First, let’s acknowledge and commemorate the great loss and tragedy of 9/11/2001 and subsequent responses. It is a day of great sorrow. One of my goals in life has been to do my tiny part to help the US overcome anger, senseless killing, and destabilizing militarism. We failed in the aughts, but aren’t all dead yet. A story of reconciliation and peace remains possible and worthwhile.
Who doesn’t love a good story? Human culture and society are built on shared stories. Where would we be without language and the ability to share information through symbolic representation. We tell each other how things work and how to get things done. We use myths and stories to help our youngsters grow up and learn how to find their way in the world. We tell so many stories that the stories take on virtual lives of their own. It works fabulously well, as long as we keep our stories grounded in reality.
Science itself is based on the notion that we can’t be 100% sure of reality, so we describe the world in theories. We use reality-based theories to create amazing things based on our stories, such as magnificent buildings, 100,000 ton floating ships, entire political systems of allies and enemies, complex systems of exchange, and global trade networks. When we lose track of reality, ships don’t float and systems collapse.
Here at the ACM, we regularly discuss exchange. Some of us question whether exchange is the best way to get things around, but that is another story. Since we are exchanging, we have built up theories on exchange. I’m pretty densebusy, but have managed to learn in many years around the ACM that people have used a few systems of exchange from bartering through cycling exchange through a special medium.
This special medium has little use value on it’s own, gold standards or not, yet takes on utmost importance for its ability to get others to give up most anything, if you have enough. Now, nobody has that much in their pockets, so we play by rules of accounting, savings and managers. We add in lending, interest, investment and financialization. These groups can gain inordinate power over how and where we decide to put our resources, and seem to attempt as much whenever our diligence slips. All of these institutionalized constructs lean on legal and prison systems with the power to have you thrown in jail if you break the rules on how we exchange and own.
You can also go to jail if you have something you don’t own, or own when you shouldn’t. We shouldn’t have level 3+4 biosafety labs and toxic waste pits on every block, or so we tell ourselves. I say that whatever hazards we create should be decided democratically with risk distributed equitably. Everybody should have a decent space to relax and watch football or not on a glorious Sunday afternoon, if you ask me. Others say that is a privilege awarded to those who successfully navigate the exchange and ownership systems, or are born into it.
We build up fantastic rules and systems around what ownership means. Most everybody seems to agree that each of us needs our own stuff and have choices. In a civilization, there are bigger, broader ownership decisions in regards to our infrastructure, means of production, and all of the land and water between us. Some want this decided by bullies, thugs, feudal lords, gangsters, monarchs, elders, clerics or other undemocratic and mostly corrupted institutions, based on historical accounts. Others, myself included, seek equitable democratic solutions.
Among the story tellers, capitalists demand private ownership of all the finances and stuff behind our industrial production. Tales of advantageous innovation and growth are not borne out in realities of ongoing public R+D, profiteering, vulture capitalism, consolidation, and political power grabbing. In reality, trickle down brought us oligarchy and tyranny. If we must own, public and democratic ownership have been as innovative, efficient, accountable and productive as any.
Growth itself is anther story we have leaned on. Real life doesn’t work through unlimited growth and infinite waste. Strangely, the same system tells us that resources are limited, so we can’t just give things to the needy. Somehow we live in a world of unlimited growth, but we are too weak to live in it if we provide for our fellow humans. Not all stories are consistent, but reality is always a check. Many of us are innovating with ideas on how to develop, evolve and provide for all in a finite world of growth and contraction cycles.
We fight about whether the rules shall be applied equally, because some cling to outdated and misguided stories. Many look for stories that make us special. They separate us from the rest of reality. No story rids us of our dependence on reality. Some excuse destruction of very real necessities, such as a habitable planet, based on stories of human exceptionality and the preeminence of how they exchange and own. Earth isn’t going anywhere, but human civilization may be endangered by the folly of prioritizing economic stories over natural reality.
To wrap this up, thinking through my writing at Daily Kos, I keep coming back to finding and accepting our place in nature and our human communities. It is a theme of many of my stories. I’m sticking with it. If we want to keep telling stories, then there has to be grounding in reality. We are part of communities and a world that are at least as great as we are, and which are more rewarding spiritually, physically and economically than any granted through concepts of special exceptionalism. To that end democracy, with all of it’s frustrations and challenges, is far preferable to autocracy.
And that is part of the story.