We have written about how the economy as a system creates individuals that will try to realize goals that are damaging in the end, like trying to sell as much hardwood trees from Kalimantan, or as much Tuna from the Mediterranean Sea. These individuals apply economic rules that ignore anything that is not for sale. The economy is not about resources but turnover, because it was designed by banks who thrive on any trade. In our movie mythology terms a person that applies economic rules without considering or caring about its implication is a Borg or Systemic human.
The individual on the other end wonders what are the resources actually and reliably available to him or her. What skills does he/she posess so there is no need to trust or rely on others. The individual wants to see that there now and in the forseeable future there is food at least, or water, or shelter. The individual may be raising kids and ask the same questions in their place. In general if the economy is depleting a resource like hardwood or tuna, the individual doesn’t like it, the idea that once you had an option to get tuna, but because of the way others are treating the tuna that option will disappear triggers a sense of insecurity and social disapproval.
We are all individuals (except the one guy in the Meaning of life), and we all work in systems like a Borg. If we make breakfast for our kids it’s because we feel connected with them, we are family and operate with different drivers from our individual ones. There is nothing wrong with cooperating and not serving the direct individual needs, that is what heroism and sacrifice and pioneering is all about. But we are challenged today to think better about the systems we participate in. This challenge is that it is very easy to create systems that you feel you want to be part of as individual, but that in the end hurt you and your family.
Our sense of family and enterprise, one we have aquired as we lived as farmers in a harsh natural environment can be hijacked, has been hijacked for decades by others that where part of systemic organizations. Political parties, corporations, products like internal combustion cars or industry standards, all thos things represent systems where we have been asked to defer judgement and trust others in four ways 1. That they have our interest at heart 2. That they speak the truth 3. That they will actually do what they claim to do 4. That they consider the effect they have, avoiding negative effects. We can clearly say we have been disappionted.
One of the reasons why we have been disappointed lies in the template of most enterprises today : The loan based profit model. This can be seen as a suborganization any enterprise or organization must also be part of besides doing what it is doing. This template, a product of our banking system, is designed to serve the banking system, not cause the accumulation of wealth and security as we would like an economy to do. By adopting a business idea in the context of the wider economy we have been invited to also adopt this template organization, and this is what has created most problems.
There is nothing wrong with profits. Profits mean freedom to choose to support activities. It means freedom to apply our individual morality to society. But we have been conditioned to view as profit something that is not. Because if we make profit by selling coffee for instance, We find we have money in our hands. Money is a means of exchange. It is not a valuable thing by itself. So we gain access to products others make, but not to new resources. We may be gaining control over resources, but the total amount of resouces has not been increased. Profit is a mere buffer of security against the constant disapearing of money from society (by loan interes, financial losses, fossil fuel consumption). The economic template we have been applying has been a hologram, and nothing in it guarantees our future security or wealth.
If you are in a large organization then you will think in its interest, you will have ingested the system or you are trying very hard to. If what you find conflicts with your individual morality you will either quit or try to supress the thought, and this can in extreme cases create individuals with self loathing, no identity, drones for large organizations. If the organization expects this response then it will not help you cling on to your individuality, it will require you to dress and act as if you are one out of billions, not unique, replacable. It is a basic principle that this happens in any large organization, because large organizations fundamentally lack a reason to exist. They have to be populated with dreamy, distracted individuals. Ask the question : Which internationally operating organization do we really need? If you find a reason then wonder : Is the risk I think this organization protects me from created or always there? Also : Can this what this internationally operating organization achieves also be achieved by cooperating local organizations?
The key to being a ‘sound’ individual, meaning one that strives to survive and protect itself and whoever he/she cares about from harm, is to think through the purpose and effect of any system or organization one is part of, not only what it brings to the table for you. This is made hard by the same economic system, because it forces individuals to constantly look at money as a primary resource, while it isn’t, it is a promise to access to resources which explicitly lacks guarantees. The economy clearly tells us it focusses on trade in the market, not supply to it. As an individual one needs to think about real resources, like water, heathy soil, wood, fish etc. and wonder whether these resources are increased by the organization we work for, even as it sells them. There is a basic logic to that, of course if you sell a product you want to make more of it, but with Tuna, trees and other natural resources the economy doesn’t care, because one thing you will sell al the time : Fossil fuels.
If your organization does not generate resources and does not cooperate with an organization that offsets the damage it does (in real tangible terms), then you should withdraw cooperation in that organization. To make that easiest one should always strive for minimal debt and obligations, maximum ownership. Look for local smaller organizations that add to the reserves of food, soil, fish, fowl, trees, smart/skilled people, systems and organizations that look beyond money profit and those that support cooperation. Help others that want to do the same thing.
It is not Borg versus Neo, because we are made to cooperate and not be only individuals and only self interested. People that are like that use only part of their own resources, and sometimes it is the emptyness that results from that negligence that keeps them captured in their behaviour. We are Neo and Borg, and we can be so without destoying the planet. We just need to use our talent to analyse and our courage to move when we feel we contribute to our own destruction.