A Small Book for a New Mindset by Robert Dupre - HTML preview

If your religion is misogynist, legitimate the inferiority of women, state that a woman must be reincarnated as a man in order to achieve enlightenment, does not favour literacy of women, favour a high fertility rate and a preference for a male child; you should condemn this religion and leave it.

Religions that move away from these values are crucial to progress in poor countries of your world. They are cultural men-made obstacles to progress. How does one change a society in the absence of chaos? Things are going wrong, what did the elite do wrong?

How can you put it right? There can be no transformation without a belief that there is something wrong with your culture and without an effort to discuss ways to fix it.

How do you transform transmitted fatalistic beliefs that are part of the male identity?

The cultural dimensions of human progress are neglected by international development institutions. Cultural change cannot be imposed from the outside; a critical mass of awareness must emerge from within. Female illiteracy is the single greatest obstacle to cultural changes because of the crucial role of women play in child rearing. Religious reforms are a must in Roman Catholicism and Islam. At the root is a failure to inculcate the golden rule.

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17 TO ALL IMAMS AND MULLAH

You must focus on the future possibilities, not past mistakes. Your role is to unlock people’s potential, not to give instructions. There is attraction in dictating, it provides you with the feeling of being in control, but this will reduce motivation. The key is to be open, to be able to say “I don’t know.” Your intention must be to help, to assist, with compassion and social engagement.

If you Imams do not change directions, your countries will end up with massive poverty.

Your economic downturn is only the beginning of worse to come with climate change.

You must get rid of your blame culture; blame is about fear and the past. You need to refocus on hope and the future; honest recognition, identification, and acknowledgement of the inefficiencies in your system.

Full acceptance of your personal responsibility is a necessity for your survival. Building awareness and responsibility is the essence of your mission. An Imam should help people to build self-reliance, self-belief, confidence and self-discovery.

No two human minds are the same; there is not a right way in a book that will say what should be done. You kill awareness when you tell someone what to do. You are not a problem solver, not an expert and not an instructor; you are a facilitator, a counsellor and an awareness raiser. Telling people what to think save your people from having to think; you must ask questions that cause them to think for themselves. One thing is sure; if pregnant women do a one month Ramadan, it will produce children with lower intelligence and with cognitive defects. Pregnant women and children should not do Ramadan.

It is impossible to breed successful humans if they do not have mothers capable of raising them to be successful. You have to reform Islam heritage; move from autocracy, class stratification and gender privilege to the idea of a democracy, meritocracy and equality.

You have to educate souls to make them a member of a community, to throw off attitudes of fatalism and take charge of their own destiny.

Jihad means to eradicate the fatalism of the mind, to remove the inferiority complexes, to commit to productive work, to improve the condition of the muslin community, to speak out against unjust rulers and to demand justice.

Do not be chained to the past unless you want mass poverty. All Imams must bring a message of moral and ethical renewal and emphasize a new ethic of activism and responsibility to renew Islamic society.

Activism means to be engaged in the political process, to vote, to work for political reforms and public accountability. Islam must grant all people rights to respect, dignity, 25

participation, voice and knowledge. Islam does not justify any injustices towards women or men. There are no God-given gender hierarchies.

Should the Imam not stress equal access for women and men o participate in schools, civic and cultural institutions?

Should the Imam not stress moral and ethical renewal, a new ethic of responsibility to create an Islamic federation on Sunni State?

Should the Imam not stress the obligation of rich states to share the wealth between all Sunni members?

Why are Sunni States selling all their oil; why not sell it at the highest price to maximize your wealth ?

Will the Imam admit women in Islamic civilization organizations, help them break their internalized sense of inferiority, value their intellect, personality and merit, to foster a sense of community?

18 THE BRAIN

Your brain is a social organ; it requires affectionate contact to develop normally.

Maternal depressions have profound detrimental impact on infant social development.

Television screen time has a harmful impact on children, reducing their capacity of empathy, increasing aggressiveness and reducing social ties and civics engagement. A stressful environment will alter the brain of a child. Prenatal care and support during the first years of life is a must to improve a critical foundation for well-being and is at hearth of developing empathy.

Empathy originates in the family, in babies even before they leave the womb. Pregnant women need to be safe, ease of stress, nourished and nurtures to create a safe and nurturing environment.

New parents need education. What kind of children do you want to raise? What kind of society do you want to live in? In your society, what do mothers need? What should be the contribution of men?

Your body is the temple of your sole; it is the biological environment of your brain. The plasticity of your brain is not to be taken lightly.

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Educational and challenges build your brain and protect it from the negative effects of aging.

Your brain is the organ that sets you apart from any other species. Its capacity is the result of its organization. A blue whale has a brain five times larger, it is not five time smarter. Smart brain are derived from more the size. A chimps as a brain weighs of 400grams, a human about 1400grams. How did you go from 400 to 1400? Its increases is too rapid to be compatible with random genetic.

How to explain this positive selection? How did your brain and mind come about?

Nowhere in the animal kingdom is there a high lateral cerebral specialization as in humans. Why?

Your brain continues to grow throughout your lifetime with the integration of emotional behaviours with the cognitive process. Psychologists are looking for similarities with humans and bonobos, gorillas, gibbons, monkeys, chimpanzees, orang-utans; it is the differences that define a species and make it unique; the organization and the connectivity.

19 THE AGE OF FINANCIAL UNREASON

Crash in financial markets can be brought about by economic problems or by the complexity of new strategies in financial markets. With short positions when markets are failing, too many investors are unloading as markets fall, creating instability. Models for pricing stocks are underestimating the risk of extreme events .You will have to unify under a single regulatory agency stock and futures markets and increase the margin requirements for trades to increase the cost of speculation. A very high requirement for buying futures contract would reduce instability. Credit agencies enjoy too much protection and they are tainted. You assume these credit agencies engineering, you cannot predict default since the past is not relevant. States should not outsource its regulatory function to three agencies for profit. Governments should not certify private for profit agencies with their official imprimatur, there are too involved to serve as a neutral arbiter.

Financial innovations are beyond the capacity for people to understand. You are at the mercy of your PhD in finance. They spread the flu to make fees. It is very difficult to create an incentive structure to reward skilled hedge-fund managers without creating reward for con artists and money hungry managers. The strategy is to collect enormous fees until the markets blows up, than they walk away and don’t have to pay back the fees.

Investors are the suckers.

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Economic globalization has outpaced political globalization which means a huge need for global collective action. Financial institutions have pushed for deregulation and markets liberalization based on flawed economic and financial models and philosophies.

Liberalization policies need a very high safeguard to prevent negative consequences in managing global financial markets exposed to high risk and leverage. Offshore banking centers for tax avoidance and evasion are totally immoral and inappropriate. There should be no secret bank accounts.

The current crisis is systemic and as many facets: financial, economic, food, water, energy and demography. It demonstrates failure at many levels: in philosophy and theory, in policies and ethics, in ecology and global democratic governance. Harmonization of business taxation throughout the world is a must to avoid fiscal advantages to attract foreign investors. The fiscal system must be progressive to reduce the inequality of opportunities.

Commodities price speculation should be contained for it creates price instability, inflation and unemployment. Banks that are too big to fail lead to moral hazard problems; the state should have a participation in them to avoid taxpayer’s bailout with proper governance structures. Governments must protect markets from themselves and protect society from the irrationality in financial markets.

Ensuring global financial stability to support economic stability and low unemployment is a global public good for a crisis in one large country will have the negative externalities and global consequences. Banking is a public utility; regulations must serve the interests of society as a whole. GROWTH IS IMPOSSIBLE IN A CORRUPT

ENVIRONMENT. WITH YOUR ACTUAL CULTURAL AND POLITICAL ISSUES, THERE ARE TO TECHNOLOGICAL FIXES. THIS WILL BE A TIME FOR

HUMILITY.

20 AMERICAN FREE MARKET ILLUSIONS

The self-interest of organizations is best capable of protecting the consumers and their shareholders. Markets reward hard work. Markets always generate good outcome and allocate resources efficiently. There are no market failures. The invisible hands ensure that everything works out for the best. Real estate does not lend itself to speculation.

There are no perverse incentives for managers to take more risks.

Managers have the ultimate goals to maximise the firm wealth. Self-regulation will maximize innovations, satisfy human wants, minimize wasteful activities, police rapacious managers and enriches the population. The liberty of individual will not 28

endanger the security of society. Each people welfare counts equally. Free markets force you to accept gross inequality. There is no hope to improve the efficiency of free markets. Markets are stable with price adjustment. Individual are rational. Drug companies, if left alone, would refrain from distribution dangerous products.

There is no need for the EPA, the FDA, the SEC, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, etc. for the consumer is protected by competition. The stock market never suffers from irrational exuberance for every one has the same information about the economy. In capitalism there is no place for ignorance, stupidity and herd behaviour foe we all rational. Unemployment is a matter of choice.

Climate change is not a market failure for private costs always equal social costs.

Investor’s should rely on rating agencies. High leverage is good for banks. Derivatives and swaps will not trigger systemic problems for statistical models make the future predictable. When CEO of Wall Street have a 40 to one leverage for their extra profits, this is good for their institutions. Option grant are good for innovations. You can rely on markets and the private sector to solve systemic problems.

The American political system is the best, designed for effective government action. The only respectable socialist is socialism for the rich and Wall Street. Self-interest and competition equal nirvana for all and will protect public interest. Hedge funds don’t increase instability, their use of leverage is not excessive. Regulators should not impose maximum leverage ratios on financial institutions. Executive pays don’t lead to myopic behaviour and excessive risks.

PhD in quantitative finance seems to be masters of your economic universe. For a very high performance fee, they will make a conscious effort to avoid regulatory rules, will short sell and leverage their bets with borrowed money, they will create bubbles and crashes and will create turbulence in exchange-rates. When many hedge funds have high leverage, they become vulnerable to shocks. When many funds try to cut their positions all at once, they create panic in markets.

Central banks can no more be focused only on inflation and ignore bubbles creates by speculators with dysfunctional incentives. Traders take very high enormous risk, earn a fortune if they win, don’t endure symmetrical punishment if the bets go wrong. Policy makers must restrain financial supermarkets with confused and overlapping objectives and shrink institutions that are too big to fail.

Leverage and short selling create economic trauma. There must be restrictions on those practices. Hedge funds are not private, 5 000 can create chaos and turmoil with the risk in their portfolio when the herd sell to jump out of the markets. Collusion between funds and brokers are to be suspected.

For the stability of your global economy, you must understand that the most dangerous people are traders with very big leverage positions; ill-conceived bets can wipe out the capital base on their fund. It should be a crime to speculate on currencies and 29

commodities on margin to create instability in the price or rice, sugar, coffee or grains?

Speculative flows are self-reinforcing, driving prices further and further from the level needed to achieve equilibrium. They create instability, bull markets and crashes, panic and chaos in the financial system.

A sound financial system should value investors that buy with little leverage that hold their investment for the long term. Trading is not playing poker. Traders don’t care about the macro-consequence of their bets; they relish market turbulence. In your new world, private players will overwhelm central banks and destroy currencies; this is terrorism.

Why give power to speculators over governments and central banks? Use capital controls to attack speculators in a world in which hedge funds trade everything with unpredictable connections.

In today’s world government’s power to influence markets are waning. You are destroying your ability to intervene successfully. Since there is deposit insurance and a lender-of-resort for big financial institutions, they should pay a very high tax rate on their profit as insurance for their risks. A high capital requirement is a must to curb their risk appetites.

21 REFORMING ECONOMICS

American as lost its balance with deregulation, its financial engineering, its market fundamentalism that leads to incorrect theories and policies: perverse incentives in private institutions, stagnation of income for the middle class and its reduction for the poor class, high debt ratio for the middle class and low taxes for the rich class.

The exploitation of the poor will lead to revolt in Europe and America; this crisis is needed to oblige the state to help the poor and the unemployed, to change corporate governance and their flawed incentive structures and bad environmental behaviour. The financial system is a mean not an end in itself. Gone will be the corporate welfare and the ways for the rich class to avoid taxation. You will have the revolt before you decide to build fairness in your economy.

Banks are holding a gun to your heads; tax them for the service to create money while their assets are protected by the state. There are no justifications to have a low tax rate on financial institutions. The model on which Europe and the USA are based his coming to an end. Unemployed will remain high until you decide to replace it with a new focus on fairness, less military waist and subsidies for the wealthy, a high tax on the price on carbon, a new global reserve system so that the American dollar will be replace by new instruments at the WMF. New regional monetary funds are needed to prevent bubbles, 30

excessive borrowing and fight systemic risk. You must stop Wall Street capacity to determine compensation for their executives. Close the loopholes that facilitate money laundering and tax evasion by the rich class. No more secret havens.

No more gambling on energy and food with derivatives. These are weapons of mass destruction. Your tax system treats speculators better than workers, no more low rate compare to wages. Capitalism, American style, has failed. Your challenge is to create a new capitalism and new electoral processes. You have to rewrite the rules for societal well-being and create a new dream, a sense of fairness, cooperation and trust.

You will do it after a long systemic recession, the crisis is just beginning. The instability will generate political instability, the need for capital controls and government safety net; investments in skills and retraining, portable pension, unemployment benefits, reform the corrupt rating agencies, reform the reward structure in the corporate world to prevent high risks. The fault of the instability does not lie in economics but in politics. The public has lost faith in the system where the distribution of wealth is tilted in favour of 20% of the population.

Financial and economic crisis have political roots. Greed must be regulated for your self-preservation and to maintain the free-enterprise system. Rising income inequality and middle class stagnant income must be fought in the political arena to overcome amoral lobbies of the rich class. Politicians will ignore your anxiety at there peril.

It is an illusion for the poor to see themselves eventually becoming rich; taxation of the rich is a must for a more equitable distribution of income. Striving to rectify the inequality may need class warfare if security is not diminished. It is the responsibility of politicians to restore the dream opportunities, the belief in equal chance, the access to education and health, the opportunity of upward mobility and the faith in fair enterprise.

As with climate change, there will be short-term costs for long term benefits. It is up to you to put the pressure on politicians, to mobilize your organizations, to use the internet to spread your influence. You must master your politicians by entering schools and universities where students will be responsive to ideas about global citizenship, and global good.

The production of wealth is not necessary a source of happiness; you are deluded into believing this in order to stimulate economic growth. You will have to limit freedom to stabilize the ecosystems for the benefit of all. There is a very high urgency to create and apply an ecological ethic. Your morality must preserve your ecosystems excellence, their integrity, interdependence, harmony, stability and beauty.

Diversity insures stability; this is not a luxury. It is a very high necessity for the protection of your human nature and mental health. You have choices to make; transform this planet to be an oasis or hell, your choice. You are the masters of your destiny.

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After reading this book, begin to study your dreams, meditate for spiritual progress and have access to a better relation with the divine. Put cooperation into your actions and your ideals. As this world inters into a very intense phase of instability, this will bring peace of mind, and maybe an experience of spiritual unity. Each experience with the divine is unique, related to who you are. The experience will depend on the purposes, the motivations and the ideals.

You are on your spiritual path, the master of you destiny.

22 A ROAD TO UNREST AND SUFFERING

Resignation must not rule. Stations in life are not ordained by a deity. The political problem of the elite is to combine economic efficiency, social justice and liberty. The capacity to produce will continue to develop, it is the distribution mechanism that is flawed. Improvement of the wages of the unskilled must not be marginal. Poverty, chronic unemployment and reliance on charity must not be a by-product of your wealth.

The function of private business is to produce higher living standards for all. Without economic growth as benefit for all, you will witness radicalism. Competition is not a race to the bottom; corporations are agents of social change and must educate the unskilled. It is the responsibility of the state to seek equality of opportunity.

A state must regulate individual behaviour to serve society. The pursuit of self-interest does not add up to socially desirable results. Wealth arbitrarily distributed weaken democracy and the faith in government. Instability and inequality are a threat to capitalism. One must regard banking as more than a private business; credit creation is a public service.

Investors must not be lured by banks to have high leverage and seek high risks. It is Keynes who said that the economics of a system as a whole differs profoundly from the economics of the individual. No system is self-regulating. Samuelson said of Adam Smith’s invisible hand; it is a machine without an effective steering wheel. You must restore an ethical dimension in your economic system. What is a just society?

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23 THE CODE OF THE UNIVERSE

Information is not just in the mind but in nature, yet invisible to the senses. The fundamental furnishing of the universe is information and energy; rather than matter and time. Information is the software that governs the mass-energy hardware.

Any construction must have a design beforehand. The universe is a design that evolve, full of codes that define, inform and regulate growth and development. We live by perceptions and interpretations; prisoners of our world. If I don’t perceive, it doesn’t exist. We live surrounded by crowds of invisibles; times, ideals, values, abstracts, the spirit, the mythic, feeling, inspiration and intuition.

Mass and energy are interchangeable. Mass is molecules and atoms, infinitely divisible into emptiness. The physics of the invisible is the physics of the fields. The world is not build with solid bricks, but with vibration and energy. Electrodynamics field dictates the behaviour and ordering of components; fields impose a plan and organization of the material components.

The word is a giant hologram with electromagnetic field, gravitational field, nuclear fields, but only united fields can explain the connections; it seems empty but it is not void of essence. Emptiness doesn’t exist. Creation is subject to planning. What inspires bees to build impeccable hexagons? Nothing is created without information. The exchange of information is life.

There are extrasensory communications; plants emit electric currents just like human and animal respond to feelings with their power of extrasensory communication. It happens in herbs, flock of birds, insect groups and fish schools, providing that there is an affinity of belonging to the group, there will be a particular emotional resonance.

Animals do establish resonance. How can the migratory species, such as insects, birds, turtles return to the same place? Monarch butterflies go to winter in Mexico and take three to five generations to complete the journey, thus no individual will experience the entire journey. An innate program contains the memory of the route, a morphic field serving as custodian of the form, an invisible design. Who owns the designs of there groups of animals?

A unified field produce by termites dominates and orders them to behave as a single organism, without contact between them. A psychoanalyst could call this group soul; a unique reality functioning according to the collective unconscious; a group resonance field. The result is homogeneity of frequencies. The organism realizes the most perfect harmony of the whole so that the collective interest prevails over the individual. The field group takes precedence over of the individual.

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Belonging to a group promotes extrasensory communication, resonance between fields.

Emotions vibrate in the fields of organisms and are transmitted to other beings.

Emotional transmissions occur instantaneously; not bound by time or distance. An intense emotional event can be memorized for years and be read. It will impact the body, the mind and the environment.

24 A NETWORK OF MINDS

Many humans have a negativity bias. The media thrive on bad news; it affects your mood, your brain, your way of forming impressions of the people and your moral judgements. Is your religion providing a survival advantage? Or is it about ghosts, aggressive Gods, creating anxiety with notion of salvation? Why not require the same standard of evidence for religions that you do for science? Reappraise. Even monkeys do have some capacity for theory-of-mind reasoning.