The Fish Tank

Trey Smith

Sticking a whale in a fish tank is a bad idea. With its fat body pressed up against all four glass walls, there's no room for any of the other fish – goldfish, zebra fish, sucker fish – to swim about or even eat since, of course, the whale will eat all the fish food and likely the fish themselves.

Eventually all the other fish will die. Then, all you're left with is a whale, alone, in a fish tank. And what good is that?

The point is whales don't belong in fish tanks any more than giant transnational monopolies or oligopolies belong in our economy.

Nature has a way of restricting the size of animals in their ecosystem making sure they don't get too big and cause problems for the other animals and organisms that call the same ecosystem home. Similarly, our economy must have mechanisms to restrict the size of corporations to make sure they don't become too big and cause problems for other businesses trying to make a living.

This was the intent of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act passed in 1890 during the height of the Gilded Age (also known as the long depression), when there were a bunch of whales in our fish tank economy.
~ from Corporate America: A Whale in a Fish Tank by Thom Hartmann and Sam Sacks ~

I have selected this particular article today because Hartmann and Sacks appear to understand what the Taoist sages understood all along: Humanity is PART of nature -- it doesn't stand apart FROM it.

There are certain rules or principles that govern life in this realm of existence that we know. Violate these principles -- throw a system out of balance -- and you know serious problems will result. Try to thwart nature as it tries to remedy this imbalance and calamity will soon follow.

This is one area in which it would do America and the rest of the western world a bit of good to look toward Taoism -- not Christianity -- to understand the predicament we have put ourselves in. Christianity teaches that we are masters of nature and that it is our destiny to subvert it for our own ends. Taoism, on the other hand, teaches that we are part of nature and that we subvert it at our own peril.

Christianity is the philosophy of the oligarchy because it fulfills their egoic and material desires. Taoism is the philosophy predominantly of the underclass because it is universalist in approach. It is a philosophy that stipulates that what is good/bad for the goose is good/bad for the gander!

The powers that be have no use for Taoism precisely because it states that the principles of nature apply to all being and does not make exceptions for those with great wealth or power. You see, the oligarchy doesn't want to be constrained in their lust for wealth, power and fame. They want to write their own rules and administer their own forms of justice.

And hey, let's be honest, it works to a point. In societal terms, they DO write the rules. But in the overall scheme of things, these rules succumb to the principles of nature in the end. They know it. We know it. It's just that all of us like to pretend otherwise.