If you are an optimist, your optimism must derive from all the beauty, diversity, and proportion that can exist in our lives. We all have seen glimpses of it.
Almost everybody has such encounters in their dreams, others experience the occasional shimmering sparks of happiness and elevation in their daily lives, and a select few manage to turn those into regular events. But even for the latter, it is really nothing more than a passing light in time, for we all have a deadline in our life path.
Does this discussion bring a tad of melancholy? It shouldn’t. And it doesn’t as soon as it stops being about you the whole time. The bigger the picture, the more we can deal with the specifics. And if we go a step further, we find that to expand such fleeting moments of personal experience into Shared moments of collective elevation, ‘participation’ is required. ‘Not an easy thing,’ the marketers and promoters will say.
Really? How come? The connection is already there, and it isn’t social media. It is a network of diversified links called ‘society.’ Current societies are less homogenous compared to previous times, the degree of connection among continents being equal to the degree of separation among local communities. Still, such a network should work both on the local level and across the international board based on qualitative criteria.
What is blocking our societies from becoming powerful, dynamic, organic bodies of governance, natural carriers of positive change? We all agree when it comes to those significant issues. Don’t we?
Many qualified analysts identify the following as significant or potential barriers disrupting the flow of social communication: ideologies, different personal life priorities, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, religious beliefs, and different prioritizations regarding the minor nuances of major global issues (human rights, climate change, education, etc.) All things that make each one of us unique! Should we create societies of robotic androids then?
Could it be that the demon here is none of the above? Could it be that none of the above is what people worry about when going to bed at night, and none of the above is ruling their life to a degree greater than they had even thought? Could the problem be ‘economics’?
I am not talking about capitalism versus something else. Or the fight of social classes. Or the dynasty of the markets or the double-edged sword of globalization. Or the central bank(s) or the monetary system and its in-growing jungle made by gifts and vultures. I am talking about the actual money, the bill of whatever union or national currency you happen to operate.
Is it the dollar? The Euro? Bitcoin? Other? It doesn’t matter. This invention, a symbolic token representing an accepted (invented) value (that constantly changes), has put into lethargy any thoughts of further human development. Hopefully, not to permanent rest, but with the current speed of ecumenical development, we will need more centuries than planet Earth might be able to survive.
The world ‘economy’ came from the ancient Greeks and meant nothing more than the ‘Laws of the House’ or ‘Home’: the rules (and desired proportion) that should intimately govern your base. Is this what it means today? Far from it, so much so that even the modern translation substitutes ‘Law’ with ‘Management’.
I could analyze it further and provide ample support for my outrageous argument, but it would not be fair or productive. Instead, I will have to trust my readers (as I do so often) to try and think this through based on their everyday experiences. It will soon become apparent that humanity could have and perhaps should have developed various local systems with the ability to work together in harmony as a unified whole. As well as interact successfully with more distant nodes using finances to improve the lives of its global citizens.
It would be a far better proposition than the current variations of capitalism, preferred almost everywhere just because any other system is obsolete, especially in democratic societies.
Most recently (speaking in historical terms) and just in a few years, this planet received three warnings pointing out that ‘economies’ in democracies as we have structured them are more of a liability than an asset. The US crash (2008) and European economic crisis a year or two later, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the Ukrainian-Russian conflict – turned into a war implicating everyone.
Of course it did. We live on an economic planet now where interests are linked.
Brilliant minds are drawing unexpected conclusions as we speak. Their work will lead humanity into developing more sustainable future systems and help it thrive on this or any other planet without the need to exchange tokens.
By then, the word ‘economy’ will have different meanings and functions. It is highly improbable that future generations will continue to view ‘economy’ as a management system of dispensation. I personally expect the notion to move closer to a mechanism facilitating praiseworthy ends for humanity and the world, in ways less mechanistically objective but fairer to the grand objectives of us all.
Today’s realists might call this a pipe-dream. Pragmatists of tomorrow might laugh at the silliness of our time. Until then, fasten your seatbelts as we serve the servant and the Laws of the House we can’t call Home yet.