IntegralJournal

One Level Deeper and Ask The Next Question

I saw two things this morning that caused me to think that we need to go one level deeper and ask the next question.

First there was an article on Michael Jackson's death entitled "Drug Propofol eyed in Michael Jackson's death investigation: Rx for trouble."  In the article, the author cites a study in which it was determined that at least six medical residents died as the result of overdosing on the drug Propofol.  Let's take it the next step and ask: Why did all these doctors feel compelled to take something to decompress?  Why -- other than the addiction -- did Michael Jackson feel compelled to take something?

Secondly, I watched an Msnbc clip with a panel that included Eliot Spitzer, Bill Fleckenstein, and Robert Shiller.  All seemed to agree that capitalism without regulation is not the answer.  Except for the most ideological among us, we can agree on this.  However, to say that capitalism with regulation is the answer is to ignore that for much of our history, that has been the default option.  And it hasn't made us any wiser.  Wisdom is what we need.  The current system -- with or without regulation -- forces us to be hustlers or forces us to go through some sort of bizarre initiation as in the case of the medical residency doctors mentioned above.

Yesterday, I had an experience that always causes me to ask the next question: Why can't we trust auto dealerships to tell us what is wrong with our cars?  They are part of a system that forces them to keep people employed repairing vehicles.  They are part of a system that is credit/payment based and forces all involved to worry about making the next payment.  What if we had a system where those who knew how to repair cars could do something else when all the vehicles were running well?

We can't trust our doctors to suggest alternatives to pharmaceuticals.  Why is this?  We have a system in which many of the participants are obese.  Why is this?  Take it one level deeper.  Ask the next question.  Why are so many young women carrying the type of spare tire around their middle that used to appear only on middle-aged men who didn't exercise and drank copious quantities of beer?  (I'm tempted to label this post "Copious Quantities of Beer" as the response rate would be much higher.)

We never seem to go one level deeper. We never seem to ask the next question.

All it takes is for one well-positioned, philanthropic person -- say Bill Gates...or Bill Fleckenstein -- to ask the next question.  Is there a better way of organizing life and work than what currently exists?  Is there a better way to be philanthropic?  I think the answer is a resounding yes.

For the sake of creating a healthy society, let's go one level deeper (or higher) and ask the next question. 

Mindful Capital Club Presentation

Presentation and Background Information

From the back cover:

Those who are mindful are beginning to realize that only an entirely new operating system can prevent the collapse of civilization. However, to date, no one has presented such a system. This presentation outlines a system that has the potential to serve as a viable replacement for the current paradigm.

Reality Bites

See this article for an excellent summary of the current food situation.

Once again, I am attempting to get readers to understand that reality dictates that dramatic changes have to occur and different institutions have to be developed.

Jerome Raines in The Institution describes one top-down way of building the knowledge required to get us through this crisis:

I am coming to the conclusion that it is unrealistic to expect the general public to make a move without their leaders telling them to do so.  We haven’t been programmed that way.  In fact, the Constitution prohibits it.  What I’m suggesting acknowledges, and challenges, the ruling class.  If there is to be meaningful change those who really hold power will have to be the instigators. This is also a course of action that might wake people up.  It would draw attention to the grimness of our circumstances and how imperative it is that we act.

At this juncture, it is up to the powerful to save our asses by suggesting that society take a “jubilee” from doctrine, dogma, and specialization.  Except for essential services, daily life as we know it would be transformed into a twenty-four hour, seven days a week opening of all public and private libraries for a period of at least six months.  No one would go into the classroom, the office, or any other workplace.  Those who do not currently “labor” would be required to help those who provide essential services.  All payments that are due during this  period would be added to the end of whatever payment schedule exists.  All of us -- religious persons, professors, professionals, and producers -- would take the time to find out how our little slice of pie fits into the whole.  We would do this purposefully with an eye towards developing ourselves into higher quality human beings and transitioning to a mature, advanced civilization.  As a society we could potentially leap forward into a more comprehensive age.

Even in the face of how rapidly things are deteriorating it won’t be easy though.  I’m not sure how to get the talking heads, the think tanks, the political pundits, and all the other so-called experts to quit leading their followers down this dead end we call the American Dream.  The American Dream is an ecological nightmare.  The Enlightenment principles on which this liberal democracy was founded are based on material growth in a land of plenty.  The founding fathers neither foresaw nor made provision for scarcity.  Did they suffer from what University of Colorado professor Albert Bartlett calls the greatest shortcoming of the human race -- our inability to understand the exponential function?  Is that why they never asked, what happens when we run out of the land and resources that provide the means with which to expand?  Because our political/economic system is flawed at the core, once the material peak was realized the failure of this democracy was a given.  Promising perpetual abundance through the conquest of nature and the tyranny of property rights may have looked like a sound plan at one time.  That was before consumer demands and retirement expectations exceeded our society’s capacity to provide them without bankrupting the nation.  Now that economic gains can no longer be delivered, what do we do?  It seems to me, we might entertain basing our political system on something other than selfish individualism.

In order to overcome the flaws of the current paradigm, four considerations stand out -- ecological continuity, consciousness, personal virtue/ethics, and a form of governance that ensures our stated goals are met.  These must be at the foundation of whatever we conceive.  Perhaps we could look to ecological principles for answers.  A climax forest would be a good place to start searching for clues as to what works over the long haul. In that environment many species committed to quality growth efficiently use the available energy to lead long, complex, symbiotic lifestyles. 

Ken Wilber On The Two Functions Of Religion

From a 1997 article:

TRANSLATION VS. TRANSFORMATION

In a series of books (e.g., A Sociable God, Up from Eden, and The Eye of Spirit), I have tried to show that religion itself has always performed two very important, but very different, functions. One, it acts as a way of creating meaning for the separate self: it offers myths and stories and tales and narratives and rituals and revivals that, taken together, help the separate self make sense of, and endure, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. This function of religion does not usually or necessarily change the level of consciousness in a person; it does not deliver radical transformation. Nor does it deliver a shattering liberation from the separate self altogether. Rather, it consoles the self, fortifies the self, defends the self, promotes the self. As long as the separate self believes the myths, performs the rituals, mouths the prayers, or embraces the dogma, then the self, it is fervently believed, will be "saved"—either now in the glory of being God-saved or Goddess-favored, or in an afterlife that insures eternal wonderment.

But two, religion has also served—in a usually very, very small minority—the function of radical transformation and liberation. This function of religion does not fortify the separate self, but utterly shatters it—not consolation but devastation, not entrenchment but emptiness, not complacency but explosion, not comfort but revolution—in short, not a conventional bolstering of consciousness but a radical transmutation and transformation at the deepest seat of consciousness itself. (Entire Article Here)

Matt here.  My argument for some time now has been that none of our current institutions encourage personal transformation -- and personal transformation is the cornerstone of the change that is required to live healthy and happy lives.

Don't Eat The Marshmallows

A Nice Summary Of Why You Won't Have A Retirement -- Unless You Work(ed) For Goldman Sachs

Rolling Stones Magazine Article by Matt Taibbi

Decades Of Social Crisis?

Pension Article

Nobody Says It Better

The latest from Dmitry Orlov.

Higher Education

The Incredible Shrinking Harvard

The Key To The Mystery Of Life

In our quest for a sustainable development model it is important to recognize that all efforts to date are only marginal.  In other words, our behavior is only impacting outcome by degrees rather than by the orders of magnitude that are necessary to avoid collapse.  One example is that the high price of fuel last year only impacted miles driven in the U.S. by 3%.  In order to be sustainable -- and avoid collapse -- we can probably only drive about 3% of the miles that we drive now.  To explain it in a slightly different perspective, our miles driven have to drop by about 97% rather a paltry 3%.  This is only one example.  In almost every aspect of our lives, we have to make a 97% change rather than a paltry 3% change.  We spend a great deal of time on the 3%.

How can we get this message across?

On a related note, I found the following excerpt from Kenneth Boulding's The Image (thanks to David Korten for mentioning The Image in one of his books) to be thought-provoking:

...in developing any theoretical models of living organization we cannot neglect the through-put not only of the material substance but also of information.  Even the simplest living creature is an information-gathering and information-organizing structure.  The through-put of information, however, is a very different process from the through-put of material substance.  Material substances, in which I include energy, obey strict laws of conservation.  The basic law of conservation is that the increase in anything in any system is equal to the difference between what has been taken in and what has been given out.  This is true of water in a reservoir, of any element in the body, and it is true also of energy.  It is not true, however, of information.  The through-put of information in an organization involves a "teaching" or structuring process which does not follow any strict law of conservation even though there may be limitations imposed on it.  When a teacher instructs a class, at the end of the hour presumably the students know more and the teacher does not know any less.  In this sense the teaching process is utterly unlike the process of exchange which is at the basis of the law of conservation.  In exchange, what one gives up another acquires; what one gains another loses.  In teaching this is not so.  What the student gains the teacher does not lose.  Indeed, in the teaching process, as every teacher knows, the teacher gains as well as the student.  In this phenomenon we find the key to the mystery of life. [p.35]

Of course, the teaching has to be centered around the aforementioned 97% change and not the 3% change.