June1979 RAIN Page13 It is, I think, because we have been guilty of the same dreams. Haven't we all. sometime imagined what we would do if we had a million dollars-and had no qualms about that being more than we need, about the effects of having so much more than others, or about where the wealth would come from? Most of us have prospered (in small degree relative to the corporations and the wealthy, but prospered nonetheless) from corporate exploitation of other material and human resources. We have been, if anything, admiring and envious of the greater success, luck, or ability of others to achieve what we have only dreamed. But now the implications of dreaming those dreams are becoming apparent as a result of their successful pursuit. And it is only now, as we begin to reject such dreams personally, that we discover their hold, discover alternate dreams, and .111 /lilmi' discover what they can do to resolve our intractable problems. We need perhaps to be more pragmatic- seeking realistic solutions to our real proulems free of ideologically colored glasses, and looking at the reality of proposals rather than their labels or sponsors. We need to continue our stumbling way step-by-step to awareness of more basic causes of our problems, and in turn to the vision to find clearer, more workable and effective solutions. It's getting time to move the game onto the other players' turf. It's our turf, really, and we want it back. It's curious, in a way, to have come full circle to the old "Capitalist Greed" and "class struggle" territories. Yet it's coming to those arenas now with documented evidence, the self-proclaimed words and deeds or our business and governmental leaders, and real-life proof of the failures of our accepted traditions. We have a clearer sense of that politics of power and how it has taken advantage of us, a broader and experienced range of alternatives, and technology and energetics to support new ways of doing things. We're finding, it seems, that the technology of a sustainable society and the power to exercise it must be sought together. II. I stopped writing here last night. The above seemed true but incomplete. Corporate America, and exploitation by the ruling class of Americans have definitely been central mechanisms in the deterioration of our society, and need to be dealt with. But that doesn't reach deeply enough into the problem. Why have we allowed such things to develop and prosper? Why have we not been galvanized into indignant reaction at past exposure of these activities? Nuclear energy could only be successfully dealt with when we had moved beyond the dream of limitless comfort and ease it promised. And that happened only when the limitations of that dream and the consequent side-effects of its means became apparent. The same is true of wealth-based economics. To change the means we must change the ends. Within the system we accept, there are no significant alternatives. Our only real alternative is to accept a different system, serving different goals and arising from different dreams. Greed fails as the basis of society as its consequences become known. Greed means the eventuality not only of combative and exploitive personal relations but of great inequities of wealth and power, and the end of a democratic society. It makes impossible humane cities, socially benign transportation, or respect and loving care for non-productive clements of society and nature, and so on.... Our failures in resolving such unsolvable social problems are tied to our unwillingness to dig deeply enough into their causes. Doing that we will find, as Bologna, Italy, has found, and as others are finding, that new and effective answers arise easily from new assumptions. Good transportation will come only when we put humane cities above the profitability of the auto industry. That means we stop trying to accommo· date the auto and its destruction of our cities and start to locate business, home and shopping to avoid need for transportation, and then regulate the auto into its proper place relative to other transit. The automobile won't go away on its own. There's too much powerful self-interest behind it. We'll find, as countries such as China have amply shown, that to eliminate poverty you must improve the lot of the poor, not improve the lot of the rich with the assertion that the wealth will "trickle down" and improve the lot of all. Wealth is relative. It is not how much you have, but how much .relative to others, that makes you powerless or powerful or distributes power equitably in a society. And counter to our development claims, the productivity of the poorest and most backward sectors of a society can be improved most inexpensively and most easily-if what we really want is their well-being. So far we haven't. Our modern cities seem to be endlessly in the midst of one crisis or another caused by striking taxi drivers, firefighters, garbage collectors, teachers or some other group that has realized the ability of any element to paralyze a complex and interconnected modern city. We seem unable to do anything but capitulate to their demands or engage in a long and bitter combat. Yet if we didn't believe so strongly in greed ourselves and sympathize with the strikers' attempts to exploit their power, we could easily resolve our dilemma. If we believed that equity of income and wealth was reasonable, we would have massive public support against any contract agreements paying more than the average income in the city, and equally strong support for raising incomes below that average. We would learn quickly the effectiveness of practicing Top-Down Equity- throwing out politicians, business execu
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