This is the image for this course. It refers to capitalism's need for ever-increasing aspirations. Economist Hazel Kyrk wrote that “a high standard of living must be dynamic, a progressive standard.” Consider that for a moment; a subtle, yet powerful observation about capitalism. Is this not the engine that drives working and consuming forward? An ever-increasing standard of living creates both our (1) envy of those just above us and (2) anxiety about "falling behind." The belief that a “high standard of living” is always “just a little more” drives society "forward." It’s also the reason there is never enough. Or that we are never enough.
The toxic myths that “there is not enough” and “more is better” are the root of the daily task of achieving worthiness. Because a high standard of living is dynamic and progressive, we have to keep running, just to stay in place.
This is the root of both workism and consumerism.
This week's assignment is to take time with this image. Take time absorbing it and then go on a solo 15 minute walk. Consider your life on the hamster wheel, even before connecting with someone else.
BIG IDEA: Capitalism is a taskmaster, the one telling you that you don't have enough and are not enough, so you must keep trying and trying to "improve" and be "more." And here's the important move: we internalize it into self-hatred. Read this story about the Dalai Lama and self-hatred (just the first four paragraphs). How is our desire to be the best at work and our desire for the best things and experiences related to self-hatred? So much for our desire for more is a profound self-hatred as we are, we are constantly trying to run away from ourselves and everything else. As Francis Weller would suggest, allow yourself to feel the grief of it.
- Love is unconditional inclusion. Historically, when we lived in bands and tribes, we unconditionally belonged. Now we have to *earn* inclusion. Both consumption and work in capitalism are attempts to "achieve worthiness" and belonging.
- The capitalist paradox is, for all our need to belong, we don't want to need others. We want our own things, our own privacy, our own independence. The more we don't need another, the more we can exclude others. Consider the fact that true community, true connection comes when we acknowledge we need others. And when we allow others to need us. We’re so scared of both.
- Isolation is the glue that holds inequality in place. Who have you isolated yourself from? There you will find inequality.
- Achieving goals and finding success feels inherently good. Burnout happens because success is never permanent. In America, you have keep succeeding and when you succeed, keep on that dynamic and progressive standard by succeeding more. You have to stay on the hamster wheel to keep achieving worthiness, or else you will fall behind. And as you achieve more, the wheel gets faster.
- The hamster wheel makes capitalism run. Capitalism needs both more production and more desire. Capitalism needs both *our* production and *our* desire to keep our standard of living "dynamic and progressive." Dynamic and progressive means you can never rest.
- The vast majority of messages you receive in the world are designed to make you feel lacking, unbelonged, and unloved, so we keep producing and consuming. Without our production and our desire, capitalism dies.
- The hedonic treadmill, the source of your perpetual dissatisfaction with what is, is the consequence of your ego's personal program for happiness.
PROMPTS:
1. How has capitalism kept you in the hamster wheel, wanting more achievement and success all the time? How have you been complicit and bought into it? How do you perpetrate it for others?
2. Play with how the wheel is a metaphor for other, larger things. Christian mystic Richard Rohr says:
"something has to break our primary addiction which is to our own power...the incestuous cycle of the ego." The Buddhists describe the suffering as the wheel of egoic craving and avoidance. What's the connection between those egoism and capitalism? (DEEPER: check out the definition of narcissistic personality disorder and consider how an individualistic society like ours fits this.)
3. How does one get off the hamster wheel? How does one opt out?
This lesson is sorta of bummer. But we're now through with the bummer part of the course. The last four weeks will about reclaiming presence, attention, and connection.