My Message to OWS/Occupy Together

(1)
OWS: 'Occupy Wall Street to Obama: Don't Be Big Banks' Puppet; No Immunity Deal for Crooks' (5/11)

kibitzer November 6

Go for real change, OWS. Build on your non-violent base, and refusal to be painted into a simple left-wing box; ie, expecting to find a solution on the same level as the problem.

Now that the historical process has gone global, humanity can enthrone their better natures. The answer to the current dilemma - and to its systemic roots - is to do away with interest-bearing money altogether. (We don't REALLY want the moneychangers running the world, do we??)

All people need, to give to a system of their time and labor, is a motive. The profit motive is one; and its concomitant reward in personal aggrandizement. But it's only one motive; and a relatively rudimentary one at that. Hardly befitting of a mature race of beings, with, now, a good level of technology, capable of providing enough, in goods and services, for all, with a proper husbanding of resources.

And the socialist model is also one, of producing 'for use, not for profit'. And it would seem to be a more sensible system, especially now, with the capitalist system's need for constant growth placing such a terrible burden on the planet's resources, and causing so much environmental havoc, with its insatiable need for markets and such, like a bicycler pedaling furiously in order to keep upright. But 'been there; done that': the socialist system has been found wanting every place it has been tried. Why?

Because it has been wedded to a command and control system of governance - organization, and power wielding, from the top down. Not the bottom up; from The People. And not with a sufficient take on the 'human nature thing'. Treating the human being merely as a 'clever mammal' (or worse: as a 'killer ape', and so needing to be controlled strenuously).

I've got a better idea. How about treating us humans as 'spiritual beings having a human experience'. And thus, with a higher part of our natures, just waiting to be harnessed, to produce a system wherein The People share their goods and services - and give of their best in the process - out of a higher motive for doing. Out of the highest there is: out of gratitude to their Creator for life with meaning. So that the system runs on, in a word: Love.

Oh! - but that would require...what. Believing in a religion? No. Just accepting our fundamental nature, as - in an expression - 'not of this world'. 'This world' being just one realm, one dimension, of possibly many; as our modern-day scientists are telling us, about 'the nature of reality' - as accurately as they can, at least, with their current set of instruments, and level of deductive reasoning.

I'm not asking anybody to 'believe' in anything. I'm asking everybody to wake up, and realize that we have been involved in a play, wherein 'we' take on many parts - now a prince, now a pauper; now male, now female; now of one race or nationality or religion, now another - in order to...what.

To grow up. In wisdom, and compassion. And now we're ready for graduate school; on lovely old, beleaguered old, planet Earth. Now asking of us our best.

It's a crowning moment. Let's take it. And good on you, OWS, for helping us do so. [get there]


(2) To: wouldsocialismwork.com

[N.B. This site has a very uncompromising take on a socialistic model - not just a system without money, and everything held in common, but work being purely voluntary.]

kibitzer 7/11

Thank you, Gus, for setting up this forum. These are important questions, that need to be considered, especially with the straits that the world is in these days. Consideration of alternatives is a legitimate exercise.

My two cents' worth. (1) I see the society of the future as having tokens representing value - 'it' can even be called money; just not in the classical definition, ie, of interest-bearing money. Rather, more like a LETS system - for services rendered to the system; so that individuals can accumulate those tokens towards 'purchase' of things that by their nature are not available to everybody; eg, a beachfront property in Southern California*. (Although I like your idea of time sharing; in some of these sorts of situations.) People can spend their tokens any way they wish to. But this requires them to give service for services rendered to them in return. The system runs on Love; but practical Love. (Loafers need not apply.) And speaking of:

(2) Such a system can't/won't take place in a moral vacuum. The trouble with classical socialism is that it doesn't provide any real reason for people to be 'good'. In its rejection of 'religion' it throws the baby out with the bathwater. The reason why it will/could work is by offering a motive other than/greater than the current one of profit. Just offering a feel-good reason - wouldn't it be nice if people were nice to each other, and would do all things for each other - doesn't cut it. Either there is a purpose to the whole shebang of life, or there is not. If there is not - ie, nothing to life beyond just in and for itself only - then nothing really matters anyway, and we are simply wasting our time discussing such what-ifs. (The killer ape will, eventually, rule, in that vacuum.) If there is, however, then certain things follow. It follows, for one thing, that we have a legitimate, and intelligent, and powerful, motive for human behavior and activity; and thus the system will - could - work on the definitive motive of gratitude to our Creator for life with meaning. On, in a word: Love.

Now THAT sort of society could - would - work. Absent that real reason for being - that there is a Plan in and Purpose to life, beyond just a state of human comfort - I really wouldn't hold out much hope for your proposed society. That one really would be Utopian - ie, not "viable". And I don't wish you well on the waste of time devoted to its promulgation. Except as a point of consideration, in getting to the real thing - the true Synthesis of the historical process that humanity has been engaged in. Which is just waiting for us to get to it.

So let's get to it. [As in: enough beating around the burning bush.]



[* which had been referenced in his reply to a poster, as a question regarding how to deal with such things]



A few points, especially regarding (2) above.

+ TINA - There Is No Alternative - is not alive and well any longer. So the greedy money grubbers - worshipping at the altar of Mammon - can just put their smirks away.

+ I can't emphasise enough what key element the 'alternative' - the change - requires: a raising of consciousness, beyond the current level of consciousness. Gus, and others advocating a socialistic model, seem to think that the prospect of a cushy life is reason enough for it to work. They seem not to be fully aware of the extent of 'human nature' in any such a model, sans a real reason for being. This attitude seems to be due to an educational system that has inculcated the idea in its students that most things are essentially 'nurture' in nature - environmentally induced and encoded. Thus the feminist belief that there is no real difference in the sexes; and thus the Marxist-Leninist belief in The New Soviet Man. If only. (I'll return to this matter of our 'human nature', and its full extent, in a moment.) Somewhat similar to this point, but taking it a step further:

+ I can't emphasise enough how important a full, complete understanding of 'life' is to a successful transformation into a new model of society on Earth.
I repeat: Either there is a 'God' - something more than Man; a transcendent aspect to Man - or there is not. If there is not, then nothing really matters anyway, and one might as well live exclusively for oneself (& one's family) - independent of the effect of that pursuit on others - as not; for the end of the closed system of life can, then, as easily be seen as that as anything else, a presumed evolutionary advantage to a certain degree of cooperation, or whatever. If there is, however, then certain things follow. It follows, for one area of consideration, that there is Plan in and Purpose to the life experience - and it would behoove us to find out what that Plan and Purpose package is. That's number one. And number two: If there is, then we need to stop being silly - caught up in, mesmerized by, the play we are in - have created, to amuse ourselves; like a video game - and start 'acting' as if it were indeed true. Not as if it were not, as we are doing at present. And have done, for long enough.

In 1976 - the year I joined a spiritual community; to try to further the evolution of consciousness on this planet as best I could (and to be with like-minded others in the process) - Zecharia Sitchin had his first book on the origins of civilization on the planet published. It was - is - called 'The 12th Planet', and it chronicled, from the records left behind by the civilization we know as Sumer, the story of our beginnings as Homo sapiens.* It was the Missing Link, for me, and for science - if 'they' had bothered checking it out. But 'they' were too involved in playing their parts in the human drama, to understand that that was all that they were doing. We have suffered enough, from 'their' oversight.**

It is the missing piece to our story on this planet. We had already known about the phenomenon we call reincarnation - and have added immensely to that knowledge in the years since I personally first came across it in depth, in my research on such matters in the New York Public Library in 1955-56. But we hadn't known, except for the account in Genesis in the Old Testament - which seems rather fairytale-like - of our human origins. How did our souls - our individuated sparks of Divinity, growing in consciousness through lifetimes after lifetimes (and accruing and discharging karma in the process) - get encased in these bodies that we inhabit for a time, on this material level of existence?? Yes, we COULD have started as one-celled organisms, and worked our way up through all the kingdoms of Nature, to this particular state of individuation; but there was something tantalizing in the Genesis account of our origins, that leaped us from such lowly beginnings, to the form we are in now. Yes, the model has aspects of being a 'clever mammal' - and yes, has the capacity, the potential, of being a 'killer ape'. But it was obvious that we were more, much more, than that...

I won't belabour the point. I am just saying that, left alone with our material vehicle, and having lost contact with our transcendent aspect, we could, and will, do terrible things, as we play the parts of territorial apes - but always with that other consciousness lurking in the background of our being; telling us - nagging us - that what we are doing, more often than not, is wrong.

It's time to let that part of our makeup - our 'human nature' - come to the fore, and take over. Acknowledging our true Source.

That we come, not only from the earth, and from the stars. But beyond.

---

* The story of that unfolding, in a nutshell, in Sitchin's own words:
"I was a schoolboy, privileged to study the Bible in its original language, Hebrew. We reached the story of the Great Flood in the book of Genesis, where it is stated that it was at that time that the Nefilim were upon the Earth, who went on to marry the daughters of Man. The teacher explained that the story speaks of giants who were then upon the Earth. I raised my hand and pointed out that the word literally meant those who have descended, who have come down (in the context) from the heavens to Earth. For that, instead of being complimented, I was reprimanded. 'You don't question the Bible!' the teacher roared..."
Ah. We have been fighting that battle for a long time. The battle with our teachers; who are the experts, and who are we, the pupils, to question them???
Vanity. It will kill us yet.
(Hopefully not.)


** 'They', of course, are just 'us', playing a different part. A different facet of 'us'. 'We' being one another. Over and over. Until 'we' get, that We Are One. And become One again, with our Source.
Which We already Are. The little 'we' just has a ways to go, yet.
But 'we' are getting there...



(the quote of Sitchin's from 'Of Heaven and Earth: Essays Presented at the First Sitchin Studies Day. Introduced and Edited by Zecharia Sitchin.' The Book Tree, Escondido, CA; 1996)