Artificial Problems, Artificial Answers

Guest post by Dan, aka Auntiegrav…

Greed isn’t a problem. It’s actually a useful behavior.

Money isn’t a solution to anything: it’s simply an invention that makes itself seem useful. Some things are like that — if you didn’t know about them, you wouldn’t want them, but once they are invented, they become cultural comfort food that soothes the inflated fears of our imagination. Greed (hoarding) is a way to feel comfortable about a future by storing up some food or spears in a cave.

We can see how that can turn into a problem when an elderly relative reaches the point where his house is no longer navigable due to the piles of saved newspapers and other paraphernalia. Banks hoarding money becomes a problem not because the money is “out of circulation”, but because the usefulness which people put into creating that money is out of circulation and rotting while other people who are waiting for the services or products that the money represents go hungry or homeless. Money, and especially electronic money, makes it easy to virtually hoard, but like saving vegetables, it can sometimes rot, and when rotten money is used, it rots the guts out of the people using it. We easily blame the money, because it is visible, or we blame the person, because they are made visible in a perp walk. What we don’t consider, though, is the Virtual part of the predicament.

Freedom Guerrilla had a recent post about Men and Money, and the lack of Real Man problems to work on. Whether rich or poor in New York, the game is rigged by the jungle of buildings that isolate the participants from the predatory randomness of the natural world which spawned humankind. In the concrete jungle, problems are both exaggerated and trivialized at the whim of imagination and ego. Real needs are ignored, food is an afterthought, shelter becomes a product of the trading of virtual usefulness (rent) at the whims of contracted supply and propagandized demand.

The artificial environment is indistinguishable from the natural one to the subconscious animal which comprises most of the action motivations of the human being. To make claims that “everyone should live in a cave and live tribally” would be as false as claiming we can “conquer nature” or “live” in space. (Astronauts do not “live” in space: they temporarily reside in that toxic environment for only as long as their bones and bodies can stand to decay there. They, like the 5000 cows in a factory farm, are dying at an accelerated rate. The difference between these artificial environments is that we don’t eat the astronauts at the end of their “life-spending period”.)

Government and corporations have grown out of the artificial problems of the detachment of money. People have learned to follow the behaviors of the corporate detachment from real actions and become “limited liability” minds themselves (Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back). Most are more worried about how crime affects their property value (hoarded virtual value) than the safety of their neighbors (immediate reality). With so many neighbors and so few buildings, of course the value of people vs. buildings is lopsided to the immediate senses.

Charles Hugh Smith (Survival+: Structuring Prosperity for Yourself and the Nation) points out that “self-discipline defines our strength, not trash-talk”. In humanity’s history, one cultural behavior has recurred because of its usefulness: physical games with rules. Modern competition has become results-oriented, based on money and chance, but the recurring theme is to have some form of rule-based sport.

“It isn’t whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.” In some ways, it’s really the fact that you PLAY that counts. I think that the only time we really make a conscious choice with our ‘rider’ is when we can stop the ‘elephant’ of our natural emotional beast. In sport, this means we allow our beast to run and run and fight and reach new physical heights of power, but in Stopping The Beast, we also reach new heights of consciousness and discipline. To focus on only the conscious brain, detached from the body, we create only virtual beasts and problems to fight over. Focusing only on the physical creates real monsters that we cannot control.

Humanity’s usefulness and potential are defined by the ability to Tame the Beast, not to eliminate it or deny it exists. Failing to work as complete humans, we create virtual beasts (petroleum demand) which we fail to be able to control when the time comes that it needs controlling. Using money as the definition of success has led us to simply unleashing the beasts all over the planet and waiting to see which one comes out on top.

Unleashing is easy: just ask the Reaganites. Putting the harness back on the beasts without getting killed is the tough part. We usually end up shooting it and getting a new, younger one instead. The question is, “Can we put the System of Systems back into harness for the good of the future, or has it already grown beyond any harness we can make?” Something that big usually dies from a failed heart under the weight of crushing obesity. The children are not OUR future. They are THEIR future. Ours is running around in circles in the Gulf right now, waiting for someone to put it out of its misery.

Tagged as: money