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To set the stage, here’s metaphorical view of - The Money/Energy dancing duo of modern civilization:
We might think of fossil energy as golden nuggets of highly concentrated energy found in Pandora’s ample box of tricks. The coal, the gas, the oil all have gone into enabling human population growth to surge from about 500 million to almost 8 billion in a mere 300 years. But energy was not alone in this exponential growth adventure. Energy needed a dancing partner capable of a fast tango. Energy needed a Monetary Economic System (MES) to facilitate the ever expanding volume of exchanges in goods and service that were, and still are, mostly enabled by fossil fuels. Over the years, sapient humans kept modifying the MES in order to expand the money supply to meet the accelerating energy demand and growth of goods and services exchanges for burgeoning billions of humans. Within this 300 year window the MES changed first from a commodity basis of gold and silver, and then to fiat – computer-generated data. Now the MES has infinite expansion capability on the money side, indeed, the conductors of the MES orchestra have developed their music such that it will collapse without continuous growth of ‘E’. With such vast amounts of money flowing in and out of banks and industry, it is not surprising that those in charge have felt a sense of entitlement at their success. And so constant hegemonism over time enabled them to cajole government rule-makers to tip the money scales heavily in their corporate favour, resulting in today’s vast economic and energy-use inequity.
However, the fossil energy dancing partner, like the rest of the biophysical real world, is finite and shortages are bringing this tango to its inevitable conclusion. Fossil fuels with a high EROI ratio have ended.1 If we humans were truly sapient, our leaders could have changed the music to a slow dance, perhaps The Last Waltz, or Goodnight Sweetheart. As couples leave the floor, we could adjust the monetary dancing partner in close concert with the diminishing biophysical real-world.
Note: If the music stops suddenly, tragedy will be swift for today’s massive human herd.
~~~
There appears to a disabling mystique surrounding the curtain at the end of the yellow brick road, and not many people venture to pull it back and to observe the magical money strings, and to see just who is plucking them.2
The underlying premise of this paper is that some of us have pulled back the curtain and find that the magic-like fiat debt-based fractional-reserve money-creation system, (MES) operated primarily by commercial banks, is a root cause of civilization’s apparent incompatibility with the finite Gaian biophysical world of nature. This reluctance to engage a root cause continues to thwart serious ecological corrective measures. This money system cannot be fixed.
Having this understanding frees us to speculate on a suitable replacement means of exchange.
Surely we need a BioPhysical Monetary Economic System (BPMES) that can be modularly expandable, region by region as opportunities arise. Opportunities are likely to arise in the form of collapsing elements of the existing growth-driven MES, or from difficulties imposed by the fossil energy downslope, or from ecological catastrophes, or from resource wars. Or the BPMES just might become a popular alternative.
Prior to this impending collapse it is imperative that we have established a comprehensive plan ‘B’: A system plan that it has found wide ranging acceptance and has been developed to a point of being capable of minimizing the inevitable chaos that our future appears to hold. Our plan ‘B’ should be seen as a proposal that will bring about a global syntropy3 – a reversal of the entropy now that now envelops the world of nature.
Today there are thousands of social change initiatives4 working to alieve nasty symptoms of today’s growth-driven governance. But they work in isolation. Since the majority of these efforts tend to run parallel to the plan ‘B’ proposed herein, their individual efforts could gain a significant synergetic boost if they were to become part of a comprehensive socio/political/economic paradigm changing initiative.
A keystone understanding of this BPMES proposal is the old adage:
‘You can't manage what you don't measure. It is an old management adage that is still accurate. Unless you measure something, you don't know if it is getting better or worse. You can't manage for improvement if you don't measure to see what is getting better and what isn't’.5
The proposed BPMES has the functional characteristics of an interactive dynamic system that gathers and process essential global information to establish feedback pathways that move human civilization at all levels, from the individual to community and regional level towards the goal of reducing human activity.6 until we are living within the replenishing resources of our planetary home. Human psychological nature is a primary consideration in the design of this complex interactive dynamic system that could provide a viable form of stewardship for the small blue dot called Planet Earth (so named by Carl Sagan after seeing an image of Earth from deep space). Since this image can have a soul stirring effect, we suggest naming the overall system, Blue Planet Governance (BDG).
Ideas within this brief presentation are extracted from the web booklet called Paradigm Junction7 that envisions in some detail the potential governance system of our future society 50 years after a chaotic period that leads to relatively stability after a significant paradigm change. Various references will be made to Paradigm Junction in this presentation.
My background is engineering. After reading the controversial 1972 Limits to Growth report8 about 38 years ago I began an intensive study of human psychology in order to understand why the animal with our self-given name, homo-sapiens, could be so stupid. This side journey has been enlightening as it seems that a general understanding of human nature is essential to understand why we have not dealt with our dire predicament, given that all of the needed information has been available for several decades and there are no physical barriers preventing us from engaging appropriate solutions. Data from this study led to a book in 1995 titled, A 21st Century Steward’s Handbook: Only obsolete human traditions, inhibitions and taboos separate the present and a sustainable future.9 Several chapters cover in depth aspects of human nature that are essential to understanding our predicament. (Chapters are linked in footnotes below)
The 1972 Limits To Growth report gave us explicit and graphic indication that by about 2010, we humans would move into a period of serious decline in our well-being resulting from overgrowth in human population: depletion of essential resources; and the pollution that we create. In the past 50 years, a multitude of studies and reports paint the same picture. We now call our era the Anthropocene, as we realize that our massive planetary footprint is fostering the 6th great extinction of our fellow species.
Logic suggests that we should change our ways ASAP! But since we have not, we need to understand why.
It appears that our evolved psychological nature, having served us reasonably well throughout our evolution, has not prepared us to easily change our acquired beliefs, customs and traditions as required to accommodate today’s rapidly deteriorating conditions. One of our characteristics is to discount the future in favour of the present, and we individuals collectively vote for leaders promising to follow pathways providing us with the maximum short term comfort.
It is common biological knowledge that when any species discovers a limited niche environment with energy/food abundance, overgrowth and die-off is the result.
Psychologist Robert Ornstein10 stated that our physical evolution is complete: What humans need is a psychological evolution in order to shed our pathological adherence to obsolete traditions. This quote by Daisetz Suzuki, Zen philosopher, highlights Ornstein’s message:
Man makes many tools and uses them effectively in various fields of his activity,
but he is always exposing himself to the tyranny of the tools he has made.
The result is that he is no more master of himself, but an abject slave to his surroundings,
and the worst thing is that he is not conscious of this fact."
In his ‘79 book, Mind and Nature, Gregory Bateson uses the name Abstract Reality in reference to our reification of the idea-platforms that we have created. Some examples are: constitutions; nations; religions; corporations; land ownership; a ball game or money. When these social norms are handed down from generation to generation they gain in concreteness. When Carl Jung alluded to this line of thought he suggested that the individual is the carrier of the culture. Many of these thoughts are expanded in the Paradigm Junction booklet, Chapter 2a The Triad.11
Variability
A large percentage of us cannot escape the mental prisons of our abstract realities that are no longer appropriate. However, nature provides the magical ingredient of species variability that enables evolutionary change. Perhaps human variability can provide enough sapient leaders to facilitate Ornstein’s conscious evolution, and to initiate revolutionary change in human governance. The 80/20 guideline is often handy when considering how groups of people will behave. From Paradigm Junction Index/Glossary:
When stating that, under these circumstances, people will do that, generally, the 80/20 rules suggests that only 80% will do that, and the remaining 20% will not do that. However, the dividing line is fuzzy with sometimes a wide range of overlapping views. It might be 99% to 1% on some characteristics. It applies to both physical and mental characteristics. See: Human Variability.
Social psychologist Milgram illustrated this point when he wrote: “We are puppets controlled by the strings of society. Yet what is also true is that not all puppets jump when their strings are pulled.”
Perhaps 5 or 15%, of us can refuse puppet-hood, and look beyond today’s clouded mindset12 and speculate on solutions to deal with the way we humans are: more guided by emotion than logic. The need to change from today’s Monetary Economic System (MES) to a BioPhysical Monetary Economic System (BPMES) was expressed in the title of a paper by Hall and Klitgaard13 20 years ago – The need for a new, biophysical-based paradigm in economics for the second half of the 21st century. One way of doing this is to return to a commodity-based monetary system where the commodity basis is measurable Real Wealth:
Real Wealth is a measurement of robust ecology and of the general health and happiness of the people!
This definition of wealth is from Riane Eisler’s ‘98 book, The Real Wealth Of Nations.
While corporate management can find success by measuring monetary flows, it is an invalid metric for governing a region, a country or planet. The measurement and management of Real Wealth must become a core concept in future governance. The first step to development of any new system is to envision the desired working model. This essential step was outlined in a keynote address to the International Society for Ecological Economics in 1994 given by Donella Meadows. She highlighted the need to envision the finished product as a starting point for change. She opened her talk thus:
Vision is the most vital step in the policy process. If we don’t know where we want to go, it makes little difference that we make great progress. Yet vision is not only missing almost entirely from policy discussions; it is missing from our whole culture. We talk about our fears, frustrations, and doubts endlessly, but we talk only rarely and with embarrassment about our dreams. Environmentalists have been especially ineffective in creating any shared vision of the world they are working toward -- a sustainable world in which people live within nature in a way that meets human needs while not degrading natural systems.
Hardly anyone can imagine that world, especially not as a world they’d actively like to live in. The process of building a responsible vision of a sustainable world is not a rational one. It comes from values, not logic. Envisioning is a skill that can be developed, like any other human skill. This paper indicates how.
Unfortunately, it appears that Meadows’ advice to envision as a first step has, generally, not been taken. For our purpose the term, Post-normal speculation14, may provide greater clarity than the more general term, envisioning. This concept was introduced at the 2004 ISEE conference: Simply stated:
Post-normal science is a concept developed by Silvio Funtowicz and Jerome Ravetz, attempting to characterise a methodology of inquiry that is appropriate for cases where "facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent". It is primarily applied in the context of long-term issues where there is less available information than is desired by stakeholders.
In the future that we and our children face, facts will definitely be uncertain and the stakes will be extremely high. It seems that many people are not comfortable speculating in this post-normal area, perhaps because there will be no proof of concept, and there is considerable likelihood of being wrong. Gut feelings, intuition and our limited understanding of the interplay of multiple systems and subsystems will be our only guide. The world of academia is generally not conducive to such speculation.15
In order to adequately deal with the subject issue, we start with a few basic assumptions that are justified in the Paradigm Junction booklet.
The assumptions are these:
- The world of nature – personified as Gaia by scientist Lovelock, is an unguided interactive dynamic system.
- The human world of civilization is a subsystem of the Gaian system.
- Civilization is human-created and has acquired the non-viable goal of infinite growth.
- There is zero possibility of a happy(er) ending for humanity until money creation is under the control of a scientifically informed agency that works to maximize Real Wealth as defined by Eisler.
- Because of the universal daily human/money interactions involved with exchanges of goods and services, monetary flow control acts as a regulator of human-activity. For example, more money equals more spending. Monetary flow control with a BPEMS, guided by up to dated measurements of the many factors that comprise Real Wealth, can continue to regulate human-activity as part of a dynamic system of governance with the long-term goal of reaching a collective ecological footprint of less than one to one.
- Many valid reasons show that large nation states such as the USA, Canada, Russia and China are simply too large to govern satisfactorily. Many of these reasons are spelled out in books by Gar Alperovitz.16
Speculating on design of a biophysical and ecological macroeconomics system.
In his ’72 book, Designing Freedom, cyberneticist Stafford Beer17 wrote:
I am proposing simply that society should use its tools to redesign its institutions, and to operate those institutions quite differently. You can imagine all the problems. But the first and gravest problem is in the mind, screwed down by all those cultural constraints. You will not need a lot of learning to understand what I am saying: what you will need is intellectual freedom. It is a free gift for all who have the courage to accept it. Remember: our culture teaches us not intellectual courage, but intellectual conformity.
As Beer points out, we need only apply change to some of our institutions and to operate a few things differently. This is important since the majority of humans tend to resist any significant change from their normal way of doing things. It is likely that perhaps 80% (?) of people are either unaware of, or will deny that there is a global issue, or they are simply unlikely to be motivated toward acceptance of the dire need to change our ways, or they will be attracted to the comfortable deceptive messages of the FUD (Fear Uncertainty Doubt) organizations18 that go to great lengths to assure the masses that the scientists are wrong. The FUD message that, All is well, don’t worry, are highly appealing to many because it provides relief from the anxiety associated with acceptance that the human predicament is real.
Hopefully, 15 or 20 percent of us can do as Beer suggests, undo our screwed down cultural constraints, and agree on a viable model of a dynamic society with the goal of becoming sustainable. When this is established and made known, it may create the conditions for wider acceptance of the Blue Planet Governance proposals among existing social change initiatives. This BDG proposal will become increasingly desirable as conditions deteriorate under the Business As Usual Titanic course to which our governments commit us – this includes inhabitants of steerage and first class as well as the Titanic captains who all fail to take account of biophysical resources realties.
To stress Donella Meadows’ recommendation, it is essential that leaders of the few of us in the biophysical economic community overcome our latent inhibitions associated with future design and come to a shared agreement on the design of our future goal, whether it is this BDG proposal or another design, we need a shared vision of the goal. Only then can we reach out to compatible social change initiatives to build synergy.
In this Blue Planet Governance macroeconomic model, most change will occur at the political and economic levels, while the general public will notice relatively little change in local daily life, except that there will be a guaranteed minimum income and fewer working hours. While this idea flies in the face of what we have been programmed to think, the solid logic of economist JW Smith, in his ’89 book, The World’s Wasted Energy, suggests that over 50% of the world’s energy use is wasted on wars & military, unneeded products, frivolous travel, designed obsolescence, etc., etc.
And what would be wrong with automating all repetitive laborious tasks if the benefits from automation are fed back to the public domain in social benefits? The 50% energy waste Smith mentions leaves a significant cushion for both human activity reduction and improvement in the general health and happiness of the people, as we wind down both population numbers and resource throughput.
~~~
Blue Planet Governance
Paradigm Shift from the bottom up
We, the People:
Historically, when a significant regime change has been forced on a population, it is brought in at the Macro level, usually with the backup of military force. But handed-down cultures of the world resist such change, and individuals remain disenfranchised or unhappy, sometimes for generations, or forever.19 From this thought, we move on:
Global human activity begins with individual humans, and then couples, families, communities, regions, states and nations. Sociopsychology20 informs us that our individual behaviour is influenced somewhat by Macro, Meso and Micro levels, however, the level of influence drops rapidly as we move out from ‘self’.
The Micro Level #1
Since ‘self’ and very close relationships are capable of responding quickly and effectively to outside influence, this suggests that if we are to make a significant heading change of the global ship-of-state the best place to start would be at the micro level of human activity - the individual human and close-in relationships. And it would be best to focus that influence in an acceptable and familiar manner that is blind to an individual’s cultural acknowledgement, or to their acceptance of, any or all symptoms or causes of the human predicament. In the proposed Blue Planet Governance system, the Real Wealth of one’s Region is the basis for the amount of money available within each Region of the world. The money available to each individual is partly determined by the Region’s overall, Wealth Per Capita (WPC).
A significant factor influencing an individual’s resource throughput - activity - is one’s relative affluence - our available money. Where women are educated, free and equal, such affluence also influences procreation choices. Family and a close circle of friends are often involved in discussions regarding whether to have a child.
Meso Level #2
At this level, local peer pressure often affects our choices. And so do our interactions with neighbours, with church groups or other local organizations, including the county or city governments. All individuals will feel the pinch of reduced affluence from a low Regional WPC index. And this feeling will be reflected back to the spending or procreation choices of most individuals in the Region.
At the Macro Level
In the early days of Blue Planet Governance, the leaders will be the 10% to 20% of us who have accepted the reality of the human predicament revealed by scientific and observational evidence. And to keep the human spirit alive, we have a responsibility to construct the framework for Regional lifeboats as the Titanic MES sinks into the sea of time. A good book by Professor Lester Brown points out:
Envisioning a Sustainable Future, 1989 Lester Brown on Responsibility
Our common journey promises to be challenging and exciting even though difficult. It will be much easier and more likely successful if we face it optimistically with a deep understanding of the pace and character of social transformation. Those given the gift of understanding will become the conscious mind of the biocommunity, a global mind that will guide and hasten the transformation. Those who understand what is happening to our world are not free shirk this responsibility.
The backcast from 50 Years After Paradigm Change (050APC)
Our envisioned social/political/economic scene describes a brief overview of life 50 years After Paradigm Change (050APC) and provides a brief sketch of the nature of governance and established norms for those living within a large number of Regions of world where governance using an enlightened BioPhysical Economic Monetary System (BPMES) measuring real wealth and providing feedback at the human level to regulate human activity. As a backcast from 050APC, this section is written as if the speaker is describing the system in the present.
The development of such an organizational system in the real world of chaos and change would no doubt be somewhat different but this prototype is an essential post-normal first step toward development of any new product or concept.
The United Regions (UR) is the name given to Blue Planet Governance organizational collective. UR leadership is by an assembly of regional representative, the Assembly of Regions. The Assembly’s representatives have been democratically elected, one each from each of the 97 Regions of the world that have chosen to benefit from the Blue Planet Governance (BDC) cooperative. In a sense, the UR functions as a chaordic organization whose core purpose is to represent the collective voice and to serve the needs of Regions of the world. The lead scientists, economists, psychologists and other required specialists that head the other sections of UR are chosen by the Assembly of Regions.
Except for the requirements of membership in the United Regions, each Region remains highly autonomous, and the daily life of most people is, to a large degree, much as it had been before paradigm change. The levels of government within most Regions are as before Paradigm Change: city, county and the Regional government.
The UR administers global issues that are beyond the scope or mandate of any individual Region, such as:
- To measure and report the collective elements of global Real Wealth;
- To police the global commons;
- To establish global standards and laws pertaining to BDG;
- To arbitrate inter-regional disputes, etc.
Where applicable, the UR and many Regional governments borrow ideas from the page book of large corporations using Quality Assurance (QA) system guidelines. An overview of these ideas is presented in Paradigm Junction 4ab.21
Many Regions of the world were small countries prior to Paradigm Change and are able to maintain most of their historic cultural values and traditions. Some were states or provinces of larger countries: Some have borders based on cultural or geographically defined boundaries.
The fact that Regions are relatively small gives individuals and small communities greater empowerment in influencing Regional affairs, as the appeal of localization strengthens the social bond, whereas Regions are seen as cooperative competitors. This configuration is intended to provide syntropy, a reversal in entropy and a tendency towards order and togetherness under a collective system of governance for our small, blue planet.
The UR monthly State Of The World22 report includes the WPC (Wealth Per Capita) rating of each participating Region, and a summary of global real wealth.
The four oval bubbles of the United Regions
In the State of Gaia (SG), scientists measure the well-being of the oceans, the atmosphere and other planetary metrics. Another input is from the audited ecological assessments of each global Region. From these data, the SG produces real-time information about global ecological well-being. The SG data flow acts like a doctor giving a continuous report of the vitality of the Gaian system of nature, the source of all life on our small blue dot. Each metric is referred to as a Wealth Factor.
The Human Activity Index (HAI) monitors the well-being of human affairs. The wealth-factors, represent the numerous elements that are a measurement of robust ecology and of the general health and happiness of the people, which form the basis of Real Wealth. The wealth-factor scope is wide. For example, there are assessments of the well-being of: biodiversity; corporate well-being; human happiness; human cultural nourishment; education and energy categories such as energy demand vs local supply, renewables, etc. etc. HAI data flows to the other UR sections for further processing, including the Bank of Gaia, to help determine the amount of money available for each Region. Wealth Factor details are found in PJ chapter 4e Dynamic Flows23 page 7.
The Global Standards (GS) section develops the mandatory requirements for a Region to become part of BDG. These are:
- To operate a Regional Government in accordance with democratic principles;
- To participate in Regional wealth measurement and reporting;
- To operate a Regional Bank of Gaia (BG-R);
- To accept Gaia$ as the only means of exchange for goods and services, except direct neighborly barter. (There was a period of overlap in the early days as the MSE collapsing began)
- To publish the BG Regional wealth assessment as Wealth Per Capita (WPC);
- To hold public training sessions to explain why some ways of doing things must be vastly different from the way it was done BPC (Before Paradigm Change).
- To accept that a few of our created abstract-realities need to change, such as: There can be no private land ownership, money will be interest free, and there will be distribute basic living wage for all regional citizens.
The GS group also establishes laws and limits that are outside the mandate of any Region and provide some optional guidelines for Regional governments. The GS section develops standards for assessing the wealth-factor criteria. An old organization in Geneva called International Standards Organization (ISO), was experienced in developing standards for industry: The United Regions contracted ISO to work with Regional governments to establish the standards for determining the status of each wealth-factor.
Each region measures the Wealth Factors within its borders. Here are a few examples.
- A region’s ability to harvest flow-energy (renewable);
- A region’s open spaces of untouched nature;
- A region’s capability to produce manufactured goods;
- A region’s capability to produce food;
- The level of happiness of people in the region;
… and many more. The use of fossil fuels is a negative wealth factor
The Bank of Gaia (BG) uses data from both GS and HAI and uses the Real Wealth assessment of each Region to establishes the level of money that each Regional banks can circulate. The money is referred to as Gaia Dollars, the Gaia name, providing a subtle hint that their monetary currency is directly related to mother-nature. All money is digital and transparent at the Regional government level.
In the Regions
Based on the BG information, the Regional banks publish a daily report on their regional Wealth Per Capita. The Wealth Per Capita policy is a first step in bringing the Region’s human population issue into the psyches of the general population, along with the concept that ‘your’ procreation considerations are not ‘yours’ alone. Most Regions having an ecological footprint larger than 1:1 will recommend a one-child-per-female policy, which can influence individual personal choices at the Micro level.
When scientific data indicates a Region is in significant footprint-overshoot, the normal money supply based on a Region’s Real Wealth would not have enough circulating currency to sustain the needed functional economy. As a temporary measure, the BG creates a Tombstone Debt loan to keep the economy operating. The Tombstone debt repayment schedule is well publicized by the Regional Government to encourage rapid reduction of human activity, in both gross human population and resource throughput. The issue of overshoot now becomes personal.
Regional governments are able to swap Wealth Factor values with other Regions to help improve their WPC rating. An example of this would be Regions with large cities and manufacturing capabilities swapping with nearby Regions with agricultural or renewable energy surpluses.
Within Blue Planet Governance, trade barriers are the primary tool for dealing with Regions that do not fully comply with the UR guidelines and standards. There can be no trade with areas of the world that to not join BDG.
And much more is in the Paradigm Junction chapters, it being a fluid document, meeting ISO standards for documentation control & update by those designated to make changes.
~~~
Economics and the money system are central pillars of civilization. They touch every human and every commercial exchange. It is essential that those with a deep understanding of economics unite to tear down the curtain at the end of the yellow brick road, and install a new orchestra that is in tune with both Mother Nature and human nature in order to someday illustrate that humans can be smarter than yeast.
~~~ End ~~~
1. For a graphic of fossil energy remaining, browse to page 9 of this presentation by John Howe: http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/HowePowerPointBW5.pdf
2. The following is a compilation of several views of the monetary reform symbolism used by L. Frank Baum in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. https://theyellowbrickroadfreeblog.wordpress.com/the-meaning-of-the-yellow-brick-road/
3. Syntropy: A togetherness movement – or the tendency towards energy concentration, order, organization and life, the opposite of entropy. http://www.syntropy.org/
4. Many of these movements are itemized in a 2016 book by Gar Alperovitz, What then must we do? However, as yet these important initiatives toil in separate silos. But they could gain dynamic synergy if their efforts were bound together cooperatively by one overall common vison of a viable future.
5. While this management consulting site is about increasing corporate profits, the same message applies to reaching goals in any complex system. http://management.about.com/od/metrics/a/Measure2Manage.htm
6. Human activity, as used in this paper refers to our collective resource usage, pollution and gross human population numbers.
7. The short booklet, Paradigm Junction provides essential basics, with the chapters of section 4 focusing on envisioning. A scenario describes the basic operation of global society 50 years after paradigm change. It describes how a commodity-based monetary system is derived from the scientifically measure natural and social wealth within each region of the world, and how the monetary flow control is able to regulate human activity in an acceptable, civilized fashion, in order to bring the human ecological footprint to less than one. The Index/Glossary can be found here: http://management.about.com/od/metrics/a/Measure2Manage.htm. This chapter formed the basis for a paper given at the 2015 CANUSEE conference: Chapter http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/4ba-050APC.pdf
8. A pdf copy of the original book is at: http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/Limits-to-Growth-digital-scan-version.pdf Home page of Don Chisholm, showing Limit To Growth ‘Standard run’, from 45 years ago, which projected into the future: And that future is now today’s present. http://members.kos.net/donchism/index.htm.
9. The manuscript, A 21st Century Steward’s Handbook, had been edited and accepted by a UK publisher, but 6 months after acceptance, the publisher closed shop. Chapters available in pdf at: http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/A 21 Century Stewards Handbook.pdf.
10. Robert Ornstein ’89 Penquin: The Psychology of Consciousness. See Anchored in the Past, page 6: http://members.kos.net/donchism/h-Chapter6.pdf.
11. Paradigm Junction, Chapter 2a, The Triad, http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/2a-TheTriad.pdf. More in depth human-nature observations in the chapters of A Steward’s Handbook. See footnote one above.
12. Clouded Mindset –Epsen Stoken’s book deals with issue avoidance and other psychological tricks.
13. Hall & Klitgaard: Quotation: “More fundamentally, some twenty years ago in the journal Science, Nobel prize winner in economics Wassily Leontief found the basic models of economics “unable to advance in any perceptible way a systematic understanding of the operation of a real economic system.” http://www.peakoil.net/files/the%20need%20for%20a%20new%20biophysical-based%20paradigm%20in%20economics%20....pdf
14. Post-normal science is a concept developed by Silvio Funtowicz and Jerome Ravetz, attempting to characterize a methodology of inquiry appropriate for cases where "facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent" (Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1991). It is primarily applied in the context of long-term issues where there is less available information than is desired by stakeholders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-normal_science
15. This blog article by George Mobus discusses the general lack of systems thinking in the academic world:
http://questioneverything.typepad.com/question_everything/2016/05/systems-science-ascending.html
16. Gar Alperovitz makes a convincing case for small states or Regions in such books as America Beyond Capitalism, Making a Place for Community: Local democracy in a Global Era or the 2013, What Then Must We Do? He is co-founder of The Next System project: http://thenextsystem.org/. This initiative has many parallels to the Paradigm Junction processes but it is limited to the USA and the monetary system remains fiat, not based on a BPEMS, nor does the project address the human population issue.
17. Stafford Beer: In the 90s I visited Beer from time to time to chat over a bottle of wine. We communicated until 1998 when he became ill and he died in 2002. His career was summarized nicely in The Guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/sep/04/guardianobituaries.obituaries
18. Fear Uncertainty Doubt (FUD), see http://countysustainability.ca/political_game_changer.html. The new masters of public deception learned from the tobacco industry in the early '70s. The process is well documented in a short video that can be viewed here: http://tinyurl.com/cahcax4.
19. Jada Thacker presents an essay giving a historical review of aggression by military and enslavement by debt: http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/HowDebtConqueredAmerica.pdf.
20. social psychology noun Medical Definition of SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY: The study of the manner in which the personality, attitudes, motivations, and behavior of the individual influence and are influenced by social groups,
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/social%20psychology, states: “the study of the manner in which the personality, attitudes, motivations, and behavior of the individual influence and are influenced by social groups.” http://www.britannica.com/science/social-psychology
21. Chapter PJ/4a illustrates how corporate management has many policies and procedures that could work extremely well in global and regional governance. http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/4ba-050APC.pdf
22. The name, State Of The World, report is borrowed from an annual book produced by the Worldwatch Institute. Lester Brown was the leader of this influential organization during the 1980s & 90s.
23. Links to all chapters of Paradigm Junction are given below:
http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/1a-Index.pdf
http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/PJ-Synopsis.pdf
http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/1b-GlossaryOfTerms.pdf
http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/1c-Preamble.pdf
http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/1d-TheNewStory.pdf
http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/1e-BioOfWriter.pdf
http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/2a-TheTriad.pdf
http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/2b-DynamicSystems.pdf
http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/3a-MCP.pdf
http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/3b-OtherParadigmFlaws&CompoundingIssues.pdf
http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/3c-GraphicBeforeAfter.pdf
http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/4a-ThoseWhoEnvision.pdf
http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/4ba-050APC.pdf
http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/4b-DynamicSociety050-APC.pdf
http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/4c-UN-Wheelhouse.pdf
http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/4d-TheViewFrom050APC.pdf
http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/4e-DynamicFlows.pdf
http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/5a-AreWeReadyToEnact.pdf
http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/5b-ChapterAndVerse.pdf
http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/6b-Appendix-MCP.pdf
http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/6a-Appendix-OurJouneyIntoToday.pdf
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Don Chisholm is the Director of the Gaia Preservation Coalition. He is a retired engineering technologist whose career path dealt with dynamic systems, maintenance, design, management and quality assurance auditing, generally related to the aviation industry. The past thirty years have been spent studying human behaviours, energy, and other areas related to the human predicament. For his complete biography and contact information, click here.
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