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liberty
October 2009 
THE CARING REVOLUTION ...
Posted on Jun 7th, 2009
by 
Michael
Michael
A New Economics That Works
for Business, Families ...
and the Planet.
“A prescription for an economic system that is both equitable and sustainable.
It should be read and used by everyone who wants a better world!”
Deepak Chopra
" The most important human creations are our cultures. The cultures we create largely determine whether we kill one another and destroy nature’s life-support systems, or live in a humane and sustainable world. And economic systems are a
key element of ALL cultures.
I have in this book argued that we need a caring economics more congruent with the direction in evolution toward greater consciousness, creativity and caring. I realize that speaking of direction in evolution is today a kind of scientific heresy. At best, it’s acceptable to say there is evolutionary movement toward greater complexity and variability. But as Darwin himself noted, the movement in evolution goes beyond greater complexity and variability to the emergence of needs, capacities, motivations, and possibilities of a different order than those present in earlier life forms.
This does not mean that our species, as one of the last to emerge, is the apex of evolution, and thus entitled to lord it over other life forms. Nor does it mean there is a divine plan or intelligent design. We don’t have any way of knowing what ultimately lies behind evolution, and this is so whether we think evolution is directionless or not.
But it does mean that as life evolved on our Earth, it developed an ever greater capacity for consciousness, creativity, planning, and choice. And while these capacities are not unique to us, they are most highly developed in our species.
Whether these human capacities are expressed, however, largely depends on the kinds of social and economic systems we create. This makes us, quite literally, co-creators of our evolution.
We certainly can’t determine everything about our future. But we can join together to create the social and economic conditions that nurture, drive, and promote the expression of our positive rather than negative genetic capacities. Indeed, having unprecedented biological capacities means that it’s our evolutionary responsibility to use these gifts in positive rather than negative ways.
ALL LIFE FORMS – from the smallest to the largest, from amoeba and plankton to elephants and whales – have to some extent altered our planet. Some have done so by simply appearing on the evolutionary scene. Others have built new structures: birds make nests and beavers construct dams. But no species has come close to what we humans have done.
Riane Eisler on her book "The Real Wealth of Nations"
WE stand at an evolutionary crossroads in our human adventure on this Earth.
We can continue with “business as usual” – even though both science and our native intelligence tell us that the mix of high technology and an ethos of domination and conquest may take us to an evolutionary end. Or we can use the great gifts we were given by evolution to create a new economic story and reality – a caring economics that supports both human survival and human development and actualisation.
It is in our power to imagine the world we want for ourselves and our children.
For most of us, this is a world where our basic needs for food, shelter, and safety,
as well as our yearning for nurturing and love, for justice and peace, and for a sense
that what we do has meaning and helps others as well as ourselves, are fulfilled.
Above all, it is a world where our children survive and thrive.
It is up to us to help create the conditions that support this vision. We have been endowed by nature with an amazing brain, an enormous capacity for love, a remarkable creativity, and a unique ability to learn, change, grow and plan ahead.
If we act now, we can use these capacities to co-create the economic and social systems that support the great gifts we were granted by evolution.
We can’t wait for our national and international leaders to act. Every one of us can be a leader by using our imagination and initiative to change consciousness, practices, and policies."
Riane Eisler
.
Access: Public
We have been endowed by nature with an amazing brain, an enormous capacity for love, a remarkable creativity, and a unique ability to learn, change, grow and plan ahead.
We are love, sometimes we just forget.
Beautiful blog, Michael, just beautiful.
love to you… and the family please,
j
WE R LOVE indeed …
NOT JUST merchants of LOVE
Ken Costa, Chairman of Lazard International and Chairman of Alpha International which promotes the ALPHA COURSE, published his Personal view in the Daily Telegraph yesterday entitled …
We must break the bonds of economic slavery and find a new way to live.
In his very appropriate “THEN & NOW comparison” he wrote …
”Our task now is surely no less than to fix the character of our time.
Our finances are broken. Our moral fabric is breaking. Our political system is beleaguered. And our society is broken. Many of us feel ill at ease; we know that all is not well. Secretly, we almost scream out loud for change.
What is the moral and spiritual character of our times? Today, we are shocked by the slave trade's evil economics. However, because we have given financial matters an exaggerated role in our lives, we often forget the enslavement of the human spirit that this has caused. The economics of slavery may have been a thing of the past, but the slavery of economics is very much of the present.”
ALL of which I agree with entirely.
MY ONLY PROBLEM with this, however, IS, as is the case with the vast majority of religious perspectives of THE ONE and ONLY GOD, that those perspectives are invariably seen ONLY in the context of one of many myopic interpretations of THE ONE and ONLY GOD, rather than an ALL-inclusive multi-faceted and potentially homogenous SINGULAR PERSPECTIVE.
Contrary to Albert's proposition IT IS for this reason that there can only BE ONE MODEL of a NEW HUMPTY DUMPTY solution rather than the cobbled together amalgam of the OLD HUMPTY DUMPTY solution which we now find broken at our feet.
GOD at WORK has NO THING to do with Hinduism, Budhism, Christianity, Islam or infact any other myopic interpretation of THE ONE and ONLY GOD, IT IS GOD awakening to IT SELF through the collective mindset of individuals who have themselves individually come to terms with their part as an independent but interdependent component of the integral whole which IS GOD, as a result of their ”spiritual connectivity” with that which IS GOD.
IT WAS Pierre Teilard de Chardin who, more than any other, truly understood
the importance of “spiritual connectivity” when he wrote …
“That globalisation is about something far deeper than economics,
commerce and politics. IT IS an evolution of the human spirit.”
Stephen Green, Chairman of HSBC, offers a challenge to the financial elite that sold its soul for profit in his book Good Value:Reflections on Money, Morality and an Uncertain World and poses the question …
“IF with all the technology and sophistication at our disposal,
the basic structure of the world economy is built on sand, not rock,
then WHAT IS the justification for all our labours?”
How did we get so far away from caring for and about each other? Over the years we have created a hideous model of society - greed, guns, fear, irresponsibility, laziness, lack of compassion or understanding of basic human needs, ethics, manners. We have become uncivilized. Anyway, I am an old crone and believe in the golden rule, I am my brother's keeper. It is just now the inmates are in charge of the asylum.
I shake my head in disbelief as I watch ignorant people in the USA shouting down health care for themselves and their neighbours. Crazed and pumped up by slogans they disrupt the social business of the the land. One would think they would be grateful to have the burden of illness removed from their lives. It is illogical, pure laziness, and mob mentality to oppose health care for everyone. How can people be so stupid?
PS –I am a Canadian ;>) Funny….the Father of Universal Health in Canada, Tommy Douglas, was a little white guy, about 5'4”. But he had the heart of a warrior, a soaring voice, and he took on the medical establishment (the doctors went on striked) and he won. All Canada benefitted and he is a Canadaian hero. Meanwhile Obama remains silent, and the ignorant speak and CNN broadcasts their rantings as “news”. MacLuhan was right.
Thank you Michael for sharing this book… The world will be sustainable if created within the Heart… The Companies/ Businesses will survive if will be run with the Heart… The energy will not be a problem anymore when we will respect the living Earth… We, humans, are amazing being with extraordinary potential… and we just have to believe it… Actual politics do not have anything to do with the future of Earth… unfortunately…
We can’t wait for our national and international leaders to act. Every one of us can be a leader by using our imagination and initiative to change consciousness, practices, and policies.”
beautiful, thank you, Michael.
… and HOW REFRESHING Janie, to see you taking THE most positive of initiatives to establish a mindset of responsible caring and an economical attitude to match.
I am just handing over the decision making process to the children. It's easy.
They have as much wisdom, enthusiasm and potential in their hearts and minds, as a star nursery…It's time to let go, and watch them paint a beautiful picture of consciousness on this planet. All I am doing is bringing the canvas… and it is my honor to do so…
… and you might very well ask of EVERY SINGLE ONE of US, Asteri, the first & most important question of LIFE here on OUR PLANET, such that we might individually and collectively begin to understand that IT IS about an acceptance of the infinite consequences of the interdependence of independence within OUR holistic thinking - which will indeed awaken us to the words of Mark Lynas
“It seems to me that a low-carbon society would be one which remembers that our planet is a unique gift - perhaps the only one of its kind in the entire universe - which we are indescribably privileged to be born into.”
To put Riane Eisler's WHOLE concept into context, NO BETTER single-minded description of the REALLY BIG PICTURE dilemma that homo sapiens faces,
as custodian of ALL LIFE on our planet and possibly in the multiverse of
parallel worlds, can be attained than by reading, learning and digesting
Richard Heinberg's Museletter 208 of August 2009 entitled …
Temporary Recession or the End of Growth? …
in which he concludes …
” mainstream economists failed on the whole to foresee the current crash. There was no consistent or concerted effort on the part of Secretaries of the Treasury, Federal Reserve Chairmen, or “Nobel” prize-winning economists to warn policy makers or the general public that, sometime in the early 21st century, the global economy would begin to come apart at the seams.
One might think that this predictive failure—the inability to foresee so historically significant an event as the rapid contraction of nearly the entire global economy, entailing the failure of some of the world’s largest banks and manufacturing companies—would cause mainstream economists to stop and re-examine their fundamental premises.
But there is little evidence to suggest that this is occurring.
At the risk of repetition: physical scientists from several disciplines have indeed foreseen an end to economic growth in the early 21st century, and have warned policy makers and the general public on many occasions.
Whom should we believe?
My conclusion from a careful survey of energy alternatives, then, is that there is little likelihood that either conventional fossil fuels or alternative energy sources can be counted on to provide the amount and quality of energy that will be needed to sustain economic growth—or even current levels of economic activity—during the remainder of this century.
But the problem extends beyond oil and other fossil fuels: the world’s fresh water resources are strained to the point that billions of people may soon find themselves with only precarious access to water for drinking and irrigation. Biodiversity is declining rapidly. We are losing 24 billion tons of topsoil each year to erosion. And many economically significant minerals—from antimony to zinc—are depleting quickly, requiring the mining of ever lower-grade ores in ever more remote locations.
Thus the Peak Oil crisis is really just the leading edge of a broader Peak Everything dilemma. In essence, humanity faces an entirely predictable peril: our population has been growing dramatically for the past 200 years (expanding from under one billion to nearly seven billion), while our per-capita consumption of resources has also grown. For any species, this is virtually the definition of biological success. And yet all of this has taken place in the context of a finite planet with fixed stores of non-renewable resources (fossil fuels and minerals), a limited ability to regenerate renewable resources (forests, fish, fresh water, and topsoil), and a limited ability to absorb industrial wastes (including carbon dioxide).
If we step back and look at the industrial period from a broad historical perspective that is informed by an appreciation of ecological limits, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that we are today living at the end of a relatively brief pulse—a 200-year rapid expansionary phase enabled by a temporary energy subsidy (in the form of cheap fossil fuels) that will inevitably be followed by an even more rapid and dramatic contraction as those fuels deplete. The winding down of this historic growth-contraction pulse doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the world, but it does mean the end of a certain kind of economy.
One way or another, humanity must return to a more normal pattern of existence characterized by reliance on immediate solar income (via crops, wind, or the direct conversion of sunlight to electricity) rather than stored ancient sunlight. This is not to say that the remainder of the 21st century must consist of a collapse of industrialism, a die-off of most of the human population, and a return by the survivors to a way of life essentially identical to that of 16th century peasants or indigenous hunter-gatherers. It is possible instead to imagine acceptable and even inviting ways in which humanity could adapt to ecological limits while further developing cultural richness, scientific understanding, and quality of life (more of this below). But however it is negotiated, the transition will spell an end to economic growth in the conventional sense. And that transition appears to have begun.”
and IF that IS NOT convincing enough just ask yourself …
Is the Global Oil Tank Half-full or Half-Empty … or are we Running on Fumes
Whom should we believe? INDEED
… better that WE ALL take note of individual initiative taking
such as this message to Obama
Hi Michael,
Thank you for posting about this book as you did last summer. I'm still too addled to have read all your comments. My attention span is a little screwy. Oh well. I wanted you to know I come back once in awhile and read.
Love to you,
M.