I used this in an earlier post but it is worth repeating: “I used to think the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change. I thought that with 30 years of good science we could address those problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy…and to deal with those we need a spiritual and cultural transformation. And we scientists don’t know how to do that. Gus Spieth
In part 1 of this current theme I talked about how through a long development through history we had arrived at a Dominant Social Paradigm (DSP), which is the basis for most of the environmental problems we face today. Back in 1978, researchers had already been showing that much of the human population in the developed world was already aware of and supportive of a pro-ecological worldview called the New Environmental Paradigm (NEP). This was the root of my own research into worldviews (see my previous post, Richard’s Research on Worldviews and why he is optimistic about a transformation) to understand what it would take to get us through a transformation to a sustainable future. To sum up, over two-thirds of people are ready to transform NOW, but many were too locked in to the DSP, and unwilling through fear of change, to begin the process.
In the Speth quote above, he uses the terms Selfishness, Greed, and Apathy as the greatest problems, and these very problems are propagated by the DSP. Despite so many of us telling people that the corrupt financial system being manipulated by the elites is not serving the mass of people, change was not coming as it might. Then in the last few months, the Covid-19 (Coronavirus) lockdown created a whole new situation.
The most positive thing that occurred was that people recognized personal connections so much more and even the desire to get into nature without restrictions. While I’ve not doubt that some families may be ready to kill each other, overall, it showed billions how much they need continuous connections to other people. The ruin of the economy also showed so many just how fickle and malicious was the financial system running their lives. Even with the opening up coming, it is clear that the world we once knew has ended and that it is easier to rely on people around you than it is people manufacturing and growing cheap stuff and food for you a half a world away. The many who were furloughed or laid-off were quickly pushed into a world where the realization that you can live by yourself at the cost of others was no longer an option. The coming economic depression is the impetus to make the decisions to create the world we want rather than the Hunger-Games society into which the Cabal would like to force us.
At the beginning of the 19th century, Europe was transforming through the industrial revolution into a new kind of living based on technology that would elevate the DSP to new unprecedented heights of ecological destruction and human separation from nature and each other. In the new USA still trying to fathom what it would become; two powerful ideologies were debating the path of success for the country. Thomas Jefferson dreamed of an Agrarian society while Alexander Hamilton pushed the technological path. It is crucial to note here that both opposed the role of private banks as financial reserve banks in controlling a country’s economy. Philosopher Zeus Yiamouyiannis states that we have a corrupt economy because our modern economy serves the needs of money and not the needs to the people. The Covid crisis has clearly emphasized this because so many governments have used much bailout money (to the tune of many trillions of dollars worldwide) has gone to corporations with little to help the people whose lives have been upended into a new poverty. Jefferson’s Agrarian Dream heralds a new potential path but within a new sustainability paradigm.
There is much rhetoric about a ‘new normal of recovery,’ the simple truth is that the economy is contracting and with it the contracting numbers of jobs we take for granted in a technocracy. Not that the common person has been doing well this past couple of decades. While the stock market has flourished artificially (10% own 84% of the worlds stocks) funneling money up to the elites, the common persons wages have all but flatlined, even disappearing in the Covid crisis. The lockdown has given people a lot of time to contemplate what is important in their lives. Most who supported a NEP perspective and might have been nervous in letting go of the DSP and its inferred ‘security’ are now being pushed into rethinking what they can do to live better. In the coming months more and more people will awaken to see how the economic system is crashing and now be ready to support a new system of living.
At least since the 1970s, when the default world currency of the US dollar was uncoupled from the gold standard, money has been completely uncoupled from how it benefits humanity. What is coming, if we the people control it, is a rebuilding of the economy around a paradigm of democratic capitalism where money is used to serve people and metrics of success hinge on how it did that. (Look at my previous posts about Bhutan’s economic metrics, e.g. Manifesting a New Global Society while keeping our diverse global cultures 2 –Evaluating our Societies.) As this new ‘depression’ hits, what we will see is a greatly reduced tax base where centralized services will also contract, and with it the contraction and collapse of the global corporate business plan with its fetish on money and lack of caring about the people it uses. What I see happening is a fast decentralization of governmental control (in every country) and a Radical Relocalization where people come together in tight-knit communities of support and mutual caring.
I must confess that in my Sustainable Living textbook where I used my Espe story in each chapter to show how the future might unfold, I originally thought it would be oil supply shocks that pushed us to change, but a viral crisis seems to be fulfilling the same roll. We now have a chance to invert the financial pyramid to work for us and not the elites. As I have often said, we don’t need the elites and by rebuilding self-sufficient community systems we begin the path towards a sustainable society. The world of the DSP is about to fall apart leaving the two-thirds of us that support a NEP to lead the way into a better future of living sustainably rather than a dystopian hunger-games. For those who were hesitant to act, this crisis should be the impetus to empowerment for action.
To Be Continued ……………………….
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