Roman Mittermayr: On My Way

The Reality of Life, Money and Society

This will be controversial. For you, to enjoy this, I am assuming you have grown to realize atheism is not a trend but merely a step forward to understand why we here. We are going to need your believe in evolution to get you through this. It well help understand why I am writing what I write here. If this is new, give it a try, you might enjoy moving forward in your adventure of finding meaning. Confused? Perfect, it’ll be absolutely not religious, promised.

The past weeks, if not months, I can’t help to escape the terror going on. Terror? Do I mean the #occupy movement? Do I mean Egypt or Syria? Do I mean the insane Black Friday queues? The Euro crisis? Greece going down? Japanese politicians drinking radiated water? US debit collectors and refinancing? Justin Bieber’s psycho fan-chick expecting to get away with the story? - YES. Yes, that all is exactly what I mean.

I like my little snippet of world news from time to time, I want to know where people are trying to get out of trouble, need help, where nations are getting ready for their next step as a society and all that. I’m not the brightest person in oh so many things, but I definitely have an idea of how severe certain things really are - and what really is just a great morning for a news desk ready to rock. I am so shocked, seeing what all these news leave behind, when people turn off their TVs, put away their papers and iPads… It leaves the most baffling mix of absolute panic, and absolutely ignorance. You, reading this, might be different. I understand. But not your parents, friends or co-workers. And they are definitely more than you.

But let me start, well, at the start. Evolution helps us upgrade our bodies, we move from simple survival, to co-existence, to dominance, to social grouping to major dominance to social classes, pure power and what the hell is going to come next. At some point, someone figured out, well, if I have something the other person wants (or, going back further historically, needs), then I can get the other person to do stuff for me, maybe things I can’t do, or don’t feel like doing right now. Read: I’ll trade you one of my new-born sheeps, if you go hunting while I build my house. Cool. Move forward, way, way forward. People figured the more people you have working for you, the more important of a person you are. It brings power, you can do things that are fun, and others do things that are not fun but need to be done. For instance, you eat, while everyone else has to sit through the night hunting for you. Better to have three people go hunting while you bang their ladies. Sure thing. Now, move forward. 

Money. After a while, it got boring and people decided it’s pretty hard to keep trading sheep and shit all the time for little transactions. Maybe a nice stone for the lady? A pair of comfortable sandals? A sword? A coin? Money. The more I have of it, the more I can rule shit and not do stuff myself. Hence, make (get) lots of it, in any possible way, spend it to live the life. The concept worked from day one. People might say now, why the hell introduce something that would immediately establish power and become a dangerous driving force of daily life? Well, it was probably the most beneficial modality to have people help each other out and keep society moving forward. We can assume that most people wouldn’t spend their day building a house for that random guy on the other side of town just because he asked you to (why not? Well, he would just enjoy life while you spend your limited life-time for him, hence, he would trade you something to make your time worthwhile, next step, money, we’re being recursive here). So, it helped us support each other, getting something in return. I give you bits of my life-time, you give me something that allows me to buy back (hopefully the same or more) life-time of someone else, later.

Up until here, things make sense, I assume. It’s a pretty natural progression. If today, the monetary systems break down, and all money on this planet goes up in flames, well, we’d be back to a similarly established system, possibly in the next 5 to 10 years, all over again. We’d be trading stuff, we’d be establishing new forms of vouchers representing value. We’re back. Agreed, nobody would have to pay off any debts or other bills from the past, so that’d be nice, in a way (although, probably unfair, since I said earlier, you took life-time from someone else and didn’t give it back). But more about the chaos in a bit.

Having moved from life to money up until here, on to money and society.

As said, a smart person would find a way to get a lot of money, arbitraging the shit out of any possible transaction to end up with more buying power than having invested. I go to work, spend 8 hours day, come home, get to spend the money I earned in 2 hours at work on my housekeeper, who cooks and does the laundry, working a full day. I win. Socially, this is pretty much a very sad situation. Logically, it does make sense, however. More free time, more time with things I love, family, outdoors, traveling, reading - whatever it is you do. But well, you see the problem. Why does that one person qualify as a housekeeper and you would never come to think to look after someone else’s house for some $7 an hour? Since you could easily switch jobs to the other bank or IT company. You will keep moving to easier (more comfortable things) if your position in society allows you to. So what do you, as a socially responsible person, in a very ideal world, suggest? You’d suggest, I’ll pay the housekeeper equally well, or maybe, even better since he/she does harder work than I do. You end up having no house anymore, no housekeeper, and no free-time, since well, you spent all the money on the housekeeper. Damn system. So, option two: What if (and we hear this over and over again), we could create a perfect world? Everyone earns the same amount of money, doesn’t have to do hard work and we all have equally much on the bank? Or wait! Even better: Screw money, we get rid of it. We clean our own houses, we don’t buy anyone’s services, at all anymore. Cool! Let’s try this:

So, you’re trying to build yourself a house. It’s really hard and you might not have the skills, or simply, the strength to put everything together. So you ask a couple of people nearby if they’d be willing to help for a few weeks. If they help you though, you’re having them work for you, them investing time of their life. We’re all alive on this earth for some 80 years or so. So eventually, people will figure out that some are more happy to help and others are not (even if there is no money and pure equality). And some will be pissed that they ought to help building your house while they struggle finding someone who helps them. What if one person sucks at building houses and others are really good at it? Will the really good ones never get to have free time again? And while they help you, they can’t go fetch food, they’ll be hungry. Maybe someone else helps them, maybe it gets really tricky after a while, since we really love the internet, or newspapers, or books, and someone needs to do a lot of work which will be hard to trade your genius qualities for… What if you have absolutely nothing to give back? Will people still help you? You see how romantic this whole scenario is, but how miserably it would fail. It would fail like a first-week high-school class. There will be blood and tears.

Alright, so this wouldn’t work, and you will agree, if you push aside the romantic thought and let reality in for a bit. 

So how the heck can we introduce fairness, if, in a fair world (meaning golden fairness, where there are no inequalities), nobody would care to help anybody else (there is no tension, no incentive, no reason other than pure chance and occasion). We would not move at all. There would be no computers, no internet, no great food, no traveling, no seeing the world, no movies, nothing that makes life fun. I know, this line alone is enough for some people to prepare a negative comment already, but be real. You like a lot of the things we have - and I don’t mean to be materialistic. Screw the computer, screw technology. Yet, after all I have seen now, I would actually like to be able to fly to Paris, see New York and visit Singapore. I want to see cultures, food, music, people. Guess what, all that won’t happen, without a lot of incentives in place, to get a lot of people to do a lot of hard work.

Fine then. We need a little inequality to keep things buzzing. Would be a nice, still somewhat romantic concept. Problem is, we’re in a really dynamic system. We’re locked into it. Our desire to live, our limited time on earth - this is the core factor of all this craziness. I am here, I had no choice in being born. My parents decided it for me. So, being here, I better do what I can. This is a world that has been developing for millions of years and it hopefully will much longer. I’m only one tiny bit active in this whole cycle, but I am active. The day I was born, I was given a chance to do something with it. I could have died on the second day. I might have been breathing for one day, and it might have been awesome. I might live until I am a hundred years old, and there’s a lot of things that might have been awesome. Maybe only for me and nobody else. Life is a little bit like jokes sometimes, there’s always something in it that only you find funny, really, really funny. And that’s the important part: Make it what you want to.

Now, cue in the third world. Not everybody is born with the same chances, in lovely environments, with hipster parents. I agree, and it saddens me that we can’t make that happen with all this genius intelligence around us. I mean, what the fuck, we can implant artificial hearts, so what’s the matter. Keep in mind, a lot of people on this planet will not live as long as you will, never touch a computer, get rick-rolled or have ever heard of Thanksgiving. But they still can be happy. Very happy. It only becomes real tough if we introduce them to a world of our standards, and show them what they are missing out on. But this is for another article. That’s a really tough one and constantly bugs me since we are bound to have a clash here - but this ain’t something occupy stands for, by the way. This is one floor down even, basement. For the sake of this post, let’s hook back into the core point here: We’re here to live our life. And we rarely want to waste it, give it away, not spend it the way we want to. Sometimes, we need to help others, but this alone would not (don’t be romantic, read again what I wrote above) suffice to help us move forward and grow as a society. And, simply, it would have some people trying to escape the system. Somewhere, someone will get three not so smart guys together, have them build stuff for him or her, resell it or trade it, pay them less than he made, inequality will develop. Fast. Very, very fast.

There is no escaping. Well there sort of is. In a world, where machines, or other forms of technology would be able to build (without need for maintenance, power, financing, supplies, etc.) and do everything we don’t want to do, without us needing to invest a lot of time in keeping this system running, then well, we could get rid of inequality and all enjoy life. Go hiking, build stuff, sleep, sing, dance, and what not. Yet still, someone would escape the system, and it only takes a few to start a new downfall of a happy world. But this won’t happen, since we can’t let the machines take over, they’re evil, also, our information would be out there, what the hell, how shocking …….. (sarcasm) …. It’s really, really tough.

So, we need money (or a trade currency / voucher system), we need inequality. If both would be dismissed, we’d be unable to function and it immediately would re-develop and establish itself in some new form, with similar dynamics. Over and over again.

So, we’ve moved from life, to life and money, to money, to money and society. Now, let’s talk about the #occupy movement for a second, and therefore: Society.

Inequality is a bitch that won’t die easy. No student sitting out any pepper spray strike will change this. That’s a fact, if you don’t believe it, you’re a romantic. I congratulate you, and hope you don’t have decision power over others in life, since you are likely to have lost touch with reality. Bill Clinton said it pretty well a few days ago, when he welcomed the power and spirit of the Occupy movements. He also said that he’d much rather see these people become influencers, do stuff that makes a change and not just expect the world around them to change magically through the simple act of blocking things, occupying fields. The police men are not an alien force fighting against you. Guess what, they have kids, some of your parents are police men, a lot of these people are very, very nice folks. They see what you want to say, but their bosses, and those bosses’ bosses don’t want to lose their job (money) - so they need to go there and see what they can do. There are, sadly, always absolute idiots among them who set things on fire, emotionally (and sprays, physically) - but it’s the same on the other side, students burn buildings, cars and block things. They are not your enemy. If one guy walks around and pepper sprays students, 1.000 students go nuts and call police men, politicians, every other person not occupying shit and the 1% - and who not, responsible for this mess. Everyone is responsible, correct. Everyone includes you, students. Striking through occupying is like a fight among kids. It surely has an effect. But man, we’ve grown since then. And if some guy calls me a fat person, I’m not going to rip him apart (like I’d do in school). I have better ways, I have grown. I know a lot of students just really, really love the spirit of occupy. The movement. The let’s do shit together, let’s go against the government, let’s make shit happen, let’s be a part of a world we want to create, let’s what the fuck dude, anything works.

Don’t get me wrong here (really, try not to!). I really like seeing these people spend their life-time (we’re reconnecting, you notice) on hope that they can call for that change of shifting the inequality that we actually need, back to a little more stable levels. I would join immediately, if there is a way that brings change. With this methods, however, there isn’t. Sitting there, expecting the world to change won’t just happen. It won’t. Even if a politician introduces a law, it will blur out faster than you guys graduate. There will be victory, parties, the night with that girl you never met again, awesome times, sad times. You hopefully had a fucking good time, but nothing more. If you really, really (deeply) want to change the system, then try to understand it first. Figure out where change needs to happen, figure out who can make that change and why that person is socially and physically unable (or unwilling) to. Become a politician, if you hate them so much. You think the political system sucks? Create a new system, be smart about it, use the internet, use whatever we have that people a hundred years ago didn’t have. But don’t, please don’t, sit in parks and hope the world will be pissed off enough at one point and change it for you. Seriously? This, won’t, happen – important note though: We’ll soon read news that things are moving and laws are being introduced and what not. There will be some sort of victory claimed. After all, a new or old president will want to be elected, promises will be made. But this all feels more like removing shit-stains from your ice cream, when you really want to remove the broken pipe bursting that stuff onto the ice machine. Find the pipe, fix it. And no, the pipe are not the 1%, not the politicians. There are, for sure, a whole lot of crooks in there, assholes, socially irresponsible freaks who couldn’t stop the run for money. They need to be extracted, outed and blocked from enjoying their false advantages, sure thing. But not through sitting in a park. 

And lastly, the point that started all of this for me tonight: If you think that the world is going to collapse soon, the Euro will default, Greece and the whole damn European Union will go down the drain, the United States will be bought and squeezed out by the Chinese and we’ll all end up in large insane fights – well then you are much more in love with the sadness of our historical past than with the opportunity ahead of us, the intelligence we gained and the fact that most of us are figuring out that life is here to be lived, enjoyed and not spent with stupid fights, sit strikes or other forms of violent pressure aiming for change in someone else’s path. We’re reaching the last paragraph, I love you already for reading through all of it:

If tomorrow morning, as you turn on the TV, the news anchor announces that the Euro has crashed, banks are defaulting, the European Union can not back up the debt, the United States does not have the money and China is not willing to help or whatever happens after that …. Will you suddenly walk over to your neighbor and burn down his house? Will you go to your bank and kick the shit out of your best friend working there because he is a fucking banker? Will you burn a politicians house? If any of this is true, then, well, you hopefully are the last of your generational type. If my money at the bank vanishes, my investments and debits purely bust in nothingness, if everything just goes away… I will walk over to my neighbor and ask him if there is anything he needs help with. I will ask friends to join me. I will organize, work and start everything again. I will be coming out first, when everybody else is still trying to set the bank on fire. I will hope you guys don’t ruin it for us. I want this world to change, but let us all be smarter about it, use intelligence and not force.

I actually like to live my life. Money is a great enhancer, it helps you with a lot of things. But even if all goes away, life will continue. Sad fact at the end: If you are expecting the world to crash soon, a group of sheep might be a better investment than your next real-estate…

Thanks for reading. Please comment. Go nuts.