Why can’t we have presidential candidates like this? Part ii
Giving a damn about baseball dolls, full employment
Last week I wrote about former President of Uruguay Jose Mujica. Known as “The World’s Poorest President,” he eschewed the presidential palace to live on his farm. He donated 90% of his $12,000 salary to anti-poverty campaigns, saying he didn’t need it. This wasn’t for show, this was simply an outward manifestation of his personal beliefs, beliefs that he had given his life for.
In this Netflix documentary, he talks about his life dedicated to the poor, including fifteen years in jail, ten of it in solitary confinement, two of those in a bottom of a well:
“I spent almost ten years in hole in solitary, time to think, what I found, either you’re happy with very little, free of all that extra luggage because you have happiness inside, or you don’t get anywhere.”
“I am not advocating poverty – I am advocating sobriety”
“Since we have invented a consumer society, the economy must constantly grow. We have invented a mountain of superfluous needs.”
“When we buy something, we are not paying money for it, you’re paying with the hours of your life you had to spend earning that money. The difference is that life is one thing money can’t buy. Life only gets shorter. And it’s pitiful to waste one’s life and freedom that way.”
“What I suggest is that we quit wasting resources on useless things.”
“At this point in my life I don’t need money. not at all. I don’t need more than what i’ve got.”
“In politics, try to find people with big heart and small wallet.”
“True change is inside one’s head, cultural not material.”
“There are others like me who try to manage what we can within capitalism, but the solution is not capitalism. We have to find other things/paths, and embrace that search.”
After watching last night’s presidential debate, I realized the reason we don’t have presidential candidates like Jose Mujica because we couldn’t elect a president like Jose Mujica. We like “success,” or at least the veneer of success. We elect the billionaire son,1 the Ivy League grad,2 the Hollywood hero.3 We love the idea of ascent, and we push failure and descent as far away as possible. Put another way, which of our Presidents have the spiritual depth only found in real difficulty?4
“A lot of what I’m telling you now was born of that time of solitude in jail. I wouldn’t be who I am today. I would be more futile/frivolous/superficial, more result-oriented, more short term, more triumphant, more blinded by success, with more of a statue- like pose. Yet all of these things, of which i am not, could be said about me had I not lived those 10 something years of deep solitude.” — Jose Mujica
More superficial, more result-oriented, more short-term, more triumphant, more blinded by success… does that not sound like our politicians?
Does that not sound like us?
What Mujica has is what the Quakers talked about as integrity: his outward actions are the manifestations of his innermost beliefs. Willing to fight for it, go to jail for it, to be tortured for it:
“José and his wife Lucia belonged to pillar number 10. They lived underground and spent their time being bundled from one safe house to the next , planning operations— until one day, as Mujica was waiting to meet a contact in a bar, suddenly, something hit him in the chest. The police shot him six times, but they didn’t let him die. They needed him as a hostage, to discipline his comrades. Mujica does not talk about the torture he endured while in prison, but some of the other survivors from that time told me about what happened to them.” — Chasing the Scream, Johann Hari
Instead, we spend a lot of time trying to be “successful” (bigger houses, nicer dinners, better vacations). We don’t spend a lot of time trying to be true. True to ourselves, true to what our bodies are asking, true to the world we want to live in.
Without a good sense of our innermost selves, we get swept away in the desires of this pathoadolescent culture (bigger houses, nicer dinners, better vacations) without asking if the desires of this pathoadolescent culture is what we should care about.
Baseball dolls
Ram Dass once equated our culture like that of children wanting baseball cards or dolls, or as he savagely put it, “baseball dolls.” We’re going around spending our money collecting baseball dolls, feeling superior that we got baseball dolls than someone else, feeling bad and working harder when someone else has more baseball dolls that us.
When we buy baseball dolls, we are not paying money for them, we’re paying with the hours of our lives we spent earning that money.
Ram Dass points out that, at some point, some kids mature (puberty haha) and think, “I’m done with buying baseball dolls.” But if everyone around them stays in baseball doll consciousness, all their friends think they’re in denial about wanting baseball dolls. And unless you really care about something bigger, and can surround yourself with people who care about something bigger, you slide back to buying baseball dolls.
We’re the average of the five people we spend the most time with.
It’s really hard to be true to ourselves.
In one of my favorite documentaries, current philosophers sum up Martin Heidegger’s philosophy as “giving a damn.” If we are anything, we define ourselves by the choices we make. We are in fact the sum total of our choices. What we give a damn about defines us is how we create meaning in this world.
And all it seems like we give a damn about is getting more. We say that’s not what we care about, but as I mentioned last week that we buy fifty-three new items of clothing per year — four times as much as in the year 2000. We buy 8 pairs of shoes a year.
If you had the same amount of clothes as you did 25 years ago, would you be worse off? What if you only bought 2 pairs of shoes a year?
We’re wasting resources on pathoadolescent, useless things. Baseball dolls.
Who is this for?
Who is this actually benefiting? Nike has a 38.2% global market share in sports apparel and footwear. In 2000, Nike’s stock price was $6 a share. Nike’s stock price today is $80. That’s down from $170, so Nike is “in trouble.” When people don’t keep exponentially buying from Nike, Nike is “in trouble.”
When the State of Oregon Department of Environmental Quality suggested in the early 2000s(?) that Oregonians celebrate an environmental “Buy Nothing Day,” businesses were incensed: Those radical leftists are advocating the idea of buying nothing? That campaign was quickly put down.
“The chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world” — President Calvin Coolidge
If you only bought 4 pairs of shoes a year, would you be worse off? Would you prefer to work half as much? Because those two things, writ large, are connected. In another 25 years, are we going to be buying 200 items of clothes a year? Thirty-two pairs of shoes a year? It sounds insane but guess what someone in 2000 would say about our consumption today.
True change is inside one’s head, cultural, not material.
We get the presidential candidates we ask for. We demand from our leaders more economic growth and “full employment.” In a world of plenty, why do we want everyone to be “fully employed?” We should want more time instead.
“The first and most sacred commandment (of capitalism) is: The profits of production must be reinvested in increasing production.” — Yuval Noah Harari
If you stopped for an hour to think about it, you’ll realize the only consequence of “full employment” is having to sell more stuff. And the only way we can sell more stuff (i.e. find enough demand for infinite production) is make sure people believe that they aren’t enough and don’t have enough. To paraphrase Ralph Ellison: To it may concern: keep this boy running.5
Full employment means buying more stuff. This is what we’ve give a damn about in America. This the meaning we’ve given our lives here.
In contrast, Jose Mujica gives a damn about something bigger than the production of more baseball dolls. That’s why he’s a hero, he’s willing to live, and die, by the sound of his innermost desires. Instead, we’re wasting resources on this mountain of superfluous needs.
And we’re going to elect whoever we think who help us continue doing so.
“The most invisible form of wasted time is doing a good job on an unimportant task.” — James Clear
“What you are, the world is. And without your transformation, there can be no transformation of the world.” — Krishnamurti
Courses in October
If you’re interested in talking about the integrity, your innermost needs, and their relationship to capitalism, sign up for Money and Meaning: The Course. 8 weeks, 8 sessions. You can find a preview of the first week here: What is your deepest longing? I love this course; you can read the testimonials to see what people get out of it.
Also FF1 for those of you who haven’t taken it! I think I’m doing it twice more: this October and then maybe again in January.
Bush, Bush, Trump
Kennedy, Clinton, Obama
Ugh.
FDR and Kennedy had debilitating physical ailments, which were assiduously kept from the public.
He put an N word in there.
Spot on, Douglas!