DEMOCRACY OR CAPITALISM: WHICH ONE ARE WE?

Listening to Michael Moore talk on YouTube this morning about Trump’s leadership style I realized that America is operating on an unconscious two-party system that has much greater power than the acknowledged two parties. While he essentially said that Trump is a caricature of the narcissistic CEO in his manner of running the country, I realized that our entire country is based on an unconscious internal dissonance. Of course, the opposites in life are the source of movement and change but they are destructive rather than creative if there is no attempt to resolve them by moving to a higher resolution.

Our government has been idealistically if frequently not functionally based on democratic values. As a nation, we are also in an adolescent state of development and think in unresolved opposites of black and white. Our pioneering spirit is also very extroverted and not inclined to self-reflection. A high IQ is valued over a sensitive and intuitive heart. Perhaps, on a side this is the reason there is so much heart disease even among those who eat right and exercise regularly. Our culture is not kind to the body which is often seen as another part of nature that must be conquered and exploited. But the body is not just a complex machine. In fact, the comparison of body and machine is an unwittingly reversal of the reality that machines are fashioned after various body functions to enhance their innate functions with greater speed and power. There are, of course those who would replace us all with machines and others who are terrified that we will be replaced with machines. Neither thinks in terms of a soul and its emotional responses in association with well being. The mind is more than a mechanical calculator and even science is beginning to recognize that the body in both heart and muscle has an intelligence of its own separate from brain cognition.

The democracy we assume seems to be a thin layer of paint covering a voracious oligarchy. The hungry wolf has been scratching at the door of the Capital for a long time. Trump is raising much consternation because he invited the wolf in without rationalizing or attempting to hide it. In this sense, he is a different kind of politician because he exaggerates this act as leader and makes no attempt to hide it.

Does unfettered capitalism truthfully result in a better way of life. It is supposed to encourage creativity and increased quality, but while encouraging competition it also encourages greed and exploitation. How are we to enable the good aspects of competition while controlling self-serving greed. We must approach capitalism with a sense of relatedness, or it becomes exploitation.

In the 19th century the Darwinian concept of natural selection of the fittest as a justification for exploitation of the poor by the wealthy became embedded in the capitalistic system. Socialism was judged as a reversal of the natural order and the sure way to breed a weak society. I suppose the subject must be how to encourage creativity and healthy competition without going to a self-destructive extreme. Somehow, head (literally capital) and heart must be balanced.

The current scare about the Corona virus outbreak brings the imbalance of self service and communal membership into direct confrontation by threatening to shut down businesses and jobs, the circulatory system of our world economy and therefore society. The virus isn’t political. As an act of nature, it is pushing the reality of global membership in our face. The individual is also a member of a society and society is made up of individuals. One cannot exist very long in denial of that reality.

The ultimate fear seems to be the end of the world as we know it, and this is the fear, as they say in Washington, “on both sides of the aisle”. However, creation is a continuous process and the entrance and exit signs exist on the same wall. The difference depends on whether you’re coming in or going out. The end of one world is always approaching as another is coming in. As individuals we always have the choice of celebrating or mourning. I usually mourn and then celebrate, but everyone has their own sequence. Nature doesn’t care because its always in process. If you have a superior ability you can benefit the world but if you attempt to hold your place forever you will become a disease.

I’ll use the concept of God as an intelligence principle in the cosmos that includes all functions of the creative/destructive/re-creative process. In the astrological model there is creative fire, nurturing water, solidifying earth and distributing air and they are all in constant interaction, but we humans usually don’t notice when “the times they are a changin”. Carl Jung said, “...fundamental problems cannot be solved, only outgrown”. Belonging and competition are always in conflict. Creation is a process of finding a resolution on a higher level. The breakdown in a system reveals its weaknesses. The world in balance is always a tight rope walk. Eventually there will be a fall and the people of the world will go on by getting up and trying again or recognizing that someone else must walk the rope.

On a seemingly unrelated and possibly trivial note, I have been watching YouTube videos of the current generation of professional dancers. As a child, my first desire was to be a dancer. I was not allowed to dance because of my parent’s religious restrictions and thus began lessons hopelessly late  in my twenties. However, in my usual style, I went in for total immersion for several years. I got to see the Bolshoi Ballet with Maya Plisetskaya, Balanchine’s New York City Ballet and The Royal Ballet with Margot Fonteyn and Rudolph Nureyev. Now comparing that generation with the current generation (also on YouTube), the virtuoso techniques of that past generation have been absorbed and transcended by the current generation. Someday, the current generation will have taken certain steps and postures to an absurd level, (some have almost arrived there now) and there will be a reaction back to classicism. And so our planet spins and the poles continually wobble.