There are many changes
coming in this century, some I'm sure that you have heard of and some
you may be less familiar with
The familiar ones would
be climate change and monetary instability.
The less familiar ones
like loss of antibiotics and the destruction of phytoplankton are
probably less familiar precisely because they are so terrifying that
people really don't want to talk about them. But they're coming any
way and hiding your face beneath the bed sheets isn't going to stop
these monsters
Climate change is only a
tiny part of the problem. Plastic in the ocean is only a tiny part of
the problem. Massive population increase is only a tiny part of the
problem. The real problem is that all of these things (and many,
many others) are actually reducing the planet's capacity to sustain
life. If we carry on like this, we won't have to fly to Mars to find
a dead planet, we will make this one dead.
Now,
is all of this change going to be bad? Yes, very bad - but only if
you ignore it. If you turn the other way, put your hands over your
eyes and hope for the best, these tsunamis are going to come along
and sweep away you and everything you care about.
The
problem is that if we want to get out of this mess alive, we need to
do two things
- Use our creativity to find or discover possible solutions
- Have the willingness to change to fit those solutions
And
that's a big problem because we fear and hate both creativity and
change. We fear creativity because it's been beaten out of from our
youngest days by our environment. And we hate change because it
brings with it two things that we find absolutely terrifying: failure
and the unknown
In
fact, we fear and hate change more than we fear and hate the events
that are coming because we have so little idea of what is coming.
So,
we are now facing a simple choice -
- Either we change
- Or we carry on doing what we're doing and destroy ourselves and the planet with us
So
is there a solution?
Certainly, the biggest
change coming could be our salvation, if we let. But a lot of people
aren't going to like it .
It has been called the
3rd or even the 4th Industrial Revolution. It isn't. It would be
better described as the Post-Industrial Revolution or The New
Paradigm. Just as the Industrial Revolution turned everything on its
head, so the Post-Industrial Revolution will turn it back. That means
that everything you think you understand about the world is about to
turned on its head. And that also means that everything you think you
need to do to survive and prosper in the world is about to be
reversed and lead to your ruination.
I
know what you’re thinking:
“But,
Phil, none of this is new. We’ve known about this for since the
Sixties. There’s even a Wikipedia page on it”
And
you would be right. We have known about this for a very long time.
But we haven’t prepared for it because we hate change and saw it as
a bad thing. We saw the tsunami coming but we persuaded ourselves
that we still had a little time left to do things the same old,
comfortable ways making a little bit more money before everything
changed. And so you keep putting off change until the very last
moment. But all that means is that when the tsunami finally arrives,
you won’t be ready and you and everything you have worked for will
be swept away. I just hope you have the decency to admit that it was
your fault rather than blame others for your situation (yeah, right).
People
have claimed that this will be the biggest transfer of wealth in
human history. That description completely misses the point. It will
be the biggest destruction of false wealth in human history. All
of the things that people now think are worth anything – like money
– will be seen as the valueless rubbish they truly are. Real wealth
will be the only acceptable currency of the New Paradigm. The top 1%
of “wealthy” people will suddenly find themselves in the bottom
1% of the poorest. Oh dear – what a shame!
So
who will survive? The people who are ready to ride the wave.
The
biggest irony is this New Paradigm works now and it works better than
the lies of the Industrial Revolution. Actually, it always has. So
the sooner you move over to it, the sooner you can start building
wealth that will survive
So, are you going to ride
the wave or get swept away? Your choice.
So,
what is this New Paradigm at the heart of this
revolution?
Quite
simply, it is the end of the idea that humans are nothing more than
cogs in a machine only useful until they can be replaced by machines
and a return to the idea that humans are the sole driving force of
economics because they are the only ones that can be creative.
That’s
it.
It
doesn’t seem so scary, does it?
Well,
it is.
That
apparently small change will sweep through our society and completey
change the course of history.
Here
is how it will do this.
The first casualty will
be that we're going to stop measuring things in terms of money and
start measuring them in terms of wealth - which people think is just
another word for money but is actually something completely
different. We will understand that money cannot create wealth - only
humans can do that.
This will lead to the
next casualty: the rejection of the job and the return of the concept
of work - that is, a move away from someone else telling you how to
do a job that is dull and probably meaningless over to you finding
work that inspires and excites you. If humans are the only ones that
can create wealth, we will start to see useless jobs as a waste of
resources and start demanding work that fulfills us human beings
because that is the only way to create serious wealth.
The
next casualty will be competition. When you limit and control
a resource as we have done with money, you create a Poverty mindset
because the only way you can have more is for someone else to have
less. This breeds competition where you see others as enemies who
want your stuff. When you realise that wealth may be produced by any
human being, you understand that there is no limit and the Povery
Mindset is replaced by an Abundance Mindset. The consequence of that
is that competition is seen as bad and the New Paradigm is
collaboration: I can only help myself by helping others.
Putting money back into
its subordinate position to wealth and replacing competition with
collaboration is going to mean the death of capitalism and the
present global economic system based on money. This will lead to the
collapse of international businesses and banking as we now understand
them
The decentralisation of
wealth production will cause a movement away from centralised systems
of authority of the majority to decentralised systems where you
exercise more control over your life and can pursue what is important
to you. This will lead to the obsolescence of democracy and with that
the need for national governments.
So, we started with the
seemingly harmless idea that humans are creative wealth producers
and ended up with the complete destruction of the global economy and
national governments
Are you beginning to see
why some people call me a terrorist?
Now I have painted a
picture where the Post-Industrial Revolution will cause the demise of
the Industrial Revolution. This is not quite true. The Industrial
Revolution will bring about its own demise without any help. This is
the cause of the very calamities that we started with. It is in the
process of doing so now. If left unchecked, it will destroy itself
and us with it. However, the Post-Industrial Revolution will actually
help reduce the pain and suffering by reducing the fall-out from the
collapse.
The only solution to stop
the bloodshed is to change as quickly as possible.
Now here's the really
good news. The transition over to a Post-Industrial mindset can be
easy and gradual requiring only small, simple changes and the truly
wonderful thing is as we make these small, simple changes, we get
immediate benefits. This is not some utopian "After the bloody
and costly revolution, comrades, the few survivors will live in
paradise". This is "Do the change today, see a result by
tomorrow". And the beauty of them is that as you make these
small, simple changes, the results start to feed off each other and
start to multiply bringing greater and greater results without any
increase in effort.
Personally, I think that
the "terror" of making small changes that lead to a better
world and a happy, healthier lifestyle to be more preferable to
waiting until there is blood on the streets and having to change
anyway.
So,
we need to create a culture of change. But
here is the problem: people are so resistant
to change that they find even small, simple
changes terrifying. They hate change. They want everything to stay
the same. Even changes that would make them happier.
This is the real reason we haven't changed so far - even in the face
of annihilation and catastrophe - because we hate and fear change
more than we hate and fear the threat of annihilation and
catastrophe.
That is the challenge
because people don't even like small changes. Change represents a
loss of control. People think that if things are familiar that they
are controllable. Of course, this is an illusion - but that doesn't
stop people wanting to believe it.
However, the good news is
that this doesn't matter. When a change hits a tipping point and
enters mainstream consciousness, it just becomes assimilated without
fuss. So, the task is to find and reach the tipping point.
I originally thought that
the place to start was with unlearning our fear and hatred of
creativity and change As they are absolutely necessary for our
continued survival, the least we can do is learn to tolerate them
But Covid-19 has changed
the game.
I didn’t bother with
Covid-19 when it first emerged because, compared with the other
massive changes I’ve mentioned here, it was a very minor player.
Actually, the problem wasn’t Covid-19 at all, it was our
over-reaction to it. We took a problem that was hurting perhaps 2% of
the population and made it so bad that it hurt everyone – and will
continue to hurt everyone for a long time to come.
Why did we do this?
I believe that it was
because our present global economy was so weakened already that a
small thing like Covid-19 was enough to cause catastrophic failure.
This has now caused such
a climate of fear and horror that my suggestions will be seen as
“solutions” rather than as the minor changes they actually are.
I can now portray the New
Paradigm not as the bloody replacement to the current capitalist
system but as our saviour from it – which is what it is.
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