A Dysfunctional System Creates Dysfunctional People

It has become an almost mainstream view that it is us, the ninety-nine percent, vs. them, the one percent. While on the surface that would very much appear to be the case, if we should be bothered to take a closer look at the situation, it becomes evident that the reality is not so black and white.

Clearly we have an international banking cartel bent on controlling our political system, large global corporations buying their way into the political arena, pulling the strings of our so called elected representatives, treating us like little more than cattle with rapidly diminishing, low paying, unsatisfying jobs, selling us made-to-break garbage with little to no concern for us or our environment. To the so called one percent or more accurately the “point zero zero one percent”, it is all about profit, power and control.

Those labelled the one percent are actually part of the one hundred percent and are only exhibiting behaviors our social model has very effectively reinforced and rewarded them for their entire lives.

If you beat a dog, then that environment of abuse teaches the dog to be abusive, and humans are no different. We are raised and educated to compete with each other, to get the best marks at school, rewarded with scholarships and better paying jobs. Not that there are all that many jobs, never mind high paying jobs, floating around these days.

Our education system has become less about educating and more about churning out unquestioning, unthinking robots which can slot into the workforce, filling in the forty hour week following procedures and being a company (wo)man. This system encourages mediocrity, it is not designed to generate highly informed critical thinkers, it wants you to know just enough to push the button at work, but not enough to ask why.

How many times during our educational process are we encouraged to question society, when do our educators question us about the relevance of our very social design? While we can identify criminal behavior the ability to understand what causes people to act in a particular way can for the most part be lost to us. Why are so many people self medicating with drugs like alcohol, cannabis, or heroin, is it recreational escapism and if so, what is it people are trying to escape from? Why is it that those which are the most violent have a past history of abuse in their childhoods, yet in general this is seen as nothing more than a handy excuse? Why do we not want to try and understand the science and begin to figure out how to go about breaking the cycle and what doing so may require? When are we encouraged to ask difficult questions and employ some critical thought in regard to society and its fundamental mechanics?

We would appear to be so preoccupied with placing blame that we do not have the time or desire to look beneath the surface to figure out where all this aberrant behavior stems from. It is just lock them up, it’s such an easy solution, no need to investigate the impacts of our social environment on our intellectual, emotional and physical development, we can just put these bad people in jail and get on with our shopping.

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
Mark Twain

As a species we tend towards  finger pointing when things go wrong, we want someone to blame to hold to account, to punish, but what are we actually accomplishing?

As a result will our infinite growth economic system be altered at the most fundamental level, to reflect required sustainability practices on a finite planet?

Will we begin to produce high quality products that are designed and built to last?

Will we place more importance with our global environment than with profits and profitability?

Are we going to work towards access abundance and the removal of price tags on the necessities of life?

Do we identify corporations that produce substandard products, wasting finite resources and can we hold them to account for profiting at the expense of sustainability on our planet?

How far will we go?

Far enough to get back to work, no banker is going to jail, bailouts for banks and austerity for the rest then get on with business as usual. Oh sure there may be a few superficial reforms here and there, perhaps some tax increases for the rich, but not much else. The last thing we want to do is actually address the systems failure which generates a stratified society, perpetuates endless debt and reinforces the continual consumption of materialistic garbage in the first place.

Blaming and shaming a few bankers without criticizing the system that generated them in the first place, is akin to having ten people stand in a circle and explaining to them that they each must take turns blowing up a balloon. Continuously passing this balloon around taking turns inflating it without stopping for any reason, then when the balloon inevitably bursts, holding the poor individual with it in their hands responsible. Taking them away, replacing them with someone else and starting all over with a new balloon.

It is plain madness.

The balloon is our environment, while the air being pumped into the balloon represents the demands we put on the environment. Constantly inflating it to buy new cars, homes, gadgets, to fill desires that corporations are busy convincing us we have. Now of course there is a limit to how much strain we can put on the environment, before it bursts under the pressure of ever increasing consumptive demand. It is always bound to happen while we continue to operate an economy based on repetitive consumption, of what is little more than garbage, for the sake of keeping people employed so that they can continue to consume.

At what stage will we consider the limits of our planet, or the immense strain we are putting on our environmental life support system? There must come a time when we agree we must see our planet as a holistic system. A system which we are very much dependent on in order to sustain our very lives. To operate an economy based on anything but sustainability and equality is destined to nothing but severe failure.

Sure we can blame bankers, blame politicians, we can even blame each other if we want to, but it isn’t going to get us anywhere in the end. We will still be in a system that has us going to jobs the majority get no pleasure from, so we can pay the bills, purchase things we really do not need, which are designed to fail so that we end up having to buy them again, taking loans and racking up credit card debt. Starting the entire process of blowing up the balloon all over again, sure this time those nasty bankers will have been punished, but they will only have been replaced by more bankers. Human beings which have been raised in this system, like the rest of us, taught that success is measured by acquisition, working to secure profits for both themselves and large multinational corporations.

Nothing of substance will have changed, apart from some names at boardroom meetings; we will be back to the shopping, but this time there will be more of us doing it, China is set to join us in a way that has never been witnessed. The strain we will be putting on our planet and biosphere is going to be unlike any other time in our short human history. In 2011 the U.S.A. had a G.D.P. of over 15 trillion dollars, while China was less than half that at just over 7 trillion, how long is it going to take for our planetary limits to became painfully apparent once China is matching the G.D.P. of the U.S.A.?

If we fail to recognize the natural limits of our finite planet, if we simply put a few people in jail and revert back to business as usual, we may find the next collapse is not a financial one, but an environmental one. If that happens printing more money, or jailing some more bankers won’t solve a thing.

It is not the one percent we should be focussing on, but in fact the system that generates a one percent in the first place. It has become socially acceptable to hate on these people as if they are in fact less than people, like they are somehow all that is wrong with our society and if we could just lock these people up and throw away the key, then everything would be all better. Yet what we would appear to completely fail to understand is that even if we locked up all the corrupt people in the world, there would be new people ready to step into their place immediately, being just as indoctrinated into this system as their predecessors.

No matter how enticing it may be to point our fingers and blame someone, if we fail to address the social root cause, which is the social structure which reinforces and rewards this type of behavior with giant houses, fast cars, private jets and extravagant salaries, then we will be doomed to relive the entire situation.

It is not the people that are the problem, it is the system and we are all victims of this system, even the one percent. Growing up many have dreams of becoming movie or rock stars, driving expensive cars, or just generally having loads of money. As time goes by we find we are not stars, are driving used cars and are scraping by trying to repay massive debts, then we start to question the fairness of the system. Even still we do not question the validity of the system itself, rather we pontiff about how fair it is and think that it could be fixed with this reform or that. While the few which do experience a degree of “success”, if that is what we want to call it, are then subject to media scrutiny, are consumed by a desire to have more property, more power, more money, as this is what this system generates. The false needs and desires for more.

Then of course we get the statement that this evil one percent is not going to just lay down and let us change society without a fight, like we have somehow not realized that of the seven plus billion people on this planet, the one percent represents something like seventy million people. When was it concluded that over 6,930,000,000 people had to ask permission of 70,000,000 people to do a damn thing. Our biggest problem is not this nefarious one percent; it is ourselves, our failure to be able to identify what the root cause problem manifesting all these symptoms is. Not understanding how it is our social environment reinforces and rewards the aberrant behavior of the few and leaves us feeling powerless to change anything.

We have all the power, if we can stop bickering over pointless superficial crap and unite under the common understanding that our real problem is an outdated system and not each other. Do the so called one percent have to be on board, no of course not, but nor do they need to be banished or ostracized. They are only doing what has been taught to them and reinforced by society at large after all.

We are not the ninety-nine percent, we are the one hundred percent, united we stand, divided, well, look around – this is what divided has gotten us so far.

We are all products of our environment and until we understand that and make the fundamental changes required to our very social design in order to promote outcomes beneficial to our entire species, then nothing of substance is going to change. We will continue to find ourselves in this self perpetuating feedback loop, which manifests all the symptoms we tend to misdiagnose as problems.

“It’s not that they are “bad” people, or anything like that. This is what this system has created. Simultaneously, let’s remember that the market system requires constant problems. In order for the public interest and consumption to be maintained, problems in cultural influence is required. The more problems there are, the better the economy, generally speaking. In this system it is inherently “good” for cars to break down. It is “good” for people to get cancer. It is “good” for computers to become quickly obsolete. Why? More money. To put it into a sentence: Change, abundance, sustainability and efficiency are the enemies of the profit structure. Progressive advancements in science and technology, which can resolve problems of inefficiency and scarcity once and for all, are in effect making the prior establishment’s servicing of those problems obsolete. Therefore, in a monetary system, corporations are not just in competition with other corporations; they are actually in competition with progress itself.”
Peter Joseph

Feature Image
Cracked earth in the Rann of Kutch by Vinod Panicker CC BY-SA 2.5
Times Square at dawn by Jorge Láscar CC BY 2.0