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Eric Explains Everything:
Revelation And Revolution
Chapter zero: Introduction.
Hello, my name is Eric Schechter.
I'll take a minute to introduce myself.
I'm an eco-anarcho-socialist,
but that term does NOT mean violence or dictatorship --
it means sustainability and sharing and caring without coercion.
It means there are seven billion people in my family,
and someday I hope to have dinner with them all.
I'm a dreamer trying to be something like a poet.
I'm a retired professor of mathematics.
There's very little mathematics in this essay,
but some of my students said I'm good at explaining abstract ideas;
I hope this essay will live up to that praise.
The presentation is my own,
but none of the ideas in it originated with me.
You can see many of the sources and related ideas, if you follow the web links
in the transcript of this video.
The transcript is at
Lefty Math Prof dot
word press dot com.
I was making fun of myself when I said I'd explain EVERYTHING
-- but I'll explain the things that I see as crucial to our survival,
in politics, psychology,
linguistics,
and epistemology.
Epistemology??
Yeah, who would've thought that EPISTEMOLOGY could be crucial to our
survival?
That surprised me too.
It means that, for the most part, I won't be asking you to accept new assertions
as facts.
I'll be asking you to consider a new way of seeing the fact you already have.
And I know I don't have all the answers, but NO ONE does and I'll prove that at
the beginning of the next chapter.
Here's a one-sentence summary of where I'm going in this essay:
Our world is dying from a doctrine of separateness;
we need to rediscover our connectedness.
Perhaps you've heard words like those before in some NewAge-y religious
context,
but I'll try to make them concrete,
and I'll connect them to our political problems.
We have a lot of big problems
and that's why this essay so long.
But I'll also show that they are really just one problem --
I feel it's important to see them that way.
We're on a road to destruction,
and too many people are asleep --
too many people who think they're living normal lives in a normal world --
too many people still don't see what is really going on
and how urgent it is --
too many people don't know or don't care.
We must try to wake them --
we need everyone we can get,
to spread the word and to plan the future together.
Things are changing faster and faster.
Anyone who begins our prediction with the words "at the current rate" just
doesn't get it.
Ray Kurzweil
has explained that knowledge, and everything affected by it,
is growing at an exponentially increasing rate,
on account of feedback loops.
So our problems are growing faster,
but so is our knowledge,
and maybe our wisdom too
-- so maybe there is hope for us.
In 1498
Albrecht Dürer made some illustrations of the Book of Revelation.
Here are the four horsemen of the apocalypse --
that's conquest, war,
famine, and death.
I would choose different horsemen,
but in other respects the metaphor seems appropriate for our time:
muddling along on a middle path is no longer possible --
the world as we know it cannot continue much longer.
Soon it will either
heal, change entirely, and grow beautiful,
if we find wisdom,
or
collapse and kill us all, if we continue in our present blindness.
The demons facing us are legion:
alienation,
apathy,
authoritarianism,
bullying,
censorship,
child abuse,
corruption,
cruelty,
disinformation,
excessive incarceration, exploitation, foreclosures,
greed, homelessness,
homophobia,
hunger,
inadequate healthcare,
Islamophobia, lies,
loneliness,
media consolidation,
money in politics,
neglect of the elderly, nuclear meltdowns, oil spills,
pederasty,
plutocracy, racism, ***,
sexism, spousal abuse, the Federal Reserve, the military-industrial complex,
theft, unemployment,
unverifiable ballots,
and war ...
-- and those could go on forever.
But we're also heading into economic and ecological collapse
both of which add a time limit to our torment.
(I realize that half the people in the U.S.A. do not believe in ecological
collapse; I'll come back to that point later.)
But this apocalypse does have a silver lining:
As our situation grows worse,
and people become more desperate, they will also become more willing to listen
to new and different ideas.
What kind will they hear --
good ones or bad ones --
depends on what you and I do right now.
Will be spread enough good ideas so that
people will awaken before it's too late?
I don't know, but I 'm certainly going to try,
and I hope to persuade you to join that effort.
To halt the destruction
will require an ENORMOUS change in our political, economic, technological,
and communication systems.
But those systems are firmly in the grip of the mindless plutocracy,
which does nothing to halt the decay.
The plutocracy permits only minor and superficial reforms --
it prohibits any change in our fundamental principles.
As long as that continues, things will get worse for most of us:
Unemployment, sweatshop exploitation, and poverty will grow,
as privately owned mechanization continues.
Wars will worsen,
as people learn more ways to make weapons.
The oil-based economy cannot outlast the oil.
And if ecocide continues much longer
we'll all starve --
even the rich can't eat money.
People everywhere, especially young people,
are growing aware
that they'll only have a future if society makes huge changes very soon.
But the ruling elites, driven by the market, are unable to even *consider*
change, despite promising it in all their speeches.
Idealism has always been risky,
but so-called "pragmatism" has become suicidal.
Thus, a revolution is coming soon;
that has become inevitable.
But what kind will it be?
That depends on what ideas you and I can spread.
I hope it won't be just a change of leaders and a few reforms.
Our problems are much deeper than that.
And we no longer have time for another cycle of confusion and promises.
We finally have to get it right this time.
Some people think that we can solve our problems by passing a few laws, maybe a
constitutional amendment banning corporate personhood.
But the so-called "rule of law" is insufficient,
in at least three ways:
First, laws can be evil in their own right.
For instance, slavery used to be legal
and the so-called "Patriot Act" still is.
Second,
laws can be distorted into something entirely different from their original
intent.
for instance, the 14th amendment to the constitution was originally intended
to protect the rights of freed slaves,
but it has been twisted into a *justification* for corporate personhood.
Why should a new amendment *banning* corporate personhood fare any better?
And third, laws can be disregarded altogether.
For instance, recent presidents in both major parties have waged illegal wars
all stripping away our bill of rights.
And some people think the solution lies in small localized government,
since only big governments can make wars.
But the Jim Crow laws of the southern U.S.A. showed that local government, too,
can oppress people,
and might be stopped from doing so only by big government.
I think that we may be able to get the best of both worlds, by decentralizing
power
but networking to voluntarily coordinate efforts.
At any rate, I am convinced that the crucial thing we need is a big change in our
culture.
Greedy individuals *are* a problem,
but I wouldn't focus solely on them.
Doing so would distract us from analyzing our own culture, which is the
*source* of the greed.
I believe we'll make progress on all our separate problems when, and only when,
we see their common root --
but presently it's as unnoticed as the air we breathe.
It's philosophical,
for our individual actions are shaped by our common beliefs.
Bullies, liars, thieves, and murderers
-- in market and in government --
are merely agents of the problem.
They believe we're all SEPARATE,
motivated only by greed and selfishness.
They might say something like this:
"Your bank account is not my bank account;
your loss is not my loss, and might even be my gain.
Those people are different from us.
Put the homeless where I won't have to see them."
And so on.
Their doctrine of separateness is manifested as private wealth --
but wealth coalesces into ever fewer hands,
wealth is power,
and power corrupts.
Our rulers have legitimized their doctrine of separateness, as though
it were respectable.
They want us to share it --
they use it to justify themselves and their rigged economic system,
to keep us apart,
to control all.
They rule not by hidden cabals,
but by owning the media and framing the issues.
They seek to persuade us that a better world is not possible,
that we are too weak,
that human nature is too base.
But they're mistaken about our motives.
You and I have found something better inside ourselves and our friends.
We've found solidarity, empathy, love,
a concern for the commons.
It's in everyone, if only we can reach them,
for we're all one flesh-and-blood.
Let spread that truth
and delegitimize the doctrine of separateness,
for until we do, our other advances will be minor and temporary.
Human nature is far more noble than the mainstream propaganda has led us to
believe.
At this point in the transcript
I'm including links to some material by Jeremy Rifkin
about recent developments in sociology,
Rebecca Solnit on how people have behaved in times of difficulty,
and Paul Hawken on how large the movement to heal the world has already
become.
There are excellent selfish reasons for becoming unselfish:
Once people have the basic necessities of life,
additional private wealth doesn't increase their happiness,
but additional connection with other people does.
Instead of talking about how we can compete more effectively,
let's talk about how to cooperate.
Sharing *does* work:
The so-called "socialized" medicine in Europe,
Japan, and Canada
delivers far better health care for far less money
than does our own pills-for-profit system here in the U.S.A.
And *not* sharing does *not* work:
the commons has been privatized, plundered, and poisoned, and so the
ecosystem is dying.
We need a spiritual revolution.
Really, we need something much bigger than what the word "revolution" usually
has meant.
Far more than just a change of government,
we must change everything about our way of life;
we must change human nature itself.
As John Lennon sang,
instant karma will knock us off our feet.
This change will be greater than any since our shift from hunter-gatherers to
farmer-owners 10,000 years ago.
Nothing less will save us from extinction,
but nothing more is needed to guide us to utopia.
We will remake the world entirely.
Another John Lennon song describes the enormity of the change.
(At this point in the video
originally I had included John Lennon singing a couple of verses.
I thought it was what the copyright laws call "fair use."
But Electric and Musical Industries
"owns"
that song about sharing,
and apparently they didn't want me sharing it.
I hope they won't block this reduced
quality version.
I highly recommend John Lennon's version.)
Imagine no possessions -- I wonder if you can.
No need for greed or hunger
-- a brotherhood of man.
Imagine all the people sharing all the world.
You may say I 'm a dreamer,
but I'm not the only one.
I hope someday you'll join us and the world will live as one.
To most people today
the word "apocalypse" means
*the end of the world*.
But if you look at the roots of the word,
it originally meant "from concealment"
-- that is, a revealing --
or "revelation."
The word "revolution" sounds similar, but it comes from a different root.
"Revolve" comes from a word meaning
"to turn over."
To most people today those three ideas seem very different --
an ending, a revealing,
and a turning over.
But I'll show you how they're connected.
In this essay, I 'm attempting to reveal a view of the world that many people have
not seen.
I believe that if everyone will see it, it will transform and turn over our
lives completely --
ending our present way of life
and beginning a new way for all of us.
The revelation will be a revolution.
My vision differs only slightly from what Jesus and Marx had in mind.
As I see it, their message was in three main parts:
First, that love can transform the world,
remaking entirely.
And with this I agree entirely.
Admittedly, "love" is not a word commonly associated with Karl Marx,
but he was motivated by compassion for the great masses of people trapped in
sweatshops. He wanted to free them from that.
Second, that the time of great change was imminent.
It seems to me that both men got this *wrong*, for the great change has not yet
arrived.
And yet, here I am, making the same prediction again.
Perhaps I'll turn out to be wrong too. I guess we'll see.
And third, both men apparently thought that the outcome of history is
inevitable.
But inevitability was common in the belief system of their times and it is
not in ours.
My own feeling is that the future is not yet written;
it depends on what you and I choose to do.
Either side -- love or fear -- may still win the struggle.
And there's no way to know how much help we'll need,
so no one can afford to just be a spectator.
There lots of issues here -- peace, love,
sustainability, justice, and so on.
Personally, I see them all as one big issue and I feel it's important to try
to explain it that way.
But I must accept that the awakening process is in stages.
Most people become aware and involved first regarding one issue, then perhaps
another.
Only later might they start to see how all the issues are connected.
To reach beyond the choir, we must accommodate beginners, by encouraging
their participation in single-issue organizations --
but we can try to connect those organizations in one unifying network.
The great change begins with *you* joining the discussion.
We all need to understand each other's views of the world better;
we need to understand *each other* better.
In fact, many of us probably need to understand *ourselves* better.
Join (or start) a local political organization,
one small enough so that everyone gets a turn to speak.
You'll find a tremendously empowering to be part of a community,
and part of the conversation steering the community.
With that community network to other communities, you'll be part of the global
conversation.