“The chief object of your attack against
me concerns my support of “world government.”
I should like to discuss this important problem only after having said a
few words about the antagonism between socialism and capitalism; for your
attitude on the significances of this antagonism seems to dominate completely
your views on international problems. If
the socioeconomic problem is considered objectively, it appears as follows:
technological development has led to increasing centralization of the economic
mechanisms. It is this development which
is also responsible for the fact that economic
power in all widely industrialized countries has become concentrated in the
hands of relatively few. These
people, in capitalist countries, do not need to account for their actions to
the public as a whole; they must do so in socialist countries in which they are
civil servants similar to those who exercise political power.
I share your view that a socialist
economy possesses advantages which definitely counterbalance its disadvantages
whenever the management lives up, at least to some extent, to adequate
standards. No doubt, the day will come
when all nations (as far as such nations still exist) will be grateful to
Russia for having demonstrated, for the first time by vigorous action the
practical possibility of planned economy in spite of exceedingly great
difficulties. I also believe that
capitalism, or, we should say, the system of free enterprise will prove unable to check unemployment, which will
become increasingly chronic because of technological progress, and unable to
maintain a healthy balance between production and the purchasing power of the
people.
On the other hand we should not make the
mistake of blaming capitalism for all existing social and political ills of
humanity. The danger of such a belief
lies, first, in the fact that it encourages fanatical intolerance on the part
of all the “faithful” by making a possible social method into a type of church
which brands all those who do not belong to it as traitors or as nasty
evil-doers. Once this stage has been
reached, the ability to understand the convictions and actions of the “unfaithful”
vanishes completely. You know, I am
sure, from history how much unnecessary suffering such rigid beliefs have inflicted
upon mankind.
Any government is in itself an evil in
so far as it carries within it the tendency to deteriorate into tyranny.”
Albert Einstein from Ideas and
Opinions
I am more convinced every day that the
advancement of technology to replace the rudimentary labor of moderately to
lower educated members of the human population is incongruent with the health
of our human super-organism under a predominant capitalist paradigm. This excerpt from Albert Einstein’s
collection of writings in Ideas and Opinions briefly hints at such
dangers and the greater dangers of the absolutism of favoring capitalism,
socialism or any exclusive form of economic policy through government. There are benefits to each, which shift as
science and technology progress humans to unexplored life-potential.
I consider myself a champion of reason
on all levels. I often see the
governments of our planet as representatives of our inner war between love and
fear of our neighbors. In fear we become
an island nation assassinating political candidates, armed to the hilt with
gun-factories in our backyards in a circle of mutual destruction. In love we are at peace that our neighbor
could destroy us in the gaps between tyranny and responsible self-defense and
mutual assurance of group recompense upon the violator of the peace in a United
Nations form of alliance.
The boundaries of religion to me are the
greatest threat capable of spreading ideologies rationalizing hate masked as
faith across the universe which jeopardize such peace. Religion beguiles the masses into exclusivities
of disconnect between the promise-maker and reward-provider. This gap is an unparalleled breeding ground for
fear that neuters the coalition of peace.
After the small explosives at the Boston
Marathon this week, we can see ever clearer the potential of confusing the
risks of volition and the tyranny of fear.
The hypocrisies of drone bombings and the rationalized family members
discarded with the targeted ring kindred.
The reality of cities of this Earth which relegate public meeting spaces
as petri dishes for fourteen year olds to strap on explosive vests after being
told stories or in full recognition of what is to be of their body parts in
nanoseconds after detonation is possible in any city in America. It is possible at the Boston Marathon, Mardi
Gras in New Orleans, the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, or Wrestle-mania. It is possible at a kindergarten graduation
ceremony a Carnival cruise ship or the Sears Tower in Chicago. Death by volition is not a managed-enemy.
We rush to find out how, why, what if
this happens again, oh we caught him and his brother; the threat has passed and
fear is watered-down. The fire is doused
for the moment. The reality of the
potential of volition is never gone. It
never will as long as we are free-willed beings capable of such science. We are capable of such massive death and
torture by the volition of a microcosm of our super-organism. No drones or bullets will ever sever this
truth.
I remain resolute that America would be
better to build homes, schools and crops in Afghanistan from September 12, 2001
on in a constant marketing campaign of entrusting the reality that this has been
from eons ago a war of the mind. Peace
is a byproduct of such mental battlegrounds.
Justice is an illusion of the fear-filled. I know Einstein knew this and so much more
than I can comprehend. Encouraging the
will of a people to no longer see the power of extremists as their most
consistent path to a form of self-sufficiency by endearing them to a coalition
of empowered pacifists which does not birth warriors in the ranks of our opposed
bathed in ignorance is or was at our disposal, but is forfeited in the
hypocrisy of our disconnect from ration that argues that we can confine the
volition of the terrorist.
America sleeps with the fear of volition and the confusion of our
disenfranchised masses unemployed by factory robots, drive-through computer
systems, online-merchant portals and a global textile cartel under the progeny
of Sam Walton and his stock-ticker cronies.
The threat of physical destruction of government against government has
shifted to the threat of individuals against government as technology has
progressed. The threat of economic
destruction of corporation against individual has deteriorated the purchasing power
of the average family and calcified the wealth of nations into a jury of
billionaires. The juxtaposition of
physical and economic threats upon the psyche of the average citizen leads us
each back to confront volition.
We each must choose between our mutual
destruction and our short-term preservation.
We are a people on a sinking island with fewer rafts than humans. Each raft requires a team of rowers, but
depending on who arrives at the raft first, some may attempt to go short-handed
or those who wait may be thrown overboard by others who come later. The balance of trust is our task of
life. It is our purpose, this balance of
love and fear. If we do not see and
confront this prisoner’s dilemma reality we will ensure our extinction.
The healthy form of socialism Einstein
alludes to is begging to the Earth to be embraced in the failures of
environmental assurances in Kyoto and the lack of a digital-IRS-based single-payer
health care system linked to patient economic linkage to care acquisition in
the United States to serve as a model for democratic nations to the world
rather than a profit-hoarding embarrassment.
The healthy form of socialism acknowledges what the federal disability
system and state-welfare systems are in the United States in comparison to
factory-robots, defined-benefit government retirement plans and average CEO
compensation. The healthy form of
socialism acknowledges the middle-class working people shuffling to abortion
clinics who cannot afford more children and the governmental programs that
encourage people to use children as cash machines.
We are a world and an America at war
with our volition. We can choose or we
can worship a mirage of our flavor of justice.
We all ask, “Do you see me? Do
you hear me? Does what I do matter?” I will die believing in the goodness of the
majority of people of wanting the same peaceful harmony. How else have we lasted this long under the
threat of volition?
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