When I first drove a car, with my instructor on passenger's seat (yeah, I was one of those unlucky teenagers whose parents did not allow to drive before getting driving license), I was told not to look at the wheel. Apparently the first thing everyone does when driving for the first time is to look at the wheel, controls, gear lever, because driving is a serious business and it is necessary to know everything, and you know by looking at it, of course. It takes a moment to learn where everything is, memorize it, internalize it, never have to look again, because your body knows. Soon you drive as you walk, without micromanaging all those muscles, because what matters is the road and where you want to go, and the rest? Change gear now, look at the signs, left foot, right foot, it's all happening in the background - you know it, feel it, but it just happens.
Now, capitalism and communism... yes, of course I was going to write about them one more time :) So, what just crossed my mind is how they both concentrate and get all emotional about unimportant things, like production and distribution. "It's the economy, stupid" was Clinton campaign's slogan, as if nothing else mattered.
Well, one has to eat. Drink. Have a roof over one's head and means for his family to be happy. All the little things that enable us to live, like all controls of our cars, they are essential on the basic level, but they are background. Capitalism vs communism is a bit like arguing whether transmission should be manual or automatic, color of the car... Diesel, gas, maybe electric? How about a hybrid? It's all great, but there is one thing missing, and to notice what is missing one has to get off the car and look at it from some distance. And then what the observer might notice is that, at the very core, it's just a car. And a car should have a purpose. Car is just means to get to some destination, and while it is important for it to be usable and in good shape, at the end of the day, it's just a car.
Neither capitalism not communism have the foggiest idea what our destination is, or even what possible options are.
Both capitalism and communism do their best to not think about themselves as anything else than final destination. Capitalism is all about growth and having more stuff. Communism is about growth and producing more stuff. Both carefully avoid the important question of "what for?" - of course, so everyone is happy and die delighted. Questions about the meaning of life was left to religions, but then religions have hard time under both systems - communism is quite materialistic, so is capitalism, and they see religion as standing in the way of progress, as something that we better don't talk about it too much, because... it's uncomfortable, and people who think too much about afterlife tend to spend less money (that's where New Age comes in, to monetize angst). By the way is it really surprising that Islam is appealing to some young people? Or that US has many christian radicals? People look out the car windows and ask themselves why are we not moving? And in economic systems there are no answers, because it is not what background is for. Function of economy should be only looking after our basic needs, and nothing more. Economy should be invisible, like that gear lever is invisible to the driver - in constant use, but barely registering in awareness. They are so much more important things to spend time on...
We are about to have automatic cars. It's well past time our economy was made automatic as well. I wonder though how much effort it will take to push our beloved distractive and noisy "-isms" into the background, to serve humanity in silence instead of constantly demanding our time, attention, effort and life.
