What ails America today will not be solved by an election. It will not be solved in the courts. It will not even be solved by people working together to find ideological common ground. What ails America is deeper than all of that.
What ails America is that which ails much of the rest of the world: an economic system, secured through military might, that allows and even requires the suffering of the many for the benefit of the few. That system is the source of our most intractable challenges, yet as a country we’re unwilling to talk about it openly.
When earthquakes strike, structures too close to the faultlines collapse. Two major faultlines under which the structures of our society appear to be collapsing are materialism and militarism. To focus only on the collapsing structures and not address the faultlines upon which they rest is folly.
The materialism faultline is an economic system dependent on endless growth, which in turn depends on an endless pipeline of consumer demand, which in turn requires the ravaging and depletion of nature’s far-from-endless bounty. The result is a catastrophic climate crisis and a staggering global imbalance in wealth and resources that has created many of the world’s most intractable conflicts.1
The militarism faultline is the use of force to sustain that global imbalance — to impose our national will in whatever ways are needed to protect our materialistic way of life and the corporations that depend on it. Were we not blinded by the chimera of endless economic growth, we would see that using force to hold together an imbalanced world is a futile effort that has cost millions of lives, trillions of dollars, and put all life on the razor’s edge of annihilation.
If we are to meet the challenges wrought by this imbalance we need to do our part to address its root cause — to wake up from the American nightmare, extricate ourselves from the madness of over-consumption and the infrastructures that support it, and finally treat the needs and interests of all people as we would our own family. Which in the big picture, is exactly what they are.
So how might we do that? How do we change a culture so invested in its own existence, so unwilling to see the faultlines upon which it’s built?
There are a few useful points to make in that regard.
The first point is that we are not naturally an over-consuming species. For the vast majority of our history we lived in hunter-gatherer societies that were both “egalitarian and sustainable,”2 two attributes unsuited to today’s growth-driven market economy. For our economy to prosper, then, our natural instinct to know when enough is enough has to be overcome. That is not an easy task. If it were, corporations would not need to spend billions of dollars each year on sophisticated marketing campaigns that manipulate our need for acceptance and belonging just to sell us products that we often neither want nor need.
Take away the mass manufacturing of artificially-induced incentives, and at an individual level it will not be hard to wean ourselves from excessive consumerism.
On a cultural level, of course, it’s not that simple. Eliminate overconsumption and you undermine the entire global economy, an outcome so threatening in its implications it’s beyond contemplation. But here is the second point: As we’ve seen, the faultlines of materialism and militarism have already revealed their instability. Reimagining our cultural institutions in a way that brings us into harmony with the planet and with each other is not so much a choice as it is a necessary response to a system collapsing under its own weight.
That’s why we need to have the materialism/militarism conversation now. We need to seriously start talking about what kind of economic system delivers the benefits of capitalism while prioritizing people and the planet over money. And we need to seriously start talking about what is really required to secure our safety and wellbeing in an age where all threats are global. Is it by building weapons of mass destruction and putting them on hair-trigger alert, or by finding the common ground on which we can build strong relationships, especially with those we consider our enemy?
Certainly we’re seeing in our country today the imperative of having good relationships with those with whom we disagree. The same is true at the international level. Good relationships build trust and open the channels of productive communication — so essential if we’re to exist together, rather than not exist at all.
The third point is that, while it may be below the radar for many of us, such conversations are not only happening, their fruits are being put into practice. There are people developing the framework for a people- and planet-centered form of capitalism.3 There are people developing, validating and teaching powerful new approaches to the resolution of conflict without resorting to violence.4 And there are people figuring out how to create communities and industries that are in harmony with the rest of nature, replenishing vital resources rather than depleting them.5
The problem, however, is that initiatives like these — and the destructive economic and military paradigms they address — have failed to sufficiently break into the national conversation. Rather than being front and center in our collective awareness, they’re mostly ignored and in some cases actively undermined by the special interests of the dominant culture — judged to be futile or unrealistic by those who lack the knowledge, interest or imagination to judge otherwise. Meanwhile, the catastrophic failures of the dominant culture continue to fill our news feeds.
This needs to change, and an expanding grass roots conversation can do that. We can insist on addressing these two fissures in our foundation – materialism and militarism. We can confront their role in creating and perpetuating the existential challenges before us. And we can highlight the alternatives so that we can look together at what may be possible.
That requires taking these subjects off the taboo table. We have to start talking.
https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/
https://c2ccertified.org/
Love is who we are; let's lead from it. A Love-based economy isn't far fetched. After all, leading from the base of our being is... relatively natural. We must engage in tough conversations and choose to see our oneness, not our divides. Seeing through Love's eyes leads us here. Being this way requires noticing and surrendering the places within ourselves where we've blocked our capacity to see through Love's lens.
The materialism Faultline and militarism Faultline
Causing a catastrophic climate crisis and a staggering global imbalance in wealth and resources that has created many of the world’s most intractable conflicts. ¹
The use of force to hold together an imbalanced world is a futile effort that has cost millions of lives, trillions of dollars, and put all life on the razor’s edge of annihilation.
We need to seriously start talking about what is really required to secure our safety and wellbeing in an age where all threats are global. Is it by building weapons of mass destruction and putting them on hair-trigger alert, or by finding the common ground on which we can build strong relationships, especially with those we consider our enemy?
That requires taking these subjects off the taboo table. We have to start talking.
I totally agree with Kern's wisdom for an inclusive, mutual respect sustainable thriving Global system positive change , a new culture paradigm on equality in dignity over domination is a requirement .