Substance over Technique/Technique over Substance

Modern Ways of Thinking About our Existence are Sick:

When propagandists use glittering generalities and name-calling symbols, they are attempting to arouse their audience with vivid, emotionally suggestive words. In certain situations, however, the propagandist attempts to pacify the audience in order to make an unpleasant reality more palatable. This is accomplished by using words that are bland and euphemistic.

Take for example “conflicts” between our species as a prime example. Since war is particularly unpleasant, military discourse is full of euphemisms. In the 1940’s, America changed the name of their War Department to the Department of Defense (as it is called in most countries). Under the Reagan Administration, the MX-Missile was renamed “The Peacekeeper.” During war-time, civilian casualties are referred to as “collateral damage,” and the word “liquidation” is used as a synonym for “murder.”

Thus is the way we conduct our lives. Living in a world of propagandic titles.

Now let us look at the flavour of the moment in propaganda. The one we call… free market. It is nothing more than a propaganda machine set in place that keeps telling you to consume. Humans will always need… things… food, shelter, clothing (and the like), that is a given, but when these needs in our existence become driven by and/or are overshadowed in the connection of our basic needs to an idea of status (over someone else), it seems it is time to take a step back and ask oneself… why.

And what of the multitude of other propagandic ideas we live by. Are any of them any better?

Communism doesn’t work because we are (as a species), too selfish. For whatever the reasons (insecurity, greed, fear, preoccupation,), we always want more.

Socialism doesn’t work because people cheat the system (for their own benefit). Not every one of course, but it is a natural tendency for humans to want to get what they can for themselves.

Welfare States don’t work because, let’s face it…. No one would work if we did not have to, and in the world that we as a species have created, money is oh so important, but we can’t just go on making it.. and giving it out … forever. Even though it is (at its core) truly meaningless and only a piece of paper, we have elevated it to the status that dictates our existence. So in essence we have elevated it to what some people see as a “god” (being that they see that their God dictates their existence, then it is logical that money is a god as it dictates most of how we can exist in this life). Creating a welfare state only perpetuates all the other ideas of how to run a system.

Basic, street-level environmentalism is (at the moment) doomed because there is no financial incentive to conserve. We can all recycle our cans, bottles, paper and the like, but until we understand that a FUNDAMENTAL change is needed and that the entire system by which we grow, produce, manufacture, distribute, advertise (and so on) changes, nothing ever will.

Those whom say that the United States is a democracy and hold that up as the bastion of what we should strive towards need to understand that it was conceived as a republic. A republic never intended for power to be in the hands of the many. A republic is based on the premise of a few holding the balance of power and doing what is good for the republic and its people.

Free Market does not work because it is not a whole… it is a means to work through a mathematical equation, and while mathematical equations are often good, they do lack the understanding of the human factor at times.

Religious states do not work because they don’t allow for the very real differences that arise in our species, and they stifle our growth in so many ways because their own fundamental ideas are never evolving.

Anarchy does not work because the human species works best together… and achieves the most when we have common things to strive for. Divide and conquer for the greater good seems like shooting ourselves in the foot or cutting off the nose to spite the face

Libertarianism doesn’t work because it is based on the flawed premise that we are all starting from a place of equality and that humans will always “do the right thing”… and it ties economics to social issues. It forgets, like so many other ideas of how we should exist, that we are not all the same and that we are a flawed species in many ways. It is also very self serving, but again, like so many other of our thoughts does not see that, nor wants to admit it.

Consumerism does not work because it is a self-perpetuating circle designed to feed on its hosts, not feed into its greater good.

Humans are animals, like any other, and we are in a constant need to… survive. The economic models of today are simply another avenue to what we now see as … surviving and thriving…Existing economic models are theories… just like any other. They are treated as “science”, but in fact they are nothing more than ideas floated in the air that often bear little resemblance to the real world which they are being applied to.

Economics as a whole has become increasingly an arcane branch of mathematics rather than dealing with real economic problems. The problem does not seem to be math itself, per se, but the obsession with technique over substance; Sort of the symptom of the whole of our species at the moment.

Technique over substance.

It seems that we need to really take a step back and understand that we need to look at the whole of our existence and really reevaluate what is really important and needed in our lives.

It seems to me humans spend so much time trying to define… and defend … their way of being, they often forget that those they are in most conflict with are usually the ones that are trying to do the same. Evil does exist, moral guidelines should be upheld and people should be allowed autonomous freedom to… be, but all of this comes with a price.

-The price of understanding.

-The price of seeing all the others.

-The price of letting others do what my not necessarily be in line with you (within the guidelines of mutual respect and understanding).

-The price of seeing the big picture.

More than anything else in life, I see how complex it is for our species to co-exist and how it is next to impossible for us to have one way of doing things for a species such as ourselves that thrives and prides itself on the diversity of its thinking.… so I don’t strive to say that this way is the right way or this way is (even thought like you and everyone else I do it every waking minute of my day with all the choices I make… that is a given). I tend to see the flaws in them all (these models we so dearly hold close to our thinking), and instead think…

How can I leave this world, better (in some way) than when I came into it? Not just better for me, but for everyone.

That is the system I strive for.

Substance over Technique.