This is the fifth in this week’s series of essays on conflict: 1)Conflict: The Norm of Current Civilization 2)Programmed for Conflict 3)When Lose/Win becomes Lose/Lose and 4)Leap Forward or Perish
Remember CONFLICT is the struggle to avoid loss—the struggle to avoid being hurt. In a society that is dominated by conflict. The focus of government is to prevent its citizens from being hurt. This results in the creation of numerous laws that attempt to prohibit hurting by creating expensive punishments for those hurting others. By expensive I mean not just to the criminal, but also to the community seeking to be safe from the criminal.
Barry Carter
A couple hundred years ago at the beginning of the Industrial Age someone uttered the famous words, “We are a nation of laws not men (people).” Though this is what we’ve been for the past two hundred years, when we think of what this really says it is, it is pretty ridiculous and insulting. It says several things:
- We are a nation of bureaucracy and red tape (above being human) since laws are micro rules, regulations and policies intended to limited individuals freedom and make it difficult to do certain things.
- People are not humans but parts of a machine and it is not important to be human but that the machine works. The statement is rooted in Newtonian worldview where the important thing is the running of the machine. The fact is that we are a nation and a planet of people and other life forms.
All civilizations must have a system of social order. Industrial society uses government. In specific representative government. The primary tool used to provide this order is laws. The primary function of our representatives, in addition to levying taxes, is passing laws. These laws are then supported by a judicial system and the potential violent force of police and militaries. We see how ineffective our laws are in an Information Age, when they run counter to our lose/win norms, with out of control violence, crime, riots, corruption, white collar crime, terrorism and overloaded prisons.
“When mores are strong enough laws are not needed and when mores are not strong enough laws are irrelevant.” —Stephen Covey
Today our mores are lose/win and until this changes anything goes! The fact is that our norm in society is lose/win and adversarial competition. We artificially attempt to separate some lose/win activity from other lose/win activity with laws. In an Information Age where people are empowered more and more daily, with expanded social freedoms, it simply does not work. Lose/win is lose/win and a norm is a norm. Man-made micro rules and laws that make one form of lose/win legal and another illegal, are meaningless. This is why progress seems hopeless in our present paradigm.
We have violent professional football players in public services commercials telling our youth not to play the game of lose/win violence on the streets. We cannot teach con-artists, crooks or criminals that what they do is wrong when all of society and civilization operates off of lose/win. Con-games, scams, public work, organized crime, company salaries, war, Olympic games, the death penalty, terrorism, lotteries, robbery, talent contests, murder, beauty contests, rape and career promotions all fall into the same category of lose/win. It is duplicitous to say that one form is wrong and the other is right. As long as civilization works based upon one person losing in order for another to win, then any lose/win goes. Human beings will never effectively be micro-managed into abiding by an artificial line dividing one lose/win behavior from another.
Decentralized Wealth Creation and Mass Privatization operate based upon a win-win norm where artificial micro laws, rules and regulation are not needed. Social order is achieved through overlapping, interconnected and interdependent Mass Privatization communities with an overall shared vision. These communities all have one thing in common. They are all working to help others by meeting their needs. Decentralized Wealth Creation will shift us from a nation of laws to a nation and world of win-win mores.
Copyright 2000 by Barry Carter
About Barry Carter.
Infinite Wealth is available at the author’s website, and can be purchased in bookstores everywhere including Amazon and Barnes & Nobel. There is also an abbreviated free online version, which has been reposed at Future Positive:
See: 1) The Rise of a Win Win Civilization 2) A Personal Journey of Discovery 3) Why Corporations Don’t Work 4) The Emancipation of Capitalism 5) Mass Privatization: Organizing in the Information Age 6) Decentralized Wealth Creation 7) The Infinite Wealth Potential of Liberated Humans 8) The Mandate for Win-Win Wealth Creation 9) Breakpoint: Why You Must Act Now 10) SYNOCRACY: True Democracy Through Synergy 11) THE SHIFT: Awaking to a Win-Win World 12) The Synthesis of a Win-Win World and 13)Vision for a Synergic Transition.