Integral anti-capitalism continued

Continuing from this post, I reponded to Pascal's inquiry into how we get beyond individual dysfunction to open onto more just economic systems, bringing in Reich's bodywork.

I was a bodyworker in a previous career. I was led into it in part by getting Rolfed. During the sessions my Rolfer introduced me to a Reichian therapist, so I did that too in this period. So I’d certainly agree that our body and emotional armoring prevents us from fulfilling higher endeavors. And that we get it very early from our parents, who got it from their parents ad infinitum. After getting those therapies, then later getting trained in, and then professionally performing, bodywork over an extended period, I was acutely aware of those holding patterns and did my small part to release them. I was also a tai chi student/instructor in those days, so also training oneself and others in breaking one’s habitual movement patterns was part of moving beyond our armor. Rolfing itself also had a movement education program for that purpose.


However what allowed me to get such expensive treatments was that I had my own business and had the time and money to explore self-improvement, even to read and find out that such things existed. A key issue is how do we provide the time and money for others to get such an education to open such possibilities? Being stuck in one’s job closes a lot of doors that one doesn’t even know are there. The bottom line is having the surplus money, and time, to even go there. It seems that the socio-economic circumstances of one’s life are the prerequisite for even getting in this game of evolution. Hence it is up to those of us with privilege (time and money) to not only work on ourselves and others but to create the socio-economic means to provide enough surplus on these lower levels to allow for one to recognize they even have body and emotional armor, let alone then afford its treatment. Hence my focus on those who are working towards creating such a system of surplus on the material level.

For now just a teaser that the surplus Harris talks about is related to the excess of restricted economics. See e.g. this post on capitalism, and how the excess surplus goes into personal consumption instead of social programs. (Using work from this Ph.D. dissertation, "Potential economies: complexity, novelty and the event.")