As I have emphasized many times: There is no superman coming to save us – we are the ones we are waiting for. We cannot be victims and accept the totalitarian two-step in which the unaware are being herded. Massive inflation is here and major recession around the corner. We are not seeing it clearly yet because of the massive amount of money being invented by the central banks that is being flooded into the system worldwide, but it cannot continue for much longer. Money is just a tool used to control us within the casino capitalism and ‘elite economy siphon’ we have been conditioned to accept as normal (see earlier post, Old Euro-Worldviews gone amok – Trying to Change Beliefs {April 2018}). The current system has us reliant on the system. Now having expressed a scene of gloom, let me reiterate why I have a positive view for the future.
We start by not relying on our governments and the monetary elites to resolve the global problems – they created the problems and will continue to do so. It’s how they designed the current situation. How do you get a ‘Hunger Games’ scenario? Let the elites take charge. We have to stop investing ourselves in their dream of a new feudalism. We have to invest our time, energy, creativity and our dream of a sustainable planet in ourselves. We do that from the ground up.
Invest in yourself and create value for you and your skills – create value and not money. Realize the impact and contribution you can have and recognize that it is not monetary success (revenue) that we need but success in living. We do not need more money-making projects – we need more wisdom and projects focused on how to live well in the world. Materialism is how the elites trapped us in that paradigm of greed and dissatisfaction. We can return to being more agrarian (less specialized and organic instead of today’s industrial agrarian system with its cocktails of chemical poisons) and still have technology that enhances our lifestyles. And without the elites trying to control us, we create communities that thrive along with individual freedom to express ourselves.
In one of my first posts, Relocalization and Community {January 2018} I introduced the idea of a Neo-tribalism that meshes those successes of indigenous peoples with the best of the modern world – an idea also expressed by Jared Diamond (The World until Yesterday) and Daniel Quinn (Beyond Civilization). As Quinn states, the hierarchical system that defines modern civilization is the one problem that keeps us trapped. We don’t want the strict boundaries and violent ethnicities of tribalism, but we do want their wisdom in living within the world. We don’t want the hierarchical control of so-called civilization, but we do want the benefits that modern technology can offer if used wisely. We can have a sustainable and peaceful world when we are not fighting over resources. And that involves recognizing that abundance is all around us once we let go the current economic belief that scarcity is required for an economy to work.
And it all begins with you living the practice of self-responsibility. Take control of you own circumstances as best you can. Be the leader you can be, to lead locally where you are comfortable in your skills. Everyone has some kind of leadership skills that do not require you to be the head-honcho, but allow you to offer your wisdom in helping your community thrive. And once we commit to a new system, each community will develop organically without some obscure need for a self-righteous oligarchy.
As Bertrand Russell expressed in his book, The Impact of Science on Society, “Although everybody who was in any degree progressive recognised the evils of oligarchy throughout the past history of mankind, many progressives were taken in by an argument for a new kind of oligarchy. ‘We, the progressives’ – so runs the argument – ‘are the wise and good; we know what reforms the world needs; if we have power, we shall create a paradise.’ And so, narcissistically hypnotised by contemplation of their own wisdom and goodness, they proceeded to create a new tyranny, more drastic than any previously known.” It’s not saying progressives are wrong but that we must recognize self-righteousness wherever it arises and hierarchical control as an excuse to follow dictates that can be extreme especially with censorship of alternative views. It’s up to us individually to make our own decisions without coercion on the best path to follow from all options being presented. Mass-persuasion is a system of open debates, propaganda is one view with no debate, which totalitarians love.
In civilization, we’ve had millennia of being repressed by oligarchies (totalitarians) of one kind or another, which I add we never liked no matter how accepting we had to become of them. Materialism is based on plundering the natural world and then plundering each other. Just look at the last thousand years to see how colonialization made this a wonderful platform for the oligarchies to build their monetary wealth on the backs of all the common people. And always with the idea that if one worked hard enough, then they too might enjoy the larger pieces falling off the elites’ table rather than the crumbs.
French economist Frédéric Bastiat observed how our modern economic system set the trend for the world’s problems, “when plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it. Bastiat recognized two kinds of plunder. Private plunder when one person or group forcibly takes another’s property, and legalized plunder when hierarchies, through legal means, take property from one group and give it to another group. The common good is used yet another time to justify these actions. Yet, I don’t think he was arguing against social benefits such as public utilities and helping people in need. I think his focus was on how hierarchies enrich themselves legally at the expense of the many.
It’s hard to become self-reliant when monetary wealth is viewed as meritorious, while poverty, depravation, and squaller seen as a result of bad luck or even bad character. This is how hierarchies justify punishing the sick and the poor. Remember, that poverty is a symptom of our economic system. Indigenous people have no money but do not consider themselves poor until they run up against the seductive and highly propagandized mindset of materialism. The cargo cults of the South Pacific are an example of this, although it is not as simple as that, since colonialism and modern capitalism, coupled with technological might tend to subdue people and control their thinking. Many nations were quite advanced socially until the Europeans arrived in the 1500’s – 1700’s and began the process of colonializing the world. Many argue that corporatists are still doing so. In the modern world, not having enough ‘stuff’ is somehow seen as a problem needing to be resolved, “Poverty is neither a crime nor a character flaw. Stigmatise those who let people die, not those who struggle to live” Sarah Kendzior.
It’s the hierarchical system that is flawed, and we becoming self-reliant on ourselves and collaborating with self-reliant others around us allows be self-reliant societally as well as individually. Catherine Moore (https://positivepsychology.com/self-reliance/) has some excellent ideas for developing that personal self-Reliance that will become your tools for creating the better world you want to create. In summary; accepting yourself, and being your own best friend; Inner confidence; Making our own decisions; Recognizing and managing dependence; Accept yourself for who you are; Having your own values; Not relying on ‘things’ to feel happiness, and; Deciding who you want to be, and how you want to get there. Imagine true freedom by getting out of the ‘rat-race’ and enjoying life every day without worrying about financial systems overwhelming you.
To Be Continued ………………………
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