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| Author, Thomas H. Greco - who argues that human life thrives best on co-operation rather than competition. |
Continuing with business as usual is similar to maintaining the
status quo, needing only conventional thinking.
Switching to and understanding how we could be fulfilled and
content by working fewer hours, demands revolutionary thinking.
Such innovative thinking begins with the abandonment of
cherished, but seriously dated concepts and then their replacement with something
new; something that sits comfortably with our evolving world.
Agile, athletic and energetic thinking will help us understand
the advantages of that new paradigm; a paradigm that without option we have to
theoretically, politically and practically understand, and adopt, because of
the damage we have inflicted on the equilibrium of our climate.
Fulfilment in life for all thrives more on co-operation than
competition and as Thomas H. Greco writes in “The End of Money and the Future of Civilization” ….”to recognize that we
all have fundamental interests in common; and to organize and co-ordinate our
actions to achieve common goals”.
Working a four-hour day is about common goals and
co-operation, but it is a concept that is unquestionably beyond the
comprehension of most and being wholly disruptive it will end, without
question, life as we know it.
Disturbing as that might sound it is in fact a good thing for
life as it is abounds with inequity; an inequity resulting from a globalized
economy being forced upon on a world-society still fundamentally driven by
localism.
We have a globalized economy – money travels uninhibited by
national borders, but even in the relatively economically tiny Australia we, in
Tony Abbott’s words, “must turn back the boats”, illustrating resistance to a
globalized civilization.
The growth mandate of the globalized economy clearly puts
profit ahead of people and even a cursory look at world circumstances illustrates
that many have been brutalized and plunged into poverty through pursuit of that
tumour-like ideal.
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| Albert Einstein. |
That unrelenting quest for growth is exactly what has
brought us to this position and that causes me to think of Albert Einstein’s
observation that the thinking that has led to this will not be adequate to take
us beyond it.
Considering Greco’s observation about the importance of
co-operation ahead of competition and Einstein’s suggestion that we need to
refresh and invigorate our thinking, it appears obvious, at least to me, that
we must willingly surrender many of modern life’s trappings.
Many draw their optimism from technology and human ingenuity
pointing to our magical modern life as justification of their faith, but
embedded in that conviction is a disturbing indifference to the science on
which that celebrated technology and equally acclaimed ingenuity depend.
Most everything we enjoy in our modern world depends on
science and yet we ignore that science at our peril; a science that
unequivocally declares that we, because of our behaviour, have wounded earth’s
atmosphere.
