Are you a free life form or a resource to be used? Are you in control of your life or is someone else dictating how you live.? In modern society, money has a huge say in our lives, but we didn’t evolve to serve an economy.
Atomic particles evolved into our structure over a few billion years. they did so, as with all structures, to better serve their desires for the energies of the environment. Their desires are our life source, the reason we exist and, when some essential part of our organism fails and we die, they live on in other structures.
Particle desires are present in everything. For example, there is no 3.6 billion trillion kilogram force pulling earth toward the sun. The vast numbers of energy linked particles that constitute the earth have limited desires for and make tiny individual movements toward the radiated energies of the sun, so creating earth’s orbit.
Our particles cooperate in phenomenal ways within us to enable us to satisfy their desires. When we serve them well we feel their content. Way back in tribal times we, like other life forms, innately knew what we were about; we cooperated with others to satisfy our particle needs. Sharing was a priority; selfishness and hoarding were not tolerated and self sacrifice for the good of others was not uncommon.
Now, in our economic world, for most of us there is no clear link between the work that we do and the desires and needs that we as individuals have or which any group we are a part of has. Work for many is something we do to serve the so often remote financial interests of others. For many, the work we do is not something we want to do; it does not add to our wellbeing but to our inner discontent. Stress, anger, depression, mental health issues, gender issues and an increasing demand on health care services are all indications of our particle discontents. People are frustrated with their economic lives; some of those frustrations boiled over in the not so long ago riotous actions against immigrants and police in the UK.
Technology has not given us the increased leisure time it promised. More people of working age now work, many doing irregular hours at the beck and call of businesses. Huge numbers of jobs are no longer directly related to the real needs of people, but are instead about manipulating them. We can’t avoid adverts that pop up everywhere saying a product will lead to a better life, even when in reality it will do nothing for our wellbeing and in its making will have depleted earth’s resources and when discarded will pollute the earth or require recycling.
The buying of products is encouraged by our leaders; it is part of their plans to grow our economy. It will give them more money to spend, make investors richer and improve the living standards of people. But for most this higher living standard will be at a cost and will mean a poorer quality of life, with less time and energy to do what they would like to do and which would bring them satisfaction.
Growing the economy is not a new idea. It has so far led to our considerable national debt, to private ownership of many national assets and interference in many others; locally owned assets may be next to be sold off. It has led to a considerable divide in wealth and produced many investors and businesses with more say in how we live our lives than governments. But most significantly growing the economy has been and will continue to be to the detriment of human wellbeing and contrary to why we exist. People want real change but governments continue to be governed by economics.
A better standard of living for all sounds good but what does it mean? Will those that have little get acceptable homes, jobs worth doing that benefit others and be able to adequately feed their families? For others will the additional buying power not mean more possessions, more replacements, more waste, more use of earth resources, more threat to our existence? Will it not give more control over our lives to remote businesses and financial institutions.
Applying the same old growth policy will not improve the wellbeing of people and it will be to the detriment of our planet. Give free reign to artificial intelligence and it will only make things worse. A government, which puts the wellbeing of its people at the heart of every action it takes and considers it a priority in all of its visions and plans is what is needed. We should encourage, support and sustain businesses that provide for the real needs of people and which care for their workforce as if they were family. We should seek out and penalise those businesses that are there to further their self interest by exploiting their workforce or by acting in a way detrimental to public wellbeing. We should tax the sale of luxury goods at rates considerably higher than those of more essential goods and take money from waste producing companies as protection against future clean up costs.
Changing from a life style dictated by economics to a modern version of the human needs life style we once had and which all other animals still have, won’t be easy. Many with vested interests will resist it. But as the satisfying of our inner particle desires is why we exist it must surely be a way forward that all could support and cooperate in achieving. Can we not all have a more relaxed life style in a more relaxed earth environment by cooperating and concentrating on providing what we truly need?