01.04.12 – 01.10.12: * "Put On Your Vampire Hat"
Recently I listened to Gar Alperovitz and David Korten being interviewed unctuously about what they called the ‘Local’ ‘Movement’.
Let’s assume the best and not suspect funding from right-wing malevolence.
It could be they are genuinely fuzzy on the question of what ‘wealth’ is and where it comes from… or just have books to sell… or both.
The following is a little of what David Korten had to say:
“The solutions will not come from the system, the real solutions will have to come from the bottom-up, from people building their local economies… [by shifting their dollars away from large corporations to local businesses…]”
“We have to change the rules to fundamentally shift power back to the people… [this will be hard but] we have to start on the local level.”
“Capitalism presents itself as the champion of democracy and free markets and it’s actually the opposite. It is the local economy that’s the foundation of real democracy and real markets.”
While these are mostly noble sentiments… (of course ‘power’ must be returned to the people)… and while they, most significantly, tapped into the growing determination of ‘the people’ to reclaim responsibility for the planet…
…their ‘solutions’… (and they admitted this…) could not possibly be accomplished for many years to come… (if at all… truth to tell… ‘political realities’ being what they are…)
(Whenever pundits tell you “it’s going to take time”…
…when you know our brothers and sisters are dying…
…and babies and trees can barely breathe…
…and we daily forfeit our dreams…
…trying to feed our families…
…please don’t listen to what they say….
Listen to the earth…
…listen to your labored breath…
…the dirge of distress…
…the howl…
… …)
And… guaranteed… those “many years” will see… a choking off of our Global Awakening.
(And… significantly… he links ‘democracy’ with ‘market’… which aligns his message with a recent directive from right-wing propagandist Frank Luntz (sp?)… who advises his constituents to stop saying ‘capitalism’ and say instead ‘free market.’)
Let’s look at one of their ‘solutions’: “worker-owned businesses”.
A “worker-owned business” would only keep money in the local community if it was structured not to ‘grow’ – i.e., not extract much more from ‘earth’… than it gives back… (and by ‘earth’ I mean ‘earth-as-us’ and ‘earth-that-provides-all-the-stuff’…)
…it could do nothing to address the ‘Legacy Imbalance’…
(…or the existing blood-streaming-globally into ‘profits’…
…that becomes our jeans… or leashing-debts…)
…– i.e., the dis-eases with which our earth is burdened…
…and the great piles of money that determine…
…whose hides will be tanned first…
And these businesses are so constructed that they can never correct the Legacy Imbalance.
They may help a few have less hideous lives…
…but ‘power’ remains free to jump, stomp and stride…
…all over Grandma’s hide….
And we’ll still have trouble breathing…
…and our earth remains dis-eased…
…and our bodies still not free.
Let’s say we don’t want particulate matter in our babies’ lungs…
…or those who harvest our food dying in the noonday sun…
…how would we seize the results of corporate greed…
…that cause the dust we see spewing from all the factories?
How would we re-take…
…the earth which makes…
…the food from which we re-generate?
(…and…
…believe…
…your backyard can’t feed…
…us being tossed into the street…
…by the financial industry…
…or those dying due to drought…
…brought about…
…by cloud-seeding.)
Any ‘play’ we try to make…
…to restore power to ourselves…
…or refresh our earth’s depleted stores…
…means aggregating ‘means’…
…means ‘money’…
…and “‘power’-knows”…
…where it goes…
…controls…
…its uses…
…access to it…
…all skewed to serve…
…‘its’ abuses…
…while we stand hat in hand… begging… “please… could we just… at least… have a brief respite… a chance to breathe?”
OK…
…go get your Plato-Given-Hubris-Gear… and put on your vampire hat… you know, the one with the drop-down eyes that turns everything you see into dollar-signs?
What do you see?
You see an earth pretty much divvied up and done… the mineral and oil wealth has been found… nicely converted into abstract quantities and placed on balance sheets… (yours… your balance sheet…) and is flowing with admirable regularity into your coffers… (yours… your coffers…) via channels of Sweet Sweet Manipulation… delightfully devious twistings that are virtually untraceable….
You are safe from detection.
You can’t be found out.
The earth is tapped out…
…and you’re sitting on mountains and mountains of money….
You are a hair’s breadth from being what you’ve always dreamed…
…part of that elite corps of philosopher-kings.
Are all bases covered? Think. Think.
All the One-Time-Money that can be squeezed out of the planet is already in your pockets… or is solidly in-line… in private hands… (yours… or those you can control…) waiting for its turn… to serve….
The earth-earth is threatening to churn up more ‘cost’ than ‘credit’… all that poisoning leading to… upchucking bio-diversity… and who-knows what horrors… that could still upset the cattle… all the human Renewables….
So the Renewables must be dealt with… fed… bred… multiply-misled… but otherwise almost infinitely bled…
…tapped… to fill with their own blood… the well-earned gap… between ‘them’… and ‘us.’
And… fortunately… you have so structured things that… for them to have any comfort at all… any relief from the pain of not being self-determining… they must have…
…money…
…and…
…Look! (smile)… you seem to have some (smile)…
“So…” (you smile at them)…
…“here’s some fields that need a hand (or two)…”
…“here’s mines… (a few)…”
…“but… (sadly)… there are far too many of you…” What to do?
And at this point you withdraw behind the veil of Stolen-Cattle-Dreams and confer a bit in quiet… with a few more of your tribe.
So this is how you reckon:
“We’ll train a few to guard the moat…
…give degrees… and tests….
And then…
…address residual distress…
…with pundits mouthing the usual nonsense…
…about self-governance….
And the poisoned earth will keep them busy and distracted…
…and their lives non-protracted….
And to these ‘middle-classes’…
…who provide us ‘higher’ services…
…we’ll grant a longer leash…
…let them plan…
…their own ‘urban experience’….
And our pundits will proclaim…
…that ‘capitalism’ has changed…
…into a brand ‘new’ game…
…called ‘De-centralized Local Governance’….
And those few…
…we give money to…
…can tell themselves they’re ‘owners’ too….
And we’ll let this chump change rest…
…in ‘local institutions’…
…that ‘re-invest’ in…
…‘local institutions’…
(…and of course some leakage is to be expected…
…some drift…
…into the global game of death.)
And those who play…
…this global game…
…called ‘Power’…
…will roll its eleventh hour…
…into…
…a ‘play’…
…in which only they…
…can move.
––––––
‘Localism’ is a shade…
…a pillow…
…and a Sweet Forget…
…a rationale…
…for the wage-enslaved…
…turning away…
…from brothers and sisters…
…facing hopelessness.
Embedded in this glory-talk of ‘localism’ without consciousness…
(…without vision… of freedom…
…of life lived in the authentic…
…in our own bodies…
…not in the heads of ‘representatives’…)
…without responsibility except to self…
(…hiding in the guise of ‘citizen’…)
…to keep your own ‘self’ ‘healthy’…
…while leaving the earth-connected…
…to fend off Vampirism all on their own…
…while we exist aglow with Plato’s blessing…
(Here’s truth: that’s inverted too… the earth-connected are true wealth… true knowledge and true health. They hold our souls, and we have ‘all’ to learn from them… if we could learn that our ‘help’, in standing solidly with them, is solely salvation for our ‘selves’.)
…embedded in this glory-talk of ‘localism’ without guilt or consciousness…
…is an ideology preparing us to accept as legitimate a bifurcated world…
…globally and ‘locally’….
NEWSE (The Nascence to End Work Savings Endowment)
P.O. Box 3952
Berkeley, CA 94703
phone: 510.420.8054
