Confined to our homes by a virus for which we are severely
underprepared, the whole world is faced with the inadequacies of our systems.
This timeout from our usual responsibilities gives us an opportunity, challenging
us to reassess who we are, what values we are expressing in how we live, and
how can we choose the best path to a future that manifests our vision for one
united world.
Besides the obvious
failures of the healthcare system, we can see that our current Western economic
system fails to serve our deeper purposes in life in many ways. We spend most
of our lives in debt, trying to catch up, and figuring out how to pay for
healthcare, education, etc., instead of being able to invest time and love in
our children.
Given that the
majority of humans see life as leading to some kind of eternal existence, how
can we design an economic system that allows for the greatest freedom to make
our own decisions, and that enables personal growth? It would be nice to move
to an eternal world somewhat prepared!
Humans grow by
receiving love, and by giving love, by investing effort, through relationships,
by exercising their own responsibility towards living a life of value
fulfillment. We grow by living for both the whole purpose and the individual
purpose, and especially through investing in our children and communities.
Indigenous communities
sustained their way of life throughout thousands of years, supported by nature,
and without destroying that natural world. Despite its technological
achievements, Western thinking, originating in Europe but now worldwide, has
led us to the brink of destruction of the natural world, as now seen in the
sudden clearing of atmospheric pollution as human economic activity is forcibly
shut down in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Instead of going back
to total communal ownership, hunting, fishing, and raising GMO-free crops, consider
what could have emerged from a respectful analysis of the two ways of life that
clashed as Europeans moved into the New World, sadly displacing the original
residents.
There are a few basic
facts to take as a foundation for our future economics: the universe provides
all of nature for free, for the equal use of every person. There is no income
requirement for what is provided. However, shaping the natural environment for
the purpose of maintaining humanity does require some effort. Both facts lead to
one level of responsibility, and so far, there is no responsibility on anyone’s
part to work anywhere near as long hours as is typical in America today,
because ensuring that everyone has a house, food and basic needs would not
involve more than probably one or two days a week, if everyone contributes.
The second level of
responsibility is oriented more toward growth of humanity as a whole. Our
absolute responsibility is to raise healthy and happy children, and guarantee
that their individual survival needs are met, allowing them to be ready to work
on their own personal goals and values, to express their own individuality in
the context of becoming loving, capable adults. This inevitably leads to the
evolution of humanity, the expression of humanity’s values.
Indigenous thinking,
embedded in the world as part of nature as they were, is necessary but not
sufficient, in that it is unlikely such a way of life in itself would have led
to the current level of progress in science, technology, psychology, etc. However,
by merging with and influencing Western values, there could well have been a
much more healthy development of all these areas of knowledge.
Thus we are led, in
analyzing what could have been, to incorporate the best of both worlds. Simply
jettisoning capitalism would leave us bereft of what could be a very strong
pillar of our economic future, while ignoring our identity as community, we
already can see has severe consequences, particularly in terms of honoring the
divine, unique, and sacred value of each and every individual.
Our society simply
throws away those who haven’t achieved parity in the economic competition that
we think of as life. They end up in poverty, in economic slavery, working all
hours for survival only, never attaining the economic capacity to move further
toward value fulfillment, thereby impoverishing humanity beyond any imagining.
Capitalism has shown
itself to be highly vulnerable to being hijacked by the “winners” in the
economic race, and needs some very fundamental modification. Firstly, we must
recognize the unconditional aspect of nature’s contribution. Without nature,
without the bees to pollinate, without the tendency of seeds to grow, existence
itself would be threatened, and no corporation would make an easy profit if they
had to replace all the functions of nature through their own ingenuity. This
belongs equally to every person, because we are all equally created as part of
nature.
Therefore we can see
two distinct levels of economic thinking here, the first being the meeting of
our needs within a hugely benevolent, well-suited planet, and the second being
the enabling of growth through the creative use of nature and our relationships
with each other. Thus, every person should receive the basics, within the
context of a couple days’ work a week for the benefit of maintaining this basic
level of life, and once that is achieved, then beyond that people may freely
work toward profit and creative expression of what is important to them. I say
freely because work as we know it is not necessarily the highest value, but
rather we would hope to reach the end of our lives as more mature, loving
people ready to move forward to the next phase. Work is part of this of course,
but certainly not the whole.
Thus a person who
wants a very nice home should be able to achieve that on the basis of hard
work, but to the extent she or he uses more than say half an acre of land on
which to build, there should be recognition that the community must be
compensated for the loss of the use of this extra land. If people use nature
for economic purposes, and obviously they have to, then they can receive the
rewards of their transforming nature into useful commodities, but also
compensate the whole for whatever they use that rightfully belongs to the
whole.
A nature-value tax
would be a natural source of income distributed to everyone, out of which those
who choose not to work (other than the time needed for maintaining the communal
level of life) for some time, or even for large parts of their lives, may do so
freely and without guilt of feeling like a parasite. At this point, spending
time at home raising one’s children in this country is considered almost
parasitic behavior. Clearly this violates the deeper purpose of life, and yet
we are all driven to live in this fashion.
Without the obligation
to work for survival, people would be able to choose whether or not to take a
job, and employers would have to pay enough to entice workers to work. Our view
of corporations would evolve, and we would see them more as sources of community
value, rather than as ways of enriching the owners, the current “super-rich.”
Corporate leadership would be compensated for their time and work,
well-compensated, but would not be as excessively rich as they are today.
However they would have people’s respect and gratitude instead of resentment.
They would not be forever fending off lawsuits, because people’s anger would be
relieved as we all start to feel more valued and loved. Even inter-corporate
cooperation might evolve into a real phenomenon, beyond simply that of buying
up smaller corporations to increase short-term profits.
The sharing of
corporate returns might also prove a source of some kind of living wage, or
basic corporate income, in such a world.
Freedom from debt and
from bureaucracy-imposed burdens are both necessary aspects of any future
system. Servicing debt is maybe the most debilitating aspect of our current
economic lives. If we have to have a system with built-in debt, then at least
build a protective wall around the retail economy and people’s savings, so that
no one can lose everything because of such debt. Likewise we need a greatly
strengthened firewall between retail and the speculative behaviors that have
forced us to bail out wealthy corporations, especially banks, several times in
recent decades.
Government must also
evolve to stop using our technology to impose order upon us under the guise of
providing for us. Such evolution though requires a much greater level of trust
of each other, because so much of the endless filling out of forms and paying
vast amounts for insurance emanates from our distrust. Lawyers and courts have
taken over so much of our decision-making, leaving us very inadequate in our
capacity to solve problems by working things out together, and leaving us vulnerable
economically as we have to pay for this distrust. We have not learned wisdom in
the handling of an information economy, and until this evolves, our data is
used for the profit of some and for the ease of controlling the population by
others.
Capitalism has given
us ways to use money by investing in corporations and businesses such that our
money can grow even while we are not actively working. This has been a great
relief to many, in providing retirement income and freeing up one’s time.
Simply discarding our capitalistic system devalues the Western progress that
freed us from so much of our servitude to nature. The path to living within the
natural world and also freeing ourselves from the limitations of living only as
part of the natural world is a path that requires thought and universal values.
Western values need to
be incorporated in any movement toward the future of course, so that we have hope
to see a world that incorporates intellectual accomplishment and individual freedom,
but we need more. We need also a world that values justice and heart more than
intellect alone.♦
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