We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, May 4, 2013

The Power of Local

Click here to access 7:50m video commentary by Catherine Austin Fitts for her Solari Report.

Fitts is a former Assistant Secretary of Housing under the Bush (Jr) administration, presently an investment banker, and investment adviser with Solari Investment Services. She exemplifies an old-fashioned conservative who fervently believes in the capitalist system, from which she secures her fortune; but at the same time she recognizes that the system is destroying our society. She maintains her belief system by criticizing the way it functions even though she hints at the conclusion of this video that such criticism is futile. 

She uses the metaphor of a body to explain her understanding of the economy. However, what she seems to miss in this metaphor is that the system of capitalism functions like any parasite, once it destroys one molecule or one body, it simply moves on to feed off another until it also dies. If you think about it, this functioning of capitalism was clearly expressed by Margaret Thatcher when she declared "there is no such thing as society [body]. There are individual men and women, and there are families [capitalists]."

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