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Comments in response to an article by Polly Toynbee:

If ever there was a time for an emergency super-tax, it's now

17/10/09

(Return to removed from Cif index)  (Link to article and thread)

 
Polly, you are overlooking the fundamental flaw in our "society" (so fundamental and pervasive that no one notices it), which is that it is not primarily a society at all, but an ENVIRONMENT, which Homo sapiens, being the animal he is, seeks to exploit to his own, individual, advantage. Bankers are simply pursuing their evolved Darwinian nature, it's just that they are in a better position to exploit society (their environment) than most.

Society should (ideally and necessarily, if it is to survive) be a natural development of our TRIBE; instead it serves as an ENVIRONMENT, which we all (only some more advantageously than others) now exploit.

The institutions of state and economy arose and developed to facilitate this exploitation, to the advantage of "society's" dominant and privileged elites, who were the ones best able to influence their development.

 
There has been a huge expansion and diversification, during the past century especially, of society's dominant and privileged elites, to which you and I, Polly, now also belong.
 
We are all conditioned, and obliged by its immense power, to look to the STATE, which has effectively replaced our tribe, with misconceived expectations. It didn't arise and develop primarily to serve society (except as a shepherd serves his flock, i.e. for the meat and wool it provides and can be sold at market, and notwithstanding the genuine concern he may feel for a lost or injured lamb), but to facilitate its self-exploitation. That's a tough and troubling insight to digest, with profound and revolutionary implications for all the political and social sciences.
 
If Bankers, or anyone else making lots of money, recognised their own TRIBE in society, or a genuine development of it, they could emotionally relate to, they would want to and get great pleasure from sharing it (as the evolutionary development of our brains intended), instead of doing all in their power to keep it for themselves.
 
But we ALL do that (not just bankers), because subconsciously, and despite all rationalizations and self-delusion to the contrary, following the example of our dominant elites, we see and treat society not as our tribe, but as an ENVIRONMENT to be exploited, to our own and our immediate family's advantage.

2nd Post

Continuing on from my first post:
 
Polly, with your suggestion of a super-tax, you would force people to treat society as if it were their tribe, rather than just an environment to be exploited, but that is like trying to force someone to love you, i.e. inherently doomed to failure.
 
Our problems can only be solved at their source. What we need is a society (or rather, societies, in contradistinction to the monolithic and monstrous STATE) which individuals can freely and genuinely relate to as their extended tribe. Only then will we be able to realise, peacefully and grassroots-democratically, the kind of society (just, humane and sustainable) you lefties dream of, but vainly imagine must be implemented by the state.
 
As I'm always trying to point out, the state's inherent and primary purpose (being a product of man's perverted Darwinian nature) is, as it always has been, to facilitate society's self-exploitation to the advantage of some over others. It has served (and exploited) us for over 1000 years, thereby giving rise to our civilisation, but now we must introduce some radical changes, before the turbo self-exploitation it is now responsible for and intoxicates us with the transient material fruits of, leads to its, and our own, self-destruction.