The Next Copernican rEvolution - Chapter 12 - Q&A: A Discussion with a Civil War Reenactor
The New Abolitionists — The Civil War, Climate Change, and Money
“Before the cannons fired at Fort Sumter, the Confederates announced their rebellion with lofty rhetoric about “violations of the Constitution of the United States” and “encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States.” But the brute, bloody fact beneath those words was money. So much goddamn money.” ~ Christopher Hayes, The New Abolitionism1
Q: I can’t believe I stumbled on this reenactment, driving out here in the middle of nowhere.
Zachariah: Well, we’re sure glad you stopped by. It’s fun for us doing it without a doubt, but it’s also fun to have an audience.
Q: Nice to meet you…um?
Zachariah: Zachariah…Well, that’s my civil war name anyway.
Q: I love that, even your name is reenacted. You know, I am amazed at how popular this seems to be. There must be hundreds of soldiers out here.
Zachariah: Close to a thousand actually. Some of these events have upwards of 15,000, like the Gettysburg 150th anniversary in July of 2013. Of course, many more reenactments happened in 2015, exactly 150 years after the war ended.
Q: I know it’s probably a cool hobby and all, but I’m curious why people find this so fascinating.
Zachariah: Well, funny you ask. I just read this article about that very subject, talking about the sustaining power of Civil war reenactments. One of the guys they talked about in the article said, “It is the yearning to understand our being American that compels many tens of thousands of Americans to be Civil War ‘buffs’ and try to understand a thing too profound and dire perhaps to be fully comprehended.” 2
Q: Yeah, I still can’t wrap my head around how bloody and horrible and stupid it all was. And how many deaths were there?
Zachariah: Around 600,000 men and brothers lost their lives.
Q: Not a great chapter in America’s history for sure.
Zachariah: Indeed brother, but it could be worse. It might just be worse in the not-too-distant future. You know there are people talking about how divided America is today, with many doubting we will remain united as a nation.
Q: Come on, are you talking about another civil war, really? I know Americans are divided and all. I mean there’s always talk about some remote county in some states like Colorado or Texas seceding. But you don’t really think it will come to that, do you?
Zachariah: Well, look at our political landscape and tell me if we’ve ever been more polarized than this. But actually, that’s not what I’m concerned about. I’m referring to a whole different kind of fight and a different kind of abolitionism.
Q: Well, of course, it won’t be about slavery. We already fought that battle, thank god. And I don’t think you’re talking about alcohol prohibition, been there too. So what else could possibly cause such a divide?
Zachariah: Well, how many levels deep do you want to go brother? If you got the time, I can explain how this time it’s not about slavery; this time, it’s about climate change and money, which is a whole lot worse.
Q: Seriously? Well, you can’t just leave me hanging Zachariah. I’m listening. This is as good a place as any to be on a Saturday afternoon.
Zachariah: Ok, you asked for it. So you think the civil war was fought over slavery, do ya?
Q: Well, of course. Wasn’t that the defining issue?
Zachariah: It was seemingly, but if we go a little deeper we can understand that at its core it was really about money. Sure slavery was the big moral issue of the time, but what do you think perpetuated and propped up slavery, not just in America, but with slavery throughout history all over the world?
Q: Let me guess, money? That’s a pretty big claim, Zachariah.
Zachariah: Well, not just money, but property and ownership and power. But at the core of those things is money. There’s this great article…here I got it. It’s called “The New Abolitionism” by some guy named Christopher Hayes. It explains how the money involved in dispossessing the slaveholders of their property (slaves) was such a staggeringly large issue with abolishing slavery. So it wasn’t just about convincing the slave owners of the immorality of slavery. The fear of approximately 400,000 slave owners was “that all the wealth stored in the limbs and wombs of their property” would be zeroed out, more or less overnight.
So whether slaves were property or persons was the defining question that the war was fought over, for sure, but the deeper issue was about how much money, or wealth, the slave owners were being asked to concede. In the article, Hayes said that in 1860 slaves accounted for about 16% of the total household assets, or wealth, in the entire country, which in today’s terms equates to about $10 trillion. Can you even fathom how much money that is?
Q: Wow, that’s crazy. I guess I never thought about slavery in those terms.
Zachariah: Let’s zero in a bit more on the geographical economics involved. This here article…let me see. Oh, here we go. Christopher Hayes references some economic historian Gavin Wright who claimed that slaves represented nearly half the total wealth of the South on the eve of secession. And Wright was quoting civil war historian Eric Foner who said, “In 1860, slaves as property were worth more than all the banks, factories and railroads in the country put together. Think what would happen if you liquidated the banks, factories and railroads with no compensation.” 3
Q: Damn, I’m starting to see the economic consequences of abolishing slavery. We were demanding that the slaveholders just give up all their wealth while getting nothing in return. But what does that have to do with climate change?
Zachariah: Well, ya see brother, it’s the same battle, over wealth. In the article, Hayes references some studies that give us some staggering benchmark numbers. In a nutshell he says, “we can release about 565 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere by mid-century [if] we hope to keep inhabiting the planet in a manner that resembles current conditions.” But the terrifying part is that according to studies we have “2,795 gigatons. Which means the total amount of known, proven extractable fossil fuel in the ground at this very moment is almost five times the amount we can safely burn”. So then he cites climate writer and activist Bill McKibbon in saying, “the staggering conclusion [is] that the work of the climate movement is to find a way to force the powers that be, from the government of Saudi Arabia to the board and shareholders of ExxonMobil, to leave 80 percent of the carbon they have claims to in the ground. That stuff you own, that property you’re counting on and pricing into your stocks? You can’t have it.”
Q: Okay, so that’s where it compares to the slaveholders in 1860, right? The energy companies have to give up their wealth.
Zachariah: Yeah, you got it man. Now here’s the money part. Hayes says that some financial analysts put the wealth of all the unexcavated carbon in the world at $20 trillion. But even if we are conservative and say the real number is half that, say $10 trillion, “The last time in American history that some powerful set of interests relinquished its claim on $10 trillion of wealth was in 1865 — and then only after four years and more than 600,000 lives lost in the bloodiest, most horrific war we’ve ever fought.”
Q: Okay, here’s what I’m seeing. Tell me if I’m on target. The climate change battle is global, unlike our civil war. So if we extrapolate the battle of climate change — and the underlying wealth dispossession that’s required — to the entire world, then are you talking about potentially a global civil war over the ownership of fossil fuels involving millions of deaths?
Zachariah: Well, a lot of people think the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were fought over oil resources. And some estimates of casualties in all those wars is in the millions. So yes, the potential, if not the reality, is there for mass violence.
Just like the slave owners in the past, the owners of all that potential wealth won’t give it up easily.
Q: But what’s all this I hear about peak oil. Besides what that guy in that article said about the fossil fuels in the ground being five times what we can safely burn, I thought we were running out of oil.
Zachariah: Well. The cheap and easy stuff is running out. As deep water drilling and the tar sands shows, it’s getting harder and more expensive to get at. At some point, we will run out, especially as our global oil consumption continues to rise. Listen, don’t get me wrong; I do think we are in the dying days of the fossil fuel era. But sometimes when something is dying, that’s when it is most dangerous. Oil will get more scarce, and the funny thing is…that will just make it more expensive and therefore more valuable. The same thing happened in the fifty years before the civil war. In this article Hayes talks about how in 1808 they passed an act prohibiting the importation of slaves, permanently constricting supply. At the same time, the cotton industry was taking off, trying to satisfy the world’s insatiable demand for the white fluffy stuff. So all this together meant that the economic value of slaves exploded. Hayes wrote this, “As slavery becomes more valuable, the slave states find ever more fulsome ways of praising, justifying and celebrating it. Slavery increasingly moves from an economic institution to a cultural one; it becomes a matter of identity, of symbolism — indeed, in the hands of the most monstrously adept apologists, a thing of beauty…So that, on the eve of the war, slavery had never been more lucrative or more threatened.”
So, isn’t the same thing happening now with the fossil fuel industry? Have you seen all advertising and PR campaigns from the energy companies, trying to convince everyone that there’s enough oil and gas forever and that we just need to “Drill, baby, drill!”? This, of course, leads to increased consumption, with the general public thinking they can just go buy a bigger vehicle. Indeed, truck and SUV sales in America are growing like crazy. And have you noticed the wild west-like scramble to frack everywhere they can the last several years? It’s like a feeding frenzy.
Q: Yes, I definitely see all of that craziness going on.
Zachariah: Hayes says, “There is no way around conflict with this much money on the line, no available solution that makes everyone happy. No use trying to persuade people otherwise.”
Q: Well, shit. Now I’m depressed. If there’s going to be some global civil war ten times bigger than in 1865 over fossil fuels, what hope do we have?
Zachariah: Well, I hate to tell you this, but we need to go one step further, and it might just initially make you feel even more despair. But don’t worry. I think you just might see some hope after all this sinks in.
Q: Um, yeah Zachariah, don’t you leave me all depressed. Please go on…don’t worry, I’ll brace myself.
Zachariah: Well, the civil war brought an end to slavery of course. Christopher Hayes concludes the article by saying that in order to fight the fossil fuel companies we need to go after the industry’s “Achilles’ heel”, the fact that oil extraction is so monumentally expensive to begin with. So acts like divestment campaigns, stopping pipelines, and all the protests make the oil business too expensive and it ceases to be a viable business model.
Q: So it can be won then…
Zachariah: Hang on there yankee. I think Christopher Hayes made some excellent points in his article, especially to show how big the money and stakes involved are. But I don’t think he goes far enough. He is looking at one issue: climate change. Certainly, it is a huge issue affecting everyone everywhere, one that threatens the survival of the entire human species…
Q: So how can you say he isn’t going far enough? Isn’t that the biggest issue of our times, much bigger than slavery?
Zachariah: Well, the battle we have to fight with the energy companies is big enough, a $10–20 trillion battle. But the battle isn’t just with the oil companies. If we look at every sector of our global socio-economic system…food, agriculture, pharmacy, banking, media, politics, etc…we have large, interconnected and life-threatening problems that need to be addressed. And all of those sectors are controlled by big and powerful and wealthy corporations. Are you seeing where I’m going with this?
Q: I think so, and it’s scaring the hell out of me.
Zachariah: Mmm. Hang with me man. It gets hopeful. So, we’ve already been talking about “Big Oil”, but we also have Big Electric, Big Food, Big Ag, Big Beef, Big Dairy, Big Pharma, Big Bankers, Big Media. We already know the dangers of oil and natural gas, not just because of CO2 emissions, but also due to the pollution of our land and waters. Same with coal.
Look at our agriculture and food production. We are fed processed foods that are quite unhealthy. Our land is mono-cropped which requires massive chemicals and fertilizers and destroys the topsoil and the bees. We have huge dairy farms that create manure runoff that fouls our waters. The cows we eat take huge amounts of water and grain to feed and have huge greenhouse gas emissions. We are over-prescribed medicines that all the commercials during the evening news convince us we need. The big banks control the world economy and are too big to fail. And big media controls the messages telling us that we just need to keep shopping and vote every four years.
Q: Yep, I think you about summed it up. Pretty sad state, huh?
Zachariah: Well yes, but the point is it all desperately needs to change. We need to abolish all of it, not just fossil fuels. So if we take into account all the sectors, well suddenly that $10- 20 trillion goes to…who knows how many trillions of dollars? It’s too big to fathom. So now, think of all that money, all that power, and the size of the battle this time? It’s too big to fight. This isn’t any conspiracy theory, it’s the way things have always been: those with money and power and wealth and ownership have always controlled and dominated those without it. Money always wins. And unless those of us good guys can somehow muster up $100–200 trillion, we’re screwed. We can’t fight bad money with good money, because there’s always more bad money than good money, because the bad money people do what the good guys never do in order to get the money. So, I’m afraid to say, we can’t win fighting them head on. It’s too big to fight on their terms — money terms. The fight alone would be a global civil war that, in itself, would destroy the planet and human civilization. It’s unwinnable, any way you slice it.
So we have to do it another way. As futurist and inventor, Buckminster Fuller said, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Q: So tell me, this is the hopeful part Zachariah: What would be that new model?
Zachariah: We’re getting there cowboy, hold on. First, we need to ask ourselves, what is the ultimate cause of climate change? What is the ultimate cause of slavery? What is the ultimate cause of poverty? What is the ultimate cause of obscene levels of income inequality? What is the cause of corruption? What is the cause of environmental destruction? What is the reason we can’t agree to do anything about climate change in the first place? What is the cause…
Q: Whoa, whoa. I get the point. So you’re saying there’s a root cause to all of these things. I would say human greed, but I’m afraid you might have another idea.
Zachariah: Good guess, but what is the root cause of greed? It’s money stupid! No offense man.
So in Hayes’ article, he is describing “the new abolitionism” as the movement to end fossil fuels. That is fine, in and of itself, but if we don’t go to the root cause we will not be able to successfully address climate change. If we don’t go to the root cause of all the other problems in the world, we won’t have a chance in hell of solving any of them. And we need to see that they are all connected to the same root cause.
So here’s the hopeful part: the new abolitionism needs to be about abolishing money itself. We need to abolish the entire monetary system of exchange.
Q: Holy shit. Getting rid of money? Like that’s possible? Isn’t that way too big to realistically pull off?
Zachariah: As I said, we can’t fight the problems with money; we can never win. Money is too powerful. Remember Einstein said, “No problem can be solved from the same level that created it.” So that’s the solution…we need to evolve to an entirely new and different level. We need to create a new socio- economic model that makes the old one obsolete.
Here’s the cool part: If we stop playing the money game, they have no power over us. If we play the game, they win, but if we don’t play, they lose, because they lose their power. Put simply, if we abolish money we abolish the power hierarchy that’s been with us for many millennium.
It is time for a rEvolution of this magnitude. Band-aid solutions like monetary reform or regulations never work. Or they work for a while and eventually get corrupted by money. That’s why time and again some seemingly good ideas get corrupted and end up leading to dictatorships and causing millions of deaths.
Q: You know Zachariah…umm, this sounds kind of crazy…but I’m willing to admit that big ideas in the past were seen as crazy, like believing the world is not flat. Or that the earth is not the center of the universe. And the people with those big ideas were seen as crazy, like Copernicus, right?
Zachariah: Exactly. That’s where we are now, on the precipice of an entire paradigm shift, or an evolutionary phase change, where the rules of the old world don’t apply anymore.
Speaking of crazy people with big ideas, I’ve been doing some research on other crazy people around the world who have arrived at the same conclusions. Look at this growing list that I’ve been compiling of some of the new abolitionists of the twenty-first century, the individuals and organizations around the world who see that for mankind to evolve and thrive, let alone survive, we need to abolish money itself. There's a whole page showing Money Free Movements, Projects & Initiatives around the world.So, are all these people crazy, or just crazy smart? You tell me.
Q: Wow, that looks like a lot of people. This reminds me of that quote about misfits from Steve Jobs who founded Apple Computer…
Zachariah: Yep, got it right here, he said, “Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
So you see, the cat is out of the proverbial bag. People around the world are now thinking about a radical future beyond money, and it can’t be stopped, or put back in the bottle. It’s an idea whose time has come. As our systems and institutions continue to break down, what once seemed radical, like the notion of a round earth, simply becomes practical.
We need to take a different perspective on slavery and the civil war and how that human tragedy compares to the battle we need to fight — or not fight — today. We need to see that the epic battle is not just with fossil fuel companies, but also the elite powers and corporations controlling all sectors of our world. So the battle, in monetary terms, is incomprehensible. We can’t fight them on their terms, money terms, because they will win and it will be far bloodier than you can even imagine.
But if we abolish money, we abolish their power. So abolishing money is the new abolitionism of the 21st century. And isn’t it about time we stop fighting altogether?
Q: Amen my friend.
Zachariah: And, the added bonus is that if we abolish money we abolish modern day slavery at the same time…
Q: Wait, are you talking about human trafficking? The fact that we still have actual slavery going on in today’s world just blows my mind.
Zachariah: Yeah, there’s that, which is horrible in itself. But I’m talking about yet another kind of slavery that’s even more insidious. I’m talking about modern day wage slavery. Did you know that about 70% of people hate their jobs?4 They work these life-sucking jobs just to take care of their basic survival needs. South African writer and activist Michael Tellinger had this to say about wage slavery, “The philosophy of slavery is well evolved on our planet. People have been enslaving each other for thousands of years. But to keep people enslaved physically, you have to house them, feed them and clothe them. Through the introduction of money as a tool of enslavement, people have to work; feed themselves, clothe themselves, and house themselves. To do all this, people need that stuff called money, which is controlled and supplied by those at the top. What a brilliant and simple scam to keep humanity enslaved — money.” 5
Q: Yes, for sure money and capitalism are insidious.
Zachariah: Yes they are, but money and capitalism are not based upon immutable natural laws. They are changeable, defeatable and just downright unnecessary. But not if we fight money and those with it — that way we will surely destroy ourselves in the process. We can only win by transcending money altogether, to the point where money loses its destructive grip over humanity.
It’s not only a hopeful protopian vision, that of transcending money, but one that is most achievable, and utterly necessary for our species’ survival. And lest you think it is utterly utopian, I think the words of the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek are applicable when it comes to transcending money, “It’s easier for people to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism [and money]. When people say ‘you are a utopian’, sorry, the only true utopia for me is that things can go on indefinitely the way they are.”6
So you see my brother, this is the way the river of change is flowing. All the trends, all the logic, all the increasingly self- evident truths, all the scientific and technological breakthroughs, all the breakdowns in capitalism and our jobs- based money system, everything is moving towards a money free world. So, if we don’t get our heads around this, if we don’t suspend our disbelief and cynicism, we will find ourselves swimming upstream against the current of evolution. We will find this to be increasingly difficult and painful. The American ethnobotanist and mystic Terence McKenna said,“It’s clearly a crisis of two things: of consciousness and conditioning. We have the technological power, the engineering skills to save our planet, to cure disease, to feed the hungry, to end war; But we lack the intellectual vision, the ability to change our minds. We must decondition ourselves from 10,000 years of bad behavior.” But if we can do this, if we can relinquish our fear and accept that we are entering a completely new paradigm, then we can relax our hold on certainty and let ourselves flow down the river. We will discover how easy it all could be to arrive at this beautiful new world our hearts know is possible.
Q: Wow, thanks, Zachariah. Maybe it is time to abolish money itself. Maybe I will become a new abolitionist and join the fight to build a new humanity.
Zachariah: Indeed you are needed man, but not to fight. Remember, there is no fight anymore. You are needed in the evolution, the evolution of the mind, as we simply dissolve money and its power over us. You know, there’s a non-profit organization of well-meaning people in New York calling themselves “The New Abolitionists”7. They are all about eliminating human trafficking — modern day sex and labor slavery. With all due respect to them, when will we see that until we abolish money itself, we will always get what we have always gotten with money? When will we see that what we are trying to do — to stop all the corruption everywhere — is incredibly hard, if not impossible?
Let’s take the easier route. It’s time for us to pick a date in the very near future, and just do it. Let us just decide we are going to make it happen…to go money free. Then we will figure out how to get there, and see how easy it will be. Someday soon we will look back in astonishment and wonder at what took us so long. It’s time to put that stake in the ground for humanity now. How does 2020 sound?
Q: Wow, that’s like right around the corner. First I was thinking a money free world would never come about in my life time. Now you’re telling me by 2020? Isn’t that way too soon?
Zachariah: Well, if we look back at the patterns in our human evolution, we’ve seen major phase-changes happen faster and faster in both our consciousness and our technologies during our history as homo sapiens — 200,000 years ago, then 50,000 years ago, then 10,000 years ago, then 5,000 years ago, then 500 years ago, then fifty years ago, then twenty years ago, then five years ago. This is an exponential rate of change my friend. Things have been speeding up faster and faster. So if you are telling me that 2020 is too soon; perhaps it’s way overdue. Maybe now is the time.
Q: Hell yeah. Why do we need to wait until 2020? Let’s get on with it already.
Zachariah: Indeed, this is an idea that has been around for a long time, who’s time has now come. Thomas More wrote in his book Utopia exactly 500 years ago:
“And yet how much happier even these people [the rich] would be in Utopia! There, with the simultaneous abolition of money and the passion for money, how many other social problems have been solved, how many crimes eradicated! For obviously the end of money means the end of all those types of criminal behaviour which daily punishments are powerless to check: fraud, theft, burglary, brawls, riots, disputes, rebellion, murder, treason, and black magic. And the moment money goes, you can also say goodbye to fear, tension, anxiety, overwork, and sleepless nights. Why, even poverty itself, the one problem that has always seemed to need money for its solution, would promptly disappear if money ceased to exist.”
Q: I choose utopia over dystopia any day. It’s time, now. I’m ready for the next Copernican rEvolution! Thanks my friend.
Zachariah: Indeed my brother. This is the End. And the beginning.
~~~
Book 2: The Next Copernican rEvolution: Coming From the Future
Footnotes:
The New Abolitionism - http://www.thenation.com/print/article/179461/new-abolitionis
The Strange, Sustaining Power of Civil War Reenactments - http://www.psmag.com/culture/the-strange-sustaining-power-of-civil- war-reenactments-61902/
The Case for Reparations: An Intellectual Autopsy https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations-an-intellectual-autopsy/371125/
'I Hate My Job,' Say 70% Of US Employees: How To Be Happy At Work - http://www.medicaldaily.com/i-hate-my-job-say-70-us-employees-how-be-happy-work-319928
UBUNTU Contributionism - A Blueprint For Human Prosperity: Exposing the global banking fraud - https://www.amazon.com/UBUNTU-Contributionism-Blueprint-Prosperity-Exposing/dp/1920153098
IT’S EASIER TO IMAGINE THE END OF CAPITALISM THAN THE END OF THE WORLD - https://superflux.in/index.php/work/its-easier-to-imagine-the-end-of-capitalism-than-the-end-of-the-world/#