I have always believed that revolutionaries, activists, dreamers, pursuers of that better world, strivers for Utopia, are the stepping stones to social justice, they carry that better world in their hearts, with the burning desire that we should all enjoy its fruits. Today the world is a harsh and cruel place, not by nature, but by this man made system of global capitalism. The free market, neo-liberal, financial dictatorship, that dominates all aspects of our life, binds us to exploitation, inequality and injustice, and like a cancer, is destroying the planet. Now, more than ever in our history, we need the dreamers, the seekers of Utopia, those who still refuse to accept that the corporate free market is the only game in town. Those who still believe that there is a better way and a better tomorrow, if we will only grasp at the dream.
Sometimes when you read something, there is a passage that with clarity and accuracy seems to say all that you are trying, to say. I find this short paragraph from the Introduction: Open Utopia falls into that category.
Yet we need Utopia more than ever. We live in a time without alternatives, at “the end of history” as Frances Fukuyama would have it, when neoliberal capitalism reins triumphant and uncontested. There are still aberrations: radical Islam in the East, neo-fascist xenophobia in the West, and a smattering of socialist societies struggling around the globe, but by and large the only game in town is the global free market. In itself this might not be so bad, except for the increasingly obvious fact that the system is not working, not for most people and not most of the time. Income inequality has increased dramatically both between and within nations. National autonomy has become subservient to the imperatives of global economic institutions, and federal, state, and local governance are undermined by the protected power of money. Profit-driven industrialization and the headlong rush toward universal consumerism is hastening the ecological destruction of the planet. In short: the world is a mess. Opinion polls, street protests, and volatile voting patterns demonstrate widespread dissatisfaction with the current system, but the popular response so far has largely been limited to the angry outcry of No! No to dictators, No to corruption, No to finance capital, No to the one percent who control everything. But negation, by itself, affects nothing. The dominant system dominates not because people agree with it; it rules because we are convinced there is no alternative.Read the full article HERE:
