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Wednesday, May 4, 2011

A better world will make us better people.




What Comes 1st, Survival or Enlightenment ?



How radically different would life be if lived from the perspective of abundance and not scarcity?

Our humanity, seemingly grounded in suffering and struggle is bathed in fear and the anticipation of hardship. Our philosophies and religions seem to have been born out of our attempts at explaining why things are difficult, and what hope we may have of overcoming pain and discomfort. Our human fear of survival reaches to our animal core, and in many cases has become the negative (bad) in ourselves we seek to overcome or accept. It is our so-called “dark side”

In many of our efforts to come together, as a species for a better world, we often hear that we need to change ourselves if we wish to change the world. Our problem throughout history has been that we seem to have a hard time changing ourselves. Jesus, Mohammed, Krishna, Buddha, and even Michael Jackson all make good common sense, showing us that we are all immediately and unequivocally connected, and therefore we should be good. After thousands of years, we are still blindly hating and killing and also still trying to be "good".

Just as a children or animals abused by another, we wear the scars of the past. “Sins of the father”… wars, famine, and other human miseries are etched into the mind of man, from as far back as anyone can know. On the reverse side of this issue of our darkness, is what we have tried to do about improving, not just ourselves, but also to create material security to calm our basic animal survival uncertainty. Much of our cruelty, as a species, can be directly linked to our animal responses  and our individual and tribal efforts at survival. How reasonable is it to expect we will not fight and kill to keep ourselves, or our off spring alive. So, in spite of all the great visions of the “great ones” , we are still left with us fighting  each other, and in direct opposition to our own survival natures.

What kind of a history would we have had if it was anchored in abundance, and also  the likely resulting awareness of each other as non-threats to our own survival and well being? How much of a dark side would we be carrying and at war with ?

Most examples of abundance in our collective history were born of some form of exploitation. The great Greek societies and many others had a leisure class supported by slaves. When the natural environment could provide this abundance, such as areas of the South Pacific, or areas of Africa, etc., there were others that sought to take from the lucky ones, their Edens. So, we have only known collective insecurity, even if our own immediate environment was materially secure.

The problem throughout history, has been that no such time has ever existed when abundance was a global collective fact, as we have neither consciously sought this nor knew how to achieve such a utopia.

One could look at our economic past and see that we have moved to more and more successful forms of production and distribution, but still we see billions who struggle for daily survival. The fact that some or many more, are doing better, is of little consolation to those who are not doing well. If abundance for all was our goal, we have so far fallen short but have come closer than at any other time in our history.


The strange fact  is that we are now able to provide for everyone on the planet, we just don’t. For many years, it has been known that we produce enough food on the earth to eliminate hunger and we also close many goods producing factories, daily. The frustration of the many, has been with distribution not production. As we pay farmers to not grow crops, and others seek to limit who can grow, there has been no global will to be our “brother’s keepers”. This is one of many “not can we but will we questions”.

The food distribution issues are small compared to the distribution issues of other goods and services. The same excess capacity exists for almost all commodities. As we speak, we are all struggling under the results of overproduction.  Production efficiency, and global competition for sales, have brought forth so many manufacturers that wages have gone down for many workers, in most of the world the cost of goods is starting to get lower and will continue, and additionally the need for workers is decreasing.
How is it that we have the sources for abundance, but most people are struggling to live? One explanation is distribution, not just how to get things to the right people, but what to do with our system that needs a profit in order to pay workers so that they can purchase and consume what they need. It is the same system that has created both the capacities of plenty, and now also, is the dead end to a worker 's income and our collective economic wealth.

We are in a system, for better or worse, that requires that some have more than others (investor classes vs. workers). If we all worked and bought each other’s goods, there could be no profit. If there were no profit motive, few would invest or risk the necessary resources to discover new ways of making things or better ways of meeting our needs. It’s our economic knot. Some must go without so that the system survives. No, I am not proposing socialism. Capitalism has moved us forward from less expansive optimism and we owe our excess productive capacity, largely to the "free market".

The point here is not to focus on the knot we have tied for ourselves, but the fact that we have an existing capacity on the earth for abundance for everyone, we only lack the clarity and the will to find a way to make this production capacity a good thing.

My premise here is that we don’t know what we humans would be like if we had abundance, or whether it would change us to be different or better humans. I contend that the knot is made of, in all or part, our fear and distance  from each other and we have been evolving through this breach, and as such, it is neither good nor bad. It is just where we now are in our evolution. What is amazing is that we now can consider what we might do with each other, given that global abundance is possible and is right in front of us, as a fact not a Utopian theory.

If we are bad or cruel because we fear for our survival, in some fundamental sense, then the problem to be solved is not our dark sides, but to find the reasoning and rationale that we will need to provide for ourselves collectively. We need to learn how to grow with out finding security at each others expense and by utilizing the new capacities we have collectively created.

On reflection, why would we think that us humans can or should dissect ourselves, or take time from the immediacy of raising children, or work in order to contemplate our navels? Clearly, some of us do and have taken this time, but it is obviously a privileged avocation. A person, trying to make it from one day to the next, shows little promise as a potential recruit to become a contemplative, or activist. If engagement in daily survival is the state of most of the people on the planet, then isn’t it obvious, that if self-reflection is a necessary individual journey, or the way to make a better world, we need to focus on creating abundance for all first,  if we are to provide for the necessary leisure,  allowing  for all of us to change?

I am not one who believes that changing ourselves comes first or maybe is even necessary, I say this while also having been a meditator for 50yrs. What I do know is that I can't even guess who I might be, when we aren't worried about our material survival. Without hard ship, are there  big philosophical questions ? Maybe the egg came 1st ?

Once again, if the source of most of what we deem as wrong about us, our greed, violence, insensitivity, etc , can all be traced back to the outgrowth of a defensive perspective, that forms out of tribal or individual animal survival consciousness, then why wouldn't it be just as likely, that after a few generations of abundance, our fears could be seen as unnecessary and discarded like as outgrown organs of the body.

I admit that this is more an attempt at an outline than offering answers to all the discrepancies and variations of human behavior. It is not intended to address the greater complexities of our natures, but it’s just a beginning. This is just another way of looking at ourselves that sets a worthwhile task before us that is within our reach. We can only really answer who we are when we have eliminated the survival issues from our collective reality.
Think about it and if this reasoning seems a reflection of reality, act with others intelligently.