Paying For Help – Towards the Gift Tensegrity (6)

Neutral relationships are ignoring and average experiences. The giver of help experiences a draw. He is unchanged by the act of helping you. Neutral relationships are ignoring and static experiences. He is the same after helping as before. When you ignore those who help you, this is why you get only mediocre help.

Neutral INTERdependence—Fair Market
Sometimes I payothers to giveme help and sometimes otherspay me to givethem help. We are both buyers and sellers of help.

Macys, Sears, Mervyns, Pennys, Costco, K-Mart, Circuit City, etc., etc.—malls, stores, markets, shops, and restaurants—are all examples of neutral help. The yellow pages in the telephone book are lists of places where you can purchase help. Capitalism’s fair market is where you purchase neutral help. You buy help in the open market place at a fair market exchange price. This is the modern free world where help is sold as products and services.

The “fair market” provides humanity a neutral form of INTERdependence. When we buy and sell in the fair market, we are still depending on each other. Humans in neutral relationship still depend on others to meet their needs. However in the fair market place of neutrality, the helpers are anonymous. This anonymity is what allows us to feel independent. Our belief systems in the Western ‘free’ world rest heavily on the core beliefin independence even while this belief is obviously false.

FAIR TRADE—def—> The bartering to insure that the exchange is fair—to insure that the price is not too high or too low—to insure that neither party loses.

Human Neutrality is about fairness. The market place is a fair and safe place to exchange goods and services. Neither seller nor buyer should be injured in the exchange. Products should represent a good value and be sold at a fair price. All citizens are guaranteedfreedom from loss.

In the free market of Neutrality, our identities and personal relationships are unimportant. We purchase products anonymously, usually without knowing the seller’s name, or he ours. When I enter McDonalds to purchase my lunch, I see only the product, the hamburger stacked in the warmer. I ignore the clerk. I don’t know her name or her story. I see the hamburger, that’s what I want. The clerk behind the counter ignores me. She doesn’t know my name or my story. She sees my five dollars, that’s what she wants.

The store is clean and I feel safe. I expect the kitchen is clean and I will get a good product for a fair price. We will trade. We will speak the neutral words of the trading ritual. Inever knowing her name, she never knowing mine. “May I help you?” “Thank you and have a nice day.” We trade.

Now our trade is fair. By definition, the lunch McDonalds is selling has a fair market value of $5.00. My five dollars has a fair market value of $5.00. We trade fairly. Economicallynothing much has changed for me. I had five dollars in cash when I entered McDonalds, and I left with five dollars worth of lunch. My net worth is the same.

While I obviously got some utility from the exchange, I preferred the lunch to my cash. In a strict economic sense, I am little changed by this exchange. In fair exchanges, $5.00 in cash equals $5.00 in food. In fact, McDonalds created the lunch for less than $5.00, the fair market price contains some profit for the seller. But, when I earned my $5.00, I did it by selling some product or service that cost me a little less. I’m entitled to a profit when I sell products or services. That’s the neutral way.

If we analyze neutral relationships, we discover that in a neutral exchange (1+1) = 2. Humans institute Neutrality to escape Adversity—to protect themselves from loss.

In the language of games, where you can win, lose, or draw, we are obtaining a draw. We, like the plants, will be ignored by the experience. We will be the same after the experience as before. The advantageof changing from Adversity to Neutrality is not that we will win, but rather that we will avoid losing.

Neutrality offers a safe haven for humans. With Neutrality it is possible for us humans to avoid playing the adversary game. We are free to work without fear that others will hurtus. We are free and independent citizens. We are free to create products or provide services and sell those in the great market for a fair price.

The capitalistic economics of Neutrality produces a major advance over the economics of Adversity. Humans using neutral organization are much more successful than those using adversarial organization. Because human needs and wants are many and complex and there is no way any individual can meet these needs, we have evolved the great market. We operate as independent producers and consumers. Each neutral citizen is responsible for purchasing their own needs and wants.

Neutral relationships are ignoring. The parties in these relationships experience no change. They barter to insure that the exchange is fair—to insure that the price is not too high or too low—to insure that neither party loses. The open market of free enterprise generates a zone of neutrality which markedly reduces adversary relations. Neutral systems gain a marked production advantage over adversary systems. They are significantly more productive. However, this is primarily because they are not adversary.

In a neutral relationship, one individual plus another individual are the same after the relationship. (1+1) = 2. When you pay others to help you, offering them a fair wage in an atmosphere marked by indifference, the helper draws and will typically give you only average quality help.

Product Tensegrity

When we obtain help from others by payment of money, we are entering into theProduct Tensegrity. Now in the Fair Market, products are the actionswe need to purchase to meet our needs. Products include knowingin the form of expertise, consultation, and counseling. Products includeactionin the form of physical labor and services. And products include leverslike tools, appliances, automobiles, computers, homes, food, etc., etc., created by action to meet our needs.

Now if we examine these products, we discover they are continuously made available in the fair market by sellers for sale to buyers who only occasionally purchase them. And so we see the emergence of theProduct Tensegrity. Products are continuously available and pullingon the buyer to enter the fair market, but the buyer is only occasionally interested in making a purchase. Many of our stores are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year—continuously pulling. But, I only shop on Friday afternoons —discontinuously pushinginto the fair market.

Like all tensegrities, the larger it is the more stable it is. In nature, we find that the larger the fair market—the greater the numbers of buyers and sellers , the more stable are prices and supplies of commodities. Recall the natural Needs-Action Tensegrity of Life. Needs are continuously pulling on me take action to meet them.

Within the Product Tensegrity this means, sometimes I am the buyer and pay other to give me help, and sometimes I am the seller accepting payment to give my help to others.

Within the Product Tensegrity,the buyers are the active members. The seller is continuously available to accept payment to give their help to others. For an INTERdependent species like humanity that means that the Receivers of help are theactive members. The givers of help must be continuously available to discontinuous buying whims of the receivers of help.

Now compared with thenatural pattern,

Needs —Actions
Continuous-Pull —Discontinuous-Push
Passive —Active
Receivers of Help —Givers of Help

We view each other as independent and separate individuals. We are not enemies. Although we usually act in a friendly manner, we are not really friends.