Everything Is Suspect

This post is to make a point that is apparent throughout much of my writings, but one I never made explicit. That point is crystallized in the title; we live in a world in which the overarching paradigm creates an atmosphere of universal distrust, a society that teaches its participants that everything and everyone is suspect.

_{Image by Thomas Guest - source: Flickr}

Honesty, empathy, selflessness, self-sacrifice and yes, decency are signs of weakness in this world. To make it one needs to have a "killer instinct", something that most people, and certainly empathic people lack. Not that I haven't talked about him more than enough lately, but this could prove one of the main reasons Bernie Sanders will not win the primaries; he has nothing even resembling a killer instinct and goes out of his way to consider the feelings of his political and ideological adversaries. The fact that his campaign hasn't released a single negative attack ad could easily be perceived as political negligence, political malpractice even, but I believe it's just that this man is a genuinely compassionate person who's politics are driven by that deeply embedded compassion for his fellow humans.

And that's the thing; we were humane for hundreds of thousands of years when we lived as nomadic tribes. Those small societies were 100 percent egalitarian, and "private property" wasn't invented yet. The irony is that in those days scarcity was a real thing, and that the moment we started to produce surpluses we lost that egalitarian streak. From that moment on we began to make the distinction between producers and consumers, from that moment on we've been engaged in the class struggle we're still fighting right now. And the universal distrust that drives our individual and collective behavior today is rooted in that age old class divide. How can the 99 percent trust the 1 percent of the owner class when their overarching doctrine is one that prioritizes maximal personal gain? You make sure that this doctrine becomes common sense, that's how. The elites, who had a virtual monopoly on reading and writing skills for centuries, who were the teachers and leaders of "their" people, have shown us, have indoctrinated us with the idea that profits and competition are the life-blood of our collective betterment. This starkly inhumane prioritization of things is illustrated by Trump's recent decision to donate 1.5 trillion dollars to banks and multinationals, instead of dedicating this newly created money to the easing of the suffering of the middle class, working and poor people who will be struck hard by the corona pandemic. The delusion of profits and competition will once again cause tons of unnecessary suffering and deaths. Meanwhile the plutocrats will make out like bandits, and you can be sure that the saying "keep the problem going, so the money keeps flowing," will be acted upon by all those who gain from disaster capitalism.

_{Bernie Sanders HAMMERS $1.5 Trillion Wall Street Bailout}

But it's us to. We, the 99 percent, collectively and individually behave just like our "wise" political and intellectual leaders; centuries of capitalist indoctrination has had its effect on our cultural evolution. Stores are empty now because we all selfishly hoard food, bottled water and toilet paper in order to survive the upcoming shut-down of society as quarantine measures are taken all over the world to combat the pandemic; we don't care that there's no toilet paper left for the next customer. Why would we? That's just not how we function psychologically; survival of the fittest, remember? That's how well the indoctrination has worked; most of us really do believe that our selfish behavior is a key aspect of our biological and psychological evolution, and that there's just no point trying to overcome those primal instincts with rationality. That's not what I believe though, I'm stubborn like that ;-) I believe we are many things, sometimes selfish, other times selfless, and that those many things are geared toward the survival of our species, not mere individuals. And as a species we are social creatures, not solitary beasts. Which is why all tribal communities in all of human history have been egalitarian societies in which we shared, and in which "hoarding" was never invented.

The paradigm set by our material overlords has for centuries emphasized one aspect of our multi dimensional psyche; selfishness. It's normal to be selfish, and a sucker is born every day. It's why we can not trust ANYTHING coming from corporate backed media and politicians. It's you against the world, instead of you living in the world and with the world; that's why measures that are obvious and rational, like a Green New Deal to save the planet, need a revolution to become a reality. We are selfish to the extent that we don't care what happens to the generations that come after us. When you make personal gain, which is just a euphemism for selfishness, the heart and soul of individual and collective reasoning, exploitation of the Earth and 99 percent of its inhabitants, human and otherwise, is the result. It's what makes us a virus, the disease of this planet as mentioned by agent Smith in The Matrix, and maybe a virus will some day end our reign...

_{The Matrix - virus scene}

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