July 26, 2008 at 13:23:37

Is capitalism a religion we have taken too far?

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By Roland Michel Tremblay (about the author) Page 1 of 2 page(s)

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Is pure capitalism a religion we have taken too far? George W. Bush may wish to talk about God as much as he wants, his track record and the one of his family, up to his grandfather and great grandfather, speak for themselves. The Bush family has only one God and one religion, it has nothing to do with Christianity, but everything to do with making money. Pure capitalism and pure greed to the extreme is our only religion.

I feel it is difficult to speak of capitalism as a whole, without falling in numerous traps and being accused of not knowing what I am talking about. So first thing I did was to go on Wikipedia, then I stopped myself. Don't get me wrong, I will read it and say what I think of it, but first capitalism must be, before anything else, what the people inside really feel it is. Not the perfect book definition that we all wish it to be, because in practice we know capitalism has evolved into something else, that many consider a real monster and threat to humanity.

This point becomes clearer when we read Karl Marx and his ideas of a perfect socialism, which in real life has been the breeding ground of corruption and governments' hidden agendas, who drove us all to utter failure. I read a bit of Karl Marx a long time ago, I like to say I didn't, and yes, I was charmed by it. In reality, what I have observed of what we have done in his name, has alarmed me so much, the only solution I could see was to discredit the man, because no one ever again should use Karl Marx as any kind of authority to justify the worst atrocities and injustices this humanity has seen. I may talk more about this one day, right now I wish to define my own definition of capitalism.

What is capitalism in your own mind? What is it in my mind? Well, it is our new religion, it is all that we believe in. We claim it is our way to freedom, the liberation of the masses, our chance to succeed beyond measure at becoming filthy rich and powerful, no matter our background, our education, our social class. Capitalism can be reduced to the American Dream.

In my total ignorance of what exactly is capitalism, I have to say, yes, capitalism is wonderful! I want that chance to freedom, I want to become filthy rich and powerful, I want to do what I want to do in this life, nothing else. At this point I realise that I need to dig further. What else do we believe it is?

Well, it is a system, an economic system upon which our existence, our corporations, our governments base everything they think and do. What it seems to be about is capital, making money, as much as one can, to the detrimental of just about everything else in life. If the one at the top prospers, we all prosper. A rich company will create jobs and should in theory pay its employees well. The private sector is where capitalism is applied, though even government agencies think in capitalist terms, and if there is a way to make a profit in anything, we should certainly go for it and make tons of money that could be re-invested somewhere else.

When I was child, my parents never had with me the big talk about capitalism and what it meant. They never told me what was expected of me in such a system. Haven't they? They certainly pushed my sister and I to the limits. We had to have a great education, we had to succeed at any cost and attend the best universities, we had to become rich and have a great status in this society, the best job one can hope for. Medical, law and engineering were the only obvious choices available to us. However, in retrospect, they were misguided. No one becomes rich being a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer. Poor shadows of what capitalism truly means.

Capitalism means starting your own business and building it until it becomes a huge corporation employing thousands of people worldwide in some sort of wonderful perfect globalised world. Lawyers in Canada can eventually do that, they can start their own law firm. Engineers can do the same, creating their own engineering consulting firm. Doctors in Canada cannot really go private, in the United States however they can, as it is all mostly private. This led to horrifying results, where doctors became nothing less than advertising agencies for the almighty pharmaceutical companies, pushing half baked drugs that they all know don't work, and in many cases, make the patients worse.

Perhaps capitalism should never have been applied in certain areas of our society. There is no need to become extreme, like in the United States, or we will eventually reach a point where everything will come crumbling down to dust, as we are witnessing right now in the stock exchange market and financial sector. Too much greed will be our downfall, just as it has always been throughout the ages.

At its most basic definition, I think it is fair to say that what comes to mind to anyone when we talk about capitalism, is this law of the offer and the demand. Let's forget here about advertising and marketing, forcing us to wish for things we would never have thought we needed in the first place. We live in a society of consumerism, highly materialistic in nature, where your only goal in life is to acquire as many possessions and assets as you can, as it is how you will be judged and respected in society. How much wealth you have will define how great a man or a woman you truly are, your worthiness to exist. This is what the meaning of life has been reduced to under capitalism, a game of Monopoly, and I dare you to deny it. It is such a shame, as I do love to play Monopoly on my Nintendo DS. I am a product of my generation, well, almost.

It's okay, I am still not criticising capitalism that badly, who knows, maybe it is the way to go. After all, what other system has brought us anything better? None. Might seem a bit superficial, plastic, meaningless, and so on, and on, and on. If one wishes to be the devil's advocate in this case, my God, that one could go on forever about how misplaced this whole philosophy of life can be, and how more important stuff are actually... well, much more important. Like, I don't know, emancipation, happiness, finding a meaning to our existence and figuring what is this place, the universe we live in. Finding some peace about who we are and what we are supposed to do here, if anything.

Freedom and happiness are still key to everything, we should never forget that. I believe they tried to convince us that it was embedded in the whole capitalism system. You are free to become a civil servant doing admin for the rest of your life, or create your own business and become as rich as your imagination and cleverness or shrewdness will lead you to.

Then, I suppose, capitalism only becomes a real problem to you if you are just a civil servant with no thirst to becoming rich and controlling the planet. Otherwise, wow, what a great life you can have, a real challenge that will answer all your prayers, assuming you have totally espoused the capitalist way of thinking. You might find later on in life that this was after all a bit meaningless, but who cares. Whilst you were in the thick of it, it seemed right, it was fulfilling, it was exciting, you can be proud of yourself and your achievements, you certainly cannot be faulted for it, you will be envied.

In order to get a better idea about how great capitalism is, we need to turn to our models and heroes of capitalism. I reckon, that should be anyone who has made over a billion dollars and who took the time later on in life to write his or her autobiography, or at least who have given us enough to understand how they truly felt about it. Then, we also need to assess if they have not simply continued to play the game and are not just telling us how great and successful they have been. I mean, a real turn around to assess exactly and honestly how they feel about it all.

I can think of two great examples, perhaps the greatest ever, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. It does not matter who they are and how they made it. If you do not know who they are, forget it. All you need to know is that they made billions of dollars and build up the most successful corporations this world has ever seen. And later on in life, they both seemed to have suffered from some sort of existential crisis, and realised that perhaps life and our values were not all that they should have been.

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