The forgotten children of Checenia. Life in Grozny. Picture taken by Musa Sadulajew.

The forgotten children of Checenia. Life in Grozny. Picture taken by Musa Sadulajew.
The forgotten children of Checenia. Life in Grozny. Picture taken by Musa Sadulajew.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Is "Ethic Individualism" the key opening the door to a valuable life in the Third Millennium?

Basically there are two social-economic systems still surviving in our age. One is Capitalism, which is apparently the winner. The other one, the loser, is Communism. But if we come back in human history just only 200 years ago neither Capitalism nor Communism were the leading system by which human beings were setting up their lives. 

Since we are just living the present and we are not able to behave thinking we are part of a temporal flux such as Past, Present and Future, we naturally tend to believe that our last discovers and inventions will last forever. Nothing could be more wrong. Our present capitalistic times are not forever. The seed of changes is already germinating. Along this unbelievable year 2011 we have assisted to a lot of social convulsions. It all started as we now know as "Arab Spring". Then the rage of Muslin people, even for other motivations and under different forms, emerged in Europe, especially with the so called movement of "15 March" in Spain. Now, in these first days of Fall, we are viewing how the protests are taking a new form of protagonist even in USA with the movement "Occupy Wall Street". 

Rightly people all over the world is just pissed off. Personally I consider myself a pisser (my American cousin baptised me in this way and I think he is right). I am part of that 99% people that is tired of the greed of 1% population. This 1% is destroying all that the 99% of the people has built over the last 200 years. So now don't be surprised if in a global economy, the struggle of the 99% is necessarily a global struggle.

However there is a question that is intriguing me in these days regarding all that is occurring all over the world. I would like to turn you this question, if you agree. The question is: how much ethic is the behaviour of the protesters and how much is an interested behaviour their behaviour? 

I believe we have to clear the field by a serious misunderstanding, if we want to really understand what is now happening and how the present will affect our next and far future. Sometimes to understand the present and the future could be useful to have a look to the past.

Forty-three years ago, it was 1968, started the so called "Revolution of May '68". It started in Paris and the motivation, if you look at the past with the eyes of today, sounds really ridiculous. The detonator that exploded the bomb just was a simple case of sexual discrimination. A male student was not allowed to visit his girlfriend in her college apartment. The prohibition was considered unacceptable by young Parisian students. They all went out on the streets protesting against what they considered a limitation of personal freedom. 

What nobody could forecast at that time was that this protesting behaviour was the stroke that broke the camel's back. Once the movement of students started his rebellion, it was like an immense river flowing to the sea. It grew suddenly up more and more, until the constituted Power had to admit that the protesters had overpassed their expectations. Since the Power was not prepared to this kind of rebellion it needed a lot of time to understand what to do. Finally the Power decide to use the only way it can admit to preserve its existence. The constituted Power used the force of the police to block any attempt of changing the legal order. Notwithstanding this Power's reaction it couldn't prevent that the "red terrorism season" especially in Germany and Italy could be born. The so called "70s" were considered in Europe by all conservative Governments the age of fighting a possible victory of the communist ideology.

Nowadays the Power is already alerted from that bad experience and is not wasting time. It is reacting promptly to any behaviour that can represent a danger even so far. Power is now well organized and it can't allow to miss his dominance. For this reason even if all the protests are basically pacific protests, Power is already using police against protesting people.

People is doing absolutely nothing. Sometime people is just pacifically showing their opposition to the social-economic system with a song. Have a look, for instance, to the following video and let me know if you don't agree with my opinion. This is the video, which is absolutely tender, I promise.



On the other side the last October 15 (already baptised Movement 15-O) we have assisted in Rome to an indecent show organized by Black Block movements and all his anarchist supporters. In Italy there is an historic anarchic movement that always fight using violence as a tool to claim even little social transformation. It is in the Italian DNA to be anarchist, probably because Italian people what they evaluate more is a vision of life based on individualism.


Personally and in principle I am not opposing to an individualist vision of society, always and when this vision doesn't affect the majority people's life. If you consider that the heart of Capitalism ideology is based on an individualistic philosophy, well, there is nothing wrong in it. Unless, as it is now happening, this individualism is elevated to a previous never seen grade of egoism (Wall Street speculators' behaviour, for example) or using the violence as a politic tool (anarchist in Rome or London, for instance) instead of discussing social controversy into the appropriate legal forms and institutions. 


However if we accept that individualism is the base of any modern society (intending for modern all the western world societies born after World War Two) we must assume there will be something by which justify the correctness of this idea of life. 


I don't know you but I tend to believe that a vision of life based on collectivism is definitely faded for the following three reason: the fallen of Berlin Wall, the slow but constant progressive change of Chinese society from a communist society to a capitalistic society and even the recent changes in the policy of Raul Castro in Cuba. The last bastion of a collective ideology remains North Korea but, early or later, even there something will happen and things will start to change. 


So what we should have to consider is how to mitigate the influence that individualism can have on people and the way they organize their social life. 


It is not really easy to find a way to stop the bad influence that an exaggerated and extreme vision of individualism can bring to our life. As said, Wall Street speculators (and all speculators all over the world) are the living example on how people without ethic and moral principles can create an economic disaster on a global scale. 


But this is the point I am talking about and I wish you to fix your attention on. I have just talked about "Ethic and Moral Principles" as a filter by which looking at the reality or, if you prefer, as a barrier that we should never exceed to avoid predictable catastrophes as already happened in the past.


Any time a punch of greedy people doesn't respect this limit of ethic and moral principles we have assisted to an impoverishment of the majority of the people and their social downgrading on a global scale. What is, for instance, the World War Two if not the result of 1929 crisis? So don't be too much surprised if suddenly can explode another global war. By fact this global war is already happening even if it is a kind of war that is not fought by opposite armies since it is fought by civilian people against state organizations like police and secret services.


At this point of the human history we should all ask the following question: are we doing the right thing ignoring the request of 99% of the people? I don't know your answer, but I know mine. My answer is: no, we are committing a big mistake because this 99% of the people is just asking to live a decent life. But since a punch of greedy people is not interested to share the wealth on Earth and it is only interested to become richer every day more, well, it would be only my opinion, but I believe that this 99% of the people on Earth is right.


We are living in a world with too much economic and social inequalities. We are living in a world where it is believed normal and acceptable that a person can earn in a year what could satisfy the necessities of 100,000 people for a life time. Is this kind of world we have build all together a fair and correct world? Is this a world where ethic and moral principles are still respected?

No, my dear readers, I don't think so. This is a world where ethic and moral principles have been forgotten since a lot of time. What is incredible it is
 I can't say you when we started to forget them, because in any time and in any country of the world always happens the same. There is a moment, difficult to establish, that a society of good people starts to be corrupted by power and money. All the biggest empires in the past have passed through this bad and destructive experience.This is now happening again at a global level. It seems that a corruption of moral and ethic principles is widely expanding all over the world, as if it was a virus. 


The only defence we have is to enforce our ethic and moral principles so we can strengthen our personal behaviours. Without this that I can, one more time, define a R-Evolution we can't pretend to win the battle to re-equilibrate the wealth of people. In other words we must finish to behave like sharks during an attack to provide their food. Yes, we are animals, it is useless to deny it. But we are a special category of animals. We are a category of animals possessing a deep consciousness. I don't know you but I hear this consciousness shouting out loud. It is asking us to revise our vision of individualism and mitigate it with ethic and moral principles like compassion, charity, a moderate life, sharing part of our wealth if our wealth is so big that 1,000 people can live daily with the money we earn in a month. 


I am not stimulating a renaissance of communism. For God's sake, I hate communism. Nothing is worst than communism for me. But yes, I am promoting the idea that "Ethic Individualism" is the key opening the door to a valuable life in the Third Millenium. Are you ready for it? 

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