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  • Improbable Democracy The New Human Rights Movement, Sept 9, 2017 Peter Joseph

  • I'm Peter Joseph and I founded a

  • non-profit a long time ago called The Zeitgeist Movement

  • and it's an organization that still has numerous chapters,

  • hundreds of chapters in 60 countries and we've done about a

  • thousand public awareness events since its inception.

  • And beyond that social experiments working in the hope

  • to unify the world in a common direction,

  • desperately needed of course due to the ecological crisis and

  • the social instability that we're seeing emerge.

  • I also produce educational and socially conscious activist media

  • including these two books.

  • I wish I'd brought some books actually but I couldn't

  • get the weight in my luggage or I would have given you all some.

  • The 'Zeitgeist Movement Defined' was the original text,

  • kind of a joint effort but mostly written by myself, produced in 2013.

  • It's the root thesis of The Zeitgeist Movement

  • and it advocates in pretty extended technical detail what

  • we do and what we promote.

  • The second book, 'The New Human Rights Movement',

  • was published by BenBella earlier this year

  • and it takes a more social justice approach

  • and a public health approach if you will,

  • focusing on what really underscores a stable, healthy and peaceful society

  • including the active reduction of intergroup conflict,

  • oppression, bigotry, racism, xenophobia and so on,

  • something that this country and the world is

  • starting to see a resurgence of.

  • Today's talk will be more or less a derivative of this book,

  • specifically in regard to the history, structure and nature of modern political economy.

  • Again since I refuse to repeat my talks,

  • and you can go on and see about 20 or 30 hours of my lectures online,

  • I apologize if this moves quickly for those that are new.

  • But if anything is unclear - this will be about 45 minutes or so

  • and I'm definitely always into questions - so make some notes

  • if anything jumps out at you.

  • So to jump to the work's conclusion for the sake of clarity

  • the bottom line is that without the removal

  • of socioeconomic inequality -

  • meaning the various levels of inequity we see both domestically

  • and internationally as linked to economic roots -

  • there's a serious need for concern about what the future holds.

  • Unannounced to most, there's a strong public health argument

  • against the existence of economic stratification and class.

  • And by extension this means that there is a strong public health argument

  • against the mechanisms of our society that create

  • this destructive imbalance,

  • namely the market system of economics:

  • a system that is also leading to the destruction of our habitat

  • due to its archaic basis in cyclical consumption,

  • perpetuating a built-in incentive to create waste,

  • inspire more purchases to create more jobs ...

  • And when you step back and take all this in,

  • you realize that an economy powered by consumerism,

  • which is what it is, is in fact not an economy at all.

  • A real economy by definition is about

  • the strategic and efficient use of materials and means to preserve sustainability

  • in the process of meeting human needs.

  • Yet our system does the opposite:

  • not only inspiring vast wealth imbalance,

  • limiting in fact the well-being of 60% of the human population today,

  • in the context of relative and absolute poverty,

  • but also in the sense that the entire system is really backwards

  • in terms of extended sustainability and effectively earthly economic goals;

  • a complete omission from all economic textbooks.

  • And it's worth pointing out that this seed of unsustainability really wasn't

  • easily to recognize centuries ago,

  • as the process and means of production was quite manual and arduous.

  • But since the Industrial Revolution

  • and the introduction of mechanization and increased efficiency -

  • increased production I should say because it's not really efficient, it's just

  • the more of production that we're able to increase -

  • the tables have turned.

  • What was once an agrarian economy that worked to meet

  • core needs of a scarce society, generating jobs to facilitate those needs,

  • has transformed into an economy that has become so productive

  • that our sense of social inclusion

  • must now be manipulated

  • by marketing and advertising,

  • producing a neurotic, insatiable and materialistic culture

  • seeking to buy, own and accumulate

  • simply for the sake of buying, owning and accumulating.

  • And without that value system, the economy wouldn't work today.

  • So coming back to my broad point here,

  • the current state of evolution of the market economy

  • not only requires an insecure, immature and selfish population,

  • it also requires that nothing really work too well, for too long:

  • planned obsolescence.

  • For true preservation, efficiency and sustainability

  • is really the enemy of market economics.

  • It's the enemy of the foundation of our society

  • and the result as we see

  • is enormous amounts of waste, pollution and resource overshoot.

  • And it's interesting today with all the talk

  • about ecological degradation, climate change, biodiversity loss and so on,

  • very rarely do people speak of the most important consequence of this:

  • we're not destroying the earth,

  • we're destroying our future capacity to coexist peacefully

  • and productively as a growing species.

  • We're setting the stage for new forms of unnecessary scarcity and limitation.

  • And this is and will continue to translate

  • into more extreme degrees of socioeconomic inequality,

  • reducing public health,

  • and this increased socioeconomic inequality as social science has long confirmed,

  • will fuel further social fragmentation,

  • conflict and disorder, both domestically and internationally.

  • I apologize if this idea is new to some of you here

  • as it is something I have written and talked about a great deal in the past,

  • linking socioeconomic inequality and economics

  • to increased violence, heart disease, mental health disorders,

  • child abuse, loss of lifespan and so on.

  • But I encourage you to look into this largely ignored public health issue

  • because it's the most critical one, and no one's really talking about it.

  • The central message of this talk -

  • as rambley as it's going to be due to the limitations I had in creating it -

  • is that our economy poses many serious problems,

  • not only as an instrument of human manipulation in terms of politics that we see,

  • but as a structural phenomenon

  • in its root core foundational logic.

  • Or more bluntly, the real problem -

  • in stark contradiction to our prevailing

  • entrepreneurial romanticism and free-market mythology -

  • is the very nature of business itself:

  • the inherent dynamics and incentives that are immutable

  • to the logic of engaging and winning in competitive trade

  • is the binding destructive force

  • that while creating the world we see, with some material positives of course,

  • is also simultaneously destroying it

  • at a far more rapid rate, in the context of sustainability

  • and a loss of democracy, as I will discuss.

  • And with all the debate today about party systems and corruption and

  • lobbying and war and so on, you will notice,

  • with the exception of say conversations about democratic socialism

  • or other more - more or less - passive

  • still ultimately pro-market socioeconomic adjustments

  • the political landscape shows very little real reflection

  • on what the structure of our economy is actually doing.

  • Even worse,

  • those rare few who do approach in a critical and thoughtful way

  • are quickly dismissed by myopic and emotional impulsive reactions

  • and symbolic irrationality.

  • In fact I would have to argue that the greatest failure in the world today

  • is that of creativity, and an expanded sense of possibility.

  • People are afraid of things they can't see of course

  • or don't understand or haven't learned about -

  • a kind of indoctrination and laziness continues to limit the debate

  • of what our future could be,

  • locked into bogus identity politics, isms,

  • unnuanced childish distractions of left and right,

  • alt right, centric,

  • capitalist, socialist, communist,

  • and a host of other unnuanced labels

  • that serve only to keep people thinking categorically,

  • ignorant, polarized, and easily manipulated.

  • The power of language and the associative symbolic myopic nature

  • of political discourse now blinds us,

  • and it's time we snap out of it

  • and expand our sense of possibility.

  • Brings me to part one - Structuralism: Culture and Biology.

  • Again I've spoken a great deal about things like structuralism in the past

  • and this will be more of an overview of it.

  • And if you want to look into this concept as I will go through a bit,

  • I encourage it.

  • But the details by which I'm gonna go through this will be relatively advanced.

  • I'm going to expand the context of structuralism

  • from the influence of culture, environment and social system

  • to include how those inputs interact with our biology,

  • given the biopsychosocial nature of the organisms that we are.

  • While there is ongoing debate about time scales of biological evolution,

  • specifically with respect to the human brain and behavioral variability,

  • it's safe to say that if you took a newborn child from say 25,000 years ago,

  • and raised him or her today,

  • the characteristics of that child, and eventually adult,

  • would be indiscernible from the average person born in the present day.

  • Likewise it is a fact that we modern humans can trace our genetic lineage

  • to a woman from East Africa commonly termed 'Mitochondrial Eve'

  • who lived roughly 150,000 years ago.

  • Hence we are all African, we have all been set in motion so to speak,

  • with the same basic genetic makeup.

  • And while there have certainly been selective genetic changes in groups

  • such as the development of different skin colors and

  • physical features due to exposure to different areas of the planet,

  • the idea that any groups of humans on this planet are genetically superior or inferior,

  • or perhaps having developed novel cultural behaviors driven by genetics

  • is completely unfounded.

  • And what this means

  • is that the vast array of human behavior we have seen historically on the cultural level,

  • from the routine human sacrifice of the Aztecs

  • to the polygamy of Mormonism

  • to the end of cannibalism of the Amazonian Yanomami tribe,

  • to many other examples, can only be

  • linked to the influence of environment

  • and the social institutions and traditions

  • of a given society and period.

  • This is not to discount the role of biology,

  • evolutionary psychology, or in effect what is,

  • again the biopsychosocial synergy of our existence.

  • This isn't about behaviorism, in lieu of say BF Skinner.

  • The nature of our brains and our genetics have an integral role

  • in all outcomes of behavior on some level.

  • But they are not actively deterministic influences

  • when it comes to the phenomenon of culture.

  • Sorry to drill this in:

  • pop society loves to separate nature, nurture,

  • or more accurately genetics and environment.

  • Yet biological evolution is also a kind of molding

  • of our genetic makeup through natural selection,

  • which basically started with a single-cell organism some 3.5 billion years ago.

  • The complexity of your form, who you are physically,

  • is really an environmental outcome,

  • and with this kind of genetic play-doh that's

  • been utilized since the single-celled organism.

  • And it's evolved through environmental interactions

  • into the complex organisms we are today, driven by environment.

  • Now the reason I bring all this up is because

  • one outstanding myth that leads to a set of other myths

  • we have in support of the way the world is,

  • is that "society reflects our immutable human nature,"

  • as if in the long term our nature can be called "fixed."

  • It's a legitimizing establishment-preserving myth,

  • for if society is a reflection of our immutable human nature, well guess what -

  • there's no reason to attempt to change society.

  • We see this worldview throughout recorded history

  • to one degree or another especially in the realm of political economy and philosophy.

  • In fact I am unaware of any historically recognized political or economic theorist

  • that didn't propagate the false notion that humanity's

  • apparent brute, selfish and competitive nature

  • was simply an immutable law of our existence

  • and something to be dealt with.

  • For example Thomas Hobbes, considered the father of political philosophy,

  • famously proposed that humanity's state was one "of war,"

  • therefore he implied in fact

  • that a dictatorial sovereign power and hierarchy was actually needed

  • to oversee and control society.

  • When Charles Darwin came along with his theory of evolution

  • his 'survival of the fittest' notion was quickly bastardized,

  • distorted to support elitism, oppression and dominant power.

  • This misconception further added fuel to yet another highly influential economist,

  • someone of particular despotism: Thomas Malthus.

  • While Malthus' fatalism is different from general human nature myths,

  • his theory of population, if you're familiar,

  • is still generally accepted today, albeit rarely verbalized,

  • as it is very politically inconvenient to talk about something like this,

  • with the basic idea that the poor of the world cannot be helped

  • since nature will always be in deficiency to some degree

  • in meeting an inevitable growing population.

  • Malthus even went so far in his time to criticize Europe's Poor Laws as they were called

  • and rejected the idea of social compassion when it came to poverty.

  • He stated "To act consistently therefore we should facilitate,

  • instead of foolishly and vainly endeavoring to impede,

  • the operations of nature in producing this mortality.

  • Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor we should encourage

  • contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower,

  • crowd more people into the houses and court the return of the plague.

  • In the country, we should build our villages near stagnant pools,

  • and particularly encourage settlements in all marshy and unwholesome situations.

  • But above all, we should reprobate specific remedies

  • for ravaging diseases, and those benevolent but much mistaken men,

  • who have thought they were doing a service to mankind

  • by projecting schemes for the total extirpation of particular disorders."

  • As an aside I wish to point out

  • that much of the world as it exists today

  • begins to make a whole lot of sense

  • when you consider the influence of Malthus, who is

  • probably one of the first world economists of the British East India Company,

  • coupled with the haphazard conception of social Darwinism.

  • Whether noted in public policy or not,

  • this overall worldview is clearly in the general philosophy,

  • [in] the back pockets of big business and world governance,

  • justifying continued inequality, social dominance, oppression,

  • rampant poverty, and the vast, direct and structural violence

  • inherent to our economic system.

  • ... once again from the inherent dynamics incentives

  • of an economy based on scarcity and trade-strategizing dominance,

  • which I'm going to expand upon in the next section.

  • Trade strategizing dominance:

  • I want that phrase to stick with you guys.

  • This Malthusian, socially Darwinistic perspective

  • is a significant reason why we have seen very little real progress

  • in the developing poverty-stricken and disease-laden nations today,

  • or even in the relative poverty and homeless crisis

  • we see in the affluent nations.

  • I'm sorry to say it is an unspoken yet ever-present value system and mindset

  • that the poor should suffer and die, and the rich should live and prosper.

  • And it is this manifest structural violence that kills more people

  • than all the wars, dictators and plagues combined.

  • Estimates put this death toll at about 18 million a year

  • due to socioeconomic inequality.

  • That's numerous holocausts a year.

  • That's more than communism claimed to kill in a century,

  • in 6 years,

  • due to socioeconomic inequality and poverty.

  • Meanwhile, 5 people today have more wealth in the entire 50% of the world.

  • So tangent aside,

  • and returning to my central point regarding biological determinism,

  • culture and the various naturalist myth's "appeal to nature" fallacies

  • we find that preserve the status quo,

  • show through cognitive neuroscience and other studies,

  • prove, and there's no reason to assume,

  • that there's any kind of predominant, competitive, acquisitive

  • narrow self-interest in-group out-group biased society propensity

  • which is some "law of nature."

  • In the same way there is no reason to conclude poverty is a social inevitability.

  • The human mind is an extremely powerful and flexible system

  • when it comes to behavior.

  • It can be an organ of thoughtfulness,

  • compassion, extensionality and collaborative incentive,

  • as evidenced by the later stage development of our frontal cortex,

  • or it can be an organ of fear, hate, selfishness and domination

  • as evidenced by our older, lower so-called reptilian areas

  • such as the amygdala and limbic system.

  • And when you combine the power of culture -

  • the fact every word I'm saying has been taught to me,

  • the fact that I'm an amalgamation of everything that I've been born into,

  • the fact that I'm not wearing a Victorian gown right now -

  • is because I've learned through this society the way I should be

  • or in the sense of the feedback system,

  • the way I will end up invariably being

  • because of my exposures to the environment.

  • And you combine this force with the variability you see in our mind and biology

  • as proven by cognitive neuroscience,

  • and this is my point, we realize a kind of dynamic structuralism

  • that very much underscores and controls

  • what we call our consciousness or free will.

  • And we can't expect to change our society or civilization

  • without understanding ourselves;

  • what influences us and our shared biological reactions.

  • This mythology that we are strong, individual, rational human beings

  • walking the earth with complete conscious control, is a myth,

  • as paradoxical and complex as that is to say to yourself

  • because your brain is telling you something different all the time.

  • Now, stepping back, I first heard the term "structuralism"

  • used by Johan Galtung of the Gandhi Institute,

  • As a scholar of Gandhi he had this to say,

  • which I think is an insightful qualification.

  • "Gandhi saw conflict in the deeper sense

  • as something that was built into social structures,

  • not into the persons

  • Colonialism was a structure and caste was a structure;

  • both of them filled with persons performing their duties according to their roles or statuses.

  • The evil was in the structure, not in the person who carried out his obligations.

  • Exploitation is violence,

  • but it is quite clear Gandhi sees it as a structural relationship

  • more than the intended evil inflicted upon innocent victims by evil men.

  • It's a deeply thoughtful and compassionate and systemic type of perspective,

  • that's dramatically limited in the modern world.

  • The profoundness of this,

  • that we humans can become subservient to social institutions and systems,

  • takes a while to sink in.

  • To believe this is to admit to yourself

  • that depending on the nuances of your biology and social condition,

  • you can effectively be manipulated

  • by larger order forces beyond your control.

  • And most people's egos once again have a very difficult time with this idea,

  • as it contradicts again everything that your experience is telling you.

  • But the truth is, the social condition or culture you find yourself [in],

  • how society is organized and incentivized,

  • plays a profound role in your sense of identity

  • while pinging or exciting

  • parts of your brain that amplify the probability

  • of certain behaviors to occur, or not.

  • If you generate a social structure that creates

  • a culture of insecurity and fear like we have today,

  • you're going to excite older parts of the brain:

  • the limbic system that compound,

  • but are in effect primitive, old primate reactions

  • such as competition and violence, apathy.

  • In contrast if you have a structure that creates a sense of safety,

  • fairness, justice, security,

  • you will bypass primitive brain reactions

  • and excite areas of the mind related to higher order intellectual functions,

  • leading to a strong sense of trust,

  • social capital, collaboration, empathy and so on.

  • In fact, this structuralist perspective forces us

  • to rethink our ideas of morality and ethics.

  • The conclusion is that morality and ethics can really only follow

  • from the social or environmental condition

  • and are in fact painfully subjective from the standpoint of history.

  • And if you need evidence of that think of the countless soldiers raised

  • by wonderful church-going families who never had a violent bone in their bodies

  • who, sanctioned by their government,

  • are incentivized by some abstract external threat

  • and are willing to murder other human beings

  • that they have never met, in the military.

  • Or perhaps consider the numerous studies done by people

  • who have been tested for their sense of responsibility or lack thereof,

  • such as the Milgram experiment,

  • the shock experiment I suspect some of you have heard of.

  • They're incentivized to hurt others under the protection that it isn't really their fault

  • because they're just following orders.

  • Or perhaps the Rwandan genocide of 800,000 Tutsis in a 4-month period,

  • all sanctioned by government and propagandized media

  • creating a vicious period of mass hypnosis in effect

  • that was based on a kind of distorted class war that didn't actually even exist.

  • So I hope my point is clear.

  • You're not an individual in any technical sense.

  • We are all deeply vulnerable to the social structures,

  • dominant institutions and culture

  • that invariably guide our perception,

  • and accentuate and attenuate,

  • attenuate aspects of our brain chemistry.

  • And since we can't change our brains in biology, at least in the short term,

  • at least not now to any relevant degree

  • (someone could debate transhumanism and things like that)

  • this means that we're left with one real option.

  • If you want to change human behavioral patterns and the institutions

  • that are political, economic and philosophical,

  • you have to change the structure we find ourselves,

  • or better yet to use a medical term,

  • you have to change the social precondition.

  • And the most powerful precondition ever-present in our lives

  • will be found to be the economic structure

  • as I'll explain in the next section.

  • Part 2 Origins: Power, Class and Inequality

  • In this section I'm going to go through the history of our economy:

  • where it came from and the core attributes that define it.

  • If I was to frame the academic context of this analysis

  • it would be one of cultural anthropology,

  • a subject I hope people will look into,

  • with the theme being how the logic of our existence today,

  • especially that of our economy,

  • has been carved out over time by external forces

  • which could be termed geographical determinism,

  • like sand and wind that erode mountains over time.

  • Roughly 12,000 years ago the human species transitioned

  • from nomadic hunter-gatherer societies,

  • tribes foraging and hunting with no agricultural skills,

  • to farm-cultivating settled societies.

  • This was termed the Neolithic Revolution.

  • In form this change marked a kind of technological shift.

  • Like the advent of mechanization and the Industrial Revolution,

  • this development of agriculture was basically the application of new

  • technology, as primitive as it seems.

  • I point this out because it's worth noting

  • that the most influential characteristic of a civilization

  • is the kind of technological means it has, and how its applied.

  • When very large-scale changes in applied technology occurs,

  • human culture and behavior tend to change as well.

  • Before the Neolithic Revolution,

  • as corroborated by numerous anthropologists

  • studying both existing and historical hunter-gatherer societies,

  • small bands and tribes operated without money or markets:

  • they were egalitarian.

  • In fact 99% of human history had no money or markets by the way,

  • with no economic dominance hierarchy.

  • It's also well established that they had much less violence

  • and certainly no large-scale warfare.

  • And while modern culture would gawk at the seemingly crude and minimalistic

  • reality of hunter-gatherer life today, it's thoughtfully argued

  • that there really existed a kind of minimalistic affluence,

  • a simplicity that was accepted and made people happy,

  • a unique distinction because it really challenges

  • what we think of today as progress in social success,

  • which unfortunately is so deeply tied to material progress.

  • To highlight this contrast here is a quote by anthropologist Marshall Sahlins.

  • "To accept that hunter-gatherers are affluent is therefore to recognize

  • that the present human condition of man's slaving to bridge the gap

  • between his unlimited wants and his insufficient means

  • is a tragedy of modern times.

  • Modern capitalist societies, however richly endowed,

  • dedicate themselves to the proposition of scarcity.

  • Inadequacy of economic means is the first principle

  • of the world's wealthiest peoples."

  • "The market-industrial system institutes scarcity in a manner completely without parallel.

  • Where production and distribution are arranged through the behavior of prices,

  • and all livelihoods depend on getting and spending,

  • insufficiency of material means becomes the explicit

  • calculable starting point of all economic activity."

  • I'd like to highlight this notion of a society based upon scarcity

  • because I'll be returning to that in a moment;

  • it's a very critical theme.

  • In modern terms,

  • hunter-gatherers basically had a gift economy as we'd call it today,

  • where they shared with no direct expectation of reciprocation.

  • There are even modern stories of outsiders being given handicrafts

  • from existing hunter-gatherer tribes

  • only to feel the need to give something in return,

  • as many in our market, effectively agrarian-based cultures do.

  • This reciprocal behavior was considered offensive by the tribe,

  • as they felt the exchange was a refusal of friendship.

  • British anthropologist Tim Ingold highlights that the difference between giving and exchange

  • has to do with a social perception based around

  • autonomous companionship versus involuntary obligation.

  • He states: "Clearly, both hunter-gatherers and agricultural cultivators

  • depend on their environments.

  • But whereas for cultivators this dependency is framed

  • within a structure of reciprocal obligation,

  • for hunter-gatherers it rests on the recognition of personal autonomy.

  • The contrast is between relationships based on trust

  • and those based on domination."

  • I'm going to read that final part again.

  • "The contrast is between relationships based on trust

  • and those based on domination."

  • This is a subtle but powerful distinction.

  • Cultivator society,

  • which almost always is a market society,

  • generates a social perception

  • NOT based upon mutual concern,

  • but rather trade-strategizing dominance:

  • gaming for survival.

  • So in short the Neolithic Revolution set in motion

  • the core framework of the modern world:

  • settlement, property, protection,

  • labor specialization, trade, governance, capacities for war, and so on.

  • Each one of these characteristics was born out of the natural logic

  • based upon the new settled, and producing paradigm,

  • hence the geographical determinism,

  • translating survival requisites into eventual tradition.

  • We also get the formation of a culture

  • that learns to perceive life through this scarcity-and-protectionist worldview.

  • And given disproportionate labor skills, means,

  • and the unequal benefits of certain geographical features (capital),

  • the outcomes of inequality, competition and mass conflict

  • were simply inevitable as this evolution continued.

  • In turn, ever-hardening values around competitive self-interest manifest,

  • with these psychological gravitations extending into sociological ones,

  • forming social structures, institutions and customs

  • derived from the scarcity, competitive and protectionist worldview once again.

  • Again all this was set in motion by the geographical determinism

  • of the Neolithic Revolution.

  • Now, some may ask "Why couldn't it have gone another way?"

  • In this book 'Man's Rise to Civilization' by Peter Farb,

  • he describes numerous cultures that were in fact agrarian

  • that lived very very differently and very egalitarianly.

  • So why couldn't it have gone another another way on a large scale?

  • If people realized they have disproportionate skills in different regions of different qualities,

  • why didn't just a larger, more communal connected society form

  • based upon the original hunter-gatherer value system and principles?

  • Because hunter-gatherers didn't just have a natural sense of egalitarianism per se,

  • they actually actively preserved their egalitarianism.

  • It was called reverse-dominance hierarchy by some theories

  • and they worked against anyone

  • that did rise up and start to pollute the community

  • with overt self-interest.

  • It was an active recognition in hunter-gatherer society.

  • Well, as I said historically it did go the other way in rare cases.

  • We have knowledge of agrarian First Nations people - indigenous populations - that

  • due to the small size of community and the benefits of their region

  • - effectively surplus - they did not fully succumb

  • to this overt competitive scarcity-based dominance outcome.

  • But those are exceptions to the rule,

  • and the very fact that most of those cultures are now extinct today

  • shows the power of the underlying framework

  • of the survival mechanism set in motion.

  • In the words of neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky:

  • "Hunter-gatherers had thousands of wild sources of food to subsist on.

  • Agriculture changed all that, generating an overwhelming reliance

  • on a few dozen food sources.

  • Agriculture allowed for the stockpiling of surplus resources

  • and thus inevitably the unequal stockpiling of them -

  • stratification of society and the invention of classes.

  • Thus it has allowed for the invention of poverty."

  • So to summarize for clarity:

  • "Since the Neolithic Revolution,

  • we've had a process of economically-driven cultural adaptation

  • built around the survival requisites of the relatively new,

  • settled agrarian paradigm.

  • The evolution of post-Neolithic culture was self-guided

  • by systemic environmental pressures

  • and survival inferences - geographical determinism -

  • common to the natural dynamics of the new mode of production.

  • This gave birth the dominance-oriented incentives, values, and protections,

  • evolving patterns of conflict, hierarchy, elitism

  • and disproportional allocation of physical and social resources."

  • To translate in terms of modern political economy as we know it,

  • "You thus have the basis of property (ownership),

  • capital (means of production),

  • labor specialization (jobs), regulation (government),

  • and protection (law/police/military).

  • In other words you have grounds for what is now the ultimate mechanism of survival -

  • the market system of economics."

  • To which all of these aspects are actually intrinsic and immutable

  • despite the utopian ideals and abstractions of libertarians

  • and those effectively basking in the sociopathic free-market delusions of Ayn Rand.

  • Pick up any introductory textbook on market theory

  • and you'll notice the rationale of the market's very existence

  • starts with one fundamental premise:

  • "Resources and means are scarce."

  • There's no qualification other than that.

  • It doesn't matter if you're a billionaire,

  • these people still have the mindset of operating as though they're poor,

  • at least in terms of how they work and engage trade with others.

  • Their little compassion is shown in the act of competitive trade from billionaires.

  • In fact as social studies have shown, psychological studies have shown,

  • it actually gets worse the more money they get.

  • And from this premise - resources and means are scarce -

  • the architecture of not only the economy but of society itself has been derived.

  • I call it the root socioeconomic orientation of our world.

  • Root Socioeconomic Orientation.

  • It justifies brute competition, narrow self-interest,

  • elitist hierarchy, inequality, and oppression.

  • And the central mechanism of this system -

  • what keeps society divided and accentuates the endless abuse we see,

  • whether individual or by whatever elite minority -

  • is again trade-strategizing dominance:

  • the kernel incentive rational process.

  • It has been the root logic of trade

  • despite material progress we have seen over time,

  • since especially the Industrial Revolution

  • that ruins humanity's capacity to function

  • in a socially just and sustainable way.

  • This gaming mentality,

  • which is also a core prerequisite for racism, bigotry, and xenophobia,

  • rooted deep in the cultural norm that we live,

  • and this dysfunctional scarce idea

  • where any surplus that happens, any abundance,

  • can only appear to be transient.

  • You can't rationalize a world where there's actually enough to go around

  • even if it was mathematically possible,

  • which it actually is.

  • And again if you dig deep into the worldview of some of the most dominant and revered

  • Western political and economic philosophers from Adam Smith

  • to John Locke, to again Malthus, to John Stuart Mill and many others,

  • you find little deviation of this social preconception:

  • one that says it is natural for us to fight, because that's just the way it is.

  • In the words of John McMurtry,

  • "This tendency prevails from the Continental Rationalists on.

  • Leibniz, Spinoza, Descartes, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, for example,

  • more or less entirely presuppose the social regime of their day

  • and its constituent forms

  • as in some way the expression of a divine Mind,

  • which they see it as their rational duty

  • only to accept or to justify."

  • It's the climate of opinion.

  • Part 3 The State, Democracy and Fascism

  • So.

  • If global society as we know it

  • has undergone a systemic unfolding from the Neolithic Revolution,

  • what can we learn about the nature of government

  • within this unfolding and climate? Well first,

  • we see that government actually proceeds from the economic premise of a society

  • and not the other way around.

  • It is the preordained economic mode of society

  • that decides what government is,

  • what it does and where its loyalties reside.

  • If you examine historical variations of social systems,

  • historical capitalism, communism, socialism,

  • feudalism, mercantilism and so on

  • - and you'll notice I said historical and not theoretical -

  • you realize that the governing architecture of those systems

  • served to protect and perpetuate the prevailing economic and class structures

  • that ultimately define them.

  • Feudalism for example was a structure based upon land ownership,

  • the means of production, labor, and class interdependence

  • going from the peasant up to the king.

  • Capitalism in contrast is based upon dynamics of private property,

  • buying and selling and ownership,

  • and the mechanism of ownership and wealth translating

  • into power and control.

  • Here is a quote by Australian economist John C. Wood,

  • who was a scholar of a sociologist that I

  • often recommend named Thorstein Veblen.

  • And I think this summation of Veblen -

  • who is extremely verbose and rather complicated to read -

  • gets to the heart of what we're facing in terms of

  • the structure of government within capitalism.

  • He states "Veblen wrote extensively and insightfully

  • on the relationship between capitalist government and the class struggle.

  • For Veblen, the ultimate power in the capitalist system

  • is in the hands of the owners because they control the government.

  • The government is the institutionally legitimizing means of

  • physical coercion in any society.

  • As such, it exists to protect the existing social order and class structure.

  • This means that the primary duty of government is to enforce private property laws

  • and protect the privileges associated with ownership."

  • "Veblen repeatedly insisted that 'modern politics is business politics.'

  • The first principle of a capitalist government is that - to quote Veblen -

  • 'The natural freedom of the individual

  • must not transverse the prescriptive rights of property.

  • Property rights have the indefeasibilty which attached to natural rights.'

  • The principle freedom of capitalism is the freedom to buy and sell."

  • "The laissez-faire philosophy dictates that - to quote Veblen -

  • 'So long as there is no overt attempt on life ...

  • or liberty to buy and sell, the law cannot intervene,

  • unless it be in a precautionary way

  • to prevent prospective violation of property rights.'

  • Thus above all else, to quote Veblen again,

  • a 'constitutional government is a business government.'"

  • In a detailed 2014 study conducted by professors

  • Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University,

  • concluded in their extensive study which I recommend you read,

  • "the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule,

  • near-zero, statistically nonsignificant impact upon public policy."

  • The researchers concluded that lawmaker's

  • policy actions tend to support the interests of guess what-

  • the wealthy Wall Street and big corporations.

  • And what stuns me is that many in America

  • act like this is some anomaly,

  • as though the US government, and in effect the governments of the world

  • (because this system is just existing on

  • different stages and levels of incorporation in every country)

  • haven't always been driven by financial business interests since inception.

  • As though society wasn't set

  • to favor the wealthy minority and business elite freedom to begin with!

  • James Madison, the father of the US Constitution as he's referred,

  • made it very clear in the Federal Convention of 1787

  • as to why the Senate was to be created.

  • He stated "There ought to be so constituted

  • as to protect the minority of the opulent

  • against the majority.

  • The Senate therefore ought to be this body and to answer these purposes,

  • they ought to have permanency and stability."

  • Madison had a unique perspective on what he considered majority

  • and minority interests, and if you read his work

  • in the Federalist Papers, it's very unique to see how the language is used,

  • because ultimately there is a fundamental elitism,

  • which is often interpreted as against special interest minorities

  • but actually goes the other way.

  • And I hope people understand that when you really look at the foundation

  • of America with all of its plusses,

  • it really had no interest in the resolution of class differences,

  • and ensured, as it remains today, the disproportionate support and power

  • is given to the opulent rich minority.

  • They knew that a true democracy would force a vast redistribution of wealth

  • since of course, the vast majority historically have always been poor.

  • In fact it should be a fairly obvious feature of all national governments

  • that this kind of protection of the rich is structurally secured

  • through government policy.

  • And if there is any catchphrase that I am so tired of hearing,

  • it's this thing that people say about getting money out of politics. What?!

  • First, while it may seem morally sound,

  • it's extremely idiotic in principle given how the world operates.

  • In a world where everything is for sale,

  • in a world where gaming through trade and trade-strategizing

  • dominance is the prevailing ethos,

  • it's the most dominant mode and in fact communication in the process of our society.

  • Why should government be off-limits? Why not buy legislation?

  • In fact if we're to be consistent as a society,

  • it's actually poor form to object at all to this reality

  • of lobbying and political special interests.

  • We should LET the Koch brothers buy and run America! Why not?

  • It's the purest and most natural outcome suggested by this system:

  • for the billionaires to run everything, which is what this system assumes,

  • its natural gravitation, and you're never going to stop the force

  • of financial and business power as long as our society is grounded in the way it is.

  • And by the way, the election of Trump is not an anomaly.

  • It's just another step toward the natural gravitation

  • that our system generates: a world again run by rich monarchs.

  • And to some degree or another it has always been this way

  • since again the Neolithic Revolution.

  • So needless to say when it comes to the true nature of our system,

  • the very idea of any kind of effective democracy becomes increasingly illusory.

  • The system simply isn't designed to cater

  • to the well-being and democratic control of the general majority.

  • Rather it is designed to facilitate the affairs of business

  • and most of all the protection of big business,

  • which are naturally the dominant interests in the revolving door of government.

  • Put another way, the system is fundamentally fascist.

  • This is a book by Robert Brady

  • called 'Business as a System of Power.'

  • It was written in 1943 in the heat of the 2nd World War.

  • It is a comparative study of a number of nations

  • including fascist Germany, Japan, Italy and others,

  • and it links the root structure and incentive of business -

  • businesses by the way which loved the fascist institutions of this time -

  • to the rise of fascist controls historically,

  • specifically in that period which is very unique in terms of history.

  • And it's frightening. Because when you really read this book from 1943

  • and you start to dissect the structures of these economies,

  • it becomes euphemistic to see how they've actually changed, because they haven't.

  • Things really haven't changed, they've just become more politically correct

  • in the way the world is perceiving

  • the structures of totalitarianism that are actually in play.

  • The forward of this text was written by Robert Lynd

  • and I think he states the issue very well with respect to America.

  • "Thus political equality under the ballot was granted

  • on the unstated but factually double-locked assumption

  • that the people must refrain from seeking the extension of that equality

  • to the economic sphere.

  • In short, the attempted harmonious marriage of democracy to capitalism

  • doomed genuinely popular control from the start.

  • And all down through our national life the continuance of the Union

  • has depended upon the unstated condition

  • that the dominant member, capital,

  • continue to provide returns to all elements in democratic society

  • sufficient to disguise the underlying conflict in interests."

  • Sufficient to disguise the underlying conflict in interests!

  • "The crisis within the economic relations of capitalism was bound

  • to precipitate a crisis in the democratic political system."

  • Part 4 The New Human Rights Movement

  • The solution to a world at war with itself and at war with the environment

  • is to change again the social precondition

  • from one that emphasizes scarcity, competition and hierarchical dominance

  • to one that emphasizes and incentivizes effectively the exact opposite.

  • Since the Industrial Revolution humanity has been handed a gift

  • to change course in a completely different direction,

  • with the option to create in fact a strategic and sustainable abundance

  • to meet the world's needs:

  • a phenomenon Buckminster Fuller called ephemeralization,

  • or what Jeremy Rifkin refers to more technically as a "more-with-less" phenomenon.

  • As time moves forward

  • we're able to do more and more and more with less and less and less.

  • That means that we can create an increased abundance

  • without heavy impact on society;

  • they move in contrary patterns now,

  • as abstract and odd as that is to realize.

  • If strategically utilized

  • this pattern, if we adjust our society - adjust our economy -

  • will put to rest the dysfunctional social system

  • that is based on the exploitation of scarcity and other human beings.

  • Now due to a lack of time in the preparation of this as I mentioned,

  • it's not the scope of this talk to delve into the subject

  • of what a new economic precondition [is], or how to get there.

  • That's detailed in my book

  • and this slide right here, this figure

  • is a brief summation of the types of transitions

  • that the world needs to see, all of which are actually happening now.

  • And I'm not here to plug a book

  • but I do encourage anyone that wants to think about

  • this particular subject to read that section of it.

  • So in conclusion, I do want to state

  • that the New Human Rights Movement

  • has the following four realizations before anything can actually change.

  • Number one.

  • The structuralist realization that the most detrimental social patterns existing today

  • are sourced to a flawed economic orientation.

  • Number 2.

  • These resulting detrimental social patterns include

  • socioeconomic inequality as the core public health threat.

  • Socioeconomic inequality is the precondition for a spectrum of other problems,

  • also linking to unsustainable negative externalities

  • produced by the market:

  • resource overshoot, diversity loss, climate change,

  • endless pollution, destruction of the oceans, and so on.

  • Number 3. Adjusting away from this flawed economic orientation

  • and seeking to reduce socioeconomic inequality

  • and generate environmental sustainability

  • means shifting focus to maximize economic efficiency

  • through strategic, systems-based, technical design.

  • (something I haven't had a chance to get into

  • but that is what the secret of economic efficiency is: its design.)

  • This will reduce scarcity, reduce inequality, and reduce the environmental footprint.

  • It will also better harness ephemeralization as I mentioned,

  • moving us closer to what could be called a "post-scarcity" abundance

  • or post-scarcity society.

  • That's not a society where there's an infinite amount of everything.

  • It's a society where people are actually focused

  • on creating enough for everyone

  • as opposed to exploiting the fact that people don't have things.

  • Number 4. Accomplishing this transition will require creative initiative

  • and activist initiative.

  • The creative initiative has to do with developing the efficiency-enhancing systems

  • that will compose the new economic mode.

  • The activist initiative has to do with strategic pressure and demands

  • placed upon the existing power structure,

  • effectively coercing change from the bottom up.

  • Because none of this is going to come naturally.

  • It is antithetical

  • to the culture that's been created in the dominant class,

  • and it's going to take a kind of galvanization that the world probably hasn't seen,

  • even though all these paths are actually being suggested right now,

  • and these trends are really not surprising in terms of the

  • vast positive potential we can have in the future:

  • an equitable society where people's needs are met,

  • derailing all the social distortions and intergroup conflicts and bigoted patterns

  • that will continue to be amplified,

  • as long as this system continues as it does.

  • Thank you.

  • [Applause]

Improbable Democracy The New Human Rights Movement, Sept 9, 2017 Peter Joseph

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講演会です。ありえない民主主義 ピーター・ジョセフ 9/8/17 [ ツァイトガイスト運動] (Lecture: Improbable Democracy Peter Joseph 9/8/17 [ The Zeitgeist Movement ])

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