Monday 12 October 2009
Dear Michael Moore,
SUMMARY: Why not champion the humble self-directed investor? No need to damn all participants as amoral or immoral for investing on their own, the way the Pension and 401k are doing for us all already.
This is my second email to you, inspired this time by your Facebook message yesterday. (Now it has to be a blog post since your email box was full) The first time I wrote you was almost 20 years ago, I think, after I first saw Roger and Me. At that time I was an inner-city school teacher in my hometown of Mobile, Alabama. I took seriously what Emerson and Gandhi wrote about education. When Bush, Sr. sent his Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander to our school for a pep-talk and photo-op about his then education “plan,” and we had students at our school who did not have desks or books, teaches painting their own classrooms, all that, I decided to take a sick leave and return with signs to protest the sham or shame of this appearance. I paid a price, but that’s another story. Your movie gave me hope, and ever since I remain an admirer and solid fan. And when you took time to reply to that email, I was floored. My deepest gratitude for you and your work is both personal and impersonal. I consider you the essential gadfly America must have. Keep after ‘em!
I make no apologies for the length (hey - one email per decade! ) If you even see this, given your fame now and the amount of feedback you get daily it will be a miracle. But I needed to reply to your message yesterday at Facebook:
Friends,
I'd like to have a word with those of you who call yourselves Christians (Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Bill Maherists, etc. can read along, too, as much of what I have to say, I'm sure, can be applied to your own spiritual/ethical values).
In my new film I speak for the first time in one of my movies about my own spiritual beliefs. I have always believed that one's religious leanings are deeply personal and should be kept private. After all, we've heard enough yammerin' in the past three decades about how one should "behave," and I have to say I'm pretty burned out on pieties and platitudes considering we are a violent nation who invades other countries and punishes our own for having the audacity to fall on hard times.
I'm also against any proselytizing; I certainly don't want you to join anything I belong to. Also, as a Catholic, I have much to say about the Church as an institution, but I'll leave that for another day (or movie).
Amidst all the Wall Street bad guys and corrupt members of Congress exposed in "Capitalism: A Love Story," I pose a simple question in the movie: "Is capitalism a sin?" I go on to ask, "Would Jesus be a capitalist?" Would he belong to a hedge fund? Would he sell short? Would he approve of a system that has allowed the richest 1% to have more financial wealth than the 95% under them combined?
I have come to believe that there is no getting around the fact that capitalism is opposite everything that Jesus (and Moses and Mohammed and Buddha) taught. All the great religions are clear about one thing: It is evil to take the majority of the pie and leave what's left for everyone to fight over. Jesus said that the rich man would have a very hard time getting into heaven. He told us that we had to be our brother's and sister's keepers and that the riches that did exist were to be divided fairly. He said that if you failed to house the homeless and feed the hungry, you'd have a hard time finding the pin code to the pearly gates.
I guess that's bad news for us Americans. Here's how we define "Blessed Are the Poor": We now have the highest unemployment rate since 1983. There's a foreclosure filing once every 7.5 seconds. 14,000 people every day lose their health insurance.
At the same time, Wall Street bankers ("Blessed Are the Wealthy"?) are amassing more and more loot -- and they do their best to pay little or no income tax (last year Goldman Sachs' tax rate was a mere 1%!). Would Jesus approve of this? If not, why do we let such an evil system continue? It doesn't seem you can call yourself a Capitalist AND a Christian -- because you cannot love your money AND love your neighbor when you are denying your neighbor the ability to see a doctor just so you can have a better bottom line. That's called "immoral" -- and you are committing a sin when you benefit at the expense of others.
When you are in church this morning, please think about this. I am asking you to allow your "better angels" to come forward. And if you are among the millions of Americans who are struggling to make it from week to week, please know that I promise to do what I can to stop this evil -- and I hope you'll join me in not giving up until everyone has a seat at the table.
Thanks for listening. I'm off to Mass in a few hours. I'll be sure to ask the priest if he thinks J.C. deals in derivatives or credit default swaps. I mean, after all, he must've been good at math. How else did he divide up two loaves of bread and five pieces of fish equally amongst 5,000 people? Either he was the first socialist or his disciples were really bad at packing lunch. Or both.
Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com
I have not seen Capitalism: A Love Story. The reason is simple. It is not playing here in Mobile, Alabama. (To see Fahrenheit 911 we had only two days at a small mall screen to do it – then, poof, gone – wait for the DVD.) Down here where I was born, and my father, and his father, it seems I'm a stranger in a strange land. It's my feeling that in the Bible belt one can find some of the worst travesties of Christ and authentic Christianity. ( One Christian woman told me you belong in jail - and several were less mild!) Groupthink, if it can be called thinking, is a scary thing.
I am no stranger, however, to Christianity. In 1970, I became a full-gospel, evangelical, charismatic Christian - the whole nine years.. Or to be more precise, I came along as a hippie Christian, a Jesus Freak. At that idealistic moment in history, we actually took up a lifestyle based on the first books of Acts, living communally in and around a number of “house ministries” around the South. We referred to ourselves as First Century Christians. Of course most of us moved on – in fact a number are the very ones here who have become hateful right-wing Christians, the very ones who tell me Michael Moore should be put in jail. Me, I continued my lurching toward the Source. I have been meditating for some 30 years, beginning with Zen, and then on to India to study raja yoga. I was drawn to try to find truly enlightened beings, some hidden; others, like Mother Theresa, who I visited in Calcutta, more well-known. Interesting moment that, but it’s for another movie, as you said. Fact is, there is one truth with many names, and you can stay within your tradition, as Mother Theresa and Thomas Merton did, or certain rishis of India, and Sufis of Islam (yes, I learned from wonderful people in these traditions too), or if you need to, find another way more suitable to your Nature. AS the great Ramakrishna wrote, “God is like a mother who prepares food for her children according to their taste.” And Jesus himself said, “In my Father’s house there are many mansions.” The Gita says, “In whatever form you worship me, in that form I appear unto you.” I could go on, but you already know the point: many paths, one truth. I just took the trouble to devote a large part of my life exploring many of those paths. Most Westerners are entirely ignorant of any tradition other than Christianity. To me, this is a huge tragedy. Muslims, Jews, Christians are equally ignorant – but, another time …
All this (have you even read this far?) is preamble to my observations of what I gather to be the central thesis of your movie; namely, that capitalism (and especially the predatory capitalism of Wall Street) is anti-Christian. I see your point. But for the past year, oddly, I have been studying this myself – not only studying, but practicing! Facing some serious health problems, unable to work, and having no marketable skills and no assets other than my own my modest savings, which like everyone’s become more modest in the past few years, I fired my broker. After all, I could lose money as easily as he was doing, I thought. But seriously, I wanted to take responsibility and control of my own back after I concluded that investment experts had an interest in making us feel like children. “You don’t understand this stuff, you should never try to do it yourself, etc.”
So in keeping with my approach to spirituality, I started the process of learning about things I had avoided all my life: the economy in general, and the market in particular. I became a guppy, a retail stock trader, one of the million small-fry eaten regularly by the sharks and con-men at places like Goldman Sachs. Like 90% of the small guys who try to do this, I am, at this point, still losing. But this I expect for the first year, if I can survive – I consider it tuition. At least now I am the one is losing my own money, not some broker or investment manager.
The bottom line is still the bottom line – to earn some money. But for a guy like me, the Market has become one of the best teachers I have ever had. In short, below the bottom line, for one who cares to notice the Stock Market is, like the Tao, a great guru, remorseless, exacting -- relentlessly testing one’s character, revealing all sins and weaknesses, especially the twin emotions fear and greed, and severely punishing traders who fair to learn and accept personal responsibility for their mistakes. It is not for everyone, but even little guys from places Flint or Mobile can get in, if they choose. Why not champion the humble self-directed investor who chooses to do this? No need to damn all participants as amoral or immoral for investing on their own, the way the Pension and 401k are doing for us all already.
I invite you to join me in this education. Not that you should become a day-trader yourself. But consider my thesis. The greatest saints and wonderful of the East was included untouchables, some with shunned occupations, like butcher, or corpse burner, and even the richest, the rulers, the raja rishis. A businessman, even a stock trader or lawyer (or film-maker) as a saint? Unthinkable? As one of my great spiritual teachers, a Baptist preacher named Charles Simpson used to say, “God can hit a straight lick with a crooked stick.” Even galoots like you or me are not excluded.
Here’s a modest proposal: Assume that the stock market is becoming a true democracy, more accessible and information more available to anyone with a computer. This is a fact – what once was only for a few select folks in Chicago or New York is now more available to everybody who wants to give it a go. In this way, it is much more fair than it was for my father, who dabbled, but also much more dangerous in another way, since few take the time to acquire the discipline to trade.
Now assume that the market is still subject to all kinds of shenanigans to take advantage of the lowly new-comer. (OK, you know this. See Deep Capture Blog for a resource we can all access about the latest scams, and Business Jive for a great presentation of economic corruption and how the SEC is really operating) Now, join in the campaign to force the SEC and other government institutions that are supposed to regulate fair-play to do their jobs! Of course, most people will still lose money, but the Market, the largest poker game in the world, won’t have so many dishonest dealers pulling cards from the bottom of the deck. No, that’s naïve – but maybe the SEC and FTC , etc etc could do a better job – like those casinos. To dismiss the entire endeavor as immoral seems incorrect. It is amoral. Like God, the Market doesn’t care. When the two angels appeared to Joshua just before the battle of Jericho, he asked, “Are you for us or against us?” I love the reply they gave. It was one word: “Nay.” But I stray back into Christianity again.
What is the best way for us to partake of the bounties of the planet in the 21st century? I am far more radical – perhaps even more radical than you, if this is possible. But enough. It’s been many years since I felt moved to write such a … missive to you. I expect no reply, and doubt this will even reach you. But I needed to get it off my chest.
Your pal and fan,
Clark Powell
http://www.facebook.com/friend1
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