Expansion of Premises

So I should mention in the name of full disclosure that much of my thinking on this stuff is being heavily influenced by my choice in reading material of late. Ask me in person if you're interested in what it is.

I want to expand on Premise 2 of my last post, that there are many things that we take for granted that are, in fact, false. When viewed in the short span of our lifetimes, they may seem as true as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, but with the benefit of some historical analysis, we can see that they're as false as the illusion that the sun is circling the earth.

The first thing we take for granted is that our current state of being is in any way a natural one. For most of human existence, people lived in hunter/gatherer style groups, some nomadic, some relatively stable. The state of being removed so thoroughly from our food sources, our homes/shelter, and the creation of our cultural artifacts alienates us from the simple joys of life and is a very new experience for humans. Even until very recently (less than 100 years ago), most of the products we consumed(1) could be easily traced to a local producer who was responsible for their creation.

The second thing that we take for granted, coming to life within a capitalist society, is the primacy of capitalism. On the one hand, the idea of a free market seems to make a lot of sense, and is very much how commerce began: one person had item A, another had item B, and they freely chose whether or not to exchange these items. However, our market is so far from free at this point that any idea that we are somehow benefiting from it is utter delusion. A free market, in order to function properly, must allow also for the free flow of information about the items being exchanged. Otherwise, the people engaging in transactions are making choices that are not truly free. Without knowledge of the production techniques used in bringing items of consumption to us, we can only make comparisons on relatively inane details: aesthetics, price, comfort, etc. We cannot, for example, easily make a choice based on whether production used exploitative labor practices, degraded the environment or involved torture. In fact, it is in the best interests of those bringing products of this nature to market to obfuscate these attributes. The capital market actually facilitates many negative production techniques by generating additional net profit to be reinvested in public relations and marketing.

The third thing we take for granted is that the cost of an item is the same as its dollar value, that which is deducted from our account. I shouldn't need to elaborate on hidden costs with the melting of the ice caps FINALLY making headlines, though I am having a difficult time understanding why it's not the ONLY headline, as climate change is likely going to spell the end of this chapter of our civilization. That's only one example though. Another example is the hidden price of, for example, oil on the people and landbases where the oil comes from. Every time we fill up our tank, we are buying into a system that forces people off their land, causes environmental degradation on a grand scale, and in many cases outright kills people.

The fourth thing we take for granted, related to the third, and the last I'll talk about in this post, is the idea of property, and our right to exploit it as we see fit. Our culture has an unbalanced concept of property rights – that if we own something it is ours to destroy if we so choose. I believe that this comes from the biblical notion that we are meant to be somehow superior to the land and its inhabitants, to rule them. There is a fifth thing that we take for granted, which I will elaborate on in a later post, and that is that we are somehow different from, unconnected to the world around us – that we are above it. The primary difference, in my mind, between us and our non-human neighbors is our capacity for this arrogance. However, the responsibility that comes with 'rulership' (I'm actually looking to move away from this concept towards a term more like 'stewardship') is ignored entirely. When we take actions on our 'possession' (most obviously land) that cause it to be degraded, we reduce its capacity to carry life, and in doing so, we diminish the real value of that possession. While it's easy to see this on a spreadsheet, again, it is the hidden cost to the long term viability of that land that is cause for concern. On a small scale, this seems to be of little consequence. When we reach the economy of scale that we are now experiencing approaching a population of 7 billion, we finally realize (quite likely too late at this point) that exploitation of our landbase without true concern for its long term viability is long term suicide.

Some cultures believe that you cannot own any more than you can carry on your back. If we apply this concept to our property rights, that you are only entitled to damage your own possessions, and you are responsible for the maintenance of anything beyond that in order to sustain life, we could truly reach a point of a sustainable culture.

(1) – "Consumption" itself is a relatively new concept in many ways.