Hello everyone.
Just jumping in quickly in the conversation.
My two cents is :
- capitalism, with the big and stable salaries that it can offer, is able of taming the egos.
- FOSS (and any other alternative movement in other aspects of life and politics), is based on egos and incapable of taming them.
That’s why we fail.
Advocating for freedom, diversity, grassroots, bottom-up, democracy, anarchism (you name it) is just synonym for “i want to do only what i want” and the “cooperation, community, collective, coming together” wrapping around it is just a fig leaf, and cannot infringe on my rights to freedom and self determination, and I prefer to be poor, miserable and isolated, than to compromise with others, or with capitalism.
That’s a very harsh depiction of the situation, but if you look at it closely, maybe it isn’t that far from reality.
And don’t get me wrong. I am anti-capitalist, FOSS enthusiast, myself deeply involved in it, poor and happy about it as long as I can eat and have a roof over my head, but I am also very concerned about our many failures, specially in guaranteeing a safe today and a bright tomorrow for our people, and of course, alarmed at the enshittification of everything on earth. And also, yes, I am anarchist, anti authoritarian, freedom fighter, ecologist, activist, etc…
But.
I can tell, that everywhere I look, unchecked egoism is the root of the problem.
And that even if capitalism is based on egoism (Musk and Bezos, I am looking at you), it doesn’t change the fact that for the extreme vast majority of the people enslaved at all levels in the capitalist system, their ego is tamed !!! They are forced into cooperation. They have to abide by rules coming from above. They have to accept orders and execute them. They don’t have a say on everything, and they don’t know about everything that is happening. They do their job. They do their job well. The best that they can. They will get promoted if they do so. And they contribute to the whole cogwheel that we call capitalism, that is producing ALL the material goods and providing ALL the services that are currently needed by the whole humanity, and even more and in surplus. And yes, we destroy ourselves and the environment in the process. But it works.
And as long as we cannot understand that the ego needs to be tamed, we will never achieve anything great.
And the best would be if people could start to understand that they can tame their ego by themselves, and they don’t need an oppressive system in order to do that.
Self-limitation, humility, and voluntary obedience, are qualities that are nowhere to be found naturally in humans, and especially not in the free and open source movements, or any other alternative movement whatsoever.
Capitalism is only great at one thing: forcing people into useful cooperation.
The deal is: if you don’t accept the hierarchy and to cooperate with other, you won’t have to eat and a roof above your head.
Pretty brutal.
But works for millennia by now.
And I say that with a lot of pain.
Why aren’t we capable of self-taming our egos and voluntarily engaging in fruitful cooperations ?? and why do we only accept this to happen if we get big bucks in exchange?
Isn’t our cause important enough so we could do that by ourselves?
Aren’t our ideals strong enough to force us, voluntarily into submission to a greater good?
Open questions i guess.
