Richard Lloyd Jones: I'm Richard Lloyd Jones and this is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. Einstein made serious mistakes in equating energy with matter and thereby giving us the scientific justification for tearing up the planet looking for more material to extract energy from. His theory also single-handedly put the damper on space travel when he linked everything to the speed of light. If we have to propel a spacecraft at that speed, well, how will that be possible?
And even then, it'll take a few million light years to get anywhere interesting. You can see how that dampens enthusiasm for space exploration. Now, Einstein wasn't a bad guy, just inverted. However, he did say some good stuff, too, like how we should never lose our holy curiosity when contemplating the marvelous structure of reality. Somehow that touches poetry, doesn't it, and makes a case for how science shoulders up to art when it's at its best.
Norberto Keppe maintains that art is actually the basis of civilization, essential as the main pillar of any advanced culture. And art brings with it an implication of beauty and goodness, something we too often neglect in our modern technological paradigm. Work, art, and Occupy Wall Street. Today, I'm Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. You who listen to us regularly will know that I love to get feedback from you.
You can drop me a line anytime and let me know how our shows are hitting you. I truly love to know what you're thinking. JonesHealingAtGmail.com is my email. We sent out a quick survey of our loyal listener base just after New Year's. And if you're interested in giving us your feedback in a quick survey format, I can certainly zip that off to you.
You just need your email to do that, of course. By the way, if you have any concerns about how your info will be used, let me reassure you. In a very pre-1984 way, I never sell emails or share info people send me in any way other than trying to make our work on this program more relevant and useful to you. You know, the virtual world is a very different environment from the radio world I grew up in.
We Internet radio hosts don't have so much contact with our audiences as we used to in our terrestrial radio days. So please know that my invitations to you to participate with us are only designed to fill the vacuum I sometimes feel in putting our program out there and then missing the response. So a long-winded way of inviting you to participate more directly through email or on our Thinking with Somebody Else's Head Facebook page.
Every Tuesday night I participate in a reading group based on Norberto Keppe's work. I'm joined by a number of North Americans to consider the relevance and application of Keppe's work towards returning to a saner society. In our last class, Gilbert Gambucci, no stranger to our radio program, joined us to talk about his latest efforts at Occupy Wall Street, where he's living now, to introduce Keppe's solutions into the dynamic mix of protest, consciousness, and revolution going on there.
I thought that discussion would really be interesting for you to eavesdrop on. You're going to hear a number of voices on this call, including me, Gilbert Gambucci, Diana Boylston, a teacher and musician from New Orleans, Bob Butler, who has put in extended visits with us in Brazil a couple of times over the last couple of years, Susan Berkley, who's joined me on various Thinking with Somebody Else's Head programs a number of times.
None of these names will be mentioned before they start speaking, so just know that those are the people who will be speaking when you hear their voices. Hopefully you can distinguish the differences in their voices, too. As this is a conversation and not an interview, Some references to things are left dangling a little and need some explanation from me before we start the program.
Gilbert is talking particularly about his recent attempts to start productivist companies based on Keppe's business model, which started in New York in the 1980s and has been honed to perfection through Europe and now here in Brazil. Susan Berkley makes a reference to a song called Dirty Chateau from the great Rye Cooter's latest CD, Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down. Highly recommended, by the way.
He offers a very potent critique of our social malady done in terrific artistic style and played extremely well. I think you'll like Rye's, all of his work is fantastic. His latest one is really great. So when we return, we'll dive into our conversation when Thinking with Somebody Else's Head returns in just a moment on the Stop Radio Network. Back in just a moment.
Well, now I want to invite you to listen in as Gilbert Gambucci, Diana Boylston, Bob Butler, and Susan Berkley and I talk about business and art and Occupy Wall Street. So, welcome to our conversation this week on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.
Maybe you should bring us up to date now a little bit, Gilbert, while we're listening. What's cooking? What's happening?
Sure, yeah, just quickly. A turn of the tables, really, kind of a surprise for me, because, you know, last year there was never any mention of work of any kind, you know, co-ops or nothing like this. But this year it seems to be, like, very much in focus.
It doesn't get to, like, everybody in the movement, because it's very diverse and very widespread and all kinds of things going on at the same time. But there is certainly a focus now on opening co-ops. And this last weekend, we had a three-hour meeting with the New York City Association of Co-ops with the OWS working group, kind of trying to open a co-op, or they're trying to open several of them.
What they don't do like we do. What they do is they open one for each kind of work, you know. One for the silk screeners or trying to do one maybe for the catering people, one for the printers, and you know it's kind of not very economical you know. And but it was very interesting to see this dialectic between people who who know how to run a business and the owsers who are really social activists, you know, two completely different worlds having a dialectic you know.
And it was kind of nice to see, for the OWSers to see how they're so far removed from the professional working world, you know. And the others, the New York City co-op people are after money. You know, they're businessmen. But also, like, they're idealistic also. They've turned to opening co-ops so they can have a more fair distribution of the profits, you know.
They say things like, very close to productivism, they say, like, we want where the workers contract the capital, and not the capital contracts the workers. You know, you see, so they give, like, more emphasis on work than on capital. But anyway, co-ops are still basically capitalists, you know. People who invest in the companies, they earn money from that. You know from the dividends of capital and in productivism of course we don't do that.
The only people who earn are those who work in the company you know. They have their dividends if you want to put it that way you know. But um capital is treated as a loan so they're not they're not really productivism as as dr Keppe has you know forged this way of doing things. It's kind of close to a co-op, it might, it sort of looks like a co-op, but it's it's uh completely it's neither socialism nor capitalism.
And it's also more um economical you know for you for what I'm doing here is I've got three putting together three different groups uh renovators and there's those carpenters and a guy who does painting uh that's more like uh for the men you know.
And for the women there's a cleaning service that we're trying to get up and going and then there's like website designers because these kids they all know how to design websites and they're very good at it. So January is a bit slow and we're we're just getting started leafleting putting the flyers out you know and one or another person come trickling in.
We don't have a lot of discipline yet but it's um it's happening today was encouraging so that's where we're at. I'm hoping that the other cooperatives um if our productivism can get up and be going well that they would be influenced by that because it's really more economical you know. We share the same telephone, the same office space, uh the same legal opening of the company you know.
It's kind of like an umbrella company for as many as you can handle, many companies can come in and co-ops never do that of course, they just they focused on one type of work. And in fact we're distributing leaflets like right in right in this area because it's a good residential area.
Richard: How's that going over Gilbert, flyers, because you guys did that back in the 1980s, is that still having an impact, are you noticing that people are paying attention to what you're doing there?
January tends to be slow and I'm trying to drum things up so we're not in any kind of a rhythm of putting flyers yet yes and experimenting with this and another person uh one or another has showed up a second time you know. So I'm kind of being very patient and putting something together
Richard: here. And tell me, how are the people you're working with responding to this idea?
Are they excited about this idea of businesses? Are you having a chance to talk to them, or is it more just a... Sort of the nuts and bolts of business these days.
Both, you know. People are excited about it. And in fact, a guy just told me just like a little while ago, he just got back from holidays. People are just getting back from holidays now even, you know.
But just the fact that I'm ready, I've got everything ready here. I've got an office, got a telephone, got 20,000 leaflets ready, opened a company so that we can have the name secured and a bank account and like everything is ready to go. So I'm like all ready to jump all over it but nobody else is, they're coming in one step at a time so I got to be patient in working it out.
It's very cool. It's very exciting this year is the year of either the 1% is going to really take care of the entire planet for us or we get it back, you know.
Richard: Where is this idea of the cooperative movement? Where is this beginning, is this idea? Who's putting forward those ideas, Gilbert? Do you know? Is that clear?
You know, whenever we start something that goes, have you ever noticed that with Dr.
Kempi's work? He comes out with an idea and then it starts, I don't know what happens, even like it starts popping up all over the place. And so all of a sudden dr Keppe put a very strong emphasis on the on the companies. And so I'm just like all over trying to do my best to get it going and then all of a sudden there's a big interest in cooperatives here you know.
So I don't know how to explain that. At first I was kind of struggling with myself like well what's my role here, should I try to influence these guys who are interested in doing a cooperative or should I just do the companies uh my kind of like myself the productivism you know. And after this weekend and watching the discussions about it I saw that the old ws's they want cooperatives, they see that we have to start working and getting some more depth to what we're doing you know.
So then I I decided I should be doing the two, we should have here like a kind of model of what is the productivism and and then just just uh as much as I can go talking about the principles and the benefits of doing this. And in what way exactly the productivism is different from both socialism and capitalism. But first we have to have like a working model for people to see.
Otherwise they don't get it. So this is the objective. That's exciting, Gilbert, because what you're accomplishing is something we could never accomplish until you got there and we could do research on the ground floor. You know, we can put all our theories and try to distribute, but we, you know, with teaching, they say you take people where they are, and then you bring them to where you want them to go.
So you're down there, and you're finding out what are their needs, what are the lack, what is it that they want, and what is it that they don't know how to do. So you've just accomplished something in that short amount of time that any successful enterprise has to have in order to go for it, you know, to go far. Yes, and I'm not looking for like, some of the guys that were on the panel over the weekend were very sharp, you know, they were like clever businessmen who went to cooperative type of functionings, you know.
But I'm working with the owsers and you know it's like another thing uh I'm somehow attracting the better ones. At first I was worried about who I would attract here you know but what happens is those who are really have no intentions of ever working don't come anywhere near me, they're kind of allergic to that you know. So it's kind of like more or less the better people who are showing up.
And we are officially like what's called an affinity group. That is, we're an outside group working within OWS. So I'm working like within, with the people here, with the protesters, with the activists, and forming these productivist companies. We've had a difficult time since Bloomberg's psychotic crises attacking the Liberty Square. People got dispersed and living in all kinds of unnormal conditions. So now to try to pull together people to get them into some kind of discipline to make it form companies, I'm seeing that it's not going to be immediate.
Richard: Gilbert, if I could just give you a little bit of feedback on what I see as one of the results of your work and obviously Dr. Keppe's work. A couple of reports have been released recently. One was released through Bloomberg, actually, about the 1% complaining to the 99% stop picking on us. I don't know if you've seen this report. Yeah, no, I haven't.
Yeah, no, it's very interesting because the highest paid chief executive officer, Jamie Dimon, the highest-paid chief executive officer among the heads of the six biggest U.S. Banks, received a question at an investors' conference in New York. And he said, hey, look, acting like everyone who's been successful is bad, and because you're rich, you're bad. I don't understand it. We can't denigrate the whole.
We are the most productive. And they're starting to get very, very, very defensive about all this criticism that's happening. And I would say that a lot of this criticism is like a vibrational weight they are feeling because of the work directly that you are doing and through Dr. Keppe, Dr. Keppe's work too, over many years. But particularly now, you are really particularly putting a focus on the pathology of power, the sickness of those in power, something that wasn't really being talked about before you went there very much.
And so that focus is really touching them. They're getting, and you know, these guys are like bullies, so they can't handle any kind of confrontation. One little confrontation and they want to start screaming and crying to their mother, you know, and that's Exactly what I see happening now. Another thing that I read today was about the civil war that's erupting on Wall Street as the financial elites start turning on each other.
So I think this is a direct result of this kind of spiritual pressure of focusing on the pathology of power, that these guys are sick, and they don't like that. They do not like to be called that. They like to be doing their thing in the shadows and having everybody think that they're incredible and productive and phenomenal people. And starting to really call attention to this has really been a good move.
I think this is really having results now. I just wanted you to have that feedback.
And that resonates, Gilbert, with, I don't know the name of it, but that assembly page that you communicate with people on. You said something very similar to that, where you can see people, some guys trying to be more dominant than others. And I'm paraphrasing now, but you basically said sometimes you have to confront them to silence them.
And that's just what's happening. When people who are dominant are confronted, normally one of two things happens. Either they really get aggressive or they they start talking and they start backing down yes. In this case these people are agents here in the meetings trying to disrupt as much as they can and uh and I noticed lately they've been very quiet because uh everybody kind of knows you know who they are exactly. And um so um in order for them to stay and continue observing they haven't been put out but then anyway they don't disrupt anymore, it's kind of like that that's happening.
But I think uh Rich's observation was interesting, Bloomberg uh admitting that he is the one percent, this is great you know. They say stop picking on us one percent so that right there that division they recognize that they are the one percent, we are the 99 and there's a big difference between the two. And
Richard: it's also interesting Gilbert to see how out of reality they are, they either they really don't see it or they see it or they see worse, they see it and they want to pretend that it's not happening which is even more unethical.
But this idea that they can look at the world and say that everything's okay, this is a tremendous lack of ethics. So we see that the ethical issue is of one of the fundamental issues, these guys are totally unethical immoral against all of what it means to be a human being. And you're really, like, sort of shining the light on that. And so I really appreciate your work in that respect.
I think it's really great.
Well, and also the comment that they make that they're the only productive ones and they're being criticized for being, everybody's picking on them because they're productive. I mean, what nerve that 99% of humanity doesn't work? 99% of humanity, you know, is working for them. And they're sitting back you know what I'm saying that that really gets me yeah.
If we stop buying their products for one week uh they'll find out who the 99 percent are and who supports who exactly. It's like that song Rich that you play for me dirty chateau about about a maid that's working for this. Rich guy in a chateau, you know, and really... And
Richard: that's why in that article about it, you know, the commentator, the reporter said, you know, the balls on these guys, you
know,
Richard: to say we're the most productive.
I mean, if you look at that system of economy, it's totally unproductive. It's creating money from nothing. It's inflating that with incredible amounts of interest and speculation and derivatives. It's totally unproductive. It's totally outside the real economy of work. If I'm not mistaken, there's being organized on February 29th. Is this year a leap year? I thought I saw on February 29th there's going to be action taken against corporations it's not been specified yet probably some type of boycotting for some time as Dr.
Keppe says if people stop buying their product for one week, that's it they're finished. I don't know exactly what this is on the 29th of February, it's the end of February, something's being planned already. And because these people they're really activists, they're social activists, it's it's really fantastic and you know living in situations that are that are not appropriate um and the character of people does get affected by um let's say reaganomics you know, a society that is imbalanced that influences the person.
And so I found that I really don't get upset with the lack of discipline that I've been seeing so far and starting up the productivism, but just trying to help people to get more into being regular about what they're doing here, you know, and see if people can improve and get moving on to the thing, you know, because the society is sick and this affects people.
At the same time, these people are really idealistic. We live in a sick society. And, you know, some people are affected by that more than others. But all of us are affected by it.
Richard: I also love this idea of like an alternative society, Gilbert, because you don't have to confront directly. I mean, in a way, it's a real confrontation of the way things are.
But you create kind of a parallel thing and just ignore them. Let them, as Dr. Keppe says, leave them to their arrogant hate and stewing in their own hate. You know, leave them to do that. And we create our own banks, our own businesses, our own society. It's a really phenomenal example of how powerful is a therapeutic approach to social activism. I really like this aspect of Keppe's work.
Yeah, that's the beauty of it, man. We're going to marginalize the 1%, exactly what they've been doing with us for all this time, just by simply creating a society that is more just, more human. We want to service each other in more interesting ways and not producing the same thing over and over and over and not allow them to participate. You know, I was just thinking, don't we all love to go to a little town like a place like, I'm thinking Kingston, New York was, Rich, you know, where it's a lot of small, charming shops run by people, you know, and the proprietor.
And you go in there, it's always so interesting and you can spend hours browsing versus going to a shopping mall where you have to like, you barely get out of there with your life, you know. So if this is going to be the world of the future, it's going to be wonderful. On that kind of a line, I was noticing lately, I always get surprised when a person that I've known for some time, I find out that before coming to Wall Street, he was an artist of some type, either a painter or a writer.
There are many musicians here like myself. There's all kinds of artists here and many different types, like, you know, artists who make visuals for behind a talk show type of thing instead of a fixed screen. I mean, have you ever seen these visuals that kind of move, you know? What is that? It's not exactly laser, but, you know, all types of artists mixing art with technology.
And I was just seeing that after this year, this war year, as I call it, of 2012, when the society becomes ours again, I think personally, just by intuition, that we're going to see an explosion of artistic renaissance. Because most of the people here at Wall Street are artists. And so they're the ones who get it, you know. They want a more just society so that they can live in a more beautiful world.
So I think 2013 is going to be an artistic explosion. And not not in just the conventional seven arts but in like how could I say unlimited types of art. I think we're going to see for the first time in history because people combine their art with all kinds of different technological things and other other stuff. It's very very creative. The people here are very creative and and the world doesn't quite know that yet.
The amount of creativity that the activists here have.
Richard: There's this enormous link, again, that you've talked about and Dr. Keppe talks about all the time, between a true society and aesthetics. This became clearer to me. I think this is, what you're saying is really interesting because this is the basis of sanity, is linked to art and goodness and beauty, you know.
And I even get, like, a little bit surprised with myself.
Like, why am I here doing these productivist companies, you know? I'm not a businessman. I'm a pianist. Sometimes I wonder, well, it doesn't make sense. But there are just things that we are... I think we don't really know what is a true civilization yet. And I think 2013, we're going to begin to see what it is. The real Belle Epoque.
Richard: Long overdue.
And so, Diana, your place is very much in that line, right? Diana, this artist who wants to... This is your world, too.
And the thing that I was thinking of when Gilbert was saying that is people who are strongly artistic and lean on that or somehow made a decision about themselves as I did a long time ago, that that was the way that I expressed and created and communicated and even educated.
We're not always good at business. And when you're saying all those people on Wall Street are very good at business, you know, very good artists, they really, there's nothing more common than a poor artist. So there has to be some way to learn how to merge these two worlds. Because it doesn't matter how great you are at anything, artistically, in my opinion, you need, you know, it's a business.
And that's something that I continue to work on because I realize that without that, it seems to be lopsided or inverted. Diana, you just gave me an idea. You know, the artists don't combine, it's like water and oil, with capitalism because it's exploitative. Neither does it combine with socialism, which is also exploitative. So maybe it's really through these productivism enterprises enterprises that we can get into what is a real civilization you know some justice in the in the action aspect of the human being.
So it's really essential this productivity. It's not just something a better more economical way to make money but it's going to be like a an avenue for people people to be able to work with ethics to produce according to what's in their being you know which neither capitalism or socialism ever had quite quite to the contrary. Because many artists believe in a very elitist manner that you know that they they feel like well you know I'm doing true art so it doesn't matter if I don't get money.
Well that's really totally out the box thinking and not accurate either. So they have to learn that it's it's nothing to be proud of that you're poor and because you're rich doesn't mean and because you're rich in talent or rich in expressing your talent doesn't mean that you should be poor. It's nothing to be proud of. There's a way to combine the two.
Yes, it's fundamental this question that people should earn according to their productivity and not according to capital investment which co-ops still do. So this co-op thing really isn't the answer even though it's closer to productivism. It seems to be drawing closer and closer to the productivism until we get to that point where you stop this thing with people earning dividends because of money they invested.
You only earn dividends by your production, by your work. When that flips, when that enters, just that key right there, then it's going to be very,
Richard: very interesting. Then artists will not be poor. Art and business. There are many things to reconsider about both areas if we truly want to live in a modern and enlightened society, something I think all of us have been dreaming about for many, many, many years.
The hearts and souls of everyone is this dream of a better society, of a better world. Our science of Analytical Trilogy is about that, and our radio program, Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, is also about that ultimate goal. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones. Thanks very much for being with us. Our program, Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, is on the Stop Radio Network, and we are back next week to consider more of these fascinating themes.
Talk to you then.
