Jedi Mind Trix

Community and the Capitalist Accumulation Habit

Posted by Trix on May 26 2008 | 10 Comments »

Does community build happiness? Barbara Kingsolver and John Perry Barlow think so.

Over the past week or so there’s been a lot of net traffic around the Kingsolver commencement address presented at Duke a few weeks ago. Lady Leblanc pulls some good quotes and teases us with an initial analysis. She followed up this post with a JPB essay entitled the Pursuit of Emptiness that really struck a chord with me.

Each propose that material wealth does not bring happiness, while being in community fosters it. Many people share this idea, throwing away the money=happiness equation and filling the void that’s left with community building. While I believe that community can bring happiness where wealth cannot, I also believe that to do this, the values of the community must drastically depart from the idea that capitalist accumulation in all its forms brings happiness. Community must be redefined and reimagined.

Barlow’s and Kingsolver’s essays examine how we would benefit to move past monetary value to true life value. They both introduce the idea of community as an agent of change and hope for the future of humanity in this respect.

Kingsolver writes:

Community is our native state… In the last 30 years our material wealth has increased in this country, but our self-described happiness has steadily declined. Elsewhere, the people who consider themselves very happy are not in the very poorest nations, as you might guess, nor in the very richest. The winners are Mexico, Ireland, Puerto Rico, the kinds of places we identify with extended family, noisy villages, a lot of dancing. The happiest people are the ones with the most community.

I am challenged to think that the kinds of communities we create and live in today deviate substantially from the capitalist accumulation-success paradigm, today’s version of the Puritan or Protestant Work Ethic. In this paradigm, success is based on the number and size of individual achievement. The culture rewards those individuals who achieve the most and those with the most rewards are seen as the most successful. These are the most respected individuals, which is in itself another reward.

Kingsolver offers the idea that when asked “Your money or your life?” we can choose life and this life can be found in community. And yes, I see new “progressive” communities form and grow, in an effort to redirect individual goals away from monetary gain. But despite these initial ideals, there continues to be an over-valuation of success through capitalist accumulation and accomplishment; our value lies in our output potential, our informal resumes, our ability to get things done and to achieve. This pressure, this value system, this cultural ideology I will call our Capitalist Accumulation Habit. We have been indoctrinated to believe that to be of value we must live up to the ideals of the capitalist accumulation-success paradigm. Although we have moved away from seeing money as the path to happiness, the underlying meaning behind the money, that has been reinforced throughout our lives, has affected the way we live our lives and define success. The attitudes and thoughts of the dominant system have become habitual and continue to influence our way of thinking and behavior often through unconscious patterns, even when we think we have left our old ways behind.

For example, Burning Man (I’m sorry to always pick on you, BMan) has employed a system in which participants are valued for their participation in the practices of gifting and of creating artwork, and for working hard. It is in essence, built on the Protestant Work Ethic: through hard work the community will find salvation. Those who work the hardest and those who give the largest most tangible gifts are the most valued, recognized, and admired people on the playa. The Capitalist Accumulation Habit has come home to roost. Yes, there are those rare magical moments when small, subtle and intangible gifts and experiences strike you, give you wonder. And there are those large tangible gifts, accomplishments and achievements that are offered to the outside world beyond the insular progressive community, who help bring solar installations to low-income communities or devote their energy to assist Katrina victims (thanks for the examples Orange). But overall, in communities like these, capitalist accumulation is often the norm. And those who create the most output and who work the hardest are the ones most valued and celebrated by the culture.

Through my participation in Burning Man and offshoot communities, I find myself in this very conundrum: my success is still determined by the size and nature of my output, a symbol of how much I am “worth” to a community driven by accumulation and achievement. The culture of community demands to know how hard-working, creative, clever and determined I am. My acceptance is directly proportional. I’m sure that I’m even judged on how well I am formulating and articulating this analysis here on my blog. The more holes you poke in it, the more valuable you are; the more fortified my stance, the more valuable I am.

Hand-in-hand with this over-valuation of output comes an unsavory bedfellow: the devaluation (the shunning even) of our emotional strengths (unless written publicly in whispy, pseudo-spiritual jargon on social networking sites, which I would argue are not strengths of anything but wordsmithing). In communities where the members are stuck in the Capitalist Accumulation Habit, people are not recognized for contributions that do not fit in with the group’s habits. Individuals are required to play up achievements and devote energy towards accumulation of markers of (self) worth. Such markers include fashionable art pieces and clothing, (scope of) projects completed, number of (influential) “friends” and social status in order to be accepted into the community. Those who do play up these attributes and are recognized are less likely to express their emotional selves and focus energy on achieving in order to remain in good standing. Those who are more emotionally focused and don’t prioritize achievements are not recognized by the community as fully valuable and are less welcomed into the group.

No one I know would object to a community branding itself with the ideals of “more joyful experiences, more sense of meaning, more happiness, more free time, more love”, But when building social connections and resumes becomes the main output, the purpose even, the ideals turn into rhetoric. It’s at this point that the communities stray from their intended goals and instead align themselves (unintentionally) with egalitarian group networks, goals of accumulation, and values of self-serving accomplishment.

Community only brings happiness when it exists to support, accept and value each other’s strengths and full humanity. When true community and friendship exist, it throws away the expectation that people have value based on their tangible output and accumulation potential. Creativity isn’t only measured in beautiful art, but in creative solutions to living happier lives together. Hard work isn’t only measured in hours of sweat and labor, but in willingness to stick with someone until you understand their point of view. Love isn’t about helping someone out with a project, but accepting each other with all our strengths and weaknesses.

I must say, there’s been a lot of joy and celebration and support that has come out of these communities, I’ve seen it. So don’t get me wrong, they do serve a good purpose and bring some happiness to some people. I have also seen, felt and participated in the unsavory forces that prevent community from coming together, leaving people feeling unloved and unwelcome. I have seen outsiders shunned or ignored, due these self-serving, capitalist ideas.

I offer these words as a place for reflection and potential growth. Because whether or not the culture moves with me, I’m moving on.

“Citizens, did you want a revolution without revolution?”
-Maximilien Robespierr

barack obama reads my blog

Posted by Trix on May 25 2008 | Comment now »

i’m kidding…
but the commencement speech he delivered at Wesleyan today sure seemed to chime in on the discussion following my Yes We Can post last week. I might be skeptical of Obama for President and I definitely get all squirmy around patriotism, but there’s no doubt Barack has some good things to say to today’s youngsters about the choices they must make.

breaking the sushi habit

Posted by Trix on May 25 2008 | 1 Comment »

2008.04.15 :: bento diary :: tax day bento, originally uploaded by vingt_deux.

i’ve got a sushi habit. it’s nothing to joke about. if i didn’t have any self control, i would be spending $100-$200 on sushi a day, seven days a week. luckily, i’ve got some control, but its still getting to be too much.

i’ve been talking with several people about how each of us have decided to open up our vegetarianism to include fish (pescatarian), but not other animals. there seems to be some mythology around eating fish to be acceptable and a dismissal of how bad the oceans are being overfished or how bad mercury is for the body. the question has come up, why not choose to occasionally eat organic beef or fowl when you know the owner and their ranch/farm practices rather than just order any fish, any time. its a good question that i’m trying to resolve for myself. i’m not about to run out and get to know some ranchers so i can sink my teeth into a steak, but i’m thinking about it.

in the meantime, Zim and i are getting on the sushi wagon. after conducting some research, we’ve decided that we’re breaking our sushi habit based on the combined sustainability problems and mercury levels of the fish we enjoy. Blue Ocean Institute, Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood WATCH, the green guide and Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) are good online resources that helped us examine different species and make this decision (the green guide looks at both sustainability and mercury).

what does this mean? it means we’re not eating any fish unless it is Alaskan salmon, which may be the only fish we enjoy that is not being overfished and that’s low in mercury. Well, with one exception - unless its one of our birthdays and we’ll be going to our favorite sushi place in SF, Sushi Bistro.

while we’re on the subject, I have to give props to Tataki Sushi Bar, also in SF, whose mission is “to showcase the beauty and delicacy of Japanese cuisine while respecting the sanctity and fragility of our environment. If we are to preserve the art of sushi, we must also safeguard the health and biodiversity of our oceans. With this in mind, we strive everyday to integrate the concept of sustainable dining into our menu options.” i haven’t been there yet (they just opened last month), so i can’t vouch for the fish, but the ethics i can palate for sure.

Getting Congress on the hope bandwagon

Posted by Trix on May 23 2008 | Comment now »

Hopefully, if Obama gets into office, he can get Senate Democrats to be a little more hopeful about how the United States doesn’t have to fund murder, ruined lives and lies . So far, his campaign speeches haven’t been all that effective on that front.

Is the situation beyond hope? Is Congress beyond the Hope sensation? Is the current administration the Hope vortex?
I hope we are at least able to get to the bottom of all this garbage in January.

Yes we can

Posted by Trix on May 18 2008 | 5 Comments »

What I like about Barack Obama is that he’s all about sending a message to the American people that we can have a better future. Whether or not he’s a part of that future or should be a part of that future is not something I want to examine here. The hope he instills in people is a beautiful thing. We the people can not only have our country, our lives back. We can see things change from a world gone wrong today to a brighter tomorrow. Despite my love of the rhetoric, I believe its not going to be given to us, nor will it just simply arrive by being hopeful, voting for a certain candidate or even him winning the election. It will take work, through education and action by privileged people like you and me to bring about this change.

Part I

Yesterday I spent some time with Loganotron talking culture and politics as usual. We have a history of chatting about the West Coast festival scene and politics, and how they come together. Yesterday we once again enjoyed such analysis and debate. One point of focus examined how so many people we know, who spend so much time and money creating and supporting the art and music in the scene, devote such little time, energy and money in political/social justice/environmental/etc activism. I promised to send him this 2003 John Perry Barlow essay reflecting on Burning Man attendees as agents of change, which although slightly dated in some respects, still hits home.

If someone like Karl Rove [fill in any Washington politician Republican or Democrat] had wanted to neutralize the most creative, intelligent, and passionate members of his opposition, he’d have a hard time coming up with a better tool than Burning Man. Exile them to the wilderness, give them a culture in which alpha status requires months of focus and resource-consumptive preparation, provide them with metric tons of psychotropic confusicants, and then… ignore them. It’s a pretty safe bet that they won’t be out registering voters, or doing anything that might actually threaten electoral change, when they have an art car to build…

This event demonstrates that it’s going to take more than just getting out the vote to restore common sense to the American political process. When the voters start hallucinating, democracy fails. You end up with junk politics, as the current issue of Harper’s puts it. Twinkie democracy. It now seems incumbent on those of us who have been hallucinating intentionally to throttle it back a bit and get our shit together.

It’s time for the experientialists - those of us who don’t get our reality from television, who actually read about what what we can’t experience directly - to emerge from our psychic sanctuaries and become seriously involved in the ugly business of politics. If we don’t, it’s only a matter of time before the dominant culture quits ignoring us and starts actively locking us up in even greater numbers. Indeed, the means to accomplish this are already in place, as I can personally assure you…

Still, this is a critical moment in history. If we beleaguered bohemians really care about the moments to come that our children will inhabit, we’d better show up for it. This means that, painful as it sounds, we’re probably going to have to act like grown-ups some of the time until things quit being so weird. If the world isn’t going to make sense, we’d better.

Part II

After spending the afternoon thinking about all this, I went to the Bassnectar show at the Fillmore at which Bassnectar (aka Lorin) brought out some local political and social justice activists to weave some bigger issues into the night and therefore, scene of which he has become an integral part of here in California. Lorin has been politically minded for a long time in his music career, however, this was him amping up his desire to bring something of greater impact and meaning to one of his shows. For this (and many other reasons) I admire him greatly. His central message was borrowed from JFK’s “privilege is here, and with privilege comes responsibility.” Lorin, in delivering his message did not knock the beauty of the joy and connection that comes out of 1000 people dancing together to bass heavy music, but called on us to be mindful of how much suffering there is in the world. He and his guest speakers asked us to reflect on how limiting it is for us to take advantage of our privileged positions and merely enjoy ourselves in these experiences when there is so much work to be done. They called us to action in whatever ways work best for each of us individually.

Lorin, like Obama, due to his popularity, charisma and his positive message can use his strengths to leverage the average fan towards some level of excitement about creating change. I too have hoped that we can create a better world for ourselves and our children. However, at the same time I’m skeptical, because when everyone goes to bed at night, I wonder whether anyone was inspired enough to actually do something. Or will we just relax back into our privileged lifestyle, now with a new “hero” to admire.

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