Demote Money, Promote Wealth

No further revelations of criminality from on high should surprise us anymore; it is now clear corruption reigns. The surprise is how few of us are ready to embrace this fact, how hard it is to accept we’ve sold our dignity for decadence. As with decadence across the ages, dishonesty, corruption, naked greed, psychopathy, casuistry, amorality, and disinformation are this period’s defining characteristics.

This time it’s different. This time the decadence is rotting a global system that has more power than any other in history. Its implosion threatens such devastation that we should all do what we can to free our habits of thought from their socially acquired cages. Nothing, except that which we ourselves work through and understand, can be trusted. We must become arrogant; we must know for ourselves. From there we can reach out to others in humility and openness, as contradictory as that sounds.

Since 2007 at the very latest we’ve been face to face with a seamlessly operating Media, State and Corporate status quo. We must now treat with imaginative skepticism the totality of the story of our times, as propagated – wittingly and unwittingly – by all organs of this status quo, and use our spare energies for our own research. The Internet is invaluable, but I’ve found depth of wisdom comes from careful perusal of source literature, then writing about and discussing it. Sharing our emerging position with others solidifies understanding, corrects inevitable errors.

What matters though is not where our experiments and trials take us, but that we stay true to openness and humble inquiry. It is therefore vital to sidestep, as best we can, the divide-and-conquer tactics deployed so effectively by the status quo. Any status quo’s unchanging aim is self-evidently to sustain its own position of power indefinitely, and as such it is self-tasked with preventing the nucleation of a viable, alternative story. It will do whatever it can to survive, as is natural. Neutrality demands we build a new, loose consensus around our common humanity, using compassionate forms of logic and reason – double-edged as both are – rather than by adhering to left/right myths. Nor should we stay loyal to any particular philosophy or religion. And, essential as they are, we must bear in mind that personal morality, intuition and sensibility also play powerful and deceiving roles; objectivity is an illusion always.

As for powerlessness and its consequent despair, speaking personally I acknowledge and welcome my own anonymity, as well as the smallness of my contribution. It is precisely this smallness and anonymity, as twinned foils to ego-ambition, repeating as echos across the newly opened spaces of the Internet, which can gather into a new song.

Decadent times require steady bridge-building, not trench warfare. Anger and rage are justified but should be wielded wisely. Entrenched and partisan bickering helps only the common enemy, which is now the broader system, its crumbling assumptions and our unavoidable efforts to prop it up; we are all constituent parts of system. If we stay humble but determined, unprejudiced but focused, we can affect real change directly through our own actions. Only through such a process can change be sufficiently wise and radical. Broad and profound understanding leading to a willing pursual of real alternatives is the only viable way. This change cannot be forced from above; it is a methodology, not a conclusion to be agreed with. This is beautiful precisely because it cannot be forced and because there are no guarantees.

My contribution to this difficult and lengthy process is this call: Demote money, promote wealth. Econosophy is an ongoing attempt to give meat to its bones.