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Money systems vs Ultimate Prosperity |
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Money systems vs Ultimate Prosperity |
There is much confusion as to what I speak about when I say we must get rid of the money system. Some think I mean cash money, others think I am talking about going to electronic money, or some local currency concepts, or work credit systems, or barter... few actually realize I am saying that we must get rid of all economics as we know it now. When freedom is solitary, it's a struggle.
When shared it is a joy, a communal work of art impelled by love.
From "When It Rained in Egypt", The Play of Freedom
No money, no metered exchange, no barter, none of that at all.
And the few who realized what was I was saying instantly thought, "He is obviously crazy!" or "Never happen!" and usually also told me so. (grin)
Most people are totally conditioned to believe that the money/exchange system, 'economics' is like the weather, something beyond us and beyond our control, something that is as natural as breathing... something embedded in human nature. They accept a super simplistic 'axiomatic' concept of economics, a basic set of unquestioned assumptions about the source of economics that even those who go into the 'field' of economics avoid looking at objectively.
Because of this very intense conditioned belief, and the denial it creates, they accept also all the side effects of the money/exchange systems that occur in the world, including the starvation of 40000 children a day, billions going without medicine or health care or even sanitation, hundreds of thousands wandering around barely surviving even in the richest country of the world, the destruction of the environment by rich and poor driven by the need or greed for money... and the stats of the system goes right over their heads, like 1% of the people in the world owning 98% of all real wealth...
'Real Wealth' by the way, is land and property and environment... and owning 98% of the 'real wealth' in real terms, means owning all the people who require that 98% of 'real wealth' to survive. That 'real wealth' was here long before humans came around, and humans claiming that 'real wealth' as their property, usually by violence, does not change the relationship of humanity to that 'real wealth'. We survive because we are made up of, and out of, and sustained by, that 'real wealth'. All we have learned to do comes from the study of that 'real wealth', (we call it 'technology',) and if that 'real wealth' is damaged or destroyed then the people who depend upon it for survival are also destroyed.
The world is not exterior to us, really. WE are interior to it. We, in the extreme arrogance of the money system/property paradigm, claim to be autonomous, to be separate from and higher than everything in nature. But it is an easily observed lie/self deception. Humanity can be either a cooperating part of the whole or a cancer to the whole. Imagine that your liver decided it was separate from and higher than everything else in your body? Imagine that it started using up all the blood, all the nutrients, and grew to replace your intestines and kidneys and lungs... isn't that what a cancer is? AND WHAT IS THE RESULT?
In the same way that we need our livers to function cleanly, we need to realize that we, as a species, also must function cleanly within the greater body of the world, or we will kill ourselves along with our greater body, just as a cancerous liver within us would kill itself as it killed us. It's that simple, really. With the money system/property paradigm ruling the minds of humanity, enforced by guns and threats of violence, the rules of the system continues to kill the planet, and the only path left open to us is the agreement to move together and simply take care of each other, without using money or any of that system/paradigm. We are not allowed to survive without using money as individuals, but as large enough groups, we can choose to not use money or barter among and within our group, without any major problems with 'authorities', who are the authors of the system in the first place.
I'm not talking about confronting or competing or struggling with anyone. I am talking about living with, working with, caring for and being cared for, by others in an environment of equality, and with an emphasis on the environment.
Any economic system, including barter, has a level of judgment in it. Each item is judged by one as compared to something else. This judgment causes division between folks, from the very beginning of their sharing of resources. When people are struck by disaster, and all they have is destroyed, they are often overwhelmed by the generosity of others, even complete strangers. They get all they need, and often more. No judgment is put on the gifts, and the feelings all the people have, giver and receiver alike, is profoundly spiritual and loving.
In a moneyless society, where the overwhelming concept is that folks take care of each other, this is the glue which binds them together. It is a shift in paradigm, because it requires that each person puts the value of each other person ahead of a lot of ingrained concepts learned early from the money system.
It's a matter of realizing that people are always more important than any set of rigid concepts, especially the concepts of money or barter. A family with children, for example, need more than a family without children or single folk. What people need has to come first, then what they want. On an individual basis, we do this kind of thing all the time within our own lives and families. The moneyless paradigm just means that people have to extend their idea of this to the other people in the community.
The money system is an artificial evaluation of people in worth, with some people being considered worth more than others. In the division of people this paradigm creates, people are blamed for whatever lack they have and exulted for any plenty they manage to accumulate. The measurement is made in terms of the paradigm, not in terms of the fact that every human is more than any paradigm can truly understand, just as Nature is more than any human paradigm can understand. To consider every human being to be of equal worth, and their needs and wants as valuable as anyone else's is to unify people, erase divisions, and make them work together far more efficiently than any other system man has every come up with. After all, it is the system Nature created in the first place.
The world has far more wealth than anyone realizes. Major studies of the world's resources along with available technological levels show that if we change the most basic paradigms we use, there are literally 6 billion billionaires on the planet now, and that is without any further destruction of the environment.
I don't believe in the concept of 'Utopia' as expressed or defined as some kind of 'perfect' world. To me, both words are essentially meaningless grunts. However, even as Humanity works out it's often irrational dynamics, there is no reason to kill our environment or 32000 children a day by totally unnecessary starvation or the bombing of whole populations with weapons of mass destruction or any of the nasty stuff that goes on daily on this planet.
We can live in a world where the environment is healthy and Humanity, complete with it's technology, can be integrated into it in a rational, realistic, and natural way. We can live with absolutely no poverty, with people working at what they want to work at, without the intense stress of currently 'normal' life that is now killing millions, have time to raise our children personally, have time to get to know each other, and most of all, to have a basic spiritual benchmark for decency about how we treat each other.
We can have a diversity far beyond what we have now, and yet have no conflict from that diversity. We can actually, practically, live with more freedom than is now even imaginable. All it takes is for people to get beyond the concepts and practices which divide us up into conquered individuals, to have a level of individualism that is now not available.
Individualism and collectivity is not in opposition. It is our concepts, largely caused by economics and politics, that create this sense of opposition. We can eliminate both. I will speak of politics in a further essay, but it too is a leftover system of concepts which are not practical nor survivable in the real world.
If we are to survive... we have to change. We have to change our minds individually and sidestep the existing destructive systems of thought which oppress and divide us. We are One. We are individuals. The two are simultaneous, not two separate states. We are Universe being aware of itself, and locally, on this planet, we are this planet being aware of itself. We have a natural niche in the ecology of this planet, and our future is incredable, beyond the imagination of the highest minded of us. Let us do this, and do it in time to make it work. This generation, the generations that now exist, have the ability to respond to all that is going on, and that is the definition of our individual and collective responsibility. We can't leave it to governments, to religions, to corporations, or any other existing institution... we have to do it ourselves!
Thank you for reading this. May you join us in the forerunner movement and
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