I’ve spent some time thinking about what the #Occupy movement is really representing. I’ve attended the camps as I’ve traveled, and I’ve interviewed people in the camps, as well as their formidable opponents - the 1% - in the ownership positions of society.

I’m comfortable echoing the analysis that Occupiers have done a good initial job in comparison to similar movements around the world. They’ve caught the attention of the masses; everyone now knows what #Occupy means. Of course the problems of any fledgling movement are that its priorities aren’t hashed (#) out. Everyone knows what #Occupy is; but no one has any idea of what it wants, or needs.





Every movement-struggle-jihad is a philosophical battle between how a society exists versus how it should exist. Due to the collapse of the economic system, it is evident that we need structural change in the modern world. When I listen to the rhetoric of the Occupy movement and the defense of its identified opponents, I discover this:



On one side we have the individuals, represented by the #Occupiers. On the other side we have the institutions, represented by owners/stakeholders. While individuals allocate a moral regard to their fellow man/woman based on their acknowledgment of his/her intrinsic or extrinsic value, institutions do not.



Many individuals advocate the virtues of institutions because they believe institutions can better society. Institutions were created by individuals to protect the discovery, development, and deployment of technologies (methodologies, hardware, & software) that help individuals control what would otherwise be a chaotic environment. Who wants to live in 3000 B.C.E.? Few of us would enjoy limiting our communication to a distances less than 20 feet.



Institutions have served individuals well over the millennia, but their control mechanisms have the potential to run amuck because they’re related to extrinsic value, i.e., ability to generate revenues above the cost to exist. Controls validate the existence of each institution (for-profit & not-for-profit alike), but most individuals don’t regard themselves as having extrinsic value alone, based on this on-going survey that I’ve been conducting. Problems come into play when people who are still benefiting from the existing operations of institutions clash with those who are no longer benefiting. As institutions try to sustain their existence, they actually have incentives to suppress markets to enrich their stakeholders.



Regarding the Occupy movement, progress will occur when the most radical members of the bunch agree that the contrast of values between individuals and institutions is infringing on their civil and human rights and is in fact stifling their ability to live productive lives. Regardless of how they derive their understanding of the modern economic situation, they’ll have to hold it as dear and urgent as their radical predecessors in past successful liberal movements. I’m not referring to Martin Luther King’s boycotts or freedom riders, or Nelson Mandela’s political activism. No. What I’m referring to is the immediate threat that militant groups like the Black Panthers, or the onslaught of the Allied Forces, or the provocative military growth of Umkhonto we Sizwe and many other like-minded groups in each struggle. Laws of arbitrage are clear and animalistic. Incumbent leadership, ideals, and conservatism only respects formidable opposition.





The incumbent power in 1950’s United States and 1980’s South Africa only yielded because they perceived an inevitable destructive threat; any rhetoric that suggests otherwise is misleading. It would take years to list all the martyrs from every movement who gave their lives to inspire the few, and were willing to take other’s lives for their cause. The pathology of pacifism is a failed effort when it does not inspire an aggressive colleague. Occupiers are going to have to figure out what in the world they can do to change the way institutions and individuals agree on human value. Although they were arguing slightly different causes, the incumbent powers decided to oblige Lyndon B. Johnson immortalizing Martin Luther King in order to nullify the slogan “Black Power” and its author Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael).

It seems as though it takes a guilty old man faced with the passions of an aggressive young man, to make any incremental change.

