21st Century Revolutionary "Workers of the world unite."
Five words of wisdom from old revolutionaries. Read what new revolutionaries are saying.
When Karl Marx spit forth those words, in 1849, they dripped emminent sense. The French Revolution, still freshly bleeding in everyone's mind, continued in uncoagulated violent urban uprisings. The newly-birthed wage slaves roamed the streets among the tightly-knotted artisan guilds joined together in outrage over the eruption of wealth and license in the Paris around them. Correctly guessing that the luxuriant new wealth was kindled by the flames of urban industrial commerce, the hammering pathos of Marx's words rang true. Marx begged the workers to unite and plunder the new commerce for themselves. In 1849, the bulldozing vehicles of the gargantuan new -wealth to come-, telegraph, telephone, electricity, gasoline power, railroads and steel were still underground mushrooms pristinely awaiting the future.
Marx's view of the world exploded into a major brain tumor for 100 years. Marxist drenched governments dumped the bodies of tens of millions of innocent humans in trench graves. Marxist governments used death to eradicate the urban evils that Marx tatooed on the eyes of his congregation: social class, income inequality, inexplicable distributions of wealth and the outrageous liberties of urban life: color, vitality, novelty and creative public intercourse. (Think Communist Moscow 1965 to imagine urban life devoid of these outrages). Marxism, now in 21st Century remission, is still a popular cancer of political analysis hidden under burkas of anti-Americanism, behind black ski masks of anti-global corporatism and smeared everywhere in the platitude that money drives all domestic and international politics.
Marxism, a miscarriage of ideology, misses two obvious diagnoses. One, income differences are greatest in countries with high immigration. Two, urban industrial commerce birthed and flourished in democracies. Democracies are never nurseries for revolution.
Anti-Marist Reality: the past century and a half delivered an urban industrial masterpiece, a Michaelangelo of beauty, an awesome - magnificent world that most of us are fortunate enough to cuddle into. Your life span and mine are extended dramatically while infant, childhood and maternal death rates have been chopped down 99.9%. Most people, us, wallow in our long lived daily work-out fitness. The horror of club feet, dwarfism, stubble-legged polio, hanging-skin leprosy, horrid facial scarring from childhood disease and many other physical ignominies are gone. Food abounds, liberty spreads so plentifully most people ignore it and sexual freedom slips easily into every daily movement.
In candor, we are clueless to the origins of the careening forces pushing urban industrial commerce. Plenty of billboard theorist post their observations but no clue to a testable idea is on the horizon. Wisely we should just accept the reality of commerce as it is. Worship it. I recommend accepting our ignorance about its origins and sources, lest we fall prey to another, a new, killer ideology that snuffs out millions more innocent people.
"So what's to revolt against?" "You suggest we have paradise -- what's a revolutionary to do?"
I'm clued in and I'll spill the beans. Understanding what I say will be a meal for few readers. Starvation will be the norm. Swallowing my revelation is a case of tasting an unfamiliar world that looks like a prickly artichoke to most people and will probably taste as uninviting as most first artichoke bites.
My 21st century revolutionary is a single person ensconced in small communities of revolutionaries. You've heard plenty of 20th century "New Age" crap about the new world is inside you. No, No, NO. Behavior is revolutionary. Outward social behavior. Revolution resides in a social world of friends. It's pinnacle is in fact two behaviors, as you will see. A revolutionary doesn't go it alone, ... he or she requires friends, a small community of support.
The first moccasin step our 21st century revolutionary takes is to live simply. Simple living, however, isn't simple. Tools and skills to command a simple life are internet posted in my many writings, we won't dabble in it here. The tools of simple living demand mastery and a personal devotion to conviviality.
The simple living I champion, the revolutionary one, is recent . The history of simple living extends far back into military and monastic traditions. It offloaded from ships onto American shores as Puritanism. Genuine military and Puritan austerity imbibe many of the revolutionary attributes that I pour into modern simple living, which is why there is such a long tradition. Austerity, though, is not the cornerstone of modern simple living, certainly I don't chain myself to privation or hardship.
In the same century and a half that urban industrial commerce has erupted, two new streams of vitality have poured into the river of traditional American simple living. Bohemianism and Zen. The Bohemian stream, a little muddy, is a radical departure from traditional simple living. Bohemians spilled their lust upon our shores from the suitcases of Central European artists and poets. They joyously celebrated freedom and sexual license and set bombs under the old Puritanism. A little dirty in physical ways and very "dirty" in all other ways. The 1960 hippies lustily embraced Bohemianism. They also embraced Zen from Japan. Zen rings a temple bell in our simple lives with a powerful direct esthetic: tea ceremony, ikibana, wabi sabi, deep understatement, minimalism and skin-rubbing-cleanliness. Together Bohemianism and Zen have joined traditional American simple living. Together they are magic: fun and exquisite.
My modern simple liver isn't Johnny Appleseed, David at Walden Pond or Big Mountain Man scouring the woods to kill his own food. We wallow in urban. We suck-up cities, we kiss the diversity of humanity, the vitality and zeitgeist of dense streets and towers. We zip by air from Tokyo to Istanbul and embrace life in both places. We stay home too, strolling quietly for hours across town to drink with friends in a coffee shop. Simple living is about possessing few objects and appreciating the few we keep; living joyously with the lowest possible monthly expenditures. We share, rent and "live without".
"What the hell is revolutionary about that?", you ask.
We lust for the fruits of urban industrial commerce but shoulder none of the burdens. No striving for status, no insatiable hunger for objects. We are free to chase passions, loves and pleasures. Our pockets overflow with the time to swallow life; we have abundant time. We are gourmands of zest for our whole lifetimes. What could be more revolutionary? The global mega-mega bends down to serve us. We reign as kings and queens over the most abundant, lavish, exciting empire in history.
There's one additional revolutionary behavior that some of us erect on the shoulder of the revolutionary colossus of simple living. Self employment.
Complaints about work life in the urban industrial machine are often, sadly, valid. Self employment proffers an additional dollop of liberty to the kings and queens of simple living. The self employment I specifically commend is the kind that ladles out great freedom of movement and smears us with flexible time; examples are consulting, training, free lance teaching, writing, massage, graphic arts and door hanging. One of my favorites is Johnny the Well Hung Door Man. A surfer, he drives a truck with all his equipment inside. He's renowned as the best door hanger within 25 miles in Santa Monica. A well hung door can take a morning or a day. Johnny only works at his convenience and he surveys a back log of jobs that he can pluck at will until his 100th birthday. Surfing stands first with Johnny.
This article sure doesn't reverberate like the old style steel driving revolutionary manifesto. "Workers of the world unite?"
I say: "No way". Stop being "workers" in the industrial cog-in-the wheel sense. Just stop. Don't unite in a deathly boring ideological movement. Get out, have fun with your friends, go downtown.
Simple living twinned on to self employment, when possible, is bad material for proselytizing. It's too difficult for most people to do. Simple living requires intelligence, strong will, many friends and most importantly, the common missing ingredient : a clear gut based sense of what to do with your life. Most people live "just because". We simple livers can't proselytize. Why should anyone be a simple liver and have plenty of time if they don't have a driving passion to make use of that time? There is no reason. Don't be revolutionary, go make sand piles of money! busy busy yourself!
Summary. Revolutionary acts of the 21st century are individual acts. To revolt is to helicopter out of the hysteria, greed and addiction to possessions that greases the industrial commercial mega-mega. My revolutionary wanders freely enjoying the magnificent gifts of urban industrial commerce. Free to be fully human.
Michael Phillips Jan. 2002
Question/Comments from old style revolutionaries: - You don't give hope to the billions of poor people.
Nope. Too many millions of people have been killed by ideologies guaranteeing to remedy poverty and equalize incomes. We have time as simple living individuals to confront and work on those issues but we sure aren't arrogant enough to offer a solution.
- You don't offer anything to people who don't have skills and talent.
True. This is not a panacea. Maybe someday urban life will be simple enough and understandable enough for many more people to lead a simple life.
-What will happen to Capitalism if everyone follows your advice?
Excuse me? Who is really worried about that? You? Certainly not me. Urban industrial commerce is facing declining populations and declining demand by older citizens in Japan and many European countries. Urban industrial commerce will find ways to survive just fine.