My Heroes at War - poem about political polemics and suffering
Actually written APRIL 24, 2017 -
I love people who struggle to relieve the suffering of others.
They are my heroes.
But my heroes have divided themselves into two opposing armies
who kill one another over their difference in opinion
about how best to relieve suffering.
And I have to wonder whether this war they wage
creates more suffering than their combined efforts manage to relieve.
...
One of these armies I call
“my heroes of the abundance premise”.
These are the ones who believe and shout:
“There’s enough to go around if only we distribute it all equitably!”
and
“Scarcity is an illusion created by malevolent capitalists!”
...
The other army I call
“my heroes of the scarcity premise”.
These are the ones who believe and shout:
“Nature is a harsh realm of scarcity!
We are plagued by disease and shortages of food and shelter,
and even by the scarcity of the healing touch of our fellow beings!”
and
“Only our ingenuity and productivity
can turn nature’s scarcity
into the abundance that relieves suffering!”
and
“And we must reward the productivity of each person
in proportion to the amount of suffering their productivity relieves,
or they won’t produce!
And their capacity to relieve suffering will therefore diminish to nothing”
and
“The most efficient way we have
to reward one another for relieving the suffering of the other,
and in proportion to everyone’s effectiveness at relieving suffering,
is through free market capitalism!”
...
And to this
my heroes of the abundance premise reply:
“Your paranoid worries about these scarcities
are what created these scarcities
like a self-fulfilling fear.
“You say diseases come from nature
and must be cured through the productivity-optimization of capitalism.
“But diseases actually come from the stressful lifestyle
of capitalism itself.
“You say scarcity of food and shelter come from nature
and must be abated by the productivity-optimization of capitalism.
“But it is capitalism
that brainwashed us to expect more than our fair share of food and shelter,
to want a personal surplus of food that others can’t eat,
and a mansion that would equal 500 modest homes.
“What we really need
is to get rid of the greed
that capitalism brainwashed us to pretend is natural.”
...
And to this
my heroes of the scarcity premise reply:
“The evidence refutes you.
Every time you try one of these paradises of equity
it fails miserably.
By thwarting natural greed,
you force a modest standard of living on everyone,
saying it is everyone’s fair share,
hoping they’ll get used to it and love it.
“But it just leads to such a lack of motivation to produce
that you end up having to force them to produce.
“You force them into slavery
to make them relieve one another’s misery,
hoping they’ll deconstruct their greed
and re-interpret their greed-defined scarcity
as modesty-defined
– or community-defined –
abundance.
“But nobody ever deconstructs the greed.
And everyone remains miserable.
And your slave state never withers away,
but rather gets more draconian
each year it tries that much harder
to create the abundance it promised.”
...
As I watch this endless exchange between my two armies of heroes,
with all the flashpoints of horrific wars,
all in the name of how best to relieve suffering,
I feel like a child – traumatized by watching my mother and father come to threats and blows
over how best to raise me,
how best to be a loving parent.
The truth about how best to relieve suffering seems to me like something we should study very objectively,
without emotional commitment to any given premise about the origins of scarcity.
Let’s not mess around.
This is suffering we’re talking about.
Let’s be serious.
Let’s re-examine our premises,
whether it is a premise of original abundance
or a premise of original scarcity.
Can someone please be that kind of hero for me?
[Cue: Lone Justice - Reflected (On My Side)]
[Cue: Melanie Safka - Nothing is Real]
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