The Whole And The Parts
You all know the saying: "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts." You also know it's true: part of me is useless without the rest of me. Cut off my hand, and my hand becomes useless. Remove one wheel from a car and the car becomes useless. You know it's true, so why not extend that truth to human society?
source: Needpix.com
This is part of what's wrong with the neoliberal doctrine; it reduces everything to the level of the individual and ignores society as a whole, the sum of its individual parts. It's the basic difference between the competing ideologies that have dominated our era; opposite the prevailing free market dogma that has captured the collective mindset we find ideologies that focus on the whole. The polar opposite, communism, can rightly be criticized, at least in the ways we've seen it implemented on large scales so far, for losing sight of the importance of the individual parts; individuals don't enjoy a lot of freedom under the authoritarian governments that claim to adhere to communism. The problem here is that this is a difference on an entirely different scale: authoritarianism stands opposite to democracy and freedom. In other words: left and right, communist and capitalist governments can both be of the authoritarian and democratic flavor; you have to face the reality that most authoritarian regimes rule over capitalist countries, or state-capitalist countries to be more precise. And the dictators that play the state-capitalist game under our rules, are the dictators we like; Saddam of Iraq and the Shah from Iran once were such dictators, they were "our" dictators.
But this you should know already; what I'm trying here is to make you think about basic principles and basic realities in life, one of them being that the sum really IS greater than the sum of its parts. There would be chaos if that weren't true. Everything in our reality that means anything exists because individual, meaningless parts coalesce into a greater and meaningful whole. When the parts coexist and collaborate in a harmonious way, the whole becomes more than all of them together; this is true even about the letters in this sentence. It's true for life itself, including the life that produced these sentences. I am, you are the living proof of the truth behind the whole being greater than its parts. And so is everything we've been able to achieve by slowly expanding the size of our tribes. Set aside any socioeconomic principle or ideology for a moment, and I think we can all agree that humanities tangible achievements are the result of our ability to communicate, organize and cooperate, our ability to add many parts to an organized collective aimed at reaching a common goal. If I had to build my own house, it would be a wooden cabin at best; everything that I own above and beyond that imaginary wooden cabin, I own solely because of the truth about the whole and the parts. And in our modern society that rests on the achievements of many prior generations of organized human collaboration, this is true for almost everything I own. I can not claim to be the sole creator of this post, for I am not the sole motivation behind it, and I did not create the PC I've used to type it out, let alone the internet and blockchain technologies that made it possible to reach you, dear reader.
It sometimes baffles me how we live in such deep denial of life's deepest truths; in the way we're taught to view reality, I AM the sole creator of this post, which is simply not true. The erroneous idea that "freedom" is something to be regarded from the perspective of the individual is but one example of our collective ability to deny basic truths. Freedom can only be achieved by focusing on the well-being of the whole of society. What is freedom? Well, the fact that I did not have to build my own house is freedom, the fact that it's so much more than just a wooden cabin is freedom. What I'm getting at is the different kinds of freedoms, and the order in which they are achieved; there's "freedom from" and there's the "freedom to" kinds of freedom. There's the freedom to be allowed and able to do, say, think things. And there's the freedom that comes with being free from worries, free from fears, free from hunger, free from disease. I hope you can already see the order in which they are achieved; first we have to be free from the things that hinder our freedom to do things. And all the things we need to be free from, are the things provided by the whole that consists of harmoniously and purposefully organized and cooperating parts. They're all the result of synergy, from the Greek word "synergia" which means "working together."
We've reached a time in history when we've technically and scientifically progressed to the point that we can provide basic freedom and happiness for all passengers on spaceship Earth. We can all be free, but only by realizing that to achieve that we need all of us working together. Starting on a somewhat smaller and more comfortable scale, America needs to realize that healthcare becomes cheaper and way more efficient when it's treated as a universal right, when every individual part of society is equally invested and pays an equal share for equal benefits. Don't look at it as becoming more dependent on government, but see the basic truth behind it and say that it's okay, no necessary even to lean and build upon the benefits we've created as a society in this and previous generations. When it's "our healthcare" instead of "my healthcare", you've achieved another step towards true freedom, the kind of freedom only found in the fruits of our collective efforts. This is why all individual freedoms start with recognizing the power of the whole, not with embellishing the power of the individual, which unfortunately is the prevailing mindset of modern day homo economicus. I hope you can now see what's wrong with that mindset... In closing I share with you a video about and containing a beautiful ad for the Bernie Sanders campaign, one that's extremely synergistic in nature.
Sometimes it feels like our world is falling apart, but REAL change is all around us.
Every conversation, protest, canvass, and donation fuels our movement.
Stay focused.
source: Twitter - @People4Bernie
Beautiful New Bernie Sanders Ad Is A Must-Share
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