The Revolutionary Significance of Everyday Life
The ruling class counts on our not understanding this.
I have copied below two recent posts on my Nextdoor social media app because:
they are so ordinary, so absolutely unremarkable, so typical of the kinds of things so very many people do in their everyday lives without thinking of it as political at all, and yet
they are in fact IMPLICITLY very political, indeed revolutionary, for reasons that I hope you will appreciate after you read the linked articles of mine below, and the excerpt from Dave Stratman’s wonderful book that appears below.
Tracy Balthazar in her post is expressing her egalitarian, anti-capitalist, values: mutual aid, fairness, truth.
Sean Singh in his post is expressing his egalitarian, anti-capitalist, value of mutual aid (concern for others.)
Please read about the significance of these everyday life examples
The Golden Rule: The Transcendent Value That Is the Basis of a Good Society
Religion, the Golden Rule and Revolution
We CAN Change the World: The Real Meaning of Everyday Life, by Dave Stratman, online, from which the following is an excerpt:
If there is anything that defines the world as we approach the end of the twentieth century, it is the loss of hope.
The fundamental reason for this loss of hope is that there seems to be no alternative to the capitalist system. Communism provided the fullest articulation of apparently revolutionary ideas in the twentieth century, and it has turned out a disaster. The idea of revolution has been defeated by the reality of it.
Without an alternative to the system, fundamental change seems out of the question. We seem doomed to live in the grip of a system which defines human life in terms of its own imperatives of profit and loss, competition and inequality. It seems that the deepest human values and most important human relationships must forever be subordinated to the needs of the economy and the dictates of the elite.
Hope in the future and belief in the possibility of fundamental change—belief in the possibility of revolution—are inextricably linked. The defeat of the idea of revolution has led to an end to the belief that human beings have the capacity to create a human world.
My purpose in this book is to show that we can triumph over the system to create a truly democratic society…
Revolution, in my view, does not mean simply a new economic structure, and it does not mean control by a new elite. It means transforming all the relationships in society to accord with the values, goals, and idea of human life of ordinary working people.
There seem to me to be two values which are fundamental to most people's lives and which are critical to creating a new society. Most people believe in equality and in commitment to each other. Revolutionary democracy means changing all the relationships and institutions in society to reflect the values of solidarity and equality.
Revolutions occur when people gain sufficient confidence in their own view of human life and in themselves as the makers of history to shape all of society with their vision…
The Importance of a Revolutionary Conception of Change
The idea of revolution has no legitimacy in contemporary society. Yet a revolutionary conception of society is essential if we hope to understand the world around us or to change it.
The reason for this lies in the nature of the system in which we live. Capitalism is not merely an economic system. It is a system of human relations, which projects and enforces its own view of the world as its primary source of control. The essence of the capitalist view of the world is a view of people: the idea that capitalist society expresses human nature.
According to this view, society is competitive and unequal, driven by greed and self-seeking, because that is the way people are. The goal of society is economic development; the goal of the individual is to produce and consume. Society is a jungle in which only the fit survive, and the most fit rise to the top. Whatever is good comes from the top of the social order. The feudal aristocracy claimed that the order of society was the will of God and therefore eternal. The capitalist class claims that the order of society is human nature, and therefore cannot be changed.
Capitalism holds that self-interest is the fundamental human motivation. Capitalism defines the possibilities of human society in terms of this view, and it shapes the fundamental relationships in society, such as economic relations, to conform to this view. Capitalism means a society constructed on selfishness as the basis of human development.
The culture of capitalism has great power to convince us that the world cannot be different, because "this is the way people are." In this competitive world, we are taught to be always on the defensive. We are forced to compete for grades at school and for jobs when we graduate. The stories we read in the newspaper, the ideas we are taught in school, our experiences on the job can all serve to convince us that people really are just out for themselves.
To understand that the world can be different, we have first to realize that people are different from what capitalism says they are. We have to realize that selfishness is not the fundamental impulse of most people's lives.
The heart of a political vision is thus not a view of economic or political structures but a view of people. The revolutionary vision which I develop in this book is a view of people which shows that most people are moved primarily by goals other than self-interest and thus are capable of creating a new society together…
The necessity and possibility for revolutionary change lie in the vast gulf between the world as it is and the world as most people would have it to be. The logical end of the struggles in which most people are already engaged is the creation of a new society which expresses their values and their idea of what it means to be human.
POSTSCRIPT July 9, 2024
Today a new chair I ordered was delivered. It was in a large and heavy box/package left on the sidewalk in front of my condominium unit’s building. As I was struggling to move the box into my building and was not able to do it, a person delivering somebody’s ordered take out meal walked into my building with, leaving his truck idling in the middle of the one-way narrow street. After he put the food inside he helped me lift the box and carry it into the building, no questions asked. He was under a lot of pressure NOT to help me because a car behind his truck was honking for him to move it, but he spent time helping me anyway.
Why did he do this? Did he expect I would one day return the favor? No likely, since we would probably not ever see each other again.
Clearly he helped me because it was virtually instinctual to do so. Most human beings (not all!) are like that; we are hard-wired to honor the Golden Rule. When it is most human beings instead of the few who don’t honor the Golden Rule that have the real power in society, that’s when it will be the egalitarian revolution that so many people would love.
John, I feel you have hit the nail , squarely on the head in your description of where we are as a society in today's culture. HOPELESS... and we don't know what to do to rescue ourselves from our dire situation.
Which of course, is the very definition of Hopelessness. As you say.... we have been taught all our lives to be independent of each other.... pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Work hard, keep our nose to the grindstone, keep our noses clean. Do all these things and we were told you will be rewarded with a means to acquire a beautiful home and family and a white picket fence to surround it.
Meanwhile, our real enemies were conspiring to gather their forces against us.
It wasn't hard to notice that those who were chosen to move ahead..... were certainly not the best i and certainly not the most knowledgeable workers from amongst us. They were instead the devious snitchers, the slackers, the deviants who cut corners to meet the companies outlandish mandates. Those who would graciously do anything to maintain their
lofty positions no matter who it hurt.
Eventually in time, they became the dominant
catalyst in every workforce that does not require any skill other than to 'dominate and oppress' others and where there is no 'product ' needed to profit from and all expenses ares solely paid for at the Commoners expense....ie: the police force, the military, all the branches of government.
So what we have now is not just a unethical and inequality of Wealthy people in this country but also a conglomerate of solely Taxed Paid institutions who are designed to Keep us Down to Keep themselves Up.
Add to that all the mass mouthpieces of the bought and paid for media, the injust and conflicting laws that our so called representatives pass to misguide us, the monopolistic merchant system to bankroll us, the Agricultural system to poison us, the Health Care system to keep us sick, bankrupt us and eventually kill us and every other enterprise that seems hell bent on keeping us in such a toxic state of Chaos.... It's no wonder we have lost All Hope in living a decent life.
I heard it said that one must hit bottom before one has the ability to turn themselves around. Some say they find God in that abyss of total despair . I say , God has always been with them... but their lack of Faith has prevented them from seeing Him. Once all is lost and there is nothing they can do to help themselves .... With no other place to go...they finally find their Faith and finally turn to God... and like a Good Shepard He brings them back into His fold.
We're Not there Yet! We are too fearful to lose what we have... what we worked so hard to get all our lives. The devil's know this about us. Job2:4 satan said..."a man will give all he has to save his life". and we will hold onto all things of the World.... our homes, our cars, our
money .. To keep what we have... the life we made for ourselves. ......before we
come together in unity to save ourselves from them. And strangely,all we have to say is ..
NO... NO MORE . We will not take No More ..
But we must come together to do this...
and that is what is stopping us right now.
Just saying.....
and thank you John for delving into what you called the : mysterious things' if I remember correctly.. For their -in the mysterious things lies our salvation.