The new, real heroes after the greediness's Lords - or remove the barons from office...

Le Commencement d'un monde de Jean Claude Guillebaud
Uploaded by EditionsduSeuil

In a long interview with the French journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud (writing about media in the French “Nouvel Observateur”):

”The medias today are lacking backbone. They don't have any goal any longer, more than earning money. In former times one looked upon the medias' freedom as an indication on how the democracy worked in a country.

But now the medias have become radioactive, they poison the democracy.”

Guillebaud has collected a lot of warnings for the coming financial crisis. Everything has been said, all the time, he means.

But the ones warning didn't get any space in media. Instead the medias tried to make us believe that this economical meltdown was entirely unpredictable. The medias tried to silence all contradicting voices.

Guillebaud thinks the medias was the greediness's Lords instruments.

And today it's the ones causing the crisis who are still given space in the medias to tell us how to solve it. The ones warning have no say not even now.

This is what happens daily in Sweden even in public service the Swedish journalist Maria-Pia Boëthius thinks in the article "Remove the barons from office."

On the question who the new heroes are, after the greediness's Lords, Guillebaud replies (in my maybe a little free translation from a Swedish text) :

“All the million people who try to perform an honest work, and who are the real foundation for our existence on this earth.”

“But you don't see them in the medias?”

the interviewer asks.

“Exactly”

Guillebaud replies. A lot of people are working hard to manage their lives and earn their living, and are working entirely in the shades! And they don't earn a lot of money, despite a lot of hard work.

And apropos media: everywhere there is a debate that the paper newspapers are dying out. Or at least the morning papers are dying. However, they want support from the people now. But they let the readers down. They are about committing suicide of fear for the death.

Imitating Internet and the evening papers instead of restoring the honest journalism. They are to blame themselves, but this doesn't impede our needs for honest daily papers.

Found something Alice Miller writes at page 87-88 in her book “The Body Never Lies – The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting” *:

“The playwright Henrik Ibsen used the phrase 'pillars of society' to refer to those people in positions of power who profit from the mendacity [lögnaktighet, osanning] of the society they live in. I hope that those people who have recognized their own story and freed themselves from the lies of conventional morality [the fourth commandment] will be the pillars of a future society built on conscious awareness.

Without the awareness of what happened to us at the outset of our lives, the entire fabric of our culture seems to me to be nothing other than a farce.”

* about this book: "Miller also discusses how institutionalized religion itself can contribute to the crushing guilt that prevents us from being healthy and conscious adults. She urges society to realize that the Fourth Commandment -'Honor thy father and thy mother'- offers immunity to abusive parents. Indeed, she argues, it is healthier not to extend forgiveness to parents whose tyrannical childrearing methods have resulted in unhappy, and often ruined, adult lives.

In a stirring rejection of the 'Poisonous Pedagogy' that pardons even the most brutal parenting, Miller examines the cyclical nature of violence and abuse. Parents and guardians who abuse their children, both physically and mentally, leave them embarrassed and hurt. The inability of most children to properly express such feelings causes them to perpetuate the cycle by lashing out at their family, friends, and, above al1, their own children, who will inevitably do the same.

Throughout The Body Never Lies, Miller offers a calm and encouraging voice. Indeed, The Body Never Lies, through its illuminating and provocative insight, affords us a unique understanding of the immense healing powers of the adult self and the body."

The sources of terror - and contempt for weakness…

Slightly edited during the day...

Two leaders this morning and a discussion in the morning-sofa on TV made me think and triggered this posting. Here a quotation from the first leader “The Sources of Terror” about the events in Mumbai, India on Wednesday (my a little free amateur translation from Swedish):

“All terror has last of all its origins in social evils [sociala missförhållanden] or political injustices of some kind. Let us hope that heads of the governments in India, Pakistan, USA and Europe are able to keep this in mind even after this incomprehensibly brutal act of violence.”

I think he is right, but this (the social evils and political injustices) is only an explanation no excuse for the use of violence was one of my thoughts. However, it's no wonder people at last start to react.

I also found this blog about this event, see here.

Each Friday a panel (on three persons) use to speak about the last week’s events in Sweden and the world in the morning sofa on Swedish TV. Today one of them said something about:

“...anxious men [in the higher/highest positions in the society and the world] needing to ‘assert themselves’…”

by competing about who is the most highly (well) paid. Yes, why do they need this – and to that degree as we see? Aren’t they good enough being less paid? Will they ever become satisfied though? Aren't those needs actually bottomless?

The other leader "Martina and I" was about the documentary “Martina and I”, i.e, about the woman Martina with Downs Syndrome, who is working as cleaner at a service flat for elderly people (see earlier posting) since quite many years. In this leader it stood about the notion “normality”…

Martina doesn’t have sense for time. It doesn’t mean anything to her. She lives in the here and now, and this can cause problems for her both here and there. But this job is perfect for her the leader writer thought, because older people don’t care about (the) time either.

“A sharp light is falling over the modern working life. How tiny the space is for the divergent/differing, for things/persons/phenomena not being throughout perfect! All those whom aren’t really that productive are pressed out from the regular working life, and in a world where work is such a central part of the life this implies the most severe marginalization of all.

That Martina managed to get a foot into working life has made her to a stronger human being./…/

All aberrant/deviating we let into the ordinary life contribute to change, yes, to reform the normality.”

Yes, it was this with contempt for weakness… And with productivity and cleverness. We have to earn our right to live?? Observe the irony!

You can find the leaders here too.

A rotten system - or fortune…

videos with Paul Krugman.

What is fortune actually?

That money and ownership more and more lands in fewer and fewer hands is built into the economical system a person wrote in a Swedish paper today. What he wrote triggered this posting. And it was quite fun to add videos with Paul Krugman, whom I have read with lots of joy! :-) And I got quite happy he got the Nobel Prize!

A writer means that financial speculation is opposed to the market economy, which has to be built on real production of things people need (see about perverted needs, denial of needs).

Today 500 multinational groups of companies and their vice presidents are steering the world economy (the need for power? A need that never will become filled. This is about bottomless, unlimited needs). They decide over investments, patents, production, and distribution and so on. To a too high degree.

When companies become giants they become anonymous. Which makes space for individual directors or vice presidents to act unethically without (any) social responsibility. Thus the economical system leaves the field open for greediness and have-desires.

Fortune is lycka, levnadslott, förmögenhet in Swedish.

More voices in Sweden about the current situation in the world...

Martin Luther.

Suddenly the word capitalism was on all our lips. Economy reporters started to pose questions about the capitalism. It’s no longer seen as only an economical system, but also as an ideology.

It was long since. The entire posting written with my amateur English...

The market mantra about the necessary deregulations maybe can be changed against a more moderate, sensible talk about a common responsibility and the policy’s power nationally and internationally at last?

Here is another one reacting at our finance minister (from the moderate party), mentioning his attack against greedy people on Wall Street. A minister advising the need for regulations, not least international regulations. But it would be "becoming" if he made a public confession the writer thinks. The moderate party is namely the party that has recommended market liberalization the strongest and put every trial to creating a balance between politics and market to scorn.

However, the writer appreciates his criticism of the neoliberalism’s ravaging.

Even the social democracy needs self-examination. Hopefully the leader of that party Mona Sahlin and their spokesman for economical things Thomas Östros will be the prime mover of endurable alternatives to the quarter-of-a-year-capitalism.

Avariciousness has always been the capitalism’s intrinsic motor. Already Martin Luther realized this when the city of Wittenberg was stricken by failure of the crop or bad harvest 1537. The prices on grains shoot up. And the grain dealers started to store grain waiting for the prices to grow even more!! In this way the capitalists could gain even more money. Consequently this became a catastrophe for the wage-workers of Wittenberg. They were forced to borrow money to be able to buy their bread (as we say). The banks raised their rates. The poor was starving.

Luther wrote a grinding (??) to the priests to preach against the usury. This was an unprecedented attack on that time’s bank and trade capitalism.

“An usurer is murdering actively. Because it isn’t only that he lets helping the hungry alone. He even pulls (jerks?) the crumbs from the mouth of the starving. /…/ The usurer doesn’t care if the whole world dies if he only gets his money.”

Luther wrote.

The usurer was considered abusing his fellow human beings situation of troubles and (justified) needs. Power abuse. Luther started out from solidarity with the ones that were poor and had least power.

“Who are stricken in first hand when you are practicing usury? Isn’t it the poor whom in the whole is stricken first and foremost?”

Luther continued with his criticism.

Through the economism culture we have all become speculators on the stock exchanges/market (for instance we place our pensions in stocks or shares nowadays!!!). We are raised thinking on biggest possible profit for our own sake. We need to re-establish the sense for a “we”, where we in fact are dependent on each other and therefore need to look so all have it good. From mutuality the solidarity grows.

Oh NO, we are not dependent on anyone!! Observe the irony. Because maybe we are both dependent and independent? We need other people at the same time as we can manage a lot of things on our own (if we aren't totally handicapped). A child who has been truly respected develop a sound (sounder than many of us) relation to dependency/independency? Isn't afraid of being dependent in certain situations, and is independent in other. A sound balance beween dependency and independency?

The capitalism is threatening the right and righteousness.

I can’t help thinking: We teach our children to think of other people and share and at the same time they are learned a contradicting message: to think of themselves. Miller writes about contradictions and confusions… And once again the Dutch therapist Ingeborg Bosch writes about the effects of children being taught to share at a too early age (something she thinks almost all of us are).

I think Martin Luther was beaten as a child by the way... What did that mean to him and to many other people?

More about avariciousness...

Joseph Schumpeter.

[Upgraded October 3, see the end]. People here write: We have been living in the de-regulation mantra for several decades. Now the neolibberal utopia is falling as a house of cards. Even our right wing finance minister is talking about the need of regulations – international regulations.

Recently he spoke about the too greedy finance brokers on Wall Street when he got interviewed in the news here.

But isn’t the capitalism’s motive power the avariciousness?

Unregulated it eats itself up? It’s therefore a political against-power is needed which manage to redistribute and maintain a solidary society.

Neither the totally regulated nor the totally unregulated society is good?? Instead we need a sort of balance between the political and economical power? Sometimes called mixed economy, sometimes called welfare-capitalism.

Reagan-Thatcher and their armies of economists and advisers rebelled against this system to make place for a new capitalism – the neoliberal.

Regulations were torn down; laws were written/created according to the capital’s interests, the market took the political sphere over, taxes and other restrictions for the capitals’ interests were wept away. That generation’s neoliberal politicians are carrying the responsibility for the deep capitalist crisis today.

After a quarter of a century this system, which for a long time created growth but also the most gigantic redistributions of wealth in modern time, explodes or rather implodes.

In parts this break down follows because the financial sector has to become severed from the real economy. More and more fictive values were created.

Joseph Schumpeter, sceptic to the capitalism’s survival but the entrepreneurship’s special philosopher, described a theme of our time: the innovations and the new technology’s creative destroyment. That’s right; there’s much less creativity today I feel. In a time when we should have been more creative to solve different problems. Here the school has become much more theoretical for instance. Also a sign of our time. What about developing (or maintaining) the whole person?

Today there is very little creation, the more destruction. Most of all it is the belief and trust to the society which has been gnawed in pieces. A fundamental mistrust is demonstrated against the financial system, its speculative elements.

It stands in wikipedia about welfare capitalism:

“Esping-Andersen categorised three different types of welfare states in the 1990 book 'The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism'. Though increasingly criticised, these classifications remain the most commonly used in distinguishing types of modern welfare states, and offer a solid starting point in such analysis.

The three different types are the 'Social Democratic' Model, as exemplified by the Scandinavian countries and particularly Sweden; the 'Liberal' Model, often related to the USA, Canada, Australia and increasingly the United Kingdom; and thirdly, the 'Conservative' Model, which is indicative of Germany, as well as France, Austria and Italy.

Recently in the US there has been a trend away from its form of welfare capitalism, as corporations have reduced the portion of compensation paid with health care, and shifted from defined benefit pensions to employee-funded defined contribution plans such as 401(k)s.

It should be noted that the original definition of welfare capitalism, as used by the 19th century German economist, Gustav Schmoller, called for government to provide for the welfare of workers and the public, via social legislation, among other means. (And not to rely on business to do this.) While Schmoller's work is little available in English, his influence can be seen in the modern European welfare states.”

And I wonder about the roots to this, and what’s driving people creating those destructive things?

Here are different articles in Swedish newspapers and blogs, two of those I have reffered to above.

Addition later in the morning: delegation has been something popular on work-places here. The bosses delegate responsibility to their employees. Give them responsibility. Of course that's good in many ways, people can grow by this. But - it can also be misused (and is misused I can lively imagine quite ironically). Responsibility can be delegated that the boss ought to take! Bosses can push responsibility and (a lot of) work away. Including the risk of being blamed!?

Can it be something similar with the economy, the society, politics: the ones in power are pushing the responsibility away on a diffuse, not visible or touchable market? Who is then to blame?

And about greed: some claim that greed isn't only bad, that it makes people want to work hard etc. But I would claim that there in fact exists people who works hard with no such drives!! But with other drives and motives. Just with the wish to create something good, not only for themselves - OR for others, but for us all.

Yes, what are driving us?? What are our motives/motivations? Why are we driven by what we are driven? Do we have to remain the same a whole life? Can we change and do we ought to change?

In the shower I thought further on responsibility. People are paid fantasy-salaries (get bonuses and retirement-insurances) for their work because of the enormous responsibility. Bosses on lower levels are also more well-paid than earlier. Even though they are told to delegate work...

But it differs on what sort of responsibility you have... We working with human beings aren't worth a scrap of what those high paid people are worth! What does that say? About what we value as a society and in the (whole) world?

And it was this with limitless needs again... To value oneself, or not value oneself... What's sound and what's not sound?

The Dutch therapist Ingeborg Bosch writes about children who have been taught to share at a too early age (something most of us have learned more or less too), and the results of this later. Resulting in that we can't do anything if we don't get anything back. Other people have learned not to value anything they do too...

Upgraded October 3: A Swedish leader writer this morning:

“Few governments and as few economists confess anything else than laissez-faire. But now these market liberal doctrines are tried.”

He also writes that the nonplussedness as a matter of fact is fundamental (grounded on principles), yes, epidemic and ideological.

Yes, that about responsibility? Convenient and handy to blame the market? You can just leave everything to the market; a phenomenon you can’t touch upon.

What does this say actually?

This about responsibility and blame…

Avariciousness…

[Slightly edited October 1]. Quickly written after a long day at work: The Swedish leader-writer and priest Helle Klein writes in her blog that she thinks the economism gets both material and existential consequences.

She wonders how what’s now going on in the current financial crisis will end.

“The greediness digs its own grave – unfortunately many small-savers [??] are drawn with in this crisis.”

In a leader chronicle yesterday she writes about that “The Capitalism Destroys the Love.”

The Swedish debater and journalist Dan Josefsson said at the book-fair in Gothenburg recently that:

“Loneliness is a malignant tumour on our society.”

He and a psychotherapist have written a book together called something like “The Secrecy –from glance to lasting relation” (if we just "take ourselves in the collar" as we say here and become the clever girls and boys we will manage it!!! My interpretation from what I read about the book. Of course; all who haven't been so badly hurt will manage this, but those who were more badly treated... What about them?). Addition October 9: the home site for this book, see here.

In the book flood from this year’s fair (mass?) the need of help with relations appears. The human beings of today seem to have difficulties with the love –not with sex, kicks of happiness or enjoyment, but with lasting and deep relations.

Of 9 million people in Sweden 2, 5 million are living in one-person households. Over 1, 5 million of these have hardly any contact with their families. 200,000 say they don’t have any friends.

A lot of people call help-phones. All sorts of people are calling: young, old, people born in Sweden and abroad, men and women. Many carry a huge agony. The dismounting of the psychiatry is shown clearly. Other people are struggling with their addiction(s). Strikingly many women are drinking too much. But obviously many are merely alone. They have nobody to talk with. They are longing for connection beyond themselves.

Loneliness is the Western world’s big problem child. We have everything, but not. The affluence of things has to compensate for broken relations (but more and more people don’t have material things either, we are returning more and more to the class-society again).

However, all those offers of therapy, lifestyle coaching and self-realization say that we have to change ourselves, not the society * (the tendency to blame ourselves is strengthened! Very practical for the ones in power on all levels).

If one topic of conversation in our time is the loneliness, the other is the financial crisis. The bank system in USA is breaking down and the confidence for the societal economies is crashing.

The greediness, avariciousness has dug its own grave.

Maybe these two societal phenomena – the loneliness and the greediness - belong together?

“The capitalism is a condition in the world and in the soul”

Franz Kafka once claimed.

His provoking metaphor hold things together we use to hold apart – the economic and the existential aspects/things.

One of Klein’s teachers at the university, Per Frostin, once wrote an essay with the heading “The Capitalism Chokes the Love.”

He searched for the talk in society and church about the economism’s and consumism’s influence not only on the societal solidarity but also on our ability to maintain loving relations, enter into marriages and devote ourselves to family life.

This essay, published more than twenty years ago, feels more burning today than ever Klein thinks.

Our quarter-of-a-year-capitalism is not only a neoliberal economical system but also an ideology with a view on man which says: go in for, invest in yourself, and seek for the largest profit for your own sake.

Those ideals are the opposite of solidarity and love. The calculated egoism is breaking both the societal economies and human-between-relations down.

What has Alice Miller said about these things?? Is material things a substitute for other things? For instance love?

* In many circumstances quite moralistic - and not least unemphatic.

"I can - why can't you???"

Addition October 1: read this article too (in Swedish). And earlier posts on self-justification (the right to abuse?). And under the label moderators. See the blog Freakonomics on "In the Battle of the Sexes, Partians Outearn Peacemakers."

The American psychotherapist Jean Jenson writes that

"And the best is that the better our mental health becomes, the more we dissociate from power exercise and violence [in whatever form]."

And it was that with perverted needs and substitutes... Denial of needs "I don't need..." And as I don't have any needs I can't get hurt. And see the phenomenon divide and rule. Something we probably learned as children: siblings were played out against each other, more or less deliberately and/or consciously. A power-tool.

Read George Montbiot in "Congress Confronts its Contradictions."

How would we have reacted and resonated and how would the society and world have looked like if a sound development had occurred, i.e., if we had been truly and genuinely respectfully treated as very small kids and up? If more people had been? Because this kind of truly respectful (non-authoritarian) treatment is very rare?

A Swedish journalist said something about conservatism...

Arthur Silber wrote something interesting:

"When people say adults behave and think like children, what they more properly mean is that they behave and think like children who are profoundly damaged -- children who are already made emotionally numb by the typical kind of emotional abuse to which most children are subjected many times a day, children who have been forced to deny their own pain simply to survive, and who are therefore unable to grasp the pain of others. Most adults were once such children; one of the ways the damage reveals itself when they become adults is the denial described above... /.../

Many children believe that 'wishing will make it so,' just as they believe that there are no consequences for their actions that cannot be undone. But again, children who believe this are those children who are already damaged. Healthy children do not think in this manner. But most of us were greatly damaged as children, and most of us deny what ought to be unavoidable truths because we learned to do this in our earliest years of life./…/

…most Americans -- and our entire governing class and almost all commentators and bloggers -- refuse to grasp them. It is as if these ideas are written in a dead language. Certainly, the language is dead to them, for they have made themselves incapable of understanding it. To recognize a truth of this kind threatens the mechanism of denial that lies at the very center of their sense of themselves, at the very center of their identity. So the truth cannot be acknowledged.”