to school because there's no way I could pay for the tuition.  I'd like to learn.  I like gardening but don't know how to do it.

But change can happen.  People are trying to fight the 1%.  People will look back at how bad things are now and say, “I'm glad we did that.”

 

Michael Basillas, 26

San Diego

What made me join [Occupy L.A.] was to find a place where I could have a conversation about social, political and economic injustice in this country.  Our system favors the 1%.  That is not sustainable for the citizens of the U.S.  It's good to know you have other people that feel the same way.

I worked at HSBC [Bank] in the accounting department for three years.  They let us go because they needed to outsource the jobs.  So how do I pay my bills? I'm not going to wait until I'm homeless on the streets to fight for change.

Government power is an illusion.  We placed them there.  We can always take it away from them.  Occupy is trying to figure out how. I'm a Republican — but a radical Republican.  I don't like high taxes, but if you pay taxes, you want to know it is going to the betterment of people.  You want to know it is going toward things like health insurance. I don't have health insurance.  It is too expensive.

Joseph Thomas, 50

Los Angeles

I was raised political.  My mother adored Robert Kennedy.  My father hated Richard Nixon.  We talked about politics over dinner.  My parents made clear to me:  If you take social justice seriously, you have to be political.  I'm here because I see our world is being broken.  My generation has a responsibility to do something about it.  I'd like to think even if I were living in a mansion in Bel-Air, I would come here.

The message?  It's that politics matters.  It is not peripheral.  If you want to build a better world, you have to engage in the political process.  We need to build a kinder, gentler world. I'd like to see a change in U.S. foreign policy.  The U.S. has a dismal record in supporting brutal people across the globe.  I'd like to see the Occupy movement be a force for democracy and social change.

Vivian Ortiz, 19

Grand Junction, Colo., attending photography school in North Hollywood

After I came here to school and went into debt, I found out my school is unaccredited. It is part of a corporate chain.  They were good at making themselves seem like a legitimate school.  But now I'm stuck.

A lot of people say, “The economy sucks, and I'm not going to do anything about it.”  I'm here to hopefully make a change.  I want to have a more stable future than what I'm having right now.  I want people to look back on [Occupy L.A] with a positive light.  Everyone came with their own issues.  But the major thing is that something is wrong with society.  People want their voices to be heard.  Me personally?  I want to get a proper education and not be in debt forever because of it.

Carina Clemente, 24

Inglewood

I went to Cal State Long Beach.  I graduated with a major in psychology and theater.  I was laid off a year ago.  I've been trying to find work since then.  I've spent five or six hours a day filling out applications and looking for work.  But I only got contract jobs teaching theater classes and doing temp administration work.

I came out of curiosity.  I didn't have an initial plan.  The first day there were different focus groups.  We came up with the idea of the People's Collective University.  We held classes around political, social and economic justice, sustainability and community needs.  We are making plans to expand into neighborhoods.  The idea is to provide an alternative education model.  We are focusing on the ideas of Paulo Freire, the Brazilian educator.  He came up with a “popular education” based on mutual respect and using the personal experiences of students.

My experience through the collective university is that we have knowledge to share and can educate each other.  We don't have to rely on the repressive education system.  We can build together.  We had classes on nonviolent direct training, on working-class unity, on healthcare inequality, on ending racism and white privilege, on addressing the role of patriarchy.  Just having honest discussions, people were able to get a different perspective.  People got a chance to understand each other.

One message is, we have the power to provide for ourselves.  We are intelligent and capable enough to do so, regardless of formal institutional education.


Gabriel Marantz, 25

Venice

I came as a response to corporate greed and social, political and economic injustice.  It is time for us to restore our democracy and have real representation for reasonable taxation.  This movement gives a sense of hope in our ability to make change. Going to the ballot box is not enough.  Until we change and reform the corruption of the political system at its core, we can't have a government that represents us.  By volunteering [in the campaigns of Barack Obama and Dennis Kucinich], I was [able to] have an effect in getting someone elected, but getting one elected official into office is not enough.  We are not a true democracy anymore.  The disparity in wealth is saddening.  To do nothing is just not an option for my soul.

We should abolish private financing in all federal elections and get rid of perks and gifts to politicians.  We need a constitutional amendment that says corporations are not people and money is not free speech.  I want a lot of things, [including] serious electoral reform.   [We should] abolish the electoral college.  Elections should be on national holidays so everyone can get there without restrictions.  [We need to] make government more representative.

Rachel Bulisky, 29

Recent transplant to Los Angeles from New Jersey

I have an accessory line, http://www.trashriot.com/.  I do necklaces.  But I haven't made anything lately because I'm homeless.  I have a BA in fine arts from Montclair State in New Jersey.  Now I'm $20,000 in debt and I'm on the street.  I majored in artistic welding.  But you need electricity and a blowtorch.  So now I do wire wrapping in my tent.  I used to sell in Venice, [but the store] got shut down.

I was on a bus. I saw all these tents.  I got off to see what was going on.  Someone asked if I needed a place, and gave me a tent.  At the same time, these people were protesting all the things I hate.  The government is totally messed up.  Everybody here can agree on one thing:  Things are not right.  There are a lot of frustrated people and nowhere to go with that.  There's a lot of energy.  It's not like we all say the same thing.  It is a meeting ground and a shelter where we can all throw around ideas.

There have been a lot of beautiful moments.  It's been a meeting place of brilliant minds.  At least in one place, we're trying to work it out.  I learned how to crochet here.  We started a crochet circle.  We were making handbags out of scraps of materials.  It was a lot of fun.

J.D. Mcconnell, 33

Recently moved to Las Vegas from Los Angeles

I came to get money out of politics.  We have a system of legalized bribery and political puppeteering.  Before, I was not feeling like I had a political voice.  This is the first time I've felt like I had a voice.  If you get enough people together, you really can be heard.

 Allan Eaton, 33

Ontario

The key issue is our economic and financial situation.  It is important that we do the most we can to bring attention to it, so future generations won't see the noose getting tighter and tighter around their necks.  It seems like a class war.  The wealth has been unequally distributed and too many people are losing their homes.  Too many are homeless.  Too many veterans are coming home from war and not getting the treatment they need.

I gave up a job [to join Occupy L.A.].  I found an occupation.  Separating myself from my work life, social life, home life, I see more of who I am.  I have separated myself from everything I know.  Sometimes it is weird.  I'm used to getting up and going to work.  Seeing the spectators.  Having a social life, going to hear music, bands.  Getting beers with friends.  Shooting billiards.  All those things are of so little significance.  This is more important for the future of this country.

The message is economic justice. That is it. 

Too Big to Fail: The Movement -- And Everybody Needs One, Every Day

A Movement Too Big To Fail 

Chris Hedges, TruthDig 
October 17, 2011


There is no danger that the protesters who have occupied squares, parks and plazas across the nation in defiance of the corporate state will be co-opted by the Democratic Party or groups like MoveOn.  The faux liberal reformers, whose abject failure to stand up for the rights of the poor and the working class, have signed on to this movement because they fear becoming irrelevant.  Union leaders, who pull down salaries five times that of the rank and file as they bargain away rights and benefits, know the foundations are shaking.  So do Democratic politicians from Barack Obama to Nancy Pelosi.  So do the array of “liberal” groups and institutions, including the press, that have worked to funnel discontented voters back into the swamp of electoral politics and mocked those who called for profound structural reform.

Resistance, real resistance, to the corporate state was displayed when a couple of thousand protesters, clutching mops and brooms, early Friday morning forced the owners of Zuccotti Park and the New York City police to back down from a proposed attempt to expel them in order to “clean” the premises.  These protesters in that one glorious moment did what the traditional “liberal” establishment has steadily refused to do-fight back.  And it was deeply moving to watch the corporate rats scamper back to their holes on Wall Street.  It lent a whole new meaning to the phrase “too big to fail.”

Tinkering with the corporate state will not work.  We will either be plunged into neo-feudalism and environmental catastrophe or we will wrest power from corporate hands.   This radical message, one that demands a reversal of the corporate coup, is one the power elite, including the liberal class, is desperately trying to thwart.  But the liberal class has no credibility left.  It collaborated with corporate lobbyists to neglect the rights of tens of millions of Americans, as well as the innocents in our imperial wars.  The best that liberals can do is sheepishly pretend this is what they wanted all along.  Groups such as MoveOn and organized labor will find themselves without a constituency unless they at least pay lip service to the protests.  The Teamsters’ arrival Friday morning to help defend the park signaled an infusion of this new radicalism into moribund unions rather than a co-opting of the protest movement by the traditional liberal establishment.  The union bosses, in short, had no choice.

The Occupy Wall Street movement, like all radical movements, has obliterated the narrow political parameters.  It proposes something new.  It will not make concessions with corrupt systems of corporate power.  It holds fast to moral imperatives regardless of the cost.  It confronts authority out of a sense of responsibility.  It is not interested in formal positions of power.  It is not seeking office.  It is not trying to get people to vote.  It has no resources.  It can’t carry suitcases of money to congressional offices or run millions of dollars of advertisements.  All it can do is ask us to use our bodies and voices, often at personal risk, to fight back.  It has no other way of defying the corporate state.  This rebellion creates a real community instead of a managed or virtual one.  It affirms our dignity.  It permits us to become free and independent human beings.

Martin Luther King was repeatedly betrayed by liberal supporters, especially when he began to challenge economic forms of discrimination, which demanded that liberals, rather than simply white Southern racists, begin to make sacrifices.  King too was a radical.  He would not compromise on nonviolence, racism or justice.  He understood that movements-such as the Liberty Party, which fought slavery, the suffragists, who fought for women’s rights, the labor movement and the civil rights movement-have always been the true correctives in American democracy.  None of those movements achieved formal political power.  But by holding fast to moral imperatives they made the powerful fear them.  King knew that racial equality was impossible without economic justice and an end to militarism.  And he had no intention of ceding to the demands of the liberal establishment that called on him to be calm and patience.  “For years, I labored with the idea of reforming the existing institutions in the South, a little change here, a little change there,” King said shortly before he was assassinated.  “Now I feel quite differently.  I think you’ve got to have a reconstruction of the entire system, a revolution of values.”

King was killed in 1968 when he was in Memphis to support a strike by sanitation workers.  By then he had begun to say that his dream, the one that the corporate state has frozen into a few safe clichés from his 1963 speech in Washington, had turned into a nightmare.  King called at the end of his life for massive federal funds to rebuild inner cities, what he called “a radical redistribution of economic and political power,” a complete restructuring of “the architecture of American society.”  He grasped that the inequities of capitalism had become the instrument by which the poor would always remain poor.  “Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism,” King said, “but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all of God’s children.”  On the eve of King’s murder he was preparing to organize a poor people’s march on Washington, D.C., designed to cause “major, massive dislocations,” a nonviolent demand by the poor, including the white underclass, for a system of economic equality.  It would be 43 years before his vision was realized by an eclectic group of protesters who gathered before the gates of Wall Street.

The truth of America is understood only when you listen to voices in our impoverished rural enclaves, prisons and the urban slums, when you hear the words of our unemployed, those who have lost their homes or cannot pay their medical bills, our elderly and our children, especially the quarter of the nation’s children who depend on food stamps to eat, and all who are marginalized.  There is more reality expressed about the American experience by the debt-burdened young men and women protesting in the parks than by all the chatter of the well-paid pundits and experts that pollutes the airwaves.

What kind of nation is it that spends far more to kill enemy combatants and Afghan and Iraqi civilians than it does to help its own citizens who live below the poverty line?  What kind of nation is it that permits corporations to hold sick children hostage while their parents frantically bankrupt themselves to save their sons and daughters?  What kind of nation is it that tosses its mentally ill onto urban heating grates?  What kind of nation is it that abandons its unemployed while it loots its treasury on behalf of speculators?  What kind of nation is it that ignores due process to torture and assassinate its own citizens?  What kind of nation is it that refuses to halt the destruction of the ecosystem by the fossil fuel industry, dooming our children and our children’s children?

“America,” Langston Hughes wrote, “never was America to me.”

“The black vote mean [nothing],” the rapper Nas intones.  “Who you gunna elect/ Satan or Satan? In the hood nothing is changing,/ We aint got no choices.”

Or listen to hip-hop artist Talib Kweli:  “Back in the ’60s, there was a big push for black … politicians, and now we have more than we ever had before, but our communities are so much worse.  A lot of people died for us to vote, I’m aware of that history, but these politicians are not in touch with people at all.  Politics is not the truth to me, it’s an illusion.”

The liberal class functions in a traditional, capitalist democracy as a safety valve.  It lets off enough steam to keep the system intact.  It makes piecemeal and incremental reform possible.  This is what happened during the Great Depression and the New Deal.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s greatest achievement was that he saved capitalism.  Liberals in a functioning capitalist democracy are at the same time tasked with discrediting radicals, whether it is King, especially after he denounced the war in Vietnam, or later Noam Chomsky or Ralph Nader.

The stupidity of the corporate state is that it thought it could dispense with the liberal class.  It thought it could shut off that safety valve in order to loot and pillage with no impediments.  Corporate power forgot that the liberal class, when it functions, gives legitimacy to the power elite.  And the reduction of the liberal class to silly courtiers, who have nothing to offer but empty rhetoric, meant that the growing discontent found other mechanisms and outlets.  Liberals were reduced to stick figures, part of an elaborate pantomime, as they acted in preordained roles to give legitimacy to meaningless and useless political theater.  But that game is over.

Human history has amply demonstrated that once those in positions of power become redundant and impotent, yet retain the trappings and privileges of power, they are brutally discarded.  The liberal class, which insists on clinging to its positions of privilege while at the same time refusing to play its traditional role within the democratic state, has become a useless and despised appendage of corporate power.  And as the engines of corporate power pollute and poison the ecosystem and propel us into a world where there will be only masters and serfs, the liberal class, which serves no purpose in the new configuration, is being abandoned and discarded by both the corporate state and radical dissidents.  The best it can do is attach itself meekly to the new political configuration rising up to replace it.

An ineffectual liberal class means there is no hope of a correction or a reversal through the formal mechanisms of power.  It ensures that the frustration and anger among the working and the middle class will find expression now in these protests that lie outside the confines of democratic institutions and the civilities of a liberal democracy.  By emasculating the liberal class, which once ensured that restive citizens could institute moderate reforms, the corporate state has created a closed system defined by polarization, gridlock and political charades.  It has removed the veneer of virtue and goodness that the liberal class offered to the power elite.

Liberal institutions, including the church, the press, the university, the Democratic Party, the arts and labor unions, set the parameters for limited self-criticism in a functioning democracy as well as small, incremental reforms.  The liberal class is permitted to decry the worst excesses of power and champion basic human rights while at the same time endowing systems of power with a morality and virtue it does not possess.  Liberals posit themselves as the conscience of the nation.  They permit us, through their appeal to public virtues and the public good, to see ourselves and our state as fundamentally good.

But the liberal class, by having refused to question the utopian promises of unfettered capitalism and globalization and by condemning those who did, severed itself from the roots of creative and bold thought, the only forces that could have prevented the liberal class from merging completely with the power elite.  The liberal class, which at once was betrayed and betrayed itself, has no role left to play in the battle between us and corporate dominance.  All hope lies now with those in the street.

Liberals lack the vision and fortitude to challenge dominant free market ideologies.  They have no ideological alternatives even as the Democratic Party openly betrays every principle the liberal class claims to espouse, from universal health care to an end to our permanent war economy to a demand for quality and affordable public education to a return of civil liberties to a demand for jobs and welfare of the working class.  The corporate state forced the liberal class to join in the nation’s death march that began with the presidency of Ronald Reagan.  Liberals such as Bill Clinton, for corporate money, accelerated the dismantling of our manufacturing base, the gutting of our regulatory agencies, the destruction of our social service programs and the empowerment of speculators who have trashed our economy.  The liberal class, stripped of power, could only retreat into its atrophied institutions, where it busied itself with the boutique activism of political correctness and embraced positions it had previously condemned.

Russell Jacoby writes:  “The left once dismissed the market as exploitative; it now honors the market as rational and humane.  The left once disdained mass culture as exploitative; now it celebrates it as rebellious.  The left once honored independent intellectuals as courageous; now it sneers at them as elitist.  The left once rejected pluralism as superficial; now it worships it as profound.  We are witnessing not simply a defeat of the left, but its conversion and perhaps inversion.”

Hope in this age of bankrupt capitalism comes with the return of the language of class conflict and rebellion, language that has been purged from the lexicon of the liberal class, language that defines this new movement.  This does not mean we have to agree with Karl Marx, who advocated violence and whose worship of the state as a utopian mechanism led to another form of enslavement of the working class, but we have to learn again to speak in the vocabulary Marx employed.  We have to grasp, as Marx and Adam Smith did, that corporations are not concerned with the common good.  They exploit, pollute, impoverish, repress, kill and lie to make money.  They throw poor families out of homes, let the uninsured die, wage useless wars to make profits, poison and pollute the ecosystem, slash social assistance programs, gut public education, trash the global economy, plunder the U.S. Treasury and crush all popular movements that seek justice for working men and women.  They worship money and power.  And, as Marx knew, unfettered capitalism is a revolutionary force that consumes greater and greater numbers of human lives until it finally consumes itself.  The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is the perfect metaphor for the corporate state.  It is part of the same nightmare experienced in postindustrial mill towns of New England and the abandoned steel mills of Ohio.  It is a nightmare that Iraqis, Pakistanis and Afghans, living in terror and mourning their dead, endure daily.

What took place early Friday morning in Zuccotti Park was the first salvo in a long struggle for justice.  It signaled a step backward by the corporate state in the face of popular pressure.  And it was carried out by ordinary men and women who sleep at night on concrete, get soaked in rainstorms, eat donated food and have nothing as weapons but their dignity, resilience and courage.  It is they, and they alone, who hold out the possibility of salvation.  And if we join them we might have a chance.

Spiritual Humanism

Spiritual Humanism

PROUT is founded on the assumption that matter is not separate from consciousness but is rather a metamorphosed form of it.  Similarly, consciousness, is not the result of mental activity but rather thought is also a form of consciousness.  It is Consciousness that underlies psycho-physical reality and provides the inspiration for a rational view of life, moral integrity, and spiritual wisdom.

Spirituality and morality should not be equated with religious dogma and faith in God.  All religions are frankly dualist systems that separate humans from their creator and the creation.  The rationalist rebels against theology - Descartes, Leibnitz, and Kant - also failed to escape the vicious circle of dualism.  To offer security, religion impressed upon people the need to submit before the imaginary will of God or a theological ethical code, sanctioned by the scriptures and defined by religious institutions.  Morality in this sense, however, is the absence of freedom.

A philosophy based on spiritual and moral values, on the other hand, is able to explain human existence - including desire, emotion, instincts, intuition, will and reason - as an integrated framework and do so in a way that is accessible to human comprehension.  Such a philosophy is required to build the new social organism and political institutions capable of fostering not only the harmonious relations of all races and cultural groups, but also the harmonious relation of human beings with all animate and inanimate objects.

Human existence is physical, mental and spiritual, with progress as an evolutionary continuum into higher consciousness and ultimately to the state of absolute freedom.   Simultaneously, spiritual progress can only be attained on a firm physical and mental base.  This physical and intellectual base has to be progressively adjusted to changing conditions of time and space.  The natural human aspiration is to achieve freedom in all three spheres.

In our march towards freedom we cannot neglect other living beings.  We have to develop a social system where all living beings can live securely, and where people can move towards emancipation by freeing their minds from superstition and dogma.  This universalistic spirit is NeoHumanism or Spiritual Humanism.  Human history thus far is a story of ruling classes trying to enhance their own social and material wealth at the cost of human values.  This is why temples, churches, scriptures, laws, constitutions, corporations and international trade agreements have become more important than human beings.  To confront this, PROUT maintains that a fundamental human philosophy is required to cement a new social system and not the changing social values based on self-interest embodied in contemporary ruling institutions.

Human values find their root in transpersonal essence, spirituality.  Spirituality is not mystic speculation of life after death, but is realized in relation to the manifest universe.  The philosophy of monism, which postulates the self to be in union with the rest of the universe and responsible for its well-being, is the essence of spiritual humanism.  Sarkar wrote in his book Neo-Humanism in a Nutshell:  Part 1:  “What does the state stand for, what is the use of these regulations, and what is the march of civilization for, if human beings don't get a chance to build a good physical well-being, to invigorate their intelligence with knowledge, and to broaden their hearts with love and compassion?   Instead of leading humanity to the goal of life, if the State stands in the way, then it cannot command loyalty, because humanity is superior to the State.”  

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Political Democracy can and will be fortuitous when Economic Democracy is established.   Explore this and other articles covering alternative economics, ethical leadership, economic democracy, and a society without the weal and woe of social and economic vicissitudes HERE   How does PROUT compare or contrast with capitalism or communism?  Explore the answers HERE What are essential ingredients assuring progressive sustainability bereft of the vicissitudes of economic or political predation, privation or disparity?  Learn more HERE  http://gplus.to/ProgressiveSustainability