I hadn't conducted a remote interview for a while going into last evening's Brown Samana, at least not since HGRNJ upgraded our telephone interface with the big board. So when my buddy Danno called to verify some on-air speculation as to the release date of O' Brother Where Art Thou? (2000), I couldn't resist the temptation to drag him on the air. We began by joking a bit and discussing the film and the music from the film, which I had been playing. Danno had more on his mind though and we fell easily into the same old anti-capitalist ranting which so often dominates my on-air spiel as well as Danno's and my private conversations. We weren't covering any new ground, but as we spoke I came to appreciate the value of rehashing the usual suspects and revisiting again and again the well trod paths of one's own evolution of thought. There's always something new to be gleaned from what had once appeared to be picked clean. And so it was that Friday evening. As I listened to Danno lay it out for me, woe upon woe, it struck me that he is the embodiment of the fatal flaw in a capitalist ideology.
Danno is a good man, someone who deeply and genuinely cares about the well being of others–his friends and acquaintances especially, but all of humanity just as certainly. No one who knows him can dispute this fact. They will all attest to his generosity and humility, to his willingness to give of himself freely and without expectation of return. They will, however, also tell you of his complete incapacity for salesmanship, self-promotion and entitlement. It is unfortunately this latter rather than the former which defines his level of "success" in a capitalist system. So what does capitalism teach us to be? What type of human being is "naturally" selected for extinction if the struggle for survival is staged within a capitalist construct? A man like Danno who is willing to work and to contribute to humanity at large to the best of his ability should not have to face the spectre of an impoverished retirement fraught with economic and social pitfalls. And he's one of the lucky ones in possession of intelligence and interpersonal skills and U.S. citizenship. We need to stop trying to solve our problems within a capitalist construct and start thinking outside that particular box, if you'll allow the cliche. There are real solutions out there. All we need as a society is to want to solve our problems. Do we? I mean, do we really want to?
Danno is a good man, someone who deeply and genuinely cares about the well being of others–his friends and acquaintances especially, but all of humanity just as certainly. No one who knows him can dispute this fact. They will all attest to his generosity and humility, to his willingness to give of himself freely and without expectation of return. They will, however, also tell you of his complete incapacity for salesmanship, self-promotion and entitlement. It is unfortunately this latter rather than the former which defines his level of "success" in a capitalist system. So what does capitalism teach us to be? What type of human being is "naturally" selected for extinction if the struggle for survival is staged within a capitalist construct? A man like Danno who is willing to work and to contribute to humanity at large to the best of his ability should not have to face the spectre of an impoverished retirement fraught with economic and social pitfalls. And he's one of the lucky ones in possession of intelligence and interpersonal skills and U.S. citizenship. We need to stop trying to solve our problems within a capitalist construct and start thinking outside that particular box, if you'll allow the cliche. There are real solutions out there. All we need as a society is to want to solve our problems. Do we? I mean, do we really want to?
1 comments:
This discussion begs application of the imitable words of a former U.S. President: define entitlement. I can easily agree that solutions abound, although they may be more obscure than we would like. Your discussion conjures vague recall of ages gone by where the scales of equity have been tilted toward the power elite. I think we need to be fair, at least to ourselves, and wonder whether or not capitalism is the sole culprit. Meanwhile, it’s interesting to survey the current evolution of pro-active resistance to mass entertainment media - the newly spawned expressive multitude grappling for their remaining entitlements that portends a durable instinct in humans to claim their identity and survive the oppression that might be more insidious than capitalism. This problem is global. It's worth exploring more deeply. Keep blowing your horn, Joe. You'll get signed up somewhere on the planet.
Hawk
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