From: Cliff Stabbert (cps46@earthlink.net)
Date: Sun Sep 15 2002 - 18:53:41 MDT
Sunday, September 15, 2002, 7:18:23 PM, Samantha Atkins wrote:
<snipping and re-ordering your points>
SA> I don't think it is wired into our evolution that the only way to
SA> live is through endless competition for material things even in
SA> times of great abundance.
I agree, and as you point out there have been/are cultures based
around other paradigms.
SA> Perhaps, while we can't espect a major spiritual transformation,
SA> we can expect enough of a shift in beliefs and perceptions that
SA> we can re-order some of our institutions, our economics and
SA> parts of our politics and expectations to be based on abundance
SA> ratheer than scarcity.
But this I'm not too sure of. Our institutions, economics and
politics by and large are based on zero-sum tactics, scarcity
thinking, however you want to describe or name it.
To raise a hypothetical: there's plenty of "free energy" theorists out
there (some very amusing, the majority running financial scams to
get "investors"), and almost all of them posit a conspiracy by Big
Oil / Big Energy. But what if there really *was* a cheap/easy way to
create an abundance of energy -- what if, say, somebody managed to get
some form of tabletop (or "cold") fusion working? I think The Powers
That Be* would do everything in their power to shut that down. At this
point, they're too entrenched in scarcity-based thinking -- too
"addicted" to power -- to be able to see beyond it.
* By such a glib phrase I don't mean simply people in power, but
institutions, which over a certain level of complexity become
"more than the sum of their parts", with their own motivations
etc. Every last person working at a cigarette or bomb factory may
be a "nice guy" while the organization as a whole can still act
despicably. (see http://www.ag.wastholm.net/aphorism/A-1102 )
--
Cliff
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