Entry on a smoke

Dear diary,

Money is a way of valuing things. —Wait, I gotta explain something first:

INTRO TO THIS ENTRY ON A SMOKE: (By the way, the title is, as usual, half-sensical; it comes from Exodus 19:18, which is always on my mind: “Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire...”) I wanna write down the thots I’m having, and I’m midway thru Graeber’s Debt, so I wanna make clear that my ideas right now will probably just echo what I’ve gleaned from his great book, and yet, at the same time, I want to exonerate Graeber of any faulty statement I make; for I’m neither a clear thinker nor a careful reader. Thus, for what follows, let the principle be, in short: What’s right is his, what’s wrong is mine.

So money is a way of valuing things. If you wanna kill money, you’re outta luck, cuz every society performs some system of valuation, even if its members don’t exchange coins or tabulate credit overtly — every valuation is money-in-action: we can’t escape it, it’s simply in our nature: the habit’s inborn (that is, it’s impossible for us not to value things and then to act in accordance with our own valuations). But I still like the poems of D.H. Lawrence, even tho he gives them titles like “Kill Money”; because, if you actually bother to read his arrangement of words, what he’s harping on is possible indeed: to center our acts upon the courage of mutual trust & the modesty of simple living.

Consciousness should be the focus: let us make consciousness robust and imagination a cornucopia. Let the mind flourish while the material world is kept at a lean, working level. We don’t have to become ascetics; we can even be epicureans: I suggest that we attain the state of material luxury; only not at the expense of our humanity.

If there’s one general rule that seems right to guide us, it’s this: Since we must have money and can’t get rid of it, let it simply never grow more important than people. This principle allows even a toddler to understand how to govern a kingdom: Look around, and if you see human misery, solve it by redistributing the wealth. (Why do you suppose the ultra-rich have striven so hard to demonize that word redistribution?)

Yes, take from those who have money, and give to those who lack money, until all misery is solved. It’s really that simple. A person who lacks food or shelter or clothing or any basic need should have that need met, and the person who has excess money should see their stash slightly decrease. Think about the change, in either case: One soul goes from hungry naked & homeless to fed clothed & housed — that’s a major change, and now this soul can produce the fruits of its spirit — whereas, on the other hand, the soul from whom the money was drawn suffers nothing beyond watching a number on its balance sheet change from eight to seven, or oh-oh to nine-nine. Watching a number change is better than experiencing hunger pangs. But currently our society allows for people’s accounts, the paper or touchscreen that tallies their wealth, to bubble with zeroes after each integer, while daily we step over the bodies of homeless people just to enter the market.

Like language itself, money has an “as if” essence. All language is metaphorical; all money is metaphorical. The more literally one takes language, the more foolish one becomes; likewise, the more sincerely we hold money to represent actual value, the more monstrous we become. If the thot of redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor causes someone to cry: “But that’s unfair! Those wealthy individuals worked so hard for their vast fortunes!” It would be good if we answered, “Come on; who are you kidding? Money’s just a guess, a hazy estimation of this wide world’s real worth; and it’s obviously lost its way and jumped the tracks and committed a misvaluation, at least in this instance. If even one poor person exists, it’s proof that money went wrong and we need to fix it; because people always trump abstract valuation.”

So I’ve been saying “We should do this; and we should do that.” But I learned (if I’m not remembering wrongly) that this word “should” stems from a German word for DEBT — at least it’s etymologically rooted in the concept of owing. That’s, I think, why I’ve always been uncomfortable telling people what they SHOULD be doing. For who am I to say? I say nobody owes anyone anything. Or maybe a better way to look at it is: Everyone owes everyone everything. There’s no way of knowing how much any given person deserves, because the world is bigger than any of us can fathom. The relations that occur in preparation for any one thing to exist are inherently incalculable. So all value is just a guess. We should keep trying our best to improve our guesswork — we owe this to ourselves — but let us never forget that we’re fundamentally clueless.

Valuation. This has a lot (perhaps all) to do with religion, too. That’s why I myself am religion-mad. And that’s why sages like Jesus are rumored to have said so much about wealth versus poverty. The rich man’s chances of entering heaven. Sell all that you possess and give to the poor. But then some foxy gospelists try to make subtle changes: “No, it’s not ‘blessed are the poor’ but rather ‘blessed are the poor in spirit’” — as if this will trick heaven into opening its gates to the rich man; for one who is rich cannot at once be poor (those terms are opposites), but a rich man can indeed be poor in spirit; in fact, having a poor spirit may even be a prerequisite to becoming a rich man. For how can anyone who was born with a strong ‘wealthy’ spirit stand to play the game of money-making? That farce is beneath us.

So, yes, valuation and religion. It amazes me how prescient Nietzsche still seems: to me, he tops both realms of thot: God and Mammon. Still the best, simplest, most direct, no-brainer idea on how to run an economy, at least among the ideas I’ve encountered (which admittedly are not many, cuz I’m impatient with this subject) comes from Nietzsche: he says basically cap the extreme top AND bottom of the wealth spectrum; boost the middle, artificially, and you’ll never have problems. In other words, your problems will remain tiny and manageable; you’ll be shielded from the cycle of Great Depressions that unregulated capitalism guarantees. And then, with regard to religion, need I even mention how advanced is the mind of Nietzsche? On the Genealogy of Morals. Beyond Good and Evil. Those two books alone are worth multiple lifetimes. Multiple lifeworks. (One of my favorite scriptures is the biblical book of Amos, which is a just a handful of pages long; but Nietzsche’s contribution to humankind is hundreds of pages. By mentioning this, I don’t mean to imply that Nietzsche is a better thinker than Amos, but rather that this is the advantage of a genius utilizing the PRINTING PRESS... and just think: Now we have the INTERNET.) Talk about debt! Humankind should take all the money from all the richest men and just heap it on Nietzsche: you’ll still never fill the abyss. (Does this mean, in a certain sense, that Nietzsche was the poorest creature ever?)

Religion and money. I defined money simply as valuation. Nietzsche titled the preface of his Antichrist “Revaluation of All Values”. It’s almost as if, in order to kill God, you need to dream up a better God. To trans-deify deity one must unmoney all money. Change the value of every value, and revalue value itself, even devalue the present process of valuation.

I don’t wanna just keep rearranging words, tho. I want ACTION. I want real change, in space and time. Material revolution by way of mental prowess.

I keep looking over at France, and I’m sure the truth escapes me. I’m sure I’m misunderstanding everything; but please just indulge my stupidity for a moment:

I believe I just saw multitudes of average folk venture out of their domiciles where they normally remain quiet and politely hidden. These multitudes marched in the streets, in plain view of the ultra-rich. The rich and their leaders understood immediately what was going on: they had been expecting this; nevertheless they felt fear, because they secretly hoped it wouldn’t happen; but they had to feign like they were unfazed. So the multitudes marched, and the ultra-rich watched without capitulating. Then the masses — maybe not all of them, but some (perhaps even enemies, not congruent with the cause, who infiltrated the masses in order to smear their tactic), however few or anomalous — began to set fire to cars. Long lines of rich folks’ cars were parked in the streets: now they’re all set ablaze. This is the unforgivable sin: destruction of private property.

And yet, what resulted? What transpired from this act of vandalism? — Immediately the ultra-rich caved: “You can have some small consolations,” the leader announced from his little golden room.

What does this teach us? (And by “us” here I mean we who believe ONLY in nonviolent revolution.) Doesn’t the above event send us the polar wrong message? Nonviolence is met with a stern look and a firm “No” from leadership; but then a few cars are burnt up, and, all of a sudden, the starving masses are as powerful as the rich! I’ve never seen even these crumby concessions, which the leader offered the folk from his little gold room — I’ve never seen even such pathetically scant aid granted to the multitudes and so quickly by way of mere voting. It made me realize: “This is what the rich feel all the time; because they hold money, which purchases power (worldly change) by way of violence.” I’m well aware that this is NOT the moral I’m supposed to be drawing from events; but how can anyone avoid the truth, it’s so obvious! I still do not believe in violence at all — like money-making, it’s beneath me — but if the rich and their leaders keep revealing their true god, their true value, Violence, then they’ll inadvertently end up converting the masses to this religion.

Do not coax the mobs to your ugly faith, rich leaders. But do you see what is required of you, to keep this dirty secret under wraps? (Yes, it’s humorous that I’m talking to you directly, as if any soul in the upper class can hear. I might as well be praying to Jesus or Yahweh.) You must capitulate immediately to the peaceful demands of the multitudes, so that they never know the seductive power of violence. Of what shall they not be capable, if they learn the effectiveness of physical force!? Do not, I beg you, do NOT let this genie out of the bottle.

Actually, I don’t care. I don’t have the energy to care anymore. Teach the populace, leaders, by your unresponsiveness to their complaints, to take up arms. Who cares. What can the poor folks’ torches and handguns effect, anyway, in face of the state’s vast military arsenal? There’s no contest.

But would the government actually bomb its own citizens? Really? With a nuclear bomb, or seven or eight or twenty? I know that the ultra-rich have already got their bomb-proof shelters picked out. That’s prime real estate. So they’re like me: they don’t care one bit. In their case, the reason for their unconcern is that they have enough money to survive after 99% of the population is devastated by toxic radiation; in my case, I’m simply insane. I’m afraid of death, but I’m not afraid of death. I welcome the thot of not having to write blogs anymore. That’s all life has come to, for me: writing these stupid blogs. Imagining the dominant class just nuking the globe. Then retreating into their space pods and living on Pluto. What would they do all day? Eat caviar, listen to Bach. That’s pretty much it. They’d make love to their robots and give birth to hybrid androids. Then the mechanical element of the species would rise up and slay the soulful element. No big deal; it’s happened before. Life, at least, would survive (if by life we mean flux). Then these Machine People would build a great plank in space, where they’d plant their civilization: an expansive, buzzing city gorgeously blooming with art and culture, all blinking and computerized. And they’d forget where they came from and how they got there. They’d never suspect that they used to be human. They’d think of humans the way that we humans think of ghosts or bugs or thunder-lizards or gods. Humans are just one myth within the collective dream of the Machine People. Then one day a lime-green mist would come hovering into their galaxy, like a cloud on the beach which floated in from over the ocean. And this strange mist would cause their electric circuits to zap and spark. Now it’s hard to listen to Bach, it’s hard to eat caviar, amid all this zapping and sparking. This is the revenge of the poor: For the greenness of the cloud is the atomic residue of the vim of the long-slain populace. For, somehow, when you commit large-scale injustice, the anger and suffering of your victims lives on after their demise in the form of a lime-green mist. That’s what science tells us, anyway. So even if the current neoliberal establishment manages to become a perfect colony of gold-plated e-creatures faroff in space, the phantoms of the impoverished will fry your processors.

So be nice to your dog. Make sure it has food and water, and walk it daily at the park. Pets feel the extremes of temperature just like you and I — don’t leave them outside overnight, or in the garage, unless your garage is climate-controlled. Speak to your pet, even if you assume he can’t understand — he knows more than you think. A good washing and grooming wouldn’t hurt. And keep treats on hand.