hopelesshappiness.com

It is pretty straightforward. As long as the top 10% continue to make the rules, the rules will continue to favor the top 10%; and in the comfort of our complicity we will continue to serve the top 10%. To wrench one's mind free of our entrenched complacency is not at all comfortable; and then to translate said discomfort into drastic, compelling, constructive action leading to actual widespread improvement, would not only require considerable effort but would also be met with large scale resistance. Instinctively, that should not be an excuse; instinctively, we should still put forth the effort; realistically, it is lonely. And in the face of this, the question remains – how do we dethrone the top 10%?

I have previously made the following suggestions:

• We could let go of our illusion of stability. 4/16/22.
• We could embrace uncertainty. 4/23/22.
• We could change our focus from bureaucracy, convention, certainty, division to Beauty, Truth, Wisdom, Justice. 5/7/22.
• We could differentiate between substantial and essential. 5/14/22.
• We could reverse the dollar flow to narrow the income gaps. 3/16/24.
• We could cap wealth and implement a meaningful universal base income. 3/11/17.

These are all drastic actions that would require considerable effort in the face of large scale resistance. As said, I see the resistance as large scale for two predominant reasons: 1) the power held by the top 10%, and 2) our complicity. At this point, some may unpretentiously claim “things are not that bad” and ask the question, why do we want to dethrone the top 10%? The closer one is to the top 10%, the more likely one is to ask this question and make this claim and perpetuate complicity. I would answer this question by first pointing to the previous thoughts linked above and summarizing as follows:

• The income gap and the wealth gap are unnecessary and they are knowingly, intentionally maintained at the expense of the bottom 50%.
• “To unnecessarily act in one’s self-interest knowing it is at the expense of another is a trespass against all of humanity.”
• Those most righteous are most culpable. And today those who are most righteous are those who define and justify their misguided morality on the basis of faulty fundamental principles including bureaucracy, convention, certainty and division.
• Garbage in, garbage out.

To me, sitting here in the bottom 30%, it is obvious. But even from here, it is only obvious when I make myself see it. As one moves to the bottom 20%, the bottom 10%, circumstance becomes increasingly dire. But for me, as it is for most of us, there are times when I am watching Netflix, listening to music, reading a good story, preparing a good meal, that it is not so obvious.

So in my mind, the first step to dethroning the powers that be would be to continuously, consciously shed the comfort and warmth of our complicity; to take a leap of faith toward Beauty, Truth, Wisdom and Justice. If we believe in erroneous presuppositions or if we idly hope for future just rewards, we are complicit.

But still, because for most of us it is not as consistently obvious as it should be, how do we reduce the immensity of the resistance? How do I make others look? How do I get the attention of the flocking masses? How do I wrench our heads, our minds from our grazing grasses and get us to look up? And ahead? This is the hurdle I am currently unable to get over. My experience, when I work to turn someone’s attention to the illusion of stability and to the dangers of bureaucracy and convention and certainty and division and to the difference between substantial and essential and to the growing income gap and the widening wealth gap, I drive them away; they begin to work at avoiding me. And I do understand that. Complicity is so much more comfortable. And then when I do drive someone away, I feel bad and I go back to my Netflix. But when I graze and sit on my hands and gag my tongue, I also feel bad. And when I do for myself, when I walk and read and learn and think and write, I feel better momentarily, but then when I realize it is not drastic, compelling, constructive action leading to actual widespread improvement, I feel bad. And when I do for others, when I complete a task and help and serve and improve a process and create a pivot table and put forth substantial effort, I feel better somewhat beyond momentarily, but then when I realize it is not drastic, compelling, constructive, essential action leading to actual widespread improvement that could contribute to the long-term well-being and survival of Humanity, I feel bad.

So, in my own way, even when I force myself to take notice, even when I am learning, thinking and writing, even when I am creating, serving, producing, I am still complicit. I don’t do enough, we don’t do enough, and I still feel bad.

So, I am at a loss. But perhaps I should be. Perhaps we all should be. Last week I said “To embrace certainty is to defy one’s impermanence.” It is also true that to embrace certainty is to defy one’s natural (God-given?) state of bewilderment. I feel bad for all the reasons stated, but I feel sad because I often feel like I am alone in my bewilderment. We could do more, better together.

Once upon a time there was an era in which knowledge was increasing at such a rapid rate that the average citizen could not keep up. And in this era there was a learned man who, in an effort to explain the circumstance, pointed at the recent proliferation and seeming necessity of knowledge outlines and summaries from which the average literate citizen could better connect with deeper thought. This thinker / writer observed that “human knowledge had become unmanageably vast.” And he further described this diabolical challenge saying,

“The gap between life and knowledge grew wider and wider; those who governed could not understand those who thought, and those who wanted to know could not understand those who knew. In the midst of unprecedented learning, popular ignorance flourished and chose its exemplars to rule the great cities of the world; in the midst of sciences endowed and enthroned as never before, new religions were born every day and old superstitions recaptured the ground they had lost. The common man found himself forced to choose between a scientific priesthood mumbling unintelligible pessimism and a theological priesthood mumbling incredible hopes.”

Now this man could be describing Google and Wikipedia and our belief today that we are all experts and have no need for bona-fide authentic experts or deeper thinking. And this man could be describing our government and our rulers and our superstitions and our feeble, uninformed hopes. But this man did not write these words yesterday, nor even ten years ago. This man who was called Will Durant spewed this wisdom in a far-flung era more than 80 years ago. These words are from the preface to his 1943 edition of “The Story of Philosophy” and I interpret his remarks (as he meant them for his contemporaries) as an encouragement for the average, literate citizen to attain a base knowledge by using the aforementioned outlines and summaries of knowledge and to thoughtfully connect with and listen to expertise to make better, more well-informed decisions. And though this interpretation, (as the moral of a good story often does), also applies to our time and place, in addition Mr. Durant could be describing our increasing ignorance today as an entrenchment and he could be foreseeing our certainty as a threat to our survival as a species.

We could go on to suggest further prescience by recognizing that this gap he describes between life and knowledge has spawned other gaps that also continue to grow wider and wider: the wealth gap – the income gap – the opportunity gap – the health and well-being gap – the gender-pay gap - the housing gap – the education gap – the healthcare gap – the childcare gap – and then there is the exponential impact of the perpetuation of any one of these gaps on all the other gaps.

In this story, our story, there are good guys with faults and there are bad guys with redeeming qualities, and there are complications and hurdles and challenges, and there is hope and love and sadness and anger and oppression and liberation and imagination and hostility and division and ignorance and expertise. In this story, our story, the average, literate citizen, (as suggested by Mr. Durant), must rise up and rebel against those rulers of our great cities who are wealthy and powerful and comfortable and who think they know; and the average, literate citizen must take heroic action and reach out and work hard to listen and to learn and to understand and to connect. And for this story, our story to end happily ever after, the average, literate citizen must then rise up and rebel against convention and tradition and bureaucracy and certainty.

Certainty is a solid presence, overwhelming, stifling. Privation, hardship, imposed or chosen, is unnecessary, gratuitous, indefensible. Doubt is possibility and potential, leaving room for imagination. To embrace certainty is to defy one’s impermanence. To embrace asceticism is to defy possibility. To balance presence and absence is to invite beauty, profundity, mystery.

I understand before I even start that this is almost assuredly an exercise in futility – but I just – can’t – help – myself.

I can no longer hide it. And I can no longer hide from it. No matter how much it hurts, most times now I just lean into it, welcome it, embrace it. It is better to recognize it for what it is – a betrayal – than it is to hide its truth behind a mythical American Dream. It is better to look ahead at its trajectory, than to try and hide myself behind privilege that may or may not exist.

To unnecessarily act in one’s self-interest knowing it is at the expense of another is a trespass against all of humanity. Not that we act as if we care.

It does not have to be a zero-sum game, but because it often is, because that is what we have been taught, it is of course the wealthy and powerful consistently and constantly taking from those less-privileged. Must we first somehow reverse the flow of this zero-sum game so each of us can see it from all sides, before we can quit it entirely?

Below is an example close to home.

My employer is a large state university. I am employed in the medical school in a student support position. According to public records released in January, this past Fall I received a 3% pay increase. The dean of the medical school received a 4% increase. One might look and think that the increases are comparable, but if I would have received the dean’s dollars, my increase would have been 75.6%. The dean went from making 18.9 times more than me to making 19.1 times more, which again sounds close but again if I would have received the dean’s dollars (and he in turn mine) the dean would have went from making 18.9 times more than me to making 10.8 times more than me. The issue of course is the growing income gap. To entertain the thought that the dean is 19 times more deserving or more capable or more entitled than I am would require a different conversation; a conversation about available opportunities and available to whom and who makes the rules and bias and bureaucracy and convention and certainty and division. That is not this conversation.

Another way of seeing this conversation is that as said, instead of 3% I would have received 75% and on the other side, instead of 4% the dean would have received 0.15%. I suspect that the dean of the medical school would have been insulted by an offer of 0.15% yet I am expected to attach a different meaning to the same dollars. This example is one-to-one. More relevantly, looking at all pay for more than 23,000 employees in this same frame, if we would have reversed the dollar flow between the top 10% and the bottom 10%, instead of 6.65 times more, the gap would have narrowed significantly to where the top 10% would be making 4.1 times more than the bottom 10%. It is likely not necessary for one’s well-being (in the case of the dean) to pull in $910,000 instead of $875,000, nor is it likely a matter of life and death if the top 10% averaged $209,406.13 or $193,681.12. However, the difference (in the case of the bottom 10%) between $31,524.85 and $47,265.65 could hugely impact an individual’s or household’s well-being. It is worth repeating: a 59% increase for the bottom 10% would change lives. But instead of taking care of each other, the wealth gap widens, and the inequality is further entrenched, and the zero-sum game plays on with no dollar-flow-reversals and no rule changes. It is a trespass against humanity and (apparently) humanity should be grateful.

If we applied this thought exercise reversing the dollar flow between each pair of mirrored deciles, here is what would happen:

• For tier 1 (top and bottom 10%) instead of respective averages of $209,406.13 and $31,524.85 and the more affluent sector making 6.65 times as much, the respective averages would be $193,681.12 and $47,256.65 and the upper half would be making 4.10 times as much.
• For tier 2 (11-20% and 81-90%) instead of respective averages of $105,754.16 and $38,592.13 and the more affluent sector making 2.74 times as much, the respective averages would be $99,741.30 and $44,604.99 and the upper half would be making 2.24 times as much.
• For tier 3 (21-30% and 71-80%) instead of respective averages of $84,679.51 and $44,395.10 and the more affluent sector making 1.91 times as much, the respective averages would be $80,749.08 and $48,327.23 and the upper half would be making 1.67 times as much.
• For tier 4 (31-40% and 61-70%) instead of respective averages of $72,129.23 and $51,702.56 and the more affluent sector making 1.39 times as much, the respective averages would be $70,291.70 and $53,539.29 and the upper half would be making 1.31 times as much.
• For tier 5 (41-50% and 51-60%) instead of respective averages of $64,445.48 and $58,268.89 and the more affluent sector making 1.11 times as much, the respective averages would be $63,698.53 and $59,015.84 and the upper half would be making 1.08 times as much.

Equity! What a concept!

And if you’re paying attention, you will have noticed that this dollar flow reversal has allowed the bottom 10% to (barely) leapfrog the second decile from the bottom thus (in a sense) eliminating the bottom 10%. Wouldn’t that be something? And yes, there will be some in that second decile from the bottom who would want to complain about their paltry 20% increase compared to the 60% captured by the former bottom 10%. But they only need be reminded of two things: 1) that this process will work more in their favor next year when they are in the bottom 10%, and more importantly 2) To unnecessarily act in one’s self-interest knowing it is at the expense of another is a trespass against all of humanity.

Not that we act as if we care.

It is upside-down and distorted, yet gives an impression of depth and dimension.

It is a lie bought and sold again and again and again, increasing in cost with each successive sale yet paradoxically, proportionately decreasing in value.

At its best it is magical, alluring, captivating – a siren's song.

At its worst it is disturbing, ominous, sinister – a malevolent propriety.

It is a comfortable excuse; it appeals to my sense of order and it makes me feel less ignorant, yet it leads me astray.

It is an enterprising depiction of what is (simultaneously) there and not there; an invention, an illusion, a myth.

It is full of light and dark and hope and trust and imagination and danger and vulnerability.

It is an urgency incidental to itself, and a warning humbled and hesitant. We have chosen to follow the urgency; the warning goes unheeded.

It is a house of cards built inside a cast iron vault.

It is (only a little) closer to reality at 90 degrees and then (a bit more) at 180 degrees.

When you look beneath it – there is nothing there.

When you reach underneath – it slips through your fingers, cold and wet; unctuous, unfathomable.

It is a tool used to substantiate,  justify and maintain.

It is a covering, a garment used to conceal, amuse and distract – one size fits all.

It facilitates, expedites, promotes, simplifies, enables.

It is absurdity masquerading as wisdom. It is impulse pretending virtue. It is artifice playacting sincerity. It is death posing as potential.

It is a mirrored membrane reflecting a misremembered past as present as future.

It is an imperious suggestion of misinformed righteousness.

It is a preference for answers over questions, constraint over consideration, presumption over doubt, loud over obvious.

It is decisive, judgmental, unflinching, unforgiving.

It is a landscape, a pointillist perspective, a watercolor, a canvas stretched, a kaleidoscopic diffusion of promiscuous observation.

It is blissful reconciliation.