Scarcity/Competition/Fear vs. Flow/Collaboration/Love
I had a
conversation with my good friend Gwendolyn Hallsmith. She is an economist living in what she calls
the Independent Republic of Vermont.
As I recounted the labyrinth through which we have been putting in place
a seed of a healthy and just economic system and nurturing it long enough for
it to stand on its own, she reminded me of something VERY fundamental.
She quoted
her good friend the late Bernard Lietaer
who used to say that you can’t ask a fish submerged in
water to explain to you anything about water. This she said in answer to my anxieties about
the mutual credit system and the Guacimo, our unit of exchange, which we have been rudimentary using since
2014, but that now, due to the pandemic, is taking on its full colors.
She pointed out that even me, one who has been fostering
community-based trading for years, has also inevitably been immersed in the
idea of an economy where there is never enough, and that very deep without our psyche,
naturally we will have anxieties associated with the free flow of all the
necessary things in life. To illustrate
her point she described a “game” that clearly plays out that the current
economy is debt-based; therefore, there is always scarcity and the associated losers and winners and competition
for the artificially “limited” amounts
of money.
But while at some point in its history, money stood
for gold in a bank, for the most part money now is just an instrument, an
agreement to make trading of goods and services easier. And these goods and services, these resources
do not depend on the stock market, they depend on each of us. WE ARE THE SOURCE OF WEALTH, a healthy environment
is a source of wealth, our hands, minds, hearts, relationships, and the very earth
beneath our feet, are what sustain us.
Going back to the ancient trading and mutual credit system return the trust
and faith where it belongs; in the true wealth.
And this system brings out the best of human nature, and moves to the
forefront the reality of Nature itself, its abundance, its constant flow to
supply all that is needed for EVERYONE on the planet.
Related, but necessary to this artificial economic
system that we all currently “swim” in is the belief that to get ahead, one
must be better than the rest; i.e. enter into a competition vs. a collaboration
with others. Just the word competition
itself makes my entire body tense up. While when I think of cooperation or
collaboration, I relax, breathe more easily and prepare to give and receive
in a free and joyful spirit. This idea of
competing to get our needs met, has been “imprinted” in us by a long-standing
position of the educational system and by the debt-based, scarcity-driven
current economic system. Volumes have been written on this topic, and
there is a wonderful documentary that details the history of education and its
original purpose tracing back its origins in Europe. But I will tell you a quick account of a
young business major who visited our Center and said “how else would you
motivate people to be the best they can be if not through competition?” I said, what about compassion, wanting to
make the life of all other sentient beings a little less painful, a little less
difficult, a little healthier, more joyful, easier?” We humans thrive when we give and receive love.
There is a third element in these three “horses of the
apocalypse”: Fear. We either trust and relax
and flow or we fear and contract and freeze/flee. For me, it has been helpful to examine a
whole range of belief systems. All the
way from what is God/Universal Intelligence- Is it a life-giving,
life-supporting, benevolent force or being? or is it a being/entity that is
ready to judge and punish us and that more than unite us, tend to divide us? Is
there a Unity of Life? Do each of us stand alone disconnected from the rest of
the Universe, or is there an interconnectedness and all we think and do affects
the rest? I have found it useful to examine the role of my own belief systems,
as I am part of the human collective, and as such, I believe my individual self
has played and will continue to play a role in the current state of affairs. The Whole is the sum of its parts and their
interactions. It seems to me that what we each believes plays a big role in how
we experience what happens, the meaning we assign to it and therefore, our
capacity for co-creating a new humanity, and our resiliency during these times.
So we can choose between two sets of beliefs: Scarcity/Competition/Fear
or Flow/Collaboration/Love. If we can
comprehend that the first set has brought us where we are, a state of world
hunger, environmental destruction, and overall crisis; and if we can also
understand that it was artificially induced, under a gross misunderstanding of
the Nature of things, we can choose differently. It is not pre-determined and it is not too
late to choose
