self-reliance

Republicans tend to extol the virtues of self-reliance and self-interest. To believe their responsibility is primarily- sometimes exclusively- to their family and close friends. This is a practical approach to life. It’s more sensible to focus on being a good provider than to try and Save Africa. Growing your own business is likely to produce more prosperity for the world than giving to charity.

And yet there is also an opposing principle on which the survival of humanity depends. Sacrifice. We are only here due to the sacrifices of those who came before us. Their willingness to use their life or lay down their life for people they would never know. Their willingness to allow their family to experience hardship for the good of the collective.

When greed and focus on me and mine becomes too strong and a spirit of sacrifice too weak, humans are vulnerable. No one steps up to combat threats. Instead they focus on minimizing damage to themselves and their families. And so the threats grow increasingly stronger until protecting oneself and one’s family becomes impossible. Everyone must be willing to risk something for the collective or none of us survive.

We’ve seen a lot of this selfishness in recent years when too few wanted to stand up to the mobs because it wasn’t in their self interest to do so. No one wants to lose their job, their friends, get yelled at. And so the mobs, the insanity, the bad things grow stronger and stronger, hurting all of us. In coming years this will continue. Unless we can muster a sense of devotion to the higher good, unless we take risks for the collective, we WILL be overtaken by tyranny. Selfishness leads to mass death.

But sacrifice is not only essential for survival- it is part of what makes life worthwhile. It opens the spirit to everything transcendent and beautiful. To make a God of one’s own survival…. there is something grotesque about it. It traps us in a world of meat. Only through giving our life away does our existence begin to take on meaning.

This is the story of Jesus whose symbol- like Pisces- is a fish. When he sacrifices his life out of love for humanity, he gains life eternal. His suffering is temporary but his joy is permanent. Because really we are already eternal beings stretched beyond death, but until we care about something more than ourselves we remain unaware of this. Even when you place your family’s survival above all else, what are you teaching them? That the purpose of life is to survive? Then life must have no purpose, because they won’t.

Sacrifice opens us up to receive from higher realms. We grow inspired, uplifted, empowered. We have two more years of Neptune in Pisces. We must use this time. If you believe bad things are happening, then stand against them. Do not simply try to minimize the impact on your own self. Unless we love the collective and risk ourselves for those we will never know, we all fall down. Don’t save your own hide at someone else’s expense. Instead take a bullet for an unknown brother.

P.S. Love of one’s own life is a beautiful red flame and without it nothing else is possible. To survive is the first law of the jungle, a religion I subscribe to. Unless one values survival, risking it has no meaning. Unless one cherishes their own life, they can’t develop that love for the multitude which opens the gates to heaven.

Communism cannot be defeated. It represents important truths and until capitalism wrestles with these and incorporates them into a broader capitalist vision the desire for communism will not go away. These truths include interdependence and the realization that power does not equal value. In other words, survival of the fittest does not mean survival of the best.

Supporters of capitalism champion values such as self-reliance and competition. Both beautiful things. But this frequently morphs into the naive view that whoever wins a competition was in fact superior and has more to offer society than those he vanquished.

A 60 second reflection on life will show this is not the case. Those who survive may be best at surviving, but this does not mean they contribute more to society. If baby Jesus were to be defeated by the AIDS virus, that is natural selection, but can we truly say the cream has risen to the top? Likewise, the winner of a business competition may have been best at winning the competition, but that is no guarantee they offer more value or a better product than those they beat out. Were the Mongols inherantly superior to those they destroyed? No. Might does not make right and might has little correlation to value.

But those with a religious belief in capitalism frequently cling to the notion that that which does survive and thrive is that which SHOULD survive and thrive, conveniently blocking from their minds the truth that evil is frequently well versed in survival. But this naive capitalist dogma relieves us of the human responsibility to ENSURE the survival of the good by throwing our weight behind it. We can sit on our hands and watch gladiators behead children while mumbling something about Darwin under our breaths. If people do not feel a moral responsibility to see that good triumphs, capitalism will create nothing more than a cesspool of oppression.

Allowing life to take its course is not evolution. Evolution is taking responsibility for what happens in our world. Might makes right leads to de-evolution.

The principle of self-reliance can also be troubling. On the one hand, it is a beautiful thing when people take responsibility for their own survival. On the other hand, most people who consider themselves ‘self-reliant’ pay little attention to all the people and systems which make their self-reliance possible. Then, when they see someone else struggling to survive, they make the naive assumption that a lack of self-reliance must be the problem.

Yet again, a 60 second reflection easily reveals the complicated truth that many (most?) human problems are external in nature. Slavery and systems which create functional enslavement being just two examples. As far as we know, the animals in the zoo are every bit as self-reliant- or would be anyways- as animals in the wild. To attribute the struggles of others to their inferior moral characters is simply a fantasy which relieves us of guilt as we prioritize the most trivial pleasures for ourselves over the basic needs of others. Because if we were to help them, they would never learn self-reliance, now would they?

There is also the brain-dead conflation of poverty with laziness. While this may be true in some cases, the reality is simple. Our wealth is determined by a single factor- how much money we have received from others. Lazy people frequently position themselves to receive quite a bit of money. Hardworking people can also position themselves to receive good money from their labor. Or hardworking people can find themselves in situations where they receive little or no rewards- in some cases even ending up in debt from nonstop work.

But it is always the case that wealth is simply a measure of what we have received. Never a measure of what we have given. Hardworking people all over the world can barely feed their children. In many cases the poor are the most hardworking segment of society. We call them the labor class. They are contributing but aren’t positioned to receive wealth- either through their own lack of skill in RECEIVING or an actual lack of options. In astrology, for example, the sign that rules work- Virgo- is associated with poverty. Virgo focuses constantly on solving the problems of those around him and is rewarded with scorn. A pattern we have all witnessed.

So this is yet another problem with religious capitalism- we measure people’s value by how much they have received from society, not how much they have given to it. We convince ourselves that these are one and the same. This relieves us of guilt & casts our fawning admiration towards the rich in a more flattering light. We admire their contributions. We aren’t sniveling syncophants drawn to power like a moth to hell.

So while I am fully team capitalism, I embrace it as an economic system- NOT a religious philosophy. Capitalism will never ensure the cream rises to the top. It is does not magically cause good to triumph over evil. That is OUR job. If we sit on our fat asses and watch humanity slug it out in a gladiator pit just waiting to suck the dick of the winner we will create a hell on earth. Cause you know who the winner will be. Satan. When capitalism is used as an excuse to free ourselves of moral responsibility, that is just the way things go.