Is it time for a new civil war in America ?

Anger will only get us so far. For anger may inspire action, but it won't fix anything. 

Recently I heard some members of Manabu Farms suggesting that we need a  "class war". First of all, despite greater numbers, what chance does a mob of working class people have against a heavily armed, well trained military industrial complex? The people we'd be fighting are already highly skilled fighters. They have all the equipment; tear gas, hoses, batons, protective clothing, and even hollow point rounds. They have an army of empathy-less authority-brainwashed thugs that are just itching for an all-out fight. To think that the public can beat this with Molotov cocktails and hunting riffles is naive. 

Even if we were to stand a chance in a violent face off with the henchmen of the elite, what would we actually achieve? Lots of people would get hurt, there would be anger and hate and resentment which would fuel further fighting. A war is not a single battle -- the likely scenario would be a drawn out series of back and forth skirmishes, a swinging pendulum of violence and suffering. 

Suppose we the "poor" were to eventually emerge victorious -- what is the end goal? I suspect a desired outcome would be justice -- punishment for those who drove the world into greed and inequality. So we lock up all the bankers, we jail those responsible for driving illegal resource acquisition, we banish irresponsible corporate leaders and court marshal military figures who led illegal wars. Will that put a permanent end to this kind of behavior? Not likely. 

Every tyrant who ever lives, eventually dies. But there will always be someone to take their place providing that system rewards it. We will never stop this, until we build a new system that no longer perpetuates and rewards acquisition. And that's why a class war is pointless. That's why "locking up the bankers" is not the answer. We may still want to jail those responsible in the short term. But if we don't fix the underlying issue, we will quickly find ourselves back in the same position. 

Currently acquisition empowers. The more you have, the more influence you are able to exert. This is the inevitable end-result of capitalism -- money makes money and wealth always floats upwards. If the existence of a $67 [billion or trillion something, too blurry] banking system wasn't evidence enough of this, I don't know what is. 

We need to replace our system with one which either automatically penalizes excessive acquisition or which automatically rewards generosity. We could certainly have some degree of both, but it would be important to focus more of the rewarding aspect. I'll repeat because this is really important: 

Incentive to share and generally be good needs to be built into the very essence of how our society works. 

So how do we ensure this is the case? 

Money is the lifeblood of the elite. It is what gives power to those who accumulate. Yet this power only has a chance because we too rely on money for our survival. We can and must undermine money at every opportunity. To do this, community is paramount. Work to build a community around you that helps each other. Use this community to remove your reliance on large corporations as well as your reliance on money itself. Technology will also help us to some extent, but community is the essential ingredient.

The important thing to note is that this is a paradigm shift. These breakthroughs rely on both technology and community. The same principles of sharing, opening up information, and undermining the monetary system can and must be applied to all aspects of society. 

Thankfully, this is already happening.