A common delusion
Following on from my previous blog post Relationship, capitalism is not relationship. This doesn't invalidate capitalism in any way, but I feel we need to be clear about what capitalism actually is, and it is very clearly not relationship.
But then again capitalism is not a lot of things what many people think it is, and this is perhaps why the world and our society is so messed up like it is.
Capitalism is any interest or activity which is pursued exclusively and solely for the objective of acquisition of money, property, materials or labour off other people.
Let's be very clear here. The only thing that matters when it comes to capitalism is acquisition. Nothing else matters. Nothing.
This means that when it comes to capitalism no relationship is possible. No relationship is possible because capitalism is an interest with a very clear objective, and that objective is physical gain. This is done by way of a transaction. You cannot sell anything without someone else buying what it is you're selling. You cannot buy anything which someone else is not offering for sale.
Beyond this transaction, or deal if you prefer, there is no relationship between any of the parties involved. None whatsoever.
The fundamental basis of all capitalism is division.
There's no ethics or morality involved in capitalism. None whatsoever. Fundamentally capitalism is the use of energy to create space because money is space just as time is space, and as some people will tell you time is money, which is fundamentally true. But some people will tell you that capitalism is natural, which it isn't, because money is just as much a human concept as time is. Neither time nor money exist in actual reality, therefore neither time nor money exist in nature, so how can capitalism be in any way natural?
If anything capitalism works against nature and works against the natural order and environment and there is a very urgent need to scale back this human obsession - and it is an obsession - with capitalism otherwise we're going to create a natural environment which is hostile to living existence and millions, if not billions of people are going to end up getting killed.
We have already created a society, which is becoming global, which is hostile to human life.
I can offer an analogy here from my own life experience. For many years I was a smoker. In 1997 I almost died from double pneumonia, both lungs filled with gunk. I was told that I had the lungs of an 80 year old. Yet somehow I survived, coming back from clinical death, literally (I was apparently dead for several minutes) and once I recovered, stupidly, against medical advice, I started smoking again. Fast forward to 2012. Again I was rushed to hospital with breathing difficulties. The doctor said I was borderline on pneumonia. That's when I made the decision to quit smoking. I tried gum, and then went onto electronic cigarettes. I now vape. Vaping is not what I call safe, but it's a lot better than smoking tobacco.
My point here is that what I did is what many people do, and that is when you experience a situation when your life is threatened and you are facing death, and you are doing things against yourself and your life, you somehow manage to change your consciousness, your thinking and behaviour to live in a way which is healthier. Or you don't.
We are still in a global pandemic over COVID, the first of its kind at least in my lifetime. I know of a dozen people of have had COVID, a few have died either from COVID or because COVID exacerbated a health issue. I cannot say. I'm not a doctor or a GP, I don't have an intimate knowledge with anybody else's medical history than my own. My point here is that there has been a virus of some sort which has killed some people and which we have needed to take action to prevent the further spread through infection.
Throughout this pandemic, which is now over a year, politicians have been among the most vocal of people out there. Now bearing in mind that COVID came out of an environmental issue and was a virus initially among wild animals, and humans became infected by encroaching into wild spaces (capitalism again). But has there been anything new suggested, environmentally, or socially, beyond the wearing of masks and social distancing?
No because the political emphasis is on the creation of markets and on applying capitalism as a solution to all human problems - every single one of them. If you are not 'marketable' and not part of a market then politicians don't have much time for you. There is little or no interest in developing any kind of relationship. The only infrastructure that politicians are interested in developing is market. Outside of market, forget it. It's not going to happen.
Therefore it's very clear that the long term prognosis for COVID - outside of vaccines - is to ignore it and carry on living as we did before. This is the exact same logic as someone who say, has a heart attack but who also drinks and smokes. They got rushed to hospital with a heart attack, a medical team saved their life, they spent a few days in the Coronary Care Unit, then maybe a week or two recovering in another ward, and then they get discharged. Once discharged they head for the nearest shop and buy more cigarettes and more alcohol.
This is the level of consciousness we're dealing with here, isn't it?
Now we can understand a market to be any meeting point or culture where capitalism takes place. There is no relationship in a market, because capitalism is an activity where no relationship is possible simply because capitalism is all about acquisition. This also means that a workplace is also a market because most people as far as I'm aware go to work to acquire money or an income. Or do you go to work to hang out with your boss and chit chat? Think about it. For sure there's a degree of symbiosis. You have to be prepared to do what your employer wants you to do, because all work is a transaction, you do the work, you get the income, your employer is running a commercial interest and thinking about the income and the turnover, and you are doing the work and thinking about your income.
Any connection is based on a division, a symbiotic relationship between people with objectives which are opposite to one another. Your salary or renumeration is in opposition to your employer's profit incentive, and their profit incentive is opposed to your objective of receiving a salary or rate of pay sufficient on which to live on.
But getting back to a society which is hostile to human life, here's something I want you to think about.
We spend a third of our lives asleep, say 8 hours a day. Many people spend more time working than they do sleeping, which means that for many people capitalism is the central focus of their lives and it doesn't matter here whether it's in the workplace or boardroom. I'm generalizing here of course but I feel that there's a point here which needs to be made.
But then once you've acquired the money and got it into your bank account, what do you do with it?
Acquiring money is only one half of the activity, isn't it? If you have money then you not only spend time acquiring it, you also have to spend time using it. So think about all the time in your life you devote to money, such as paying bills, shopping, spending money, trawling round supermarkets and shops, online purchases, and browsing sites such as Amazon and eBay looking for stuff. All this is still capitalism, it's still acquisition, it's still either trying to get money, or if you have money trying to acquire other things - goods, products, services, energy, fuel, food, and so on in exchange for money.
Now think about what you do for entertainment, for example watching television, or spending time on social media. This is also capitalism. Think about how much of your time is spent on dealing with advertisers, commercials, infomercials, and other media designed to get you to part with your money or trying to sell you something.
How much of your time and attention is taken up on people, subjects and activities which have a clear commercial or capitalist interest? How much time do you spend following or watching celebrities, politicians, political parties, social movements, and so on and so forth?
In the time that is remaining in your life, how much time do you actually spend on relationship?
How does this compare with the amount of time you spend on capitalism and acquisition?