Our View of Capitalism, Is It the Correct One?

I have written in this blog in the past about shifts in attitude that can be seen happening.

One of these manifested by Jeremy Rifkin writing about an anomaly of which he has become aware of young people seeing the from a different world view, not the age old “Survival of the Fittest” as established during the 1700’s and ruled our thinking ever since.

We heard “Survival of the Fittest” borrowed from Darwin, applied economically by Henry Spence and naming Adam Smith’s theories of marketplace in “Wealth of Nations” written and published in 1776.

The very rational rationale of this is the thinking an unfettered marketplace will assure us the greatest degree of financial opportunity in a climate of absolute safety. Let to compete, that competition, one man against the other, will assure none achieve ascendancy over the other, thereby keeping all in check balance by the greatest measure of freedom for all.

We have been operating in this paradigm ever since. Capitalism has ruled! The great depression and slow recovery created doubt. The so called recession begun in 2008, and slow recovery since lend credence to what was seen in the 1930’s.

Has Capitalism outlived its promise?

Rifkin suggest this in the paradigm shift he sees young people have been making. In stead of competing with one another, instead of doing all that is possible to get ahead of anyone else, withholding what you know that might be of assistance to others, or rigidly using copyright, patent and trademark enhance your financial position, they are asking instead: “Can I help? What do you need from me?”

This altruism in attitude and approach does not fit, it is irrational, it isn’t what keeps the wheel of pprogress rolling evenly, it is counter productive!

We of course can blame it all on René Descartes who coined the word and the way of the Enlightenment “I Think Therefore I Am.”

It is this trust of reason that made capitalism sacrosanct.

This introduces the point of The New Humanism an OpEd Comment in the New York Times by By DAVID BROOKS. Click on the title or Archive to read it.

It is time to take another look. It is time to revise the paradigm that influences us so deeply, namely the sacred cow we believe Capitalism to be. Capitalism works each time it is rebuilt after an economic collapse that drives it away. Our recent history demonstrates this in the events leading to the Great Depression and the slow tedious recovery that followed until the New Deal had completely obliterated the values of the Robber Barons that led to the collapse of the Depression.

It is the same now. We are slowly recovering and hopefully we will accomplish it. With any luck regulation and economic control will be part of it. Should you want to dig back further into economic history I am confident you will find the same things, in fact, these turns have been codified in a book entitled “The Fourth Turning” by Strauss and Howe.

Brooks writes:

·         …A range of deeper talents, which span reason and emotion and make a hash of both categories (Reason and Emotion):

·         Attunement: the ability to enter other minds and learn what they have to offer.

·         Equipoise: the ability to serenely monitor the movements of one’s own mind and correct for biases and shortcomings.

·         Metis: the ability to see patterns in the world and derive a gist from complex situations.

·         Sympathy: the ability to fall into a rhythm with those around you and thrive in groups.

·         Limerence: This isn’t a talent as much as a motivation. The conscious mind hungers for money and success, but the unconscious mind hungers for those moments of transcendence when the skull line falls away and we are lost in love for another, the challenge of a task or the love of God. Some people seem to experience this drive more powerfully than others.

It is the last, Limerence, which strikes me as the most profound in my experience. I do so because it is in my senior years I have really seen it in action. I have started to see what it is all about.

Thank you Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) that set me about wondering instead of seeking. In an effort to make my life have sense after being struck down with AD I finally gave up control of my life completely in the present, as it is happening, accepting it only as it happened. With this I mixed in a little of that salt known as “Why?” It is with the “Why” that answers started to fall into place as never before.

My paradigm shifted from that of the normal, trying as I could to use what I had in this world to do as the world was telling me to do. I put my shoulder to that same “Wheel of Progress” as Spenser described us using that wheel and shoulder as the metaphor of Capitalism.

It was at this time, answering like a shower of gold falling out of the heavens leaving an open sight of their celestial wonder, that I knew where my life had missed it.

I should have been asking what I could do to help as trying to do what I was supposed to do!

I learned and realized this as I did the goodness of Heaven or the Cosmos, whatever it is, while at the same time recognizing and taking advantage of the direction given me and the time allowed to take it to concentrate the rest of my life asking others “What can I do, what do you need from me?”