Occupy Wall Street Demands a New World 0/11

You-Sheng Li, 28/1

Occupy Wall Street is an ongoing series of demonstrations that start ed on September 17, 2011 in New York based in Zuccotti Park in the Wall Street a rea but now it has become an international protest. Various "Occupiers and suppor ters have modeled themselves after Occupy Wall Street in over 900 cities worldwi de. People are amazed by their wide spreading influence but few know the similar ity between those protestors and Taoism. A Taoist website asked me to write a hu ndred word comments to explore this unusual link. I wrote:

Lao Tzu says, "Heaven and earth unite to rain down sweet dew; the people, nobody ordering them, balance to equality." Now both wealth and inequality have skyroc keted in a global village that is far more complex than Lao Tzu could have imagi ned. Taoism provides a solid ground for ordinary people both to protest against the richest 1% and to maintain a healthy lifestyle and serenity of mind. Taoism also offers the technique: Transcendence. We all experience such moments when we emerge ourselves into the amazing landscape of nature or absorbed into a master piece of arts, a world of beautiful serenity where secular concerns become irrel evant. Those who have such a transcendent mind are also more likely to balance t hemselves to equality.

In the above quotation, Lao Tzu linked natural equality with sweet d ew. Sweet dew is only the natural plenty of the Eden Paradise or the environment in which the ancient primitive people lived. Chimpanzees share their food whene ver another chimpanzee holds out an open hand. Even the food holder does not lik e the begging one but he still gives out a share but throws it out to show his u nhappiness. Thus, even if sweet dew is only a minimum amount of food, Chimpanzee s balance to equality by sharing. Furthermore, the inborn instinct that dictates food sharing apparently transcends or overrides the more superficial emotions a gainst the beggar. Unlike chimpanzees, modern men are mainly of their own making , dictated by their sophisticated calculations and superficial emotions. We have to come deeply into my mind or deep consciousness in those transcendent moments to search our natural inborn instinct. Given the survival of our closely related cousins, modern apes, and the most developed brains of our ancestors, the Eden Paradise would appear to be almost unbreakable unless by humans themselves. Indeed, the migration of our an cestor Homo sapiens out of Africa was closely linked to the extinction of Homo e rectus in Asia and the Neandertals in Europe. Many contemporary scholars believe that our ancestors simply wiped them off earth though some crossbreeding might have occurred. Among the Eden residents, Adam and Eve, there was neither leadership nor ambition. They existed only to enjoy themselves. The same applies to the pr imary society that Taoism admires. Similarly, those occupying protestors have ne ither leaders nor clearly expressed demands. They lived there together for days to form a temporary society similar to the ancient primary society. They often p rovide free drinks, food, and other items if anybody needs them. They also keep the sanitation of their occupied places. Although they did not yell out their de mands, most people sympathize with them and understand what they want. Misunderstandings come from the hierarchy of our society. The top 1% claims they pay 40% of the taxes of which, a large portion goes to the military

to kill other humans. The only widely used slogan among those protestors is: We are the 99% to which, some raise the slogan: We are the 53% who pay tax. The 99 % still have their innocent hearts, like Adam and Eve, and dream of the lost par adise on earth while the top 1% benefit from this hierarchal social structure. D avid Suzuki once said to a reporter in Montreal that enterprises pursue nothing but money. After paying 40% of the countrys taxes, they still make so much money that the gap between the poor and the rich has expanded rapidly in the last few decades. The annual U.S. incomes share of the top 1% was around 10% in 1980 but was 23.5% in 2007. A parliament member even examined the tents of those proteste rs in London, Britain and claimed that they were 90% empty. But he never thought of examining Adams and Eves tents if they had any. He would have to start by teac hing Adam and Eve what is good and what is bad first. Those orientated towards money and towards enjoyment of life are rar ely able to work side by side. Such a rare occasion was war. Roughly between eig ht and six thousand years ago, the world became much drier than before. A desert ification took place all over the world. This process hit the central zone from the Sahara in Africa to Tibet, Mongolia, and Siberia, so-called the Saharasia. W hen the Saharasia was drying out, it was a physical challenge but once humans fo rmed the first raiding army to exploit their neighbors, the challenge they were facing was not physical or social but an ever-accelerating and rapid-upgrading h ostile humans themselves that they had never faced before. Arnold Joseph Toynbee pointed out: The human races prospects of survival were considerably better when we were defenceless against tigers than they are today when we have become defen celess against ourselves. William Eckhardt (1995) raised the so-called dialectica l evolutionary theory to interpret the process of human civilization. He proved beyond doubt that the five thousand years of our civilized history was only an a ccelerating and upgrading war culture with the two world wars as its recent peak . The Bible was right after all: Humans broke the Eden Paradise themselves. It is not surprising that scholars also calculated the time of the C reation and Adam/Eve to be around six thousand years ago. God regretted that he had created man, and said to Noah, The end of all flesh has come before me, becau se the earth is full of violence as a result of them; and here I am bringing the m to ruin together with the earth. (Genesis, 6;13) Thus the Bible writers and mod ern scholars pointed to the same time, six thousand years ago, as the start of o ur modern world. When survival was at stake because of war, humans tend to suppress t heir nature in order to survive. Whenever a relatively peaceful environment seem s to be lasting, human minds go back to their lost Paradise on earth. In the Wes t, from Platos Republic to Augustines City of God, humans never stopped pursuing t heir dream, the lost Paradise. The Messianic Movement in Judaist and Christian t raditions and Utopianism in modern Europe aim at the same dream. Apart from those philosophers, sages, religious Messiahs, the Commun ist movement peaked up with Maos Cultural Revolution that smashed all bureaucrats and resulted in chaotic anarchy for years. Modern democracy allows young people to listen to their hearts and express their feelings in a social movement. In t he worldwide restlessness in the 1960s, young people, nobody ordering them, orga nised themselves into communes like the early Christians in the Roman era. The c urrent Occupy Wall Street demonstrations all over the world are only one of thos e urgent cries from the bottom of human hearts: They want the lost Paradise back on earth though it is out of the line with the present order of our society.

Professor Dorian Warren from Columbia University has described the movement as t he first anti-authoritarian populist movement in the United States. In conclusio n, like Taoism that respect neither heavenly authority nor secular authority on

earth, those protestors demand a fundamentally new world, the lost paradise.