On Friday, I featured an article by activist and writer Marguerite Hampton, writing under the pseudonym ECO, who has recently joined the Energy Resources Yahoo Group. The focus there is on the fossil fuel depletion crisis, global warming and the human overpopulation crisis. Today she responds to another questioner from that group.
ECO
John Warner asks: Eco – I am curious how you are following your own prescriptions for the future by living outside the Global Monetocracy System.
John, you bring up some very good points here. I can only respond to you by saying that it will take a long, long time before any of us are able to thoroughly extract ourselves from the system, at least as long as the system holds sway. To use a very crude expression, ‘the system literally has us by the balls’ and as painful as being in the system is, extraction is equally painful since those in charge of the system aim to keep is in it.
However, there are growing numbers of people around the world trying to extract themselves and I consider myself to be among these. This growing movement is labeled “The Cultural Creatives” movement by values researchers Paul Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson. It is estimated that there are 50 million of us here in the United States and possibly another 150 million worldwide, as revealed by David C. Korten in his book, “The Post-Corporate World,” who want change.
Let me quote from authors Roy Madron and John Jopling in their book: “GAIAN Democracies – Redefining Globalization and People Power“. And I want to note before beginning that whatever, if we continue to have a world, it will be a globalized world unless we want to go back to a world without communications. The question is: “What kind of a globalized world do we want? The kind we have today or one based on social, environmental, and economic justice, which could lead to world peace?
The new paradigm as being proposed by Madron and Jopling rests on the thesis that:
1) Gaia is a system of interacting biological and material subsystems that have co-evolved together over billions of years and depend on each other.
2) Human beings are a species that has evolved like any other species, with all that implies in terms of interdependence, self organization and the other characteristics of evolved systems.
3) The Gaian system as a whole appears to be approaching one of its periodic system shifts, a process which our industrial and agricultural activity is accelerating.
It is widely recognized outside of the elites (who run the GMS) that our industrial and economic systems must be reconfigured to work with natural systems, instead of treating them as inexhaustible resources. Our human societies must somehow reconnect with nature.
The characteristics of Gaia as a system, and of human beings and human societies as sub-systems of Gaia are deeply significant in relation to democracy. The capacity of Gaian systems to self-organize is the key to their survival and adaptation. Our democratic systems need to be configured so as to aim toward achieving ordered relationships between the self-organized actions of the members of a particular democratic system, the democracy of which they are a part, and the Gaian system to which we all belong. Many will optimistically agree that “Potentially at least, we have the intelligence to learn how to work with Gaia, rather than undermining her.” The intelligence? Yes. But systems for co-learning how to use it? No. Under the Global Monetocracy there is no possibility whatsoever of that potential being realized. The only chance, we believe, of averting the disaster a Gaian systems-shift will spell for the human family, is a system-shift in our democracies. In that sense, we are in a race to reconfigure our democratic systems before Gaia launches on her own systems shift. All we can hope is that Gaia that does not get there first. (End of quote.)
Madron and Jopling go on to write that we have no way of knowing whether the Gaian systems shift will result in a Little Ice Age or what form it will take. They also note that the shift is an example of Gaia’s balancing feedback mechanisms in operation, and that because of the phenomena of systems lag, what we are experiencing may be irreversible, but we have not yet caught on to that in definitive terms. However, there are those on this list who feel that this is the case.
Their plan for system change runs along some of the same lines as those of Jay Earley. And, they emphasize that a new paradigm cannot come about without the input of all citizens. They note that under the Global Monetocracy System the value consensus of the elite ensures that the GM’s purpose is presented as an inevitable fact of life. Both Gaian Democracies and Conscious Action seek to involve we-the-people, and my hope is to see a global civic society that is legally enabled as a true representative of the people.
Madron and Jopling go on to note that “If today’s Global Monetocracy still holds sway, the consequences of the Gaian shift are likely to be horrific. I suspect more and more that the latter is true.
Whatever the outcome, people are going to need support from one another in getting through this phase in society. Michael Ellis, M.D. and I see community learning and information centers as being the vehicle through which we could disseminate information on the need for social change at an international level. Both Madron and Jopling, and Jay Earley along with members of his group have expressed interest in community learning and information centers as the means for bringing people together in small groups and disseminating information through the network thusly created.
There are people in every country around the world who are tired of oppression and want to be free. What we need to do is to encourage these people in establishing community learning and information centers where people can come together for discussion in face-to-face meetings at the micro level. Then we need to connect these dots via the Internet so we have a fully integrated world society that acts like a ‘global brain’ administer to its neural networks and creating a feedback loop that takes into account ’cause’ and ‘effect’.
What is envisioned here is a change from a mechanistic way of life to a more holistic and organic way.
You mentioned the word ‘leader’ here John, and there can be no leaders in this because none of us has the ability to lead—this challenge is too humongous. What is better is that we are all part of ‘co-learning’ groups where information is shared and discussed as it is here. Lists like ER serve a very vital purpose and Tom is to be congratulated on his willingness to take over and moderate the list. He does an excellent job here that serves us all well. I am here like everyone else, to learn and share. We’ve never faced a challenge like this before; we don’t know how to handle it—we can only learn as we go along. In learning, like the baby taking its first steps, we’re going to fall down and have to pick ourselves up and begin all over, hopefully using experience as a tool to make the next step better.
What is necessary is for us to take action on ‘knowledge gained’ through co-learning groups, and I believe that can only come about through linking groups like this, which are on the leading edge of discovery, to face-to-face groups in communities around the world.
ECO is a pseudonym of Marguerite Hampton, an activist and writer with the Turtle Island Institute.
Read more about the Fossil Fuel Depletion Crisis and Global Warming.