Despite modern advances in everything from communication and drug development to production and technology, social injustices remains real, pervasive and deeply problematic. The roots are not only personal but collective. They cling through a tenacious ivy of control and posturing. Economic distress and systems at all levels reflect its persistent clutch. Yet confusing the mirror with its reflection — the ivy of injustice for human nature — puts us at risk for other problems. Problems fueled by disorienting conditions like confusion and mania, resignation and despair. In this post, I will address a subset of current ideological distortion — “down with the system” mentality.

So, if we are also to repair rampant confusion and despair evident from both sides perceiving social injustices, humanity needs a different way to address it than “down with the system”, including anti-capitalism and anti-government positions. Do you tout unfettered capitalism (including “free speech”) as a catch-all solution? Or reveal it as a corrupt (including fatalistic) house of cards? The question that unites these seeming opposites, stuck in no solution, is —

What better focus than future economic prospects could there possibly be for establishing or reinforcing real social justice?

The collective present would be better. By which I mean, clarity about what is objectively true, such that real efforts can match real opportunities can match real challenges. Obvious, and yet somehow insufficient, or impossible? Yes, and no.

Insofar as humanity lacks a coherent sense or connection with collective present tense, the tendancy is to lean into economic market dynamics. It does, admittedly, require at least a rudimentary appreciation of the timeless qualities of the present tense. Yet a detailed and more nuanced context for the appreciation of collective present tense is what most yearn for. That’s a good place from which to usefully distinguish capitalism from social injustice. Let me explain.

Capitalism in modern times has been artificially elevated, in both meanings and promises. Where liberal and conservative have been used to simply jockey for the reigns of reform, today collective movements of social justice and populism vie for control over getting. Sadly, no one gets anything in such a race but division and strife. When control over getting is applied to the word “capitalism” in a way that leads to ambivalence, the reasoning on either side gets rendered collectively superficial.

Even though we are a sense-making species, one word or phrase is no means by which to “work it out.” One upside of the ambivalence towards capitalism has been the rise of economic justice, a resourceful and genuine dialogue that is also potentially capitalism-inclusive.

Within the richness of experience, capitalism has a saving grace. Its root in competition. At its most self-effacing, competition is about stimulating play. Focusing on outcomes such as survival of the fittest or accumulation of wealth, it is easy to miss this. Outcomes have us always playing catch-up, both to the past and the future. Collective present tense seems a far-off or intangible dream in the tense kind of past/future play we find ourselves in.

The key (and thus easy to take for granted) timeless quality of existence is generativity, available in part through generative connotations. (Not as simple or straightforward as it might seem, but worth taking at face value so as to make a point.) Competition as play, loss as a sometimes necessary form of suffering, these are timeless qualities that allow the collective function of generating socially healthy competitive economic environments that cuts across divisions. So for capitalism, healthy as in, rivalries have positive influence, as do rules and laws and even violence. Sport as the moderator of war. Law enforcement as the moderator of corrupt vigilantism. Generative (healthy) feedback loops have the chance to prevail over degenerative ones.

So what of this social impulse for control over getting that arguably gives rise to not only generative but degenerative competition as well*?* I submit, somewhat counterintuitively, that capitalism is not the linchpin in the control over getting struggle. What capitalism’s defenders and detractors are referring to is the capacity humans have to manipulate and distort collective action and understanding. The all-encompassing connotation of “capitalism” is a mirror for our shared reality being perceived as time-bound only.

One thing each of us understands intuitively when we scope out to “take it all in” is, analyzed below in terms of Outer Kaleidoscope, Inner Compass and the logic of representational reality, humanity’s Collidoscope. It demonstrates the way we fill the vacuum in human understanding that comes from our to some extent inherent personal disconnect from our wider nature and the awesomeness inherent in the present tense that we share.

“The Collidoscope”

The Collidoscope’s very ugliness is, in a sense, its collective hypnotic effect. As attested to by vast number’s of people’s compulsion to watch “trainwrecks”, despite the unpleasantness. Even those who don’t like to watch wrecks just for the morbid curiosity of it at least find themselves concerned enough with the evident ugliness that we concern ourselves with preventing the wrecks we come to know through direct life experience.

The struggle is the collective effect of all of the “control” egos and the “get” egos at play. It is necessarily not felt individually but rather is mirrored in the collective. The control-driven part operates through memory, with its self-image, others, influences, and reality model functions. The get-driven part operates through focus, with its ready-set-go perpetual state of busy-ness (pun intended).

To “be present and accounted for,” we must use conflict and ideology. Individuals do this, often unconsciously or at least reflexively, to defend our own preferred memories and areas of focus from the uncontrollability and needs of others.

The trick, should we wish to right social injustices of all sorts, is to not ab-use conflict and ideology. Capitalism being the case in point. Do we wish to achieve synergy with each other and the natural world and do great things in a sustainable way, or ignite conflicts and ideology over a word? The later is miserably fruitless and does little to address social injustices.

Abuses of conflict and ideology in the West are typically matters of entrenchment in preference-driven individuation impacting social justice. In the East (very broadly speaking), it’s the inverse. The Collidoscope and its function regulating between memory and focus, creativity (mismatch loops coming from manipulation and distortion) and pathfinding (mismatch loops being problem-solving and goal-orientedness) demonstrates that we are prone to actively forget what matters about the past and the future and react to any offense (seen in others) by manifesting more control-driven conflicts and ideological stances.

Collidoscope cycle is dependent on creating mismatches for others (e.g. disinformation, misinformation). Conflict and ideology driven mis-matches, in both cases, pit the control and achievement sides of the ego in each other. This is where righteousness calls out hypocrisy, yet in so doing remain blind to what is similarly present in oneself.

Nothing I’m saying here is new, it’s a very familiar story. One offer, if you need a way to be personally involved right now, is to explore this and other representational phenomena via my Full Content Library OKIC or taking the step to request to Study Consciousness with me as part of a cohort.