Here in the USA, we pretend that the Stock Market reflects how well the nation is. That’s the message pushed by mainstream media and capitalists. It doesn’t. There are many people in America who are suffering without work, without livable wages, without health care, without safe food and water, without good living conditions.
In the same way, the world’s mainstream economic marketers focus on how well the global markets are doing, to the ignorance and detriment of billions of humans sharing this planet with them.
I came of age in the 1970s. It was the last time of hope and vision of a positive future. As we see now, in 2018, in even greater display, back then the discontent of people who thought only of themselves was molded into a political movement to free the forces of over-consuming self-destruction, casting capitalism into a moral imperative.
In one lifetime, things have gotten very bad, with trashing the oceans of the world, decimating the forests, overwhelming every part of the planet. It is so bad that we are now seeing significant examples of the mentality in which one will take all they can before the end. Doing so under the insanity of the moral imperative of capitalism. Profiting from the myth of supply and demand without any moral challenge.
This is exemplified with Japan’s return to commercial whaling. We have mostly killed off these majestic intelligent mammals. The few that are left are protected. But, Japan wants to *eat* them. Nothing can taste that good. This is artificial, manufactured, demand. People are highly adaptive and can enjoy the taste and consumption of many things. But, people who look at the Earth in terms of dollar-signs think differently.
We see how this is coupled with and driven by the greed of free-market capitalism. The latest auction of a sushi-grade tuna illustrates this. Again, this happened in Japan. The fewer tunas are left, the more the price will go up, and the stronger the force is to capture, kill and sell the last one.
Is the entire Earth for sale? Those people think so.
We need to return to balanced life on this planet, balancing humanity as just one life-form in a complex ecosystem containing all life on the planet. We need to discover a fundamental ethos, which will apply to all that humanity participates in. Fundamental concepts for this are balance, equilibrium, sustainability. The forces in balance are growth and decomposition. It is a balanced budget. This applies to the human population itself. It applies to economic systems. It applies to the energy sources and sinks. It applies to the generation and destruction of carbon dioxide and methane. It applies to everything.
We cannot achieve an understanding of these principles without an even deeper foundation. That is based upon reasoning overcoming instinct. Rational analysis overcoming marketing, advertising, emotion-driven propaganda and opportunistic promotion.
The world is headed toward the cliff at a high rate of speed. We are well beyond the time to take the foot off the gas pedal, slow down, turn around, and use our understanding of what’s over the cliff to teach us that we should be heading back the way we came.
Going back doesn’t mean to give up what we have, but it does mean to rationally consider what is important and how much of it we want. This is not a cultural revolution. This is not the destruction of institutions, the shaming of intellectuals, the return of everyone to farms. It is a utopian revolution delivery the advanced, balanced, future-focused world that we imagine. Why forfeit a good future so that a small number of people, who have convinced others into replace their happiness with avarice, can take all that they want. The profit-makers have conned people into thinking that utopia is not possible, because it would prevent their personal enrichment. You can’t have all that you want when it takes from what belongs to others.
Humanity has lived the era wandering tribal groups, of building cities, of yielding power to monarchy, yet we have not yet left those behind. It is time to let go of self-interest and rationally build a world focused on equality for all and harmony with the environment.
What concrete steps must be taken?
- Restrict family size to one child
- Reduce world population to around 2 billion
- Dissolve national boundaries, accepting one world government
- End all profit-taking
- Eliminate currency exchange for material goods
- Equal assets and earnings for all
- End all marketing, advertising
- Free education, housing, food for all
- Increase education in STEM
- Foster interest and pursuit of art
- Eliminate religion and all believe founded on unfounded faith
- Stop all new construction of housing, cities, transportation
- Return land to natural ecosystems
The reaction to this essay will be to cast fear, to invoke taboos, to threaten the end of the world. But, by far, the majority of us know that those in power will try to persuade you to act against your own interests so that they can continue to take what they want, taking what is yours, taking what belongs to everyone, what belongs to the entire Earth, what belongs where it is in the integrity of the ecosystem of the Earth. This will not remove the incentive of people to learn, create and work. The incentive to live happily in the world comes from the beauty of the Earth and the will to experience all that is on the Earth and in the Universe.