Understanding the nature of our Society

When I give food, shelter and clothes to the poor,
They call me a hero.
When I talk about giving food, shelter and clothes to the poor,
They call me a communist.

What is the foundation of moral life? What makes it possible for human beings to care for one another, and know that they have responsibilities for each other and to their communities? What could possibly make anyone willing to pay the living wages of workers in India when they can get them to work for less? The 18th century philosopher David Hume, is one of many philosophers who believe that no such reason can be given. For Hume, it is part of our nature that we feel sympathy for each other and that this sympathy counters our narrow interest. Josiah Royce, an American philosopher of the last century , shares a similar belief. She argued that you do not really understand another person if you do not understand their aspirations, their fears and their needs. To understand someone’s feelings is in part to share them. And you cannot share an aspiration or a need without wanting to see it fulfilled, nor can you share a fear without hoping it will not come to pass. So the mere recognition of what other human beings are, involves us in wanting to see them live and prosper. Both these philosophers believe that sympathy , love and caring determines all, or even most, human behavior.
However a brief look at our 21st century would prove these philosophers otherwise ,as with 126,218 people dying a day, it seems clear to me that the world is facing some serious issues. What these philosophers do offer, though, is an understanding that human beings have the capacity to want the best for each other. So now we must ask, what forces are at work in our world that blocks and undermines human morality? It’s not guns, it’s not diseases, it’s the way we live, it’s – capitalism. Unknowingly, you are a bolt, a screw ,a gear that keeps this great Machine running, this great machine that destroying what is left of our capacity to care. You are a member of a social system that allows 18million people to die a year, just because they're too poor to afford the basic necessities in life. A social system that breeds oppression, exploitation and cruelty. Worst of all, it is a social system that now exists in most countries of the world.
To understand why capitalism undermines the foundation of moral life, we must first understand the way it works. To begin with Capitalism is social system that is based on a psychological model that is fundamentally flawed. Under capitalism, the ‘resources’ in our society are controlled privately by people not by the government, and the distribution and production of these ‘resources’ are governed by the use of 'capital'. Everything in our society from the social services that we are entitled to, the houses that we may live in, the education that we may receive; everything in nature; such as forests, water, oil; everything that us, human beings, are capable of doing such as our technical skills, our intrapersonal skills- are all viewed as 'resources’, with prices on them. Shelters, food, the environment, and human lives mean nothing in themselves but are valuable only when they can be turned into capital. So to really participate and survive within this society, we must be constantly accumulating capital. With capitalization of all aspects of society, the amount of capital that a person has, determines the sort of life that he will lead. The capitalization of all aspects of society, by itself creates a class division in society as the wealthier people in our society, has access to more resources and is able to lead more privileged life.
We’ve developed a system, whereby theoretically, the hardest working person could possibly reap the most rewards. As supposedly, the person who distributes and contributes the most ‘resources’, earns the most ‘capital’.

But in reality it doesn’t quite work this way. With capitalism, people can still make significant amounts of capital without making any significant contribution to society. An example of this is interest, once a person has a certain amount of capital, he can survive off the interest of the capital without providing any constructive contributions to society. In this case, he is capable of becoming a pure consumer, rather than a producer. Such a person does not truly contribute to the advancement of society and is in fact capable of exploiting others. I say this because; only those with large amounts of capital are able to employ other people in our society to produce and ‘contribute’ resources for them. Basically, these workers must sell their ability to work in return for capital. They are paid low wages to produce goods and services which are sold by the wealthy capitalists for profit. The wealthy capitalist becomes wealthier, through the contributions that are really made by the working class. Inequality and exploitation occurs as the capitalists are able to lead a more prosperous life from the profit they obtain from the work and labor of the working class. Besides the exploitation and inequalities , capitalism has also brought about a society of selfish and competitive people who are bound by ‘the profit motive’.
The profit motive is the major incentive that keeps this giant machine running, perhaps it’s the only incentive that other social systems lacks. The profit motive occurs naturally because of the importance of capital that is reinforced by the fundamentals of our social system. Even though this is the motive that drives us to work every day at 7:00 am in the morning, the profit motive is the ultimate flaw in the capitalist system. Through the profit motive, competition and strife is created, forcing people to abandon all principles and save one – maximizing their income. It creates more problems by itself as it runs counter to any altruistic behavior. Altruistic behaviors such as, love, for example is important for human welfare but because it leads to activities such as sharing, caring and giving away, it runs counter to the profit motive, and so these activities which promote love are discouraged. Inadvertently, mathematics replace human morality in the sense that only profitable activity thrives whereas all other altruistic activities are suppressed. This is evident in our world today, as feeding hungry people is not the aim of the food industry, or sheltering the homeless the purpose of the housing industry, or else there would be lower levels of starvation and poverty. Ethics, the overriding commitment to meeting human needs, is left out of deliberation in this system. So if we care about life, and if we see our obligations in each other faces, then we have to want all things that are governed by capital, to be directed by the ethical concern for life.

Both the fundamentals and the incentive of capitalism has brought about a society of people who are bounded by consumerism. As all parts of life becomes a commodity to be bought under the capitalist system, organizations have spent millions of dollars in marketing strategies , to exploit the vulnerable by encouraging them to see themselves as consumers. This is seen as the citizens of many capitalist nations, consume more products, live in bigger houses, use more consumer durables than the rest of the world. By a surface examination, it appears that they lead a higher standard of living. However social indicators such as family structures, suicide and crime rates tell a different story. The high rates of family breakdowns, stress, depression and suicide indicates to us that promoting consumerism has lead to negative social problems. Even though these overconsumption may constitute a downward spiral for the individuals involved, it represents a virtuous cycle for the economy, which benefits from the increased levels of consumption.

Besides interfering with people’s lives, the capitalism has now penetrated today’s schooling system. Today’s compulsory school system has been designed to replace individual education, children are taught not to be loyal to their own values, friends or community, but instead to be unswervingly loyal to a faceless and unaccountable authoritarian bureaucracy. True education, should not be confused with today’s schooling which curbs human altruism in order to fit children easily into the existing social order. The high ideals of many teachers contribute to the popular misconception of forced schooling as an altruistic institution carried out by one generation to benefit the next. The current school systems only serve to promote capitalistic values by focusing on individual achievements and awarding prizes to only a select few. In school, children’s achievements are not valued with reference to their personal relationships, but instead by a larger mathematically based system. These ‘Marks’ that are always given by teachers, just as, ‘capital’ determined by wealthy capitalists, not only undermines the importance of personal relationships in children’s lives, they promote rivalry and also subvert their naturally tendencies to help one another as they compete for better ‘marks’. The emphasis that the schooling system gives to individual results undermines the children’s ability to work together and to self-evaluate. If any attention is paid at all to promoting good human values and altruism, it is usually a personal matter, not due to the school system, but to the altruistic efforts of individual teachers. Even though this may seem like a poor preparation for life itself. It is more accurately to describe it as a preparation for a poor life as discouraging their natural altruistic tendencies, prepares children for life in a society in which most people’s work is devoid of personal interest, most relationship are temporary and self serving.

Capitalism is ultimately a system that breeds a selfish, non-caring, non-contributing society, where dignity is robbed. It formulates a competitive environment, where when you care about others ,you suffer and the only way to succeed and benefit is by exploiting others. As long as we live under this social system, oppression, inequality, starvation and exploitation will always exist and true human altruism and potential will never be seen. Change cannot occur today, because most of us have been positioned all our lives to think ignorantly about the injustices and the systematic violations of our society. As long as we conform in to the unjust ways of our society, where profit is the main motive that drives us, we will always remain a screw, a bolt, a gear that keeps this great killing machine running.



(note:this is a rendition of sources from the internet.)