“We’ll go down in history as the first society that wouldn’t save itself because it wasn’t cost-effective.” Donella H. Meadows
A continuation of a fictional reflection by a hundred-year-old Espe from 2112 about the start and on-going movement of transformation to Sustainable Living. I add clarification links and quotes as needed.
Getting to true sustainability was fraught with problems and nearly all were born out of the insane economic worldview that ran our world and its focus on materialistic consumerism. Since the 1970s, ecological economists (see Reconditioning Ourselves: Alternative Perspectives 2 – Economics parts 1, 2, 3, 4 {January 2020}) had been campaigning for a different kind of economics that could support a more sustainable paradigm. But even then the problem was that ecological economics merely gave a better tweak of a the same insane worldview that was ruining the planet. Even the Covid era green deals were merely band-aids meant to keep the disastrous economic system alive without really addressing all our environmental and ecological problems.
In retrospect, we are now grateful that the Cabal did what they did in trying to capture everyone within a ‘New World Order’ because it forced everyone to reevaluate their lives. Had it not been for the hardships being forced on humanity, people might have stuck in the materialistic mindset until it was too late to extricate themselves from the Cabals takeover.
I grew up as a young girl and teenager through the Covid era without a real sense of life before that time. Add to that my family who were ardent and well-informed sustainable living proponents and all I had was a hopeful vision of a better future rather than trying to hang on to a failed worldview. That is one of the reasons the young generation of the Covid era was so effective in driving the changes we needed in the 2030s. Even then it was a touch and go situation since my generation worldwide also grew up with what my father called ‘electronic joy’ – an addiction to our smart phones of the day and social-media that made us susceptible to the Cabals artificial intelligence plan to capture humanity’s soul itself.
By the time the Covid era came along, prosperity came more to indicate being monetarily rich and being able to consume more materialistically – this was a consequence of centuries of conditioning that was propagated further by mass media entertainment. There were plenty of people who were monetarily wealthy but not prosperous in the broader sense. Most people knew better, but it was during the Covid lockdowns that many awakened to the real meaning of prosperity that was far beyond having tangible monetary wealth and more to do with happiness, health, overall well-being, and life satisfaction in general. It had been measured since 2011 and was more a consequence of individual country policies than any direct action to achieve it.
Before the Covid era only one small country had even attempted to define prosperity as something more than economic Standard of Living and Gross National Index as measures of well-being (see The World Economy – are we really doing better? Measurement is everything! {August 2018}). Bhutan, a small economically poor country in the Himalaya at that time recognized that while money helped to create a technological base of manufacturing to gain more comforts and luxuries, there was much more to well-being than simply having money and technology. Of course, the rest of the world laughed at this notion of using ‘Gross National Happiness’ as a serious measure, but after the Great Change it made sense.
While governments and the super-wealthy were trying to save a misguided form of capitalism as a way of resolving global problems, there were many smaller groups setting up discussions to debate how humanity could thrive with a new paradigm. One that brought people together rather than separate them. We became united in intention of how to live, instead of separation and polarity – the awakening; the challenge of wisdom and Hope for a better world and not just one where we survived. In local communities all around the planet, people started doing what was right for them. The old economic system failed of its own excesses and we created a new one that served people with measures, like the Bhutanese one, that focused on well-being and not profit. Money became a tool for creating change and not for enriching the few at the expense of the many.
What was the impetus for change? Simply put, the active power of Hope. We couldn’t force a new world to occur, only to settle into a new way of thinking and have faith that what we doing would create a better place. We had to lose that judgmental idea of change. We started letting go of old ideas and beliefs, allowing new ideas to flow in. We had to lose blaming, canceling, and harsh judgments (the need to defend and attack) on things we once believed were inviolate. We had accepted the materialistic-consumer paradigm without question. Once we saw it for the sham it was, change became easier.
All the fear and worry that came from trying to ‘make ends meet’ in a paradigm of scarcity quickly dissolved as we recognized that there was abundance, and that if we worked together all the problems could be resolved without the need for heavy handed bureaucracies. The new economy started out locally all over the world as we used money to finance community projects for the benefit of everyone and not just ‘investors’ looking to make a profit. Our goal was well-being for all, not profits. We finally realized that what we focused upon as success is what we measured, so we focused on well-being and thriving life. After a few years, regional economies came together and then by 2050 we had the global Gaian economy. It was a logical economy based on the natural world economy of energy and was totally transparent. It would be hard for people from 2020 to understand how such an economy could focused on human and global life benefit, but back then they had been through over 600 years of economic thinking based on scarcity and a social power hierarchy demanding control of everything.
As a young girl I remember reading the Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas and how the musketeers had a rallying call of “One for all and all for one.” When we finally put aside our differences and started working together, it was a lot like that for whole communities everywhere. We didn’t expect people to have set roles. Indeed, we started becoming generalists rather than specialists. Of course, we needed technological specialization but we expected everyone to be able to ‘pitch-in’ and help whatever the tasks in front of us. We developed a new ethic of cooperation such that even if something was not your responsibility, you took ownership. I know in the communities I educated as a young woman in the 2030s, we did what needed to be done or to help someone else find the solution. Period. Even when nobody was watching. We brought our individuality to help where we could for the betterment of the community, but never lost sight of our personal sovereignty. We understood how we could be trapped in a system that put social good ahead of individual sovereignty and made extra-efforts to ensure that personal sovereignty was never lost. That is why it became one of the primary rights in the Gaian Bill of Rights of 2048 – the year we first officially recognized one global human community comprised of myriad communities from around the world.
In 2030 we started choosing our leaders for their ability to inspire and connect people and especially for their integrity. I recall a song my grandmother loved from 1988 that sang of a dream of ‘one love’ for humanity (see lyrics in video description box) that expressed how Love would liberate us to be the higher Better Angels we could be. I know I used this song to inspire people as I helped them become fully sustainable. It was a dream that could finally be realized. All it took was a change in thinking. TBC ……..
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