Does the earth provide enough resources for everyone? Your answer to that question will determine where you stand on the toughest issues of our time. All of the controversies we are experiencing right now are based on the answer to that question. Do we assist the poor or put funds into the military? Do we take care of our own, or go beat up on other people? Do we focus on American infrastructure or do we put our focus on foreign affairs?
It is a psychological fact that fear creates divides between people. If you believe that you will never have ‘enough,’ you will live in fear of losing what you have. You will feel a need to compete with other humans to acquire scarce resources. You will see other people as ‘enemies.’ If, however, you know that there is enough for everyone, and you just have to work at getting your share, you begin to approach things differently. Nobody is an enemy, and everyone is a potential trade partner. You forget about trying to compete, and you start looking at what a fair distribution of resources looks like.
The question of “Is there enough resources?” has no absolute answer; there is a gradient here, and it is mostly based on geography. There are some places on the planet where the answer to “enough?” is Absolutely Yes. There are places on the planet where the answer “enough?” is Absolutely No. But most of the people reading this will live in a place where the answer is “Mostly yes…but not always.”
The fact is, if you are reading this, you have an internet connection. You are probably warm and dry. You probably ate something in the last 24 hours. You arguably can pay your bills or at least keep yourself afloat enough to keep your electricity or your phone turned on. However, you might be worried about your next payment. You might have a medical problem that is costing you time off of work and medical bills. You might have an asshole landlord who gave you an eviction notice and now you’re scrambling. You might be reading this from the library or on your phone on the train between jobs. In these cases, no, you do not have “enough for our society.”
Now think about Aleppo. Think about Haiti. Think about the earthquake in Japan. Think about Standing Rock. These people do not have enough. They struggle every day to get food and water and stay warm. The answer to that question in those places is “No, we absolutely do not have enough.” They must cooperate or they can’t survive.
Poor people use public transportation, rely on public businesses like laundromats and repair shops, and send their kids to public school, where they interact with other people like them. They mingle with one another. Cooperation, at least on a limited basis, is natural in those circumstances.
Think about millionaires and billionaires and people who throw money around the world as if they own it, because they do. These people absolutely have enough. They have enough for all of their children, and their grandchildren’s grandchildren. Is there any cooperation between them? Hell no. They live behind gated communities, pay people to do things for them, and have no need of public services.
The rich folks don’t seem to cooperate like poor folks do. They view their peers with suspicion, as if they will lose their financial advantage if they even attempt to cooperate with anyone. A business deal can’t be done on a handshake; lawyers must draw up papers to “protect” them. They put layers of details between themselves and anyone they need to “trust.” All they can do is compete.
So think about this: You are neither rich nor poor, you who have internet and phone. You are forced to compete for your job, for your living space, for lower-priced expenses. You didn’t ask for this, but you were trained for it. Someone taught you to best your peers at….something. Anything. Just so long as we compete and win, we feel we are important in this society.
Have you ever stopped to wonder, though…who benefits from competition? Who benefits from the little kids learning to best each other in sports, in spelling bees, in collecting stuff? Who gains when every single person in a society believes that competition is the only way to get ahead? Who is benefiting from your feeling of needing to compete to have ‘enough?’
I’ll give you a clue…it ain’t me. And it probably ain’t as much ‘you’ as they told you.