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Why do I get out of bed in the
morning?—to avoid becoming someone I don’t want to be, someone conscious, but
not awake, someone who moves about, but isn’t strong, someone who grows distant
from other people, but who wants more than anything to remain vitally engaged.
So to increase my awake, strong, vitally engaged self I’m jumping back into the
blog glögg and going for a swim. As
I had hoped my summer hiatus, which turned into summer, fall, and most of
winter, proved to be fruitful thanks to relentless cross-pollination of
excellent, non-fiction reading. I can
hardly be an expert on everything that interests me. So I am encouraged when
there are so many authors who dare to describe and prescribe conditions for our
society’s improvement and healing. What follows is a compilation of the key
points from these writers.
How will humans evolve when our
choices within a market economy are driven by the very forces that serve to
destroy us? While we ride the tide of ever escalating and sophisticated
technology, how can we manage social changes brought in its wake?
The answer is essentially a
recognition that we can no longer maintain the growth of capital at the expense
of social capital. Any enterprise in the 21st century that wants to
capture the social conscience will have to do so while grounded in “biosphere
consciousness.” As described by Jeremy Rifkin this organizing principle follows
the natural rhythms of life, and the laws of energy. It powers every living
thing in existence; photosynthesis, solar power, geo-thermal power, etc.
Equally as important is the goal of social capital—empathic engagement with
one’s fellow human beings. It represents accumulated trust between people and
helps create the narratives that bind us together. Slowly we are learning how
to treat each other and share what we have so that our culture reflects who we
want to be.
Much of what has spurred the
development of these ideas is the massive dysfunction of the organizations and
systems in which we currently live.
Anticipated re-orgs:
·
A long string of stalemates has eroded trust in
our government. People will withdraw their support or force a reorganization.
·
Intelligent technology will substitute for
various forms of human labor in the commercial arena, while social capital in
the collaborative community will increase.
·
Education reform: In many ways we are teaching
ourselves how to live in what Rifkin calls a distributed, collaborative,
open-source economy.
Our culture and its leadership have no choice but to drive
the changes we seek. Transformation initiated by government can happen, but only under
pressure from its citizens.
How can
the system self-correct unless we intervene?
There
is an undeniable need to impose limits on human behavior. Capitalism as we know
it will re-align favorably with environmental conservation initiatives when it
is proven that they deliver measurable financial reward. The market and its
regulatory context must reward businesses for their performance. Rather than
making business the demon, it must be reformed from within so that values of
its well-being are not at odds with maintaining the health of our physical
world. From decades of having witnessed the carnage of oil spills, we have
learned that pleas for intelligent environmental protection have fallen on
disbelieving ears, and it is insulting to imagine that the cost of repair can ever
equal the loss of our one and only world. As Paul Gilding puts it, we must cage
the market tiger.
Please stay tuned for next week’s
installment where we find how personal economy gets involved.
Corporations are definitely out of control. They are like teenagers- wanting all the rights of adults without the responsibility. The government has the duty to act as the responsible parent- of course corporations find this insulting, just as teenagers do. Government has become the weak and permissive parent, telling ourselves that it is more important to be friends with our charge, than to provide strong guidance.
ReplyDeleteBut there is more to it. Greed used to be recognized as morally wrong. No longer, greed is just considered the natural state of man/society. We rise to the top, by getting as much as we can. Profitable has become synonymous with good. You don't have to look to corporations to see that twisted value taking over our social conscious. We don't even take up a hobby anymore, like singing or painting, unless we can think of a way to make money at it. While corporations are winning the game, we all agree on the rules.