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published exclusively in digital format (PDF, e-book)

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Back cover

Starting from the highly data-driven observations in its first part, this book explores a host of societal dysfunctions: direct consequences of our conceptions of money and profit.

The following five parts move, first of all, towards certain ideas for solutions, with a significant focus on universal basic income; but also towards an invitation to self-reflection.

For what we denounce outside ourselves, we continue to accept and even practise in our everyday behaviour and in the psychological mechanisms that underpin it.

And far more often than not, we are complacent, complicit, or even active players in the very things we denounce, without really being conscious of it. We obey implicit cultural and social orders that enjoin us to consume, pollute, waste and, indirectly (not intentionally but very much in concrete terms), harm others through all these behaviours.n And when we seek to move the lines, we too often content ourselves with denouncing problems outside ourselves by pointing the finger at ‘others’; which almost always leaves us powerless, even if we are very active. For despite our intentions, we remain locked into functioning far from the heart and fixated on what we believe to be rational reasoning, persisting in all areas of our lives in operating within power dynamics. By changing the colour of the lens through which we view the world, by looking within ourselves at what stands in the way of change, we empower ourselves, both individually and collectively, to discover solutions to the millions of problems that currently litter the path of humanity and life on Earth.

Free digital book available in EPUB and PDF formats, written, translated (using Deepl), edited, published and distributed by Claire De Brabander

 

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Copyright

This book is available free of charge to everyone, and it is prohibited to commercialise either parts of it or the whole work. This implies that no excerpts may appear in a commercially published work..

The PDF and ePub files of this book may not be made available directly from another website, nor may they be distributed in any other form. Using the QR code or link ensures that the latest version is downloaded and also allows distribution statistics to be tracked.

The cover illustration may not under any circumstances be marketed in any form.

 

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Table of contents

Copyright

CONTENTS

Preliminary remark

INTRODUCTION

PART ONE: IDENTIFYING THE PROBLEM – WHAT LIES BEHIND THE WORDS 'MONEY' AND 'PROFIT'

A) INTRODUCTION

B) WEALTH AND POVERTY FUNCTION SYSTEMATICALLY THROUGH COMMUNICATING VESSELS

C) MONEY - THE INDIRECT AND DISTORTED ROLES ATTRIBUTED TO IT

1. Means of subsistence, and well beyond

2. Recognition and its commercial exploitation

3. Money is not neutral – power and other drifts

4. Money confers status

D) THE CONCEPT OF PROFIT AND THE VALUES IT UNDERLIES

1. Fair profit or abusive profit

2. The indecency of dividends – some figures

E) THE CONSEQUENCES OF PROFIT AND THE INDIRECT ROLES OF MONEY

1. The material consequences of the lure of profit

a - Abuses in industry: when the end justifies the means

b - Unequal distribution of money - Wealth gaps

2. The richest class, by far the most destructive

3. At the other end of the wealth scale, millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions are dying

4. It is the extreme wealth of the richest that keeps millions of the poorest dying

F) THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE LURE OF PROFIT ON MINDSETS

1. Survival or greed

2. Money corrupts and perverts

3. The race to climb the ladder of wealth

4. Consumer complacency

5. Violence

G) IMPLICIT BELIEFS ABOUT MONEY

1. Money must be a limited resource

2. You have to work to earn a living

3. Rich people are happier

4. Wealth must be merited, so, implicitly does the poverty too

5. You have to work hard to earn a good living

6. Money inflates on its own

7. The increase in the cost of living, inflation, currency devaluation

8. Being rich does not harm anyone

9. In economics, what is legal is moral.

10. Economics is a complex science – we must trust the experts

11. It is politicians who hold the power

12. Growth is good for the economy

a - Logarithmic effect of growth

b - Ecological footprint and overshoot day

c - Demography

H) THE MAIN VEHICLES OF THE CULTURE OF PROFIT

1. Advertising

2. The news media

3. Social media

4. Entertainment media, particularly television

5. Male domination

6. Culture and education

I) THE IMPLICIT AND THE EXPLICIT

J) CONCLUSION

PART TWO: FIRST IDEAS FOR SOLUTIONS: Decoupling work and money – decoupling money from profit

A) INTRODUCTION

B) ALTERNATIVES THAT REMAIN ON THE MARGINS

1. We are not yet ready

2. The solutions are still part of the problem

C) ABANDONING OUR BELIEFS ABOUT GROWTH AND UPSETTING THE LOGIC OF EMPLOYMENT

D) DECOUPLING WORK AND MONEY - UNIVERSAL ALLOWANCE

1. Fewer jobs to fill

2. Creating motivation to work

3. Conception of work

4. Financing the universal allowance

5. Universal allowance would give power to those who currently have not in the least access to it

E) DECOUPLING MONEY FROM THE PURSUIT OF PROFIT

1. Creating an economy that is no longer governed by money

- The role of citizen initiatives

2. A single initiative and the snowball effect

3. Building the new tower

4. Some examples of concrete changes to come in society

a - Participatory democracy

b - Political power will be transformed and regain power in the face of economic and financial power.

c - Closed stock market

d - Disappearance of taxes

e - Democratic companies will multiply and even become widespread

F) DECREASE OF THE ROLE OF MONEY

1. Evolution of mentalities

2. The true role that money should have

a - Reducing the utilisation and role of money

b - Learning to exchange without counting

c - The decreasing importance of money in our lives

PART THREE: THE CONTEXT OF CHANGE

A) AT THE POLITICAL LEVEL

B) BRINGING ABOUT POLITICAL CHANGE THROUGH CITIZEN MOVEMENTS

C) PAN BALANCE: MOVING TOWARDS THE ALTERNATIVE

D) OUR SMALL INDIVIDUAL STEPS ARE CAPABLE OF GENERATING BIG CITIZEN TIDES

E) CITIZEN PROFILES: THE CONDITIONS FOR CHANGE

PART FOUR: THE CHANGE IN THE LEVEL OF CONSCIOUSNESS

A) INTRODUCTION

B) THE NEED TO RECOGNISE THE IMPORTANCE OF INDIVIDUAL EVOLUTION AMONG A SIGNIFICANT PART OF THE POPULATION

1. Who is firstly concerned?

a - The wealthiest

b - The poorest

c - The middle class

2. What kind of individual change are we talking about : first of all, in tangible reality

a - The responsibility to act even if you are the only one doing so

b - What if the notion of a drop in the ocean turned out to be completely false?

c - Stopping giving them power

d - Freedom – autonomy – solidarity

3. Beyond the modifications in the behaviours of citizens or consumers: raising the level of consciousness

a - Consciousness and information

b - Consciousness and technology

c - Consciousness and new solutions

d - Untying the knots in our heads

e - Changing the colour of our glasses: changing our way of thinking

f - Shaking up the structure of our beliefs

g - Evolutionary leap in humanity

4. Overcoming resistance to change:

a - Under hypnosis: our doubts, our passivity, our conformism, our cowardice

b - Stockholm syndrome

c - The difficulty of going against the flow – Milgram's obedience to authority

d - Putting into words what is implicit in order to avoid inconsistencies

e - Leaving our mentality behind will frighten us

f - The choice of pessimism under the pretext of realism

PART FIVE: THE TWO MAIN PILLARS OF CHANGE: Prioritise the reasons of the heart over Cartesian reasoning and relinquish the balance of power*

A) WHEN OUR SOLUTIONS MAINTAIN THE PROBLEM WHILE MAKING IT LESS VISIBLE

B) PRIVILEGE THE REASONS OF THE HEART OVER CARTESIAN REASONING

1. Introduction

2. We mistakenly assume that all our thoughts are rational in essence (except in cases of insanity or certain slippages)

3. Taking our rationality as our sole reference, our only benchmark, as the only valid and effective one...

4. Our resort to rationality often leads us to be fooled: a splint on a wooden leg

5. A solution that has no effect – however rational it may be – is not a solution.

6. A teaching system that reflects our entire system of rational thinking and its flaws, in an upbringing framework that is often lacking

7. The relative reliability of expert scientific reasoning – a look at global warming

8. Our inability to properly manage our scientific discoveries and inventions

9. New references to guide our choices

C) LETTING GO OF THE BALANCE OF POWER

1. Introduction

2. The balance of power

a - What does the balance of power consist of?

b - Letting go of the balance of power

c - We operate within power relations as naturally as we breathe

d - The implications of the balance of power, or absence thereof

e - Violence is never far from power relations, and neither is non-violence.

f - How power relations permeate all our conceptions

i The mentality based on the balance of power

ii Our inability to envisage conflicts outside the power struggle

iii A society of dominators and dominated: power relations are everywhere

iv Submission

v Designating someone at fault

vi Balance of power and self-confidence

vii Balance of power and free will

g - How the balance of power defines our social lives and our spending

i Behaviours, references and social markers resulting from the widespread prevalence of the balance of power

ii Social, cultural and commercial spheres of influence

iii Balance of power in the professional context

iv The balance of power and the virtual world – a school of narcissism

v Balance of power and cars

vi Balance of power, consumption, and the pursuit of profit are fundamentally and intrinsically linked

- Survival behaviours

- Greedy behaviours

- Our complacency

- Behaviours of competition

- Requirements-based behaviours

- Behaviours that defend our privileges

- Power relations are never far from our materialistic behaviour and our cupidity

vii Leaving the balance of power leads to a loss of interest in wealth and consumption

h - Balance of power on a collective scale

3. Self-knowledge: our shadow side

a - Introduction

b - Balance of power versus empathy - the two sides of today's human being

i Ambivalence in behaviour

- Attitude towards strangers

- Attitude towards those around us

- A switch in our heads and learning strategies to remedy this

ii The tipping point

- When dealing with strangers

- Facing those around us

iii We cannot disinvest our so-called "negative" thoughts and emotions solely through the simple choice of thinking positively

iv Discovering the effects of the switch

v Learning to manage the switch

vi Managing the switch over time

vii Accepting our shadow side means accepting that of others

c - Capitalism exploits our dark side

d - The dark shadow and the role of citizens in transition

e - The dark shadow and the role of crises

f - Factors that may or may not encourage the balance of power

i First of all, our past largely shapes who we are: our temperament, our conditioning, our wounds, our tendencies.

ii Further, it is our current situation that will also determine our reactions to adversity.

iii Level of consciousness

g - Our capacity for empathy depends above all on our ability to recognise what distances us from it - the altruism of religions eludes this aspect.

h - Personal evolution and denial of reality

i Completely avoiding the news causes us to lose touch with reality

ii When using the law of attraction becomes magical

iii Evolving in a world of Care Bears

iv Evolving spiritually cannot spare us from adapting with integrity our behaviours to concrete reality

4. Leaving the balance of power behind – taking care of our shadow side through real psychological work

a - The inescapable step: starting by acknowledging our dark shadow

b - Dark shadow and balance of power

c - Achieving to defuse the negative hold of certain emotions and their consequences on our thoughts and behaviours

d - The mental attitudes to be privileged

i Accepting

ii Persevering in asking

iii Making evolve requests and proposals while going through failures and by learning from our mistakes

iv Accepting, in some cases, the other person's solution that does not satisfy us, but can lead to our goals

e - Getting into the right frame of mind

i Determination

ii The absence of requirement

iii The absence of urgency

iv Harnessing the emotion without acting under its hold

v A form of self-knowledge

vi Detachment

vii The presence of doubt in confidence

viii Absolute respect and kindliness

f - When the balance of power recede, empathy and solidarity can emerge

g - Moving towards the heart

h - Changing

i - Our shadow side is our ally

j - The difference between understanding and consciousness

k - To gain some perspective

PART SIX: INFLUENCING FACTORS OF CHANGE

1. Two parallel worlds

2. Raising awareness, seeking to influence: it's deluding ourselves

3. Real influence happens far from speeches

4. Our role as hummingbirds and its snowball effect

5. The influence of the news media

6. The role of crises

7. Upbringing and teaching – including the role played by the internet

8. The power of the minority

9. Catalysts of a different kind

a - Collective intelligence

b - Mirror neurons

c - Epigenetics

d - The contagion of altruism

e - Morphic (or morphogenetic) fields

f - The transmission of all our thoughts and emotions

g - Self-contagion

10. Conclusion

TOWARDS A UTOPIA NOT DISCONNECTED FROM REALITY

- The snowflake metaphor

- One last little push

APPENDIX A detour through the polyvagal theory

HERE BEGINS THE LATTER HALF OF THIS BOOK

REFERENCES

TABLE OF CONTENTS

NOTES

 

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CONTACT

Any comments, information, constructive criticism or feedback on the book

are welcome at the following address:

clairebe (at) ik.me