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The Ponzi Scheme As Way of Life
Sharon Astyk, Casaubon’s Book
… I feel bad for those who were taken in, particularly for charities that lost their funds. But no worse than for those who lost their 401Ks or their pension funds on the stock market, for cities and states that can’t sell municipal bonds, and I feel far worse for the poor, who never had a glimmer of getting to participate in the get-rich-quick ponzi scheme that was a stockmarket that everyone said could have perpetual growth forever.
Madoff may be a criminal, but he’s a criminal in large part because he’s engaging in a particular form of ponzi scheme that we look down upon, one small enough to be called illegal. In general, we’re pretty comfortable with ponzi models -we live, quite happily, in a ponzi economy, one in which the concept of perpetual economic growth is sold, divvied up again and resold. We live in a Ponzi ecology where we borrow constantly against the future to pay for our present affluence.
Most of us have been putting our money into 401Ks and Mutual funds, and now that money is disappearing – and it is disappearing again, because we live in a Ponzi economy, one in which new funds can, for a while, conceal the bankruptcy of a society that draws down its natural resources and leverages both its ecology and economy past bearing.
(19 December 2008)
Related:
Pension Funds Collapse: The End of Retirement? (Alternet)
A Scheme With No Off Button (NY Times)
“It’s Kristallnacht Two!” An Ethnic Cleansing in America (CounterPunch says that Jewish-Americans were heavily affected by Madoff affair)
If I’m not a consumer, who am I?
Carolyn Baker, Speaking Truth to Power
… Both the Reuters and Wall Street Journal stories conclude that buying and consuming have become part of the national culture and offer people an identity-the identity of a consumer, which many will now be forced to abandon. Additionally, shopping has become a way for countless individuals to cope with their emotions. Not only do the things we buy allow us to feel good momentarily, but the disease of consumerism has become so pathological that in many instances, people have come to believe that they are what they buy, and the more expensive and coveted brand or product makes a statement about who one is. This is enormously significant because there’s obviously more than “survival panic” going on here.
I believe that it’s not a stretch to conclude that for some, the inability to consume may be creating a fundamental existential crisis in terms of losing one’s identity. This would certainly explain the bizarre violence that occurred at the Long Island Walmart on Black Friday a few weeks ago where an employee was trampled to death. If consumption “rewards” human beings with a positive identity as well as the sense of financial security, then it is nothing less than an extremely powerful addiction. Withdraw the addictive substance or activity-or put it on sale at 70% off, and many people will behave like the street junkie who will do whatever it takes to score his next fix.
I hasten to add that short of living on air, none of us can totally cease consuming. The issue, of course, is not consumption itself, but consumption that isn’t about buying or bartering for what we truly need-consumption based on fear, insecurity, alienation, all of which are rooted in the human ego, as opposed to the human soul.
… In addition to their profound connection with the earth community, which dramatically informs their desires, indigenous cultures have in place a tradition, namely initiation, for planting and harvesting in their young, a foundational sense of identity. This tradition is not simply a “rite of passage” but rather a series of ordeals, almost always occurring in a natural setting, through which the youth must pass that allow him/her to discover and utilize a deeper self. In fact, the ordeals are often constructed in such a manner that unless the youth can access that self, he/she may not physically survive. Any woman or man who has passed through such an experience will almost always attribute his/her survival to the support of the tribe, one’s own connection with nature, and the opportunity to discover a previously unknown reservoir of courage, enabled by trust in oneself and other members of the community.
In a culture where tribal community, intimate connection with nature, and concomitant initiatory rites are absent, then the human psyche, which appears to inherently requires these for optimum functioning, will consciously or unconsciously devise its own rituals for constructing an identity. If this is so, then we may conclude two things: that initiation makes mindless consumption unnecessary, and that mindless consumption in search of identity is a substitute for initiation.
In indigenous/traditional cultures, even when entire nations or villages are steeped in poverty, there is almost always a curious sense of “enough.” In fact, one usually finds there, more generosity, magnanimity, and compassion than anywhere in industrial civilization. One reason for this may be that beyond a sense of “I have enough because the tribe shares with me and I with them” is a more fundamental sense of “I am enough because I know who I am.”
(20 December 2008)
A flaming toothbrush
Ruth Ann Smalley, Daily Gazette (Schenectady, New York)
It will go down in family history as the “Night of the Flaming Toothbrush.”
We were into the second night of the power outage on our block (truly just our block and those on either side of us — up the street, everybody had electricity). We had distributed candles throughout the house, so that we wouldn’t have to dig up a flashlight anytime we left the warm circle of the living room woodstove. Grandma was getting ready for a night in my 8-year-old’s bed, as her knees don’t allow her to get on and off our mattress and box spring on the floor, and she certainly can’t make it up the ladder to my 12-year-old’s loft bed. I was ready to sleep on the fold out in the living room so I could stoke the fire in the night. The kids were camped on the floor, to help me wake up and do my job.
I was talking to Grandpa, who was settling down in the recliner, as nerve issues make sleeping flat in a bed difficult. Suddenly, a bright light in the bathroom caught my eye. Something was flaring in there. I ran in just in time to see the votive candle forming a column of flame, involved in a chemical reaction with the plastic toothbrush hanging well above it.
Having heard me whooping and hollering that “the toothbrush is on fire!” my daughter wryly greeted me back in the living room afterwards with, “Gee, Mom, you scared me! I thought a toothbrush was on fire or something.” I needed that laugh. Then I declared that bathroom off limits for the night, on the grounds that who-knows-what toxins lurk in melting toothbrush fumes.
It was the first, and the worst, of several little candle incidents over the next few days, as we struggled to make sure splattered wax and wayward flames didn’t get the upper hand in our quest for safe light. We weren’t alone in discovering that there’s more to keeping multiple candles going safely for hours at a time than there is to burning a couple for mood lighting. I mentioned our “learning curve” on this to a friend who was also without power, and she replied, “Yes, my son caught his hair on fire leaning over a candle!”
The flaming toothbrush haunts me because of the questions it raises about learning curves. I think of myself as a pretty careful person, but I was the one who had put the votive there, believing it had plenty of clearance. Of course, the incident pales in comparison to those tragic instances in which people died from the fumes of generators or hibachis that they brought indoors. But it got me thinking about just what it might take to prepare the majority of the populace for large scale power loss.
… Strikingly, even with our advantages, we found ourselves exhausted at the end of the five days. We’ve built so many aspects of our lives around the assumption that with the flip of a switch or turn of the handle, the light comes on, the heat comes on, the water comes on. Our habit patterns are strong, and how we react to having them disrupted can make a big difference in how well we are able to cope and adapt.
I observed this among the various members of the family. Some were able to view it as an interesting adventure. Others, who had physical challenges or temperamental tendencies toward needing greater control over their environment, experienced much more difficulty. Their level of emotional suffering only increased as the days went by. I’d wager that this spectrum is common to the American population, with perhaps more of us than not falling at the emotional suffering end when deprived of our routines.
My question is, how will we all fare if large numbers of us are in a similar predicament simultaneously?
(19 December 2008)
