I meant to post about this article when it came out. That was in April 2008. Which was a while ago. Even longer ago in feeling than it is in calendar months. I try to get a sense of it and come up short. Reading this helps a little. Or maybe this old cartoon:

But I won’t ever be back there, ever go back to the time (8 April 2008) when I described the girl I dated before Emily as “my last unsuccessful relationship”. Will I ever have that kind of confidence in a relationship or a person again? How could I? I can trust, I can try, but the idea of that kind of certainty seems innately preposterous. But this is not what this post is supposed to be about.

It’s supposed to be about a man on the verge of death, one who is revered all but universally in the wake of his death, now 42 years on and counting. About the fact that he was not content with the political or economic systems that comprise our perspective today, that seem to consume even the most progressive and semi-radical of proponents. That even the radicals he was surrounded by at the time were not up to his vision of a peaceful demolition of a way of life that leaned heaviest on those who could least afford it. Read the article, the first one, the one I didn’t write. Register your vision of the man we celebrate every January and on a road sign in every town with the advocacy of paralyzing Washington until it coughed up capitalism and spat it out.

What King knew then is something still barely being whispered about in the frenzied corridors inhabited by a small portion of my friends and other scattered like-mindeds. That the idea of eternal growth in production and consumption is innately flawed on a fixed planet with fixed resources. The the idea of competition where one’s life is literally on the line winds up all too often in death. That the commoditization of everything means that most people end up with nothing and a few people end up being able to functionally enslave everyone else. That racial equality is only the first step in a long road toward the kind of equality that we should all be striving for.

Is it any wonder, then, that he was silenced? With even his closest allies nervous about the next direction he would take his booming voice and sweeping influence, it is unsurprising that someone pulled the plug. Watch his Memphis speech:

He knew it was coming. He knew the risks and he knew it was worth it. Not just for racial equality, mind you, but for the message that capitalism was insufficient as a way of organizing a nation.

So next time you think of the importance of the economy, think of what you want to happen, think of your own personal compromises with financial “realities,” remember MLK. Ask yourself if (and if so, why) you believe so wholeheartedly that this structure is the terminal shape of human interaction. Does it really make sense? Is it really working for you? Are you living the same life you would live without the concept of money?

“Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”