Mr. Peterson and Mr. Zizek both agreed that there is little hope for humanity under the current system and both were equally absent when it came to offering any solutions to our present amoral corporate oligarchy which views humanity as nothing more than objects to be exploited by the elite classes which have turned economics into a corrupt casino system with the backing and hijacking of the political/justice systems aided and abetted by the hijacking of all modes of media and information.
It’s true Mr. Peterson suggests that having a good attitude every morning while you run off to shine the shoes of your wage slave masters at least makes the present system tolerable, but such notions will hardly change anything for the better; while Mr. Zizek still thinks there is hope for the Hegelian nation-state, although it’s hard to understand how such a view is possible when the nation-state was hijacked by plutocracy under the neoliberal order whose wet dream is to fuse neoliberal ideology with the Chinese model of doing ‘business’.
Perhaps it’s time for a high school drop out to challenge these two scholars to a debate specifically directed towards how we get ourselves out of this dismal and ultimately destructive state of affairs. Unfortunately, and necessarily, we would eventually have to address the J.Q. and that guarantees that no such debate would happen, but in the words of the great musical philosopher George Thorogood, ‘that don’t confront me’…
Please be forewarned that I would draw on the ideas of Dr. E. Michael Jones and argue that usurious economic models are antithetical to Christian economics and that the current capitalist state of affairs is incommensurate with even a basic understanding of a Christian ethos. How modern Christianity became so corrupted is one of the most important queries of our time but I would say this: there were movements within Christendom as it progressed into modernity that were trying to fuse Christian ethics with economics and Henry George would be an excellent example of this. His book Progress and Poverty outsold the Bible for a time and one of the most significant ideas was The Land Value Tax. The oligarchs who controlled the flow of modernity saw to it that his ideas were buried. Please note also that not all Christian communities of the time were progressive as there were those who still embraced slavery as an ethical mode of behavior.
We would have to begin with a non-reductionist interpretation of The Golden Rule which was always meant to help guide humanity in their economic affairs and in modernity this is best understood via Kant’s Categorical Imperative which doesn’t allow for the shenanigans that a utilitarian moral philosophy does; these two ideas are in complete alignment with a Marxist critique of primitive accumulation which is theft of the value of labor by the oligarchic elite. Now before you go calling me a Marxist please understand that I am a Non-Kaballistic Gnostic theist although I do self-describe as an Agnostic Gnostic as the forms, or the noumena, or God, is something humanity has no direct access to, as we only experience perspectival representations of this current construct. Ultimately this means any assertion about what God (is) is dishonest unless framed as metaphysical speculation; and yes, this makes most faiths upon the earth today ultimately delusional, although I would suggest that there is hope for religious dogmatism if it could make the shift to understanding basic philosophical premises-not that I would hold my breath in this regard.
I could direct people to my 12-part Golden Rule Winter Solstice series where I flesh out the significance of what the Golden Rule actually means and why humanity made a grievous error in dismissing its relevance to economics. Also, my 4-Pillars of A New Earth Commons blogs where I flesh out the four areas that have to be made off limits to capitalist exploitation and coercion. These ideas are premised on the notion that humanity is now in an economic and environmental emergency and public policy should treat this situation much like emergency war measures (for perhaps a 30-year period while the commercial capitalist system tries to solve the earth's most pressing environmental problems). During WW-2, and by law, sole-ownership mansions in Canada were divided into rooming-type houses because it was necessary under war emergency. The same idea applies now.
Fundamentally, I suggest capitalist amorality has made them blind to healthy boundaries and humanity needs to reorganize and understand that no one can have any real quality of life unless 4-basic needs are met: housing, food, health-care, and education. But this shift would also entail education away from cynical misanthropy to valuing human potential to actuality mores, and I flesh this out a bit more on my website; and yes, in the spirit of open source anyone is welcome to expand on my ideas which are admittedly not entirely original as I’ve found out recently I might be channeling the philosopher Rick Roderick.
I should mention here that the Marxist idea of violent revolution to overthrow the oligarchs is an affront to the notions of freedom. We have to find a solution which allows for what is good about the capitalist class and I suggest two economies one of which is solely commercial and one a basic needs economy called The New Earth Commons. I see this as an intelligent compromise between the entirely destructive and unnecessary war between Adam Smith and Karl Marx. Please note also that I do agree to a certain extent that Marxist utopia is entirely untenable and is dismissive of human pathology and our evolutionary inheritance which needs to be channeled thoughtfully and constructively or we devolve into Social Economic Darwinism which is where we are at today.
The fundamental idea of how currency is created and distributed needs to be reinvented for the New Earth Commons and it would need a non-usurious means of exchange like public banking or www.positivemoney.org. But again, a new education model is needed here also as throwing money at people DOES NOT SOLVE the systemic problems--one needs a thoroughly integrated model for any new culture to be successful.
