The Capitalist & The Cleric

By Lee Doran

The Capitalist & The Cleric explores potential roads to humanity's future. Big picture theories of human development and civilization kick start the journey. Before long, the differences between women and men emerge as critical issues. Tensions arise as this practical man and ethical woman discuss such sensitive topics in plain language. Their guest experts are often a bit bewildered; they are caught off guard by some of the rules of the game. The specialists are also challenged repeatedly by the need to speak clearly.

What if the differences between individual men and women are also reflected in their organizational lives? What if how they work together in groups reflects the differences between them? How would we plan a future that includes both sexes for the benefit of both sexes? Are there any hints of such changes already?

Join this fictional discussion of real issues on the human future. Read The Capitalist & The Cleric and comment on its contents. Then, consider how you might act to bring about a human future for all humanity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lee Doran
• Release date: May 25, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458019110

Lee Doran

In my working life, I am an environmental consultant. Daily, I learn the mechanics of how everything is connected to everything else in the natural world. About twenty years ago, I began to read and research independently on the science of the human species, Homo sapiens. I read sociologists and historians, biologists and psychologists, even economists and political scientists.The more I read, the more it seemed to me that all these specialists on humanity were dancing to the same tune -- except that they were in different rooms. And the rooms, strangely, weren't connected to one another. Picture it: sociologists dancing with sociologists in the study; biologists dancing with biologists in the den; psychologists dancing with psychologists in the attic. But none of them ever left their own rooms, or even communicated very much with people in other rooms.So who was trying to connect these various reservoirs of human knowledge to one another? Very few people. Yet, isn’t it important for the future of humanity that we have some integrated understanding of who and what we are? How can we manage ourselves as individuals or as a species if we don't even know who we are?In my writings, I try to begin making those connections. Of course, we have much too much information, now, for any one person to complete such a task. But perhaps framing the building for the specialists to populate is an achievable, if immodest, goal. Perhaps introducing the dancers to their colleagues in the other rooms is a start. Getting everyone talking to one another, maybe, if not actually doing anything much together, yet.Why don't you join the effort? Everyone can contribute something to this cause, for in the end many must agree before anything much can happen. I would love to hear how you think we should proceed.

Book preview

The Capitalist & The Cleric

by Lee Doran

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Lee Doran

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Victory

Chapter 2. Guns, Germs, etc…

Chapter 3. Fat Boys, now...

Chapter 4. Mr. Manners, first…

Chapter 5. The Alpha Male and His Troop and His Harem…

Chapter 6. Doctor ‘Y’ … or spreading the secrets of maleness

Chapter 7. To Tend and Befriend…

Chapter 8. Connections and connecting, or females in groups…

Chapter 9. The Last of the First

Chapter 10. And the First of the Next…?

APPENDIX: The Search for Universal Human Values

Chapter 1. Victory

So, we have won. At long last, we have won – wouldn’t you agree?

Ahhh, well… I guess so. We like to think we always come out the winners, don’t we? But, what exactly are we talking about here?

The last real geopolitical battle – or was it a war, the last and final global war?

Oh, that… hmmm, perhaps a bit premature to be declaring victory already – don’t you think?

Just look at the facts: after 70-plus years, Communism is well and truly dead.

Do you think so? There are still a few countries holding on, making …

Marginal and stubborn, all – isolated even from each other and soon to be history, themselves. No, the movement is dead, the ideology discredited, their former faltering economies are in tatters, if not ruins. There is no future to that Communist threat – the Iron Curtain that worked and planned and schemed for so long to bar our way has disintegrated, rusted away.

You seem so certain of that… I mean, how can you be so sure that it won’t revive…or return in some other form?

Look at the facts, just the facts: capitalist economies dominate the planet, run the world, now. Those that are not capitalist are moving as fast as they can to a private sector model, just like ours. Stock markets and government oversight (not control) and economic discipline – all are the name of the game, now. We have won this war, finally and decisively.

Hmmm… you might be right

Of course I’m right. The trends are strong and clear and irreversible – or nearly so. I would say that within the decade, before this decade is out, there will be no alternative economic model being seriously discussed, anywhere on the globe. We have won the battle for the hearts and minds of the future. This victory, sweet victory, is ours, now. We only need to stay the course that we are now on. Just a little more time will demonstrate to all who attend: the free market, private sector economy is the model for human economies, everywhere, here on planet Earth. We are it, so you had better sign up, join in, or you could well miss the opportunity of a lifetime. This train has already left the station, is now beginning to pick up speed. Hop on, now, or withhold your regrets when that time comes, when all will realize this universal truth, our truths, and it will be too late, then, to sign up for the earliest stages of the opportunities that now abound. By then, the major growth opportunities we now see will be over…

Oh, here it comes: the sales pitch… I should have realized…

Nope. No sales pitch. What you see is what you get. Just a hard-nosed, realistic assessment of the way the world is, or has now become. Or is about to finally become. Opportunities abound, now, though, I’m telling you.

Ahhh, I see. And what form, exactly, do these ‘opportunities’ take, now?

Oh, the usual – mostly just the usual. For those who invest early and wisely, and who have the patience and wisdom to stay the course, the rewards will be generous and abundant. For those who lack these qualities or the discipline to apply them… well, you know…

Oh yes, I believe I do.. But is it possible – even conceivable? – that we could win this battle and still lose the war?

Of course it’s possible – anything is possible, really. We live with risk – actually we manage risk, now, in our modern capitalist economies. That, in fact, is pretty much what it’s all about in a phrase: risk management. Those who get it right, win; those who don’t …

Yes, well, I suppose you’re right. Although sometimes I get the impression the whole scenario is one of mucho smoke and mirrors. And that no one or at least not more than a very few – a handful – of people know what’s really going on. All these risk management ‘instruments’ with their fancy names and impenetrable complexities. Until every once in a while some snotty-nosed just-out-of-college kid comes along and scoops the system. Cleans up and gets out … fast. They throw him (it’s always him, isn’t it?) in the clink for 18 months before he’s out carousing on the beaches of Thailand, doing drugs and thumbing his nose at all those ex-buddies of his (the exes before he went to the real prison), the derivatives traders and their cronies and ignorance-is-bliss supervisors and bosses.

Well, those are the risks we take, I guess. But look at what we get in return. The best lifestyle on the planet. Promise of more and better, too, ever upward and outward it is for us…

Yes, for the majority of us who have health care and real jobs and some kind of nest-egg for our retirement…

Oh, puleez, you’re sounding so 60’s with your bleeding heart liberalism. Everyone who wants to work can have a job in this country. Health care is everywhere, and the future is very bright … for everyone in this country…

There was an old 60’s saying that went ‘what goes around comes around’…?

Sure…

Well, suppose, just suppose we do win the battle but lose the war…

Could well happen, as I already said…

What then?

We figure out what went wrong, pick up the pieces and start again, I imagine. No rocket science there, really.

But what if it, this imaginary ‘it’ were totally preventable. If we could see it coming, wouldn’t we do something to avoid it, deflect it, postpone it?

Perhaps we would – and perhaps we wouldn’t. That would depend very greatly on what ‘it’ is.

What ‘it’ is… or when? Could it be the 'when' we worry more about than the 'what' of it?

Huh? Sorry excuse me?

Well, I just wonder if a lot of what people do is not just trying to postpone or put off or avoid some event or other – often an event that is pretty much inevitable. But the idea is ‘not on my watch’. That is, if I can postpone it until I’m out of here, grab my profit (of whatever kind) and run… you know the feeling, I’m sure.

Ahhh, can’t say that I do…

Puhleez, my friendly capitalist, my modern friendly capitalist, now who is behaving like a 60’s liberal – pretending you are holier than thou, have no sinister thoughts or feelings or plans, pretending that you don’t scheme and strategize as they call it officially, like all the rest of us…

OK, gotcha’, I mean you got me. Yes, of course, I have on occasion tried to take some little thing or two off the books, as it were, hide them from view for…

Yes, indeed. And, irony of irony, about 80% of the time you got away with it, too, didn’t you?

Oh I wish, my dear – may I call you ‘dear’? – just as a term of endearment, to express my affection, without any sexual or erotic implication?

Well, I would certainly prefer that you didn’t, or don’t in future.

Sorry, once again.

Not a problem. It just seems to me that these … ahh… conversations we are having should sustain a certain…

OK, OK, you don’t need to …

Decorum, why don’t we say. A certain level of decorum. And in my view, at least, ‘dear’ doesn’t really qualify.

I meant it innocently enough, as a measure…

Enough, enough…your anti-60’s liberalism is showing again, my modern friendly capitalist.

How about that, then? Does our level of decorum allow you to call me names, or at least use terms with such deep irony, expressed in that snarky way or that special tone of voice you put on…

No, it doesn’t. And if you find it offensive I will cease and desist at once. But the fact of the matter is – a word in my defense, just a couple of words, actually – I wasn’t speaking with any irony at all.

Sure… here we go again…

Truly. I thought you would take the term both literally, without irony of any kind (not even shallow irony) and as a compliment. There is really nothing pejorative, I mean nothing bad, about being a capitalist, these days, around here.

I actually do believe that…

I mean, everybody’s either doing it or planning how to do it, when the time is right, when they accumulate enough … capital.

Ain’t that the truth…

Even those who have it made, as they say, are setting up their own little capitalist enclaves, from mutual funds to investment ‘vehicles’ of various kinds – at the same time they do their charity work, set up their own foundations and all that stuff …

Yes, alright, capitalist it is – but hold the ‘friendly’ part OK?