Welcome to the New Decade! It certainly looks to be an important and exciting one. I believe this will be the decade we have the shift in consciousness necessary to heal our relationship with this planet that sustains us. Evolution occurs in nature when conditions shift and a species must change in order to survive. I believe the disruption in the world and the sense of urgency and danger and even sadness so many feel will be what pushes us into an evolutionary move in our collective thinking, our relating and in so many of the systems we rely on.
Given its impact on the world, the Mother of All Systems is the mainstream economy. It is this flawed economic model that is at the heart of the climate crisis, species extinction, oceans clogged with plastic waste, and incalculable levels of human despair, depression and exploitation.
There's really no mystery why the current system leads to these negative by-products; the mechanisms built in and include the following:
- We see an inaccurate sense of the cost of things because the current system doesn't take into account, and in many cases even subsidizes, the waste, pollution and downstream costs that certain "economic activity" creates.
- We buy into the myth of a free market when in truth the economy is skewed and directed by countless subsidies, tax codes, etc., that are developed and defended by the special interests making money off them.
- We measure progress based on growth in GDP but GDP simply measures the amount of money flowing through the system with no consideration of whether that money is making our lives or society better. For example the GDP measures money spent to keep a child incarcerated as just as positive as the same amount of money spent to give a child an education. On top of that the constant push for growth requires continuous increase in consumption of natural resources.
Right now I am developing a college course to raise awareness about these systemic flaws. It's titled Economic Illusions, Truths and Dangerous Assumptions. I am excited to create this space to discuss these issues and potential saner alternatives with a wide and diverse group of people. I believe this will be far more fertile ground than the current polarized political debate.
In the sensationalized political arena so much of the debate on these issues is framed as Capitalism versus Socialism. That precludes even thinking about whether the true solution might be a system and guiding principles that are outside either of those buckets. Moreover, it skews the truth of what both Capitalism and Socialism is or could be and usually prevents us from questioning the underlying assumptions that drive our economic decisions. For example, one of the underlying fundamental beliefs in western economic theory is scarcity, of resources and labor and of wealth. However, is it really true that we do not have enough to increase wealth for everyone if we evolved our systems and decision making lenses? What does wealth actually mean anyway? Is there really such a thing as enough? Too much? Asking these kinds of questions is key.
Surveys and polls have shown that a prevailing western cultural belief is that the economy is like a force of nature, something out of our control, something that evolves and corrects itself. This is a tremendously dangerous assumption. In fact, the economy is a human-made construct and we tweak it and control all the time. Since we created it, we can recreate it.
Would you like to feel more economic security? Would you like to know your sick child is going to be well cared for without driving you into bankruptcy? Wouldn't it feel good to know we can travel and transport ourselves around without destroying the planet in the process? Redesigning and evolving the economic operating system is essential to making all of these things possible.
Despite all the appearances of wealth and all the messages that there is no better way, the truth is our current version of western capitalism is brutal for the vast majority of people living under it. It is designed, intentionally and unintentionally, to be that way. And it is our great opportunity to say enough and to redesign it. Doing so will be a central evolutionary necessity in this new decade.
A colleague of mine, Nate Hagens, is teaching a similar course at the University of Minnesota. Here is a video from one of his classes explaining how our human brains contribute to and then are impacted by the current human predicament we face. I'd love to know what you think of this. Please send me your thoughts at [email protected].
