It's The Culture, Stupid

Muckraking is the art of pointing out truths so obvious that none should miss them. So why have so many people in today’s world missed so many obvious truths, necessitating the muckraking that few news organizations still pursue? Most news media have allowed themselves to become part of the deception visited on the public daily. However, the disconnections in American’s perceptions of events go beyond any failure in media or education. They defy the innate logic that most of us inherit from our parents. The answer lies in the software, not the hardware.
I observe two diametrically opposed construct programmers at work. One program relies on authority as the basis of truth. There authority takes many forms: the Word, the Leader, or an Ideal applied with the purity of zealots. Perceptions of reality must conform to the authority regardless of the level of denial required to accomplish that result. Square pegs do fit in round holes.
The other program lacks that certainty. It weighs experience through the lens of trial-and-error experiments and tests algorithms for their ability to predict outcomes—a strategy referred to in some contexts as the scientific method. Learning never ceases. The objectified facts lead to reliable conclusions on one hand and to more questions on the other. The truth remains provisional. The Money Tribe hates that program. It does not fit the agenda for making it big. Las Vegas does not want to hear that its casinos will soon run out of water. Growth is everything.
The culture preaches that the key to our greatness lies in American culture’s ability to provide the ambitious with the opportunity to make it really big. The first hundred million dollars is just the beginning. That culture would sacrifice many of us to poverty rather than support a government that would end the games that make a few very rich. A lotto mentality has liberal politicians hiding in the closet, petrified of a public that expects a free lunch as well as a chance to grab the golden ring. Obama’s retreat into standard tests of merit (another authority) provides the measure of how impotent the culture has rendered liberals and how little help Obama can expect from the people under him who must administer policy.
Having exported our economy to slave labor venues, little but games played for money remains. More people work for minimum wages while the moneyed and politically connected few grow exceedingly rich. But, as Abbey Lincoln sang, “The people in the houses ain’t got long.” The diminishing purchasing power of labor will support fewer and fewer people making it big. Labor and the union movement have already been cannibalized, robbed of pensions and decent wages, for corporate profits and Wall Street bubbles. The middle class is now under siege, and its disposable income (which fueled the post-war boom) is rapidly disappearing.
Bill Clinton famously said, “It’s the economy, stupid,” ignoring the major influence the culture has on the economy. If America’s mantra were small is beautiful, we would have a much different economy. SUVs and pickup trucks would not get bigger every year. However, unceasing growth is impossible, and its pursuit will destroy our environment. Natural selection provides the key to understanding this suicidal mentality.
People actually are not naturally self-destructive. They behave that way when adapting to the wrong thing, which is usually the result of natural selection’s paradox. Natural selection’s paradox metaphorically expresses natural selection’s inability to distinguish short-term adaptations from long-term adaptations in the short term, a critical phenomena science has completely overlooked. Natural selection will eventually weed out the short-term adaptations, but by the time that happens, the resources necessary for long-term adaptations may be exhausted. In a nutshell, that dynamic defines our future under present modes of production. Corporate planning does not go beyond quarterly profit sheets. Few of the means we use to provide housing, transportation, energy, and food production are sustainable.
Our machines and artifacts succeeded so dramatically in the short-term that we now adapt to them rather than to the environment that designed our genome. We assume that nature will adapt to our machines and artifacts in ways not harmful to us. When the machines change the environment enough, our genome will no longer provide an adaptable organism.
Short-term adaptations trade real wealth (resources) for virtual wealth (money). Capitalism turns resources into money (oil into petrodollars) and then uses the money to do it again rather than use the money to devise a sustainable resource. Conservation just gets in the way of creating virtual wealth. That myopic view fails to recognize that electricity generated from the sun is just as good as electricity generated by oil, but the people who control oil have no short-term interest in conserving it.
The culture reinforces short-term thinking. Natural selection may function in subtle ways. When we lived off animals, we worshipped animals. Now most of our livelihood depends on money. We worship that which sustains us. While it has become for many a measure of God’s love, proof of virtue, and the justification for any means of acquiring it, money has no intrinsic value. The mere possession of virtual wealth provides nothing but a fantasy of security. To have any value, money requires real resources it can retrieve and a government that legitimizes its use—a social contract, without which extortion becomes the means of obtaining it. As wealth crumbles under the machine, means of extortion, like other short-term profiteering, increase. Current financial institutions come to mind.
The most insidious short-term adaptation, what I metaphorically term the outlaw gene, exploits other people’s labor. There are two ways to obtain the energy one needs to survive. One can join a collective division of labor based on merit, or what each individual does best, and share the product. Alternately, one can simply steal other people’s labor by extortion or fraud. In my view, history proves the first method the most efficient. Slavery wastes individual talents and creates expensive conflicts. The outlaw gene references killing the competition before the contest begins. Hence, class has proven the most efficient way to steal other people’s labor. Class defines who can or cannot compete in any activity.
Capitalism makes a virtue out of exploiting labor. Maximum profits require minimal labor costs. The propaganda against labor unions, social programs, and civil rights financed by the religion of money has reached staggering levels over the last few decades. The lies told through the media owned by those who believe they have the right to exploit other people’s labor multiply exponentially.
What changes in the culture do these chilling revelations suggest? First, a new definition of wealth needs to filter through our institutions. So much follows from the definition of wealth. The only definition of wealth I have seen that provides a comprehensive anticipatory strategy for the future was published by Buckminster Fuller decades ago. He defined wealth as the ability to support more people on less for longer periods of time. Natural selection favors the efficient. From that judgment there is no appeal. Fuller’s strategy requires, as society’s ultimate value, an ethic based on the survival of the species. No shorter period is sufficient to avoid short-term adaptations. For our species to survive, other genome must also survive.
We have reached a turning point in history. The planet and means of production have already changed irrevocably. Old solutions no longer serve. Politicians, educators, and administrators often do not have a clue. Following those who preach, like the Tea Party, that all we need to do is be pure again (observe the Bible, the Constitution, etc.) only raises the level of incompetence and justifies wide-spread suffering. The poor will increase and be abandoned under the auspices of the religion of money’s precept that poverty is God’s punishment for lack of purity.
Adapting to the dictates of making money may seem like a good adaptation at the moment but it is absolutely the wrong strategy for our long-term survival. Money does not measure efficiency. Letting money do its thing will not bring prosperity. The market does not function as one of natural selection’s algorithms. Its corruption by virtual wealth renders it useless as a means of identifying long-term adaptations.

Mr. Stroud is the author of the book, Natural Selection’ Paradox: The Outlaw Gene, the Religions of Money, and the Origin of Evil. His essays written after publication are found in the blog: natural selectionsparadox.blogspot.com