I want to focus the theme of complexity, which I said from the outset would be central to this blog, quite specifically towards money, finance and economics. As also stated then, we need to take a close look at the new relationships with money that are demanded by a system which is beyond redemption.
Do I need to justify that last statement? I suspect that within months that question will not apply. At the risk of making myself a hostage to fortune, I believe that the stock market recovery reached its peak last April. It dropped by 18% over the following two months. The recovery since then of the majority of that drop may well be its last hurrah. The only reason it sustains is because both US and UK governments promise to print more money (known as quantitative easing) if it does not.
Should you care? Only if you own a house, or might want to. Only if you have a pension plan. Oh yes, and only if you are concerned about human survival, about sustainability, about peace. The way that we think about money, and the systems that we live are fundamentally influencing our lives and our prospects.
It should not surprise anyone who knows SDi or Integral thinking, that our attitudes to money have reflected our Values systems shifts over time. For Purple, money (where it exists at all) typically facilitated dowry systems and other social relationships. Red hoards money and shows it off in conspicuous displays of power and wealth. For Blue, prosperity may be a reward for personal diligence and industry, except for those who turn their backs on it and make poverty a part of their spiritual discipline. Blue also introduces written accounts, contracts and commercial laws.
The last two centuries have witnessed the rise of Orange Values. As we exploited our scientific inventiveness, first with productive machinery and railroads, then with telegraphy, mass road and air transport and domestic technology, finally with mass communications and the digital economies, we shared in a collective triumph over the material world. The culture came to value possessions. He who dies with the most toys wins.
For over a century there has been recognition that materialism could go too far, bringing more human-centred Green responses, including pensions systems, unemployment benefit and healthcare. But only more recently have we fully recognised that our dominance over the material world was an illusion, that prices have been paid not only in human happiness but also in ecological damage and conflict, and finally in a systematic weakness that was self-destructive. Orange strategy outsmarted Blue regulation and created paper investments whose roots were not in real physical assets but in mathematical fantasies.
Most of us have been caught in the fantasy world and still are. But growing money has not worked. The world today has an annual Gross Product of $50 trillion. World debts are hard to pin down, since they fluctuate with currencies, national economies and property values, but a conservative estimate would be $500 trillion.
So imagine that situation as a description of your own personal or domestic economy. Imagine an annual income £50K alongside mortgage, loan and credit card debt of £500K. When it will take all of your income for ten years just to pay your debts, the accurate description is “insolvent”, unable ever to pay creditors, and leads to bankruptcy.
The government is making a huge song and dance about the need to balance the UK budget and I am writing as the spending review is receiving its verdict in the papers. Amidst the varying political perspectives – I defy anyone to get clear guidance on whether the middle-class or the poor will suffer most – sits one widely shared perception – that this is a gamble. Sticking my neck out again, I don’t believe that it is. We are in trouble either way; It is only the trajectory of our fall that varies. The world has manufactured money and expanded debt, and we each have our share of the debt. One way or another, the rebalancing has to come. In Part 2 we will begin to look at what this means in more detail.
integralian
freejon
