Re: A Million Paths to Peace

Jeff,

I ‘linked' to the article by Michael Strong.  I have to say that I was a bit surprised at what I read.  I was expecting something visionary-but it seemed to me it was another round of the old arguments that ‘capitalism is the one right way'.  This article seems to perpetuate the ‘either/or' linear mindset which to me is such a limited view.

The argument of ‘capitalism vs. socialism/communism'…where capitalism is the ‘proven best' only works as long as we continue to believe that ‘commerce based on consumption' is the goal of life.  All three of these are consumption economies-the only difference being in how consumption is distributed.  From that standpoint, I would agree with Michael-capitalism is by far the very best.  But what I won't agree with is that ‘consumption economies' are the best. In fact, we all know, deep down inside that when the consumption stops, the economy does too.   At that point, it won't matter whether capitalism, socialism or communism is the distribution method-any and all of these consumption economies will fail. Talk to anyone about Christmas and we all know that we must go shopping to help the economy and even if we want to stop shopping, that underlying fear of ‘slowing down the economy' hangs over all of us.

It is time for us all to widen the lens beyond the consumption economy.  The belief that ‘if the economy is booming through ever increasing sales/profits, everything else will fall into place' is a fallacy.  We have lived under this belief for quite sometime and yet, we can look around the world and see that much is missing.  Even in our own country-despite a strong capitalistic grip, 25% of our children are hungry and almost 20% of our GDP is focused on health care-fixing a very unhealthy, overweight/obese population; our rivers, oceans and air are polluted and global warming seems to be accepted as a byproduct of our industrial economic success.. The last 5 years the economy has boomed-yet clearly, something is missing.

I found his comment that ‘if intellectuals, journalists, professors and teachers had promoted trade as the foundation of peace continuously from the 19^th century to today, the 20^th century would've been far more peaceful-I'm not quite sure how he makes that quantum leap.  The rise of the ‘insatiable desire/consumption economy' exploded in the late 1800's, early 1900's as a way to control the recession/depression cycles of the 1800's.  As the industrial revolution took hold, the first wave of ‘new products' did produce explosive economic growth but right after this, consumers decided it was ‘good enough' and instead of more ‘stuff', they wanted to work less and use their time to impact their social systems-family and community.  This produced another recession-and ‘capitalistic/industrialists' discovered the risk of a consumer economy-consumers stop consuming and the economy comes to a halt.  To address this, the idea of encouraging the citizenry to believe in ‘insatiable desire/insatiable consumption' was seen as the solution.  The advertising industry in the early 1900's successfully planted this new story and the economy boomed.  By 1929, it seemed as if ‘insatiable desire' was unstoppable.  But surprisingly, this was not true-something was obviously flawed in this system.

Yes, Jeff-consumption will happen-but to assume that it is the defacto solution to keeping the economy and thus ‘life' flowing is short sighted.  “Life” continues whether communism crashes (obviously the Soviet Union did not vaporize as communism died) or socialism crashes (his focus on African examples makes it obvious that life continues even as people are starving to death).  “Life” continues to weave itself throughout a capitalistic economy-even if 25% of our children in this country go to bed hungry tonight. 

I would encourage Michael to see the economy from an ‘and/all' instead of the current ‘either/or'.  The ‘and/all' that I'm talking about is the three legged stool of LIFE….social, natural and economic systems are equally valued as we create a world that works for peace for all.  I think this is what Oxfam and others in the global development circles are struggling to say.  Their exclusive use of social/natural systems while shunning the economic system was as short sighted as the capitalists ‘commerce/economy is everything' while shunning the natural and social systems.  Both sides have to shift out of the either/or and move to and/all.  The time is NOW for all of us to facilitate this shift;

I would refer you to Barbara Brandt's book, “Whole Life Economics”. In it, she shares that in the early 1900's, our forefathers were challenged with the desire to make a world that works.  They hoped to eliminate the continuous depression/recession cycles that disrupted economic and social systems-creating havoc for all.  At that time, there were 3 options that were available-

1. Do nothing and let the depression/recession cycles continue

2. Create insatiable desire in consumers so that business/economic growth would continue on a never ending growth cycle-preventing depression/recession and making everyone better off…

3. Envision the ‘whole'-and create a vision that included/honored the social, natural and economic systems as equally valuable in creating high quality life for all (human, animal, earth, water, plant, etc.)

Our forefathers rightly rejected #1-something needed to change because depression/recession hurt businesses as well as families and individual.  More of the same just couldn't be the answer.

#3 was beyond their ability to see at this time.  With respect to the science of the day, as well as the concept of ‘globalization'-it is next to impossible to think that they could have foreseen how the depletion of natural resources matched with massive population growth would merge together to create world wide crisis of such magnitude within just  100 years.  There was simply no motivation to choose this option based on their world view at this time.

So, #2 became the choice.  And I honor that choice-we can not expect that at that time they could've even fathomed that #3 existed.  For them, it was either #1 or #2 and #1 was unconscionable.

Michael's article perpetuates the old either/or and as I said, I was surprised to see this.  It is time for #3-and/all.  It is time to design a world that works by including all three systems: natural (earth, water, air, plant, animal) social (all people) and economic (commerce/consumption).  If we are going to create peace it will be done through all three of these systems, not just commerce.  It's an incredible world in front of us!

Re: A Million Paths to Peace

Ann,

I have spent most of my adult life working to shift attention and energy away from the consumption of goods and the satisfaction of ego needs towards the pursuit of the true, the good, and the beautiful.  I create schools that support more positive cultures in which young people invest more of their fabulous energy in being kind, compassionate, aware and pursuing lives of creativity and wonder.  I am absolutely committed to developing a society that profoundly embodies values very similar to those that you advocate.  See my “Ten School Designs” for a concrete vision that I expect you would find far more appealing:

http://tinyurl.com/j2vb8

Because creating school design #10 is my number one goal, I first must get us to the point at which markets in happiness and well-being are legal.  For a very brief sketch of why markets in happiness and well-being are illegal at present, see:

http://www.edspresso.com/2006/07/legalizing_markets_in_happines.htm

The most complete statement of this vision is available in “The Creation of Conscious Culture Through Educational Innovation,”

http://tinyurl.com/m7nv8

For a variety of reasons, both experiential (15 years in K-12 education) and theoretical have convinced me that the only way to create the wisdom traditions that you rightly admire will involve communities, conscious communities, intentional communities, virtual communities, school communities, etc.

Moreover, it will take greater freedom to develop these communities.

With respect to environmental issues, the only lasting approaches will involve either privitization of the commons and/or environmental land trusts, along the lines of Peter Barnes' speech to the E. F. Schumacher Society:

http://www.schumachersociety.org/publications/barnes_03.html

Either of these approaches could be developed to a level of sophistication at which externalities are internalized.  Movement in these directions, which is taking place already, will result in a “bright green future” similar to that suggested by the environmental futurists at worldchanging.com. 

I am trying to communicate a very sophisticated vision briefly; my writing taken as a whole is working towards describing all of this clearly and succinctly.  For the time being, I'll just finish by saying that I agree 100% with your sentiment:

“3. Envision the ‘whole'-and create a vision that included/honored the social, natural and economic systems as equally valuable in creating high quality life for all (human, animal, earth, water, plant, etc.)”

and that I am working to create a global perspective that makes this a reality.  In my view, economic growth and free markets are critical to achieving the goal that you aspire to.  Indeed, with respect to education, health care, and community development we will want far freer markets than we have today.

The animus against economic growth strikes me as perfectly arbitrary.  If we get a carbon emissons permit system, we may see tremendous growth in wind energy, with GE (the largest producer of wind turbines) showing tremendous profit and earnings growth as they crank out thousands of wind turbines.  An electric car industry would be an enormous industry, contributing to tremendous profits and economic growth.  A happiness and well-being industry, in which people on a large scale actually “envisioned the whole” and acted accordingly, would hopefully be a high growth industry for a long-time.  

And, in the meantime, very traditional economic growth is crucial for peace and prosperity in much of the world today.

My life is a campaign against consumerism and materialism.  And, irony of ironies, I have come to the conclusion that we need a far more radically free market world than we have at present in order to achieve your goals.  To understand how this is so will require a major gestalt shift, and I am working as fast as I can to help as many people as possible understand this gestalt shift.

When I read your post, I realize that we are working within such different gestalts it would take quite a long time to help you see the world that I am seeing.  My writings to date have begun to address various aspects of this world:

http://www.flowproject.org/michael.html

I'll try to respond as quickly as I can to specific questions, but this is a very dramatic gestalt shift that is not easily grokked one piece at a time.

And I have not even had a chance to return to the theme of peace, but I do believe that conventional mainstream commerce is one of the most powerful forces for peace that we have.  The best statement of how this works is in “Prediction Markets and World Peace,”

http://www.flowproject.org/Downloads/Prediction-Mkts%20&%20Peace.pdf

but even there it is not yet a complete statement.

Peace,

Michael

Re: A Million Paths to Peace

Perhaps Michael–trying to do this in a pod format is a bit of a challenge–

To that, I too have spent my adult life trying to teach people to know themselves as 'whole' human beings–because until we connect to our own whole…its really hard to connect to the larger whole of the natural/economic/social systems (Community of LIfe).  When my environmentalist friends would get so frustrated–pulling out their hair saying “What is wrong with these people, don't they get that they're destroying the very world they're depdendent on”, I would calmly say to them, “When a person is so disconnected from their own SELF, its really not a big deal that the forest is burning or the water being polluted–or millions are living in squalor–they're too caught up in their unconscious chaos'.  

When I would teach clients (and my clients are educated, successful professionals!) to see the whole by using my Life Puzzle–they would just sit there and say “Wow, it never occurred to me to see myself as a physical, emotional, thinking, sexual and spritual whole'….but now that i see it, its so obvious….At that point, it is much easier for them to see why 'change' needs to happen.  Ironicallly every one of my adult clients says “Why aren't we teaching this in schools?”  Well, as you and I know….schools are not designed to teach people to own and create whole lives…  (they could be…but with a few exceptions, by and large, they're not)

I share this Michael because I think we're on fairly similar 'gestalts' –perhaps just different approaches for getting there.  As I read Peter Barnes' lecture–Capitalism, the Commons and Divine Right–I'm in total 100% agreement with him–he's very much talking about #3 (from previous email–designing a world based on the 3 legged stool of the natural, social and economic systems”)  His mentioning of Marjorie Kelly's expose of the 'divinity' of which we have made money is wonderful. As he say, “If we were to revere the commons as fervently as we currently revere capital, our divine right would shift'.  In other words…we would have  LIFE driven economy and the 'market' would serve it in its creative, entrepreneurial way to to improve, support and grow LIFE. What a fabulous way to spend our energies–and perhaps that is what you're saying too.   Then we design cars that are lightweight, use solar energy to power them and are totally recyclable when its time to do that.  We'll make money yes, but mostly we'll build the Community of Life.

 As it is right now, we revere capital and we have a Money driven economy and the 'market' serves it in its creative entrepreneurial way to improve, support and blatantly to grow MONEY.  While a small portion of folks are having a great time doing this, massive amounts of humans are enslaved to this limited vision (including wealthy folks) and we stay stuck.

I think it is bringing forward and exposing this skewed 'reverence'–because we are so blinded by the golden glint of 'divine right of capital' we can't even see that it is problematic, that is of utmost importance.  It seems to me anyway, that when people examine this–just like when i would show them my 'whole” Life Puzzle–its a 'duh, wow, now that i see it, its so obvious' that sets the foundation for actually being able to shift out of the old and into a new world that values natural, social and economic systems in a balanced whole.

There are, as you say, a million paths to peace….I just feel, like Barnes' that unless we can shift our reverence, we're spitting in the wind.  Now, you may be saying the same thing-In your sentence from the previous email….-And, irony of ironies, I have come to the conclusion that we need a far more radically free market world than we have at present in order to achieve your goals. Do you mean by this….a 'radically free market' is a 'LIFE (commons)' driven economy instead of a money driven economy as Barnes does?–and with this shift we really expand the 'creativity, entrepreneurship' energy which is currently stunted by the Money driven market?  If that's what you're saying, then we too are in 100% agreement. 

Peace
ann

Re: A Million Paths to Peace

Michael; Ann:

I want to thank you both for this discussion; to Ann for voicing a set of concerns which could very well have risen from my own throat, and to Michael for painting a picture of a future in which money and capitalism and economics can be leveraged toward the satisfaction of existential concerns and the pursuit of higher truths, so that the runaway consumption and destruction of the commons will no longer be a concern.

It seems to me that this gestalt you're both speaking from is overdetermined. That is, it gives me such hope that even though you come from such radically different perspectives, the end result, the final vision, is the same. It seems to me that we all know, in our deepest core, what needs to occur; we all seem, at heart, to understand the necessity of that fundamental radical shift necessary to save ourselves - both personally and collectively - but that many of us are too disconnected to realize this and those of us that do are stuck wrestling with a system of language that's not quite conducive to sharing these sorts of values.

But challenges are fun, hm? Communicating our commitment to creating the spaces and places for these insights to occur – where people can realize again that money is merely instrumental and that there are far, far richer satisfactions in life, and that our allegiance to the growth of money, rather than, say, freedom, is causing us to systematically bankrupt those deeper areas of fulfillment – isn't easy, but it is possible. So thank you thank you thank you.

Let's keep talking about wholes.

Re: A Million Paths to Peace

Challenges are indeed fun & - in not to unlike a fashion as Michael Strong - I to have been rising to the challenges for 40 years or more - BUT the REAL TIME ACTION in support of Penny On - which is taking place, day by day, everyday - at Mitchell High School in Stoke on Trent, UK - IS truly awesome. It is absolutely a tribute to the entrepreneurial spirit of Josiah Wedgewood & others, that set the standards of the potteries, during the industrial revolution and to Reginald Mitchell, inventor of the Spitfire & former student of the school now renamed after him.