The Pervasiveness Of Inward Deadness Is Not The Result Of “The Deadening Effect Of The Super-Rich”

It’s easy to blame the rich and “the soul-sucking mode of exploitation we call capitalism” for the rapaciousness of the human species. However, “restraining the power of the very rich” is an absurdly inadequate response to the global polycrisis.

Of course the super-rich have added greatly to the hellishness of this world. But it’s facile to maintain they are the cause of the planetary ecological, economic and political crisis, and that constraining them is the remedy to it.

It’s no surprise that the same conventionally progressive writer also states: “We might also need, as the lessons of the past century are unlearnt and the far right rises again, to defend ourselves against each other.”

You know the left has lost its moral compass and intellectual mooring when a leading progressive voice reconstitutes a World War II mentality, and calls for much more military spending in Europe to fight fascism from Russia and America. It boggles the mind.

To be intellectually and morally facile is to be philosophically and spiritually superficial. Simply put, worldviews flowing from ‘us vs. them’ mentality, whether held by conservative extremists on the right or righteous progressives on the left, cannot resolve the destruction of the earth and injustice of man.

Indeed, a progressive us vs. them worldview contributes to man’s rapaciousness by propagating the falsehood that the super-rich are the problem, and by insisting that the source of human destructiveness is external, in other people and in systems rather than internal, in the consciousness we all share.

The ancient, darkness-accumulating consciousness is the source of the destruction of the earth and humanity. Its core aspects of greed, self-centeredness, fear and false security through group identification are what have given rise to the obscenely rich and the planet-fragmenting exploitation of global capitalism.

Moreover, the globalization of voracious capitalism, and the transnational rich that have benefited from it, are sustained by the assumed immutability of human nature.

The right extols greed and the power that wealth confers; the left tries to contain it through collective power and regulatory constraints. But the unchangeability of greed and the inevitability of power are presumed by both the left and the right.

Therefore, it’s pointless to say, it “all depends on restraining the power of the very rich: their noise, their occupation of our common space, and their intrusion into all we hold dear.” Who are “we,” and who are “they?”

Such thinking is morally and intellectually lazy because it conveniently removes patronizing progressives and the people that share their worldview from the equation.

Evidence that ‘us vs. them’ thinking is simplistic is how readily its targets can be changed. Consider this statement for example: “I’ve met quite a few very rich people. Some are lively, curious and engaged, but among others I’ve repeatedly noticed the same thing: a dullness of spirit.”

A Russian visiting the United States can just as easily say the same thing about Americans, as one did after a trip across the USA after the Soviet Union fell: “I’ve met quite a few Americans. Some are lively, curious and engaged, but among others I’ve repeatedly noticed the same thing: a dullness of spirit.”

Indeed, one could accurately now say the same thing about people in the West generally, and perhaps, since China grafted capitalism onto communism, people everywhere.

So the pervasiveness of inward deadness is not the result of “the deadening effect of the super-rich,” but of the wholesale acceptance of an utterly hollow, externally oriented, materialistic culture. America may be the epicenter that exemplifies it, but inner deadening has gone global.

Lastly, it’s silly to say, “The very rich threaten, ultimately, to drive us all out of the human climate niche – that is, the temperature range that enables us to flourish.”

Like an us vs. them mentality, such a notion emanates from a false premise: “All species have an environmental niche, and despite technological advances, humans are unlikely to be an exception.”

Homo sapiens is the exception to all other animals living within ecological niches on this planet. Man is the creature that broke the bonds of ecological niche, adapting to and exploiting every environment on earth.

That’s both the source of our immense success and increasing failure as a species. Success because the exploitative human species has technologically developed to the point that there are serious plans to mine the moon and asteroids. Failure because we have depleted and fragmented the earth to the breaking point in our tribalistic nationalism, greed, and lack of insight into ourselves as a species.

We, those who still care about the viability of the earth and the future of humanity, have to look deeper than boilerplate thinking on the left. That means continuously questioning and observing within, not automatically looking for external remedies.

When we awaken insight and intelligence inwardly, we not only feel wonder and transcendence as human beings, but will find creative outward solutions to the polycrisis that aren’t based on accumulating power.

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