Brain Flossing

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May 13, 2003

The downward spiral: Happiness in 30 days or your money back!

Prologue: I started writing this entry over a month ago. I'm finally ready to post it now that the groundwork has been lain. So here goes.

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I started reading Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson over a year ago. I quickly read the beginning, but by the middle, it was getting slow and terse (though not uninteresting). This, and the corresponding high volume of change in my life happening simultaneously, stalled my reading of the book to 1 page per week or so. Finally, I got into it heavily as it got interesting, and finished it.

As it happens, it seems that waiting to finish it was the right thing to do, as my perspective on a lot of the issues it covers have changed and solidified. Reading it now gives it whole new meaning to me. It's helped me consolidate some of the ideas I had previously been thinking of separately. I haven't come up with answers yet though. It is ironic however that the bookmark I was using is a Midnight Special bookmark, which is also where I bought the trilogy. This has deep meaning, as even Midnight Special finally succumbed to progress and was forced off the 3rd St. Promenade. They are looking for a new home, but have yet to find one.

These books give the reader the ability to consider issues on such large scales, giving one new perspective on OUR current issues. The book portrays a theoretical future, based on assumptions about our current course as human kind not changing what appears to be our current ideological priorities. Seeing our current direction taken to its ultimate extreme helps amplify its problems. It seems that the world is on this bizarre circular path where the oppressors are fully supported by the oppressed, like some sort of global Stockholm Syndrome. I don't know if its always been this way, or just in modern times, but it is beginning to seem obvious to me that it is easy for corporations, governments and lobbies to control 'the masses'. The promise of some happy, worry-free, materialistic life, seems to keep people blindly believing almost anything, even if, in the end, it is detrimental to them. People view it as short-term sacrifice for long-term gain, which coincidentally never comes for most.

Then I see this and this article, about Nike, which totally confirms my beliefs. Its about how Nike is appealing to the Supreme Court a case they LOST, claiming "Nike's defense of labour conditions in its factories represents false advertising." In other words, a U.S. court of law agreed that Nike DID have poor labour conditions in its factories, and lied about it to the media. What's almost more disturbing is that Nike is not arguing with the claim that they have poor labour conditions overseas, they are just asserting it is their first amendment right to lie about such things.
First of all, why isn't this big news again? Oh yeah, the 'War.' Or is it? This began long before the war started. It's more because corporations have become adept at PR, and in many ways, the 'objective news' IS just another outlet for their PR efforts.

I spoke to Won and Tom J. (some of my co-workers) about this today. Won argued that the problem was that most people had no soul and were too dumb to realize it. He blamed social pressures to get married and raise children, leading the 'normal life', as the cause of our current materialism. Tom and I disagreed. First of all, I have to believe there are those out there, more intelligent than myself, who are going down this false path to enlightenment. I argued that programming from a young age can lead to people who fully support the notion that material gains can bring happiness, never living among people who disagree, thus never knowing they may be wrong. Kids can be taught anything, and as long as those around them support those beliefs, they will go on believing it, regardless of whether it is true or not. Won argued that if you asked the average American on the street what they are really passionate about, what they really cared about, their heads would explode from the stress of reality. I countered that most Americans see the choice in front of them, and choose the wrong path, knowingly. If I were to try and convince a high-paid lawyer, for example, that my way of life, which puts happiness above money, is the right way, he would not listen. He already thinks my life is insane. How will I continue to make more and more money? Where will I find the money for nice things for my family? What will I do about retirement? These questions justify his materialistic life.

Going back to the apparent, infinitely cyclical nature of our current society. A year ago, while at a Mariot Hotel in Oakland, CA waiting for Sarah to finish her board exams, I had a thought about how it appeared capitalism worked. I just went searching through my blog to see if I had written about it anywhere, but apparently I haven't. The closest I came, was this entry. Basically, I believe that capitalism, in its purest form, creates, perpetuates, and further polarizes economic classes. The rich DO get richer and the poor DO get poorer, though it isn't always so obvious. My insight came as an illustration. Rich builds a widget (for arguments sake, this is probably a luxury item, like a car). It costs Rich $1 to make. He, through creative advertising, convinces middle class Joe (here-for referred to as Joe) that Joe needs this widget. How does he convince him that? Rich explains that if Joe had this widget, Joe would be more like Rich, which is what Joe is already convinced he needs to be. Joe takes the bait. He buys the widget for $2. Once enough Joe's have been convinced that buying this widget will help them, Rich is able to raise the price to $3. Of course, Rich is also able to lower his manufacturing costs due to the high volume, making the widget for $.50. So, while Joe believes by buying these widgets he is getting closer to Rich, he is actually distancing himself. Worse still, as Rich gets richer, products and services which Rich buys will get more expensive as those above Rich play the same game. Joe happens to ALSO be a consumer of many of these products and services. By making Rich richer, he makes the things he buys more expensive, thus making him relatively poorer. Is there a flaw in this logic? It appears to me to work this way.

While in LA, listening to talk radio, which I miss greatly. I caught a program on NPR where they were interviewing a British author named Niall Ferguson who recently wrote a book called 'Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power'. They mostly talked about how that topic relates to America today. At one point a UCLA History Professor called in to disagree with the authors stipulation that despite the humanitarian disaster of British imperialism, most continents are better off for it. The UCLA Prof asserted that there were many successful governments in Africa before the brits came and there is no reason to believe they wouldn't be in a better place today if it weren't for the wars, revolutions and death that British Imperialism brought. The book author countered by asking if the Prof really believed that the citizens of Africa would really have a higher GDP today, if the Zulu empire was still around. At this point, the Prof obviously had the same thought I did. He began, before being cut off by commercial, to explain that he used a different criteria when analyzing whether they'd be better off and his criteria had more to do with people than economics.

This short discussion exemplified my observations that most Americans (capitalists) equate how well off one is by the amount of economic freedom they have. Given this criteria it is easy to see how America helped the rest of the world by not only showing them that they could never be happy without money, Nike shoes, Levi pants, nice cars, etc... but also agreeing to become economic partners with their countries through imports and exports, helping them create large corporations and further polarizing those countries economic classes. For example, while on a holistic level we all agree that the fall of the eastern block was a good thing. Many of the individual citizens in those countries are far worse off now than before. It wasn't until we pointed out to them that money was in fact the measure of well-offness that they became poor (lower class), even though we had always labeled them that way before. They were never told. They lived their lives with what they had not realizing that they needed Nike shoes in order to be happy. Luckily, we fixed that.

Much of this can be traced back to the industrial revolution. There was a time when most towns were self-sufficient. There was no viable way to attain the necessary daily needs from outside the town in any reliable manner, so they maintained this self sufficiency out of necessity. They grew the foods they needed, built the things they needed, made the products they needed, etc... Along came the industrial revolution and the idea of small scale import/export. I say small scale because large scale import/export trade had been going on for a while between nations. All of a sudden, a farmer in a small town, who provided many different crops that the town needed, came to realize that he could grow one high profit crop instead of many low profit crops and send them off to the city in bulk. This would give him enough money to buy all the necessities he could not provide for himself, as well as giving him money left over. (Money for what anyway? He was already self sufficient). Ahh, but greed has its price. Now these people and towns were no longer self-sufficient. Instead they had to individually make enough money to buy the things they previously provided for themselves. While on the surface the idea that they would end up with more money NOT being self sufficient was plausible, we can observe now how it was flawed. The economies of scale afforded to larger operations soon forced these farmers (and other trade workers) to compete by lowering their prices, maybe even using cheaper materials. Soon, not only did they not have all this excess money they thought they would, now they couldn't even provide for themselves in the way they had before. This happened all over the world in any nation that capitalism gained a foothold. Yes, GDP went up, but in many areas, quality of life went down.

One question I have to ask myself is, why, once it was obvious that not being self sufficient might be actually harder than the former, why didn't people do something about it? Maybe by attempting to become self sufficient again, as individuals and towns? I think the answer is because by that point, we were thoroughly convinced that the American Dream (which by this point had changed from owning property, to being wealthy enough not to worry about money) was attainable to any American with a little elbow grease and sacrifice. Indeed, people still believe this today. News flash: most Americans will never be in a position to not have to worry endlessly about money. Most American's will never be wealthy, or even well-off financially. However, some recent polls suggest the average American is not so aware of their predicament. In this article we see that 41% of Americans believe they will be in the top 1% at some point in their lives. So it appears the system worked, as long as people believe THEY can be rich, they will support their own oppression. The most blatant example I have, is Amway. When I was 16 I went to a friend of mine's house whose parents were in Amway and wanted to talk to us about it. Beyond the chilling notion that they were marketing to 16 year olds, they told us that a key Amway ideal was that you had to act rich in order to become rich. You needed to dress nicely in an expensive suit, drive a nice car, etc.. That's because the people around you will trust you more, think you are more reputable, if you appear wealthy. Heck, if YOU made it, you must know what you're doing. If you look rich, you can convince others to join Amway. This being so important makes sense since the real money behind Amway isn't selling products, its selling Amway. This is capitalism unfiltered and at its purest. Convince people they can attain what you've attained and they will follow you.

Obviously, I'm making many gross generalizations about capitalists. In reality, there are many small business owners who believe in capitalism as a way to provide for their families without taking advantage of others. They believe in making money, without compromising their integrity. This may even be a majority of 'small' business owners (though I doubt it). However, most small businesses fail within the first 5 years, and the number is actually increasing. We see it every day, huge conglomerates leverage their larger buying power to put small businesses our of business. How many companies in how many fields were put out of business by Wall-Mart. In the past decade we've seen unprecedented consolidation between the largest of corporations, further distancing the large businesses from the small. In a previous blog entry, I cited other examples of how large companies can leverage their sheer size to destroy their smaller competitors. Its naive to think products live or die on their quality.

Here's a great article encouraging higher taxes for the poor, in order to make it fair for rich people.

So where is this all heading. We live in a world that is becoming more and more greedy, self-centered, and materialistic. I tried rationalizing that people are becoming more self-centered because they really DO see how bad it is and believing there is nothing they can do to change it, they make the best of their lives, regardless of how it affects others. But simple observation seems to contradict this view. People AREN'T acting like we're on the downward spiral. If so, they'd be trying to have a lot more fun. No, its almost worse, they believe we are actually making 'progress' as a society by clinging to these materialistic values. People actually believe being well off, monetarily, and ones general well-being are synonymous. As before, I believe it will take some huge event (probably some sort of catastrophe), to enable real change. Until then, I'm going to keep preaching and having as good a time as I can in the time I have.

Posted by wonko at May 13, 2003 10:18 PM

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