Occupy Sane Street

Last night’s CA teamspeak meeting included a lot of lively dialogue about the Occupy Wall St protests.  Several perspectives were voiced about how The Zeitgeist Movement should or should not be involved.  One theme was that because TZM has no real top-down structure, it simply is up to individual members to decide if they are interested in participating.  There was a note of caution that the Occupy protests could get trapped in an “us vs. them” stance that is counter to the social understandings that form the foundation of TZM.  That kind of reactionary and divisive thinking would likely lead to violence and oppression.

That said, the Occupy Wall St movement does share some convictions with TZM.  For example, in the recently released Declaration, it is recognized that profit has been gained at the price of human life and well being, Earth’s ecosystem has been abused by rapacious business practices, and that humanity must cooperate to create a better alternative to the current economic system.  Occupy Wall St is also an explicitly leaderless organization that does not condone violent behavior.  For a nascent organization, it has already attracted mainstream media attention (even though it took a few weeks!), and is acting as a kind of magnet around which different organizations whose work is to promote life values (as opposed to money/profit values) are coalescing.  TZM’s aim of educating people to reach a critical mass before engaging in any widespread coordinated action to directly confront the prevailing paradigm needs to attract people who recognize the current undermining of life values.  According to some TZM members who have attended Occupy Wall St assemblies, the people there are largely receptive to core concepts expressed in TZM. 

Another thread in the discussion last night was that no one can know how a transition to a resource-based economy will unfold, or if it will happen.  Is the Occupy Wall St movement part of that transition to a more sane society?  Will it just make things worse?  My present feeling is that because these people are acknowledging the attack our economic system is having on life values it represents a step in the right direction.  However, I am reminded of the solemn moments immediately after the collapse of the Twin Towers in which there was a quiet reflection about how and why such tragedy could be intended and executed.  It was as if people paused their normal habits and were forced to reexamine their values and their place in the interconnected web of a global society.  That could have been the beginning of a new, more enlightened perspective.  It turned out not to be and people fell into anxiety, fear, and revenge-filled thoughts that blamed “them,” and gave rise to a stupid one-upsmanship in patriotism, in America.  In other parts of the world, the retaliatory posture of the US marshaled the production of countless expensive weapons (economic growth) that were quickly detonated in and around “terrorist cells” creating demand for more weapons (cyclical consumption).  Many Americans just thought they were “gettin’ the bad guy.”  Bad guy thinking is a sign of a limited perspective, in which the error occurs by reducing social and psychological complexity to a simple conclusion.  This thinking is helpful if someone is wielding a knife and ready to plunge it into your chest because you need to react quickly to neutralize the threat, but to take a social action based on that mentality is foolish and will, most likely, lead to a proliferation of problems.  So, I see this as a critical opportunity for TZM to spur deeper inquiry into the malfunction of society.  When people are hungry, homeless, anxiety-ridden, and frustrated, they want quick answers and quick actions.  Unfortunately, TZM does not have the collective resources to feed and house everyone, but it does have an abundance of materials and passion to educate people about the metastasized cancer that invades our social organism.  With proper diagnosis comes better treatment.  I hope we have the collective patience to arrive at thorough diagnosis.

The last main point I want to mention is that the group showed agreement in that we hope a transition to a new economy will lead to less suffering, not more, and that humanity will come together in time to prevent its self-inflicted extinction.