[blank page]
edicated to children
and young people everywhere.
ou are the future of the human race;
take it further.
One Planet Makeover:
Colleed Essays
ohn oland tahl
© MMXXIV
The Evanescent Press
WWW.TREE.ORG
ISBN: 978-0-945303-27-5
CONTENTS
Preface ................................................................................................. page 10
from he aughter of od:
New Solutions ...................................................................................... page 13
The Church of the Living Tree ........................................................... page 42
The Survival of Life on Earth ............................................................. page 62
A Solution to the War in the Middle East ......................................... page 68
The Fall of the Dollar ......................................................................... page 75
Reality Economics .............................................................................. page 86
A New World ..................................................................................... page 91
from ore aughter:
One World Government .................................................................... page 94
Free Market Capitalism ..................................................................... page 100
A Review of eitgeift, oving orward ........................................... page 105
Seven Ways to Retire the U.S. National Debt .................................. page 111
The Hierarchy of Importance ............................................................ page 117
A New Currency, A New Bank, and a New World .......................... page 121
A Congress of the Wealthy and Powerful ......................................... page 126
The Falling Dollar, Continued .......................................................... page 129
Manipulated Markets ........................................................................ page 133
The Problem of Europe ..................................................................... page 136
Money, Power, Politics, & God ........................................................ page 139
A Modest Proposal to Achieve Peace in the Middle East ............... page 146
A One World Total Make-Over ....................................................... page 152
The Noosphere ................................................................................. page 159
Economic Theory ............................................................................. page 161
Guns or Money ................................................................................. page 164
A Run on Uncle Sam? ....................................................................... page 167
A Solution to the Fiasco of North Korea ......................................... page 170
Geopolitics ........................................................................................ page 171
Korean Re-Unification ....................................................................... page 173
Six Regions of the World on the Way to World Union ................... page 175
The Apple of Discord ........................................................................ page 179
Requiem for a Lost Planet ................................................................ page 183
Weapons of War ............................................................................... page 187
Endgame, USA .................................................................................. page 189
Advocate for the Tree ........................................................................ page 193
from till aughing
The End of the World as We Know It ............................................ page 194
The Sky is Falling .............................................................................. page 198
When You Gonna Wake Up?............................................................ page 202
The Garden of Eden .......................................................................... page 204
A Plan to Save the Earth ................................................................... page 207
A Solution for Brexit .......................................................................... page 211
roblem rom el ~ Samantha Power ........................................ page 212
The Root of the Problem ................................................................... page 215
Catastrophe Fatigue ........................................................................... page 217
Entmoot ............................................................................................. page 221
Response to Two Objeions to Free Farms ..................................... page 225
Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down ...................................................... page 235
Take Away Their Guns ..................................................................... page 241
Fiat Currency ..................................................................................... page 244
Sex Metaphysics ................................................................................. page 246
Money ................................................................................................ page 249
A Renaissance of Democracy ............................................................. page 254
A Larger Perspeive of Racial Strife ................................................. page 256
Evolutionary Leap Now ..................................................................... page 258
One World Government ................................................................... page 264
Pearls Before Swine ........................................................................... page 266
This is the ncien egime ................................................................. page 268
Agenda ............................................................................................... page 271
Solution to the Question of Deficit Financing .................................. page 275
The Failure of Democracy ................................................................. page 277
The End is Near ................................................................................ page 282
Droughts and Floods ......................................................................... page 284
Afghanistan Solution ......................................................................... page 286
I Need an Editor ................................................................................ page 289
Money, Sex, and Power ..................................................................... page 294
Two Economic Fallacies .................................................................... page 303
Tree Planting Jubilee ....................................................................... page 306
Babies for Sale .................................................................................... page 310
In Honor of Jesus Christ .................................................................... page 312
Legitimate Political Discourse ........................................................... page 314
Self Determination ~ Ukraine and Elsewhere .................................. page 316
“Why Do We Need a World if Russia’s Not In It?” ......................... page 319
Restore the Tsar ! ............................................................................... page 321
World War III ................................................................................... page 323
The Aura of a Dying Planet ............................................................... page 327
Gender Liberation ............................................................................. page 330
Putin’s Folly ....................................................................................... page 332
Another Way to End the Ukraine War ............................................. page 335
Abortion ............................................................................................. page 339
The Price of Gas ................................................................................ page 341
The Chain of Love ............................................................................. page 344
Democracy in Crisis ........................................................................... page 346
End the War Now ............................................................................. page 351
The One World Government Problem ............................................. page 354
All Systems in the Red Zone ............................................................. page 357
eus erditus ..................................................................................... page 361
We Are Living a Dystopian Novel .................................................... page 365
The Only Way Out ............................................................................ page 367
Charles ex ........................................................................................ page 371
The Cycle of Drought and Floods ..................................................... page 373
End of the Trail ................................................................................. page 375
$12 Per Gallon Gasoline .................................................................... page 378
It’s Not Going to Get Better ............................................................. page 380
eus x achina .............................................................................. page 386
The End of Capitalism ...................................................................... page 389
The Real Turkey ................................................................................ page 393
Still Speechless ................................................................................... page 397
The Republican Conspiracy ............................................................... page 400
Intersex, Transgender, and Queer Pride ............................................ page 407
Time Lapse Video: Planet Earth ....................................................... page 409
The Omega Point .............................................................................. page 412
Taiwan and Hawaii ............................................................................ page 416
The Pendulum Error ......................................................................... page 418
The Prior Problem ............................................................................. page 421
Biden’s Mistake .................................................................................. page 424
The Good Old Days .......................................................................... page 426
End Times ......................................................................................... page 429
Big Brother Go Home ....................................................................... page 433
Dominionism ..................................................................................... page 436
The Canary is Dying .......................................................................... page 439
A Sinking Ship ................................................................................... page 445
Three Solutions to the War in Palestine ........................................... page 450
Plebiscite ............................................................................................ page 454
“Antisemitism” is a Fig Leaf .............................................................. page 457
Prediions ......................................................................................... page 460
Irony ................................................................................................... page 464
Plant More Trees ............................................................................... page 466
Happy Bicycle Day ! .......................................................................... page 469
The Meaning of Life ......................................................................... page 472
Ranked Choice Voting ...................................................................... page 475
y the time you fini reading theſe boos, you will not only be able to recognize and read the aon Odfttyle Italic ‘long s’ with eaſe, but you will come to appreciate the æfthetic beauty of this claic font.
Preface
Over the past fifty years, I have written essays on a wide range of topics, from an original core of esoteric metaphysical philosophy, ranging out to refleions on the state of the earth and suggestions for a very radical new way forward. As I have grown older, the world I knew as a child of the fifties has given way to an increasingly dystopian world which seems to be falling apart on al sides on an accelerated path to destruion and ruin.
More and more I have taken up consideration of the mess and tried to see a way through the morass to some hypothetical golden age that might yet be achieved out of the current chaos.
My solutions have always been pretty radical, because rather than try to imagine ways in which the present system might be modified to produce a livable world, I have taken the literally radical way of going all the way back to all of the roots of all of the problems, in an effort to see the principle ways the human race has gone astray, and to suggest a whole new vision of what the future of life on earth could be.
What continues to astonish me is that, everywhere I look, all I can see are the most minor tweakings of a desperately failed system, where what we need is a wholesale renovation of every aspe of our world, socially, economically, and politically. Why is it that no one else has considered the immense folly of the human race and tried to work out some new direions for the planet before the problems we have created become so bad that there will be no possibility of reversing this slide unto death? I have searched the internet for signs of some holistic view of evolution that can suggest a way forward. I find nothing of this nature whatsoever. All I find are endless
tirades about how bad everything is and how stupid all our national leaders are.
We know all of this, but what do we do now?! There are some good ideas all around the edges, such as many of the reforms put forward by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren: the Green New Deal, and much more, but they don’t go far enough, and they are all way over the heads of the majority of the American people who just can’t imagine making such radical changes so fast, when, in reality, we need to rip up the entire fabric of civilization and remake it on a whol y new plan, and do so before lunch. Is Greta Thunberg the only one who realizes this? The destruive elements of the human populations of the earth have been accelerating over the past three or four millennia, and have reached a crisis stage where we are literally facing the end of life on earth unless we can somehow motivate some radical interventions quickly enough to turn the tide in time to save some vestige of life on earth before the destruion and collapse becomes irreversible.
The seriousness of our present predicament has suggested to me that I should assemble all of my essays on these topics and make a new, integrated presentation of a whole vision of a renovated planet. Accordingly, I here colle essays from my first two books, he aughter of od, and ore
aughter, along with essays from a projeed third volume of colleed writings, till aughing.
I know that I should entirely re-write all of this material into an integrated, consistent, and coherent presentation, but that is a daunting task, and I just don’t have the energy to deal with al of the effort that would be required to reformulate everything. All I can do is republish these original essays colleed together, and hope that someone might notice them.
12
Jump to the quick solution ~ plant a few trillion trees. That will stop the cycle of floods and drought, reduce soil erosion, sequester carbon, release oxygen, offer full employment to everyone, and save the planet from imminent destruion and the dying out of life on earth.
oland tahl,
July, 2020
New Solutions
to the Problems of the Present Day
by ohn oland tahl
A Blueprint for International Prosperity
and World Peace
Copyright © 1992
The Evanescent Press
INTRODUION
Thomas Jefferson and his compatriots who so well declared the principle that all authority resides ultimately with the people, rather than with established governments, would be turning over in their graves if they thought that the Constitution which they created in response to the needs of the times were to be worshipped as holy writ forevermore.
In the words of Thomas Jefferson from the Declaration of Independence, “. . . that whenever any Form of Government becomes destruive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish
it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effe their Safety and Happiness.” “. . . it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.”
It is not only the Right of citizens to form a new government when the existing forms do not meet their needs, but it is their Duty, as patriotic citizens.
The world has changed enormously just over the past few years, with the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, movements towards ever more coherent unity in Western Europe, and volatile shifts in economic balances according to the fortunes of oil, water, booming economies in Asia and Western Europe, collapsing economies in Eastern Europe, tottering economies in North America, and the fortunes of war in the Middle East, Iraq, South Africa, Yugoslavia, Georgia, Ireland, Algeria ~ (insert today’s news). Considering all the changes which have taken place in the world since the Declaration of Independence was written in 1776, maybe it is time to consider a fresh political arrangement more in keeping with the needs of today’s world.
Some of the more ingenious visionaries are finally realizing that economic strength is a far more reliable indicator of national strength than mere military power, however formidable. The price one pays for military strength is economic poverty. One reason for the prosperity of post-war Japan was the absence of a fat military budget.
And we all saw what finally happened to the might of the Soviet Union after the screen fell over: Oz, the Great and Terrible, was just a helpless old man: a humbug, after all, who didn’t really know what he was doing, and whose people couldn’t even feed themselves. Now the United States is not necessarily so far behind. We are living under a pyramid of debt that has a physical weight of its own, and will not go away any time soon without crushing whatever is underneath.
But, on top of this, so much of the worthwhile produion of our labor is lost to hordes of inefficient demons and monsters, overloaded with so much chaos and confusion that it feels like we are laboring in the garden while wearing 400 pound suits of armor (under the hot sun). There is no reason why we can’t all enjoy good health and long life in a world of peace and plenty, if only we can simplify our lives, slough off the armor, beat our swords back into plowshares, and live happily ever after, tending our trees and our gardens.
SUMMARY
I have designed an integrated theoretical program of political, economic, and social reform that is designed to be implemented world wide, but most of whose principles can also be implemented by any local government or region.
There are several main areas where I propose new arrangements quite different from our present situation:
•
A final end to warfare of all kinds ~ both wars of aggression and/or stupidity, and wars to settle international disputes.
•
The evolution of planetary cooperation resulting in a World Court as the final arbiter of international disputes, and a World Guard to hold military assets to enforce the decisions of the World Court, and to safeguard basic human freedom from the tyranny of local despots. (This is emphatically not to be understood as ax
mericana! )
•
The establishment of a Seminary to produce the Judge of the World Court who would have final responsibility for decisions.
•
The dismantling of most local military establishments, with the exception of local police forces as needed to keep the peace.
•
A total free market for economic aivity, unhindered, untaxed ( i.e.
no tax on business aivity, or profit; a resource depletion tax would be the only limitation on economic aivity, see below); free market exchange of currencies, no regulation of wages or prices for commodities or services.
•
A monumental simplification of taxation: all taxes swept away except for a universal land tax and a resource depletion tax (on trees, oil, water, energy, etc., including any kind of environmental degradation or pollution), colleed and disbursed by the World Bank, with the authority of the World Court and local governments.
•
The total elimination of transfer payments of any kind: welfare, social security, health care, the works; replaced with dire housing, food, and services to the indigent (Free Farms).
•
Elimination of the National Debt by a one time printing of 90,000
one hundred million dol ar bank notes (or, perhaps, 9,000,000 one million dollar bank notes, to make them easier to spend). From now on, the budget and the tax base should always come out even, except for extraordinary circumstances. [It is interesting to observe that, when this was first written, in 1992, the debt was a mere $4
trillion.]
Most of my suggestions are based on a fundamental premise: that the present system is so frightfully wasteful of resources that we are squandering the accumulated wealth of the world, sliding down into poverty and despair, tension and warfare, toxic pollution and disease. If the world’s resources were more sensibly managed, it is surely possible for everyone on earth to live a comfortable life in peace and joy.
The miracles of endless credit allow for a system to whirl around with a life of its own greatly in excess of its theoretical balance. The pattern, however, is for bills to come due suddenly. One fine day, without warning, you hear from your bank and credit cards that they decline to extend any further credit; please pay the balance due immediately. When your credit cards reach the level of 29.5% annual interest, you may take that as the handwriting on the wall.
Most of what passes for “happening” in the world “happens” to the people who have money. But that doesn’t help the others much. Right now there are plenty of people who are broke, without funds, employment, or both. Companies are broke; federal, state, and local governments are broke.
A great many individuals, companies, and governments are operating from debt. What this means is that most people and institutions are spending wealth faster than they are creating it. The present economic mess is so inefficient that we are just sliding backwards and downwards into chaos.
I will never forget the amazement I felt when first confronted with the machinations of gross inefficiency masquerading as business as usual: in my youth I was briefly employed to stuff envelopes for a dire mail campaign for funding. Here were all these stacks of slickly printed promotional brochures which I was collating and stuffing into printed envelopes, and sealing. In the course of the job I learned that they did one of these dire mail campaigns twice a year. It cost them about $30,000 each time for all the printing, postage, etc. (including hiring people like me), but then they prediably received about $35,000 with each mailing. That left them with a total of $5,000 each time or $10,000 per year, which funded their aivities. Free money! I was appalled. It made me sick to think of all that commotion of waste just so that a tiny film could be skimmed off the surface for their needs.
All the bureaucracies of the federal government resemble the dire
mail campaign in all essential particulars. The whole whirlwind of taxation is such a commotion of waste that it just disgusts me. Never mind, for the moment, that once the government gets their hands on our money they waste it in the most foolish or criminal ways imaginable; let’s just consider
the whole industry of taxation in the first place. What does it cost to regulate and administer all the provisions of the tax codes? How many forests are cut down to produce those stacks and stacks of forms and bulletins and announcements? How many very expensive attorneys are grinding away their services in the toils of the taxation swindle? What is the cost for businesses to comply with all of the endless requirements of forms, busywork, and tax colleion, not to mention the payments themselves? Add to all this the ongoing parade of tax tinkering shell games to obscure the fas of where the money aually comes from and where it goes. Then there’s the lobbying, the politics, the compromises, the power maneuvering, the gimmicks, the fraud, and the lies. Finally there are the armies of IRS
colleors, investigators, and purveyors of confusion. And what is it all for?
Does our tax system end up being “fair”? Has anything changed since the
ncien egime in pre-Revolutionary France? It is the poor who always pay taxes, not the rich. The whole thing disgusts me. I propose to sweep it al away.
Most of the aivities of government should be simply discontinued altogether; most remaining aivities that are found to be useful ought to be parceled out to independent, self sufficient entities. The post office should be self sufficient, for example. All expenses of mail handling should be borne by the users. Discontinue, or greatly reduce the discounts for junk mail, and the Post Office could easily balance its budget without another rate increase, while the rest of us would be spared the tremendous waste of paper that sweeps through our post offices every day.
One time I saw a pie graph of the federal budget and found it very illuminating. It was divided into three main seions plus a fourth tiny sliver.
The three main seions were, in order: the military, welfare, and service on the debt. The remaining sliver represented all other funions of government. I want to slash all three main categories of expenditure to reduce the government’s voracious need for money in the first place. There is an economic role for a central government, but it doesn’t need such major budgets for such worthless programs.
The problem of military expenditures is of paramount importance, but must be addressed on an international level. Other recommendations presented here may easily be implemented by any sovereign state, but the problems of war and military expenditures can never be solved without involving all the peoples of the Earth in a negotiated solution. This may appear to be a tall order, but, with the recent collapse of Communism, there appears to be some sort of consensus emerging about the role of government.
To date, no major departures from the principles of private ownership of property and a free market economy have managed to endure for very long.
It may not be unthinkable that some sort of international co-operation might be reached along the lines of the proposals presented here.
Transfer payments for Welfare, Health Care, etc. represent an enormous expense, not only for the payments themselves, but also for the bureaucracies which administer the system and colle taxes to pay for it.
But the payments rarely provide any real solutions for the recipients. It is always worthwhile to feed hungry people, but without some provision for their future welfare, they will just be hungry again in a few hours. One of the principle ideas behind the Free Farm idea, elaborated later on, is that the community of a Free Farm would constitute a kind of melting pot, where people would have an opportunity to change their lives. Where welfare
payments simply provide the means to continue a lifestyle that is unproduive, the Free Farm would present opportunities for new social and economic arrangements which might eventually lead to a resumption of life in “the wild world.”
The weight of inertia opposes any change (such as going to a free farm), but some such change may be advisable for persons who come into a situation of need. But instead of advocating the immediate cancel ation of traditional transfer payments, I would advocate a parallel establishment of Free Farms as an alternative. Whatever the number of people who take advantage of the Free Farm option, it would result in savings for the tax payers. If the Free Farm becomes a popular alternative to the welfare treadmill, it could lead to a gentle transition to a new social and economic alternative for new generations.
The National Debt is nothing short of an outrageous rip-off. Deficit financing is a scheme where governments spend money today by assigning the bills to future taxpayers. That is an unconscionable Ponzi scheme that does nothing produive at all. It is as bad as the dire mail solicitation scam ~ a big inefficient waste of money. Whom do they think they’re fooling? Taxpayers are justly resentful of paying taxes when so much of their money is siphoned off by moneylenders. Sure the money goes round and round, but like any machine, the more friion in the system, the more energy is lost. I want to refuse payment; the debts are not mine. Let’s unload all the monkeys from our backs, pay the cost once, and be done with it. Of course, aually paying off the national debt by printing up those million dollar bank notes would produce a hilarious situation, but it would be an instant cure; the transfer would be a swift and devastating one-time tax on
players of economic musical chairs who are caught holding cash when the music stops. The World Bank would have to require payment in its own currency, and set its own rates for local currency exchange.
TAX REFORM
My solution for the remaining expenses of government that can’t be eliminated or covered in any other way is to rely almost exclusively upon a property tax. A property tax would be one of the easiest to administer and enforce, and ultimately the most equitable way of distributing the burden of taxation. There are numerous advantages of this proposal. First, it would be very easy and straight-forward to administer in a uniformly reliable way throughout the world: since the ownership of private property is one of the economic cornerstones for which there now appears to be an international consensus, there will always be records of ownership. A tax based upon the value of land would be the utmost in simplicity.
This is not, of course, a new idea. It is an ancient idea harking back to the very origins of civilization. The aual land of the Earth represents the ultimate source of wealth, after all; it makes sense that it should be the basis of taxation. It becomes a kind of rent payable to the state as the ultimate landlord. In fa, for most of recorded history, some sort of feudal, land-based economy has been the basis of wealth. It is real y only in the last hundred years or so that money has been considered a commodity independent of any real attachment. If money were based upon land, there would always be a fundamental reality underpinning the system.
Of course, setting the amount of the tax on property is of the whole importance; the authority for setting these rates would be among the most important funions of the World Court and the Judge, to prevent the very common abuse of power by greedy despots, tyrants, and landlords. (At the local level of rent on private property there would be no regulation; like everything else, the free market rents would work out to a representation of the aual “value” of the land.) The tax could be colleed by the World Bank which would disburse funds in accordance with budgets arranged by the States, the World Bank, and the Judge.
In each region someone has to condu the central affairs of maintaining the roads, schools, free farms, police and fire proteion, etc.
They would suggest a budget for those costs which would be considered in assessing their tax rate. The World Bank, with the approval of the Judge, would accept or modify these budgets and assess the rate for the property tax.
In general, it would be assumed that the cost of local services would match the local tax revenue, but there are times when an impartial, international Judge could make adjustments for special situations. For example, a devastating earthquake might ruin a region’s economy for quite a while, but the Judge might temporarily reduce or eliminate the tax assessment while still funding services. The difference involved would be made up by the wealthier nations. This tool must be used sparingly. It would not be necessary or politically popular to try to equalize the wealth of the world overnight by levying a tax ~ the ordinary workings of free market economics should eventually raise the living standards of the poor countries, as long as their labor be cheaper. This is already happening ~ it may not be too much longer before produs are manufaured in the United States once again, to take advantage of cheap labor.
In general, this economic plan would not have to interfere with the ways in which each separate state or Country manages its ordinary affairs, except to safeguard freedom and prevent the abuses of power.
While the universal land tax would be the fundamental source of tax revenue, additional taxes might be levied by the same authority to modify the free market cost of resources. This means that a tax could be placed upon the extraion of resources (oil, trees, water, etc.) to reach whatever level of conservation and renewal were required. Further taxation would be imposed upon destruive aivity of any kind: producers of pollution would be taxed at progressively higher rates until essential targets of pollution abatement were reached. The point is that the taxation would not be used primarily to generate revenue, but to regulate destruive aivity and promote an evolution towards sustainable and non-destruive lifestyles. At some point, the distinion between “destruive aivity” taxation and financial judgments from the criminal/legal system might become moot.
The role of limiting special taxation to discourage aivity harmful to the earth is the basis of my proposal to liberate economic aivity from all of the burdens which have been placed upon it over the years. If all these burdens were lifted, just think what an enormous boost it would be to commercial produivity in every way. Leaving all economic aivity wide open to the aion of free markets would eventually solve all economic problems, and do so pretty quickly.
Obviously, there would entail some changes in the relative balance of economic realities, but ultimately, when the dust settled, a fair and simple system would evolve that would benefit everyone. Initially, it may appear that landowners would be forced to bear a much larger burden than they
currently do, since all other taxes (other than resource depletion and pollution taxes) would be eliminated, and the government would balance its budget solely with revenues from landowners. But rents would be raised to cover any additional cost of owning land. The cost of food produion as well as all manufaured goods would be affeed in the same way. The net effe on the economy as a whole would be the savings accomplished by simplifying the whole system. That is, any increase in land tax or rents would be more than offset by the elimination of all other taxes. Since the primary idea is to greatly reduce the total amount of taxation required in the first place, landowners would surely join in the feeling of general relief from the burden and waste of our present irresponsible tax-and-spend fiasco.
The only persons not joining in the celebration would be those involved in industries found to be harmful to the environment in some way.
The resource depletion and pollution taxes would have effes ranging from minor changes in industrial aivity with smal loss of profits, to being totally wiped out by an unacceptable tax liability (e.g. the tobacco industry or the nuclear power industry ~ once the full cost of nuclear power be realized and accepted, all other forms of energy generation would be found to be much more cost-effeive; any alternative would be cheaper than the true cost of nuclear power: one might cultivate oak trees to feed acorns to squirrels running on treadmills, for example.)
It may be argued that one consequence of eliminating taxes on profit or income would be to allow the few to become very wealthy at the expense of the many. But any economic aivity that was making its promoters rich would be quickly copied. Competition would bring prices down to reasonable levels. Of course, many individuals and companies would become
very rich when their businesses prospered, but that is the incentive for the aivity! If these policies were adopted worldwide (and no one else could compete who had to operate under the burdens of restriion or taxation) then all economic imbalances would eventually work themselves out.
Since most wealth really does eventually come down to the land as its ultimate source of value, the real holders of wealth, the land owners, would end up paying the tax. Renters would pay the tax at second hand, so there would remain the incentive to own the land. Businesses usually have a land base of some sort that would be taxed, but for the rest of it, let them keep their business profits! This is a considered policy. If businesses were allowed to retain their profits, without any taxation or paperwork, whether of payroll or profits or income or capital gain or anything else, then the energy and ingenuity of the liberated human spirit would galvanize the economy back into high gear really quickly. [2018 review ~ perhaps some tax on wealth will be inevitable, to put some limit on endlessly expanding wealth.]
If this policy were to be adopted in the United States, there would be no further problem about competing with Japan or China! In fa, it would quickly become imperative for every country to follow suit or else get left behind. Inevitably there would be some winners and losers whenever such major changes are made to the financial system, but I am sure that when the system adjusts to the changes and finds a new equilibrium almost everyone would feel that a great weight had been lifted.
FREE FARMS
27
For a long time now I have been having ideas about freedom. I keep thinking how central Freedom is to the solutions to all of the problems of the world. I keep thinking of what a radical idea it is to be Free!
I am not only thinking of political freedom here. Of course I believe in the importance of real freedom in every sense of the word, but I keep thinking about the possibilities of what it means to be Free, even when applied to the concept of money. What if everything were Free?
Of course you are thinking that this is useless. It is such an axiom of fundamental truth that everything must be measured by money. “Of course, if everything were free, then no one would do anything and everything would fall apart.”
Well, perhaps that may be true. The spirit of Freedom has raised its head time and time again, only to be beaten back by the grim face of reality.
The enthusiasm of the Diggers, who wanted everything to be Free, struck a resonant chord that many of us have felt. I am an original hippie, and I am old enough to have seen the disillusion as one fragile vessel after another was cracked by the inertial entropy of the real world.
But I still believe in Freedom, and I believe that it is possible to extend the range of freedom so that more and more things can be free. Giving something away for free is a very radical a. It is as radical as loving everyone, which is another holdover 60’s myth. But as a matter of fa, loving everyone and giving everything away for free are related ideas.
There are two trends in physics: sharpening and leveling. You can call it Yang and Yin. The sharpener wants to get more for himself and less for his neighbor, and accumulate the advantage for himself. The leveler wants
to nourish all life and cultivate the garden. The Sharpener wants to emphasize distinions and sele the best for himself, while the leveler emphasizes the unity and wants to share the wealth.
I think it is very liberating to give things away for free. The world is so heavily cemented into the bonds of the financial imperative that Freedom almost doesn’t fit into the equation. Yet if enough of us start giving things away for free, then the market will eventually collapse. We see it on the Internet. So many people are trying to figure out ways to make money on the Internet and they are constantly frustrated because there are so many other people offering services for free. You can’t sell software anymore, because there is so much of it everywhere that is entirely free. You can’t charge for services anymore because there is someone else offering it for free.
I remember when promoters thought that people would pay something for every visit to their site! The wealth of information and services offered for free staggers the imagination. I have published some of my books on the Internet, and what do I care if no one needs to buy my bound copies? I wasn’t publishing them to make money in the first place, and I should be (and am) delighted to save myself the trouble and expense (and waste of the earth’s resources) of aually manufauring a physical book and sending it to someone by the Post. So there is no need to go to a site where you need to pay any money!
I want to give away food and housing. Once a Free Farm is set up, it ought to be self-supporting enough so that at least there will be enough food so that everyone can eat, whether or not they contribute anything to the operation of the farm. If there are enough people willing to work in the house and garden, then perhaps life will go on.
One of the major problems of our present economic system is that you really have to be part of it in order to survive. Everyone needs to have money, therefore everyone needs to have a job. Recently I heard some politician-without-portfolio (and no construive ideas at all, simply negative ones) shouting that the Solution (to any or all of the problems of the world) was Jobs. To which I immediately came up with the response: Jobs are not the Solution; Jobs are the Problem! The way the world is evolving right now, there just aren’t enough “jobs” to go around. The necessity for everyone to have a Job, or some source of income, not only drives the fringes into robbery, murder, drug trafficking and the like, but also sets up the situation for a great many people to involve themselves in useless (or worse than useless) aivity just to come up with useless produs which they can advertise and promote in order to generate profit for themselves, without producing anything worthwhile. The paradox is that the very successes of the industrial and technological revolutions have created a situation in which the insufficiency of available jobs is causing the collapse of the economic system! But if non working members of society were allowed to live the simple life in peace on the Free Farm, and the remaining economic establishment were free and untaxed, the whole of civilization could enjoy a Renaissance of creative flowering.
A major chunk of government spending goes for welfare payments of one sort or another. This whole system is a failure and a fabulous waste of money. So much money gets drained off into payments that go nowhere. In fa, few of the problems for which the payments are offered are ameliorated at all by the funds. The poor and hungry and sick and unemployed remain poor, hungry, sick, and unemployed.
There are a great many reasons for poverty and financial distress: accidents, ill health, bad luck, bad judgment, changing economic climate, advancing age, or even the burden of raising a child without financial support. For a great many people, there just aren’t any jobs available. For all of these persons I would introduce a whole new economic arrangement: the Free Farm where the poor or unemployed always have the option to live at peace in a free community until such time as they wish to re-enter the competitive jungle of the free market.
Many times the stress of poverty is the major problem in a person’s life. Living a simple life with no concerns about money may allow these people to relax and become re-centered in their personal lives. Artists, writers, and many others just may not be interested in the pursuit of wealth and comfort, and would rather be free, living the simple life, to express their artistic flowerings at leisure. On the other hand, many people would probably opt for the chance to maintain their own place in the world, at a higher standard than that afforded by the free farm. The proportions would work themselves out exaly: whenever there were useful work to be done that others were willing to pay for, someone would come forward to do it, at the right price.
My conception of a Free Farm is a place in the country where everyone is welcome and everything is free. Absolutely no paperwork of any kind should be required of anyone at any time. Wander in, wander out, eat, sleep, or just lie in the sun. You may think too many lazy people would be seeking refuge at the Farm, but I don’t think so. At first there may be a lot of people checking them out, but I think most people would prefer to live by their own enterprise if they could. The facilities of the Farms would of course be very
basic: dormitories, cafeterias, recycled used clothing, essential medical care only, etc. Eventually the lure of the “great wild world” might inspire someone to check into one of the available slots back in the working world.
Why should someone who is unemployed occupy expensive space in a city? And why would anyone want to live in a city anyway, unless he were tied to some employment? I think operating Free Farms would be vastly cheaper than the whole bureaucracy of welfare payments and paperwork. If the whole thing were totally free, how simple it would all be.
The farms would aually funion as working farms, although they may have any other additional economic base. Anyone who is able to work may volunteer to do anything useful: planting trees (my own priority), gardening, construion, maintenance, cooking, or participation in commercial aivity. Al proceeds from commercial aivity would go to the general fund for farm expenses.
The theory is that anyone who would remain in residence at a free farm indefinitely without doing any work at all must be just totally helpless.
I think that, sooner or later, most people would want to do something useful, and later on many would prefer to move on and take a paying job outside (the farms would be natural centers for employment agencies).
On the other hand, there has never been any shortage of the totally helpless, but it would be better and certainly vastly cheaper even in the short run, and certainly in the long run, to let them live their lives in peace, than for the rest of us to be subjeed to the social problems of theft, violence, madness, and despair.
In order to provide some incentive for participation, an organized core of farm members (who would make all the decisions) would be distinguished from non-member residents. Better lodgings and other benefits would provide the incentive for a resident to participate at a level that would allow for his possible eleion as a member after some minimum time of residence.
Since the farms would be non-profit, they would not be taxed at all.
Once they were totally set up, it is possible that they might operate with little or no additional funding. In fa, well run communities, with, perhaps, a produ to sell to independent individuals or companies, might do very well.
Their expenses would be minimal; much of their food would be grown on the spot; labor would be volunteer. It is entirely possible that residents of prosperous communities might enjoy their lives better than they ever dreamed possible. Liberation from the stress of constant worry and hassle over money could lead to a great relaxation of tension.
In many ways this idea of the free farm is a very old socialist idea. The significant difference of my idea is that a well rounded economic and social system requires both opportunities: an untaxed free enterprise system which allows for the flowering of commercial aivity for those persons who wish to obtain personal wealth, and alternative economic and social communities for those who don’t.
The communities which would form around the various avenues of arrival to the free farms might enjoy considerable advantages compared with the present system. For example, single mothers, for whom raising their children is full time work (in the case of infants, of course, it is full time work for three, doing eight hour shifts), may greatly prefer to live in a free, rural environment with other mothers and children than to live on welfare in the
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city. The advantages of shared childcare, free local schools, and the sharing of domestic chores, might be an ideal situation. And free communities of the retired elderly might find their needs served so well that they may prefer to live on the farm even when they are not at al indigent.
If work really were voluntary, then I think there are a lot of people who would do very little work. There will be many people who will not go to the trouble to learn how to play a Baroque oboe, either. It is their loss. If they are allowed to live their lives as they wish, and the work will be done entirely by those people whose love of the earth and its people, plants, and animals impels them to contribute their part, it just may be that there will still be enough for life to continue.
Of course I know very well that this is not for everyone. The majority of the earth’s population is composed of sharpeners, after all, and they would have no interest in any of this. The sharpeners will go on living in the Big House, and will be very satisfied with their share of life’s blessings, but I want to encourage the levelers in any way that I can, and help to set up communities where they can live in freedom and in love, cultivating the earth’s resources rather than exploiting them.
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THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY
Along with Teilhard de Chardin, Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, H. G. Wells, and many others, I believe that no further evolutionary progress can be made until all life on Earth is united into a single political organism. In order to cultivate the garden of the Earth to its greatest potential, it is necessary to recognize the source of authority as the center of perspeive which integrates the whole. The Source of Authority is obviously a theological postulate: there must be an attempt to link the final Authority with the Way, or the path of God, or that pursuit of perfeion at rest in the center, as opposed to the field of confusion humming around it.
In order to bring this about, a planetary consciousness must replace parochial consciousness, whether of family, state, nation, race, species, or religion.
There will have to be an international language and currency, although local languages and currencies would continue in use as long as they were useful.
The agenda of a world government would be to cultivate the Earth as a garden. As a dire analogy to the individual life of a person, the life of the planet must strive first to survive, then to flourish. One thing this means is that warfare has to be considered an unacceptable way of settling disputes.
All hostilities must cease forthwith. International disputes must be settled through a legal process as an ecologically friendly alternative to warfare. If the disputes of the world were resolved by a World Court with final international authority, and the peace retained by international guards, it would only be necessary to maintain very small military establishments other than local police, saving an enormous world-wide expense on so many levels.
[As I review these ideas about sixteen years after they were first written, it occurs to me that the weak link in the argument is that it is useless
to suppose that powerful nations will voluntarily give up control of their military assets to any international body. On the other hand, if the World Court were established in its authority, it may be possible, in most cases, to accomplish the same objeives without requiring sovereign nations to give up control of their own military assets.]
While there are plenty of regions on the planet with obvious and uncontested boundaries, there are many spots around the world where borders and land use are hotly disputed. It may take many years to evolve solutions for some of the most troublesome spots, e.g., the Middle East, but if the legal framework of formal consideration is set in place as the Theater of Change, military confrontations would no longer be tolerated or useful.
Violent demonstrations would simply impa badly upon the case of those responsible. Disputing parties would devote their efforts towards presenting their case as effeively as possible before the scrutiny of the international World Court, rather than squandering their resources and credibility in bloodshed and violence.
The international “peace dividend” that would result from a new world order based upon a final authority, would be so enormous that it would independently ensure a period of unprecedented global prosperity.
Historically, the usual way of creating political units was through confli and conquest: “authority” was merely a variation of “power.” The history of the human race is largely the record of the abuse of power and the recurring failures of cohesion, but it is important to remember that many governments, cultivating their patch of the garden as best they could, have managed to provide, at least for brief periods, relatively favorable conditions for life to flourish.
Within comparatively recent times (the last 200 years), an experiment in democracy has been going on in the United States. In spite of the discounts which must be considered for exceptional starting advantages (the opportunity of making a fresh start with a wealth of natural resources and fertile soil), it is clear that the infant nation that fol owed from the designs of the founding fathers was healthy, and robust with vitality. However, as the nation begins to show signs of age, two main faults have been growing in significance: a sharpening of the inequalities of power and advantage, and an inadequate flexibility to deal with the rapidly changing requirements of contemporary problems. “The Government” is alive, and, like any living thing, it wants to grow as much as it can. Big Government has now grown so big, fat, and ponderous, feeding upon the vitality of the nation, that the people underneath it all are suffocating.
Deal the cards out however you will, the longer the game goes on, the more the gap measuring variations in relative advantage will widen and solidify. The favored group is “The Establishment” and it has always happened this way and always will happen, regardless of the political system or varieties of control. In fa, the realization of the inevitability of this pattern prompted Thomas Jefferson to suggest that a fresh revolution were necessary every twenty-seven years (the average age of a generation).
Hierarchies of wealth, power, and privilege are inevitable, but they may be flexible and moderate rather than rigid and sharp. Everyone wants to make his own life as agreeable as possible. There is also commonly a desire in good times to spread wealth to one’s family and friends, and, in times of prosperity, to the rest of the world.
The best arrangement of society is one which follows all of the basic natural laws, but which is responsive and flexible. There are two principle funions in the equation of distinion: there is the degree of difference between the extremes, and the rate of change. In many parts of the world there are small civilizations of very wealthy elites in the midst of large populations of downtrodden poor (there are no old cars in Manila ~ there are shiny new BMWs, and pedal rickshaws ~ nothing in between). Other civilizations are more equally distributed. Some of these regimes are stable, others are highly volatile. Sharpening describes the process of widening the gap; leveling describes the narrowing. A certain amount of sharpening is valuable for the pursuit of excellence, but excessive sharpening leads to instability, loss of balance, and confusion. On the other hand, the rate of change in any microcosm fol ows a similar pattern: more rapid change is dynamic and interesting, but if change be too rapid, confusion and chaos may follow.
In the abstra pattern of this process, there are four cardinal points of varieties of distinion: sharp and slow, sharp and fast, level and slow, level and fast. As a civilization fluuates between these variations we see a correlation to the relative prosperity of the civilization as a whole. That is, in times of dwindling prosperity, distinions of advantage tend to sharpen. In times of improving prosperity, distinions tend to be less severe. Usually, it is the poorest countries that have the sharpest distinion between rich and poor. As the United States approaches the close of the second millennium, we are not surprised to discover that the gap between rich and poor is widening ~ it is a prime symptom of the underlying reality of a general decline in the overall prosperity of the country, both in comparison with the rest of the world, and also with its own recent history.
From time to time, capable leaders come to power one way or another and for a period of years of peace and prosperity civilization seems to fulfill its promise. Then, with the passing of the particular hero or statesman, the old confusion supervenes. The American experiment attempts to ameliorate that problem by a praice of rapid turnover of national leaders, to prevent anyone from taking advantage of a position of power for very long.
Unfortunately, that has come to mean a succession of confused and blundering presidents whose vision is just too shallow and too short to measure up to the challenge of their office.
The greatest problem with the democratic process is its tendency to produce a breed of professional politicians. What it comes down to is that the qualities necessary to be an accomplished and effeive politician are entirely different from the qualities required of a competent national leader.
The political presence is so close to the surface that political authority fluuates like a daily stock quotation. At a time when it is absolutely essential for any national leader to consider as large a context of time as possible, we have a situation where every president spends half of his term of office campaigning for re-eleion (and his second term in total disregard of the opinions of the American people; when it was pointed out to a recent Vice President of the United States that the vast majority of citizens of the country were overwhelmingly opposed to the policies of the Administration, his reply was, “So?”). When it is necessary to have a detached, objeive viewpoint to conceive coherent long term designs involving the whole Earth, we have politicians dependent on the whims of every special interest of the moment backed by money or influence. What this means is that we do not have a government with sufficient integrity and authority to corre the
abuses of advantage which the greedy and ruthless have been quietly accumulating over the years.
When the American constitution was written, its authors could not possibly have foreseen the circumstances which exist in the world today.
Thomas Jefferson may have been overzealous with his revolution every twenty-seven years, but it certainly seems to me to be time to design a new system of social, economic, and political order encompassing not only the entire family of the human race, but also the entire life force of the Biosphere of the whole planet.
THE SEMINARY
Plato suggested long ago that national leaders should be seleed in advance and given the most careful training from their earliest youth. The kind of perspeive required for exercising primary responsibility for the welfare of a large state is a very specialized one. The only way to ensure that a national leader would be prepared to handle the requirements of his office is to provide specialized training and education beginning as early as possible.
All of the various funions of government should be performed by trained professionals; the funion I have in mind for the Seminary is to produce the keystone of the arch, the final Judge, who must develop a total world view which would include every aspe relevant to life on Earth. I see a need for someone who can rise above the level of personal interest, and identify himself not only with the fate of the whole of humanity, but also with the entire field of life energy on Earth.
In order to cultivate this attitude, which is clearly theological, I imagine a kind of Seminary as a training ground for all the qualities most essential for world leaders. This would be a small school, perhaps one or two hundred students at the most ~ possibly much smaller. Admission to this school would be by invitation of the current Judge, with the effort made to achieve wide international representation. Students might be admitted at any age, but the younger the better. The school would be generously funded, but students would not be allowed to accumulate personal wealth. There may perhaps be a trial period of a year or so during which time the Judge might expel a student, but after that trial period, each student would acquire a tenure that guarantees his status, independent of any political pressure.
The Seminary may convene at any time and ele one of their number as the Judge, according to some formula. For example, the new Judge may be eleed by a simple majority (after a death or recall), but three-quarters might be required to recall his authority. It would be expeed that all students would know each other well, and would make the right choice. It may be advisable to ele a line of succession at some time in advance, to guarantee a smooth transition to the chair of authority.
Some of the remaining members of the Seminary might arrange themselves into various advisory committees, while others may become instruors for the new students who would be entering the college in an ongoing cycle. A University of International studies would grow up around the Seminary, and form the basis for preparing the decisions of the Judge.
After a few generations, this specialized environment may attain more and more of an objeive world view and become a powerful institution independent from and above parochial interests. The location of the school
might be a secluded mountain top somewhere, although every advanced student would take frequent sabbaticals to live in some location of the real world in order to experience as wide a range of life as possible.
§
This whole program of reform may sound like a pipe dream, but we have seen how quickly events in the world can make yesterday’s news seem like last year’s snow. This is a time of turmoil and uncertainty. All over the world we are seeing small ethnic groups trying to forge their own political identity independent of the accidents of History. These are aually just the right conditions to favor a new ultimate unity. The alternations of olve et
oagula (separation and union) represent very powerful natural laws. (The convergence of the forces of life on Earth into a planetary union is one example of the Omega Point described by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.) While the present ideas are designed as a whole package to reform the political, economic, and social arrangements of the world, it is possible to implement many of the ideas on a local, or at least national, basis. For example, in any country, some of the economic reforms suggested here could dramatically improve the present situation. If they revitalize the local economy, other countries may follow suit, and the visionary goals of world union may not seem so far away.
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The Church of the Living Tree
We believe that the most important Manifestation of the Living God on Earth is to be found in the Trees. The greatest Folly of the Human Race has been the Destruion of the Trees of the Ancient Forest, with no Regard to their true Value. Living Trees are worth more than dead ones.
The Church of the Living Tree
Articles of Organization
The Church of the Living Tree
P.O. Box 64
Leggett, CA 95585
July 8, 1992
Articles of Organization
I. Name:
These Articles are to define and organize a Church, the name of which shall be The Church of the Living Tree (‘The Church’).
II. Founder’s Statement:
The Church of the Living Tree worships the Tree as the image of God. We understand God as all of Life. We do not postulate any role as the Creator of the Universe, nor do we concern ourselves with teleological questions ~ these matters being considered outside the scope of our knowledge or concern.
It is all of Life which we worship as God (specifically, but not necessarily limited to, the entire field of life energy on Earth, including plants and animals as well as all human beings), and choose to represent it in the image of a Tree, not only to express our humility that there is more to God than man, but also to express our reverence for the role which the Tree
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has played during most of Life’s career, and its critical importance right now, and for the future of Life.
We regard Trees as primary and indispensable pillars of the life force on this planet, and any regard to the health of that life force must begin with the cultivation of Trees. The loss of the Trees represents the greatest single mistake the human race has made in its entire history. The burning off of millions of years’ worth of fossil fuels in the last century, for example, pales in comparison with the loss of the Trees. For thousands of years the human race has asserted its dominance over the rest of life by destroying its environment, and, both direly and indirely, killing off other species of plants and animals, not realizing that when all of the birds and fish and Trees are gone, the human race can not long survive. The biological health of the planet has been declining so rapidly that nothing short of an immediate turn around in planetary consciousness can reverse the slide towards the extinion of life.
Our primate ancestors were vegetarian, living in Trees and eating fruits and nuts. The change to a diet of animal flesh, and the resulting changes in lifestyle, have not only caused an increase in disease, a decline in general health, and an increase in aggressive behavior and warfare, but the destruion of the biological resources of life itself.
The pattern of destruion starts with cutting down the Trees, and then raising animals who graze away what’s left, keeping the land under constant biological stress until the last of the land’s life force is consumed.
Most of the topsoil the world over has now been lost, and the thin membrane of the biosphere which covers the globe is being stretched thinner every day. The biological health of the planet is plunging rapidly towards the bleakness of toxic deserts, which will sooner or later become unable to support life.
Trees literally hold the Earth together, their roots extending many feet into the Earth’s crust, pulling up minerals, nutrients, and water from below, as well as sheltering the ground surface from above, so that animals and smaller plants and even people can enjoy a habitat supported by Trees. It is not surprising to me that northern California, for example, is beginning to dry up; when the Trees are gone, the earth can no longer hold onto the water
~ the winter rains simply erode the topsoil, and the springs dry up under the heat of the summer sun.
Therefore, the particular goal and purpose of the Church of the Living Tree is to defend and prote the Trees which still remain on this Earth, to plant more Trees by the millions of acres all over the Earth, and to evolve patterns of human lifestyles that will support Trees rather than exploit and destroy them.
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Half of all trees harvested are chipped up for the pulp mills; half of al landfills are composed of paper produs. One of the first projes of the Church of the Living Tree will be to set up the Alternative Fiber Paper Mil to begin producing paper with no wood content at al , so that the trees that remain to us may be relieved of their greatest oppressor. Timber companies want you to think that they are felling Trees to build houses and fine furniture, but the sad truth is that ever greater percentages of timber harvests are just being chipped up for the pulp mills so that our mailboxes can be stuffed full of junk mail. A paper mill to a tree is like a glue faory to a horse.
Some plants can be cultivated for the fiber as a primary crop, as in fiber hemp, Cannabis sativa, and kenaf, Hibiscus cannabinum. Both of these are fast growing annuals that produce enormous quantities of high quality fiber in a single season. Other fiber may be recycled from agricultural by-produs, such as rice straw, or from scraps from the garment industry, or rags and discards from other sources.
While the health of the Trees represents our primary concern, we understand the necessity of modifying human patterns of interaion with the Earth in order to evolve a sustainable lifestyle in which all forms of life can live in harmony. Some evolutionary trends that we want to promote include voluntary simplicity leading to a low impa lifestyle, and local, decentralized political and economic communities which will manage their own affairs: services, schools, health care, social assistance, and environmental consciousness. Simplicity should be the watchword of tax reform also: The entire whirlwind of tax lawyers, forms, loopholes, and endless paperwork for individuals and businesses should be replaced with a uniform land tax for revenue, supplemented by taxes on resource depletion for environmental control.
The problems of maintaining international peace and stability can never be resolved until some sort of international judicial body be established to arbitrate disputes and safeguard environmental integrity. In order for this to be effeive, it must be related to a holding company for military equipment. Eventually, once this transition has taken place, inter-state warfare would be history; all disputes would be settled by the arbitration of this world court and enforced by its own military holdings. Separate States would eventually maintain no more than local police forces to deal with local problems, while the international military establishment would gradually subside into a very modest presence that would rarely be used. The benefits of this evolution are obvious: in the first place, the devastations of warfare (including the present potential to destroy all life overnight ~ the nuclear component of which may well be destroying all life slowly in any case) would be eliminated, but, in addition, the savings involved by reducing the military
establishments of every sovereign state would be enormous, leading to an immediate and very real “peace dividend.”
On the other hand, there is a problem with the idea of international authority: how to empower such an authority and how to prevent the abuse of that power. Our conclusion is that the issue is really one of the most important roles for religion. The Church of the Living Tree suggests the founding of a Seminary to cultivate a consciousness in which the concerns of the human race are subordinated to the concerns of the Biosphere as a whole, symbolized by our reverence for the Tree as the most important and most endangered support of the Biosphere. This Seminary will be designed to maintain the final judicial authority proteing the environment of life.
All of these ideas and projes are related, direly or indirely, to our central purpose: support for the health of the Biosphere as a whole, starting with the Trees, and including animals and human beings. To further this goal, we are looking for donations of land all over the world, permanently dedicated to the Trees, particularly land whose life force has been depleted through misuse of one sort or another. We will establish volunteer communities of people who share our commitment to re-planting the Trees and restoring the land to fertility. We are interested in evolving alternative, low-impa lifestyles based upon a new paradigm: non-profit communities whose members live simple lives on permanent land trusts without the hassles of economic transaions, or paper work of any kind.
Projes of restoration may take many years and several phases.
Preliminary work may involve the cleaning up of any toxic debris, and the care and maintenance of water systems. The next step would be to establish primary anchor Trees and shelter belts. Eventually we will attempt to
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introduce a variety of valuable Trees, according to the potential of the land.
At the same time, complimentary programs of inter-cropping while the Trees are young, and other integrated land use (sustainable and organic) may be employed to accompany and augment the restoration of the Trees, and serve the communities that care for them.
Cultivating annual crops to feed to animals, and then eating the animals, has been shown to be a very inefficient and unhealthy lifestyle; we will expe to provide most of our food from Tree crops, supplemented by our own gardens. Once the land has been restored to fertility, it will support life comfortably, providing an alternative social environment where people can live a simple life on the land, free of the whole complex burden of survival which charaerizes life for most residents of the modern jungle.
It may be possible for a large part of the world’s population to live on these “free farms,” free of economic competition and stress. Of course, this lifestyle would not be for everyone; the present struure of free market economics must be free to continue worldwide without other interference
than taxation on resource depletion (carefully scaled to attain targets of control). However, the free farm alternative will allow people to opt for a simple life rather than forcing them into unproduive or counter-produive economic aivity just to survive (e.g., theft, drug dealing, swindles, manufaure and promotion of useless produs, the industries of confusion, the inefficiencies of insurance scams, and countless other parasites on a healthy economy).
If you are concerned that the land you have lived on and worked so hard for might be sold, logged, liquidated, partitioned, developed, or otherwise exploited by some future heir or purchaser, you might want to consider dedicating it to the Trees as a permanent trust under the care of The Church of the Living Tree. If you have no land of your own, plant Trees, and otherwise support the local ecology wherever you are. Or, alternatively, volunteer your services personally as a member of a free farm community to restore Tree cover and fertility to the lands in our care.
Families are welcome, including children of al ages. Volunteers are not paid, but all expenses, including housing and food, will be provided as our resources permit.
The Church of the Living Tree has little formal struure and makes no demands upon its members. All Tree-spirits everywhere who share our goals and interests are encouraged to work with us, or to pursue the same goals independently, according to their inclination. No particular forms of religious aivity are required of members, but we might suggest at least that spiritual gatherings take place in a grove of living Trees rather than in enclosed buildings of wood or stone. Whenever we wish to feel close to God, we want to go into the forest, close to the comforting shelter of the
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Trees, especially the oldest and the largest, with the deepest roots and the highest crowns. We do not want to hear sermons or even music ~ silence feels more appropriate to us while we sit, passive and receptive, that we might be able to hear the messages which God might have for us, and not be drowning them out with our own noise, full of our own importance.
And if you wish to celebrate a holiday at Christmas time, please do not kill any Trees; perhaps you will choose a living Tree to decorate and honor with your celebrations. If no other Trees are available to you, and there is no place for you to plant a Tree, you might cultivate a living Tree in a pot, in order to receive spiritual inspiration from it.
John R. Stahl, Founder,
THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING TREE
III. Purpose:
The purpose of the Church of the Living Tree is to defend and prote the Trees which still remain on this Earth, to plant more Trees by the millions of acres all over the earth, and to evolve patterns of human lifestyles that will support Trees rather than exploit and destroy them. In pursuance of these primary purposes, the Church may undertake additional Tree support projes such as finding and promoting alternatives for low grade utilization of forest material ~ specifically, to promote tree-free sources of pulp for paper produs. All of these goals have the same end in view: an increase in the population, range, and health of Trees, which we revere as God.
IV. Organization:
The principle unit of organization is the Restoration Proje
Community. Every piece of land acquired by the Church as a proje for the restoration of Trees will be independently managed by the community of volunteers living and planting Trees on the property. The authority for al decisions regarding the operation of the proje shall be vested in the Stewards in residence at the proje. The first Stewards of a proje wil be appointed by the Board of Direors of the Church at the commencement of restoration aivity. In addition to the Stewards, there may be any number of Volunteers, temporary or resident, who may participate in the work of restoration under the direion of the Stewards. From time to time, Volunteers who wish to make a longer commitment may become Stewards, at the invitation of the current Stewards.
The Church may organize communities for purposes other than a restoration proje; for example, there may be a community formed for the
purpose of managing a newsletter, or aing as a center of information and outreach to new members. For purposes of organization, each of these communities will be equivalent to restoration proje communities, including both Stewards and Volunteers, and a seat on the Board of Direors.
V. The Board of Direors:
The supervision of restoration projes as well as the management of Church affairs shal be condued by the Board of Direors. Each restoration proje community wil ele one of the Stewards to serve on the Board of Direors.
VI. The Trustees:
The final authority and responsibility for any and all decisions regarding the aivity or operation of the Church of the Living Tree, including matters of finance, policy, aivity, and direion, shall be held initially by the Trustees of the Church. The Trustees may over-ride any decisions of the Board of Direors.
As soon as the Seminary of the Church of the Living Tree eles one of their number as the Advocate for the Tree, the authority held by the Trustees shall pass permanently to the Advocate and his or her successors.
The initial Trustees will sign this organizing document; subsequent Trustees will be added by unanimous written approval of the existing Trustees. Documents approving additional Trustees will be attached as addenda to each original copy of these Articles of Organization.
VII. The Seminary:
The Seminary of the Church of the Living Tree will be set up as an independent and self governing body designed as an educational and social environment to produce the spiritual head of the Church, the Advocate for the Tree. Whenever necessary, adult members of the Seminary (sixteen years old or more) may ele one of their number to the role of Advocate for the Tree. The Advocate may be eleed by a simple majority, but if the Seminary desires to recall their seleion, at least three quarters of the members must vote for recall in order to ele an alternative candidate.
Initially, the members of the Seminary will be seleed by the Trustees of the Church at such times and in such numbers as will seem best. Once the members of the Seminary sele the first Advocate for the Tree (no time frame is stipulated ~ the members of the Seminary will be expeed to sele
the appropriate time), the Advocate wil assume all of the authority of the Trustees, including seleion of new members of the Seminary.
The Advocate for the Tree will be responsible for improvements or modifications in the design or funioning of the Seminary; the following ideas from the founder’s vision are only a starting suggestion to indicate the idea:
The optimum age for enrolling new members to the Seminary will be found with experience; the founder suggests starting with children of age five to ten. All members of the Seminary will have all their needs provided by the Church, but will not be paid, or allowed to accumulate personal wealth.
The school would start small, enlarging to whatever size seems best suited to achieve the intended result. The Seminary would be deliberately seleed to represent as wide a range of the peoples and cultures of the Earth as possible (new members must be unrelated to any other members, present or past).
Once admitted to the Seminary, members would be encouraged to let go of their temporal attachments to family, culture, or nation, and grow into their role as stewards of the whole Earth and proteors of the Trees. The Advocate may wish to form advisory committees to help with the enrollment of new members, with the appointment of instruors and specialists to form the educational environment, and with the management of any other matters pertaining to the Seminary. The curriculum would encompass the perspeive of the entire Biosphere of the planet, with emphasis on the role of Trees. Of necessity, human concerns ~ social, economic, and political ~
will form a major aspe of study. To emphasize their co-dependence with the earth, the Seminary members would spend a considerable part of their time working direly on the land, cultivating the Seminary’s lands as an arboretum and garden.
VIII. The Advocate for the Tree:
The Advocate for the Tree is designed to be the spiritual authority of the Church, and the voice for the Trees. The model is the Dalai Lama of Tibet: at the death of the Dalai Lama, the Buddhist priests of Tibet search for the new incarnation of their spiritual leader. Found as a child, the new Dalai Lama is trained for his role for most of his life, encouraging the flowering of a deeply rooted spiritual perspeive. The seleion of the Advocate for the Tree is similar, but we take a hint from the honey bees and raise a small group of candidates on the royal jelly to create a reservoir of spiritual energy, instead of relying on a single individual. In a manner similar to beliefs of Tibetan Buddhists, we are expeing the chosen Advocate to be the incarnation of the Tree in human form, to speak with the
voice of the Trees, and to promote the survival and optimum flourishing of all life on the planet.
*IX. Finances:
The aivities of the Church of the Living Tree will be financed by donations and grants, supplemented by sales of Tree produs or other farm material cultivated on a restoration proje, and possible business aivity direly related to the interests of the church (for example, pilot projes manufauring paper from tree-free pulp sources, either selling the paper produced to cover the cost of the operations, or perhaps selling material cultivated as a source for the pulp. These aivities will serve the purposes of the Church not only by direly relieving Trees from the pressure of demands for pulp, but will also serve as a vehicle for education and inspiration for other businesses to manufaure tree-free paper on a commercial scale).
No money received by the Church of the Living Tree will inure to the benefit of any private parties, individuals, or organizations. Restoration projes will only be carried out on lands donated to (or purchased by) the Church, or on lands permanently dedicated for public or charitable use.
None of the assets of the Church will be used for projes not direly related to its stated goals and purposes, as expressed in these articles.
From time to time, the Church may employ persons with required specialized skills, and will pay whatever wages are necessary. However, residents of Church communities, Stewards, Volunteers, and general members, will not receive payment for their services. As an alternative, community members wil have all of their needs provided direly, or paid for
by the community. An expense account may be provided for special occasions when essential aivity will be carried on off the properties of the Church.
X. Dissolution:
In the event that this organization is dissolved for any reason, the Advocate for the Tree (or the Trustees of the Church, in the event dissolution is effeed before the eleion of the first Advocate) shal distribute all remaining assets of the Church to his, her, or their choice of non-profit organizations which, in the opinion of the Advocate (or Trustees), will most effeively carry on the goals and purposes of the Church of the Living Tree. However, no such dissolution procedures may be carried out that would result in members of the Church being required (without their consent) to alter their status with regard to lands entrusted to them as Stewards.
XI. Initial Trustees:
The names and addresses of the persons who are the initial Trustees of the Church are as follows:
John Stahl
Jeffrey Conant
Etienne Conod
In witness whereof, we have hereunto subscribed our names and date:
{signatures} July 8, 1992
The Church of the Living Tree
P.O. Box 64
Leggett, CA 95585
Oober 1, 1993
Text of Proposed Amendment
Articles of Organization:
1. Article III. Purpose is amended by the addition of a second paragraph, as follows:
‘The purposes of The Church of the Living Tree are limited to those enumerated in these Articles of Organization. None of the members of the Church (while aing in the name of the Church) will engage in any aivities not direly related to the purposes of the Church or in any aivities not permitted under seion 501 (c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code. None of the assets of the Church will be used for any aivities not direly related to the purposes of the Church or for any aivities not permitted under seion 501 (c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code.’
2. Article X. Dissolution is amended to read as follows:
‘In the event that this organization is dissolved for any reason, the Advocate for the Tree (or the Trustees of the Church, in the event dissolution is effeed before the eleion of the first Advocate) shal distribute all remaining assets of the Church to his, her, or their choice of non-profit organizations which would qualify and would be exempt within the meaning of seion 501 (c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and which,
59
in the opinion of the Advocate (or Trustees), will most effeively carry on the goals and purposes of the Church of the Living Tree.’
3. The amendments proposed herein will become effeive upon approval of a majority of the Trustees of the Church.
Approved by:
John Stahl
Jeffrey Conant
Etienne Conod
Free Farms
The basic concept of the Free Farm is that it is an alternative and a refuge from the complex web of financial entanglements that comprises the daily reality for most individuals at the present time. At the Free Farm, one’s account is expeed to be kept current and in balance ~ everyone contributes as they can, and everyone’s needs are met. Like the kibbutz in Israel, it is the Community that defines the financial unit, not the individual.
This pattern allows for a much more efficient arrangement of resources, as advantages of scale are realized quickly, even by very small communities.
This is not a new idea, and communities have formed along these lines from time to time, but they frequently fail, and one of the main reasons for their failure is an inadequate consideration for the operation of the principle of authority. There may be a desire to dispense with the services of any authority, but it is not possible to eliminate the problem of authority by fiat.
To set up a community with no other recourse to authority but the consensus of the current members is to abdicate the responsibility of leadership and leave the community vulnerable to dissension.
Our solution to this problem at the Church of the Living Tree is to make a distinion between the Stewards, who share the responsibility for the land, and the Volunteers, who do not. The Stewards are the core group who have a long term commitment to the land, while the volunteers come as guests, and may or may not have more than a temporary interest in the land.
After some period of time and demonstration of commitment a volunteer may be invited to become a Steward.
Projes of the Church of the Living Tree are operated by Stewards and volunteers who do not pay rent or receive wages. At the present time we only have a couple of locations with limited facilities for volunteers, but we hope to increase the number and capacity of locations where volunteers can come and work for the Trees.
In the meantime, we are trying to assist placement of interested persons in free farm situations by operating a Free Farm Bulletin Board as a clearinghouse for persons offering or seeking a free farm situation. The Church of the Living Tree can not be responsible for any consequences of contas made through this service. Please check out offerings thoroughly before making any commitment. (www.tree.org/a3.htm)
leaſe ote: The limited stipulations for the use of this service are that all situations, whether offered or sought, must be on the basis of free exchange. Situations requiring payment, or persons seeking paid employment will be deleted when found. It should be further assumed, unless otherwise clarified, that a person invited to a Free Farm through the use of this service will have the status of Volunteer, as discussed above, without any tenure to the land, unless it is so arranged by the hosts.
The Survival of Life on Earth
July, 2006
In this essay, I want to repeat a number of ideas I have expressed elsewhere ~ in fa, here will be found many of the common themes that I have been working with lately, as I try to understand the world and any possible future for the phenomenon of Life. But Life is kind of important to me. Life is exciting to me: novelty unfolding outward in all direions as it continues to grow. The important essence of God will surely be found more readily in Life than anywhere else, except Love, which is really just another view of the same phenomenon. So if readers of any of my other articles find that this one is just more of the same old stuff, my excuse is that Life is important enough to be worth the treatment of reviewing many of my old ideas here once again, with specific reference to the possibility of the survival of Life on earth.
I say the “possibility of the survival of Life on earth,” because it is presently in very serious jeopardy! The earth is dying, and the time during which it may yet be possible to reverse this slide into the grave may rapidly be running out, so it is imperative to address this problem immediately and take it very, very seriously! There was a time when doomsayers would worry that the earth would be ruined for future generations, but the future is now ~
we are at the point where the earth is already showing the very clear signs of decay, and the stench of death is in the air ~ life on earth could very well be in its very last phase, and people alive right now are dying because of the diminishing health of our biological environment. A great many of the
problems facing the planet are coming to a head right now, during the time of the present generation.
But instead of all hands on deck working long hours to try to reverse this slide into oblivion and darkness, we see everything going on “business as usual” as everyone goes on trying to swindle and steal another dollar before the curtain falls. The reason for this is that the change has been very gradual. All through the Industrial Revolution, the earth ~ its land, its rivers, its air, its oceans, and its people ~ has been in a state of gradual decline. Of course, this decline has been going on for longer than that ~ but the past hundred and fifty years have seen such an incredible acceleration of the process of destruion that we might as well look at this as a contemporary problem. We are frogs in a pot of warm water, and the gradually increasing temperature is putting us to sleep.
I do not propose here to go through the whole catalog of ruin and destruion ~ there are plenty of doomsayers who are shouting themselves hoarse warning of the dangers of everything from nuclear power and global warming to the destruion of the Ancient Forest. My purpose is more abstra ~ I want to look at this from an objeive point abstraed out of the context of the current problem. Just suppose that our little world is being studied by the scientists of a civilization from a star like Alpha Centauri, many light years away. They may have been studying it for hundreds or thousands of years, and suddenly they see that this green and fertile earth has been rapidly withering and turning brown. It is clearly dying. It is as obvious as it would be to a horticulturist who watches his pots of greenery ~
one of his plants has been wilting, and the leaves are turning yellow and brown and fal ing off one by one. As Dylan says, “He who is not busy being
born is busy dying.” Either the plants are green and vibrant and glowing with energy, growing in good health, or they are limp and feeble and wilting and drooping, losing their leaves as they lose vitality.
When a plant is in a state of decline like that, it is necessary to take immediate steps to discover the problem and to make such changes as will be needed to restore the plant to health. Perhaps there is not enough water, or perhaps too much. Perhaps the soil is depleted and worthless, or perhaps there are some toxic elements in the soil. Maybe there is not enough sun, or perhaps the air is stale and toxic.
The point is that there may be a brief window of time during which it may be possible to reverse the decline of the living plant ~ if it is left for too long, then the plant will just die off, even if, too late, you make desperate changes, trying to revive the plant.
The Earth is a single living organism (“aia”). The “Gaia hypothesis”
seems so obvious and self-evident to me, that it hardly seems that it needs to be explained or discussed, but for those who may perhaps never think about such things, let me just say that all living systems are occupying the same space. Just as every atom is composed of a nucleus at the center surrounded by a field of energy that extends far out, so that pattern follows for all of life.
A human being is not just confined to the simple body which you may see sitting in a chair ~ his field of energy extends to the outermost reaches of the cosmos, but certainly at least it covers all of the region surrounding the planet Earth. What this means is that, in some very important sense, everyone on earth is occupying the same space. What’s more, all living things ~ plants, animals, trees, beetles, and people, are all in this together.
Over the evolutionary course of many millions of years, all of these energy
streams have evolved into more or less sustainable living systems that are inextricably intertwined, and, as “aia”, are/is conscious. The consciousness works two ways, for those who listen for Her voice.
Now, suddenly, in the past hundred and fifty years, the human race has exercised such an unprecedented influence upon this fragile biological environment that it is breaking down in many important ways.
I want to look at the health of the planet from the point of view of its
“aura.” In one of my earlier articles ( he etaphycs of ex), I detailed eight patterns of biological interaion which represent, in very abstra form, the range of the potential of life. These patterns range from very negative patterns of aggression and hostility to loftier patterns of love and union. Of course, a review of that article would be useful here, but I want to look at my catalog of patterns mostly from the point of view of the colors of the aura associated with those patterns, and then consider the level of life energy in any living system by looking at those colors of the aura. We may liken the aura to a pattern of energy similar to a kind of a light, which expresses the quantity and quality of “vitality” or life force available or remaining in that organism. A plant or animal in good health will have a bright aura; a diseased or dying plant or animal will have a dark or muddy aura.
The colors of the patterns indicated in that article may be seen as accumulations ~ that is, at the bottom there is the color Black, which is the color of death ~ aually, it is the absence of color. Then, moving up the scale, there are the colors of Red and Violet (Anger and Violence ~
Oppression and Viim). Above that, there is a mid-range of Orange and Blue (War and Peace) which represent more established levels of life energy.
Above that, there are the higher levels of Yellow and Green (Giving and
Receiving Love) representing much higher developments of biological vitality. Finally, at the very top, is the color White, which is the accumulation of all colors, and it represents the highest level of vitality ~
Unity, Love, (the Creative, Heaven, from the I hing ~ and the metal Gold from Alchemy).
So, while I am reviewing all of my old ideas in this essay, let me mention one more that needs to be emphasized in this context ~ whenever something is in good health, all elements of the organism will be in a state of balance and harmony, and when an organism is not in good health, elements will be in a state of chaos and confusion. The closer the organism is to a state of balance and clarity and harmony, the healthier the organism.
Conversely, when an organism exhibits extreme chaos and confusion, it is clear that the organism is in very bad health.
Thus, it is very clear that our world is in very deep trouble right about now! There have been times in history (Athens under Pericles, for example), when everything seemed to be right ~ art, music, literature, even architeure expressed the harmony and beauty of the age. All one has to do is contrast the glorious and joyful music of J. S. Bach with the awful and strident noise of contemporary “music” in order to realize that we are suffering a considerable decline of vital energy. Everywhere one looks today one sees violence, anger, hostility, death, and destruion. Any sweetness and light that timidly tries to appear is laughed off the stage with ridicule.
So now I come to my conclusions ~ it is necessary to recognize what is going on! If people were to see all of this clearly, then perhaps it might be possible to turn this around. What is needed is not just “a solution to the war in the Middle East, or Iraq” but a whole new spiritual consciousness.
Everyone who wants life on earth to survive must work towards the goal of a renewal of spiritual consciousness. It doesn’t matter what specific theological ideas anyone may have ~ as I expressed in another article (Is eligion ood or
ad?), I have come to the conclusion that “religions” are just obstacles to spiritual consciousness. (See also ow to eaſure piritual rowth.) We need to develop an all-encompassing spiritual consciousness that includes all of life ~ Moslems, Jews, goldfish, and blackberry brambles. If we can develop a critical mass of life to converge into a place of harmony and balance, it may be possible to reverse the slide of the planet towards an ultimate disintegration. Time is running out ~ let us make a specific goal of accomplishing this convergence by the year 2012 ~ an arbitrary time, perhaps, but a date by which many people have been looking for another high point in the “biorhythm” of the planet. We must make this convergence of harmony and balance powerful enough to carry the earth to a new Golden Age, because a failure to accumulate enough positive energy to reverse the direion back towards the center, towards Clarity, Balance, Peace, and Love, will probably mean that the ebb tide of life on earth wil just cause aia to decay into the color Black for all the rest of eternity.
A Solution to the War
in the Middle East
July, 2006
The problem in the Middle East has been going on for 1000 years, ever since the first Crusades. The situation there is a “real” problem. Some problems are not real. Some problems have a simple solution ~ some aggressor is clearly wrong, so the “solution” is to remove that aggressor and restore justice and freedom. Even if this is not easy to do, at least the problem might be clear. However, in the case of the confli between the Moslems and the Jews, the confli goes back and back and back. It is never useful to say that these people or those people are clearly wrong to do what they do. The problem is that they are aing in response to what those people or these people have been doing before. But you can carry the problem back and back and back, like the Hatfields and McCoys. After a while, the feud is so deeply ingrained on both sides that it would seem that no possible resolution could ever be possible.
In the case of the present confli, there really isn’t much basis to negotiate between the two positions. The Moslems want to force all of the Jews into the Mediterranean Sea, and the Jews want to kill every Palestinian, to the last man, woman, and child, in much the same way that the American colonists decided to deal with the “Indians” who happened to be there first.
These are their clear intentions, hardly even pretended otherwise (have the Israelis thought of donating blankets to the Palestinians, loaded with
smallpox virus, as the early American settlers did to the native Americans?).
So what could anyone possibly propose, in order to resolve this confli?
Well, I aually have a proposal, but no one is going to like it. But that, of course, is inevitable when you have two opposed camps who are so far apart in their attitudes as the Moslems and the Jews. What a thankless task to even propose any solutions! If no one is going to like any of my ideas, why don’t I just cultivate my fragrant roses, and forget about that confli? I don’t live anywhere close to that region, and I have no desire to go back there (I have been to Israel, and I have been to many Moslem countries).
However, I do live on the earth, and so the problem cannot be ignored. The earth is too small these days. The days when a Great Wall of China could be built to keep out the hordes of barbarians (or the Ugly American), are long gone. Any solution to the problems of the world must have a global consideration or the solution is worthless. If Iran and Israel have a nuclear confrontation (for example), where does that leave life on earth?
So my first premise is that any solution is better than no solution. This seems like a self-evident proposition, but to people in the heat of battle, it apparently is not so evident. Whenever any two people have a fight on their hands such that each wil fight to the death before giving in, it is clear that any solution at all, even a bad one for one side or the other, is better than nothing, since at least it allows life to go on.
This is contrary to human nature. It is human nature to go on fighting
“to the death” before accepting the short end of any deal. This is clearly folly, at least to my eyes. I remember when the deal was struck between Egypt and Israel. At the time everyone on both sides cried out in anger at the deal, yet the deal was made and accepted, and now there is no war on
that front. For better or worse, a deal was made, and now there is at least one border where there is no war going on! The benefits of this are finally clear to both sides. Now, I am sure that neither side would wish to revert to the previous situation. A settlement has been reached, and, at least as far as that portion of the confli is concerned, everyone can return to their roses or their farms.
In the same way, I am trying to find a solution which can work ~ some solution by which both the Israelis and the Palestinians can go on living.
When you can spend your resources cultivating your fields instead of building weapons and waging war, you can increase your prosperity rapidly.
Any solution that will allow for an end to hostilities, and allow the peace to be retained with only moderate peace-keeping forces, will be a great boon to the people of the region, on both sides of the confli.
The problem is that the claims to that land go so far back that it is just no longer feasible to establish “rightful ownership.” The Palestinians claim recent history; the Israelis claim biblical history. As I look upon those claims, I find myself considering that biblical history just goes too far back to provide a credible basis on which to base a claim to the land. tatus quo ante bellum is one thing; trying to revert to a political reality that is out of date by 2000 years seems a bit optimistic. On the other hand, the Jews are there, and not planning to leave any time soon. I consider that the seizure of the land is similar to when a government (by which we refer to a power stronger than you are that has a lot more guns than you have) seizes land by “eminent domain.” Basically, they say to the holders of the land, that they want it, so you have to move; so sorry. In this case, when they do this, at least they are constrained by custom to offer some compensation for taking the land.
So there is my solution. If the Israelis have taken the land, they must pay compensation. Now, of course, the Palestinians are going to say that they do not want “compensation” ~ they want their land back. However, it is evident that that solution is not liable to happen by means of any foreseeable continuations of this confli. Nothing that the Palestinians can do is likely to result in the restoration of their lands. Notice that I am not trying to make any arbitration on the basis of “justice.” It has been a long, long time since I expeed anything in the world to happen in accordance with “justice.” Politics is a business of pragmatic solutions to the real problems of the world, and no one’s platitudes are going to be of any use.
So, while no one is going to like this solution, at least it can provide a way in which everyone involved can go on living. The way it is now, the only advice the Israelis have for the Palestinians is for them to lay down and die. They should not be surprised, therefore, that when the Palestinians do this they at least want to take as many Israelis with them when they go as possible (the suicide bombers). It is not praical for the Israelis to expe
the Palestinians to accept defeat and simply go away. Not only do they have no place to go, but they don’t have any shoes.
If the displaced Palestinians are given a substantial sum of cash money to renounce their claims upon the land, they will not be penniless refugees living in tent camps, but will be welcomed anywhere. I think this is a serious proposal. I remember thinking during the war in Viet Nam that the American approach was all wrong. Instead of sending in armies of soldiers to destroy the country, they should have sent in some carnival hucksters in Hawai an shirts, with carpet bags full of cash money.
“Hello, Charlie! Good day to you. And how are the wife and kids?
Cigar? Fresh from Havana! ~ Well, I’m here representing the United States government, and we think your support of the communist regime is really foolish. I am authorized to offer you and your family $5,000 in cash to support our proposals for a capitalist regime here ~ oops, I mean a
“democratic government.” I’ll be setting up an office in town, so send your friends over ~ same deal for everyone who agrees to sign up. Oh, and we have allocated a million dollars for a new hospital here, and another million for schools.”
Give me about fifty slick carpet baggers and about 10% of the budget for the war in Vietnam, and I would undertake to have ended the war to everyone’s satisfaion! The same could have been done in Iraq, also, only now the cost would have to be adjusted upwards. Back in the old days, $5,000 per person might have swung it, but now I’m afraid it will cost so much more that the proposal breaks down. No, nothing will work now except for an immediate and unconditional withdrawal. The country has already been destroyed, and there is little hope at all that anyone in the world will ever again support the American agenda, but if the Americans admit their mistake and withdraw their troops (say, during the next administration, after George W. Bush finally takes his bow and his curtain falls), pay massive reparations to the Iraqi people, and stay out of countries where their presence is not wanted, then, after a few generations, the bad smell may begin to dissipate. Of course, when the effes of all the depleted uranium begin to be seen clearly, it may significantly retard the rehabilitation of the United States’ reputation.
So, what is the specific proposal to the situation in the Middle East? I would say, set up a panel of arbitration and invite Palestinians to bring complaints for review. This could be set up like an ordinary court, with attorneys for both sides representing their clients ~ attorneys for the Palestinians (including a Palestinian “Public Defender” for the indigent), and attorneys representing the State of Israel, against which the judgments will be made. Jews could likewise make claims against the Palestinians, and cross judgments might be made. A final settlement would include a minimum sum to which all Palestinians are entitled, every man, woman, and child, with additional specific judgments as decreed by the court of arbitration.
Now why would the State of Israel accept any such terms? Is all this just a pipe dream, or what? I think that if it were understood as a final solution to this endless struggle, it could be understood as worth the money!
Even if the final settlement runs into many billions, even trillions of dollars, this could be seen as a cheap price to pay for a peaceful end to the confli. If a settlement could be reached that would allow the Palestinians to accept the solution, and retire to within the borders left to them (obviously, any real solution will be far more complex than the broad outlines suggested here ~
some land would be set aside for a Palestinian State, for example) or find a new home and a new life, with the help of their compensation package somewhere outside the borders of the disputed territories, then everyone could return to their fields or their faories, and life could go on.
The Palestinians may prefer to have their land back rather than any amount of money, and the Jews may be very reluant to pay out enormous sums of money to people they consider to be their enemy, but if this solution leads to peace, then everyone benefits. Within a generation or two, everyone
involved would be far better off than they could possibly have been if the ftatus quo were to have continued for all that time.
It might take ten years to work out all the details of such a settlement, but if the intervening ten years were spent in court rooms instead of battlefields, that is already an immense improvement.
I consider myself completely impartial in this confli ~ I have no reason to favor either side, but I think that I would welcome such a resolution regardless of which side of the confli I were on. The goal of peace at last would be worth any sacrifice ~ giving up their claim to the land on the part of the Palestinians, or agreeing to a very substantial payment of compensation by the Israelis, which might be the equivalent of their war budget for many years into the future. However, once the debt were paid off, then there could finally be a gradual restoration of prosperity to the whole region.
And, best of all, everyone could go on living.
The Fall of the Dollar
September, 2007
It has been clear to me for many years that there is no future for the Almighty Dollar. One thing I have noticed is that people are rarely able to perceive the possibility of Change of any sort ~ whatever the present reality is, that is the way It Has Always Been, and The Way It Will Always Be ( cf.
1984 by George Orwell). However, with a little historical perspeive, it is very easy to predi the decline and fall of the Dol ar.
I have always taken a view of economics which I call “Reality Economics.” I have understood fashionable ideas about how war, for example, can stimulate an economy, but I have always taken an alternative view that aions can be considered in terms of the real effe, and that, ultimately, that real effe will tell far more surely in the long run than any very temporary apparent “stimulation of the economy.” War is the most obvious example of this principle. To be sure, war encourages a host of aivities which, superficially, stimulate an economy ~ arms are built, soldiers are outfitted with uniforms and guns, ships are built for transport, and military spending all along the line flushes the economy with movements of capital. Yet when the final effe of all of these wartime aivities is to destroy ~ people, bridges, buildings, oil fields ~ it is clear to me that all of that expenditure of money will promote the advance of poverty, not prosperity.
Then even more money is spent to rebuild what was destroyed at such cost, and huge armies of contraors, masons, elericians, and speculators will be mobilized in the shadow of the soldiers, all of whom appear likewise to “stimulate the economy.”
But in contrast with all of this destruive and useless consumption of real value, consider the effe of spending upon projes for which there is a more clearly evident value ~ schools, hospitals, roads, agriculture, etc. My
“reality economics” suggests that such expenditures will eventually bring very real and tangible benefits.
What is required is to distinguish between short term appearances and long term reality. I am not at all impressed by any of the specious arguments that pretend to find an economic stimulation in warfare and other examples of destruive and wasteful energy. Extend the window to a longer term, and sooner or later you will see the aual consequences of wasteful economic aivity (and the benefits of economic aivity which aual y accomplishes something worthwhile). I take as a prime example the ancient civilization of Crete, which enjoyed a higher civilization than is in evidence anywhere in the world at the present day, yet it enjoyed this civilization thousands of years ago, one of the earliest sites of advanced civilization known to history.
The reasons for the advanced level of civilization are very clear and simple.
Crete was an island of just the right size ~ big enough for a large and complex community to develop, yet small enough to be governed by a single king, so there was no internal warfare. In addition, and most importantly, as an island nation it was easily defensible from external attack. Thus, it enjoyed an uninterrupted period of peace and tranquility for over a thousand years. This peace al owed the citizens to attend to the cultivation of their
gardens, and allowed an attendant class of merchants and artisans to grow up around the agricultural base. This led to prosperity for everyone, and that prosperity led, in turn, to the development of music, arts, and sciences for the better appreciation of life, and the civilization was rol ing right along, flourishing and flowering in every respe.
This civilization lasted until the advent of large ships of war, when it became possible for foreign powers to invade their land with an armada of ships carrying armies of soldiers, who immediately laid waste to the land, raping and pillaging, seizing whatever they could find of value to carry off.
The civilization of Crete was destroyed overnight.
So if a thousand years of uninterrupted peace leads to prosperity and the advance of civilization, times of warfare will do the opposite, quickly dragging down any nation based upon warfare into the mire of poverty and cultural devastation.
The United States has entered upon the last stage of a Great Power.
Early stages of decline are marked by extensive military expenditures which impoverish the land and the people, and an abandonment of those commercial aivities which produce real wealth and prosperity.
The increasing dependence upon military aivities “to promote and stimulate economic aivity” has led to a state of affairs in which very little of real economic value is aually produced in the United States any more. As far as commercial goods are concerned, everything is now made in China.
Even the fabled Technology seor is increasingly outsourced to India. This is leaving the country without any real economic base anymore, so it is no wonder that it is rapidly descending into poverty.
Furthermore, its agricultural base is eroding just as rapidly. When the fertility of agricultural lands is destroyed by the over-use of chemicals, replacing organic farming praices, then the sterile medium of ruined land can no longer support life without a continued and increasing dependence upon such chemicals, which leads to a downward spiral of decreasing produivity, measured not only in the quantities produced, but especially in the nutritional value of the produce. Of what value is it to produce bushels of vegetables which contain no more nutritional content than the chemicals of which they are composed? It is far healthier to eat a small meal of organic produce which provides a true and nourishing vitality than to eat a big plate of food which is saturated with chemicals, and devoid of any of the attributes of life.
It has always amused me to watch people rejoicing in the constant rising of the values of the stock market. They seem to think that the rising values of their stocks indicates some real economic growth. Sadly, it is just the reverse. The rise in the value of stocks, like the rise in the “value” of real property, is just another way of looking at the fall of the dollar. For example, if stocks or property increase in value by 30%, yet the value of the dol ar declines by 30%, this represents zero growth. And make no mistake ~ the dollar has been declining rather quickly for many years now! All of this has been quite clear to bankers and financial speculators, but the common people, ‘οι πολλοι , are lul ed into thinking that nothing unusual is going on.
“Sure, markets rise and fall, and the value of the dollar rises and falls.” Only at present it is only falling, and not doing too much rising at all. One very simple benchmark is the value of the Euro. When the Euro was introduced, it started off at par with the Dollar. Now, a dollar will buy you about 70¢ on
the euro, representing a loss of about a third of the value of the dollar over a handful of years, and there is no end in sight.
Every day I read about falling markets in the US, and historically high markets in China and India. Just about every currency in the world is outpacing the dollar. Recently I was in Cambodia and speaking with hotel keepers who were accumulating piles of local money and they wanted, in their innocence, to convert their savings into dol ars. I told them, to their evident surprise, that they should rather hold on to their savings in Cambodian currency. I suggested that, in a few years’ time, savings of Cambodian currency would be worth considerably more than equivalent savings in dol ars.
The fa is, no one with any economic sense wants to hold dollars anymore! Even the Chinese bankers, aware of the inevitable decline of the value of the dollar, are very reluant to renew loans denominated in dollars.
Of what use is it to earn 6% interest on a loan if the loan is paid back in dollars that have lost 10% of their value? But if American banks were forced to accept loans denominated in any strong currency, such as the Chinese yuan, or the Indian rupee (hilariously enough, from the standpoint of fairly recent history ~ when I was traveling in India, in the days of my youth, the rupee had no value whatsoever outside of India), then the imminent bankruptcy of the American banks would be assured.
In fa, the American National Debt is so huge that there is no mathematical possibility that it could ever be repaid. What? Did you follow that? Look at the rise in the debt from 1940 until the present ~
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Is there a mathematician in the house? Does anyone recognize the shape of that curve? It is an exponential curve. What that means is that, from here, there is no way it can go but up, dramatically and stratospherically, far beyond the remotest possibility that it might ever be repaid. In fa, did you ever wonder how the United States is financing its war in Iraq? It is simply borrowing the money and piling it onto the National Debt, which everyone understands will never, ever, be repaid. The National Debt is a game of musical chairs ~ bankers and merchants go on making money as long as the music plays, but when the music stops, you had better not be holding any dollars (or bonds payable in dollars)!
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(Update, March, 2011) That graph is out of date. Here is the way it looks about five years later, just in case anyone was wondering what happens to an exponential curve: [October 2022 ~ $31 tril ion]
The Chinese bankers backed down, and allowed the American banks to go on repaying their loans with ever more worthless dollars, because they, like everyone else, are apprehensive about what will happen “when the music stops.” But for now, the band is playing on, even though the game has become ever more and more unreal. Do you understand how it is that so many people and corporations are able to make so much money off of this war in Iraq? It is perfely simple. What you do is get a contra from the American Government, which borrows, say, another billion dollars to give to the Contraor. Then the Contraors vaporize $900 million, and put the final $100 million into their pockets. oila, “free money”! To be sure, a billion dollars has been piled onto the National Debt, but that is all an unreal
fantasy anyway, yet the hundred million is real money in the pocket. Let the band play on!
Well, while governments and contraors are playing this game, stuffing money into their pockets as fast as they can before the music stops, what is aually going to happen? If the National Debt is just a fantasy, which “everyone” (the “smart money”) understands will never be repaid, what is going to happen? Can the levels of the National Debt just go soaring on and on to ever more unreal and lofty heights?
Wel , no. No; the hard truth is that it cannot. The music is stil playing on, but ever more and more you have the “smart money” managers glued to their computer monitors, watching for the signs of the music stopping. What happens is that declines in the financial markets can be very sudden and very brutal. The secret is to make money in this high-stakes game as long as you can, and then, when the music stops, be very sure that you are out of dollars, and out of any bonds payable in dollars! You can own tangible assets, like real property, but God help you if you have sunk the money from the sale of Grandma’s farm into the bank, or paper securities! (I am not troubled by the collapse in the real estate market these days ~ editing this article in 2008. When Asian residents discover how cheap land is in the United States, relative to the cost of land in their own countries, they will bid up the prices of the land once again.)
Fundamentally, there are really only two ways out of this situation.
One of them is through warfare. The ultima ratio regis (“last argument of kings”) is their cannon. When a nation is going broke, the simple and obvious solution is to put your last remaining resources into fitting out your citizens for war. Then you can simply march into foreign lands, raping and
pillaging, and bring home whatever you can carry off of value, just as the marauders who sacked ancient Crete did so many years ago. This is no longer a politically corre solution, however. In earlier days, this solution was so common that no one expeed anything any different. Of course your neighbors would be marching over the border to seize your lands any time they feel they can get away with it. This is just the law of the jungle, after all, so what else is new?
Unfortunately, however, the law of the jungle is antithetical to any of the tenets of modern civilization. Having recourse to wars of aggression is to renounce any claims to civilization, and hasten a regression back to very primitive morality.
There is, however, one other little possibility, which has not escaped the notice of sharp bankers! There is, finally, a way to aually pay off that National Debt after al ! The key, as the Chinese bankers so clearly understand, is to repay your loans with “dollars” of reduced value. Just to give you a simple idea, suppose agents of the US government decide that the time is ripe to shut off the music (having first sheltered all of their wealth into real or tangible assets ~ real property, gold, diamonds, works of art, Indian rupees, etc. [This is a joke. If the dollar collapses, “even” the Indian rupee will fall.]). Trying to take advantage of some brief window in which no one is expeing it, they suddenly pull the plug. When you read the morning paper over your toast and coffee, you might discover that, in the night, the US government has paid off the National Debt! What they did was to print up big stacks of billion-dollar bank notes, and paid everyone off!
Perfely legal. Now, of course, a hamburger will cost half a million dollars,
but that is no longer the concern of the federal government, which has paid off its debt in full!
But that amusing little story is not the way it aually happens. What they do, instead, is nibble away at the value of the currency a little at a time,
“so that no one notices.” But what this means is that the fall of the dollar is very far from over. You may depend upon it that the dollar will continue to collapse, a little at a time, probably with a series of rapid falls, with brief leveling off periods in between, for the foreseeable future, as the United
States gradually recedes from its position of dominance on the world’s stage to take up the more humble role of the has-been, drinking beer with the Romans, Mongols, Spaniards, Englishmen, and Russians who have been there before them.
This, of course, is the “optimistic” scenario. The somewhat more pessimistic scenario would see escalating war on all fronts ~ Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Korea, etc. Perhaps it is the deliberate intention of the cabal of wealthy and powerful people, fronted by the Bush regime, to ratchet up the levels of tension and fear in the world to the point where they can safely rule by Martial Law, bringing the world to the brink of chaos and annihilation until they can find a way to re-shuffle the deck in their favor. If they do this, of course, do not look to them to bail out the United States government, which is hopelessly bankrupt and has been for many years ~ no, they will go on lining their own pockets, bailing out of the sinking ship just as it is going down.
Oh, no ~ the former “optimistic scenario” of the gradual decline of the United States and its god, Mammon (the Almighty Dollar), is a much more graceful way for that vortex of negative energy to subside into irrelevance.
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So the moral of this story is “don’t be the last one to get out of dollars!”
Dump your dollars now, and avoid the rush. Perhaps it is time to start hoarding rupees (or guns, depending on whether you are an optimist or a pessimist).
There is a positive side to this essay. If a major change of energy can take place, and a rapid uplifting of spiritual consciousness can spread throughout the land, then, in the rapid movement back to Clarity, a great prosperity may take the place of war, and (as a rising tide floats all boats) even the United States economy and the greenback Dollar may again refle
the value of prosperity.
Reality Economics
March, 2009
I have written a previous article about what I call “reality economics”
( ide: he all of the ollar) but here it is March of 2009, and, like everyone else in the world, I am watching the entire worldwide economic system falling into chaos, and I am baffled by the methods which are proposed to
“restart the economy.” Everyone seems to think that if only everyone would start buying produs once again, then everything will be just rosy. I remember George Bush’s simple recipe for curing an ailing economy: we should all go shopping. Now I hear on the news that Germany has come up with a brilliant plan to get their economy moving again: they have instituted a program of government incentives for people to buy new cars by paying prospeive new car purchasers to junk their older cars.
Here is an opportunity for me to explain again what I am trying to suggest by “reality economics.” While the German government wants everyone to buy a new car to stimulate their economy, and they are so convinced that this is the solution that they are providing government money to wreck older cars, I would propose a diametrically opposite strategy.
I would propose that, instead of spending trillions of dollars trying to pump up sagging economies, governments should a like every other business or private party in economic trouble: stop spending money! If banks, mortgage companies, insurance companies, or automobile manufauring companies are unable to operate profitably, let them declare
bankruptcy and liquidate their assets. If company A wishes to pay out multi-million dollar bonus packages to its executives, they will not be able to compete against company B which asks all workers, from executives on down, to accept a pay cut in the interest of remaining solvent so that they will stay in business and be able to continue paying any salaries at all. If demand for a company’s goods are way down, close the faories until inventories fall to levels where it will be appropriate to reopen the faories again. Instead of encouraging everyone to buy a new car, encourage everyone to fix their old one instead.
If there is widespread unemployment, fine; just invite all the unemployed to live in peace on the Free Farm, planting trees or growing fruits and vegetables. Sooner or later enterprising individuals or companies will figure out something useful to do which someone, somewhere will pay them for, and gradually a new economy will evolve to replace old industries which are out of date.
Take the automobile industry, for example. It is not just General Motors that is in trouble; car makers all over the world have seen their sales drying up and blowing away. The fa is that there are just too many cars in the world, and not enough oil to run them much longer anyway. Let these companies go bankrupt one by one, selling off their assets until the few companies that remain are able to survive by supplying cars to what remains of the automobile market. Let the market determine which companies wil survive to make the next generation of cars. Or, alternatively, let those companies whose executives are paying themselves fat salaries and bonuses just fail in competition with leaner companies which devote their attention to spending their resources more wisely, with a view to providing greater
value to their customers ~ better quality vehicles for less money than their bloated competitors. I still believe in the free market ~ if everyone had not panicked but simply let the losers fail and drop out of the race, then the companies which survive would remain a part of the evolving economy, and those which couldn’t keep up would fail, and their stockholders would take the loss.
No company is “too big to be allowed to fail,” and this includes the United States of America. If foolish economic policies push the country into bankruptcy, well, so be it! If the voters and taxpayers just shrug their shoulders while the treasury is being systematically looted, whom will they blame for the decline and fall of the United States?
I remember after George Bush’s second fraudulent eleion most Americans simply shrugged their shoulders and said, “I guess George Bush won,” when, in fa, he had done nothing of the kind. In striking contrast, it was only a few weeks after that fraudulent eleion that there was another fraudulent eleion, this time in Ukraine. However, in the case of Ukraine, some hundreds of thousands of Ukraine citizens wouldn’t stand for it; instead of shrugging their shoulders, they took to the streets of Kiev, loudly denounced the fraud, and refused to go home until the government gave in and promised new eleions (in which the other party won).
I also hear on the news that the Federal Reserve has decided to print up another trillion dollars or so; overnight, the dollar loses much of its value on the news. But, what can you expe? They have no more money, and no one will buy any more Treasury Bills, so they can’t think of anything else to do except to emulate the Zimbabwe economic miracle. Perhaps it is time to shop for a wheelbarrow (to carry your money) before the prices go up.
No one is going to bail out the United States government. China will only continue to purchase treasury bills as long as they believe that it is in their interest to do so. When they decline to renew their loans, the worldwide economic upheaval will make the present mess look like a Sunday School picnic.
When anyone finds themselves in financial trouble, the solution is not to try to spend your way out of your troubles; the solution is to spend less than you are earning, so that you can manage your debt before it reaches levels from which it is mathematically impossible to recover. I remember the spending of the Reagan years. The short term consequence was an appearance of prosperity; the long term consequence was a massive impoverishment of the country which was direly responsible for the present financial crisis.
So, what is the message here? Is it simply to stop spending money? No; it is more complex than that. If the government spends money bailing out failed companies like banks, mortgage companies, insurance companies, or any other failed or failing business, or if they pass out goodie bags of cash money in the form of tax breaks, then we can look forward to the collapse of the United States government in our lifetimes. But if the government spends money for good value received, such as schools, health care, railroads, investments in alternative energy, and massive programs of tree planting, providing edible fruits and nuts, or other worthwhile crops, as well as addressing the principle causes of climate change and declining personal health (the declining levels of oxygen in the environment and corresponding increase in levels of carbon dioxide; ide: he auſe and ure of
iſeaſe), then there is some hope that these worthwhile expenditures,
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embodying the underlying principle of “reality economics” will eventually repay their costs and even lead to an improvement in the country’s financial health. On the one hand, I am hopeful to see that President Obama is trying to make a lot of very worthwhile expenditures, but, on the other hand, I am worried to see trillions of dollars being thrown away into Black Holes. The only hope of survival for the economies of any country in the world is to follow the principles of reality economics and make every dollar pay.
It may be difficult to stand by and watch while companies like General Motors go bankrupt, but every good gambler has to know when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em.
A New World
April, 2009
There is a sense in which I have welcomed all of the upheaval in the world today. I am a student of philosophy, and one of the sets of symbols and imagery that has always appealed to me most strongly is the Alchemical Process of Change. The process of Change is absolutely fundamental to any idea of philosophy or metaphysics. The Greeks were barking up the wrong tree, looking for some ultimate particle (which they called “the atom”). No, what is really fundamental, in this cosmos, is the process of Change ( cf: Heraclitus). That’s where it all happens. The present moment, ow, is the Philosophers’ Stone, the agency of change.
The alchemy lesson is very short and simple: olve et oagula, “to break apart, and to join together.” It is the alternation of these two direions of energy that is responsible for the unfolding of the infinite cosmos. In praical terms, what that means is that in order for something new to come into being, the old has to be broken down. For a long time (all my life) I have had the idea that this world was in need of a major makeover. I imagined myself, two millennia later looking back at these primitive times ~
from a larger perspeive, these are still the Dark Ages. From the vantage point of some time in the year 4089, there is not all that much difference between the tenth century and the twentieth, or twenty-first.
ow is the time for people of the earth to work out a new political and economic arrangement, which encompasses the whole world, and is
emphatically NOT any kind of ax mericana, nor even a ax inens, for that matter. A lot of people seem to get really terrified at any such notion. “Surely you don’t mean a ew orld Order?” Am I with the Illuminati, trying to promote some sinister plot? Well, yes, I am. Now it is out. (inifter just means “to the left.” ) All I can say is that it is not surprising that anyone should be terrified of any such notion as a major makeover of the world! Conservatism is a very natural concept: “if it is working, and life is going on, don’t fix it!” The problem is that it isn’t working, and life is no longer going on. Not only are people dying like flies from cancer, AIDS, and other diseases, due to the dire cause of the insufficiency of oxygen in our atmosphere (itself direly caused by the loss of the trees), but the business as usual for the human race includes wholesale genocide in so many parts of the globe that it is no longer news. So it is time for a whole new Contra, one which includes the entire field of life on the planet, to make the effort to keep life alive, at least for one more generation; and perhaps the next generation can figure out a way to pass on some remnant of life to the following generation.
What am I talking about here? How about a world-wide Constitutional Convention, to work out terms for a new world? As I see it, all of the problems of the world stem from one fundamental problem: the frauring of the field of Life energy into a multitude of diverse energy streams, like Don Quixote “jumping on his horse, and riding off rapidly in all direions.” Yes, the problems of global warming, cancer, and the loss of the trees are serious threats to life, but until the entire planet is somehow united politically, the threats to its survival, while overwhelming, just cannot adequately be dealt with.
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So what is the praical continuation of this idea? How about the formation of an international World Union Company to set up an entity that will address itself to the problem? It will not be easy, but, until the political union of life on earth be realized, there can be little hope for much substantial progress against the enormous problems facing the survival of life on earth.
One World Government:
“The New World Order”
June, 2010
The subje of “One World Government” or “The New World Order”
always seems to draw the most intense reaion from many people. “First we have genetically modified food, and then they’re going to shove One World Government down our throats!”
I have mentioned this topic before; I freely confess that I repeat myself constantly. (Have I mentioned, lately, the incredible folly of cutting down the arboreal biological layer (trees) from the sphere of the earth?
Unimaginable folly, probably dreamed up by the folks who advocate burning up your house to keep warm, or the hungry worm Ouroboros who relieves his hunger by eating its tail, or the government policy of spending their way out of debt.) If only people would pay attention to me the first time when I speak or write, then I wouldn’t have to repeat myself so much.
What surprises me about this one is that my own considered opinion is that the One World Government is the single most important next step in the evolution of life on earth. I share this view with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, H. G. Wells, and a great many others, many of whom have probably been prominent members of the Il uminati, in one or another of its incarnations, while we’re at it.
I would probably describe my political views to be somewhere to the left of radical, yet virtually the entirety of the Liberal Consensus seems to be agreed that the One World Government is THE most sinister manifestation of the machinations of the Il uminati Conspiracy, who are perceived to be a cabal of wealthy, powerful, or otherwise influential persons who are attempting to participate in the direion of the evolution of life on earth.
What?? Do you mean to tell me that there are aually people who are attempting to influence the evolution of life on earth?? What a fearful conspiracy!! And the wealthy and powerful, the ones whose decisions wil most radically affe the flow of events, are aually in collusion with others equally or also wealthy and/or powerful, in efforts to distill their combined shared consciousness of what needs to be done? Are they trying to play God? Isn’t the aw of the ungle good enough for them?
What is God, anyway? Perhaps every element that contributes to the (higher) evolution of life is part of whatever God is. And, surrounding that, there is a vast field of inertia representing the opposition to the ordering influence of God. This energy which is evolving, which I am calling God, aually appears to be showing positive signs of being Alive!
Is this figure of a Creative and Positive Energy reaching out into new and unknown direions, and being surrounded by an inertia of chaos and randomness, an entirely new idea, or what? Oh, no ~ it is aually very, very old.
So why is everyone so afraid of this? I think the answer I hear most often is that everyone seems to be afraid that any time anyone or any group succeeds in obtaining power, they will invariably use it to further their own
individual wealth and power, to the utter disregard of anyone else. If you look at the record of just about every known government, either in the present day, or in any of the known historical periods for which we have records, this accusation will be borne out with dead-on accuracy almost al of the time! With the possible exception of occasional enlightened emperors or kings, e.g. : Emperor Yao of ancient China, King Arthur of England (a legend will do quite as well as historical record ~ possibly better), Pericles of Athens, or Frederick the Great of Prussia, just about every king or ruler sets about colleing as much wealth as he possibly can for himself and his family as soon as he comes into power. Most rulers attempt to accomplish this by sleight of hand, but, more recently, rulers such as Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines simply load up convoys of trucks with bars of gold bullion and trundle them right out of town.
However, this universal drive to self-aggrandizement runs into a self-limiting faor: the higher you go in the ranks of wealth and power, the more radically and dramatical y your priority shifts from acquiring more wealth to
preſerving what you already have. This is the classic Conservative, who has Made It, and doesn’t want anything to change which might alter his status.
But when you come to a pivotal position at the top, there is only one way to ensure the continuation of your own personal good fortune, and that is for the entire field of life energy world-wide to be operating with maximum harmony and efficiency, rather than, for example, endless war.
The second most common response to the concept of a One World Government is, “One World Government! But ~ but, that’s elitift, and paternaliftic!!” ~ the Elite, of course, being that famous cabal of wealth and
power sometimes assumed to be banded together into a group like the Il uminati.
Let us suppose we have managed to accomplish this fiendish plot, and a One World Government is now in place; but, surprisingly, they have al owed the people of the earth to choose the person at the top, the one who will have the greatest power, and the greatest responsibility, for affeing the evolution of the flow of life on earth.
There are quite a number of candidates, and the rules for working out run-off eleions are quite complicated, in order to ensure that voters are able fully to vote their mind, knowing that if their vote is lost in the early stages of voting, they will be able to vote again from the remaining candidates until there is a final winner. Most of these early choices may be made at the time of the original voting. This is cal ed “Instant Run-off Eleion,” and it will soon be routinely used all the time everywhere. Because of the importance of the question, however, it will probably be necessary to have at least one secondary run-off vote, for which votes will be limited to the winners of the first primary vote.
Here are some of the more interesting Candidates:
First, there is the elitist and paternalistic candidate, a quiet little man of remarkable intelligence and extensive learning, giving him the manners of a university professor. He does not seem to be remarkable in any way, unless you listen to him closely. It is very easy for him to get lost among the great rabble of more noticeable Candidates:
There is, for example, Genghis Khan (we have managed to clone several candidates from surviving genetic material of old stock . . . ), who mentions his considerable experience as qualification for the post.
Another fortunate success from our cloning tanks is Idi Amin, who has graciously accepted the nomination, and has agreed to accept the position, if eleed.
Running against these formidable candidates is George W. Bush, who wishes to remind the voters of his membership in the Skull and Bones.
We wanted to offer the candidacy of Adolf Hitler, whom we had no trouble cloning back to full virulence; however, he declined the honor, out of fear for his life, preferring to hide where he is rather than consider any return to public office.
Another force to be reckoned with is the Ayatollah Khomeini, who would like nothing better than an opportunity of extending Sharia Law to the entirety of the human race.
There are plenty of other candidates, but these pretty well represent the field. We will announce the winners, from whom the candidates for the second round of voting will be drawn, as soon as the results are in.
So, what do I think about genetically modified food? In general, I am very much against it. I think that it is absolutely imperative to maintain a viable population of natural, open pollinated fruits, vegetables, grains, and, in fa, everything propagated from seed ~ not only food, but fiber crops, and crops grown for any other use. Whenever seed companies try to sell a new seed, whether it has been genetically modified or created from natural
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hybrids, they are looking for one quality of over-riding importance: the Number One required feature of any new seed is that if anyone try to plant (I am still enjoying the use of the subjunive mood) the secondary seed which will be produced by the primary seed offered for sale, such seed will either fail to germinate entirely, or be of enfeebled and useless quality. This condition is the deal-breaker. No new seed has any chance of survival unless it meets this paradigm requirement.
Everyone should refuse to use seed of this kind; only use heirloom seed or seed which is open pollenated and will reproduce itself with natural seed.
It is all of these “terminator genes” which should be outlawed. I hope everyone will refuse to use such seed ever again ~ by which I mean just about every seed commercially available except for the few sources selling “heirloom seeds” or the equivalent. New seed from natural hybrids can always be welcome, but only when they are stable strains.
But I stop short of asserting that genetic modification should never be considered for any reason. While I am not convinced of the value of any genetic modification program with which I am familiar, I retain an open mind about such a possibility, depending upon circumstances which might not be anticipated.
Free Market Capitalism
February, 2011
Somewhere I think I mentioned an annoyance I felt when an American President is talking about his goals of spreading democracy, when, of course, his goals had nothing to do with democracy. The United States may be some kind of a democracy, but that is not what gives it its defining charaer. The American Way of Life has always been about Freedom. Not only political freedom or religious freedom, but economic freedom. It is a system in which everyone is free to throw up his own carnival tent and hawk any wares he pleases. The Glory Days of the patent medicines were finally shut down by the food and drug laws, and many other little prohibitions and taxes are trying to rein in some other abuses, but, to a very large degree, Americans are free to do what they want in pursuit of economic gain, with very little regulation.
This is Free Market Capitalism, and it isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it can sometimes lead to excess and abuse, and sometimes even to excessive abuse. In the case of the military involvement of United States forces, within the memory of the last twenty or thirty years, their purpose has had nothing to do with democracy (this has been shown too many times to review here), but everything to do with maintaining a ftatus quo which will not interfere with the capital interests of the United States Corporations, which is to make as much money as they can.
The problem is that the moving direive for the whole show is to make as much money as you can. On a global scale, this is just no longer an
acceptable option. There are some very real and pressing problems threatening the survival of life on Earth, and the world-wide tensions and instabilities all over the globe just make the problem of planetary survival almost impossible to cope with. When it comes to burning up the rain forest, the profit motive just won’t do, anymore.
And I don’t mean to single out the Americans ~ anyone who has enough money to join the club, meaning that you have enough money or power so that it matters to the Earth what you do with it ~ is automatically a member of the same club. Go ahead; try to get as much as you can for yourself before the music stops.
The whole planet must be cultivated as the single field of biological energy that it is. Once this is accomplished, the problems facing our survival can be dealt with, at least as the start of an on-going effort, within one or two generations. But without it, the survival of human life on Earth is seriously threatened.
Ecosystems are just as fragile as economies. We have seen, historically, how massive panics have set off long periods of economic depression: just a few things get out of whack, and the whole thing collapses. Life is very similar! When an organism’s living environment is radically damaged, its survival is threatened. We know what we, as a species, have to do. Lester Brown sums up the problems and reasonable solutions in his book, orld on the dge. The problem is that there is no money in it. All the money and power in the world is on the other side!
I have always laughed at people who get hysterical with conspiracy theories when they suggest that the people with money and power are
aually running the world. Of course the people with money and power are running the world! Oh, it gets shaken up every now and then with a revolution, which might be bloody, as in the French Revolution, or nonviolent, as the liberation of India from England. But, by and large, it is fairly well established that the people with the money and the power use that money and power to retain the money and the power in the hands of ~
themselves, the people with the money and power. Now, is that ever a tautology, or what?
This leaves us with two opposing camps, with quite different agendas. In order for life on Earth to survive, we have to convince the people with the money and power that the survival of life on Earth is worth their serious consideration. In fa, if political changes could be made that would ensure the ease of addressing survival concerns (yes, that would be some form of the dreaded One orld overnment), that should make for a Golden Age of free trade.
The problem is that a very significant portion of the world’s wealth is direly related to the maintenance of a perpetual war footing. Why has no one mentioned George Orwell lately? The perpetual war, for manipulating the people and also to profit from war industries, was a central feature of Orwell’s world in 8.
None of those huge industries are going to be at all happy with a world in which their services are no longer required. So, while some elements of the money and the power in the world might support an initiative that would allow life to continue on Earth, the industries of Destruion will oppose, to the death of the last man on earth, anything that would reduce the amount of warfare going on in the world.
That sounds like a problem. I’m going to have to think about this for a while.
We need a different model of how to regulate this world of ours. The jungle of sovereign states, sovereign corporations, and sovereign individuals stomping around can no longer be tolerated. (As Lily Tomlin says, “This is
he hone ompany! We are omnipotent.”)
I want to establish a seat of authority: the voice of God. I literally want to incarnate God on Earth, as the chosen One of a special seminary of candidates, who will be given the very best education with emphasis on History and International Studies. The idea is simple enough: any reasonably competent person could handle the tasks required of him, to arbitrate in cases where no other satisfaory decision can be found. But we give the Authority to the Seminary as a whole, not to any one individual. It is up to the Seminary to nominate the One who will interpret and exercise the Will of God as Steward of the Earth.
We have the confidence that, as a school, they will know which one of their number to choose for the stewardship. It is a microcosm: a little world, in which the solutions to the problems of the greater world can be found. (It is simply an alchemical vessel, to those who are students of Hermetic philosophy.) There is even the additional consideration of the effe of world opinion: the energy from these other sources can contribute to the channelings of energy that could result in the manifestation of an incarnation of God. Maybe the world aually works this way, and together We can focus our energies upon our alchemical vessel and cause a manifestation of an incarnation of God to appear on Earth to lead us forward.
The role of this person would be to maintain an overview of the whole planet, with the responsibility of keeping it all alive and healthy. Such an institution doesn’t have to have any legal basis at all, and a fully endowed School of International Studies could be assembled of young people seleed from all over the world for the purpose of creating a kind of “alchemical vessel” from which a manifestation of God were expeed to emanate. The entire school would continue their specialized study of world affairs, and would constitute the most trusted sources from which the Speaker would draw information for making his calls. Whether this institution would ever attain a political influence is unprediable, but here is a model in which I would place my trust ahead of any other schemes of which I have heard.
But, once again, I see that I have bridged the gap ~ there is no reason to suppose that those who are profiting from plundering the Earth and laying it waste will voluntarily cease and desist, with or without a court order. So what can we do, here? I have put it in theological terms because it amounts to nothing less. The source of authority is the power of God. If the proje works as expeed, there may be a real expeation that an incarnation of God may appear, and when One is anointed, perhaps the Glory of God will fall upon Him. That’s what we need ~ we need an Avatar of God to come again upon the Earth and guide us how to proceed with our stewardship of the Earth.
If the Seminary be given this mission, it will create a very powerful field of magical energy around it, and God will appear.
A Review of eitgeift,
oving orward
February, 2011
“ou can only get a loan from a bank
if you can prove that you don’t need it.”
I have been watching eitgeift, oving orward, and it is pretty interesting ~ lots of ideas sound familiar to me from my own writings, but there is one very critical point, which they seem to miss, and it surprises me.
The whole discussion of “access centers” where you just go in, take what you need, and when you are done you simply return it ~ all for free, etc., is appallingly simplistic. The narrator dismisses the notion rather quickly that if everything be freely provided, everyone will simply lie in the sun and do nothing.
My own insight is that this whole idea is subje to severe limitations, and even then it is suitable only for a certain segment of the population. I envision a two-tier economic system to accommodate both sharpeners and levelers ~ a free market economy for the upper tier (limited by what I have called a “resource depletion tax”), and a “free farm” arrangement for the poorer members of society ( ide: ew olutions to the roblems of the reſent
ay - a lan for International roſperity and orld eace, 1992, reprinted in
he aughter of od). The problem is how to deal with poverty, because the free market capitalist economy does not adequately provide for the social
problems of poverty. On the other hand, the free farm approach encounters serious obstacles when it is attempted to apply it to all of society: it runs counter to the desire inherent in all of life to flourish and “get ahead.”
I hardly need to detail the flaws in the eitgeift (or free farm) approach to economics: no one will want brand B; everyone will want the best of everything, the newest, biggest, and best. No one will want anything used, chipped, older, outmoded ~ there will be no economic incentive for seleing anything other than the very best of everything. Why eat hamburger and fries when you can eat lobster and caviar?
No, my system allows for providing for the needs of the poor with a free farm arrangement, but there will have to be a certain amount of regulation in the distribution of “free goods.” For one thing, I imagine two tiers to provide a minimal, but essential degree of regulation: an upper tier of
“stewards” who form the responsible core of the farm and who enjoy a somewhat better standard of living than the “volunteers.” For example, the better living quarters, better quality beds and so on, will be given for the use of the stewards, while the older stuff (or smaller rooms) will be given to the volunteers, perhaps on a seniority basis. Anyone who wants anything more will have to pay for it. Of course, the funny notion of “no longer observing money” is so simplistic that I hardly need to pass over that with more than a tolerant smirk, and I have already exceeded my quota.
So, instead of paying out millions of dollars every month in transfer payments so that the idle poor can occupy a room in a flophouse downtown and spend their days smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee, we can simply provide space at one of the country farms where these people can be provided for in a humane way, yet at the least cost to the rest of society. This will
leave the cities as spaces occupied only by those who are aually involved in produive work. When a business fails, you don’t have to resort to crime and fraud ~ you can simply pack it in and chill out at the free farm until you (perhaps with a different set of partners) feel like taking on another proje
“off the farm” and “into the jungle.”
The cost to society will be hugely less (free farm vs. transfer payments) for two reasons: dire costs wil be far less; a hundred people can be kept in decent comfort on the free farm, with dormitories and cafeterias, for the cost of a few welfare checks. But, secondarily, the immense social costs of robbery, fraud, marketing of useless junk, drug addiion, prostitution, murder, and other by-produs of a necessity to come up with money every month, will be greatly reduced, since there will be no need for any of that behavior. (It won’t be eliminated entirely, of course, because there are other causative elements apart from financial necessity.)
But it is an essential part of my vision that this whole free farm culture exist side by side with a free market capitalism, so that everyone can be as free as they want, but with another option for those who wish to get off the tread-wheel for a while. The other half ~ those in the free market who are motivated and on to something, will find they can accomplish their goals in a streamlined manner, without being bogged down by carrying all the dead weight of loafers or drunks.
I see plenty of utopian visions like that suggested in eitgeift, but I have never seen anyone advocate anything like a two-tier system which combines socialist utopian theory with free market capitalism. It has always seemed interesting to me that the idea is a perfe marriage of Capitalism and Communism, both of which have some interesting and commendable
features, but both of which are plagued with some very serious problems. Socialist utopian visions can never work unless a creative element is free to explode off the top, providing evolutionary vitality. The Social Contra should provide for both Sharpeners and Levelers.
Oh, and, by the way, all the malarkey about the insidious monetary system with its debt basis seems to be misapplied emphasis. The real lesson there is that debt is a killer, whether it is personal debt, corporate debt, or the national debt of a sovereign state! Once you are in debt, and must borrow more money at ever more punishing terms in order to keep afloat, it becomes harder and harder to keep from sliding ever more deeply into debt. In fa, you are not expeed to get out of debt; the plot is to run people into debt so that they cannot avoid financial collapse, during which time the banks continue to claim their confiscatory 29% interest for the five or six years it may take for foreclosure proceedings to close.
