Money and Power

Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head Podcast (transcribed from audio available here)

Try looking up synonyms for love – arguably one of the most important words in the English language. As a verb, it has 40. Money – our topic today on Thinking With Somebody Else’s Head – has 56.

But whatever you call it – bucks, green, or bread – money today is so revered there’s really only one appropriate synonym … the Almighty dollar.

I’m Richard Lloyd Jones. Today on thinking with somebody else’s head – Money and Power.

First of all, thanks to all of you who’ve subscribed to Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head. We’re trying on this program to offer a new perspective on many old patterns of thought and scientific evidence. And I’m very gratified that you are listening.

Our topic today is an important one, and we’re going to try to look at money in ways you may not have considered before.

I’ll be talking once again with Dr. Claudia Bernhardt Pacheco, a psychoanalyst and vice-president of the International Society of Analytical Trilogy here in São Paulo. Our discussions are based today on Dr. Norberto Keppe’s extraordinary book, Liberation of the People: The Pathology of Power. This book is an in depth psychoanalytical critique of money and power that reaches to the very root cause of our inverted and seriously pathological society and power structures.

A couple of weeks ago, we began the exploration of money in our program about Adam Smith. Today, let’s go deeper into this area that impacts us all deeply. Our society is dominated by it.

R: Dr. Claudia Pacheco, if I ask you to talk about money from your perspective in Analytical Trilogy, what would you say?

C: I can speak about the wrong idea that all of us have that mankind only work for money. The situation, the pressure that we live under to have to pay for house, food, clothing, basic expenses is so strong, is so stressful that we don’t even have time to think how we can produce better things, better quality, more useful for humanity, to develop science, arts. Any area of endeavor is very much stopped by this concept of money, the importance of money. This is the biggest inversion in society.

R: But what leads you to say this, Claudia? I mean, many people are speaking about this idea that money is too important in society and I think many of us recognize that the drive for profit above all else is killing us. How can you deepen our understanding of this essential issue?

C: Money is not the motivation for people to produce a work of quality. This is more linked to the essence of man, which is pure action. And if we cannot accomplish what we would like to, if our ideals cannot be put into practice, we really get physically, mentally, spiritually sick. Our society is sick because it is impeded from developing its real path, which is to live a balanced, prosperous, esthetical, beautiful, healthy, ethical kind of life. To develop decent work, a beautiful work. What are we doing here? Just working to give profits for small groups of people – either communist parties or capitalistic parties. People are always left to the end, the last place, at the bottom, crushed by the sick powerful.

R: Keppe’s book, Liberation of the People, explores the pathology of power. He says in this book: “Have you ever wondered where so many people go each morning, crowed into the buses, trains and cars? Men, women and even teenagers are heading for thousands of public and private businesses helping these to exploit humanity – and to exploit themselves as well, since they, too, are consumers. I am not referring only to businesses which exploit the people because they make products which are harmful (cigarettes, alcohol); I am saying that businesses exploit with everything they produce because the profits go only to the proprietors.” What do we need to begin to correct this Claudia?

C: The conscientization that the economic, financial power is destroying all endeavors of humanity. Our very lives are being destroyed by the economic system, which is now very sick. Not because it is capitalistic or socialistic, but because it is inverted. What we see is that economic power took control of the executive, judicial and legislative powers. And the three–fold form of government is very balanced if they had not been corrupted and controlled by the economically powerful corporations and individuals and families. They took the control of the money and created a kind of living where money is put much above life, decency, ethics, dignity, happiness, health, anything.

R: Claudia, I think the idea that defenders of capitalism would use to argue against your point of view is that the system works by having the most talented people making the money and then passing those profits down to society. It’s a sort of trickle down effect. Adam Smith, for sure, believed that. But because you are a psychoanalyst and you work with Dr. Keppe on the psychoanalysis of society, you would see this in quite a different way. Help us to understand this a bit better.

C: What dominates life on this planet is inversion, psychological inversion. So we cannot see a man or a woman acting spontaneously for the good of other people. Selfishness dominates, envy dominates – envy in terms of not wanting people to enjoy goods, and richness and this beautiful paradise we have in our hands. So this competition is based on envy and it’s very destructive and if rich people are not conscious and controlled because of their psychopathology, which is envy as I said, we can expect that the richer the person, the more envious he will be. And this doesn’t bring any benefit at all for the person himself or society.

R: Of course this envy doesn’t exist only in the rich people, does it? I mean, everywhere I travel I see the same thing that everyone in society sees powerful, arrogant, rich people as the best. So we all want our place at the top, too. And this is causes us to support this exploitive and sick economic system. This is an inversion as well. Give us some more perspective on how this psychological inversion impacts us in terms of the economy and work, Claudia.

C: Like, you have thousands, millions of people with no work. Like, doing nothing. It is an enormous richness being held because the true richness comes from work. So you have thousands of things to be done, you have millions of people with no work at all. And they can’t work. There are things to be fixed, to be restored, to be created, inventions to be put in practice, to improve quality of life. So, humanity is getting poor and poor. So this thing that the First World is growing and economic growth; this is pure illusion, this is deception. Because in reality what wee see is that humanity is becoming poor and poor. Quality of life: poorer and poorer. We see the weather, we see injustice, wars… Everything is being put down and being destroyed, and money is the main tool which is been used to destroy humanity. So we don’t say money in itself is a wrong thing, but we say that money should be an instrument for humanity and not humanity been enslaved just for the sake of money.

R: You know, if we look the dominant philosophy around money today, Claudia, it is very much based on a speculative idea. Make money on your money. A smart person gets money to work for him. Make money while you are sleeping. You don’t get rich working for money. This is how we see economic growth and developing financial independence in our society. How do you see all this?

C: If we don’t stop this kind of growth we, for sure, are going to die. Collectively die. We are dying. Nature is dying. Humanity is dying. Every 5 seconds a child is dead because of hunger. They create wars to sell weapons. So, if we don’t stop this mentality of this false growth, this deception, then absolutely we are going to see humanity eliminated. Now, we want to conscientize people that if humanity wants to survive we need to stop now and see what are we working for? Who is being benefited by this growth? When you say that a country had such a percentage of growth, do you see this been passed to the people. Very rarely. You see just numbers of big corporations growing, and this does not mean that the people are been benefited, that humanity is being benefited. So if those groups would stop now, it would be much more beneficial for humanity, because then humanity could have a chance to reorganize itself in a more balanced way. And we have already philosophical and economical concepts to organize a society in a much more balanced, healthier and prosperous way; now, in humanity. But those groups don’t let this come to the surface.

R: It is a fascinating topic and there many more things to say but let me draw to a close with one final comment from you, Claudia. You alluded that there is already a scientific methodology and some social structures that can be set up that will help us to change this faulty orientation of society. You call these Trilogical Enterprises. How do you structure these? How this work?

C: Well, the first premise of this Trilogical company is that what is valuable is work and the quality of work, and not the capital invested in the company. Of course companies must have capital, this is good. Humanity should enjoy capital, should make it grow. But for all. So a company is like a small planet where individuals work to make it more beautiful, healthier, more pleasant, secure, safe. So it is able to give to each individual the means to have a very good life. And even people who you think would not be useful, in a company, they can be. Very much. So in Trilogical companies you give the best of yourself to improve this organism, which is going to feed you, and feed your family and give the means you need to have a life with dignity. A life with health and happiness. R: Well, as expansive as the discussion was today, I am impressed by how much my interview with Dr. Pacheco I had to leave out. The subject begs more discussion.