There’s lots of interesting and inspiring dialogue in this post. My favorite part has to do with the difference between having a conspiratorial attitude and a recognition that our inequalities are systemic in nature. And if so, then let’s shift our emphasis from citing individuals who are “at fault,” or “evil,” and instead work to dispassionately observe how the structures of our society actually work to continue to buttress the status quo. After all, that’s what a “structure” is for: to hold energy in form! Okay! Pluto (death and rebirth) in Capricorn (structures) (2008-2024).
Once we understand how our institutions are actually working, we can change them to meet our evolving needs.
Also interesting to me: Gar Alpovitz sees close-up just how much bottom-up transformation is going on everywhere, that never gets mentioned by the MSM. We need to realize: if we are knitting together our own local areas, so are others, where they live. And then, as they both say, let us knit our various localities together. Regionally. Rather than nationally, especially in a place as gigantic as the U.S. The key is, always: power needs to resides in the bottom, and move up and sideways, rather than as currently, power at the top, that supposedly “trickles” down.
Economist Gar Alperovitz talks to Buffett about how to create a new system from the ground up.
January 19, 2014
alternet.org, via Joy
Excerpt:
What’s really interesting about the inside of the system is that even Harry Truman who made this decision actually believed that he was doing good. If you see him as an evil person conspiring, you miss the whole.
PB: I don’t particularly subscribe to the idea that there are people out there with their fingers on the triggers, pulleys, levers and buttons, sort of a conspiracy side of things, as much as a system that is running…
GA: It’s much deeper than a conspiracy.
PB: Right! The thing I love is that nobody’s that smart, nobody’s that together. No politician has it all figured out. That’s not to say that there weren’t bad actors when the engines were starting, for instance during the Industrial revolution. People have gotten the car going off in that direction, but at that point, it’s going. That’s the hardest part about this. We’re inside this system and people absolutely not only believe it’s real, they need to believe it’s real.
GA: One of the things I’ve discovered—I’ve been speaking around the country, mainly because of my new book—most people understand that there is a systemic problem. It’s not politics and who you elect; the long-term trends are perfectly clear. It’s not a secret.
PB: You’re saying that most people get that it’s systemic.
GA: Yes, they get it. Media continues to be all about the Tea Party, and whether Barack Obama made the right move yesterday, and all that stuff. But what’s actually being said across the country is that there is a systemic problem. They voice it in different ways—some people talk about the big corporations, some about the government. But to say that there is a systemic problem is to speak to something people basically know. Lots of people.
