worldmind said:
The second part with it's assertions is largely seen as true by the membership, but it is irrelevant because no 'proof' seems to cause much change.
I know I can't convince you of the mountains of evidence against such an assertion and I feel sad that you will never see that the proof for the common belief that ex-President Bush was at worst negligent but by no means was he culpable or was this an inside job. There are many things to hate Bush for: the war in Iraq, the erasure of the Federal Surplus, the massive increases to U.S. national debt, the over-extension of government power via the Patriot Act and various Wire-Tapping laws, the total financial collapse of the U.S. economy nearly leading to another great depression, poorly regulated bailouts of the rich banks, friendship with big oil and Saudi Arabian autocrats; I could go on and on, but he point is, you and I disagree and as you don't wish to base your arguments on this poorly-supported theory of collusion, I just assume you go on believing in what I and most consider a fallacy.
worldmind said:
Actually, there is no evidence that 'barter' was an early development of Humanity in pre-history. People lived in small tribes which simply took care of each other, like most families now. The 'barter' theory comes from seeing human interaction from the money paradigm which postulates 'property' maintained by violence and intimidation. But the evidence so far is that before the first 'civilization' humans did not use violence and intimidation against each other and did not barter.
Alright, if you have such a knee-jerk reaction to the term
barter, let's call it by its more fundamental name:
Quid Pro Quo, This for That. Don't believe that Quid Pro Quo predates humanity? Let's do a case study in humanity's closest genetic relative, then. I give you the Chimpanzee and Bonobo. I wish to deal with each separately because I think both maintain aspects, as well as the Gorilla, of human instinct that is a union of those animals personalities, not a mirror of one or the other. But consider the hierarchical nature of all 3 groups. The Chimpanzee and Gorilla are both patriarchal species. Gorilla males are naturally big and naturally dominate. Chimpanzees are strong but establish pecking orders in terms of who gets to eat first, who gets to mate with the best females, and so on. How do they establish this pecking order? Through fights, yes, but also through grooming. What about the Bonobo? The Bonobo are more matriarchal, showing that there really is no reason in human society for patriarchy. In Bonobo society, fighting is much less common -- in a sense they are more civilized, like us humans. But where as Chimpanzees use violence and grooming to establish importance, Bonobos use sex and grooming. In both cases, there is grooming and grooming is a form of Quid Pro Quo, quite literally you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. It is clear that the antecedent of
all human trade, barter or money is also Quid Pro Quo through grooming, better access to food and tools and mates and eventually more abstract Quid Pro Quo through exchange of manufactured goods, what is commonly known as bartering.
Bartering is not pejorative, it is simply a form of Quid Pro Quo at a material level. Quid Pro Quo is in human nature; it's in our evolutionary baggage and not something we have yet evolved "past".
worldmind said:
The concept of property itself seems to come from violence and coercion, and was first applied to other humans in slavery. The dynamic of social interactions was sharing in a form called 'gifting' where a person's value in someone else was shown by giving them the most valuable of gifts that individual had, and in sharing what was not immediately being used easily and freely. There is also no evidence of war then either, and tribes usually had orgies when they met, because their children became weaker with inbreeding if the genes were not shared freely. (of course they did not think in those terms.)[/b]
Of course, humans have a capacity for giving and altruism without expectation. But this is only valid to a point. Okay, you don't like the term communist, and communism as practiced in the Soviet Union or China or Cuba is not true communism as I would define it anyway. But if you don't like an ism, let's call your system the "kibbutz". The kibbutz in the founding days of the nation of Israel was indeed much like the Utopian society you describe. Everyone understood their job, their place, what needed to be done, everyone trusted everyone else, everyone shared everything. It sounds to me this is exactly the world you describe. The reason why the Kibbutz and many of the old, U.S. pioneering societies flourished was because you knew everyone in that society. As long as you know somebody, you can trust that person. The problem is when you create a society too big for everyone to know everyone else. That is when the kibbutz breaks down. When you have people you know and people you don't know you're always going to trust more the people you know. It's basic human nature.
There is a natural limit to the number of people we can truly know well. It may be in the 100s, but it's likely not the 1,000s -- do you know 1,000 people well? Never mind the millions or billions. At worst your society will develop an us vs. them attitude, but that can be overcome with negotiation and trade and mutual understanding. But that understanding is only good to a limit, and this is why no kabbutz has survived with much more than a few tens of people. This is why attempts at a kabbutz society in Russia and China and Cuba failed.
I like the kabbutz, but you can't grow in a kabbutz. With so much effort spent on simply feeding the household, there is little time for science and research and the advancement of the arts. Those things were not impossible, but certainly they could not grow without division of labor, and by the time you have enough people for a division of labor that includes the more quality of life occupations, you're typically already too big to know everyone.
So how do you equalize the relationships between the kabbutz? Trade, barter, money. Money solves the us vs. them problem. Money is the great equalizer. People come in all different shapes and sizes and skills and abilities but money is the same for everyone. I can earn a wage discovering new science, you can earn a wage writing a new treatise on a modern Kabbutz system, someone else can earn money developing an electric car. I don't know you, so how can I trust that you have my best interests at heart? How can you trust me? Money. My money is as good as your money.
Also, money may be used for evil purposes, but it should also be noted that it has been used for good. It has been redistributed to help the less fortunate, it has been donated to relieve suffering, it has been used to break Communist oppression in the Soviet Union, it is used in capitalism to spurn competition which causes prices to fall making products more accessible to the masses.
Should we consider the purpose of life the pursuit of money? Heavens no! I feel that the benefice we grant others is our greatest purpose on this Earth, to teach to care, to donate. I, for instance, am a member of the Open Sourced Software community and freely give some of my work to the general public to use as they please. I even develop free software applications to bring enjoyment. But I still need to eat, and giving things away will not put food in my mouth. I still need to earn a living and if the choice is to simply live a subsistence farmer's life, waking each morning with a deep pit of dread that my crops have failed, or to depend on others more skilled at food production and others more skilled at protecting my liberties and others more skilled at building cars and roads and tools so that I can focus on the things they can use in return and we all use a universal currency. I most assuredly prefer the later and see this as the best course to having a flourishing humanity.
worldmind said:
All this comes from the violence enforced money system, which includes the very idea of 'profit' which was never a motivator in money terms before that imposition long ago. The paradigms now are not likely anything like the paradigms then. We are just beginning to understand how much our current dysfunctional cultural paradigms distort our understanding of past generations, especially in pre-history.
Profit is just a way of greasing the machinery. We do need to be mindful of excessive profit, but profit is just another form of Quid Pro Quo, in the sense that it is payment in thanks for effort and labor, be that labor of the hands or of the mind. I do think that the pursuit of profit is indeed a terrible ill that has befallen this country. Be it the greed of doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical corporations, medical supply companies, insurers or patients, excessive profit when it comes to health-care is destroying an already feeble social contract. I wish something as basic as human health was a right, not a privileged of the rich. Perhaps one day, but yes, money does have its dark side in lobbyist and PACs and rich disinformation machines.
So profit is not perfect, but without it we loose the ability to progress through trade and specialization. I see the answer as accountability and regulation, not a total elimination of money all together. There are some real benefits to money, as I've already spelled out. The goal should be how to make money work better, not to eliminate it all together.
worldmind said:
This condition is all about the common current paradigm of society everywhere, which is dysfunctional to the level of insanity. But nature does not forgive our insanity, and our practices are threating all life on this planet. But nothing is unchanging, and the paradigms are changing also. The situation in the world can change if enough people change the way they think. We know how to do it now, and the only factor holding us back is the fear that sheeple have that everyone else but them won't change. Fear is the mindkiller. That is what defines 'sheeple'... fear that others won't change which produces an attitude of 'it's impossible so why bother.' They are trapped in the attitude of fear that says: 'Anything good is evil, and anything bad is true'.
I find that most people are quite rational thinkers; it is mostly the media that is making them unable to see how some organizations are taking advantage of them through obscene profits in basic commodities or tax laws that benefit the rich rather than the voter. There is a lot of fear in the voter, to be sure, but a lot of hope too. Nobody is a sheeple, not the American working his 40-hour job, not the subsistence farmer in Asia or Africa. They all have minds, they can all see what is important to their situation at that time.
For instance, take that subsistence farmer in the developing world. She has this very inefficient farm that she'd like to improve but because she has to pay for her kids school and barely has enough money for anything else, she can't afford to improve her condition. Enter the micro-credit revolution. Now, she can borrow a few thousand dollars to make some simple improvements to her long-term farming needs and in the end become a more efficient farmer, which means more money for the education of her children which leads to a better society. The answer isn't to take away her access to credit -- she never had it before and look where that got her. The answer is to extend to her that micro-loan so that she improves, the society improves and the nation develops.
worldmind said:
Actually, the whole 'population' problem is easily fixed, (compare to some problems) merely by education and prosperity, both of which are the simplest problems to solve. The west's idea of 'population' overgrowth is caused by the concentration of people in cities which exist primarily for 'economic' reasons. There is no real 'population' problems in 1st world countries. The real population problem is in 3rd world countries where lack of education and poverty leave a dynamic where the majority of children die young, and having babies is the only survival dynamic a couple has. The ability to reproduce is the last component of humans to be lost to starvation, and sex is the only pleasure left, especially in a dark hut with no power, fuel for fires, or anything else. Is it no wonder sex is so important to them?
As I just explained, education comes through freed resources and freed resources come from Micro-credit, the one thing your movement is so against. We agree that education is the answer, but micro-credit is a way to pay for it, to Quid Pro Quo for it, as it were. I see no solution in your system -- at least none that could work in anything larger than a kibbutz.
worldmind said:
We agree with that quote. But also Chairman Bush, or Chairman Hitler, or Chairman (insert banker or despot here)!
Actually, the Zeitgeist Movement and Venus Project does not propose anything communist or socialist. That is an illusion created by pigeonholing of concepts. For 'Capitalists', everything not capitalist is 'communist or socialist or fascist', although capitalism is a form of fascism. All the 'isms' mentioned are based on fascism, on organized 'approved' violence and coercion based upon a pyramid structure of control essential to their existence. The Zeitgeist Movement/Venus Project is not based upon these proven dysfunctional ideas of 'human nature' or 'authority'. It is a new paradigm, not a new 'ism'.
The question is, can you even imagine something new evolving in this time of acceleration of acceleration of scientific and technological development? Must all human social behavior fit in some 'pigeonhole' of past dysfunction? The sheeple say no, but the half a million Zeitgeist Members, and vast numbers more join every day, say 'yes' and are proceeding to develop that new paradigm. It is 'emergent' which means it continues to change, but the basics are the same... no organized social violence or intimidation, a new harmonious relationship with the ecosystem, (which we come from and must have to survive,) and the dropping of old dysfunctional social systems which have not, nor ever could, work. Sustainability means not having wars and great divisions among humanity that can be used to create wars. It means dropping old ways of thinking that devalue nature and humans to the level of waste or replaceable components. It means, most of all, getting rid of the concepts of money and the power it creates to waste human potential in distorted horrific devaluing of human life.
Yes, I know the thing you describe. It has been tried, it has been seen on this Earth before. It is the kibbutz. If you are so offended by isms, then leave it at that. You are in favor of the kibbutz on an international basis. And I contend, as I've spelled out above, that this is unsustainable.
Listen, I will admit that I think you are a very cogent and intelligent individual, which makes me all the more sad that you can't see the big picture, the full weight of human society and history that makes us what we are. I would love a Star Trek federation ideal world, but it's just not compatible with human nature. It may seem to work for a while, but as the system grows it collapses and the only thing that's kept it stable this long is money. I just wish you could work with me to fix the problems with money and credit that we both agree already do exist, not through radical and naïve destruction but through the construction of stronger protections and better institutions.
