In part 1 we looked briefly at the incompatibility of the democratic political hierarchies to take proactive responsability for human values. Part 2 exposes not just the focus on money and our overall dependence. Corona exposed the useless, destructive productivity for the sake of financial benefit instead of human resilience.

Governance

The definition of governance is: the action or manner of governing a state or organization, etc. 

This definition already introduces an objective. What is governing all about? If we look at the way governance evolved over time than we see that is was based creating infrastructure (harbors, roads, logistics) and the aggression of taking (confiscation, plundering, warfare, trade, taxing etc) from others in order to sustain itself. Meanwhile it made use of available human resources through for instance “obedience against food and residence”. Those who were not part of the system would wonder around and try to survive in no-mans land.

Our history has not been peaceful at all. Our wellbeing had been a constant timeline of confrontations and human dominance over others. When industralization developed the popularility of money increased as a means for trade, investment, bribe and employment. The aspect of money became leading for all elements of society, citizens and institutions alike.

For governance the origin of money could at first be self made against a valuable colatoral such as gold. But when the thirst for more money became larger the colatoral changed to different means. Tax increases and debt against time for instance. Also the technique of speculation (artificial price increases due to the politics of creating shortages) introduced itself. While previously greed, self interest and needs for resources were dealt with through aggression against others, now the aggression could extend itself to ones own population by establishing the push for taxed labor, creating shortages to raise prices, allowing debt over future income to impose social controls, etc.

What are we willing to sacrifice if money is our goal?

At individual level we grew blind of moral. We consume articles produced by child labor, because it is cheap. We dump our trash in nature because it is easy. We accept money dominance because without it we cannot have access to the goods around us.

At institutional level we focus on our reason to be, not the consequences of our activities. We produce where it is cheapest, trade across the world, use planetary resources for our processes and don’t worry about pollution, labor abuse, etc as long as we satisfy our shareholders.

At government level we need increasing cash to deal with the consequences of our societal activities. We see costs rise again ailing income. Even the noblest of government cannot deal with the fragmented self interests and public apathy. Regulation is costly and so is aftercare, on top of the old infrastructural responsabilities to keep this type of destructive economy going. Government is forced to be tolerant in order to stay in force but needs to take actions to balance the economy of the taking and giving. Economy of growth is seen as only path forward but it only increases the consequences to unsustainable levels.

The financial crisis in 2008 showed the level of greed and made us loose faith in the banking systems. Instead of taking benefit of the crisis to introduce impactful change capital injections went into the system to save it. Then, 12 years later, COVID19 appears….again they try to save the system with capital injections, the introduction controls and focus on system instruments such aa vaccins. Corona exposes leadership as one track minded management networked globally in an ancient trap of abuse.

Conclusion

During corona lockdown the reality dawned on us. The mass production economy is based on useless, destructive processes. They stopped during lockdown and in just a few weeks both nature and people recovered health positively to the elimination of unnecessary destructiveness. We became aware of the true economy, seen as a cost yet the only one producing real value: care for health. People started crying out for the “new normal”, the appreciation of true value and care for eachother. A new normal that is opposite from what we evolved into over time. We need to let go the obsolete destructiveness and start structuring our resilience together among people and nature. A new type of governance and economy arises.

We are probably experiencing the biggest awareness breakthrough in history of humankind.