The problem with shifting paradigms is the language new thinkers are trying to shift people away from: Those aware of the fact that the earth was round a few hundred years ago had great difficulty describing the ‘round earth’ idea to those who were embedded in ‘the earth is flat, that’s the way it is’.
“The earth is round” the sailors would say knowing it as a fact, but that phrase could not exist then except in fantasy and even then was a stretch because every thought rested on the background ‘knowledge’ that the earth was flat – that’s the way it was – “the people are starving” they say today.
Every edifice thrown up, brick or paper shack or tree house, every street crossed with a parasol turning in the sun, every kite flown, every poem written was done on an earth that was flat – only sea captains and telescope viewers were considering other thoughts.
It’s said that Paul Kruger came down to Durban in South Africa to ask circumnavigator Joshua Slocum what shape the world was in. Slocum (who knew) could only use ‘flat earth’ terms saying something like, “I’ve sailed in as straight a line as I can right to the edge again and again and did not fall off; instead came back to where I began.”
Nothing fundamentally changed in the way buildings were built or poems written after the ‘round earth’ paradigm made its way into common belief – taller buildings had to be built with Foucault’s Pendulum in mind to allow for the rotation as well as the roundness, and poems flowered with the new wealth of girth.
What’s happening to the global economy today is a huge flat earth to round earth shift in our fundamental thinking that cannot be explained in ‘flat earth’ terms although clues can be found in the kind of thinking that some writers are using to stretch our way into new economic understandings.
When the shift has settled into the new ‘way it is’, very few basic economic principles will change.
In fact, we will probably return to those early simple models that actually worked again and again and provided general prosperity (there you are! a ‘flat earth’ phrase that does not exist in today’s capitalist reality).
Rome enjoyed general prosperity, the original American colonies were hugely prosperous and during the Industrial Revolution!
America prospered during the Civil War, Germany during the Reichmark period.
(Because of many factors involved, little is made of the fact that between 1933 and 1937 Germany went from millions sleeping in her streets to become perhaps the most powerful economy in Europe and this also during the Great Depression, a ‘function’ of the old flat-earth boom-bust capitalism!)
What did these economies, from Rome to pre-war Germany have in common? Sovereign money! Asset based, government issued money. Real money.
A ‘new’ concept to us is that money is fundamentally a tool that just helps move goods and services through the economy from manufacturers to consumers and very little more than that!
In Iceland and other and other pockets of resistance there is a return to the use of that understanding, the ‘Ancient Curse of Usury’ is gone, the globally crippling ‘cost of interest’ has been written off, the repetititive commodity crashes coupled with transfers of middle class wealth to the already rich that a capitalist status quo has overseen for three hundred years will go – none are possible to sustain.
The use of fiat paper money is being rejected simply because it carries interest, is debt instead of asset based and is not porous, double-ply and disposable as good paper should be.
So the OWS movement may be able to return fairly soon to the general prosperity of all people, something more than possible given the huge new resources coming available to the new paradigm.
One of which is our ingenuity. But it’s a massive change, it’s happening fast and we have very little control over it short of being prepared.
The next shock after this “double-dip recessionary’ phase will be a Depression with concomitant food shortages, food maybe even destroyed again lke the in the creosote dumpis of the 30’s “to keep prices up”.
It might be wise to start doing something about that, like so many people have already.