Monday, July 15, 2013

Money, mind and matter: micro conflicts and conflict resoultions in late capital society

[taken from: http://twentytwowords.com/dev2/2012/11/03/street-artist-creating-street-art-that-destroys-the-street-artist/]

Whether or not capitalism is a winner is no longer a question to ask. Capitalism wins and it wins at the very moment you tend to think that capitalism cannot to solve all the problems that people have in their everyday life. Solution to a problem with capitalism is not a justice to the problem with a provision of effective means of conflict resolution. Rather, capitalism brutally exercises power to silence the voices that tend to question or makes a small step in challenging it.

While critical theories focus on macro factors that prevents people organise against capitalism, there are micro dynamics of capitalism and its exercise of power in everyday life is formidable. Here are some of the examples:

Discourse I - Product conflict: X tells Y not to waste money for a particular product because X thinks the product is overpriced and is strategically made scarce. Y replies "I am wasting my money, why do you bother? Don't you dare further intervening in my lifestyle"

Inference - I: 

  • Money making pursuit and ownership of the means of expenditure, 
  • Personification of expenditure, 
  • speaking against capitalism = intervention is one's personal matters/ putting restrictions against one's wide range of choices


Discourse II - Resource conflict: X tells Y not to waste resources like electricity, water, and car fuel. Y replies, I will pay for it.

Inferences: 

  • Money has an incredible ability of being exchanged against any resources.
  • limited resources like water, oil and coal is no longer valued from the perspective of sustenance.


Discourse III - Emotional nature: Because of the repeated conflicts between X & Y, they fought face to face, fought over telephone.

Because X & Y are now sad they must go shopping and eat out.

The best way to resolve the conflict is not to intervene in Y's decisions and to smooth the rough edges X must take Y to shopping, eat outside, drink good wine and watch movie.

Inferences: 

  • Spending money restores peace. 
  • Money is in exchange of loneliness, conflict and conflict resolution. 
  • Finally money brings momentary peace. 


Game of conflict is a state of mind that matters:

While we know conflicts arise because of differences in opinion aided with (and more importantly) nature of discourse (tone of voice, ways of delivery) and the history of compatibility. Conflicts work in a vicious cycle as todays conflicts are tomorrows memories they keep on playing important role in shaping the intensity of further conflicts.

A state of mind is full of matters that are enforced by the masked and/or invisible power that percolates with capitalism.
Hence,
  1. Y (certainly in other cases X as well) is taught to differentiate Y's ownership of the means of expenditure from a supposedly common resource pool based on family. Paradoxically, the institution of family is strongly surviving where mind is filled with atomic individuation. 
  2. Freedom of choice is in contrast with selflessness. While in capitalist society the most effective means of punishment is to jail the criminal, people with slightest intervention in freedom (freedom to buy, freedom to exhaust) strongly react. Freedom has become one of the major sources of capitalist power.
  3. Do we live in a limited world? Apparently if one is in a selfless pursuit of money making (almost as selfless as a saint for his/her devotion to god) the world is both expandable and expendable. While things that are not meant to be exchanged like natural resources are valued in the spectrum of price and one's ability to exercise power of beating the price. 
  4. The state of mind that finally seeks peace restoration seeks refuge to the same means that makes peace fast vanishing.

4 comments:

  1. and I would love add that life in a late capital society is with series of conflicts and conflict resolutions. Conflicts are as you mention do not resolved but remain in memories. It marks and rejuvenate whenever newer conflicts come. Capital gains... and it gains as it is supposed to grow... cheers to the growth model we are practicing and experiencing...

    Liked the new look of your blog.

    Satyaki.

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  2. so basically you say, we are living in such a condition where no matter what we do we tend to rejuvenate capitalist interests? Brilliant...

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    Replies
    1. Yes, for that matter it is a reductionism... a practical reductionism

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  3. Kaleidoscope, these are not micro conflicts... I have seen families broken... These are indeed major conflicts... unnoticed major conflicts...

    Your insightful observation is appreciable...

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