Debunking Democracy

on Shoshana Zuboff & Russell Brand

This is a repost of a video from before I was on Substack. It covers a wide range of topics that seemed worth opening up to the conversation only Substack makes possible. Shoshana is the author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. My video was sparked by Russell Brand’s interview of her called ‘You Don’t Use Google, Google Uses You.’ And on that title and the argument in her book, I’m in complete agreement.

Their interview took off from there into spirituality and democracy, narcissism and Marxism. At some point Russell says that incremental reformism is an insipid milksop inoculating against the real change that a spirituality of Oneness would make possible. Shoshana argues that "a spiritual solution under autocracy is a fringe thing, full of despair that can't be realized", and democracy got us into this and only democracy can get us out.

In my episode I hope to be shooting the sacred cow of democracy once and for all. I explain why politics under a spirituality of narcissism, which is what I believe we have, will always be ‘a fringe thing’, tweaking little things around the edges but full of despair because it really cannot change anything. I look at how our spirituality permeates our politics whether we ‘believe’ in it or not, and makes them effective or not at all. And I look at what a Marxism for our era would look like.

On my Drops of God episode, I had a long comment thread with a new viewer who felt that psychopaths were the one-word rebuttal to my dogma that ‘people are inherently good and when they behave badly, systems and stories are to blame.’ Despite that one-word, we spent hundreds more on the debate. This episode is pertinent to that topic which, I believe, is the most important question we can ask: what is Reality?

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the insipid milksop of democracy

In my book How to Dismantle an Empire, I untangle 28 different paradigms, those ways of thinking before we think we’re thinking. These fool us into supporting the empire even when we think we’re not. My first chapter is called ‘A Democracy of Slaveowners.’ It goes to ancient Greece and starts with a quote from Aristotle:

Humanity is divided into two: the masters and the slaves. Or if one prefers it, the Greeks and the barbarians, those who have the right to command and those who are born to obey.

I then explain from my book how democracy was invented to quell a revolt against the archons, who were the landowners. Smallholders had joined with the landless, the colonized, women, barbarians and slaves to demand a redistribution of land and an end to the archon system. They wanted anarchy: rule by rules, not by rulers.

Instead Solon created hierarchy where small landowners could climb the ladder by contributing their wealth (from others’ labor) and their later-born sons to the military. Instead of overthrowing the archons, we got democracy ‘an insipid milksop inoculating against real change,’ which has kept us complacent for over 2000 years.

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slaveowner capitalism

Do we still have a democracy of slaveowners? Let’s look at what Shoshana’s reforms leave in place.

What Shoshana says we need, in order to change surveillance capitalism, is to join arms on our left and right, mobilize everyone we know, enjoin honest lawmakers, and have transnational cooperation.

Yet after we do all that, we still have capitalism. We still have masters and slaves, those with the right to rule and those who are born to make our stuff.

Rather than transnational cooperation, we could develop platforms and search engines that we pay for that don’t harvest our data. And since I made this video, I’d recommend Gabriel of Libre Solutions for how to do exactly that.

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a nation of narcissists

Russell quotes the Washington Post that the US is a nation of narcissists and adds that you have to have some kind of social construct in order to make a whole nation that way. A viewer has said that 99% of people are narcissists. What is a narcissist? By my definition, someone who has an overemphasis on their looks, their intellect, their moral superiority.

In order to feel superior, you first need to believe you’re a body, ‘a flesh-encapsulated mind’ as a Course in Miracles would say. You need to believe that you are your own God, that you are the product of your own creation. So really the person who thinks 99% of other people are narcissists is the true narcissist in believing in their own moral superiority.

I describe myself as the Mr. Spock of both spirituality and politics, because logic is my guide. Ethics is consistency: applying the same measure to everyone else that you would apply to yourself.

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call me by my true names

In another video, Russell quotes the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn’s poem ‘Please Call Me By My True Names’:

Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow—
even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.

I am a mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.
And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am a frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.

And I am also the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo,
with plenty of power in my hands.
And I am the man who has to pay
his “debt of blood” to my people
dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up
and the door of my heart
could be left open,
the door of compassion.

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spiritual bypassing

Some commenters reacted angrily that Russell was doing something called ‘spiritual bypassing’ and excusing the pirate’s rape. Perhaps this is like the reader who rejects the possibility of Oneness because psychopaths exist, and we good people are nothing like them. I explain my thoughts on how we all are both the perpetrator and the victim.

In my example of child slavery on cocoa plantations, I talk about tracing the whole chain of events back to you. But if your reaction is guilt, the remedy is to make your awareness small and not know what your country or your money is doing. It’s the other part, seeing how you are also the victim, that frees you to act appropriately. And that means seeing how you’ve been trapped into participating in harms you don’t want. It’s seeing your innocence at the same time as seeing your guilt, and extending that to everyone else.

How much power do we have to change things? Is spirituality “a fringe thing, full of despair that can't be realized"? Spirituality is asking the question of what’s real, and what my true relationship is to you, starting with the question of whether we’re equal.

There are three possibilities for Ultimate Reality:

1. The world of pain, death, suffering and loss was created by a God because He loves us. I call this ‘God the Monster.’ Shoshana and I agree that this kind of God doesn’t exist.

2. There is no God, all things are accidental, and we created our self in all ways that matter. We’re in competition with all other beings for food, shelter, and everything else we need. It’s only our ego or narcissism, our superiority to others that protects us.

   Under this paradigm, to change anything, you need to convince others to give up their individual desires for the common good. These desires aren’t luxuries but keeping a job rather than full time activism against surveillance.

3. The third possibility, that Russell and I entertain, is that we’re One Mind having a dream of being separate bodies. In a dream, there’s no order of difficulty. There’s no monster who’s too big or problem that can’t be solved by waking up.

There are times I’ll wake up from a nightmare in the middle of the night and, in order to go back to sleep, I need to re-script the dream. I need to write an ending that turns the enemy into something human, fallible, even friendly. I need to find a way that things, even when they seem darkest, are really working in my favor.

Maybe that’s what we need to do here. We don’t need to change everyone else’s mind, only our own. We can write the ending so that it gives a way out for everyone. But only if we let go of our moral superiority, that sees ourself as the twelve-year-old girl but says, ‘I could never be that sea pirate.’ We need to write an ending of forgiveness and escape for the sea pirate too.

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a marxism for our era

Since making this video, I’ve learned much more about the origins of Marx from within the oligarch system, so this is in context of my earlier framework.

What would a Marxism for our era look like? Marxism generally isn’t critiqued for its vision but for its logistics—Marx didn’t have a plan. To achieve the anarchy thwarted by a democracy of slaveowners, we need small scale sovereignty—commonwealths of a few hundred thousand. Then we can vote on policies, not personalities.

Noam Chomsky was once asked why a little country like Vietnam was a threat to the US. He answered that it was the example it set of self-reliance. To the neoliberal model, one bad apple could spoil the barrel.

But it’s really that one good apple could cure the barrel. One example of a successful system outside the oligarchic money system would show everyone it could be done. And one mind changed from superiority to giving the benefit of the doubt could spread like healing wildfire.

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In the beginning was the story, and the story was good vs. evil. I challenge this story and how judgment keeps us divided instead of changing the system preying on us all. I convey Mary McLaughlin's journey from liberal to outcast, and how it changed her view of 'the other side.' I end with The Alchemist on soul contracts as dimensions of our self that change with each person, and how a true friend is one where you like the dimension they bring out in you.

I respond to Russell Brand's interview of Daniel Pinchbeck, How Do We Invent a New Future? I use the Ten Terrains of Consciousness to describe a future based on unity, and examines superiority as blocking the revelation that "everyone is just us." Looks at Chris Ellingworth's application of the Ten Terrains to Luke Skywalker and what it would mean to trust in the force rather than feeling we need to make it all happen. I quote A Course in Miracles to confirm Russell's statement that reality is happening in your head. I give a radical view of the zealots and end with Rebecca Solnit's view of how the revolution will come about.