Future Positive
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 David Korten writes: Wall
Street is bankrupt. Instead of trying to save it, we can build a new
economy that puts money and business in the service of people and the
planet—not the other way around.
Whether it was divine providence or just good luck, we should give thanks that financial collapse hit us before the worst of global warming and peak oil.
As challenging as the economic meltdown may be, it buys time to build a
new economy that serves life rather than money. It lays bare the fact
that the existing financial system has brought our way of life and the
natural systems on which we depend to the brink of collapse. This
wake-up call is inspiring unprecedented numbers of people to take
action to bring forth the culture and institutions of a new economy
that can serve us and sustain our living planet for generations into
the future. The world of financial stability,
environmental sustainability, economic justice, and peace that most
psychologically healthy people want is possible if we replace a
defective operating system that values only money, seeks to monetize
every relationship, and pits each person in a competition with every
other for dominance. From Economic Power to Basket Case -- Not
long ago, the news was filled with stories of how Wall Street’s money
masters had discovered the secrets of creating limitless wealth through
exotic financial maneuvers that eliminated both risk and the burden of
producing anything of real value. In an audacious social engineering
experiment, corporate interests drove a public policy shift that made
finance the leading sector of the U.S. economy and the concentration of
private wealth the leading economic priority. Corporate
interests drove a policy agenda that rolled back taxes on high incomes,
gave tax preference to income from financial speculation over income
from productive work, cut back social safety nets, drove down wages,
privatized public assets, outsourced jobs and manufacturing capacity,
and allowed public infrastructure to deteriorate. They envisioned a
world in which the United States would dominate the global economy by
specializing in the creation of money and the marketing and consumption
of goods produced by others. As a result, manufacturing fell from 27 percent of U.S. gross domestic product
in 1950 to 12 percent in 2005, while financial services grew from 11
percent to 20 percent. From 1980 to 2005, the highest-earning 1 percent
of the U.S. population increased its share of taxable income from 9
percent to 19 percent, with most of the gain going to the top one-tenth
of 1 percent. The country became a net importer, with a persistent
annual trade deficit of more than three-quarters of a trillion dollars
financed by rising foreign debt. Wall Street insiders congratulated
themselves on their financial genius even as they turned the United
States into a national economic basket case and set the stage for
global financial collapse. All the reports of
financial genius masked the fact that a phantom-wealth economy is
unsustainable. Illusory assets based on financial bubbles, abuse of the
power of banks to create credit (money) from nothing, corporate asset
stripping, baseless credit ratings, and creative accounting led to
financial, social, and environmental breakdown. The system suppressed
the wages of the majority while continuously cajoling them to buy more
than they could afford using debt that they had no means to repay.
A Defective Operating System -- The operating system of our phantom-wealth economy was written by and for Wall Street
interests for the sole purpose of making more money for people who have
money. It makes cheap money readily available to speculators engaged in
inflating financial bubbles and financing other predatory money scams.
It makes money limited and expensive to those engaged in producing real
wealth—life, and the things that sustain life—and pushes the productive
members of society into indebtedness to those who produce nothing at
all. Money, the ultimate object of worship
among modern humans, is the most mysterious of human artifacts: a magic
number with no meaning or existence outside the human mind. Yet it has
become the ultimate arbiter of life—deciding who will live in grand
opulence in the midst of scarcity and who will die of hunger in the
midst of plenty. The monetization of
relationships—replacing mutual caring with money as the primary medium
of exchange—accelerated after World War II when growth in Gross
National Product, essentially growth in monetized relationships, became
the standard for evaluating economic performance. The work of the
mother who cares for her child solely out of love counts for nothing.
By contrast, the mother who leaves her child unattended to accept pay
for tending the child of her neighbor suddenly becomes “economically
productive.” The result is a public policy bias in favor of monetizing
relationships to create phantom wealth—money—at the expense of real
wealth. (06/08/09) |
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 Writing in 1934 Emmet Fox explained: The Lord's Prayer is the most important of all the Christian documents. It was carefully constructed by Jesus with certain very clear ends in view. That is why, of all his teachings, it is by far the best known, and the most often quoted. It is, indeed, the one common denominator of all the Christian churches. Every one of them, without exception, uses the Lord's Prayer; it is perhaps the only ground upon which they all meet. Every Christian child is taught the Lord's Prayer, and any Christian who prays at all says it almost every day. Its actual use probably exceeds that of all other prayers put together. Undoubtedly everyone who is seeking to follow along the Way that Jesus led, should make a point of using the Lord's Prayer, and using it intelligently, every day.
In order to do this, we should understand that the Prayer is a carefully constructed organic whole. Many people rattle through it like parrots, forgetful of the warning that Jesus gave us against vain repetions, and, of course, no one derives any profit from that sort of thing.
The Great Prayer is a compact formula for the development of the soul. It is designed with the utmost care for the specific purpose; so that those who use it regularly, with understanding, will experience a real change of soul. The only progress is this change, which is what the Bible calls being born again. It is the change of soul that matters. The mere acquisition of fresh knowledge received intellectually makes no change in the soul. The Lord's Prayer is especially designed to bring this change about, and when it is regularly used it invariably does so.
The more one analyzes the Lord's Prayer, the more wonderful is its construction seen to be. It meets everyone's need just at his own level. It not only provides a rapid spiritual development for those who are sufficiently advanced to be ready, but in its superficial meaning it supplies the more simpleminded and even the more materially-minded people with just what they need at the moment, if they use the Prayer sincerely.
The greatest of all prayers was designed with still another purpose in view, quite as important as either of the others. Jesus foresaw that, as centuries went by, his simple, primitive teaching would gradually become overlain by all sorts of external things which really have nothing whatever to do with it. He foresaw that men who had never known him, relying, quite sincerely, no doubt, upon their own limited intellects, would build up theologies and doctrinal systems, obscuring the direct simplicity of the spiritual message, and actually erecting a wall between God and man. He designed his Prayer in such a way that it would pass safely through those ages without being tampered with. He arranged it with consummate skill, so that it could not be twisted or distorted, or adapted to any man-made system; so that, in fact, it would carry the whole Christ Message within it and yet not have anything on the surface to attract the attention of the restless, managing type of person. So it has turned out that, through all the changes and chances of Christian history, this Prayer has come through to us uncorrupted and unspoiled.
The first thing that we notice is that the Prayer naturally falls into seven clauses. This is very characteristic of the Oriental tradition. Seven symbolizes individual soul, just as the number twelve in the same convention stands for corporate completeness. In practical use, we often find an eighth clause added - "Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory" - but this, though in itself an excellent affirmation, is not really a part of the Prayer. The seven clauses are put together with the utmost care, in perfect order and sequence, and they contain everything that is necessary for the nourishment of the soul. (06/06/09) |
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Timothy Wilken, MD writes: Recently Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, two otherwise exceptional scientists, have brought their “Dis-Belief in God” to the public sphere. They have been speared on by their emotional response to the recently popular Intelligent Design Hypothesis proposed by Michael Behe and embraced by the Creationists. ...
The words ‘evolution’ and ‘Darwin’ are powerful polarizing triggers
even in today's (2009) so called modern world. This has been primarily
because Darwin’s theory of evolution and the evolutionary science that
developed from it seem at first glance to refute the Holy Bible’s
narrative of God’s creation of Heaven and Earth and to threaten one’s
belief in God. ...
The new arguments for intelligent design presented by Behe and other advocates usually involve three issues: 1) Complexity— The
probability that life could originate by chance, or that the complexity
of molecular biology or the human eye can be explained by random chance
is enormously unlikely. 2) Intelligence— There
is evidence for intelligence in the form of controlled choice which can
be found in all life forms—plants, animals, and humans—which cannot be
explained by random choice. And, 3) Purpose— There
is evidence of purpose in the form of goal seeking behavior which is
found in all forms of life and which cannot be explained by random
chance. ... This has provoked a new war of words in the ‘evolution versus creationism’ debate with Dawkins and Dennett making the case for complexity and intelligence without God, and Dawkins denying the need for purpose.
My readers know I am seeking the unification of humanity. I believe only by working together can we insure that our species will survive. I even see a day in the not too distant future when religion and science will walk hand in hand. ...
But, if we are going to heal ourselves and solve our human crisis, we
must not fall into the ‘evolution versus creationism’ trap. This is
just another example of ‘either/or thinking’ and ‘mixing levels of
organization’. Many humans including a number of otherwise good
scientists are presently caught up in this trap. One false assumption that results from this trap is the belief
that science must explain everything about life and its origins. After
all if ‘God’ is the alternative explanation for all in universe. Then
our ‘either/or’ thinking requires that for ‘evolutionary science’ to be
true, it too must explain all in universe. However recall from the
science section that to explain ‘ALL ’ in universe is very large task
indeed. Evolutionary science (2009) does explain a great deal and many
of its aspects have been scientifically corroborated. However, Darwin
offered no explanation for the origin of life. And, evolutionary
science (2009) while explaining how simple organisms can become more
complex organisms, and how organisms have adapted to better fit their
environments, has not provided a clear step by step explanation for the
beginnings of life nor provided proven explanations for the development
of complex organs like the human eye. When scientific theory does not answer a question placed to
it, one of two conditions may exist. First, the theory is incomplete
and when more is discovered and the theory expanded, it will better
answer the question. Or, two the theory may be wrong and there exists
an alternative explanation that better answers the question. I believe that the first condition exists here. I believe that
evolutionary science (2009) is young and like many young theories it is
still incomplete. For example, it clearly needs integration with
synergic science. And, I believe when and as we discover more, we will
come to understand life and evolution better, and I predict we will
then develop better answers to these important questions. ...
Richard Dawkins is perhaps one of today’s (2009) best living
scientists. However, he is ignorant of synergy, and so makes the
mistake of ‘either/or’ thinking. He is caught up in the ‘evolution
versus creationism’ trap. His failure to find evidence of a designer and his desire to be a
‘good’ scientist—true to his intellect—compels him to deny GOD. It
should therefore come as no surprise that he is an avowed Atheist. If
he were a better scientist, he would simply say: "I don't know."
Unfortunately,
Dawkin's has been blinded by the religious zeal "not to
belief." His emotional commitment to Atheism further damages his
ability to understand evolutionary biology objectively. However his
limitations do not prevent us from learning from his insights and
discoveries. Much of his truth is scientific truth. If we step
carefully to avoid Dawkins' scientific mistakes, he still has
much to teach us. Most of his work is informative and useful. I will
quote extensively from his writings a
little later, but first lets examine what Dawkins has to say about purpose:
Charles Darwin lost his faith with the help of a wasp: I
cannot persuade myself, Darwin wrote, that a beneficent and omnipotent
God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express
intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.
... The macabre habits of the Ichneumonidae are shared by their cousins
the digger wasps. ... A female digger wasp not only lays her egg in a
caterpillar (or grasshopper or bee) so that her larva can feed on it
but, according to Fabre and others, she carefully guides her sting into
each ganglion of the prey’s central nervous system, so as to paralyze
it but not kill it. This way, the meat keeps fresh. It is not known
whether the paralysis acts as a general anesthetic, or if it is like
curare in just freezing the victim’s ability to move. If the latter,
the prey might be aware of being eaten alive from inside but unable to
move a muscle to do anything about it. This sounds savagely cruel but,
as we shall see, nature is not cruel, only pitilessly indifferent. This
is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that
things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but
simply callous — indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose. We humans have purpose on the brain. We find it hard to look at
anything without wondering what it is for, what the motive for it is,
or the purpose behind it. When the obsession with purpose becomes
pathological it is called paranoia — reading malevolent purpose into
what is actually random bad luck. But this is just an exaggerated form
of a nearly universal delusion. Show us almost any object or process,
and it is hard for us to resist the Why question — the What is it for?
question. The desire to see purpose everywhere is a natural one in an
animal that lives surrounded by machines, works of art, tools and other
designed artifacts: an animal, moreover, whose waking thoughts are
dominated by it own personal goals. A car, a tin opener, a screw driver
and a pitchfork all legitimately warrant the What is it for? question.
Our pagan forebears would have asked the same question about thunder,
eclipses, rocks, and streams. Today we pride ourselves on having shaken
off such primitive animism. If a rock in a stream happens to serve as a
convenient stepping-stone, we regard its usefulness as an accidental
bonus, not a true purpose. But the old temptation comes back with a
vengeance when tragedy strikes — indeed, the very word strikes is an
animistic echo: Why, oh why, did the cancer/earthquake/hurricane have
to strike my child? And the same temptation is often positively
relished when the topic is the origin of all things or the fundamental
laws of physics, culminating in the vacuous existential question Why is
there something rather than nothing? ... The mere fact that it is possible to frame a question does not
make it legitimate or sensible to do so. There are many things about
which you can ask, What is its temperature? or What color is it? but
you may not ask the temperature question or the color question of, say,
jealousy or prayer. Similarly, you are right to ask the Why question of
a bicycle’s mudguards or the Kariba Dam, but at the very least you have
no right to assume that the Why question deserves an answer when posed
about a boulder, a misfortune, Mt. Everest or the universe. Questions
can be simply inappropriate, however heartfelt their framing. ... And, so we see that like many evolutionary scientists Dawkins adds
the denial of purpose to his denial of God. Dawkins and company are
indeed walking a fine tightrope. He begins the preceding discussion
with strong denial of purpose, but then almost immediately finds it
necessary to qualify his denial with a number of permited exceptions to
the exclusion of purpose. His reductionistic bias forces him to lock
the front door to purpose, but expediency requires that he let it in
the back door “in a special, metaphorical sense.” Young could have been describing Dawkins when he said: “The
notion of purpose or teleology is forbidden in science, among
biologists especially, who, while they must be strongly tempted to
invoke it at every turn, avoid it as reformed alcoholic avoids a drink.”
So we see that even today 2009, Dawkins like many evolutionary
biologists is under the influence of the reductionistic bias and cannot
acknowledge the role of purpose in universe, and yet he invokes it at
every turn, but hides it by speaking of 'good' design rather than 'purposeful' design.
We cannot criticize Dawkins for invoking purpose. Evolution
cannot be explained without it. However, his need to deny and hide
purpose is a scientific mistake resulting from his ignorance of synergy
and his commitment to the reductionistic bias. Recall reductionistic
science focuses on ‘parts’ and not on ‘wholes’. Purpose is found in the
‘wholes’ and not in the ‘parts’. Reductionistic science is blind to
purpose. ...
Once you start looking for purpose you will find that like
syntropy — it is everywhere in universe. Simple processes have simple
purposes. Complex processes have complex purposes. Purpose simply
implies a ‘goal’. Purposeful behavior is just goal seeking behavior. Reductionistic science — the science of the ‘part’ has been
responsible for most of the past advances in human knowledge. However
it is an incomplete picture of universe. Reductionistic science suffers
from an ignorance of the ‘whole’ — from an ignorance of synergy. This
ignorance produces errors of ‘either/or thinking’ and ‘mixing levels of
organization’. As we review the current thinking of evolutionary
biology, we must step carefully to avoid these errors. The
gene is a "part" of the human organism. But understanding the gene does
not mean you understand cells, tissues, organs, systems of organs,
organisms, and groups of organisms, etc. etc..
Nor do you understand how each of these other "parts" relate to each other, and how they interact.
Our
estimate of the number of human genes currently stands at ~22,500
(estimates have ranged from 20,000 to 150,000). These genes are static
instructions (blueprints for constructing proteins which serve as the
building blocks of cells).
The human body contains ~60 trillion
cells, organized into hundreds of tissues, organized in to dozens of
organs organized into seven major systems of organs, and all of this is
governed by an ~100 billion neuron brain. The organism is a dynamic
living thing changing a trillion trillion times in its lifetime.
To
imagine that these genetic static blueprints control dynamic human
behavior is about as naive as as thinking that the design blueprint for
an automobile will control where and how that automobile is driven over
its lifetime with multiple owners and uses.
Which gene controls
how a Michael Jordan plays basketball? — How an Albert Einstein
formulates physics? — How a Michelangelo carves marble? — How Yo-Yo Ma
plays the cello?
You cannot understand human behavior without
examining all the parts, and understanding how each and every "part" of
the system relates to each and every other "part." Then you must
understand how these parts form "wholes" that combine with other
"wholes" to form "systems" that combine with other "systems" to form
the whole organism. Do not view my comments as critical of Dawkins and Dennett.
That is not my intention. If I had lived their lives and had their life
experiences, I would most sincerely believe as they do. I am writing
later, and I have the benefit of the synergic perspective. However, it must be clear to the reader, I am not an atheist.
Although much of what humans call religion today is nonsense, I do
believe that there exists ‘that’ in universe that is larger than
ourselves. I am also in belief that there is a ‘source’ to the
complexity, intelligence and purpose that we find everywhere in our
examination of living universe. And, I am comfortable to call that
source God. So while I share Dennett's disbelief in ghosts, elves, the
Easter Bunny, black magic and life after death, I do believe in
God. And, while I do consider myself to hold a naturalist as opposed
to a supernaturalist world view, I find God and Purpose quite at home
in my view of Nature. (05/24/09) |
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Timothy Wilken, MD writes: Have we reached the bottom?
We would like to think so. This holiday
weekend most of us will gather to celebrate the beginning of summer
with our friends and family. Schools are letting out, some of our children have reached their milestones and are
graduating, vacations are are being planned. And, so the average modern
human would like to believe that soon things will return to "normal."
Here "normal" is defined as the way things were prior to October 9th, 2007. Is this a valid belief? Is it reasonable to hope that things can return to the way they were?
Before we can answer those questions, we must first understand why the market crashed in the first place.
Why is this happening? What went wrong? What is really going on here? These are all good questions, but all have been poorly answered thus far. My answer is that our present Economic System is failing. It is obsolete. It cannot provide for the needs of 6.5 billion humans living on a finite planet with diminishing natural resources.
In synergic science our present economic system would be described as a PRODUCT Tensegrity. This is a Neutral (Money Based) Fair Market Help Exchange System. It depends on the exchange of money between buyers and sellers. This is the basis for our present Consumer Nation.
For this system to work certain conditions must exist. The population must be small compared to the available natural resources. In fact, it works best when we have relatively unlimited resources. This was the condition in America in the 1770s. The U.S. population was ~2.5 million people. Within the boundary of what is today America an enormous supply of land, water, wild animals, minerals, and petroleum existed. The PRODUCT Tensegrity is an enormously inefficient system. It creates products that no one needs, and even that no one buys. This is why 50% to 80% of new businesses fail in their first three years, even in the best of economic times.
Why have all of today's leading business and economic
gurus failed to explain what is
really happening? The answer is because they are locked into the wrong
paradigm. They assume that help cannot be exchanged without money. They
cannot imagine a help exchange system that does not have buyers and
sellers.
For our lives to return to "normal" will require nothing less than the emergence of a radically new economy. It will be so different from our current economy that most of us will initially be startled by those differences. In 2001, I first proposed such a new mechanism for the human exchange of goods and services. This new mechanism was radically different from the way we do things today. Nothing really effects our lives more than the way we exchange goods and services. In synergic science, this new help exchange system is called a GIFT Tensegrity or GIFTegrity for short.
You might choose to take some time this weekend to read my description of an alternative economy. It will help you to understand our present dilemma, and introduce you to a positive pathway out of our current crisis.
So have we reached the bottom?
No. If we continue our obsession with money, we have only begun our descent. If we are willing to consider a synergic alternative, then we can build a new system that works for everyone. (05/23/09) |
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 Over sixty years ago, Emmet Fox wrote: Scientific prayer will enable you to get yourself or anyone else, out of any difficulty. It is the golden key to harmony and happiness.
To those who have no acquaintance with the mightiest power in existence, this may appear to be a rash claim, but it needs only a fair trial to prove that, without a shadow of doubt, it is a just one. You need take no one's word for it, and you should not. Simply try it for yourself.
God is omnipotent, and we are God's image and likeness and have dominion over all things. This is the inspired teaching, and it is intended to be taken literally, at its face value. The ability to draw on this power is not the special prerogative of the mystic or the saint, as is so often supposed, or even of the highly trained practitioner. Everyone has this ability Whoever you are, wherever you may be, the golden key to harmony is in your hand now. This is because in scientific prayer it is God who works, and not you, and so your particular limitations or weaknesses are of no account in the process. You are only the channel through which the divine action takes place, and your treatment will be just the getting of yourself out of the way.
Beginners often get startling results the first time, for all that is essential is to have an open mind and sufficient faith to try the experiment. Apart from that, you may hold any views on religion, or none.
As for the actual method of working, like all fundamental things, it is simplicity itself. All you have to do is this: Stop thinking about the difficulty, whatever it is, and think about God instead. This is the complete rule, and if only you will do this, the trouble, whatever it is, will disappear. It makes no difference what kind of trouble it is. It may be a big thing or a little thing: it may concern health, finance, a lawsuit, a quarrel, an accident, or anything else conceivable: but whatever it is, stop thinking about it and think of God instead -- that is all you have to do.
It could not be simpler, could it? God could scarcely have made it simpler, and yet it never fails to work when given a fair trial. (05/17/09) |
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