On Puritan-Capitalism: Money As The Measure Of All Things

The mechanistic materialist world view, which the West, beginning with Europe, adopted a mere 400 years ago, and then exported through economic, financial, military and cultural colonialism and neocolonialism to the rest of the world, has been nothing short of a cultural, sociological, political, economic, ecological, spiritual, public health and psychological disaster; and it has led to to a global tyranny of neofeudal corporate-state oligarchy and technocratic scientific fascism.

Part of its logic, is to view all things, all of nature, human beings and all living beings, as mere objects: to be exploited, used up, and discarded at will. The natural result of its logic is to view all things, ecosystems, living beings and people as mere resources for wealth extraction.

We human beings are viewed, at least by the business elite, as cattle, to be milked for money, or yoked for sevitude, for money and power, or disposed of – or slaughtered.

Extrinsic value is the only value recognized: people, nature, living beings, and all things, only have value for their usefulness. It is a world view that is nihilistic and utilitarian by nature, and must, if its logic is consistent, degrade and destroy all other values, such as the systemic value of ecosystems and living beings, and the intrinsic value of ecosystems, nature and living beings. (I am borrowing here from one of my brilliant mentors, Professor Robert E. Carter – not the novelist, but the polymath scholar.) Money therefore becomes the measure of all things, including the measure work, the measure of social status, the measure of respectability, and the measure of human worth – or the worth of anything, or any living being.

When we examine closely the mechanistic materialist world view and its consequences, we can see and understand how and why it has been a truly catastrophic error, and one which must be quickly overcome, before it destroys us all, by destroying all life on Earth – and before it enslaves all of humanity, on its way to total ecocide, and collective self-annihilation.

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Anecdotes and personal stories are things I generally avoid, but the following is enlightening, I believe.

When I was a younger man, in my late teens, I decided in a flash, after reading Plato’s parable of the cave, in my first year of university, that I wanted to become a philosopher, a political theorist, and a writer. When I soon afterward announced to my parents that I was switching from studying science, to studying philosophy, my father, at least, thought I must be mad, or at least, drastically foolish. What money can you make as a philosopher? That was the only question that mattered, to his mind. That was the only measure of my studies, to his mind: does it make money? Of course, his view was, and is, the nearly universal view in modern society. But I was utterly resolved. Nothing would budge me.

As Margaret Atwood said, “This society doesn’t respect writing. It respects success. I could have been a used car salesman, and if I was successful, I’d be respected.”

Or as Emerson said, in his essay on The Poet, by which he meant the writer in the broad sense: “Every profession has its sacrifices. For the poet (or the writer), it is that for a long time, he will be considered a churl (a bum) and a fool, and will be understood only by his peers.”

Or as Thoreau said (and I am paraphrasing from memory), “Men are concerned, not with what is respectable, but what is respected.” “Such men deserve as much respect as wooden men, or clumps of earth.”

Nietzche was insane, and from what I can tell, his philosophy was insane; but he was right in one observation, when he remarked, “The ego – our last article of faith.” This is what mechanistic materialism, and the Puritan-capitalist psychology that arises from it, does to men’s and womens’ minds: they profess all sorts of values, but when you look more closely, their true values are money, status, and their reputation. Their true and over-riding concerns, thus, are comfort and ego. “What would other people think?” This is the thought that secretly haunts them, and it is both their prison, and the source of their moral bankruptcy and spiritual degeneration.

Thoreau also observed, “Most men would feel ashamed if their work consisted of throwing dirt over a fence, and throwing it back again; but most men are employed in no higher purpose that this.” We are obsessively busy, but what are we busy with?

(Kindred spirits, I have many. I have no need of false friends, nor of the trappings of worldly success. As Thoreau said (I am once again paraphrasing here), “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” I could not agree more. To thine own self be true.)

Furthermore, when automation and robotics are poised to eliminate 90% of jobs, and make most people, in the words of Yuval Harari, “useless”, we clearly and urgently must re-think the nature of work.

Some years later, as a young writer, intellectual, activist and philosopher, my father said to my sister, “Todd’s on permanent vacation.” As far as he was concerned, any activity that did not make money, was not work – therefore, since your activities do not make money, you do not work; which, of course, in the prevailing culture and psychology of Puritan-capitalism, means you are a useless fool, and a worthless bum.

I thought to myself, and maybe I said it to him – probably so, since I was anxiety-ridden and depressed but also paradoxically fearless: I could work 40 hours a week, or 60, or 100, helping the sick, the poor and the dying with Mother Theresa, and you would consider me a bum who didn’t work, because I did it for free, and received no money for it. (His values seemed deranged to me, so I immediately disregarded his opinion, as itself being worthless.)

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That story shows the sheer insanity of what I call the Puritan-capitalist psychology, sociology, or world view. It is truly insane. To take it further, we could say that, if I, or anyone else, worked in the arms industry, dealing in weapons and tools for mass murder and killing, or in the pesticide or chemical industry, poisoning the people and the planet, I would be a respected member of society, and viewed as a hard worker, and praised, so long as I was paid well for my evil actions, and made a good income from it.

Puritan-capitalist ethics and psychology revolve around two central premises: busyness is always good; and more importantly, money is the measure of all things. If I work 100 hours a week saving the planet, or raising children, or healing the Earth, that is nice, but I am a fool and a bum, in the eyes of the grimly delusional great majority, who are literally brainwashed into the Puritan-capitalist psychology – and blinded and enslaved by it. But they will defend their chains to the death, and decry anyone who tries to liberate them, or who even points out the chains, as a dangerous heretic and a madman.

What madness is this? This, as Erich Fromm and Henry David Thoreau, and many others have realized, is sheer insanity.

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Artists, writers, musicians, thinkers, philosophers, activists, parents and care-givers, are generally all viewed as worthless and useless bums, and their work is invisible and discounted – unless they find a way to acquire money, wealth, status, fame or power, which are the great redeemers, and the only things the great majority of people seem to truly value in modern, nihilistic, materialist, Puritan-capitalist society: in which case, they are super-stars, and greatly loved, respected, and admired celebrities.

When, in practice, rhetoric aside, we value money, material goods, comfort, entertainment, status, wealth, power and fame above all else, then there is no room for justice, ethics, morality, virtue, nobility, wisdom, compassion, human decency, or even basic sanity. This has become the profoundly abnormal norm of our modern corporate-industrial society. Clearly, something needs to change.

When human beings are being systematically degraded, exploited, oppressed, indoctrinated, deluded, blinded, imprisoned and enslaved, and all life on Earth is being destroyed, and both as a result of our materialist mechanistic world view, and by our Puritan-capitalist psychology, it is clearly time to reassess and to change our world view and our pyschology. That, by now, should be undeniable. If it is not, then we are truly and deeply, profoundly delusional.

I am no cynic, nor am I a jaundiced, jaded misanthrope. Cynicism, fatalism and misanthropy are pathologies of the mind, and delusions to be overcome. The long term for humanity is promising, to put it mildly; but the near term and present are looking undeniably dark. What we make of our present, and our future, however, is up to us.

Noam Chomsky is right: “The great majority of people have basically decent impulses.” It is true, as science has confirmed (see Kropotkin, Mutual Aid, and Rifkin, The Empathic Civilization): human beings have a natural empathy and compassion, and we have survived, and thrived, because we have a deeply seated instinct for solidarity, community, cooperation and mutual assistance. But our good nature is being systematically degraded, twisted and deranged, by a society which is truly, deeply dehumanizing, and frankly, crazy. And that is before the soma kicks in.

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Our modern society, as I have said, is thoroughly insane. Re-evaluating our concepts of money, work, status, respectability, success, development and growth, and the values and psychology which underly them, is now critical. Without that, we are doomed to a madhouse – and one that is on wheels, travelling as fast as possible toward dystopia, and the cliff that lies just beyond it.

JTR,

August 20, 2021