The history of our Story

Firing the first shots: Honduras and odious debt

Out of control, permanent crisis, role of government

клин клином or Make love not war

Exercise: rethink the Story, demonetize

What you can do

Cold ugly cynicism or warm beautiful passion

The history of our Story

Our 'civilization' is based on a society of property owners (the only ones that count in politics), i.e., those who have convinced everyone else that they deserve sole possession of some part of the social wealth, the now privatized commons. The US was built on land which was overnight privatized and parcelled among the millions of Europeans, i.e., they were allowed to staked their claim. Hollywood westerns show crowds of brutish men, ready to rush out the starting gate on the day they would become OWNERS. A vicious parody of the process of 'primitive accumulation' as Marx aptly called it.

The spectacular expansion of the US was built on high positive interest rates, which makes perfect sense, as Turtle Island was a virtually virgin land, the most blessed of all on planet Earth. All that virginal commons just waiting to be raped and pillaged. The new republic came complete with a puritanical religion which overlooked the the rape and pillage and adapted itself to the satanic forces that took hold. 

In The enchantments of mammon: How capitalism became the religion of modernity (2019), McCarraher, documents the transformation of the US into a 'grotesque world of scarcity and money, tawdry humanism of acquisitiveness and conflict, the reduction of rationality to mercenary principles of pecuniary reason.' No time for beauty. The American upstarts had to expand to pay the interest on all the European loans, so welcomed millions of immigrants, producing an 'economic miracle' much like China's since the 1980s, when hundreds of millions of Chinese were mobilized, harnessed by state-directed capitalism. Economic growth is a necessary corollary of debt-based money, but it is almost always less than the interest rate. So the common boat may be floating a bit higher, but never enough. Most debtors go bankrupt, sell their bit of commons (natural, social, cultural, spiritual), leading to cartels/ monopoly. Concentration of wealth increases at all times even as the economy grows.                     

This is not Eco 101, where many small producers compete diligently to maximize profits.

The textbooks, cheerleaders for capitalism, despise government spending and interference, yet accept it, the specter of the 1930s lurking in their footnotes. When we suffer a wave of reaction, like we have for the past 30 years, the capitalist elites convince us that efficiency demands loosening environmental regulations, privatizing every last bit of commons. We unwittingly reinforce this perverse logic, and help convert life-sustaining air, land, water into money, killing nature softly with 'free markets'. The real meaning of 'growth' is theft and further processing (producing) of what little of our commons remains unmonetized. 

In the immortal words of JK Galbraith, economics is an extremely useful as a form of employment for economists. In the interests of job security, writers of textbooks ignore this Story and the truth behind it. They are lost in their theoretical bubble with a rational, isolate man busily competing with other automatons in timeless harmony. FDR's New Deal salvaged the system, using debt money to build infrastructure to create jobs, and allowing the rich to stay on top but paying high taxes to offset profits from ownership of capital. It left the underlying contradictions in place, with the understanding that economic growth would float the boat and keep the injustices within bounds, so that the Story of the Self and World could still be convincing enough for the system to function a bit longer. WWII was necessary to jump start the economy, and the compromise worked till the 1970s. 

A bigger pie means no need to redistribute, with its promise of constant growth. Class conflict is endemic, as any downturn hits the working poor. It's owners vs the dispossessed, the debtors, and the divide continually sharpens. Debts become inescapable for the majority, a lifelong claim on the labor of debtor, peonage. No jubilee years to cancel debts like in the good ol' days. In bankruptcy, the creditor steals your assets. Then you're back into debt.

Firing the first shots: Honduras and odious debt 

Countries can default but don't. Rulers ally with the global financial establishment. If you defy it, let's just say you face extreme hostility. People who need more money can't resist the pressure to convert your social and natural capital into money. Haiti has been in debt to France since 1825, still forced to pay for the cost of the slaves in the revolt that the French revolution inspired. Aristide tried to resist twice (1991, 2004) and was overthrown by guess who? Honduras elected socialist Xiomara Castro in 2021 and became the fourth state to withdraw from the Investor-State Dispute Settlement convention, where multinationals sue poor countries which try to enforce environmental legislation for 'lost profits', and huge and vital defiance of hostile capitalists determined to steal every last bit of world commons for their private use only.ⁱ

Military power and forced tribute were the instruments of empire in the past. Now it's debt ('free' economic zones, etc all fit this strategy). A top demand now, and a huge step for demonetizing the world commons, is to cancel third world debt, or at least 'odious debt', where a country leader can claim the debts s/he inherited were wrongly given to a corrupt regime and the money squandered. Rafael Correiro of Ecuador managed to cut $3.9b from the national debt. He was subsequently replaced by a US-supporter and Ecuador has fallen into violence and ongoing drug wars.

Rule: It is very easy to destroy anti-capitalist structures (gift, socialism).

Other than the US refusing to pay outstanding debts when it took over Puerto Rico in 1923, Ecuador is the only success story so far, though Honduras gives us hope. International finance is full of such odious debts, but how many poor people win their just case in courts? How about, 'most developing world debt is odious, the legacy of imperialism.' 

As for corrupt dictators squandering loans, 'It's the system, stupid!' Seemingly anonymous, neutral loans without any responsibility by the lender or borrower to make it work for the good of society are a dangerous illusion. If I give money to a known drug addict, should I expect to be repaid? With interest? In a healthy economic system, there should be no need for massive flows of capital. Currencies will have a fixed rates of exchange based on purchasing power parity, the type of money, the purpose of the exchange, with controls to prevent destabilization by hostile actors. Localized currencies will stimulate local production, mobilizing the labour force and country's resources. Aid should be localized, not one-size-fits-all. Without a positive interest rate, the prospect of debt penury lessens. 

Neoliberalism cuts education, social services and subsidized bread in the first place, and municipalities' budgets. Households and people must go into debt to have an ever worsening existence. Countries forced to do this end up in worse shape than before the cuts, reducing further the ability to repay debts.

Paradox: IMF austerity loans forcing governments to end subsidies on basic, etc, actually backfire on the IMF too. Much like the farmer who must repay his cow loan, stealing from the commons in the process, the austerity measures lead to you producing more $s to pay back the IMF, monetizing more of the commons, cutting food crops to produce export crops, leading to famine, unrest, butterfly effects galore, always negative.  

Millions of graduates will never pay off their university or college debts (which didn't exist before neoliberalism convinced us to privatize university education, our precious intellectual commons, now the plaything of the Pentagon and CIA/FBI, recruiting the young to jobs policing our dysfunctional economic system). 

As we start to sober up to what's odious vs acceptable debt, the compulsion to actually pay debt will wane, just as your loan to Jeff looks less and less likely to be repaid, so you either go to war with him or let it go. Michael Hudson calls for a return to the Jubilee year that Assyrian kings periodically ordered 4000 years ago to cancel peon debts and bring the economy to life again. 

Out of control, permanent crisis, role of government 

Our Newtonian-Cartesian intuitions consider money as a thing, but it is really a relationship, originally a sacred relationship, now one of dead things (you, commodity, seller). And from the start, the money world was a love affair of the rich, a banquet with crumbs for the working masses. When governments have moved in to keep the system alive, spending money, it was always careful to give the divvying out of money to the bankers (occasional to actual citizens as 'baby bonus' or vouchers or Covid 'gift'), but chalking up the nice present as government debt to the Federal Reserve and on to bond holders (the rich), who will then get interest and continue to grow ever wealthier than the masses. But why should the government pay interest to the wealthy for what is their/our right – the sovereign privilege of issuing currency? A game of musical chairs run by a slick promoter, a mad scramble in which some are necessarily left out? Just issue the currency as needed yourself, no middlemen needed.  

When saddled with more government debt, fiscal stimulus (hopefully helping the poor) and government debt (owned by the wealthy) are still just another backhanded hand out to the rich (i.e., the government pays the rich a bribe (interest on government debt) to let it help the poor). Income tax is a recent blight used to keep the system alive, penalizing not only the masses, but the successful entrepreneurs who earn their profits. Not fair! FDR used it to tax excess profits, when income taxes were as high as 90%. It's wealth that should be taxed, which FDR's high taxes did indirectly, but he could only push the rich so far. A loopholeless wealth tax was beyond the pale as it still is, though it's an essential part of the answer. Taking on US robber barons and their offspring is still a road not travelled. Even breaking up monopolies such as Google is very difficult. Now income tax is a scam, with real profits held in tax-free 'shelters', so untaxed. We all know about the scam and efforts will continue to plug the loopholes until finally we succeed. 

We have witnessed the illusion of economic expansion since the 1970s. Bubbles. Much innovation in the 19th-20th cc has been to monetize home life. Household appliances, cars, central heating, running water, elevators, a/c, planes, phones, many wonderful labor saving things which genuinely allowed less onerous day-to-day lives. What an incredible two decades were the 1950s-60s. But since then, with two fridges in ever kitchen and two cars in the driveway, the household commons was captured. Now it's mere fine-tuning what we have. Where to look for demand? Planned obsolescence is no longer acceptable. We're slowly wising up. 

The information age of computers is now focused on ways of making our lives moneyless. Not. And not something we asked for, but useful for capitalists, more efficient. We already see it as creeping totalitarianism, Big Brother. Paradox: This 'moneyless' economy further monetizes us (we are the default 'commons' for the capitalist, our emotions, our will to work, to buy), seducing us to consumer more, as it's so easy. Cash is a useful check on thoughtless consuming. It is also friendlier and cheaper for small store owners. So resist being 'moneyless', even as you actively work to destroy the idea behind money, the theft of the commons. Paper money is closer to God than the abstract money of the credit card. Who would have thought? 

As technology steals more jobs, we are now in permanent crisis. Earth's commons are already privatized. That means a slower 'growth' potential, inherent in a closed ecological/ social system, i.e., Earth. Some economies have already had a negative interest rate -- the EU, Sweden, Japan 2009+. Now there is no need for full employment as positive social good. No more 'quantitative easing'. Obama was duped, merely lining billionaires' pockets, but no growth. A negative rate reflects the end of our adolescence. Banks can still lend and charge a (slightly less) negative % on deposits too to make a profit. But the glory days are over.

Rule: A system based on constant conversion of finite planet Earth into money is unsustainable where the conversion is complete. Think: Ponzi. Solutions just add fuel to the global fire (drilling more oil wells, paving more green space, spurring consumer spending to ignite growth). Interest becomes negative when the commons is fully monetized.

клин клином 

What can I do to protect myself?' Hoard gold? Lol. In crises, governments seize all gold (Lenin, Hitler, FDR). And where law and order break down, the criminals will make a bee-line to the hoarder, knives sharpened.

Rather the question should be: what is the most beautiful thing I can do? Today, tomorrow, the rest of my life. It sure isn't to make more money. How about destroying the evil? Money and interest? Not all money. Destroying money is a categorical evil only if creating it is a categorical good. But, when in doubt, destruction is always better. Your answer should always be: I am reclaiming something from the monetary economy, returning it to the gift economy. 

How? My favorite Russian saying: Drive a wedge in with a wedge. Don't hoard gold. Use money now to strengthen your bonds with community, yes, in preparation for endtimes. And what is the endtimes? It is the collapse of debt-based money creation, and end to our rape-and-pillage of nature, the denial of our true selves. Ask yourself every day, 'how can I hasten this collapse of the money economy?' Every bit of forest you save, road you stop, coop playground you build, anyone you heal, help, making it off-limits to money system, helps you and your community. Become a warrior. 

To get in the frame of mind necessary for this requires an inner revolution. Our ongoing crises are opening us up to this inner journey. We are horrified now at how animals were/are tortured to make cosmetics for upper class snobs. The world (apart from a tiny group of US-Israeli elites) is revolted at genocide taking place on our TV screens, and demands an end. Descartes/ Smith's separate self has run its course. We are inseparable from the totality of all life. This sensitivity comes at a terrible price to Earth, but it's coming and we must urge it on. We must think in terms of reunion, what we can give to the gift economy, not just take. We should expect zero or negative return on investment. Beauty is not profitable. Recycle, make instead of buying, give instead of selling, teach skills. 

Keynes: Economics pretends what's fair is foul and foul is fair, for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice, usury, precaution are our gods.

Make love not war

Our civilization is in its teens, in transition. Teenage males instinctively go through  period of testing their mettle. In precapitalist societies, this was harnessed to protect the tribe and the new tribe member in an elaborate initiation rite. Capitalist society dispenses with that, but the need remains. We are essentially that global godless tribe in its reckless teens, flailing about, a bull in a china shop. But we live in nature, and a law of nature is that all growth spurts, upsetting nature's controlled disequilibrium, reach a limit and slow/ stop as a new homeostasis is achieved.

The flower children of the 1960s put love at the top of living, inventing their own rituals of initiation, and inspired the antiwar and environmental movements. The transition to adulthood means moving past the unconditional love of nature/ God as parent, to love of nature/ God as a lover, a husband/ wife. But before you become an adult, at least in traditional societies, you first must pass through the ritual of initiation into adulthood. Like the gift, initiation is another socially evolved meme, ritual, rite of passage, which sets us firmly in touch with nature within our social context. 

As an adult, physical growth ceases abruptly, vital resources turn inward to other realms. Love, family, responsibilities. Ultimately, your child gets your gifts. We began in the womb of a hunter-gatherer when humans were part of nature, dependent, grateful, sharing all. Once you understand the true source of evil destroying us, the personal transformation is not so hard. As we reclaim our humanity, the movement takes on a momentum and we find ourselves in a singularity. 

A child has no sense of self/ other, then forms an identity/ ego. In civilization, nations matured to separate identities through physical growth, consuming our commons, our capital. Now we are at the end of our taking phase, as there is no more to take. We warriors must retake the commons. Return the commons to society, to nature, to God. Learn to live off the bounty of that capital, or rather, what's left of it. It is time to give, cocreate, experience reunion greater than the original union,ⁱⁱ since it contains the journey of separation.

The love of Earth as a lover is famously represented by the Earth picture from outer space, a Valentine card from the Creator, which is surely embedded in everyone's mind. (I don't need to upload it here. You can see it in your mind's eye.) We've lost our ancient initiation rituals apart from military conscription, but alternative service, even just graduation, a sacred vow to protect your clan totem, nature-as-your-lover, can become part of our inner growth, reincorporating into a larger transpersonal identity, without pretending to destroy, kill anything. Leaving aside conscription, we have a debased form with DIY drug initiations, dangerous thrills, etc used to test oneself, but aimless, leaving us in perpetual destructive adolescence. 

A money system based on growth is incompatible with a life of cocreation based on adult love and initiation. Money will always distort our roles, intentions, our coordinating of human activity, always prey to the allure of gold et al. These essays are peppered with paradoxes. Money is the king of paradox. Scrubbing our minds of the illusion of scarcity, greed, violence as 'the way of the world' won't be easy, but as I came to see Eisenstein's worldview, I have felt a lightness of being, as if I've found the new-old paradigm of my uniqueness and connection with all already inside, as if it was there from my first perilous, joyous interactions with the world as an infant, but lost as our Stories took hold. 

I've always chosen the least amount of punch clock work, relished periods of 'unemployment' to travel, write, think. As a bachelor, I've had the luxury of living according to a proto-Story of Self/ World that I've cobbled together with lots of help, lots of gifts to supplement my own gifts. Now that I have only a few years left of consciousness, I am concerned about giving away what I have left to good causes. I didn't articulate any of this 'strategy' as demonetizing my life and whatever 'stored value' (i.e., monetized commons) I 'possess'. In a sense, I actively evolved, arrived at Eisenstein's evolved intent to demonetization myself. A happy convergent evolution. 

Like Eisenstein, I believe all knowledge should be the collective gift of the intellectual commons. That we both arrived at the same conclusion separately is also a happy coincidence. Neither of us cares about using our knowledge to make money. Precisely the opposite. We are devoted to destroying as much money as possible. We are like little lights, separate but illuminating a bit around us. Like a vampire (an image welling up from the unconscious of capitalism), the monetizers fear our light. They literally and figuratively die in the daylight of conscious awareness. More lights will come to life and eventually, as our crises mount, our lights will lead the way to the singularity demanding our preparation and our plunging into a new dispensation. TINA.

Exercise: rethink the Story, demonetize

Many (most?) people operate unwittingly in the gift. All our most important decisions, choices, are made with our embedded relations with others, nature, in mind. Trying to maximize anything in a complex world is pointless. The best most people can do is live simply, not defile anything/ anyone, love and show gratitude. Eisenstein lets us see the truth behind our muddled, muddling truths and mistaken paths. Our being changes, picks up these shards of truth, when our Story of Self/ World collapses. We need a total rethink or rather we are being forced to rethink.

Have some fun now. Plough through these points and feel the death grip of money wane, one chunk of commons reclaimed after another:

*Time is cyclical not exponential. Law of return: everything gifted (or thrown out) goes somewhere and is food for something, returns to its source.

*Protect nature not deplete, rape nature. Natives believe that you should always leave nature in a better condition, never worse.

*See the world as one of abundance, not scarcity.

*Universalize social welfare. All the past is the gift of our ancestors to us. We deserve a share. The same with the natural wealth of Earth. The current system makes us work for what is ours already. A social dividend frees work from the pressure of necessity. Now we give welfare 'entitlements' to the destitute. Give it to everyone. All are 'entitled'. The purpose of life is not just to 'make a living'. The fear that BI (basic income) will make people lazy has been disproved in every tentative experiment, from India to Canada (before it is shut down by governments sensing it is a threat to our Stories). It let mothers care for children, young people go back to school, farmers buy a cow, ...

*Abolish income tax. This helps productive entrepreneurial capitalists as well as ordinary workers. Tax property as rent for private use of the commons.

*Cancel most debt. Especially 'odious debt'. The new 'class struggle' in the transition is debt holders vs debtors. Rescue miscreant lenders but with the warning: last time.

*Property (i.e., monetized commons) includes radio waves, patents, mineral rights etc. They are the collective product of human culture and commons. Keep all new sources of wealth in the public domain. Reclaim what was stolen through campaigns, government if necessary.

*Rule: all costs should be internalized in a 'price'. This is another key step which we all (except the polluters) agree on. That alone will eliminate probably more than half the junk we now consume, with its insane wrapping and planned obsolescence. Imagine a world without plastic wrappings clogging our lives. Use regulations, fines, but if it's still cheaper to pay and continue to pollute, then nationalize. And fines are crude, with no incentive to reduce pollution below the upper limit. No finite valuation is possible for the infinitely precious. No amount of pollution is acceptable.

*Instead of artificially stimulating full employment, creating busy work, better to just leave nature alone unless we absolutely need to steal some of the commons for our existence. Less (work) is more (commons).

*Find an acceptable controlled disequilibrium trade-off at an acceptable pollution limit. Turn the power of the entrepreneur to conservation, pollution control, toxic waste remediation. Give him/her an incentive to 'do good', not just 'produce goods', where 'good' can easily be bad.

*Localize the economy, money. Now communities are in a race to the bottom to attract industry to a locale. Zero stimulus to any local economy, no care for the environment. vs a local employer who knows and loves his locale, even if he's less 'efficient' (at making money). A localized money system backed by your commons strengthens local political and economic sovereignty. The euro's days are numbered. What a totalitarian straitjacket it has proved to be. Capital controls, forex transaction tax. Preferential treatment to local businesses for contracts. Public banks. Small town revival of real life (not retirees, prisons, tourists).

*Law: use of x as money will increase the supply of x. So choose positive goods for humanity and planet to use as money. E.g., clean air. Money backed by clean air means you work to have lots of clean air (i.e., money). Use carbon credits, sulfur credits as money. Everyone will want carbon and sulfur credits so will clean up production.ⁱⁱⁱ Promote a new materialism that treats the world as sacred.

*Rule: Negative interest. Prosperity without growth. It automatically encourages equitable distribution of wealth, ends discounting of your future for short-term returns. Embodies the truth about the world, one of decay, return to the source. We are no longer the illusory exception to nature's law of controlled disequilibrium, of homeostasis. Positive interest-based money is Marx's primitive accumulation, monetizing the commons. Our transition can be said to have in started in 2009, following the financial crisis, when central banks first posted a zero, even negative interest rate (in Norway and Japan), and only inflation and massive public spending in Covid inched it up.

*Most people live hand to mouth, so decaying currency is fine. The rich can still save but must invest at risk to maintain the value of their wealth. You can't make money 'work for you'. It is only a measure, a means of exchange. You and your workers must do the work. Which is only 'natural'. No free lunch.

*Degrowth. Absent the driving force of positive risk-free interest, there is no need for economic growth to promote the flow of capital. With advances in technology, the option is to do less monetized work. Now real unemployment is 20%; we are in a permanent state of overcapacity. Accept, welcome the end of 'full employment'.

*Deprogram ourselves/ society from the growth-is-good mantra. There is massive work to be done to undo the depredations of the past two centuries, more than enough work for everyone. Rich and poor will experience greater 'affluence' (to be redefined) as if the economy were growing. Higher wages, easier, more enjoyable employment. You will be bringing a dying nature, society back to life.

*Steps are synergistic. All converge on ending, reducing the ability to monetize others' commons.

What a wonderful inspiration as we see and feel the change happening and we are part of it. Sharing more, consuming less; giving more, selling less. The internet is a gift network. We are flooded with information and moneyless services (ads, travel, journalism, music). Of course, 'we' are scrambling to monetize it. Governments should regulate, break up, or nationalize monopolies like Google, Facebook, Twitter.

What you can do

*Demurrage (cut) your own wealth, say 5% a year. That's what everyone will be doing when we finally get our new Story of Self/ World together. Use it or lose it. Buy a community bond. Land trusts are a way of demonetizing your neighborhood, taking land off the real estate market. Your money 'works for the community'. Sign off on the positive interest, ploughing it back into the community. Your money is safe. The land, the community aren't going anywhere. You can always remonetize a bit of it if you're needy.

*Make 'less (monetized) is more (freedom, commons)', 'work = play' your credos. These supposedly utopian fantasies are already acheivable. Make as many days a year as possible Buy Nothing Days.

*Pay forward, a meme thanks to Heinlein's Between Planets (1951), but first recorded in writing in 4th c BC in a play by Dyskolos. It's the essence of gifting, as having children means we are all paying forward all the time. It redefines 'pay', just as we must redefine interest, money, invest (put clothes on your money, make it beautiful), security (lots of friends) ...

*Join an alternative money club or an online goods exchange forum, They are alive though not a real force at present. 'Scrip' arguably was key to the North's victory in the US civil war. The Swiss WIR, LETS, many successful experiments in the 1920s-30s (the German and Austrian government had to ban the miracle currencies that put people to work and gave everyone coal). They are fragile in a globalized, monetized world, and will be more like 'icing on the cake' than the cake itself.

*Join a food bank. But to qualify, you should already have a low level of monetization of your life. You can always cheat and go to an anonymous, stressful supermarket for some variety, but it is a joy to greet friends who happily let you 'shop' but in moderation with no money prostituting your access to life-giving nourishment. Over a year, that demonetizes you (and society) by several thousand dollars.

*Forget about restaurants (except for big bashes). Demonetize your nourishment as much as possible. Jobs? Provide a universal basic income and let the aspiring actors perform for free in the park or whatever. Join an amateur theater group. Be creative.

*Play, play music, sing. The arts were meant to be performed, not just passively observed. Everyone should be a musician, a dancer, an artist, a craftsman. Find, develop, celebrate your 'gifts'. Put your awareness to work on all levels, spiritual, physical, social/ cultural.

*Walk, run, bike, swim, row, sail, use public transit, sign off on planes, cars, trucks.

*Lobby, write letters, join a local resistance group to stop further theft of our inheritance. Activist Kelsey Day fighting a gas pipeline through pristine forest in North Carolina:  This violence is not unstoppable. It is not inevitable. To resist the Mountain Valley Pipeline is to be in daily solidarity with these mountains. Solidarity is the opposite of loneliness.

*Proselytize. This is our new religion. Consider seriously Buddhism and Islam (see below), the former a bit wishy-washy on interest, the latter the only religion that has stood firm in the face of relentless pressure for the past 500 years to monetize. Sadly, Pauline Christianity became a refashioned Roman-empire religion, then lost the thread completely with the Reformation (despite Luther's protest). There are still fine Christians of all sects but the religion has strayed too far, that being the reason for Islam. Christianity is part of the problem now.

Despite a century of war to force Islam into the capitalist mentality (since 9/11, 4.5m mostly Muslims have been killed in GWOT (Global War on Terrorism)), it has remained the last holdout against the Devil, interest. And yet it is still the fasted growing religion. I wonder why?

Literally every moment of your day will be different, better, using you new vision, with joyous intent.

 

They Live (1988) by John Carpenter

Cold ugly cynicism or warm beautiful passion

Ayn Rand's manifesto, trumpeting the separate self, mercenary ego, appeals to ego-thumping teens, not to mature adults. We are here to express our gifts; our deepest desire to be fully alive. Usury is for adolescence; now we see the answer is the gift, for cocreative partnership with Earth. You are in love. Recall that rush of ecstasy you once felt for your beloved. Every day is Valentine's day. We can already fashion our new Story of Self and the World. The main themes are permaculture, holistic medicine, renewable energy, restorative justice … The mind likes cynicism, its solipsistic comfort and safety, but the heart urges otherwise. Toward beauty.

The Story can't be cynical. Our separation Story embodied in money never was true, as cynical Keynes realized. He assumed we would outgrow it soon (though he himself was stuck in the paradigm and wasn't able to see the new Story clearly). 'There is no Santa.' We are ready for next step. Sometimes we must live a lie to its fullest. See its extremes, deserts, prisons, wars, concentration camps, wastage, desecration of the good, true, beautiful. Now we ready for the age of reunion. The shift from Earth as parent, enemy, slave, to Earth as lover. When in love, what you do comes back to you; her pain is your pain. A new human identity takes shape as a connected self living in cocreative partnership with Earth.

There is so much to relearn. I look back on my university economics studies with the same bemusement as Galbraith. Happily, I never needed to spout the neoclassical economic nonsense, having discovered Marx (and sabotaged my career as lecturer). But like everyone, Marx was a prisoner of his time, which was the age of imperialism and technology. It has taken time for the dust to settle, the entire 20th c of horrors and marvels, to see through the Stories of Self and World of that, this era. Marx too was cynical about capitalism, deconstructing that Story, but his call for revolution was premature. The Story of Self and the World still held the majority in thrall, our knowledge of precapitalist societies barely begun, and the new revolutionary stories were faulty and unravelled. We have lots of knowledge now and lots of experience. We are ready.

Follow the logic. It's exciting. Demonetize something, see the money economy shrink, defang the cursed gold. Degrow your own economy, i.e., transform it back into the Garden of Eden. 'Less is more' in so many ways. The new stories narrate themselves. Children especially will identify with them. They will absorb the 'good' in their formative years and then live it out. Just thinking about all this brings tears of joy. When you feel down, give a gift, create some beauty, help usher in the new world.

---

Postscript: Islam fits seamlessly with Eisenstein's analysis and recommendations, as summarized below.

We are born with our fitra (human consciousness, mind-body). Our soul is the spark of spirit in our mind-body, which struggles with temptations, Satan, and works to be the conscious, aware servant of God. Our natural state is humility and gratitude. The law of return is at the heart of the Quran. We strive for mizan balance at all times, in our inner and outer worlds. There is no interest so no discounting the future of the debtor (in the extreme he becomes nothing, your slave), and no exaggerating the worth of the owner of money by awarding him even more money. Usury is right up there with treason and blasphemy:

(If) he desists, he shall have what has already passed, and his affair is in the hands of Allah, and whoever returns (to it) these are the inmates of the fire, they shall abide in it.” (Surah al-Baqarah 2:275).

 

8 laws, 9 rules of sacred economics

Basic 'units of account' in economics should be humility and gratitude not selfishness and egotism.

Law of return. Everything you consume is consumed somewhere else in nature. The uroboros.

Law. We are hopelessly dependent on each other and on nature.

Law. Everything is sacred. Our lives are given to us. A gift. So our default is gratitude.

Law: In a dynamic system, there is no equilibrium but a state of controlled disequilibrium, infinitely complex.

Law: Every proprietor owes the community ground-rent. Corollary: Only the value of improvement to land is 'individual property'.

Law: Capitalism is conspiracy with no conspirators.

Law: 'Interest' means 'constantly, exponentially growing supply of money' which means a constant, exponentially increase in exchanging things

Law: Every dollar returned to the commons demonetizes it and ourselves, destroying money incrementally towards a truly moneyless society.

 

Rule of capitalism. Social agreements govern the creation of money, primary dictum that money should go to those who will make even more of it.

Rule of capitalism: More for me means less for you. Vs gift. More for me means more for you.

Rule of capitalism: Make the infinite finite. Vs gift: Minimize finite, maximize infinite. Money violates natural law of return and spiritual law of impermanence.

Rule: Money works best with quantitative needs. The qualitative dimension of 'good' or 'service' does not fit easily.

Rule: 'Interest' means 'constantly, exponentially growing supply of money' which means a constant, exponentially increase in exchanging things.

Rule: It is very easy to destroy anti-capitalist structures (gift, socialism).

Rule: All costs should be internalized in a 'price'.

Rule: Implicit rules of interest: For the debtor it implicitly discounts your/our future. for Mr Moneybags, it exaggerates his perpetual sacrifice of present consumption.

Rule for transition. Protect remaining commons and limit growth to hasten crash and mitigate its severity.

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