What If We Could Create a New System?

Image Description: Two people prepare to arm wrestle. Money is on table. Public domain image.

Jason Hickel and Martin Kirk have written an article with a title that poses a direct question to us: Are You Ready to Consider that Capitalism is the Real Problem?

Are you skeptical of titles like this one? Would you be open to reading and seriously considering this article?

I think it’s becoming increasingly clear that if we cannot or will not adapt ourselves toward greater forms of cooperativism, both in the large and small scale, we will continue to greatly increase suffering.

Loving your neighbor includes caring for your neighbors’ freedom to have access to resources.

And capitalism. . . and late-stage capitalism in particular. . . ? Well, that’s an enormous loss of freedom for most of us – a loss of freedom to choose the direction of our lives, particularly as more wealth is concentrated among the few, and an enormous loss of freedom for our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to choose the direction of theirs.

I’d say we are more free collectively when we value the worth of our neighbors and their intrinsic right to live well. And we are more alive when we stop uplifting profit as the primary motive for work and unmitigated greed as the unquestioned pursuit for life, moving instead, toward a motive of sustainability at work and the life-filled pursuit of uplifting each other.

What is possible if we move toward such change?

– Renee Roederer