Saturday, April 20, 2013

A Rant: The Boston Bombings and a quote from Einstein



“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?

No comments:

Post a Comment