#resource generation

I found that article that people on Tumblr wasn’t sure was real. It’s about Resource Generation, “a multiracial membership community of young people (18-35) with wealth and/or class privilege committed to the equitable distribution of wealth, land, and power.“

Resource Generation has a Tax Justice division with active projects in a number of their regional chapters.  The basic idea is to support address wealth inequality through taxes, even though the government is going to be doing horrible things with that money.  The platform can be reviewed in the article “You Can’t Starve the Beast: Why We Fight for Higher Taxes on the Rich Even Though the U.S. Government Sucks." Although I can understand where they’re coming from on this, if we’re really going to get serious and talk about the viability of our government, I’d have to disagree.  This is the “too-big-to-fail” argument utilized post-2008 for bank bailouts.  As Nicolas Nassim Taleb points out in his book “Antifragile,” there is a precisely 100% chance that everything will fail eventually.  Either we can choose when our government fails, or we can wait for it to happen - these are the only two possible answers.  In other words, actually, we can starve the beast.  The expression goes something like “the perfect is the enemy of the good.”  I couldn’t agree more, and in this case I’m going to side with the perfect.  Wealth inequality is a huge issue.  But solving that issue with taxes props up a government that does more harm than good.

In my analysis, these are all dangerous terms, as they live in the worldview of objectivity.  For more on this worldview, in contrast with the worldview of interconnection, please read this previous post. Let’s take a look.  When children talk about fair, they mean similar.  “But Johnny got TWO scoops!”  Equality does a good job at describing this use of the word.  Justice is held to the standards of “morals.”  But morals come in many flavors.  Justice can also equate to fairness.  I think of equality as a mathematical term, corresponding to equal.  Equitable also means fair, or impartial.  Impartiality assumes objectivity. So what’s the issue here?  What if we don’t live in a world of identical beings and forces?  What if everything and everyone were unique?  This is the world that I live in, and in such a world, equality is a meaningless term.  I remember being in middle school and discussing at length the controversy about “separate but equal.”  But this discussion has a faulty foundation; equality can only exist in abstract or mechanical systems.  If we try to force equality on a human system, what we get are mechanical humans [Gurdjieff goes in-depth on this topic].  I find this deeply disturbing.  One facet of this dynamic is covered in David Graeber’s book “Debt: The First 5,000 Years,” in his analysis of when financial economies [abstract or “digital”] meet social economies [human or “analog”].  The yields: violence, slavery, and ecosystem degradation.  Not just occasionally, but pretty much every time in just about every culture for the past 5,000 years. And is this happening when we bring equality into politics?  I think so. The solution?  A new paradigm that doesn’t include the frame of centralized power [which would mean it also wouldn’t include conventional politics or government].  But that’s another conversation, covered in my post “Power as Fear."

My top three highlights from the retreat: I. At the retreat we had a number of caucus sections [many of them optional, happening during meal times].  A caucus is a group of people that shared an identity [exempli gratia: white cisgendered men, Jews, people with disabilities, et cetera].  Attendees of MMMC know that talking about money is both very difficult and very important.  I found caucuses to be a brilliant way to support people to feel more comfortable to engage with difficult, complex, and vulnerable topics that they otherwise might avoid.  When we choose to be with people similar to us in some way, we’re much more likely to feel comfortable and safe.  Caucuses are also about getting down to business - diving right into serious issues.  First safety, then action. II. The atmosphere of the retreat was very laid back.  I attend a lot of retreats, intensives, and conferences.  I’ve almost never given this feedback, and it’s something that I really appreciate.  I often find myself encouraged to relentlessly barrel through events such as these - long grueling schedules with very little unstructured time. But MMMC event organizers seem to understand that all this business is often counterproductive, especially when participants are already a little on edge with the content of the event.  MMMC felt spacious and relaxing to me in a way that pulled me in to engage more fully.  I found the time to have lengthy and meaningful “side” conversation with attendees, and also felt as though I was getting enough sleep each night, even though there were evening events.  Not that I’m one to take schedules to seriously; I’m quite competent setting my own schedule.  But it was excellent to not feel inclined to do so this time. III. The key practice I’ve taken away from MMMC is the Money Story.  The title pretty much says it; Money Stories are personal stories about wealth and privilege.  They can be practiced individually [in the form of journaling], in pairs, or in groups [where everyone has consented].  Money is simultaneously one of the most powerful forces in our world, and one of the most obscured and misunderstood.  When we share our stories about money [especially those in the 1%], we help to elucidate the behaviors and functions of money.  This understanding dismantles some of it’s mythic powers of destruction, but also helps bring money under conscious intention [a place it rarely finds itself].  With this awareness comes radical possibilities.