The Western world and its stupid binary choices: capitalism vs. communism

I grew up in a period of history known as the cold war which was primarily an ideological conflict between capitalism (with the US in the lead role) and communism (led by the Soviet Union). Most people in the Western world, and since end of the communist era, those in the former Soviet Union and its Eastern European puppet states, prefer the capitalist ideology. And one of the reasons for this is the way that Soviet style communism was implemented – by coercion, the use of state terror, and the persecution of those who questioned and rejected the communist sole truth.

Yet capitalism is also a tyranny with its own sole truth, but one of a different kind, which requires people to subscribe to collective delusions, to ignore the many destructive aspects of the system, and to turn a blind eye to the fact that a minority of the world’s population live in relative luxury at the expense of the majority who will never achieve this lifestyle. It also requires from some, as you will increasingly witness in the coming years, the payment of the ultimate price when called upon to do so – peace is just the period when the citizens of the capitalist world are waiting for the next war, which is invariably linked to ideology and the control of markets and resources. Resource and ideological wars are your future – they have already started.

Capitalism, it can be said, makes a virtue of living life like a plague of locusts, with little or no thought for the future. Such a way of behaving however has no future. But do not worry, for you can forget all the problems that this system creates by immersing yourself in materialism, through your latest Apple device, and so forth. Just keep telling yourself that “the emperor is wearing a fine suite of clothes.”

What history now shows, for those who care to step beyond the ideologies of communism and capitalism, is that neither system is viable as a model for a sustainable civilisation. The time has come to move beyond this stupid binary choice and to the re-conceive human civilisation along completely different lines.

Capitalism vs. communism is a stupid choice - it is no choice at all. Real choice has yet to appear in our world.

And more about the West’s other ideological battles and its stupid binary choices which are not choices at all, will follow in due course.

This is the world that men have created, along with those women who choose to behave like men.