Feeding Children, Feeding Ourselves

It's nearly impossible for me to hear a story on news radio that is not about a problem that is created by the monetary system and its engine of scarcity.  People need help, that help is supplied through programs, but programs are under pressure because they never have enough money, which makes providing help so much more limited.  So much money is spent on just getting more money that that money isn't used to actually provide the assistance needed.  The assistance can be from environmental protection groups to education to disaster relief to lighthouses (which apparently no one wants to pay for with their own money).

Heading home Monday evening I heard this brief story about a woman who moved into a trailer park to escape an abusive situation.  She didn't have the help of any welfare programs and she had not enough food to feed her children.  She was desperate and demoralized.   She broke down and finally asked her neighbor for help.  They shared food that night, and that was the beginning of a co-op that emerged to support their whole community.

This story, while heart-breaking, was great in that it serves as a reminder that even though our system is set up to pit each one of us against each other in the battle for the sacred and scarce resource of money, that compassion and sharing can survive in spite of it.  Imagine what could be accomplished if the system actively fostered these qualities?

http://thestory.org/archive/The_Story_010311_Full_Story.mp3/view
(the story I'm referring to appears at around minute 27)

"Do Whatever You Have To Do To Sell Yourself"

This is the lesson that I learned during my orientation at the unemployment career center.  We tend to act so smug because we believe we have moved beyond the archaic traditions of dowries and servitude.  "Sell yourself" is an expression to denote prostitution, which our culture demeans.  When it comes to jobs/careers though, it is perfectly "normal."  It appeared that no one even noticed how dehumanizing this was in the room of seven people who were learning to say "I'm in career transition" instead of "I'm unemployed."

Most of the one-hour orientation was a pep talk for the group not to feel so depressed about their lack of employment.  We were supposed to feel good that, in spite of all the stormy weather outside, we had the resolve to attend this class to help us pursue the lofty goal of getting someone to hire us!  The instructor went further to say that we were actually "working;" we were working to market ourselves.  How much time and resources are spent on finding people jobs, I wondered.  It would be so much more worthwhile if these resources were used to find people the right work for them, as whole individuals, but with the way things are, society is focused on just finding people anything that provides them an income.

Despite the overwhelming evidence of our interdependency as a species, we still hold high the values of rugged individualism.  One person, all alone, can succeed and amass great power and wealth through sheer determination and competency.  It is very shortsighted of us to see life this way.  Our society is constantly disintegrating because of this illusion, and the result is a renewal of the stream of suffering.  We cannot wall ourselves off from sorrow without hurting ourselves.  To see this interdependency is to awaken to a sense of responsibility.  If your hand is injured, it's best to soothe and repair it.  If you are too late in responding to its injuries, you will have to cut it off, but then you have lost something special.  The hand does not have to "sell itself" to us for us to nourish it.  We instinctively understand its importance.  Will the time come when we understand the importance of each one of us, not as an abstract concept, but in our guts?  Then, people won't have to treat themselves and others as commodities.

If it's free, what's in it for me?

The misunderstanding that humans only do things because they provide some kind of financial reward is a frequent point of debate around the Zeitgeist Movement.  I cannot remember the source, but I remember reading a few months back about a study that demonstrated that financial rewards do not inspire greater creativity in a person's work. In fact, a financial incentive was only efficacious in its effect of increasing productivity in jobs that require a lot of repetitive behaviors (which are usually the lowest paid jobs).

So, I was wondering about the people around me. What kinds of things do they not only do for free, but they may also do them at their own financial loss?  (To protect their privacy, I will refer to them generally.)

Whether investing in photography equipment, rock and gem instruments, or culinary supplies, these people do so at their own loss.  One person spends several hundred dollars to create a piece of art even when there is no intention of making some future profit.  This art is created and mounted for the pure pleasure of its expression.  A feast is prepared and shared for the fulfillment of sharing.  The rocks and gems are inspected and measured for the enrichment of learning.  Pictures are taken with utmost care for the honor of immortalizing nature's beauty.  Information is shared in the hopes that such information will mobilize people to change a condition that is causing suffering.  Some people don't have a loss of their own physical resources, but they offer their time and energy to help make people feel better.

The internet is full of contributions from people who have no monetary reward.  I was playing a video game recently and I had some trouble progressing. I went looking online for a solution and there wasn't just one......there were dozens of discussions, video posts, written posts and other recommendations about just one problem! I wondered, "why would anyone spend the time to do all this work for nothing?"  Because they like to.  While it is possible to get a bit of fame and ride that wave to some financial reward from a contribution to the internet, the probability is very low.

What's really surprising is that even in an environment of wage slavery and "time is money," we still have people who produce, create, share, and just plain do for the simple fact that they want to do it.  It's even more surprising that people do these things at their own financial peril.  After all, they could be saving all that money and investing in something that will earn them more money!

As I see it, the monetary system, which creates financial reward in a context of scarcity, is really an oppressing force.  In reading some comments/blogs from people who are unemployed, I am surprised to read how many people come to the point of "I might as well use my time for something I've always wanted to do, but never had the time to do it."  They may not get paid, but many of them are contributing in a healthy way to create a healthier society.  If people weren't stuck in jobs that were either 1. meaningless outside of a monetary paradigm or  2. not in line with their actual interests and talents, we would have an outpouring of contributions from individuals who've been oppressed for so long under the Monetary Regime.

Please share your comments of people you know who engage in activities without the reward of money.

The Problems of Patterns

People want order very, very quickly, order in the economy, order in systems, order in whatever--order in the government.  And so, the only way to [make people comfortable with] emergence is to have everyone agree that we don't know what we're doing, because if we knew what we were doing, we wouldn't be in the place that we are.  And so, somehow, that enables people to go with the flow.  And they don't need an answer, don't need a system, don't need a pattern.  They can experiment, they can open up, they can be creative and...and I think that's being in the stream, it's part of it.  --Born, a social innovator, taken from the book Getting to Maybe by Westley, Zimmerman, and Patton.

After reading this book on social innovation and "getting to maybe" in regards to creating social change, I think Born's point is something we should all keep in mind.

We all want to hurry to a new kind of order.  We believe ourselves to be distressed by disorder, but what really seems to be happening is that we get distressed by novel forms of disorder.  Humans actually adapt quickly to new environments and new social systems.  The social system we have now is atrocious (perhaps better than some ancient societies), and it is rife with disorder, but we are used to it.  It's our "normal" so it's hard to get anyone to notice how aberrant it actually is.

The second, deeper point speaks to our psychological insecurity.  We need a pattern...what would we do without one?  Religious followers state that without religion humans would be immoral savages.  Upon some investigation, it's not too difficult to see all the problems with the current pattern or system or psychological habits, so we want to run quickly from that pattern to a different one that promises us greater security, comfort, and happiness.  However, what if the rigid adherence to a pattern is itself part of the problem?

The ZM is great at pointing out many of the current problems, and it offers a kind of new pattern, which right now is not very explicit and detailed.  I think this is a positive thing about the ZM.  A new pattern can only emerge if we give it room to emerge.  To forcefully impose another pattern will create new conflicts, new problems.

What will the resource-based economy look like? It's hard to say.  There are some general guidelines, of course, which are focused on human well-being and the planet's well being, but the exact means of working towards those goals can vary by location, by group needs, and by time.  The resource-based economy should also have a general guideline of being flexible, part of its "constitution" if you will.

In other words, guidelines should be understood as living rules.  They are not static, ideal for all time.  We need to be aware of this socially as well as psychologically, kind of like being aware of your stomach.  You cannot learn about hunger and the stomach and forget them.  It's a part of your life, every day.

Spiraling to Zeitgeist

A scholarly friend of mine who does cognitive counseling was telling me about spiral dynamics a few days back.  Spiral dynamics is a theory about personal and social development that characterizes developmental stages into discrete categories and provides a convenient color label to each of those stages.  I want to briefly discuss those stages and then demonstrate how this is relevant to the ZM.


Reflecting upon our current society, the main colors we find today are red, blue, orange, and green.


RED is a stage that is based purely on power.  If I don't like you, I want you dead or somehow to be rid of you.  Many members of the current Tea Party group exhibit this mental stage.  They want liberals gone and anyone else who disagrees with them.  The Wild West and days of the Pharaohs were very Red.


BLUE is a stage where people grow weary of this "kill or be killed" mentality so they come to a place of rigid conformity.  In other words, they sacrifice some freedoms for safety.  We can be groped, x-rayed, and suspiciously watched as we pass through airport security because that makes us feel much safer about flying. (By the way, a couple of years ago, I found out I had carried two box cutters on board with me by accident!) Everyone has a specific place in this organized society and deviants need to just come in line with the group.  Authority is important and the laws put in place are for our own good; that's why they're laws, after all!  Getting into the reasons behind the formation of laws is unimportant.  Many democrats fall into this category.  We accept the laws because they are good for all of us so we just need to obey them.  Rebellion against the rules is seen as a sign of REDness, which no one wants to go back to.


ORANGE people tire of the constraints of BLUE conformity, so they seek to break away and be special.  Laws should apply to everyone else, not them.  They want to manipulate others for their purposes because they know better.  Neo-conservatives fall into this group.  They don't want to actually send their own families into war to die, but they will pull the strings behind the scenes to get what they want through political tactics. They exploit the current rules to feed their self-interests. America's obsession with celebrity is a sign that as a whole, we are moving toward Orange.  


GREEN people realize the limitation of the ego-centric Orange.  The irresponsibility of everyone greedily grasping for what they want in a world of natural limits becomes apparent.  The idea that some people are just "special" and deserve more than others becomes unpleasant. Greens rebel in an opposite pattern and want to believe that all perspectives are valid.  Everyone should have a say at the table, and all points of view are equal.  This stage leads to a quality of impotence because deciding which action to take if all points of view are equal is a challenge.  If morality is culturally relative, then another culture has no right to even criticize the merits of our culture.


GRAY is a place of devastating disillusionment.  It seems that no one knows what they are talking about and so the whole of life is a big disappointment.  Suicide and "humanicide" ideation are frequent.  Just blow up the planet and oneself to stop this mess. It's the only way. In a more psycho-spiritual sense, this is the stage when a person lets go of all gurus, ministers, religions, and self-created beliefs.  


YELLOW comes about through a major transformation in which the prior colors are appreciated and understood for what they are, but there are no illusions about their limitations.  We all must have some cooperation (blue) to coexist, and we must celebrate our special characteristics (orange), but there needs to be a broader awareness about the effect each one of us has on the whole of global society (green).  You have the power to act decisively (red) but you don't become identified with any particular action/system (gray).  The resource based economy may be the next step in human society, but it most likely won't be the last.  When the time comes to let the RBE go, people above gray will not rebel against that because they are not committed to RBE-identification, only to the well being of people.

Spiral Dynamics is a useful shorthand to describe different interactions as they relate to discussion that the Zeitgeist Movement elicits.  The first point is that a person in orange will be misunderstood by a person in red.  The Neo-cons exploit the Tea Party by speaking down to them in the way they understand to use them for their purposes.  It's not always successful because the Reds have an undisciplined streak about them.  Peter Joseph is clearly in Yellow (or above) and as such some of his points about the unequal validity of each viewpoint will be off-putting to people in Green (which this group tends to attract).  It reminds Greens of the tactics of Orange and they want nothing to do with that!

Generally, the movement from one stage to the next is prompted by a crisis or awareness about some conflict and suffering, personal or global.  This means that the person becomes disillusion with the current system.  The cracks are appearing and it leads to skepticism.  The stated present goal of the ZM is to promote awareness.  The "awareness" is about the inadequacies of the current monetary system.  If you are in Blue, you do not want to hear about changing "the system," you just need to make minor modifications.  The ZM states clearly that the system itself is to blame for the suffering.  It doesn't just allow for it, it engenders suffering on a massive scale, which is why it becomes obvious that the system must change.

When discussing the ZM with people, there is often a reaction against it because it entails such a major transformation that simple actions to change things are no longer meaningful.  The result is an effort to undermine the ZM through whatever means so that the ZM as a whole can be dismissed.  For people involved in the ZM, I think it's important to keep the focus on the awareness of the damage of the current system.  A mind that is identified with the current system has not experienced the disillusionment to allow for something new.  Sometimes, when deciding what to do, it is important to sweep away the old clutter.  You cannot redesign your room if you haven't cleaned it out first.  The majority of the "audience" will be in colors that are Green or below.  To try to paint a pretty picture of a RBE is like trying to lure someone out to play when they are comfy on the couch in front of the their TV with a bag of chips.   They must have some compulsion to get up off their duff.

For people involved in the ZM, it is appropriate to identify it as a significant change from the current system, and then to bring back the discussion about the problems of our current economic paradigm.  After all, when 2+ billion people are starving, how successful is the current model which they want to keep defending? Or what about people who are nutritionally starving but overfed with empty calories because they can't afford fresh foods? At what point does the current system become just too uncomfortable?  To put it bluntly, is it only when you are starving that you care to do anything about it?  Isn't it then too late?

Election Frenzy

The air is filled with the energy of competition and opinions.  With defeat and success.  With hope and sorrow.  The election results have just been determined and we will begin again a new cycle of hoping for political intervention that will, somehow, make our lives better.  We know our lives won't really change that much and that the world is still full of problems too big to manage.  At least we are distracted...for the moment.  Looking at the bigger picture, which the Zeitgeist Movement is all about, is overwhelming for many.  How do you absorb that much information and not feel too little to make a difference?  How do you not fall into the world-weariness that is common from really looking at the crisis of the world?  Voting is so easy and simple.  Put a smudge on a check box and things may get better.

It's not so easy.  The Zeitgeist Movement's declared global mission is to raise awareness of the bigger picture.  That's all!  Yet, that is so difficult.  It is really a mission to provoke people to the point that they question their own conditioning, the deep and planet-pervasive conditioning that the monetary system is the only system of social organization.  The ZM has an enormous task ahead of it.  To de-condition an entire population of 6+ billion will require much dialogue and manifest many disturbed feelings.  Transformation is always this way.

I urge all ZM people to continue talking about these issues to their personal networks.  There is not a day that goes by that someone doesn't discuss an issue which is related to the problems ZM is constantly addressing.  Start there and explore those assumptions.

We may or may not survive our own term of office on this planet, but we don't really have much choice.  The more we steep ourselves in denial and ignorance, the more life comes violently rapping at these walls of enclosure.  Whether we get voted out by a tidal wave of our own violence or mother nature's, it will become increasingly uncomfortable for us to sit idly by.  An estimated 2 billion people are starving everyday.  That alone is enough to call upon yourself to change.

The Competitive Edge's Impact on Our Social Nature

This is an excerpt from a book I wrote a few years back.  I find it relevant to the Zeitgeist argument that our monetary system is making us less well (balanced and healthy) collectively and individually.

I read about a research poll done not long ago that indicated that the general level of happiness in America is quite low despite it having great wealth and power. Most people will probably attribute this to materialism in America and how materialism never serves as the buttress to happiness and peace. I think the issue is much deeper than that though.

I reason that many people in America are rather unhappy because of its resolute individualism and its concordant competitiveness. From the time we are young, we are taught that success is being self-reliant, which means, “I don’t need anyone!” Even popular culture serves up an endless collage of people  efuting belonging, or more colloquially, “not taking shit” from any person, organization, or social group. In some ways, this attitude can be healthy, but it is currently out of balance. Being needy is just as unhealthy as being withdrawn into a self-enclosed self-reliance.

We are all interconnected in so many ways that we cannot possibly imagine them all, especially all at once. I drank a bottle of water and threw the container out of the window, which ended up in the Pacific Ocean where it drifted to the great Garbage Patch. It cracked and broke into pieces, which were ingested by fish. The fisherman scooped these fish from the sea and took them to a market. The buyer cut open  he fish to inspect the goods and found the fish full of plastic bits. The buyer did not buy any of the lot; a  purchase was made from a different fisherman. That fish was sold at a gourmet market where Mr.  Moneybags can afford it, and he prepared and ate all of it with the sexy lady he invited to dinner. Tragically, the fish that he bought was tainted with a fatal toxin and it killed Mr. Moneybags and his one-night stand a few hours after eating it. The fisherman knew his catch came from a suspicious source, but he needed the money quickly because gas prices had gone up, and that was causing him to get behind in his mortgage payments. He had left his wife and child for another man (his religious upbringing made it unbearable to be honest with himself), but he still needed to make child-support payments. When the autopsy was performed, the toxin was linked to the fish and the fisherman was put in jail because he could not buy his way out of jail. The payments to his child stopped, and as a result, the young prodigy had to stop her violin lessons. Ultimately, she got a job at the DMV where she treated you like crap because she was in a job she hated and her heart was filled with bitterness.

      

Americans try so hard to escape the bonds of relationship because they are barriers to their success so they end up alone in their rooms wondering why they have become so lonely. We devote our lives to building up a financial security that can take us anywhere we want, but then we have no motivation to go anywhere because we have no one to go with. And if we do go somewhere, we just go there, get a picture and then run to the next monument or tourist attraction. The idea being that we can show our friends all the wonderful places we visited, or simply congratulate ourselves about seeing a famous place. Some even make traveling into a kind of competition. “How many countries have you been to? Only 8…oh, I’ve been to at least 25!” And this is exactly my point. The goal is not to see, to experience, to absorb, or to really learn deeply. Traveling, like true education, has the power to transform a person.

        

The “competitive edge,” as it is piously referred to in American culture, is impairing our ability to feel welcome, accepted, and embraced by others. We are riddled with suspicion, “what does he want from me?” We feel unloved, even if we can name off a list of hundreds of friends. We may have several lovers and still feel “empty.” We often give in to presenting a facade of concrete imperviousness. Surely that is not the reality of human nature so we are left to console ourselves or seek confidential psychotherapy to relieve the stress of being lonely.