A Review of "The Great Mindshift"

Why you need to re-think just about everything!

A Review of The Great Mindshift

by Kathleen McCroskey

This is not optional - you MUST read this book (The Great Mindshift) and no excuses, it is short and is a free download. If you work in government, especially in a Finance department, tell your HR people to give you an unpaid suspension and don’t write another budget until you finish reading this, then ACT on it - we can not wait another 9 years for you to get around to understanding what is required to re-imagine our place amongst other living beings on this, our only planet.

http://afes-press-books.de/html/APESS_02.htm

The Great Mindshift

How a New Economic Paradigm and Sustainability Transformations go Hand in Hand

Maja Göpel, 2016

The radical repurposing agenda could be summarized as recoupling economic processes with human well-being and nature’s laws by making the economic dimension the one that needs changing. Given the structural reality of today’s path dependencies, the foremost strategy for successive change in this direction—the incremental strategies that can achieve it—is double-decoupling:

1. Decouple the production of goods and services from unsustainable, wasteful or uncaring treatment of humans, nature and animals (do better).

2. Decouple the satisfaction of human needs from the imperative to deliver ever more economic output (do well).

The latter has been given much less attention because the worldview informed by the mainstream economic paradigm cannot even countenance it. (Göpel, 2016)

“Transformation or transformability in social-ecological systems is defined as the capacity to create untried beginnings from which to evolve a fundamentally new way of living when existing ecological, economic, and social conditions make the current system untenable” (Stockholm Resilience Centre 2012). To create untried beginnings we need new social imaginaries, sets of ideas including values, institutions, laws and symbols through which people imagine their social whole and envisage how alternative systems would differ from the current situation—and the courage to let go of that to which we have grown accustomed.”  (Göpel, 2016)

Yes, a “Great Mindshift” is necessary, but not necessarily limited to the mainstream economic paradigm. Consider it to be a software issue - it’s time for humans to download a new OS (operating system, the software platform on which all mental programs run). What deep programming aspects are embedded in your present OS? What ideologies create the frames for your every conversation and ethical judgments? You must peal it all down right to your File Allocation Table and then download a new OS. That means stripping out religion and political affiliations, everything that locks you in (religion - that which binds). Then, start to rebuild a thought process which enables Life and well-being and respects Nature’s laws.

However, we do not have several decades to allow such decoupling to filter through society’s ranks. Somehow this must be sped up. Consider the efforts to create biodiversity treaties, setting aside tracts of land and oceans to allow life to carry on amidst human interference. But wouldn’t the best first step be to not create any new sacrifice zones anywhere? If you were truly concerned by human encroachment on Nature, isn’t the most simple thing stopping the encroachment, then go about creating Nature preserves? Thus, in an effort to speed up the effects of creating this new Mindshift, I would take a similar short-cut and say the first primary step should be setting Limits to Progress. What nation would be so morally bankrupt as to spend $4.5 billion on a “practice flight” to the moon while people in other countries are starving and suffering from climate change? That would be a first “Progress” to limit.

“There is no hope for life on Earth until all people come to reject the corporatist agenda, and accept a belief system which re-integrates humans into the natural world. With the present greed-based social construct, all life is doomed, and under that construct no group, region, country or international body will be able to recognize the necessary course of action.” (from my 2006 environment web page).

And since then, what progress have we made in resetting human thought processes?

If the global village concept is going to work, if we are "all in this together", then all of the old religions are now dead. These old religions got us through the Dark Ages and into these "modern" times. Was this a good thing? Obviously not. Religion is "that which binds" or restrains us, from doing harmful things. We need, immediately, a new system of behavioural restraints, which punishes the ruiners of the earth and rewards those who take care of the environment. This new system has to apply to all people in all countries; to every part of the global village. Without this change, we are all lost. Imagine a visitor to the International Space Station, bringing a cordless drill onboard, then deciding it is his right to begin drilling holes in the walls. The other astronauts would have to bring compelling force to bear immediately on this situation, and get the drilling stopped, and that person restrained. In the same way, it is everyone's responsibility to get those ruining the earth to stop, and restrain them, thereby enforcing new acceptable rules to live in harmony with this planet. Unfortunately, many of the world's religions, especially those with the greatest number of young people, are also those in which meaningful change is truly impossible. On one hand, you have people who think there should be no restrictions to their obtaining whatever they can imagine - however, self restriction, or self-regulation is the true nature of religion and/or the rule of law. On the other hand, you have religious fundamentalist types, who are so bound to an obsolete set of behavioural codes, that it will be impossible to shift them into learning how to exist in harmony with this planet. It is up to every person to implement the limitations that are required to live on this planet, limitations of numbers and behaviour. Yes, you can dream of a life in a penthouse condo, and a fancy car and all that goes with that style, but if you act on those desires, YOU are taking the drill to this spaceship Earth and causing its ruin.

"Growth" in the economy is purported to be the driving engine in our society. This is a principle anthem in the mainstream economic paradigm. However, what people actually need is peace, shelter, food and culture. Culture in real societies centers around the production, preparation and enjoyment of food. In such cases, a society works to produce their own food, wine, etc., instead of purchasing it from a commoditized economy. In the business-greed system which feeds on an ever expanding growth of the economy, the economy ITSELF creates the demand for more population. Thus we have ever expanding urban sprawl, with most of this increasing population simply serving lunch to each other and other such needless work. Just where exactly is the original production, which takes raw materials and energy from sunlight (as in growing a crop) and initiates the economic cycle? Besides, with most manufacturing moving to China and other low-wage centres, all we will have left here in North America is people selling pizzas, flowers and insurance to each other - oh, and servicing cars of course. People "get a job", take home a paycheque and become happy (the human fertility ritual) and then reproduce, even though there is no rationalisation of the actual need for the job that they are doing. The "system" deems that their job is of value to the "economy" so they are rewarded with a paycheque, and are thus able to pay someone else to grow their food for them, since their job or schooling is so important to society. We need another system that directs monetary value to people who are working to live within the constraints of a functioning ecosystem. We absolutely don't have that at present. The society's capital (total value) is finite and we are continually rewarding the wrong people who are directing the flow of money into projects which do not help us into a new future on this planet - the projects are all directed toward rewarding business greed. At present, everyone's idea of the future is a glorified version of the deep past.

So what are the remedies - is there a way out of this predicament? Professor Frank Fenner of Australia states:

"Homo sapiens will become extinct, perhaps within 100 years. A lot of other animals will, too. It's an irreversible situation. I think it's too late. I try not to express that because people are trying to do something, but they keep putting it off."

Stop putting it off! Read Dr. Göpel’s book, and act on it!