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Permission to live

Today one of my contacts on Facebook published a note that stated “the human being is the only species that has to pay to live on this planet”. Since money is not an invention from nature but something that we thought up our selves, the ones that control the money control the human living on Earth. This is a rather disturbing thought. No Darwin, no evolutionary awareness, no God, no consciousness or genetics, faith or karma, just some political or greedy banker who grants permission to live, against certain contractual conditions.

Right now it can be scientifically demonstrated that the organized greed around money and money based systems devastes nature and our human evolution. Our dependence on money is so controled that it has become nearly impossible to even imagine a human world without it. Just try it in your own mind. Where would you get your basic needs from (food, water, clothing, housing, etc)? How would you organize your life to get access to the perceived abundance that you seem to have today? How would you ensure sustainable evolutionary progress without damaging our habitat and providing equal chances for all the members of our species? If you do not depend anymore on the permission to live of those who control the money based systems, how would you assure your own and evolutionary survival? Our vulnerability is clear here. Will you remain among the lucky ones?

Still, inside the economised world permission to live goes hand in hand with permission to die. The human life is seen as a productive asset as well as a costly burden at a later age. “People are dying well these days” an economist said when referring to the graying population and the tendency of living longer and longer, thanks to effective healthcare and scientific progress. For those who can afford life death becomes negotiable too. Lots of elderly people are being kept alive against their will while painful operations and recovery are continuously done “because it is scientifically or medically possible”. A discussion has started as to when someone should be allowed to die a natural death or kept medically alive? In times of crisis the costs of keeping people alive is making the discussion even more morbid. “After age 70 we donot provide new hips” a doctor said. “Can’t treat your urgency sir, you still have an outstanding debt” the dentist said. People with money go health shopping in other countries were transplants or operations are done for the highest bidder. Poor people are not even allowed near a doctor or hospital. Children in poverty die because they have no access at all to expensive medicin and they are no market for pharma industries. Those children could be the 21st century Einstein through pure statistics.

Permission to live and die is now a matter of economics, not of evolution. The natural selection of the species goes via the bank account. What genetic disorder will that provide over time? Undoubtedly the gen of greed will florish which will just have a further impact on the level of human agression and criminality in the world. The survival of the greediest. That does not promise much good for our species. It will be interesting to study the long term genetic impact of capitalist economics.

Permission to live is in this economic sense contrary to the freedom to evolve. We develop the tendency to pass on the worst of ourselves, not just in culture or behavior but also genetically and morally.

Capital injections don’t work – end of phase 3

When I traveled to Madrid this week (june 2012) to present AiREAS as a sustainocratic solution for the city problems with air polution the very first reaction of government executives was the traditional and classic public negation. “We have no air polution problem!”. This was interesting because I had just landed in the dense smog of the city and have information that Brussels threatens with sanctions if certain norms are not complied with in 2015. I also know that the local government has been trying to do its best to address the problem but that the issues go beyond the complexity of government regulatory authority and consequence driven measures.

The problem most government officials have is that they are so used to cover up their impotence around truly complex issues, publically claiming that they are in control and things will get better somewhere in the future, that they feel automatic resistence when someone walks in with a new proposition. This we see also in the world of finance. The traditional blind negation of an economic bubble, ignoring it until the bubble blew up in everyone’s face in 2008, was exaactly the same. When negation is not posible anymore because of undeniable proof the next psychological phase is entered: the one of disbelief and urgent correction. Then the negation continues. A quick massive capital injection should solve the problems overnight. 4 years and many billions of money later we all see that the problems continu.

When I got home from Madrid I watched financial analists on TV explain for the first time why the capital injected was only pushing the problems forward but not solving them. This remarkable first announcement of acceptance was a great relief to me. Of course, all huge capital injections had given the rats to cash their risks and leave the ship befor sinking, but still. It indicated to me that the phase of resistance to change and negotition for recovery of lost financial stability was ending.

The next phase (following my own model of cyclic phases of awareness and human development) is the one of fear. The large financial institutions had recovered their long term loans against public debt so that the institutions would not go broke. The citizens only had democratic rights and fear. A few 10K extra debt per person was institutionally acceptable. Of course, the public itself was never asked. It is all a game of big financial interests and liabilities played over the back of unaware masses of people. Institutions now need not fear anymore. Their power play is now over the civilians which hardly get organized to oppose and which can be submitted still under the pressures of financial law of debt.

Then the acceptance of the crisis and need of total renewal is opened. This openess is what I have been waiting for as it announces the total culture change needed to address the shaping of a new paradigm and corresponding new complex social structures such as sustainocracy. The crisis is reaching the general public now definitely. Capital injections saved the speculanting institutions but not society. The problem of greed was resolved and now poverty could stand up and protest.

But in Spain, from a sustainable progress point of view, the government executives were still hiding between their wall of negation. This will be the case in every government around the world. Reluctance to let go of old authorities and structures is largest when no alternative is know.Experts are consulted from inside the system only. Expertise from outside, like the one’s I  am offering, are not recognized let alone taken seriously. One will fight against change simply because one does not know where to change into. When I presented sustainocracy in Madrid the first reaction was defensive but the seed has been planted. Before my presentation they had no choice, now they do, just like the population. Just like in Holland before, it will do its psychological work (like this blog), and some time in the near future the officials will lower their defences and accept shyly the hand that I reach out to them from the new world.

We are reaching the natural point of a psychological break through, because resistence does not seem to work but also because an alternative shines through at the end of the tunnel. I hope to find enough executive interest to join me in a world changing congres on 12.12.12 to let the crisis behind us and definitively open up to sustainocracy around the world. Sustainable human progress is more important after all than keeping up artificial, obsolete systems, even if they are called politics or banks. Capital injections did not bring back stability, it just saved some banks for some time.

Choice? Blue or Yellow?

Consider that you are driving on a road and reach a T junction. You can enter the blue road which gets you to a ravine in which you will certainly crash. The road is however one big fun fare filled with goodies (plenty of food, sex and rock & roll, mountains of gold and properties along the way) for you to enjoy quickly before you crash. Once in a while you hear a scream and wonder whether it is of joy or fear just before the crash?

The other road (yellow)  is dull, even very difficult to drive due to the many horrible looking obstacles, no goodies at all, even hardship to expect, but it gets you along side the ravine safely and eventually turns away from it.

Which road would you pick? The yellow one for the long term safety where you see hardly anyone? Or the blue one for the short term joy yet unsafe and where you see a lot of people?

When you make your choice and finally encourage yourself to go for safety, the yellow road, despite the powerful attraction of fun, you notice a little man sitting there. He controls a big barrier, preventing access to the yellow track. When you ask him why you may not continue he tells you that he represents justice of a democratically chosen government and local banking system who both control the blue road and all the attractions along side. It has been decided by law that everyone has to take that blue road and he is there to assure that this rule is followed, if necessary by applying the law.

“But this will get me killed” you exclaim. The bureaucrat shrugs his shoulders and  says that he is just doing his job. It’s a free country and everyone has the right to vote democratically. Short term fun was chosen so everyone has to have fun even if it gets you killed. Dullness is not allowed and long term dullness is even banned from the choices, even if this saves your life. All banking and government investment goes into placing more attractions along the blue track and upholding the system that has been chosen for.

He even pinpoints far in the distance where you can still see a very narrow bridge over the ravine. “See”, the bureaucrat says “that is the place where the bankers and chosen politicians stand to assure that this system keeps running. It is a small bridge and has only room for them and their interests, nothing else. And look at poor me, I have to sit here and have to tell everyone to take the blue road full of attractions. A hell of a job”.

Now it is again up to you. What do you do? Do you follow the rules imposed onto you or do you make up your own mind?

The story reflects our current system of economies of growth. They are on social and ecological crash course but still oblige people by law to stick to the money driven dependencies of consumption, even if you want to take another route. Sustainable progress is blocked by bureaucracy. The only choice we really have, if sufficiently aware of disaster, is to avoid the bureaucrat, jump the gate and walk the road of safety even though we travel alone in a desert.

Strangely enough most people still take the road of consumable pleasure knowing that it ends in disaster. They do it either for the short term fun, out of lazyness to build a new life out in the empty desert or out of fear for the authorities that impose the laws. What is needed for the masses to pull down the barrier, fire the bureaucrat and build a new society along the empty road?