Friday, October 31, 2008

"We" is Socialist

"What saddens me most is your naivety in believing any county on this planet can successfully have an egalitarian society."

I don't think any country on this planet can successfully have an egalitarian society. Reality does not accomodate egalitarian societies; reality does not accomodate ideals. The question is what we're striving for.

The ironic part of the conversation is what I articulated before, that we have to pick between these two:
1) Mutual Survival.
2) Individual Survival.

What's weird about that is to apply Darwinian notions about survival. In a Darwinian sense? Conservativism is correct; individual beings struggle for survival in competition against other individual beings. Particular instances of change manifest over time and those particular beings in which the change is manifest either live or die, either pass it on or fail to replicate. But then you combine that with the fact that we are social creatures. And what's left is a dichotomy to reality itself. We're each a particular manifestation of a particular genetic heritage. But we are also partners in a social enterprise. No man is an island, in terms of survival, but every man is an island, in terms of preserving its own survival. Yet, of course, to pass on that genetic heritage we have to fuck someone else. So, again, social.

What the question comes down to is which we focus upon; which reality we pick.

Yet while each reality (individual or social) has its foundations I do not think that the individual reality, conservativism, is the reality towards which we're striving. And that's the key: "we're striving".

The Conservative mindset, economically, is that Bill Gates worked hard, made money, and so that money is his. The problem is that this mindset fails to acknowledge the social apparatus by which Bill Gates was sustained in his working. It's not the case that Bill Gates worked hard and amassed an abundance of money. Bill Gates utilized a social aparatus whereby he could amass that money. Or take the small business owner. They take a risk, they start a business. But the survival of that business is not the result soley of that business' primary investor; it is part of a social structure. One individual may have contributed a significant amount of time, but a society maintained that individual. Farmers provided food. Builders provided shelter and transit. Energy manufacturers provided energy.

Existence is a collective enterprise. We are not independent beings estranged from one another. Life on Earth exists as a result of energy from the sun. The tides move as a result of the gravitational pull of the Moon. You eat food someone else grew. You wear clothing someone else stitched. It's all inter-connected; it is all social.

So, yeah, in a Darwinian sense Conservative economic policies are sensible. In the sense that we are all in competition for survival? Of course it makes sense to focus upon economics of competition, to pit companies against one another.

But to embrace that mentality is to ignore the social implications of what occurs when Business A wins and Business B has to shut down. And, yeah, we can embrace the Darwinian notion that when Business B dies the individuals whose livelihood was maintained via Business B are fucked and so be it, that's reality.

But I don't think we really believe that. And, truly, I don't think we can even fully view it that way. Because we're social beings. Business B's failure and the social fallout of that impacts all beings within the society.

So we just have to pick which understanding of reality we will operate within. Except that we've already picked it: "we". My fellow Americans. My brothers and sisters. Our task. Change we can believe in. Country First.

We can say that we're free-market capitalists. We can say that we're for competition in the marketplace. We can say that we are independent entities whose amassed possessions and wealth are our own. But we don't really believe that.

We're not isolated beings. We're not really in competition. We're in competition insofar as there are a finite amount of resources available. But the bigger picture is that we're all co-dependent beings who are not self-sufficient but rather exist within a reality which is fundamentally not isolated and independent but rather enmeshed and social. "Your" car was made by someone else, fueled with fuel obtained by someone else, a composition of parts made by a plethora of companies each of which employ a plethora of beings.

So why cling to the notion that those items we mistakenly consider our own are our own? Why do the whole individual property thing?

I obtained "my" Tier 6 gloves as a result of the combined efforts of 24 other people. So in what sense are they mine? They're not. They exist within the social continuum by which they were obtained and are sustained; they exist as a particular manifestation of a social, communal, co-dependent chain of inter-related events.

As does everything.

And that's not egalitarian. That's a description of reality. Damn it.

5 comments:

_J_ said...

We were arguing about Socialism on the Guild Forum. Some cock shitter construed a statement I made as "egalitarian" and "idealism". So I wrote the reply which you, presumably, just read.

I posted it on the blog because I thought Caleb might like it. Sometimes he enjoys words I write.

Now I'm going to go back to listening to The Cure.

Mike Lewis said...

Dugg!

Mike Lewis said...

favorite the cure song

Caleb said...

I did like it -- especially the part of me that thought it was a good idea to read Atlas Shrugged this summer.

The Cure rocks! or, at least, The Cure plays music...

_J_ said...

What did I tell you about sharing? That's right. IT STRENGTHENS THE WEAK!

Oh, Ayn Rand...