"capitalism: a love story"-- tangential thinking

i saw michael moore's newest last night, "capitalism: a love story." afterwards we sat in a coffeeshop and decompressed. well, we let our thoughts wander. but that's the point of collectively witnessing and discussing: it takes you places!

i came away thinking about the reality of rah-rah-capitalism-sucks-wall-street-is-greedy v.s. the reality of what it actually means to redistribute wealth or re-structure our government/economy/society. to use the ever-popular pie metaphor: its not about glen beck giving his precious piece of the pie to mr. hacker (who was evicted from his home and interviewed for the film), it's about us eating something more nourishing than pie all together. something that regenerates, is from the earth, and can cyclically grow and re-birth and re-plentify. not something so finite or so damn sugary :)

sorry for the extended analogy. what i mean to say is, how do we support, encourage, or even force those with lots of pie to give some of it up- and more critically, how do we hold space for the often-painful process that this creates? i can rail against capitalism all the live-long day, but when it comes to giving up my vacation house or the funding to travel home to visit my family in the name of a 'more just world,' that shit can be hard! last night e. brought up the word "grieving," which i found useful. how do we hold compassionate space to grieve the loss of real things? it is a process to lose material, space, and freedoms we are accustom, for rich folks and folks all along the economic spectrum. it looks vastly different in different scenarios, but fundamentally i believe that loss is loss.

as a wealthy and privileged person, who works with other wealthy and privileged folks, this is a crucial and really real process to be aware of. how do you allow space for everyone's humanity, emotions, and tangible investment in the current system? while still fighting fucking hard to reinvest that humanity and those emotions in an entirely different one? how do i not get frustrated with folks who are caught up in the crash of their stock portfolios, when that sum still equals most people's net worth dozens of times over? i turn these questions on myself as much as anyone else.

how do we have compassion and patience with ourselves and our processes of lifestyle shifts? i think it hits on some deep, touchy subjects. like, if my family can't go on vacation to the beach, we will have to entertain ourselves! and talk to each other and deal with our shit and omigod that can be scary! the flip side of losing and giving things up is creating other ways of living and valuing. how do we learn to create new kinds of meaning, new kinds of fun, even?

i don't have good answers, but i want to keep thinking. keep thinking with me!

xo.