The Widening Gyre

Here’s a post that’s been languishing in my drafts folder for a very long time.  I banged out the last couple points I’d been planning to make, and here it is.

One very basic conservative view seems to be that it should not be the responsibility of people with more money to use it to help people with less money.  Because, after all, people who have money have earned it, and poor people have not.  As far as I can tell, this view is based on a few faulty assumptions about capitalism.  Here they are, as I see them.  I welcome criticism.

Assumption 1: Capitalism rewards hard work (or merit of any kind). This assumption is not 100% without truth.  It certainly is possible, in the right circumstances, to accumulate enough wealth through hard work, determination, ingenuity, etc. to alter one’s “socioeconomic class.”  However, this is the exception rather than the rule.  Hard work is not what capitalism is structured to primarily reward.  In fact, capitalism is structured so that laborers retain as little as possible of the wealth that they help produce. What capitalism is structured to reward most generously is having money to begin with. Or rather, having money and investing it.  A corporation is required by law to have as its primary motivation the financial benefit of its stockholders—people who (for the most part) do nothing but contribute money. As much as possible of the wealth created by a company’s economic activities must go to the investors.  This means that as little as possible must go to the laborers.  The reward for hard work is the smallest amount of money that people will do that work for.  Therefore the people who work the hardest are quite often the ones that make the least—the workers who harvest food, extract raw materials, and manufacture consumer goods. By design, capitalism constantly increases the disparity between rich and poor, by creating wealth and distributing that wealth in as uneven a manner as possible.

This disparity is exacerbated further by the fact that capital is allowed great freedom of movement, but labor is not.  Most of the people laboring to produce the goods consumed in the US live in other (poorer) countries.  So-called free trade policy (as well as centuries of official and unofficial colonialism) has ensured that rich people from rich countries can invest their money in poorer countries where labor is cheaper, and therefore profit margins are greater.  Of course, these profits go to the investors in rich countries.  This means that a huge portion of the wealth produced in so-called undeveloped or developing nations doesn’t actually stay in those nations.  And when the governments of poor countries have tried to to nationalize their industries—to keep the profits within the country—rich countries have supported often very brutal regime changes to ensure that this does not occur.  (For one of many examples, see Chile on September 11th, 1973)  And while massive state violence is used to safeguard capitalists’ ability to move their capital to the country where they will get the best return on their investment, state violence is also used to prevent laborers from migrating to the countries where they will get the best value for their labor.  So not only is capitalism designed to distribute the products of the “free market” overwhelmingly to those who already have money, but violent, coercive means are used to restrict the economic freedom of laborers to maneuver themselves to get the smallest share of a larger pie.

Manual laborers in poor countries aren’t the only ones who get the short end of the stick.  Anyone who makes money solely through their own labor is getting less than they could by investing money in someone else’s labor.  This includes relatively highly paid professionals—engineers, doctors, lawyers, etc. These professions garner more pay because otherwise people would be unwilling to invest the time and money necessary to be trained for them.  But the stockholders of the companies they work for still profit from their labor without having to do anything other than already have money.

Assumption 2: The capitalist economy consists of independent individuals making free decisions about wealth that they rightfully possess. This assumption has two parts.  One is that we rightfully possess our wealth.  I’ve hinted above at why this is problematic.  The wealth that people in capitalist society possess has been acquired through a long history of violent coercion.  If you live in the US, the land you live on, the land on which much of your food is grown, the land from which so many resources that you use have been extracted, was acquired through genocide.  Colonial policies backed by massive military violence have ensured that wealth is transferred into the hands of people in the privileged classes of certain nations.  Much of the wealth and infrastructure that white Americans have inherited was built by slave labor.  Examples could continue, but the point is that only if we turn a blind eye to this history can we reasonably claim that people who have money have an absolute right to dispose of their money as they wish, because it’s theirs.

The other part of this assumption is the existence of the independent individual.  I find it ironic that the iconic first-world independent middle class (male) individual is in fact in probably the most dependent economic position in history.  He depends on a vast chain of laborers for nearly every daily action that he takes.  Every item that I use, every meal I consume is the result of the efforts of dozens or hundreds of people, most of whom I’ve never met or even thought about.  And if they all stopped doing what they do, I’d be in a pretty sorry state.

The individual’s dependence extends further and deeper than economics.  Here I’m venturing into a more philosophical realm that has perhaps a somewhat tenuous connection with the argument I’m attempting to refute, but I think it is relevant to some of the assumptions that underlie capitalism.  The individual is dependent on her social environment for her very identity.  Who and what each of us thinks she is, the values and inclinations upon which we base our decisions, the concepts and vocabulary that we use to navigate the world, are all created in a matrix of interactions with others.  If other people did not exist, I would unravel, thread by thread, until there was nothing left.  If I am obliged to others for my very existence, for every (or at least nearly every) aspect of my mind, thought, and will, on a moment-to-moment basis, it seems petty to begrudge those lower on the merciless food chain of capitalism some of “my” money.*

*This existential line of thought seemed central to what I had to say about capitalism when I began this post over a year ago.  Now I’m not sure where I stand with it.

A year or two ago I was eating dinner with a certain contingent of my extended family.  These are the (mostly conservative) southern relatives.  One cousin-once-removed opined, “Lemme tell you about Chileans: I got no use for ‘em.”  He went on to explain that while Argentinians think—or rather, know—they’re better than everyone else, Chileans think they’re better than everyone else, and they’re going to prove it to you.

I asked, “Where do Americans fit into this?”

Another relative, who’s done a lot of traveling, said “Americans don’t think anyone else exists.”

I am regularly reminded of how sadly, frighteningly true this is.  (Not the thing about Chileans.)

Democracy Now recently ran an interview with two Ugandan gay rights activists about the pending anti-homosexual bill there.  There’s something that’s been disturbing me a bit about US coverage of this bill, and the Democracy Now story was no exception.  Amy Goodman spent over half of the interview (as I remember it a couple of days later) asking her guests about the involvement of US christian right groups in promoting the atmosphere of homophobia out of which this bill has grown.  Other coverage that I’ve been exposed to has also drawn a lot of attention to connections between the US right and the legislators who have been pushing the bill.

These US groups certainly deserve to have their role exposed.  However, what disturbs me about the emphasis on their involvement is that it evokes a certain racist, colonial subtext.  There’s an implication that this horrific bill is the fault of the Americans who have promoted homophobia in Uganda.  It seems that responsibility is placed disproportionately upon the shoulders of these white “meddlers,” rather than on the Ugandans who actually drafted the bill and are promoting it using all kinds of hate speech and fear tactics.  These news stories echo an old colonialist narrative in which the natives don’t really think for themselves, but merely act on the influence of whites.  This idea was bandied about a lot when Africans were resisting European colonial rule: the blacks are like little children.  They need whites to take care of them.  They’re just confused because some socialist European meddlers gave been giving them crazy ideas.  The story I hear underneath the emphasis on US influences on the anti-gay bill is “Homophobic, fear-mongering rhetoric about the Homosexual Agenda to destroy the traditional family is all objectionable enough in the US where we’re civilized enough not to go around executing gays.  But these Americans should’ve known better than to bring it to the Dark Continent, where anything goes and the most unspeakable horrors happen on a daily basis.”

This narrative is not explicit, and I’m sure it’s not intentional.  But I’ve noticed it popping up in my mind whenever I hear one of these news stories.  And if it’s lurking in my mind, then it must have come from the culture somewhere, and it’s hard to think it doesn’t have some influence on the way the issue is being reported.

But even discounting this subtext, the way Amy Goodman and others in the US have chosen to report this bill is a deliberate effort to tell the story in terms of US politics.  Goodman is using this story as a way to attack the US right.  This attack may be well justified, but it is a transparent example of the difficulty that Americans have with seeing issues (and people) outside the US on their own terms—the tendency to make everything about the US and (United States of) Americans.  The thing that makes us talk about how many American lives were lost, rather than how many human lives were lost.

I’m glad that I know that US Christian groups have had a hand in what’s going on in Uganda.  But now I want to know what’s going on in Uganda.  Far more useful than spending 20 minutes discussing exactly how and how much these US groups have been involved would be discussing the economic, political, social, and religious realities of Uganda that allow a bill like this to be proposed and make it so likely to pass.  Or discussing what GLBTI Ugandans are planning on doing if it passes.  Or whether and how I can help keep it from passing.  Usually when I see this kind of hate-mongering, it’s being purveyed by people with power who want to cement and increase that power, to people who are in some kind of desperate situation such as poverty or, say, an AIDS pandemic.

If this bill passes it will have profoundly life changing, even life-threatening (though I believe the death sentence provisions have been removed), effects on countless LGBT Ugandans and their friends and loved ones (the bill includes punishments for people who know of and fail to report homosexuals and homosexual activity).  Can we stop thinking about how this bill is relevant to Americans and the US for a minute (I know, that’s what most of this post has been about, too) and start thinking about the people who are truly affected?

Enough about the US news media.  I have the internet:

Gay Uganda is a blog by a gay Ugandan, who (unsurprisingly) talks a lot about this bill.

A post about the bill on African Activist

An excerpt from a speech about the human rights impacts of the bill by Silvia Tamale on November 18, 2009 at Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda on allAfrica.com. It has some really great analysis of what the bill means in African and Ugandan terms.

The text of the bill at Box Turtle Bulletin

There’s a lot more out there, but you have the internet too.

Pick a tarot card with a human figure or figures on it. Visualize the card with the race(s) of the figures changed. Or even get the uncolored BOTA Tarot deck, make copies, and color the people different colors. Try different combinations of skin colors. Meditate on the card with these changes, and observe how it changes your reaction.

For example, how does The Lovers strike you differently depending on whether the man is black and the woman is white or the woman is black and the man is white, or the man is Asian and the woman is black, etc.

It can be pretty disturbing, if you’re honest with yourself and haven’t done a lot of work on being mindful of your own prejudice.

You can also try switching the genders of the people in the cards to get a better sense of how gender is encoded in the imagery.

Perhaps I’ll post a personal example later.

I went shopping at Target today.  Faced with that monumental amount of crap, I was reminded of what exactly is collapsing, and feel a lot less bad about the whole thing.  

Perhaps next we can come up with an economy that supplies more people with basic needs and actually useful goods and services, rather than six different neon colors of plastic snakeskin purses that will break within a year of use.

Coming up, a more exhaustive and less flippant discussion of the shortcomings of capitalism.

I just read this post by Jess at Flip Flopping Joy, a long meandering reflection on, among other things, privilege and perfectionism.  It struck a chord.  Jess writes about suffering from at times debilitating depression based to some extent in a need to justify her existence through accomplishment—through some sort of contribution demonstrating exceptional intelligence or ability.  I may not be representing her story completely accurately, because I am also expressing mine.  And it became clear in the comment thread that this sort of depression is a very common experience.  People in the thread attributed this phenomenon to capitalism, white supremacist culture, the Midwest, being poor and trying to compete with/become the rich—and I would add modern education.  While all of these may be complicit, it is not my intention here to find the culprit and excoriate it.  

In fact, I’m not quite sure what my intention is.  Reading Jess’ post brought me out of myself a bit; made me realize that the experiences that I struggle with in solitude—the very experiences I use to isolate myself—are shared by many, many others.  Two of my dear friends seemed also to have recognized themselves.

I have been studying Buddhism and dabbling in the practice of tonglen, or sending and taking.  I’ll explain my understanding of it.  If this interests you, find some genuine Buddhist teachings on it.  Pema Chodron is a good source.  Tonglen is a practice in which one breathes in suffering and breathes out happiness.  One can begin with some suffering one is experiencing, such as (to take one personal example) anxiety about finding a job.  One breathes in this anxiety, then breathes out spaciousness, acceptance, or even the image of having a job.  Then one thinks of other people having the same (or a similar) experience—perhaps one or two people one knows—and breathes in their anxiety as well as one’s own, and exhales relief to them.  Then one inhales the anxiety of all the people in the world who are unemployed and worrying about it, and exhales happiness to all of them.

This and other Buddhist practices have been encouraging me to allow those private sufferings which normally cause me to draw away from others to instead bring me back into connection with my fellow human beings.  However, Jess’ post brought the point home in a way these practices have not.  It made me realize that yes, other people really do have debilitating doubts about whether they deserve to exist if they haven’t or won’t make some brilliant contribution to the human race.  And something as simple as expressing this can be tremendously helpful to others who share that pain.

The discussion was not, however, entirely about the depression that comes from this sort of paralyzing perfectionism.  It was also about how this myopic attention to whether I’m good enough or smart enough or doing enough gets in the way of helping other people who are suffering—whether that’s by engaging in mass activism, or simply being ready to really listen to the next person who talks to me, and really be present in my reply.  Again I’m blending her thoughts and my own.  Jess’ post, for me, was about realizing that it doesn’t matter how good what I write is, if it helps one person to soften as I did when I read her words.

My good friend Violet remarked a couple of months back upon how the internet is (slowly, so far) bringing about the downfall of Western Civilization. On the traditional purveyors of The News, she wrote:

Having grown up in an environment where you built your identity on the trusted words of a few white men, it must be terrifying to look at the enormous, overflowing wealth of voices that can now be heard and realize that people are listening. Not that many, not yet, but they are listening to them and not you. It is in a very real way the downfall of western civilization. It’s not a violent revolution so much as simply the collapse of that particular institution that distills the world into a pleasant hour to be taken in at the end of the day. It’s the slow degradation of our ability to say the world is like this and have it simply be true.

And I, for one, welcome the barbarian hordes.

I’d like to use that post as a jumping off point for the content of this little corner of the internet to which I’ve laid claim. See, I’m pretty much of the opinion that Western Civilization^TM could use to collapse just a wee bit, or perhaps entirely. But I don’t think the best way to do that is to just start tearing shit down, as fun as that would be. I’d rather pull the rug out from underneath Western Civilization by just going and doing something else. And that starts with thinking and saying something else. I chose the name of this blog for a reason (other than that it sounds cool, or that it makes a cultural reference that might make certain people think I’m smart). Here’s the context (W. B. Yeats’ “The Second Coming”):

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born

In a nutshell, “oh noez, it’s Teh Apocalypse.” Only Yeatsy. Which is actually important, because Yeats is a firmly established figure in the Western Tradition^TM, and he’s not too happy about them things falling apart. (To be fair, I’m not all that happy about WW1 either, but I’d be likely to put the blame in a different place.) Anyway, what’s important here is the imagery of the falcon and the falconer. To me, the falconer is all those rich (mostly) white (mostly) men sitting in their newsrooms and their boardrooms and their White Houses and their Kremlins and their basilicas and their megachurches and thier capitol buildings. Or rather, it’s the whole structure of perspectives and ideas and values that they represent and benefit from, but to which they are also servants. And the falcon is us. And we can still hear the falconer, but we’re learning not to listen. And each day, gods willing, we’re widening that gyre just a little bit more.