Money makes the world go round. Or so we’re told. And you’d be far from foolish to believe it, as finance is our global operating system. If crashed, it will bring industrial civilization to its knees. If money is the root of all evil, yet makes the world go round, then solving our planetary predicament presents quite a conundrum.
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The dream, promised by the western world’s doctrine of progress, which promises abundance for all, and increased leisure time (yes you can stop laughing now), is vanishing in front of our closed eyes. The party is over and all that’s left is a nasty hangover and a lot of rubbish to deal with.
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Under the guise of a proposed international trade deal called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement, foreign corporations could soon threaten the right of national governments to make their own laws. Australia is a member of the 12 country TPP negotiating group where national sovereignty over issues like working conditions, food labelling, healthcare and environmental protection could be exchanged for the promise of better access to overseas markets.
TPP negotiations are being held in secret, but leaked documents have revealed some of the alarming ambitions of the corporations.
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So we need to build a new economy, right? And we’re trying, but it’s not happening fast enough, or going deep enough. So here’s a bit of a provocation, a suggested blueprint for one way of doing it. It’s all fairly simple, won’t take much money, and could be transformative if we put all the pieces together.
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This is the second of three articles on understanding complexity, and how positive feedback loops are leading inexorably to civilization’s collapse – and what we can and can’t do about it.
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Economic growth has without a doubt become the most fetishised public goal of our time. Every politician must promise it to get or keep elected office. It solves many problems. It is a goal shared by all. It reduces unemployment, provides governments with much-needed tax revenue, makes hard workers rich, reduces wrinkles, and clears up your complexion. Who in their right mind would not favor robust economic growth?
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We are now awakening to the realization that the self is porous and not as contained as we might like to think – and that all aspects of consciousness dance together in a mutual state of inclusivity, so that it is ultimately impossible to divorce happiness from grief. Perhaps coming home to ourselves involves recognizing that grief has its purpose, without which happiness is a mere plastic echo of itself. Perhaps coming home to a more beautiful world means we realize – as the gentleman up in the Himalayan regions told Ej and I – that life isn’t that coherent.
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What has gone wrong? With the eradication of the old-style tyrannies, has a more subtle but equally devastating hierarchical tyranny risen up to coerce us all into a diabolical trajectory toward self-extinction?
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Our job is to take every brilliant pro-sustainability message that comes to us, and recommend it to our friends and colleagues. When I get this issue of SHIFT, I will post it to my facebook wall and tweet it to my followers. I do the same with Richard Heinberg’s Museletter. You, no doubt, have your own favorite sources.
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Getting most people to the point of wanting the paradigm shift that transition toward a resilient and just society represents, is a massive and daunting task. Yet the way to go about it seems relatively straightforward and generally agreed upon by transitioners. It involves raising awareness about the inevitability of collapse, the ways the current system disadvantages people, and the ways a simpler system would benefit people, while at the same time building alternatives that both demonstrate what’s possible, become the basis for our future society, and reach out to help those in need. At the same time, the increasing severity of collapse means that the current system becomes less and less viable, and the alternatives more and more useful to the mainstream of society.
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