Compensation = Contribution: What If?

The Occupy movement is hands down the most potent culmination of moral and sociopolitical purpose I have seen on this large a scale in my lifetime.  As a youth I aspired to embrace the ideas of the 60′s that I was exposed by my parents, but it rocks to have something alive and new to be part of.  It’s leading us to evolve our expectations of democracy.  Or for many of us, it’s finally starting to seem plausible that we might finally knock some sense into the world.  The early months of Occupy have done tremendous good in gathering attention to the problems of inequality and greed, and we have established new networks of commitment with like-minded folks to push for change.  Having followed the movement closely, it’s becoming clear to me that ideas are important.  Really important.

While pondering the ridiculousness of the polarized political idioms that pervade our language and funnel mainstream thought into a pointless stalemate, I stumbled across a simple idea.  Perhaps this, or something like it, can dislodge us from the narrow stereotypes that conventional left/right thinking tends to follow.

If we could somehow guarantee that every person’s compensation matched their contribution, then our economic problems would cease to exist.  Nobody gets any more wealth than that which they have created for others.  Perhaps it’s here, at this embarrassingly simple point of equilibrium where capitalism and socialism can harmoniously coexist.  What if?

Let’s imagine a world that operates perfectly by this rule.  How?  Well you see, it’s metaphysically enforced by angels who run the cosmic bank.  Ok, now what would it be like to live in such a world?  If you are poor and in dire need of money, then all you do is just start contributing to others.  In this imaginary world, you would be compensated instantaneously and fairly.  If getting rich is your thing, then just do something big,  something that will contribute to many people and you can be generously compensated.  Just don’t harm anyone or the environment in the process.  Harm is a negative contribution, so if you do that it will cut into your compensation.  There’s no hiding from the angels, for they see your every thought.  You would never see any sneaky subliminal advertisements that try to sell crap you don’t need.  Businesses only get compensated for contributing to an actual need, so there would never be any point in pursuing annoying sales tactics that promote over-consumption.

Although imagining such a world on the outside seems unrealistic, couldn’t it be the truth that it’s already how things work on the inside?  A person who has compensation that matches their contribution will always be happier and at greater inner peace than a person who doesn’t, regardless of which way the imbalance lies.  Above all, this tells me that we must unlearn the habit of blocking our own conscience in order to win, and relax our survival strategy to encompass a broader and more natural set of goals.  By doing so, we not only stop oppressing others, but we fulfill our own need to be at peace and in better health.

I have committed, and I invite others to commit to try and live by this rule (at least in terms of your thinking), if for a few days, and see how it feels.  If it feels good, then keep doing it!

Judgmental People Are Bad… Uh, Never Mind!

A big thank you everyone who has been commenting on my post The Violence of Law.  The exchange has been more rich than I ever could have imagined.  The discussion got me thinking that the topic of Judgemental Thinking deserves some attention unto itself, so here goes.

We’re all familiar with the saying “history repeats itself“.  It’s usually spoken with a tragic shake of the head, and followed by a change of topic.  History does repeat itself whenever a “gang” forms around a cause and creates judgements that define what is right and wrong.  The gang punishes wrong behaviour as a primary strategy for maintaining the peace.  The tragic irony is that what begins out of a good thing (the needs behind the cause) turns into a new oppressive force that is equally as damaging to real peace as the problems that gave rise to the cause in the first place.

Marshall Rosenberg puts it in very simple terms.  We are all born into a world that only knows one language, the language of judgement and either/or thinking.  We learn to cope with the world using this language and so it becomes part of our unconscious programming.  It is our habitual and most comfortable strategy for dealing with conflict, so deeply ingrained that we don’t even realize we’re going it all the time.

We can come to see how this language of judgement is in fact the biggest perpetrator of oppression in our world.  So what to do about it?  I was thinking that we could start a gang in which judgemental people are bad, and see what happens.  Every time someone is punished for being judgmental, the punishers would have to be punished as well.  You would hope that before long, the hypocrisy becomes obvious and people start looking for a better way.

The best alternative that I’ve heard of is empathy.  So the first thing you do is empathize with those people who are judgemental.  This may sound odd, but if you can see that behind the judgement is a need, you don’t take it personally or judge them back.  You can probe for their need and let empathy do it’s magic and dissolve the barriers.  I know, it sounds like something only Jesus or Buddha would be capable of, right?  Well, it really just takes practice.  That’s what NVC tries to help people learn.

It’s crucially important that anyone who really wants to create social change understands the cost of using the habitual strategy of judgement.  There are gangs everywhere, busy repeating history.  They can’t see this because they are either unaware of the habit of judgmental thinking, or unaware of the harm that it does long term.  It’s very hard to see this in the moment when you are feeling anger about unmet needs, but when you step back far enough, you can see how history repeats itself.  You can see how reacting out of anger makes you an oppressor.  The cost is enormous.

So for many of us (like me) it starts at a personal level of dealing with your own anger.  Identify your own needs that the anger is related to, and know that those needs are valid and important.  Then see the other person’s actions as a tragic expression of their own unmet needs.  This way, you escape the either/or thinking that usually accompanies anger:  “Either what that person did was wrong, or my needs are invalid.”

Nobody is at fault for being stuck in this habitual way of reacting.  It’s just how we learned to cope, and it takes awhile to change our habits.  So when I say that judgemental people are bad, will you cut me some slack?

Are We Tampering With Evolution?

Now that H1N1 vaccinations are underway, many of us are considering whether or not we should get vaccinated.  There are those who think it’s our moral duty to get vaccinated since we may be putting the lives of others at risk.  There are also those who feel that this may just be a large scale money making agenda on the part of the pharmaceutical industry.  Whatever the case, there is definitely a lot of fear going around.

I’d like to propose we take a step back and look at the big picture.  Humans have survived for tens, hundreds of thousands of years without anything such as vaccinations.  How is it that within the last several decades, we have come to see something so artificial as being essential to our survival?

In the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, we are presented with a portrait of the human race from an evolutionary perspective.  The story goes that about ten thousand years ago, a group of humans called the takers began attempting to conquer nature.  These takers had forgotten that in fact they were part of nature and inseparable from it.  The leavers are those humans who continued to live in acceptance of their role as equals amongst the rest of nature.  The story leaves the reader with the grim conclusion that our human race is headed for disaster ever so rapidly, fueled by this fundamental flaw in our perception that we are not animals and that we are somehow superior to the rest of nature.

Indeed, we observe that in nature everything balances itself out.  If we have made nature our enemy then we are setting ourselves up for a battle we can never win.  We ARE nature.  If we tamper with ourselves, we are tampering with nature.  We are tampering with evolution itself.

The scary part is that if you think about it, the successful evolution of our species requires that the strong survive.  This is how humans have evolved to become what we are today.  So what makes us think that all of a sudden, now we have to start tampering with our evolution?  If people are surviving and reproducing who might otherwise have died without vaccination, are we setting ourselves up to become ever more dependent on vaccinations for our continued survival?  By contradicting the “will of nature” that some people must die so that the strong can survive, are we weakening ourselves as a species?  Is it becoming that our only strength is in our ability to manipulate nature?  If so, we could be facing a much bigger issue of responsibility than most people would care to think about, let alone deal with.

What if instead of focusing all our efforts on outrunning death, we took steps towards learning how to better accept it?  After all, it is our fear of death that gives the pharmaceutical industry so much power.  Buddhism has long taught the virtues of accepting death, and in general accepting the external things that you cannot change.

Author and teacher Caroline Myss points out in many ways how Americans have developed a sense of entitlement that is completely unrealistic.  In her recent interview with Laurie Nadel, she points out how as a culture we have completely forgotten about the need for sacrifice.  I couldn’t agree more.  I see this as in fact one of many side effects of the fact that we have forgotten that we are part of nature.  It’s as though we think we are “special” and somehow different from the rest of nature.  We are entitled to our 52 inch TVs, and our vaccines to keep us alive so that we can keep watching them.

I am not getting myself vaccinated.  I trust that if I die, it is for the greater good.  I am okay with death.  Besides, I am going to die sooner or later.  In the meantime, I’m going to spend my time and energy on the stuff that makes life truly worth living.