Photo by GR Stocks on Unsplash
The American ethos is that competition is good. It forces people to do their best and, despite some friction, benefits us all.
Competition makes us more productive. We get better products and services. Prices are kept in check. Yes, not all is bliss, but we live in a world of (relative) plenty rather than on the edge of starvation and ruin.
At least that’s the story. The story is wrong.
We now know what happens when you combine elective government with capital markets. A small number of wealthy individuals bribe politicians to game the system. Corporations — fictional persons — game the system for favors and preferential treatment over actual persons. Giant corporations and a wealthy few use both humans and the Earth for their personal benefit. That is, most of the people on Earth and the planet itself is reduced to servitude. Because people are paid some money in exchange for working full-time their entire lives for the corporations/plutocrats, they are called “free.” This is a hugely dishonest use of the concept of “freedom.”
In fact, we don’t all benefit. Even the wealthy plutocrats don’t, ultimately, benefit. Because we all live on the same Earth and this system is destroying the biosphere. Competition is a losing strategy for all living beings.
Cooperation wins. Competition kills. We must decide to ditch our fatal systems and to embrace human kindness and responsible stewardship of our planet.
Apologists for the status quo say that, embedded in our existing dominant system, are the values of freedom, fairness and the opportunity for all to pursue their dreams. That’s the story. It’s nonsense. In a world of 8 billion people, you can cherry pick facts, cite people who went from rags to riches, and “prove” that this system works. These justifications have been used to carry our species to the edge of extinction.
A Titanic Failure
The climate is collapsing. The band plays on for our oblivious plutocrats who are busy strip-mining our Titanic Earth.
Stop the music!
We are in a strange moment. Billions of people are fully aware that the climate is being actively destroyed by fossil fuel companies. The wealthy few and the amoral politicians actually think they are benefiting from this. They forget that they live on the same planet and that their own children will struggle and die unnecessarily in misery due to their short-sighted stupidity.
Think tanks and media and other institutions make some noise about taking climate action, but they either do nothing or they take tepid steps best described as greenwashing.
These institutions and think tanks and people and politicians and media can’t save they Earth because they obey the rules of a system which is destroying the climate. The imperative to maximize profits, and to consume human lives and the biosphere in pursuit of them, allows for only one outcome.
A Way Out
There is a way out. Defy the system. Systems are only ideas and systems fail if people fail to support them and, instead, openly defy them. Something is going to collapse: either the corporation/plutocracy or the Earth’s climate.
I know which side I’m on. I know what I’m going to do. I have confidence that, by inviting the billion plus humans who care to join forces, that life can win and that greed and stupidity will lose.
Join with us as we grow a movement that will add weight to the actions of the existing climate activists who took the lead, starting the fight for survival and well-being. We are working to mobilize the billion who care, to create an unstoppable force for good. One that will render the destructive forces impotent.
We will not only ensure the survival of the biosphere. We will establish a new ethos powered by the better angels of our nature. Greed, competition and amoral pursuit of profits and power will be decisively rejected. Love, cooperation, generosity and kindness will reign.
If we choose this.
Be a part. Start now. Our Virtual Climate Parties are beginning to build these communities everywhere. Read detail on the next events and how you can attend.
Thank you.