Ephemeralization Generally speaking, an economic system exists to meet the “needs and wants”492 of the population. The degree by which it is able to do so depends on the state of usable resources and the technical strategy utilized to harness those resources for a given purpose. In this context, notable engineer and thinker R. Buckminster Fuller argued that true economic “wealth” is not money or even the material outcome of a given production.493 Rather, true wealth is the level of energy/production efficiency enabled, coupled with knowledge development that furthers the intelligent management of the Earths resources. In this view, he defined and expressed a trend termed “ephemeralization”494 which tracks humanity’s technical ability to increasingly do “more with less”. Historically speaking, ephemeralization is, in gesture, a contradiction of the still deeply held “Malthusian”495 consideration which, in part, claims that humanity is forever out of balance with nature and there will always be a section of the population that must suffer, as the available resources simply do not add up to meet everyones needs. As noted in prior essays, this worldview is ever apparent in the economic system we still embrace today globally, forging deep tructural biases496 that have inevitably favored one “class” of people over another in survival advantage. In other words, a “war game” has culminated, built out of the assumption of universal, perpetually reinforced scarcity, which moves forward today on its own momentum, largely absent of its original causal reasoning. The vast majority of what we define as “corruption” today, more often than not, finds its psychological root in this competitive awareness both on the personal level, the corporate (business) level & on the level of government in the form of war, tyranny and self- preserving collusion. In fact, it can be well argued that the very notion of “ethical” in a world decidedly working to gain at the expense of others becomes a highly relative and almost arbitrary distinction. Yet, this trend of ephemeralization, having increased rapidly from the 20th centurys almost sudden industrial/scientific advancements, deeply challenges this protectionist, elitist, scarcity- driven worldview, suggesting new, paradigm-shifting possibilities for human organization. These possibilities, in part, statistically reveal that we are now able to take care of the entire worlds population at a standard of living unknown to the vast majority of humanity today.497 However, in order for this new reality of efficiency to be harnessed, the archaic barriers ingrained in our everyday way of life, specifically our perception of economics, need to be reevaluated and likely overcome entirely. ~ The Zeitgeist Movement Defined (Free download - thezeitgeistmovement/orientation)
Posted on: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 00:54:05 +0000