Right Society
Who would have imagined that
there would be so many people ready and willing to form Occupy Movements across
Canada?. …ready to pitch their tents and live in the streets, threatening to
stay out there all through the Canadian winter.
---Street people, unemployed,
students, and working people are all there. How brave they were. Or foolhardy?
I remember my student protest days.
The bravest thing I ever did was walk in a peace march in the days when
the police were relaxed and friendly.
I remember when we didn’t
have street people. We didn’t have food
banks. The welfare cheques provided
enough for people to pay rent and buy food.
People who had jobs didn’t need food banks and shelters. What changed?
Why did we allow it? I know I’ve been
out there on the streets often enough with my various banners. (Ron had no idea what he was signing up for
when he decided to marry me.) I know
many of you have been out there with me.
Sometimes it feels like a lesson in impotence, but we keep on doing it
because to say nothing would be worse.
There is no question in my
mind that Occupy Wall Street is an outgrowth of the Arab Spring. The Maple Spring (Le Printemps d’Érable) may be motivated by the same energy. The spirit of a radically different, more
participative democracy is stirring in Canada.
It is the same energy that motivates the Greeks to fight cutbacks that
will only put more people in the poor and destitute class while the upper
classes get richer. The people of the
world know what is wrong with our systems, and they know things must change.
On
the 9th of November 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. It was reported as the great victory of
capitalism over communism. Since then,
most of the communist countries have begun a process of allowing market forces to
come into play in their economies. But I
would like to propose that the meaning of the fall of the Berlin wall is not
the victory of capitalism over communism.
Rather it was the fall of a particular, totalitarian system that didn’t
work because it was not meeting the needs of its people.
Capitalism
has many proud achievements. It’s
greatest feature is its ability to unleash human ingenuity and creativity. Under this system we learned how to use the
natural resources of the earth, to make tools and machines that increased our
capacity to work many times. We learned
how to grow food to feed billions, and to make even more clothing and
manufactured goods than we could use.
We
also learned how to make the greatest amount of junk that nobody either needs
or wants. Once you have a factory in
place you have to keep making stuff and selling it, the more the better. Capitalism depends on growth as the road to
success. But what do we do when we use
up all the land and resources? As Peter Victor (Economist at York University)
puts it, will we learn to live without growth by design, or will we keep our
heads in the sand until disaster strikes and chaos erupts.
The
first year after the Berlin wall fell, the people starved while the potatoes
rotted in the fields because nobody knew who was supposed to gather them. The next decade was a decade run by gangsters
and thugs. Is our fall going to look
just as ugly? Maybe that’s why the
Harper government is equipping our police with state of the art riot gear and
building jails to house double the current Canadian prison population when the
crime rate is going down!
The
Hopi Elder tells us we are in a time when the river will be flowing very fast,
but we must hold on to our true selves, let go of the edge and keep our heads
above water. The river knows its
destination.
Louise
McDiarmid (from the UU Fellowship of Ottawa) asks, “Is this the time of The
Great Turning? She speaks of the work of
David Korten. (The Great
Turning and Agenda For A New Economy.)
He sees the world as facing a perfect storm of three converging crises: climate change, peak oil, and a financial
crisis caused by an unbalanced economy. These
crises present significant threats, but also great opportunities for fundamental
change.
Louise writes, “The “Earth
Community” that Korten speaks of is a sustainable, just, and caring community,
in which people are responsible for and accountable to one another. Three years ago, I thought that this was a
Utopian dream, that those who held the reins of power would never budge from
their domination of economics, politics and the media; that 90% of the 99% would never wake up and
imagine that another way of life was possible.
Now I wonder: is the Occupy
Movement a sign that The Great Turning has begun?”
I think Occupy Wallstreet is a movement to
challenge the moral underpinnings of society; to call us to change our moral focus. We ask them what they want. To make a list of demands. That’s not their
job. They are like the Hebrew prophets, calling us to a change of heart.
Since
1970 we have been allowing right-wing conservatives and republicans to define
the moral agenda. The result is Bill
Gates, with all his and Warren Buffet’s money, trying to fix the world and in
the process, make major policy decisions for developing countries. Private moguls amass wealth and put stability
and security at risk all around the world through the arms trade. According to Rev.
Fred Cappuccino, scientific studies have
shown that if you have the courage to chase these arms purveyors out of town
you will sleep 64.8% better at night. Instead, we continue to worry as our leaders
refuse to address the challenges of our times and to plan for new ways.
Meanwhile
the banks and corporations, hand-in-hand with unrepresentative governments,
strip our jobs, strip our democracy, steal our resources, and pay their
executives bonuses based on performance.
The growth in inequality escalates. One would have to think that they
actually want the world to fall into chaos.
An
unmanaged market system has the following flaws:
· The only goal of private
corporations is to maximize profit for shareholders. When they get so big they can usurp the power
of government there is no one to speak for the people, the family, the
community, or the earth
· It is hard hearted. There is no mechanism to support the poor. This generates descending cycles of misery,
poverty, and violence.
· Whether you are wealthy
or not is mostly the luck of the draw. It
is a myth that those who work hard will have financial success. Most wealth is inherited and most on the
lower end of the scale cannot escape the vicious cycle of poverty no matter how
hard they work.
· Only things that have a
price have value. Things that have no price are outside the system and
therefore, not counted. Housework and
childcare have little or no value. The
filtration services of trees and swamps have no value.
· Adam Smith said that to
truly have a free market you can’t have monopolies. The corporate world is in an orgy of mergers
and acquisitions. A report I read suggested
that perhaps as few as 114 families own the vast majority of the wealth of the
world. We do not live in a world of free
markets. We live in a world of
unfettered corporate power.
Markets
cannot be unfettered. They must be
subservient to the larger goals of the society.
There must be checks and balances that allow different interests to be
in dialogue. The systems and structures
of society must serve all people and not just the top one percent.
Between
1940 and 1970 the western world conducted a big experiment. We decided to give a larger role to
government, using taxes to redistribute wealth and bring greater equality. To avoid another depression we put money in
people’s pockets so they could spend it and buy things and the economy would
thrive. Universal programs such as
healthcare, education, child benefit programs, and old-aged pensions helped
everyone equally – rich or poor. They
were rights of citizenship so no one felt degraded to take them. No bureaucrat had the power to give or take
away. Everyone had the basics and could
live with dignity. A solid base for all
Canadians made it possible, for the first time, for people to work to achieve
their potential – and not just scratch to survive. Canada enjoyed a long period of peace and
prosperity and shared its vision for peace with the world. Today, the Nordic countries continue to enjoy
the benefits of this approach.
If
the differences in wealth are small, people experience more inclusion, more trust,
less stress, and more well-being. “Imagine living somewhere where 90 per cent of the population
mistrusts one another! What would that mean
for the quality of everyday life?—the interactions between people at work, on
the street, in shops, in schools.” (Wilkinson and Pickett). Striving for status is a trap, leaving us
stuck on the insatiable wheel of desire, suffering and cut-throat competition.
Equality brings better outcomes in health and well-being,
education, mental health, reduced violence and incarceration, improved child
welfare, improved status of women, improved social stability, reduced addiction
problems and much more.
But
since Regan’s presidency, our society has been shifting step by step, to a society
based on individual responsibility with a few winners and many losers. The tools we had set up to redistribute
wealth to the poor were removed. There has been a great transfer of wealth to
the rich with no accountability to use that benefit for the welfare of
all. Without regulation, capitalism
leads unswervingly toward greater inequality.
But
as inequality grows, do we see the truth?
Sometimes I just want to tear my hair out I get so crazy. We close the factory or fire civil servants and
then blame the worker for choosing unemployment. We pass mandatory minimum sentences for minor
drug offences and then put kids in jail. We raise the interest rates and whole
countries go bankrupt. We see countries
in trouble so we bail out the banks. We’re running a deficit so we cut taxes
and give juicy contracts to corporations for military production. Then we take the money out of the hides of
the poor.
Social
conservatives hate the poor. They ask, “If welfare is too sweet, why would people work? All you get from those people is dependency
for generations.” “Who pays for that,”. “I don’t want to!” they cry out.
This assumes that given a
choice, people would choose not to work.
Young women, for example, will choose to freeload on society and have
babies rather than work. Have they
looked at the cost of diapers lately?
Let alone the cost of rent and food?
Have they checked out how it feels to ask for a 3-day emergency supply
of food at a food bank?! Who would
choose that if they didn’t have to? Our
complex system of programs creates a tangle of rules and regulations to make
sure nobody can collect and a bureaucracy to watch for cheating. Then when desperate, hungry people try to get
around the rules, they are accused of moral depravity.
A system that knocks people
out of work, forces them to use their assets before they can receive benefits,
and then degrades them by refusing enough assistance to cover rent and food, --
such a system makes people bad. It
pushes them to the point of desperation.
This is not a recipe for a healthy, stable society. The vision of an unfettered market and
everyone working to satisfy their own greed is not working.
We
want the market to serve the community, not the community to serve the market. We want checks and balances between the state,
the individual, and the marketplace.
Each needs its own realm of power and influence. A right society will capture some of the
strengths of socialism and of capitalism and will go beyond both.
We
must begin by getting beyond our denial and our addictions to open our eyes and
see the truth. We need spiritual
healing. An important step in this
healing process would be to address the bad relationships that fester in our
society. We must commit ourselves to respectful relations with First Nations
including honouring our treaties with them.
We
must move from a growth-based to a sustainable economy. Where
the problem was once how to produce enough to feed and clothe the world, now
the problem is what to do with all the garbage.
Andrew
Nikiforuk, author of Tar Sands, says “growth is but an adolescent phase of life .
. . continued growth in the period of maturity is called obesity or
cancer. Prescribing growth as the cure
for the energy crisis has all the logic of prescribing increasing quantities of
food as a remedy for obesity.”
We need our best minds in
economics, the social sciences, political science and law to create new social
systems. We need larger goals than
individual profit but we still need individual initiative and innovation. People need to work for a living, but they
don’t need to work making weapons or destroying the environment. We need to re-imagine a banking system that
will allow governments to finance the work that needs to be done – in food
production, health care, education, municipal infrastructure, and protection of
the environment. We need a social safety
net that will share the work, and will give worth and dignity to those who
can’t work or who are caught in transition with all the changes. Perhaps a universal, guaranteed annual income
can be structured so that everyone has basic needs met. People would work to improve their lot above
that level.
We
need strong democratic processes based on full disclosure of information, the
best knowledge science can give us, a well-educated public, and a fair system
of representation of the full diversity of the population. We need proportional representation.
We
need a big public discussion on how to approach food production and energy
security in a post-peak-oil world. We
need a national plan for energy security.
Let it be based on common sense. Andrew
Nikiforuk suggests “Using natural gas to
develop oil sands is like using caviar as fertilizer to grow turnips!”
We
need politicians who will tell us the truth about what is necessary to build
this new society. People will need to
prepare to simplify their lives and reduce their expectations. We need parties that value the principle of
equality. We need to plan and build
social structures to help us make the very hard transition ahead to a low-oil,
slow or no growth economy. We have a lot
to learn. G.A. Cohen says: “We know how to make an economic system work on the
basis of selfishness. We do not know how
to make it work on the basis of generosity.”
(G.A.Cohen CH4, Democratic Equality)
But
most of all we need a Canadian people who have not given up hope and are
engaged in the public discussion. I have
written three sermons in my time on the subject of Faith. I am obsessed with this topic because now,
more than ever, we need faith that our actions matter and that what we do can
make a difference.
We
need new leaders with creative new vision who are prepared to experiment and
develop the new directions we need. We
must believe that the power of love can push away greed, and influence
power. We must convince our politicians
to work together to confront our challenges.
We must practice dialogue and non-violent change. We need major, constructive discussions on
the tar sands – not confrontative processes that will lead to a battle between
government, First Nations, and environmentalists. If we want peace and prosperity around the
world we must find the new Keynes who will show us the way. We have two jobs – First: to actively seek
out and promote the ideas that will help us move forward. Join with transition town to plan our
future. Second: we must stand against
injustice. We must try to slow Harper
down as he races to dismantle our democracy and our environmental
protections.
Let
reverence for life in all its forms be the foundation of our spiritual life. Let us embrace the opening offered to us by
Occupy Wall Street and Maple Spring and get involved. Can we
take back the reins of power and build a sustainable Earth Community for future
generations to enjoy? I hope Louise is
right. I hope we are witnessing the
beginning of The Great Turning!
All Our Relations
Bibliography
Democratic Equality
What Went Wrong?
Edited by Ed Broadbent
University of Toronto Press
©2001
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by David C. Korten
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San Francisco, CA
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Development Forum
The Great Turning
From Empire to Earth Community
By David C. Korten
Berrett-Koehler Publishers
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Louise McDiarmid – UUFO
Newsletter, November 201
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Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent,
Revised edition
By Andrew Nikiforuk
Winner of the Rachel Carsen
Environment Book Award
David Suzuki Foundation and
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©2010
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Slower by Design, Not Disaster
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Limited
The Lypiatts
15 Lansdown Road
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Glos GL50 2JA, UK
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The Spirit Level
Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger
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Pickett
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