Which is it now?

By Nico Cost for GlobalSouth.co

China is communist and the US is capitalist. But there are still very rich Chinese and China is part of the global financial -capitalist- system that is debt-based. China has stock exchanges where they trade stocks and where they can “make” money with money. So which part of China is communist and which part is capitalist? Does communism apply to “the common man” and can the rich Chinese benefit from capitalism?

Is capitalism inherently anti-social or what exactly is capitalism. What exactly is communism. How do definitions differ from local elaborations in practice? Are they operating according to the letter of the law or how it suits them at the time? Is socialism a separate movement or can it be part of any movement? Is being social a trait of a system or a trait of a person?

Germany is democratic with parties on the left and on the right side of the political spectrum. The question is what is left and right today. Which party is still authentically left or right? After all, is this left-right thinking still the opposition that matters in politics today? Surely we all see the division of the world into either nation-states or one super-state, nationalism versus globalism.

Is and was communism the same in different countries everywhere? When it comes down to it, is there much difference between Democrats and Republicans in the U.S.? What really makes the difference when it comes to running a country? Is it the system or is it something else? We can extend it to so many other areas, but each time it comes down to the same thing.

Is there a difference between Christians, Jews and Muslims? Are there different races or is man one race? Man organizes himself in many ways, dealing with the past, the present and the future. The past is ingrained in the culture and it has proved very difficult to be able to break out of it. “We’ve always done it this way.” The conservative attitude we recognize in religions. Until a part does manage to split off under the leadership of someone charismatic and unapologetic.

Leaders today are dealing with a powder keg with multiple wicks. The world has literally gotten bigger and everything is connected to everything else. When the world was small, leaders could simply be the strongest. Then the leader gained power through knowledge because the rabble did not have access to it. The Internet has thrown everything open and eventually no country can stop it. Evolution cannot be stopped either, sorry for conservatives.

What the future will bring is still unclear. Will we go over the cliff into the depths like lemmings or will we soon stand like lions on the highest rock. I feel this will depend not on leaders, but on all of us. If we do not manage to take this on as a species, I fear a new deluge that may already be on its way. Today’s leaders talk like headless chickens about the climate while we are literally plastered in everything.

So how do you get nearly eight billion people more or less on the same page? Organizations of up to 1,000 people can work well because people can know each other. When you know each other, you can be there for each other. The world ultimately floats on friendship and not on laws and regulations. What kind of animals can we compare ourselves to organizationally? Are we termites, magpies, goldfish, crocodiles or wolves? How do those organize themselves?

You have to row with the oars you have. The leader has to deal with the prevailing culture and an environment that requires change. The leader has to deal with systems that must be connected to enable progress. The leader has to deal with people’s level of knowledge, their values, willingness to change, a willingness to invest in personal growth and to make things really difficult, with all the different variations of these things. The larger the group, the less homogeneous the group is. How do you make everyone more or less want to be on board?

What does that all require of a leader? Who can lead nearly eight billion people? Is that what we should be looking for or do we have another way to go? As long as we look for a leader outside ourselves, the leader within ourselves does not rise up. The point is that we cannot walk into a vortex to go to that future. The question, of course, is how to go from the present shit to a desired future. Assuming we can first define a common future. A good start is half the battle.

Everything is about awareness and how do people become aware now. Not many people are working on awareness and those who are working on it are certainly not making a difference one way or the other yet. There are plenty of gurus addicted to anything and everything. Weight-loss therapists who themselves suffer from obesity. Psychologists who still struggle with mental problems themselves. Doctors who fail to heal. And so on and so forth. We participate en masse in lotteries so that a few can get rich at the expense of many others. Who is consciously doing that?

What should a leader today do on the way up? There are so many variables. And does his method then differ so much from the method of the people he or she leads? Suppose as a leader you can choose between taking two good steps yourself or encouraging many people to take one good step. Which has the most positive long-term effect? What balance do you maintain between yourself and others? What example are you setting for others?

The better question is what example are you setting for yourself. Everyone has their own path to follow and all those paths are different. Improve the world and start with yourself. Then keep it with yourself and don’t try to improve the world afterwards. We have a hard enough time with ourselves let alone taking responsibility for conditioning others. So sorry for this text, but we are on our way and not yet where we belong. I am making a vain attempt and of course failing miserably. Take nothing from me and answer your own questions on your way to greater awareness. Nothing must, everything is allowed.