#OCCUPY ignores governments and standard political processes because:
- Governments are much weaker than the global economy (they are bankrupt hollow shells of what they were at the end of the Cold War).
- Governments are too ineffectual and/or corrupt to change anything even if they are coerced (see the US, Ireland and Greece for recent examples).
- Too little will change even if the government changes parties (see the US for how lame politics and politicians have become).
What's the real goal of #OCCUPY? It's a recognition that the center of world power doesn't reside in Washington or London or Moscow or Beijing anymore. It's in the executive suites and luxury resorts behind the global corporate hegemony. This protest dispenses with the middle men (governments) and goes straight after the real power to divest it of whatever credibility it still tries to claim.
The reason we are seeing this movement right now is because Capitalism, the last great ideological system, is in crisis. This isn't merely a crisis of outcomes (economic depression, financial panic, etc.). It's a crisis of BELIEF. While people generally believe in the idea of capitalism, a critical mass of people now think that the global capitalist system we currently have is so badly run, so corrupt, so terrible at delivering results that it needs either A) a complete overhaul or B) to be replaced with something new (which equates to the same thing, because the Jabberwock cannot be overhauled. Don't fool yourself! A Japperwock cannot become anything other than a Jabberwock.).
3. SPECIFIC #OCCUPY STRATEGIES
There is no difference between a person and their absolute responsibility for the consequences of their actions. The concept that a person's responsibility is subsumed by the corporation they work for (corporate personhood) or the government they serve (national laws, or the customs of the bureaucracy) is a false paradigm. Believing in this false paradigm leads to global suicide.
How do you know you are thinking in the false paradigm? You can catch yourself if you are:
- Assuming you must ignore social and environmental consequences in your decisions because they seem too expensive to consider.
- Strategizing ways to externalize costs so that the general public, future generations, or third world countries pay to deal with your toxic wastes.
- Thinking you can manufacture a product without including its recycle costs in your manufacturing and pricing.
- Thinking you can cut old growth forests in Borneo, make products in China, and sell them through Ikea or Walmart.
- Thinking that you can follow orders from a superior and kill people with robot planes in Afghanistan.
- Thinking you can manufacture, sell, transport, or fire depleted uranium weapons.
- Thinking that it does not matter if you consume false-paradigm products. (If most people stopped using Shell Oil or McDonald's hamburgers for two weeks these firms would be bankrupt.)
- Thinking you can be pissed off at your neighbor without changing yourself.
- Thinking you can order someone else to stop a third party from creating a better world and not face the personal consequences...
For example, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg thought he could have the owners of Zuccotti Park --Brookfield Properties - shut down #OccupyWallStreet early in the morning of 14 October using the ruse of "cleaning the park." He thought he could avoid the personal consequences of this decision. He was thinking inside the false paradigm.
#OCCUPY perceived the cleaning order as:
- Bloomberg vs. #OCCUPY.
- One Mind vs. Many Minds.
- Linear Thinking vs. Nonlinear Thinking.
From the very beginning Bloomberg had no chance. (This is true for whatever authority figure tries to subdue or suppress the people united. Meshwork meeting technologies far outpower hierarchical intelligence. )
How did #OCCUPY do it? #OCCUPY took immediate actions to delegitimize Bloomberg's complaint that the park was dirty and unsafe. #OCCUPY reorganized itself and brought in power-washers, brooms, and mops. They deep-cleaned Liberty Square. They hired their own dump truck. They even offered to let cleaners into the square to clean 1/3 of it at a time!
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