Does our future look grim, and should I be insuring myself against it?

A friend send me this question in response to the post, 'what happened to the promise of leisure (and pleasure)?

A few years ago I heard someone claim that people were insuring against the future. I think they meant that people were believing that the future was going to be worse than the present or past. I'm wondering how might we live in the belief that the best days are ahead of us while also being aware of what is real? Holding an optimistic perspective despite the signs of breakdown all around. Is this emergent thinking?

Thanks, and I believe this question to be so relevant I want to reply to it as an open blog post.

Underpinning our culture and way of life is what we call our socio-economic mode of production. It's what keeps us busy, the lights on, the roofs over our heads and the food in our stomachs, and it's typically what we use to define our progress.

So the question may well be.

1. Is our current socio-economic mode of production on the verge of collapse, which from what I'm hearing, seems like a real possibility?
2. And how can or should I protect myself from the fall out of such a collapse, if it happens, while keeping a positive mental attitude?

I'm uncomfortable with hyperbole which principally seeks to induce a contraction provoking a predictable response. For example, 'Click here to save the word', or 'Do you want to earn $500 per hour, working 1 hour per day from home with no previous experience?'

I'm also uncomfortable with simplistic yes, no answers (in this context), which minimises or even negates the need to explore and understand, but rather seeks only tacit agreement or disagreement. And where to from there?

I would therefore prefer to frame the first question thus.

Is our socio-economic mode of production in the process of (more or less radical) transformation? Now this raises a few more interesting questions. For example, transforming from what to what? What are the indicators, or what is the supporting evidence to corroborate such a theory? What is the depth of the transformation, in other words is it a profound core, or a superficial surface transformation. What's the best guess estimate on the timeline. How may I best participate or oppose, which is in a way asking how to best protect myself from the worst of the fallout, or even benefit through and on the other side of, this process of transformation.

And the questions framed as transformation also helps us better understand how we might go about insuring ourselves from the worst consequences of such a transformation, if such a thing is possible. Because insurance requires we bet on how things are going to be in the future, be it options, stocks even attitudes. If we make the wrong guess we lose, if we make an accurate guess, we benefit. So in order to make the right guess we need to be as informed as possible about what's really going on.

Collapse also implies a shocking end with nothing, or little of value and beauty to follow, whereas transformation implies continuity from past to present to future, a change to something higher and better. And this would help us in keeping a positive mental attitude through the process of transformation, which can be both destructive (yes collapse of the old) and traumatic. The degree of destruction really depends upon the degree to which we cling to that which is dead (or dying), inhibiting the natural process of transformation.

And the evidence is just pouring in. Global warming and climate change, over production and consumption, mental dis-ease, financial turmoil and, and this is important, incredible break through's in thinking, intelligence, science, spiritual awareness and cognitive insight.

Of all the indicators, simple maths is the best. Constant global growth be it at 3% or 10% per annum is impossible given that we live in a finite context (planet earth). At an average of 4.9% growth the world consumes double what it consumed and produced in the entire history of the world before that, every 14 years.

This is significant.

Every 14 years, based on average global growth of 4.9%, the world produces and consumes double the amount it has in total ever consumed and produced through-out its history until that point. This means we are currently consuming and producing double the amount ever produced and consumed, for the entire history of the world prior to 1998.

And we can't stop growing because then we go bankrupt. We need to grow at that speed, or even faster if we are to stay ahead of global debt payments and the interest due on that debt.

Quite simply, we can't stop growing (we go bankrupt) and we can't go on growing (we run out of raw materials).

Constant growth is a myth because

1. We will run out of materials, be they natural resources or intellectual property, to commercialise
2. We simply don't need all the stuff we are forced to make to sustain constant growth. Most of it moves rapidly from factory to garbage dump, hence the need for the throw-away culture.
3. We will alter the biosphere to such an extent as to make in inhospitable to humanity
4. We will go bankrupt if we slow growth beyond a point allowing us to service the debt.
5. And it's all escalating at an exponential rate, 2x2, x2, x2, x2 at a constant rate, like seconds ticking away on a clock.

Even now the only way we are staying ahead of the game is through monetising and commercialising every dimension of our human cultural commons (which belongs to us all), exploiting every natural resource (which also belongs to us all), whilst exporting the real cost of that production into the future. This is a trick companies like Enron used, except they got caught, but we just do it in smarter ways. Well not so smart, it's just called global denial.

And this all happens while the money system, as it is and because of cultural design, pools profits into smaller and smaller points of collection, meaning the disparity between have's and have not's also grows exponentially.

The data conclusively shows, the system as it is will break down (whether we lynch culprits or not). It is inevitable and it will happen quickly when it does, in much the same way a business recognises its bankruptcy, quickly. This does not mean is goes bankrupt quickly, just that it refuses to recognise the signs until it's forced to acknowledge it's real financial position. Until that point the directors live in the powerful elixir of false profit, hope and denial.

And bankruptcy seems like the point we will get to first, although this is not certain. In bankruptcy, all commercial activity stops. There is simply no money available to facilitate the exchange of goods and services. Willing sellers and buyers have no medium of exchange, except for the few who may have access to precious metals, but this would be a very interim solution, since the have's already control it (and it's another scarce resource, which doesn't really solve the problem of scarcity).

Of course the old system (transformation always implies the death of the old) does not have to end so traumatically, if we recognise early enough and respond to the data. The longer we delay, the more inevitable the traumatic collapse of the 'scarcity' based system will be.

And I can hear you whisper. Sure sounds like collapse to me, and it would be if something new wasn't already emerging.

What we are witnessing in the world today is a global shift, at the leading edge, from scarcity to abundance consciousness. This in itself is simply a necessary precursor to a new way of thinking and the development of a 'revolutionary / evolutionary' new economic mode(s) of production. And it's important to point out that the current model got us from wandering the plains in search of our next meal, to here. It was necessary, in that this was how it happened.

Scarcity and the age of growth are not bad. It played a crucial role in our human evolution. It just can't take us from here to there. Everything is useful to a point, ceases to be useful anymore and then deteriorates into a problem. If not attended to it shifts from a problem to pathological pattern, ending its life in psychotic self-destruction. Our current system appears to be in the final stages of psychosis. And even now, there is lots of money to be made. There is incredible profit in destruction and many merchants who are happy to profit while 'Rome Is Burning'.

It's important to recognise that abundance is not the opposite of scarcity, that's simply the antithesis and a negation of the principals of scarcity, a subtle confirmation of those very principals. Abundance is the step after scarcity, after the benefits which flowed from that level of consciousness, have run their course.

It may be easier to picture this as the most significant step in human evolution is over 50,000 years. As the emergence of a new species, playing by different rules, rules beyond the comprehension of scarcity mankind. There is simply nothing I can say to scarcity man that will help him understand abundance, in much the same way that it would be possible to explain to Neanderthal man, the rules of modern commerce.

Suffice it to say, that we will witness and are witnessing the transformation of the financial systems, of our understanding of 'what money is and what it does'. From a thing holding independent value, to knowledge (an idea), signifying a level and degree of contribution.

At the heart of a new socio-economic mode of production is going to lie a new story of why we are here, what we are supposed to do. Growth will not be measured by economic activity, but rather by community, wholehearted participation and care.

We will no longer be driven by the need to earn a living so that maybe at some point we can get around to doing what it is that we really want to do. It will be the revolutionary shift to a steady state economy, where the gifts of our planet and cultural heritage are recognised as the human commons and our real wealth.

And the best insurance policy. Personal transformation. Your shift, the shift you bring to your family, community, society, culture and together we bring to the world. Your reconnection with community (scarcity and the age of growth came at the price of isolation and separation), because when the money system as it is fails, which it will, it's the community who will support each other.

There is no free meal; this is not a change external to the very essence of who you are. It is not a cognitive, dry intellectualising. It's a metamorphosis of being, becoming and participating. It runs so deep and alters our world so profoundly that the impulse to deny it is overpowering.

So of all things, I would suggest the biggest insurance policy would be, knowledge, verifying and learning. Is what I have written here the delusions of the insane? Just wrapping your brain around the fragility of our financial system and economic mode of production causes incredible angst and tension. It causes us to contract, deny and dig further into the very system which mathematically cannot continue.

This will create anger, even rage and this is healthy. In any relationship that is dying, there is pain upon the recognition of its passing. However, we don't want to use that pain and projected anger to force us to take the next step. Pain, anger and suffering simply can't comprehend the systems of abundance, let alone participate in developing them.