Preface
From Industrial to Spiritual Revolution
Change begins in the mind. The human mind controls the brain and leads brain, body and soul in a chosen direction. When the will to change sprouts, the mind orders the brain to act. After all the brain tells a person what the world looks like. It shapes the individual reality. If the brain shifts, reality follows. The human mind has an enormous power. Imagine what would happen if all minds were set on joint efforts to improve society. Imagine what would happen if the good spirits would chase away evil and color the mood of a whole society in vivid overtones.
The movement towards a joint effort society is about joining opposites in search of a higher level of wellbeing. The voices that reject the paradigm growth is good are gaining support, spreading eco-literacy while doing so. Although much of the philosophy was already developed long before the 1960’s, now it can reach more people and contribute to awareness. General and true concerns on the direction humanity chose since machines became the main producers of goods, feed the sprouts of the joint effort society. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, countless individuals (and the societies they were part of) committed and experienced cruelties against humanity and its’ mother (Earth) in general and the poor & vulnerable in particular. A phrase originating from Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, but actually introduced by Herbert Spencer1, led to rationalization of the slaughtering and gave it a name: Survival of the Fittest. This concept turned into the dominant view of life. And so exploitation, abuse, slavery, terror and competition became legitimate means used by the rich & strong to become even richer and stronger. The overall result was a great divide between Haves and Have-nots that kept on growing until this day.
For Nobel Prize laureate Amartya Sen this divide is central in every day politics. ‘For me the difference between left and right is clear,’ he said in an interview with Frank van Empel. ‘It simply depends on: are you for or against the poor? Are you on the side of the poor, then you are on the left side of the political spectre. Are you on the side of the rich, then you are on the right side.’2
Under the regime of Capitalism, that placed competition at the centre of its’ value system, the enrichment and reinforcement of the fittest reached new heights. The free market became the arena where producers battle for the favor of consumers and consumers try to gain as many goods as possible at the lowest price. All eyes have turned towards matter and materialistic gain has become what mattered most. Within the dynamic context the job of governmental agencies has been to facilitate the so-called ‘invisible hand’ that would bring supply and demand together into a state of equilibrium. When a system is in equilibrium, you can push, pull and prod it all you like, it will simply return to how it was to begin with.3 Investor George Soros would later call this belief in the existence of an invisible auctioneer ‘market fundamentalism’. Market fundamentalism, according to Soros, is the acceptance that ‘competitive markets are always right – or at least they produce results that cannot be improved. The financial markets in particular are supposed to bring prosperity and stability – the more so if they are completely free from government interference in their operation and unrestricted in their global reach.’4
There is, however, one big problem with this equilibrium concept: in practice not one (sub)market is in balance for more than a heartbeat. When one (sub)market (e.g. the labour market) is nearing a state of equilibrium, it generally is disturbed by a disequilibrium in another (sub)market (such as the money market), already before the balance is reached. Possible reasons: greed, interests, power. The free market ideology, a.k.a. fundamentalism, belongs in the same league as religious fundamentalism. The connection between these two types of fundamentalism has been formed by the poor. Western abandonment of the poor, Micheline R. Ishay stated in History of Human Rights, has created a vacuum that has been filled by Islamist fundamentalists. ‘For Islamist fundamentalists,’ Ishay wrote, ‘it is a moral obligation to meet the basic needs of ordinary people. The fact that such needs were so neglected, first by colonialists and then by corrupt secular elites, has given these fundamentalists a powerful weapon with which to spread their beliefs.’5
The belief that everyone, by virtue of her or his humanity, is entitled to the satisfaction of basic needs and certain unalienable freedoms is rooted in earlier tradition and documents of many cultures, but in the arenas of brute market forces human rights and needs have been completely misunderstood. They were formulated by higher Spirits. It took World War II as a beastly catalyst to propel human rights onto the global stage and into the global conscience. People like Robert Schuman – one of the founding fathers of the European Union – and Eleanor Roosevelt – who was one of the initiators of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – paved the way for the human rights movement. The moment of glory came in the sixties and seventies of the 20th century; hippies and other idealists claimed the power to change, former colonies liberated themselves from Western rulers and the first steps towards a ‘better’ world were set in happy optimism. The backlash came almost immediately.
Ending the 1970’s conservatism and competition in the political arena took over from idealism and cooperation. The dominant ideology of conservative politics and neoliberal economics sang the same old song: enrich the rich, empower the empowered, after which the poor would rise from the Swamp of Poverty & Injustice in some miraculous manner. One of the tunes was called: supply side economics. Critics use the term ‘trickle-down’ economics. The main characteristics of supply side economics were large-scale tax cuts for individuals and corporations, deregulation of businesses and strong incentives for investment. This would lead to economic growth and an accumulation of wealth that would ‘trickle down’ the economy. Its proponents believed that making the rich richer eventually would help the poor because the benefits of an expanding economy would seep down to them. But, in fact, this last shackle of the chain got lost. And this is exactly what went wrong: Inequality grew like weed in the America’s of Ronald Reagan.
Not only in the USA inequality grew during those years, all over the world disparities increased, despite humanitarian aid and development programs for the developing countries and for the poor and deprived. Especially on the African continent the population suffered and was unable to throw off the heritage of colonialism. Wars and famines raged, and still do, over the continent. Of the many theories and explanation on the causes, the socio-psychological analysis of John Kenneth Galbraith is much referred to. He published The Nature of Mass Poverty, at the eve of returning conservatism and neoliberal economics, in 1979. Galbraith blamed e.g. accommodation for being one of the psychological forces of the poverty trap. The strategy to accommodate is a rational act, since improvement of the circumstances of life seems impossible to those who have suffered deprivation already for generations. No reasonable individual spills energy if there is no gain to expect from the effort. Accommodation can only be attacked by examples of successful escape. Migrants and revolutionaries are among the front soldiers that battle accommodation. They possess the will to succeed and show their peers that escape is possible, bringing energy and dynamics for change to the community.
Together all economic, political, ecological, socio-cultural and psychological developments have left 1,2 billion – and probably more – people in the world starving. They live on less than $1 a day. In Africa 46% of the population earns less than $1 a day.6 It is one of the key problems and major societal threats of today.
JES! Towards a joint effort society is an attempt to contribute to the reduction of poverty and injustice. It advocates fundamental human freedoms and teaches to stimulate self-reliance. Professor of Philosophy (University of California) Paul Feyerabend provided the motto for this adventure: ‘If we want to understand what is going on and if we want to change what displeases us then we have to know both the nature of the world and of human beings and we also have to know how they fit together’.7
So…
As opposed to the Historical Materialism of Karl Marx this book proposes Historical Spiritualism;
As opposed to Darwin’s Evolution this book proposes Ecolution;
As opposed to a focus on Production & Consumption (Wants) this book stresses Needs & Opportunities;
As opposed to Galbraith’s Affluent Society this book promotes a Joint Effort Society (JES) as part of a Spiritual & Moral Revolution. It is a natural follow up of Materialism, which dominated the last two hundred and fifty years.
Writing for a better world implies starting a dialogue with scholars who went there before, learn of their thoughts and meanings and make new combinations, and while doing so creating a fresh vision on what society needs today and tomorrow morning. While tomorrow afternoon, hopefully, somebody else will further the discussion. This person will reject parts of JES! and will embrace other pieces. She or he will create something new, again, and so on. This is the process of learning we call ‘ecolution’ and that has to go on and on to higher plateaus of awareness. This book is a part of that neverending story.
Please join the dialogue: www.ecolutie.nl
Frank & Caro