Life is easy, but we do all we can to make it harder.
All people should have justice, housing, food, clothing, relevant education and medicine as a right, just because we are alive and human.
The way we meet those needs within cities currently is grossly un-human - in its demand that you sacrifice your life to attain your basic needs, free of debt, only by the time you die; if you are lucky. None of this is necessary, it is a result of the rules we have chosen to live by.
We can get those basic needs so much easier if we simply make the choice to do so. We just need to tweak the rules.
Imagine every human freed from need, every living thing respected. We can do it I believe.
We can do what we like if it's fair.
Here's an idea for a life equation, a reflection on what economics should be encouraging:
Take what you need + Give what you can + Help each other = Live Fair
Need = justice, food, water, clothing, housing, education, medicine
What you need = your share
What you can = produce something people need, to share, or learn how
Help each other = help each other learn
Help each other = honour life
Us = people who want to honour life
What would happen if we did choose to make life easy? What if everyone had a guaranteed minimum income, and potentially months per year to do what they liked?
Do you think people would do nothing?
Do you think science would end?
Do you think technology would crumble?
Do you think people would stop trying to be smarter or stronger or more involved with their community?
I don't think so. I don't believe so. I choose to believe this is possible. Co-operation is more productive and more innovative; more adaptable; more evolutionary than competition.
The gift of self-consciousness, and our ability to manipulate an unprecedented range of resources, means we have conscious control of our evolution. We've known this for millennia. When a competitive (animalistic) mindset was applied to conscious evolution it created the rules of eugenics, genocide, pogroms and holocausts. Competition is always violent.
Yet, despite the roll-call of wars, famines and other tragedies we see recited every news cycle, violence is less common in human life than ever before. We are evolving away from it, we can protect ourselves from it. Violence is evidence of our animal ancestry, not of human nature. If we apply a co-operative mindset to conscious evolution then we create the rules of female emancipation - and universal access to education, birth control, minimum income and employment. Human populations stabilise under these conditions, as is evident in every developed and developing nation, and they have the opportunity to become sustainable. We're obviously not there yet, because our rules are still largely the rules of competition, especially our economic rules.
Let's change the rules.
Changing the rules is easy, it's agreeing to do so that is proving to be hard. This is because most of us think changing the rules is hard, or impossible, or dangerous - all of this is untrue. Most of the rules that need changing are our own lifestyle choices, not laws and regulations. You don't need to launch a national political campaign in order to personally choose to buy from the most sustainable companies. We don't need to have a huge house, a second car, or any debt at all if we don't want to. Tying possession of these things to our sense of fulfilment in life is a form of mass hysteria, because the fulfilment never eventuates, yet people each waste megatonnes of resources in the attempt. Choosing a life of "enough" instead of "more" is a huge release of stress, the lifting of an enormous burden - the burden of competition.
The gift of self-consciousness, and our ability to manipulate an unprecedented range of resources, means we have conscious control of our evolution. We've known this for millennia. When a competitive (animalistic) mindset was applied to conscious evolution it created the rules of eugenics, genocide, pogroms and holocausts. Competition is always violent.
Yet, despite the roll-call of wars, famines and other tragedies we see recited every news cycle, violence is less common in human life than ever before. We are evolving away from it, we can protect ourselves from it. Violence is evidence of our animal ancestry, not of human nature. If we apply a co-operative mindset to conscious evolution then we create the rules of female emancipation - and universal access to education, birth control, minimum income and employment. Human populations stabilise under these conditions, as is evident in every developed and developing nation, and they have the opportunity to become sustainable. We're obviously not there yet, because our rules are still largely the rules of competition, especially our economic rules.
Let's change the rules.
Changing the rules is easy, it's agreeing to do so that is proving to be hard. This is because most of us think changing the rules is hard, or impossible, or dangerous - all of this is untrue. Most of the rules that need changing are our own lifestyle choices, not laws and regulations. You don't need to launch a national political campaign in order to personally choose to buy from the most sustainable companies. We don't need to have a huge house, a second car, or any debt at all if we don't want to. Tying possession of these things to our sense of fulfilment in life is a form of mass hysteria, because the fulfilment never eventuates, yet people each waste megatonnes of resources in the attempt. Choosing a life of "enough" instead of "more" is a huge release of stress, the lifting of an enormous burden - the burden of competition.
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