This morning with great excitement I awoke to see that more people in China are now talking about mass protests. A main stream media quote noted the slogan "We want food, we want housing, we want work, we want fairness." I am excited to see the individual sense of fairness in the great corporate paradise and slave state is unexhausted. There have been several protests and protests gone bad in the paradise over the last couple of years and institutional corruption sewed the seed in each instance. If we take a step back and observe each situation, in general terms, the problem from Egypt to China is the same.
One need not learn the totality of Chinese or Egyptian history to recognize the shared problems. History in general terms is the story of individuals among institutions. And rebellion, revolution, protests and civil disobedience all arrive only after institutions have conned and manipulated individuals on a mass basis, today perhaps a global basis. The great revolting wrong in the world today and throughout recorded time is institutional transgression over individuals. It is not that institutions are all bad. It is that the predominant formation of institutions is built in an oligarchic fashion, much like an Egyptian pyramid, the few at the top reigning over the many. And when these oligarchic institutions link up with other institutions putting institutions before individuals, in a collective, the individual is ridden, exploited, deprived and even all out enslaved.
Throughout recorded time the wrong in the world always has been and still is oligarchical collectivism, institutions taking advantage of and belittling individuals. And in recent history, the U.S.A. was founded on defiance of oligarchical collectivism and the promotion of individual rights and power has ceased exporting, in general terms, the best of what we are and began exporting the worst. Tangibly so in fast food restaurants the likes of Colonel Chicky and Mickey Donny, but also philosophically speaking the U.S.A has exported the worst of our own oligarchic formations. Corporations or governments have taken advantage of people in every state there is currently revolution, through an institutional collective of sorts. People have settled, as have so many before, for an enormous, institutionally supported discrepancy between the haves and have-nots, only today we are a global collective subject to institutional formations.
The base line psychosis of tribal thought, the "us" and "them" mentality enhanced by institutions and oligarchic practices is the wrong in the world. And the U.S.A. has primarily exported, in general terms, freedom for institutions and not liberty for individuals. The difference between the philosophy we primarily export and the philosophy we ought to export, from which stems all notion of American exceptionalism, is similar to the difference between freedom and liberty. It is highly subtle to some and harshly distinct among others.
The idea of freedom is what we have philosophically exported. If individuals and God forbid, if institutions are granted total freedom they can do whatever they want to anybody. Freedom for bad people or oligarchic institutions is slavery to some. Liberty on the other hand, the philosophy which makes the U.S.A. great is more than freedom, correspondingly requiring more attention, liberty is essentially the practice and enforcement of the golden rule. Go where you wish without running anyone else over. Do no harm to others. Treat all as equals, with fairness.
Revolution takes place, if not through peaceful protest, then through confrontational revolt. This is no declarative statement meant to inspire, but simple observation of history, simple two plus two. Oligarchical collectivism is best depicted as a pyramid system, like those of Egypt and is collectivization of institutions of state, corporate and church. All people should have food, housing, jobs and fairness. And we in the U.S.A. should promote, produce and force our institutions to practice liberty for individuals and not freedom for institutions abroad and here at home.
