A German asks why change is so difficult

Hi Joe,

Please accept my gratitude. Your essays are like a key that frees me from a prison of social censure and guides my perception to a higher level. There is one question I’ve been asking myself for a long time: Why is it that those who are extremely perceptive and eloquent in seeing and expressing huge flaws in the existing social fabric, seem to be unwilling or unable to build or reveal a specific cognitive structure that would eliminate such flaws?

From my own country of Germany, it looks to me like the most elemental unit of social change is the individual, and it would be easier to create an alternate collective if individuals had a palpable alternative to gravitate towards.

We’ve all felt the whip of material being used as a fiat currency for calculating human worth and sucking up the substance of valid bio-essential need for half the globe. We’re all sick to death of legislated material and social hegemony. We need some kind of a cogent social philosophy that can do an end run around the present system’s material based protocol of control and manipulation, preferably before computerized robotic technology erases the small power for change we still have as consumers.

Where are the men and women who are strong enough and smart enough to build this thing and stay alive at the same time? The few times that pure ideological socialism has been tried in my own country, it has devolved into a corrupt distribution system of material access; so much so that even the name would cast dispersions on any attempt to resurrect the real thing.

I have to shut up now because I’m getting depressed at my own words, but is there any way you could point me towards people or ideas that are alive and capable of taking a decent bite out of the reptilian status quo?

Robert
Germany

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Dear Robert,

Such a complex letter you have written. So complex I must reply by point. I can only relate to you my own individual conclusions on such questions. (In other words, I am full of shit, but that doesn't prevent me from running my mouth about things I do not know.)

RE: Why is it that those who are extremely perceptive and eloquent in seeing and expressing huge flaws in the existing social fabric, seem to be unwilling or unable to build or reveal a specific cognitive structure that would eliminate such flaws?

Because they do not have one. Eloquence is cheap. And because they too are individuals just like you and me. And because none of us builds the cognitive structure of others. Consciousness is individual if nothing.

RE: We’re all sick to death of legislated material and social hegemony. We need some kind of a cogent social philosophy that can do an end run around the present system’s material based protocol of control and manipulation, preferably before computerized robotic technology erases the small power for change we still have as consumers.

Consumerhood is powerlessness. It does not generate cogent social philosophy. It negates it. Desire is the shackle. Material desire is the chain, and it is the tool we willingly hand our oppressors. Ain't no end run when we are dragging 100-feet of chain and running toward Wal-Mart to buy a few more links.

RE: Where are the men and women who are strong enough and smart enough to build this thing and stay alive at the same time?

Your society and mine are too crippled by affluence and materialism to produce that sort of people. But they  seem to be emerging. Read the full text of Hugo Chavez's speech. (We can only hope that our proverbial poor boy down there can keep his head on straight amid power and prestige, the hardest thing of all for poor folks, because they have no experience with power. Whereas a dyslexic pinhead like George Bush, having been raised in power, feels completely normal brandishing it around at the global cocktail party the the elites consider to be world politics. "Watch this fellas. KABLOOOM! OK, so I missed Ben Laden. But I blew the fuck out of Iraq! Cool, huh? OK, Dick, you're next. Iran is over that way."

RE: The few times that pure ideological socialism has been tried in my own country, it has devolved into a corrupt distribution system of material access; so much so that even the name would cast dispersions on any attempt to resurrect the real thing.

The term "ideology" scares me to death these days. And "pure ideology" scares me even more, whether it be socialist or capitalist.  Once I understood the the horrors perpetrated in the name of ideology, I sort of gave up on it. I now view socialism more as a personal light in which to conduct my own actions. I think the socialist heart has always been present in mankind and always will be. It exists under different names in different ages, but the spirit of common weal and common good and willingness to share with one's fellow man is always there.

RE: Is there any way you could point me towards people or ideas that are alive and capable of taking a decent bite out of the reptilian status quo?

Are we talking about leaders here? Then we have to go where the leaders are. They cannot come to each of us in the world. Are we talking about yet another idea? We have ideas enough. Too many really. Too much talk. What is called f is individual action at great risk and great personal cost. We already understand the problem. Ken Kesey said about taking LSD for to personal understanding: "When you get the message, hang up the phone." So the only option for an individual is to blow something up or build something good on our own, personally. I'm too old and drink too much to be fucking around with explosives, so I build physical things where they seem tio be needed.

Well my friend, that's my take on things. And I am only one man with no more answers that the next fellow in my country or yours.  And I have all the same problems as the next fellow. And I am a deep believer that the next fellow is entirely capable of reaching out and joining hands with me some day -- and with the next fellow down the line, too. Unfortunately though, I think he's going to have to get clobbered by the undeniable consequences of his actions before he is willing to raise a paw in brotherhood.

That's OK. I am a patient man, if not a quiet one. What other choice do we have?

In solidarity,

Joe