“We know how to solve our problems, we just don’t use what we know.” 

— Alfred Korzybski

Synergic Guardians—Protecting the Future

Timothy Wilken, MD

Science fiction is a form of Time-binding. “Science fiction differs from science fantasy in that science fiction must obey the Laws of Nature.” A simple example is found in motion picture films. ­In Gary Lucas’ Star Wars trilogy­ we hear explosions of battle in the vacuum of Space although sound cannot be conducted in a vacuum. However, in Stanley Kubick’s 2002 all the scenes in space were truly silent. The film 2002 is science fiction while Star Wars is science fantasy.

The best science fiction writers are always good scientists. And the best science fiction often predicts future science. Many scientific discoveries and technologies are described in science fiction stories years or even decades before they become realities. Jules Vern, described travel from the earth to the moon in 1865 and ocean going nuclear submarines in 1869.

Issac Asimov is perhaps one of the best examples of both a great science fiction writer, and a good scientist. His interest in science and writing developed in tandem.

  

He wrote his first story when he was only 11 years old, his first published writing was a column he did for his high school newspaper. While he continued writing, Asimov also attended college and managed to graduate from Columbia University with a B.S. in Chemistry in 1939, and two years later earned his M.A. in Chemistry. He continued studying at Columbia in a Ph.D. program, but with time off for WWII, he was not awarded his Doctorate in Biochemistry until May 1948. During this same period, he also managed to write 36 science fiction stories.

Asimov is most famous for his Robot stories. Asimov’s Robots were something very special. They could take any form, from a small household appliance to large space craft carrying tens of thousands of human travelers. Their most common form however was humiform. Examples of humiform robots are seen in recent science fiction movies. Most notably 3CPO the intergalactic translator in Gary Lucas’ Star Wars trilogy, Arnold Swartzenegger’s performances as terminators in James Cameron’s The Terminator films, Brent Spiner’s performances as Lt. Commander Data in Gene Rodenberry’s Star Trek — The Second Generation, and most recently Robin Williams’ performance of The Bicentennial Man based on an original Asimov story.

 

Asimov’s robots were highly intelligent, spoke and understood all human languages, were highly mobile, physically strong and enormously powerful. They were awesome machines. If they had wanted to hurt human beings they could have in an eyeblink. But Asimov’s robots never wanted to hurt humans. Their powerful “positronic” brains were constrained by the Three Laws of Robotics. These laws first appeared in print in 1942 as follows.

Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics (1942)

1) A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2) A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

Here we see that Asimov’s First Law of Robotics contains the commitment to helping. Not only must the robot not injure a human being it must protect the human being from harm. This is a requirement for helping. His Second Law of Robotics states again that the Robot must help human beings by obeying their orders. In Asimov’s stories the robots were often owned by the human beings they served. Asimov’s robots were almost always very decent and caring individuals, while their owner’s were often only too human. The robots were treated in the best of circumstances as respected and valuable friends, and in the worst as victims and slaves.

Asimov’s robot stories were remarkably interesting and intelligent. He fully explored the ramifications resulting when his robot’s intelligence evolved to a point that it equaled human intelligence and finally surpassed it.

Writing in 1942, Issac Asimov described a futurescape, where Robots had been invented in 2007. He invented the Three Laws Of Robotics to insure that this servant class of robots were safe to be with human beings. His futurescape spanned 6 decades and by 2064, positronic robots governed by the three laws of robotics were a widespread and common phenomena on Earth. They were especially important in humanity’s expansion into space and the colonization of other planets.

Forty-five years later, Asimov was still writing robot stories, but things had changed.

Twelve centuries had passed in his imagined futurescape, the science of robotics had progressed as rapidly as Moore’s Law drives computer design on Earth today. Robots were smaller more intelligent and could be made to look exactly like humans. Theoretically, a robot’s lifespan was unlimited. Robots had an endless opportunity to learn and to think about what they had learned. They were more intelligent than most humans, and their long life experiences meant they were usually much wiser.

It became obvious that the laws of robotics needed to be advanced as well. Asimov rose to the occasion by creating an additional or fourth law of Robotics. It was called the Zeroth Law because although it was created fourth chronologically, it was logically the First Law.

Asimov’s Four Laws of Robotics (1985)

0) A robot may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

1) A robot may not harm a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, except where that would conflict with the Zeroth Law.

2) A robot must obey orders given it by a human being, except where that would conflict with the Zeroth and First Laws.

3) A robot must protect its own existence except where that would conflict with the Zeroth, First or Second Laws.

Robots in Asimov’s earlier stories then became known as 3-Law Robots in contrast to these new more powerful 4-Law Robots.

 

Recall that Asimov’s First Law of Robotics contains the commitment to helping. Not only must the robot not injure a human being it must protect the human being from harm. This is a requirement for helping. His Second Law of Robotics states again that the Robot must help human beings by obeying their orders. Thus within the original Three Laws of Robotics, we see a strong commitment to helping humans. This commitment to helping is expanded with the Zeroth Law.

As 20,000 year old 4-Law Robot Daneel Olivaw explained:

“The Zeroth Law is a corollary of the First Law, for how can a human being best be kept from injury, if not by ensuring that human society in general is protected and kept functioning?”

The Zeroth Law of Robotics introduced the concept of responsibility to and for the entire human species. Now Asimov’s robots were required not only to care for and protect the individual human beings that owned them, but also to protect all human beings and by extension the ecosystem and the earth itself.

Protecting Humanity

Asimov’s Four Laws of Robotics can serve as the basis for developing a code for the Synergic Guardians of the Trustegrities. We can eliminate Asimov’s Second law which does not apply since humans are not property and cannot be slaves, and we can elimate the Third law as redundant since a Synergic Guardian is a human being and so is protected by the First law. This leaves us with only two laws necessary to protect humanity as community and humanity as individuals.

• A Synergic Guardian may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
  
  
• A Synergic Guardian may not injure an individual human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, except where that would conflict with the First Law. 

The Needs of the Many

In Gene Roddenberry’s original Star Trek,  Mr. Spock, the Vulcan Science Officer from a race ruled by logic, would remind his shipmates that: “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or of the one.”

 

The human body is a community of 40 trillion individual cells. The individual cells are organized synergically to be interdependent upon each other. They cannot separate themselves from the body as community. The survival of the cells depends on the survival of the body. The needs and safety of the body precedes the needs and safety of the individual cells. Sometimes individual cells are injured or even sacrificed to protect and insure the survival of the body as a whole. The needs and safety of the community of cells takes precedence over the needs and safety of the cells as individuals.

With the discovery that humanity is an interdependent species comes the realization that we humans can no longer separate ourselves from community. Humanity as community is larger and contains humanity as individuals. The needs and safety of humanity as community must precede the needs and safety of humanity as individuals.

Our present culture based on the false premise of human independence often places individual needs and safety over community needs and safety. This will shift dramatically in a synergic culture.

The first law of the of the Guardian Trust Code commits to protect Humanity as Community. The second law commits to protect Humanity as Individuals. This represents a major shift in human values from today’s focus with the individual as primary to tomorrow’s focus with community as primary.

While the Trustegrity Guardians are responsible for the safety of both humanity as community and humanity as individuals, the needs and safety of community take precedent over the needs and safety of individuals.

This does not suggest a casual attitude towards the rights of individuals. Trustegrity Guardians may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, except where that would cause injury to humanity as a whole — except where that would cause injury to humanity as community. When an adversary event presents no risk to humanity as community then the Trustegrity Guardians’ first responsibility is to the safety of the individual. 

The Bigger Picture

Within synergic community, it is understood that actions that injure the EARTH and environement—the natural resources, fertile soils, waters, minerals, ores, metals, and the very air we breathe—also injures humanity.

 

It is understood that actions that injures LIFE—the plants and animals and the biodiversity of all non-human Life—also injures humanity.

  

It is understood that actions than injures the wealth produced by human action—whether in the form of Time-binding Trust or Property of living humans—also injures humanity.

  

Therefore, synergic community desires the protection of  all Synergic Wealth:

1) the Earth Trust—the planet and all natural resources,

2) the Life Trust—All plants, animals and humans,

3) the Time-binding Trust—the accumulated ‘knowing’ from the time-binding of all the humans who have ever lived and died. Our inherited Wisdom, Knowledge, and Information including Architecture, Art, Literature, Music, Science, and Technology,

4) Human Action—Mental and Physical—Thinking, Action, and Behavior—Primary Property of Living Humans 

5) Human Leverage—Mental and Physical—Intellectual Property in the forms of Theories, Discoveries, and Technology Designs—Primary Property, and Physical Property such as Tools, Technology Artifacts, and Products—Secondary Property of living humans.

This then forms the basis for a code of behavior for the Synergic Guardians of the Trustegrities.

Code of the Synergic Guardians

1) A Synergic Guardian may not injure the EARTH or, through inaction, allow the EARTH to come to harm.

2) A Synergic Guardian may not injure LIFE or, through inaction, allow LIFE to come to harm, except where that would conflict with the First Law. 

3) A Synergic Guardian may not injure HUMANITY or, through inaction, allow HUMANITY to come to harm, except where that would conflict with the First or Second Laws.

4) A Synergic Guardian may not injure an individual HUMAN, or through inaction, allow an individual HUMAN to come to harm, except where that would conflict with the First, Second or Third Laws. 

5) A Synergic Guardian may not injure the Time-binding Trust and/or Primary or Secondary Property, or through inaction, allow the Time-binding Trust and/or Primary or Secondary Property to come to harm, except where that would conflict with the First, Second, Third or Fourth Laws.  

Best of the Best

The Synergic Trustegrities will seek to attract the best of the best as candidates for Trustegrity Guardianship. Once selected these Trustegrity Guardians would have greater trusteeship privileges with concomitant authority and responsibilities for and to the Synergic Trustegrities. Once selected Trustegrity Guardians can serve in one of the three branches of the Synergic Trustegrities — the Earth Trust, the Life Trust, or the Time-binding Trust.

Trustegrity Guardian Candidates should have repeatedly demonstrated both personal and public honesty, and should have a history demonstrating synergic morality and behavior. In the future, Universities will offer degrees in Trustegrity and Guardian Science to prepare those young humans to desire to serve Humanity as Community. A careful selection process will be developed to select the very best which could include Trustegrity Guardian Academies.

Synergic Guardians of the Trustegritys

Recall the Trustegrities are structured using the principles and mechanism of the Organizational Tensegrity. Decisions are made in heterarchy using synergic consensus. Loss within the organization is eliminated with the synergic veto. Action is carried out by negotiated hierarchical. This eliminates conflict. The three trustegrities would work together. They would be guided by Humanity as Community using Synocracy.

The Earth Trust Guardians would protect and preserve the Earth Trust including the Earth and all natural resources. The Trust would be administered to best serve present and future humanity. 

The Life Trust Guardians would protect the Life Trust including all living systems — all life forms — this includes all humans, all animals, and all plants.

And, thirdly the Time-binding Trust Guardians would protect and preserve the Time-binding Trust — the accumulated “knowing” from the lives and actions of all the humans who have ever lived and died. Our inherited Wisdom, Knowledge, and Information including Architecture, Art, Literature, Music, Science, and Technology. Because of their committment to protecting all who have lived and who have died, they also protect the new  ”knowing” of  humanity — the Intellectual Property of  living humans.

Synergic Guardians are not allowed to hurt anyone through their control of the Synergic Trusts. But in addition they are required to protect and conserve the Synergic Trusts. Further, they are required to help others and to insure that all humans have the basic needs of life —both survival and meaning. This is a binding obligation. Failure to meet these obligations results in the immediate loss of Synergic Trustee privileges. 
  
They will protect and conserve the Earth and the natural resources — including both the renewable resources — soils, water, and minerals — and the nonrenewable resources — coal, petroleum, natural gas, metals and other mineral ores.

They will protect Life — plant, animal and human.  

The Life and Earth Trusts are finite and fragile. Once a species of plant or animal becomes extinct, it is lost forever. Once our nonrenewable resources are consumed they are lost forever. And even the renewable resources can be damaged by careless use. And once damaged, they may not be repairable.

The Synergic Trustegrities hold all land and all the natural resources including native plants and wildlife in synergic trust. Land and natural resources cannot be owned. Land may leased as living sites for individuals and families. Land may be invested as production sites for manufacturing and commerce and earn revenue shares on behalf of the Trust. Natural resources may be invested in synergic production if it serves the interests of humanity as community and public welfare. Such investment would earn revenue shares on behalf of the Synergic Trustegrities.

The revenues the Synergic Trustegrities receive from their leases and investments are used not only to protect and preserve the synergic trusts, but also to help others.

The Synergic Guardians accept as their primary responsibility the protection of humanity as community and humanity as individual. They will seek to ensure that all humans are safe from crime and war; that all humans have access to shelter, nutrition, medical care, and education. They will further accept responsibilty for the provision of good care and life support for all humans in need — children and adults — the ill and injured, the poor and destitute, and the homeless.

On behalf of the Earth Trustegrity, they will provide:

1) Access to land and natural resources for personal use at minimal or no cost, and

2) Access to land and natural resources for synergic production with appropriate charges payable to the Earth Trustegrity in lease or rental fees, licensing fees, and/or revenue shares. All rental fees, licensing fees, and/or revenue shares are entrusted to the Synergic Trustegrities for Humanity as Community.

On behalf of the Life Trustegrity, they will provide:

3) Safety from crime and war, and full access to:

4) Comfortable, safe, healthy housing.

5) Good nutritious food

6) Good preventitive health services and comprehensive cradle to grave medical care, and access to the privilege of Reproduction based on fairness, equality, and mutual benefit to both humanity as Individuals and humanity as Community. This would include monitoring administrating, adjudicating the Trust privilege of Reproduction.

7) Access to animals and plants including native flora and wildlife for personal use at minimum or no cost.

Access to animals and plants including native flora and wildlife for synergic production with approriate charges payable to the Life Trustegrity in rental fees, licensing fees and/or revenue shares. All payments made are entrusted to the Synergic Trustegrites for Humanity as Community.

On behalf of the Time-binding Trustegrity, they will provide:

9) Full education to an individual’s ability and interest regardless of age,

10) The opportunity to participate in synergic organization and invest their action and leverage to earn revenue shares and acquire property throughout their full lifetime.

11) Access to communication with humanity as individuals and to humanity as community for personal reasons, for synergic production and consumption, and for synergic consensus utilizing Unanimous Rule Democracy.

12) Protection of the intellectual discoveries and inventions of Time-binding whether they be in the Time-binding Trust, or the Intellectual Property of living humans.

This is the fourth in a series: 1) Beyond Property 2) Wealthy Beyond our Dreams 3) Synergic Trusts—Moving Beyond Property

Trustegrities— Protecting the Future

Timothy Wilken, MD

It must now be obvious to the reader, that most of human wealth is a gift and cannot be claimed as property by any individual or group of individuals. I have divided this gift into three categories — the Earth Trust, the Life Trust and the Time-binding Trust.

I propose the creation of synergic trustee organizations charged with the responsibility to protect, conserve and administer the synergic trusts for the benefit of all humanity — both the living and the unborn. This organization could make use of the Organizational Tensegrity synergic mechanism which utilizes synergic consensus and the synergic veto to elimnate conflict. These Synergic Trust Organizational Tensegrities will simply be called the “Trustegrities”. The Trustegrities could form the basis for a synergic government in the future. They could perform all the positive functions of present government with none of the negative consequences. The Trustegrities would exist to serve humanity as community as well as humanity as individual.

The Trustegrities will be three with separate but complimentary missions in service to humankind. 

The Earth Trustegrity will provide:

1) Access to land and natural resources for personal use at minimal or no cost, and

2) Access to land and natural resources for synergic production with appropriate charges payable to the Earth Trustegrity in lease or rental fees, licensing fees, and/or revenue shares. All rental fees, licensing fees, and/or revenue shares are entrusted to the Earth Trustegrity for Humanity as Community.

The Life Trustegrity will provide:

3) Safety from crime and war, and full access to:

4) Comfortable, safe, healthy housing.

5) Good nutritious food

6) Good preventitive health services and comprehensive cradle to grave medical care, and access to the privilege of Reproduction based on fairness, equality, and mutual benefit to both humanity as Individuals and humanity as Community. This would include monitoring administrating, adjudicating the Trust privilege of Reproduction.

7) Access to animals and plants including native flora and wildlife for personal use at minimum or no cost.

Access to animals and plants including native flora and wildlife for synergic production with approriate charges payable to the Life Trustegrity in rental fees, licensing fees and/or revenue shares. All payments made are entrusted to the Earth Trustegrity for Humanity as Community.

The Time-binding Trustegrity will provide:

9) Full education to an individual’s ability and interest regardless of age,

10) The opportunity to participate in synergic organization and invest their action and leverage to earn revenue shares and acquire property throughout their full lifetime.

11) Access to communication with humanity as individuals and to humanity as community for personal reasons, for synergic production and consumption, and for synergic consensus utilizing Unanimous Rule Democracy.

12) Protection of the intellectual discoveries and inventions of Time-binding whether they be in the Time-binding Trust, or the Property of living humans.

Funding the Synergic Trustegrities

Future Positive was established to help humanity transition from the present adversary-neutral political-economic mechanisms dominating human life in 2002 to synergic alternative mechanisms available in a Synergic Future. In such a future the entire human species could be organized as a single organization, then there would be no need for politics, economics, or even money. Certainly the forty trillion cells in the synergic organization which comprise our bodies do quite well without politics, economics or money.

As I said earlier, if we humans synergically reorganized, we could all be wealthy beyond our wildest dreams. If we were to take all the wealth on planet Earth today, 2002 and divide it equally among the 6+ billions of us living on the planet, we would discover to our surprise and amazement that every man, woman, and child is a billionaire. There would never be any need for humans to earn their livings again. With synergic reorganization, and careful utilization of the Earth, Life and Time-binding Trusts, the Earth could comfortably support all of humanity. And this is without any need to damage or degrade our environment.

Our Time-binding Trust is so enormously powerful and gives those of us living today such enormous leverage that it is scientifically possible to solve all our human problems and meet all of our needs.

We humans are bound to the Earth, and our individual fates are linked together — we share a common fate. We can survive and prosper together as a unified species, or we can perish as individuals fighting and fleeing like the animals. There is no separate peace and no separate solutions.

All the land and all the natural resources of the Earth are needed for our species to survive. They cannot be held and used to serve any individual or group of individuals. The land and natural resources are not property, they cannot be owned by anyone. They are a Trust to be shared and carefully utilized by all living humans. They are a Trust to be conserved for all yet unborn humanity. 

“Men did not make the earth…. It is the value of the improvement only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property…. Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds.”

…..Adam Smith (1723 – 1790)

“Ground rents are a species of revenue which the owner, in many cases, enjoys without any care or attention of his own. Ground rents are, therefore, perhaps a species of revenue which can best bear to have a peculiar tax imposed upon them.” 

…..Tom Paine (1737 – 1809)

“The land, the earth God gave man for his home, sustenance, and support, should never be the possession of any man, corporation, society, or unfriendly government, any more than the air or water.”

…..Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865)

 

Henry George

The American writer, Henry George published Progress and Poverty in 1879, in which he made one of the first arguments for the common ownership of land by all people. He seriously argued for the full return of the land to humanity as community. He even suggested a mechanism for that transition. Here in his own words:

“There is but one way to remove an evil and that is to remove its cause. To extirpate poverty, to make wages what justice commands they should be, the full earnings of the labourer, we must substitute for the individual ownership of land a common ownership. Nothing else will go to the cause of the evil, in nothing else is there the slightest hope.

“But this is a truth which, in the present state of society, will arouse the most bitter antagonism, and must fight its way, inch by inch. It will be necessary, therefore, to meet the objections of those who, even when driven to admit this truth, will declare that it cannot be practically applied.

“In doing this we shall bring our previous reasoning to a new and crucial test. Just as we try addition by subtraction and multiplication by division, so may we, by testing the sufficiency of the remedy, prove the correctness of our conclusions as to the cause of the evil.

“The laws of the universe are harmonious. And if the remedy to which we have been led is the true one, it must be consistent with justice; it must be practicable of application; it must accord with the tendencies of social development and it must harmonize with other reform.

“I propose to show that this simple measure is not only easy of application, but that it is a sufficient remedy for all the evils which, as modern progress goes on, arise from the greater and greater inequality in the distribution of wealth—that it will substitute equality for inequality, plenty for want, justice for injustice, social strength for social weakness, and will open the way to grander and nobler advances of civilization.

“But a question of method remains. How shall we do it?

“We should satisfy the law of justice, we should meet all economic requirements, by at one stroke abolishing all private titles, declaring all land public property, and letting it out to the highest bidders in lots to suit, under such conditions as would sacredly guard the private right to improvements.

“Thus we should secure, in a more complex state of society, the same equality of rights that in a ruder state were secured by equal partitions of the soil and, by giving the use of the land to whoever could procure the most from it, we should secure the greatest production.

“But such a plan, though perfectly feasible, does not seem to me the best.

“To do that would involve a needless shock to present customs and habits of thought—which is to be avoided.

“To do that would involve a needless extension of governmental machinery—which is to be avoided.

“It is an axiom of statesmanship, which the successful founders of tyranny have understood and acted upon, that great changes can best be brought about under old forms. We, who would free men, should heed the same truth. It is the natural method. When nature would make a higher type, she takes a lower one and develops it. This is the law also of social growth. Let us work by it. With the current we may glide fast and far. Against it, it is hard pulling and slow progress.

“I do not propose either the purchase or the confiscation of private property in land. The first would be unjust; the second, needless. Let the individuals who now hold it still retain, if they want to, possession of what they are pleased to call their land. Let them continue to call it their land. Let them buy and sell, and bequeath and devise it. It is not necessary to confiscate land; it is only necessary to confiscate rent.

“Nor to take rent for public uses is it necessary that the state should bother with the letting of lands. It is not necessary that any new machinery should be created. The machinery already exists. Instead of extending it, all we have to do is to simplify and reduce it. By making use of this existing machinery, we may, without jar or shock, assert the common right to land by taking rent for public uses.

“We already take some rent in taxation. We have only to make some changes in our modes of taxation to take it all.

“Therefore, what I propose is—to appropriate rent by taxation.

“In form, the ownership of land would remain just as now. No owner of land need be dispossessed, and no restriction need be placed upon the amount of land any one could hold. For, rent being taken by the state in taxes, land, no matter in whose name it stood or in what parcels it was field, would be really common property, and every member of the community would participate in the advantages of its ownership.

“Now, insomuch as the taxation of rent, or land values, must necessarily be increased just as we abolish other taxes, we may put the proposition into practical form by proposing to abolish all taxation save that upon land values.

“As we have seen, the value of land is at the beginning of society nothing, but as society develops by the increase of population and the advance of the arts, it becomes greater and greater. Hence it will not be enough merely to place all taxes upon the value of land. It will be necessary, where rent exceeds the present governmental revenues, to increase commensurately the amount demanded in taxation, and to continue this increase as society progresses and rent advances. But this is so natural and easy a matter, that it may be considered as involved, or at least understood, in the proposition to put an taxes on the value of land.

“Wherever the idea of concentrating all taxation upon land values finds lodgment sufficient to induce consideration, it invariably makes way, but there are few of the classes most to be benefited by it, who at first, or even for a long time afterwards, see its full significance and power. It is difficult for working-men to get over the idea that there is a real antagonism between capital and labour. It is difficult for small farmers and homestead owners to get over the idea that to put all taxes on the value of land would be to tax them unduly. It is difficult for both classes to get over the idea that to exempt capital from taxation would be to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer. These ideas spring from confused thought. But behind ignorance and prejudice there is a powerful interest, which has hitherto dominated literature, education and opinion. A great wrong always dies hard, and the great wrong which in every civilized country condemns the masses of men to poverty and want will not die without a bitter struggle.

—

 “It is impossible for anyone to study Political Economy, or to think at all upon the production and distribution of wealth, without seeing that property in land differs from property in things of human production.

“This is admitted, either expressly or tacitly, in every standard work on Political Economy, but in general only by vague admission or omission. Attention is in general called away from the truth, as a lecturer on moral philosophy in a slave-holding community might call away attention from too close a consideration of the natural rights of men; and private property in land is accepted without comment, as an existing fact, or is assumed to be necessary to the proper use of land and the existence of the civilized state.

“The consideration that seems to cause hesitation is the idea that having permitted land to be treated as private property for so long, we should in abolishing it be doing a wrong to those who have been suffered to base their calculations upon its permanence; that having permitted land to be held as rightful property we should by the resumption of common rights be doing injustice to those who have purchased it with what was unquestionably their rightful property.

“Thus it is held that if we abolish private property in land, justice requires that we should fully compensate those who now possess it, as the British government, in abolishing the purchase and sale of military commissions, felt itself bound to compensate those who held commissions which they had purchased in the belief that they could sell them again; or as, in abolishing slavery in the British West Indies, the sum of 20,000,000 pounds was paid to the slaveholders.

“Herbert Spencer wrote in Social Statics, published in 1864 “Had we to deal with the parties who originally robbed the human race of its heritage, we might make short work of the matter.”

“Why not make short work of the matter anyhow? This robbery is not like theft of a horse or a sum of money that ceases with the act. It is a fresh and continuous robbery that goes on every day and every hour. It is not from the produce of the past that rent is drawn; it is from the produce of the present. It is a toll levied upon labour constantly and continuously. Every blow of the hammer, every stroke of the pick, every thrust of the shuttle, every throb of the steam engine, pays its tribute. It levies upon the earnings of those men who, deep underground, risk their lives, and of those who over white surges hang to reeling masts. It robs the shivering, of warmth; the hungry, of food; the sick, of medicine; the anxious, of peace. It debases, and embrutes, and embitters. It crowds families of eight and ten into a single squalid room. It makes lads who might be useful men candidates for prisons and penitentiaries. It sends greed and all evil passions prowling through society as a hard winter drives the wolves to the abodes of men. It darkens faith in the human soul, and across the reflection of a just and merciful Creator draws the veil of a hard, and blind, and cruel fate.

“It is not merely a robbery in the past; it is a robbery in the present—a robbery that deprives of their birthright the infants that are now coming into the world. Why should we hesitate about making short work of such a system? Because you were robbed yesterday and the day before, and the day before that, is that any reason why you should suffer yourself to be robbed today and tomorrow? Any reason why you should conclude that the robber has acquired a vested right to rob you?

“If the land belong to the people, why continue to permit landowners to take the rent, or compensate them in any manner for the loss of rent? Consider what rent is. It does not arise spontaneously from land; it is due to nothing that the landowners have done. It represents a value created by the whole community. Let the landholders have, if you please, all that the possession of the land would give them in the absence of the rest of the community. But rent, the creation of the whole community, necessarily belongs to the whole community.

“The common law we are told is the perfection of reason, and certainly the landowners cannot complain of its decision, for it has been built up by and for landowners. Now what does the law allow to the innocent possessor when the land for which he paid his money is adjudged to belong rightfully to another? Nothing at all.
“The law simply says: “The land belongs to A, let the Sheriff put him in possession!” It gives the innocent purchaser of a wrongful title no claim, it allows him no compensation. And not only this, it takes from him all the improvements that he has in good faith made upon the land.

“You may have paid a high price for land, making every exertion to see that the title is good; you may have held it in undisturbed possession for years without thought or hint of an adverse claimant; made it fruitful by your toil or erected upon it a costly building of greater value than the land itself, or a modest home in which you hope, surrounded by the fig trees you have planted and the vines you have dressed, to pass your declining days. Yet if Quirk, Gammon and Snap can mouse out a technical flaw in your parchments or hunt up some forgotten heir who never dreamed of his rights, not merely the land, but all your improvements, may be taken away from you. And not merely that. According to the common law, when you have surrendered the land and given up your improvements, you may be called upon to account for the profits you derived from the land during the time you had it.

“Now if we were to apply to this case of The People v. The Landowners the same maxims of justice that have been formulated by landowners into law, and are applied every day in English and American courts to disputes between man and man, we should not only not think of giving the landholders any compensation for the land, but should take all the improvements and whatever else they might have as well.

“But I do not propose, and I do not suppose that anyone else will propose, to go so far. It is sufficient if the people resume ownership of the rent of land. Let the landowners retain their improvements and personal property in secure possession.

“And in this measure of justice would be no oppression, no injury to any class. The great cause of the present unequal distribution of wealth, with the suffering, degradation and waste that it entails, would be swept away. Even landholders would share in the general gain. The gain of even the large landholders would be a real one. The gain of the small landholders would be enormous. For in welcoming justice, men welcome the handmaid of Love. Peace and Plenty follow in her train, bringing their good gifts, not to some, but to all.”

Henry George was born in Philadelphia, PA in 1839, the Earth’s human population had just passed 1,000,000,000 individuals. It is one hundred and twenty years since Henry George wrote his book Progress and Poverty. Since then the Earth’s human population has increased six times.

The truth is especially hard to believe if it requires that we take action­if it requires that we change. If humanity is to have a future, we must take action­we must change. If humanity is to have a future, we must believe the truth.

The wealth represented by the land and water, native plants and wildlife, chemical, mineral, and metal natural resources is so enormous that when it is rescued from the plunderers and returned to the Synergic Trust to benefit every human it will easily sustain the needs of all humanity.

The Synergic Trusts would make Land and Natural Resources available to individuals and organizations. The Trustegrity could be funded entirely by rent receipts from the lease and utilization of Land, and from the licensing fees and revenue shares it receives for use of Natural Resources from the Life and Earth Trusts. This leasing of land and licensing of renewable natural resources would provide the revenue base for all of the beneficial services to humanity as community and to humanity as individuals.

Basic shelter, food, education and medical care would supplied without charge to individual humanity.

Only those individuals wanting to use land and natural resources for synergic production would pay appropriate charges payable to the Earth Trustegrity in lease or rental fees, licensing fees, and/or revenue shares. Only those individuals wanting to use animals and plants including native flora and wildlife for synergic production would pay approriate charges payable to the Life Trustegrity in rental fees, licensing fees and/or revenue shares.

Only those making non-personal  use of the Earth and Life Trusts are charged fees and/or revenue shares. The rents and licensing fees charged by the Trustegrity and paid to the Synergic Trusts are not taxes, since the rentor or licensee is recieving valuable access to and use of the Earth, Natual Resources, Plants and Animals, wealth belonging to Present and Future Humanity as Community in exchange for the fees and revenue shares that they pay.

Thus the Trustegrities would abolish all taxation.

To be continued…

 

The truth is especially hard to believe if it requires that we take action — if it requires that we change. If humanity is to have a future, we must take action — we must change. If humanity is to have a future, we must believe the truth. If majority rule democracy is obsolete and no longer the best system of human government, what other things do we believe that are equally wrong?

This is the third in a series: 1) Beyond Property 2) Wealthy Beyond our Dreams

Synergic Trusts—Moving Beyond Property 

Timothy Wilken, MD

 In part one of A Synergic Future, I wrote:

Truth #1-Possessions are not necessarily property.

The possession of an object does not mean that the possessor has a moral or rational claim to ownership of the object. The political, economic, and social structures of our present world are all based on our concept of ‘property’ and property rights. If we define property as those possessions that were acquired by 1) either paying a fair price in a free market to the rightful owner, or 2) that which is produced by the mind and hands of the owner. Using this definition, most of today’s possessions are plunder and not property. In today’s world plunder is common and property is rare.

Truth # 2-The Majority of Human Wealth is a Gift

The vast majority of human wealth is a gift free for the taking, and cannot be morally or rationally claimed as property by any individual.

The land and natural resources are wealth provided to us by God and Nature. The sunshine, air, water, land, minerals, and the earth itself all come to us freely. The Earth’s land and natural resources are not products of the human mind or body. They existed long before life and humankind even emerged on our planet. There exists no moral or rational basis for any individual to claim them as Property.

If a claim of ownership can be made at all, it must be a claim on behalf of all humanity both the living and those yet unborn.

 

Synergic Wealth—Defined

The collective term we humans use to describe what we value is ‘wealth’. Synergic wealth is that which supports life for self and others.  Synergic Wealth comes in two forms: Synergic Trust and Property

Synergic Trust — wealth that comes to us as a gift

This includes the Life Trust — life itself, the plants and animals which are a gift from God, and Nature, and our human bodies which are a gift from God, Nature, and our Parents.

It includes the Earth Trust — the sunshine, air, water, land, minerals, the earth itself all of which come to us freely. This wealth is provided to us by God and Nature.

And, thirdly it includes the Time-binding Trust — the accumulated ‘knowing’ from the time-binding of all the humans who have ever lived and died. Our inherited Wisdom, Knowledge, and Information including Architecture, Art, Literature, Music, Science, and Technology. It is the Time Trust that forms the basis of all human progress.

We humans are the beneficiaries then of three major trusts — the Life Trust, the Earth Trust and the Time-binding Trust. We, humans can not and do not own these trusts. They are not derived of our lives. They are not the product of our mind or labor. We have not paid for them. There is no moral or rational basis for us to claim ownership. They are not property.

If we wish to use and control these trusts, then we must act as trustees, and then only if we act responsibly. As responsible trustees, we must preserve and protect these trusts. We must act as conservationists.

“Conservation is the sustainable use of natural resources—soils, water, plants, animals, and minerals. The natural resources of any area constitute its basic capital, and wasteful use of those resources constitutes an economic loss. From the aesthetic viewpoint, conservation also includes the maintenance of national parks, wilderness areas, historic sites, and wildlife.

“Natural resources are of two main types, renewable and nonrenewable. Renewable resources include wildlife and natural vegetation of all kinds. The soil itself can be considered a renewable resource, although severe damage is difficult to repair because of the slow rate of soil-forming processes. The natural drainage of waters from the watershed of a region can be maintained indefinitely by careful management of vegetation and soils, and the quality of water can be controlled through pollution control.

“Nonrenewable resources are those that cannot be replaced or that can be replaced only over extremely long periods of time. Such resources include the fossil fuels (coal, petroleum, and natural gas) and the metallic and other ores.”

The Life and Earth Trusts are perishable. They do not belong to us. We must protect them for our children, and for all future children. The Time-binding Trust is less susceptible to damage by the user. Using knowledge or technology designs does not diminish their future value, but it must also be used responsibly. We must not hurt others with any trusts that we control. In fact, we should help others to whatever the extent we are capable.

All humans are trustees. We are of course the Life Trustees of our own bodies. We should take good care of ourselves. Take care with our health and nutrition. We are also the Time-binding Trustees of all the knowledge and skills that we personally have mastered from our study of the past. We must strive not to hurt others with this knowledge and skill. We should try and help others to whatever extent we are capable.

TRUST—def—> Wealth provided as a gift — The Life Trust includes our bodies as provided by God, Nature, and our Parents in addition to all other forms of life — the plants and animals provided by God and Nature. The Earth Trust includes the Earth itself and all Natural Resources provided by God and Nature. And, the Time-binding Trust includes all the accumulated knowing and technology from the mental and physical labor of all those humans who lived and died before us. These three trusts can be referred to together as the Synergic Trusts.

In our present Adversary-Neutral Culture with its Pseudo-Independence, it is to common to boast that “I don’t owe anybody anything.” This could hardly be farther from the truth. Without our gifts from the Synergic Trust, we humans would have nothing, not even our lives. Without the gifts from the Time Trust, we would achieve nothing, each generation trapped at the subsistence level of the animal fighting and flighting to survive.

The scientific reality is that we humans owe nearly everything we are or have to God, Nature, and those humans who have lived and died before us. We are dependent on others. And sometimes others can depend on us. We humans are the Interdependent class of life.

Because Trusts are not property, control of Trust is a privilege and not a right. In synergic culture, humans may control Trusts as long as they exercise Synergic Responsibility.

Synergic Responsibility—def—>

1) Trustees must help others through their control and use of the Synergic Trusts.

2) Trustees should not hurt others through their control and use of the Synergic Trusts.

3) Trustees should preserve and protect the Synergic Trusts they use and control. They should not damage the Synergic Trusts.

Synergic Responsibilty is an obigation that is incurred by all Trustees of the Synergic Trusts. Any Trustee who violates their Synergic Responsibilities would lose their Trustee privileges.

Synergic Trusts are a gift for all humanity both the living and those waiting to be born. They must be shared equitably and in perpetuity. Synergic Trusts and the mechanisms to preserve, protect and administer them for the benefit and and weal of all humanity must be developed now. They will play a crucial role in a synergic future. This role will be explained in much detail in a later chapter. But first we must talk of that form of wealth called property.

 

The Proper Role of Property

I explained that most human wealth is a gift and cannot be owned. As such it is a mistake to call this form of wealth property. Therefore, I coined the term “Synergic Trust” to represent wealth received as a gift. However, some wealth is property.

Property — wealth that we earn with our action and/or our leverage

Action is how most humans earn their livings today. We work for salaries using either the action of our bodies, or solve problems using the actions of our minds. Our understanding of Time-binding has revealed that thinking is the most powerful form of human action. Many of us earn our livings today by thinking.

Tools allow humans to lever the power of their action. Humans are tool users and tool makers. If I am a skilled tool user I can sell my actions to serve others with my skills. If I am a skilled tool maker, I can sell the tools I make to give other leverage increase the effectiveness of their action. Thinking can produce ideas and discoveries which lead to hypotheses and theories which lead to technology designs which allows us to build technology artifacts or tools which leverages action further.

Property is synergic wealth created by human action and leverage.

Property is not received as a gift, but is that which is earned by the labor of mind or body. Property is owned by the individual acting and the individual providing the leveraging.

Now let’s examine Volitional Scientist Andrew J. Galambos’ definition of property with my annotated comments in colored font:

“Property is individual man’s life and all non-procreative derivatives of his life.

“Property is the basis of ownership because to own means to have and hold Property. From the definition of Property, it follows that man must first own his life before he can own anything else. Life itself is defined as primordial Property.

I define the human body and the spark of life itself to be part of the Life Trust. Our bodies and life itself is a gift from God, Nature, and our Parents. As the Life Trustees of our own bodies and life itself, we owe some responsibility to God, Nature, and to our Parents. This obviously has some implications for how we use or abuse our bodies.

However, I can agree that human actions and human behaviors can be considered property, and since our lives are mostly determined by our actions and our behaviors it would follow that our lives can be considered to be our property. Galambos continues:

“No one may own any man but himself. Thus, Property excludes slavery at the outset.

“The first derivatives of man’s life are his thoughts and ideas. Thoughts and ideas are defined as primary Property.

“From the definition, man owns primary Property and, through this ownership, intellectual freedom arises and inspires knowledge and production. From primary Property (ideas) stem actions.”

Galambos’ concept of primary property legitimizes the concept of intellectual property rights, and forms the rational basis for ownership of one’s actions. Galambos continues:

“Ownership of one’s own actions (clearly a Property right) is commonly called liberty. Liberty, then, as well as life itself, is a Property right. Since all so-called human rights depend upon man’s liberty, it follows that all human rights are Property rights. There can be no conflict!”

Property rights come with Property Responsibilites. I agree with Galambos that you should not injure other while exercising your property rights. But synergic responsibilty goes further in that you are encouraged to use your property to help others.

Synergic Trust privileges come with Synergic Trustee Responsibilities which are even greater than Property Resonsibilities. Here again, you should not hurt others while controlling a trust, but in addition you must help others. Helping others is a requirement of Guardian Trustee responsibility. In addition, Guardian Trustees are bound to protect and preserve the Synergic Trust. Galambos continues:

“Ideas and actions produce further, or secondary, derivatives. These include the access to and use of land.”

Access to land and other natural resources are controlled by the Earth Trust in a synergic culture. One can gain control over land and natural resources, but only with acceptance of Synergic Responsibility—you cannot hurt anyone, and you must help others to the extent possible. In addition, one must act as a good conservationist you cannot damage or pollute the land. Galambos continues:

“Other secondary derivatives include the production, utilization, enjoyment, and disposal of material, tangible goods of all kinds from ash trays to television sets, from log cabins to skyscrapers, from oxcarts to jet planes.”

Complex secondary derivatives such as television sets, skyscrapers, and jet planes contain significant amounts knowlege and technology from the Time Trust. In synergic culture all humans are free to make use the Time Trust and incorporate our inherited ‘knowing’ into their products as long as their use of the trust does not hurt anyone. For example in synergic culture, it is immoral to use the knowledge of physics to make weapons. Galambos continues:

“These are called secondary Property. They are secondary both logically and chronologically. In all instances, their existence is antedated by primary Property which led to their generation and employment.”

Alfred Korzybski makes a similar distinction to primary and secondary property with his discussion of two kinds of wealth:

“We have seen that the term wealth, rightly understood, means the fruit of the time-binding work of humanity. Wealth is of two kinds: one is material; the other is knowledge. Both kinds have use-value. The first kind perishes—the commodities composing it deteriorate and become useless. The other is permanent in character; it is imperishable; it may be lost or forgotten but it does not wear out.

“The one is limited in time; the other, unlimited in time; the former I call POTENTIAL USE-VALUE; the latter; KINETIC USE-VALUE. Analysis will justify the names. The energy of a body which is due to its position, is called potential energy. The energy of a body which is due to its motion, is called kinetic energy. Here the material use-value has value through its positon, shape and so forth; it is immobile if not used, and has not the capacity to progress. Mental use-values are not static but permanently dynamic; one thought, one discovery, is the impulse to others; they follow the law of an increasing potential function of time.”

Galambos continues:

“Further derivatives of man’s life lead to voluntary transactions involving Property transfers (sales, trades, gifts, etc.). Involuntary Property transfers are derivative not from the property owner’s life but from the life of the coercer. Therefore, Property ceases to remain Property and is converted to plunder when subjected to involuntary (coercive) transfer.

“Children—being young human beings—have Property rights of their own and cannot themselves be owned; children are not property.

Children recieve their bodies as Synergic Trusts from God, Nature, and their Parents. In synergic culture, the parents are the trustees for infants and young children, as children grow they gain more and more control over their bodies and eventually are invested with Trusteeship of their bodies and Property rights for their actions and behavior.

Reproduction is not a property right. Reproduction is a Trust Privilege. No individual has the right to reproduce if that reproduction would injure humanity as Community. This ends my comments on Galambos’ statements.

Now we can expand our definition of Property to one compatible with synergic science.

PROPERTY—def—> Wealth created by human action and leverage. It belongs to the individual(s) whose action and leverage created it. All humans are entitled to the fruits of their action and leverage. All human-made wealth is property, and all property has an owner. The owners of property have 100% control over their property as long as such control does not injure others, this prohibition of injury includes other individuals’ property, and the synergic trusts.

Property Rights —> Owner(s) may transfer partial or complete control of their own property to others as they choose. They may sell, trade, rent, lease, license, gift, or donate their property as they please.

Intellectual Property —>Thinking is recognized as a powerful form of action. Ideas, discoveries, hypotheses, theories, and technology designs are therefore property. Synergic science recognizes Galambos’ definition of Primary Property and fully accepts Intellectual Property Rights. Primary Property — Ideas, discoveries, hypotheses, theories, and technology designs can be used to develop Secondary Property—technology artifacts or tools which leverage further action.

Action and Leverage

Synergic Economics accepts that wealth produced from human action and from human leverage is property. Therefore, wealth created by human action and leverage is owned by the individual(s) acting and the individual(s) leveraging.

The animal has action, but only we humans have leverage. While our human action can be applied directly to solving problems and meeting our needs, the labor of our backs does not take advantage of our Time-binding power. We humans owe our great success not to our muscular strength, but to the intelligence we can use to guide that strength, and the leverage we gain by using tools. Remember, we humans are the tool makers and tool users.

If I am a skilled tool user, I can use my skilled action to serve myself and others. If I am a skilled tool maker, I can leverage my action and the action of others to serve myself and others.

Thinking is recognized as a powerful form of action. Ideas, hypotheses, theories, and discoveries are therefore property. Synergic Economics recognizes Galambos’ definition of Primary Property and fully accepts Intellectual Property Rights. Primary Property—Ideas, hypotheses, theories, and discoveries, and technology designs can be used to develop secondary property — technology artifacts or tools which leverage further action. Therefore, synergic science recognizes property rights based on two forms of human behavior — Action and Leverage.

plunder

plunder—def—> Property or Trust acquired with force or fraud—all adversarily acquired Property or Trust. Stolen property is plunder. Exploited Trust is plunder. This includes Trust that is used or controlled in violation of the Synergic Trust Responsibility. Synergic Trust that is used without helping others is plunder. Synergic Trust that is used to hurt others is plunder. Causing damage to the Life, Earth, or Time Trusts is plunder. And, using Time Trust to hurt others is also plunder.

Any individual who steals property with force or fraud is accorded no property rights. Plunder cannot be sold, traded, rented, leased, licensed, gifted, or donated to anyone. Possession of plunder even when obtained innocently does not entitle the possessor to property rights. It should be returned to its rightful owner, if that is not possible then the rescued Property should be placed in the Custody of the appropriate Guardian Trustees.

We can now update our definition of Synergic Wealth.

Synergic Wealth —def—> Life itself and that which promotes human well being generally—that which satisfies human needs of self and other—that which promotes mutual survival and makes life meaningful for self and other. This then includes all Property and all Synergic Trust.

Synergic Wealth is then 1) Life itself including the Life Trust 2) Human Action—Mental and Physical—Thinking, Action, and Behavior—Primary Property 3) Human Leverage—Mental and Physical—Intellectual Property in the forms of Theories, Discoveries, and Technology Designs—Primary Property, and Physical Property such as Tools, Technology Artifacts, and Products—Secondary Property, 4) the Time-binding Trust, and 5) the Earth Trust.

plunder is not Synergic Wealth. As stolen Property or exploited Trust it has been removed from the Synergic Wealth pool to serve the criminals’ needs.

If and when stolen Property is rescued by synergic justice, then it is returned to its rightful owners, or if that is not possible it is placed in the protective custody of the appropriate Trustees. If and when exploited Trust is rescued by synergic justice, it is returned to the protective custody of the appropriate Trustees.

Mixing Property and Trust

There is often an area of overlap with Synergic Trusts and Property being mixed. For example, animals trained as security agents would be a blend of Life Trust (the animal) + Property (the training and care). Also Synergic Trusts often require property to make them valuable. As example, Earth Trust (crude oil under the ground) has no value until property (oil well technology — finding, drilling, pumping, transporting) is added.

Andrew J. Galambos, Freedom100: Capitalism—The Liberal Revolution, Free Enterprise Institute, Los Angeles, Privately Published 1961

Alfred Korzybski, The Manhood of Humanity, E.P. Dutton & Co., New York, 1921

 

Redefining the Future — Expanding our definitions 

Recall my earlier definitions of synergic wealth:

 SYNERGIC WEALTH —def—> Life itself and that which promotes human well being generally — that which satisfies human needs of self and other — that which promotes mutual survival and makes life meaningful for self and other. This then includes all Property and all Synergic Trust.

SYNERGIC WEALTH is then 1) LIFE itself including the LIFE TRUST 2) HUMAN ACTION—Mental and Physical—Thinking, Action, and Behavior—Primary Property 3) HUMAN LEVERAGE—Mental and Physical—Intellectual Property in the forms of Theories, Discoveries, and Technology Designs—Primary Property, and Physical Property such as Tools, Technology Artifacts, and Products—Secondary Property, 4) the TIME-BINDING TRUST, and 5) the EARTH TRUST.

plunder is not Synergic Wealth. As stolen Property or exploited Trust it has been removed from the Synergic Wealth pool to serve the criminals’ needs.

If and when stolen Property is rescued by synergic justice, then it is returned to its rightful owners, or if that is not possible it is placed in the protective custody of the appropriate Trustees. If and when exploited Trust is rescued by synergic justice, it is returned to the Protective custody of the appropriate Trustees.

Korzybski’s Indexing

Now that we have carefully defined Wealth, we can utilize a derivative of Korzybski’s Indexing^TT to identify what form of wealth we are talking about.

Property^P is designated with superscript P. Life Trust^LT is designated with a superscript LT. Earth Trust^ET is designated with a superscript ET. Time-binding Trust^TT is designated with a superscript TT. And plunder_p is designated with a subscript _p.

Some examples would be: my computer^P, the American eagle^LT,the Earth^ET, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity^TT, and the thief was arrested in possession of several cellular phones_p.

Synergic Trustees

Recall, I said earlier that all humans are synergic trustees.

We are Earth Trustees for the land and natural resources we granted use of for our personal needs. We must conserve and protect those Earth resources that we are entrusted with. This is an obligation to humanity as community and to the Earth Trust.

We are of course the Life Trustees of our own bodies. We should take good care of ourselves. Take care with our health and nutrition. As parents we are the Life Trustees for our children until they are adults. We must not harm ourselves or our children. We must live in ways to help ourselves and our children. This is an obligation to humanity as community and to the Life Trust.

We are also the Time-binding Trustees of all the knowledge and skills that we personally have mastered from our study of the past. We must strive not to hurt others with this knowledge and skill. We should try and help others to whatever extent we are capable.

In synergic culture, all humans are granted access to the Time-binding Trust at birth. Every human may make full use of the knowing contained in the Time-binding Trust as long as that use does not hurt others.

Personal or educational use of the Time-binding Trust is encouraged without limit or restriction. Knowledge cannot be consumed. Using the Time-binding Trust does not in any way diminish it.

Every human who gains economically from their use of the Time-binding Trust is required to acknowledge and give credit to the innovators and creators of the knowledge they are using.

They are further encouraged to help others to the extent they are capable — helping is a basic synergic value. Who they choose to help and to what extent they help is entirely voluntary — entirely their own personal choice. And, while synergic culture encourages its members to help others, there is no coercive obligation to do so.

Furthermore, economic gain from use of the Time-binding Trust creates no economic obligation to the Time-binding Trust or anyone else.

Intellectual Property

New ideas, discoveries, hypotheses, theories, technology designs, inventions, as well as new art, music, and writing are not a part of the Time-binding Trust. This is intellectual property. Or, what Galambos called Primary Property. All property has an owner. We cannot use property without the explicit permission of the owner. Recall our earlier definition: 

PROPERTY—def—> Wealth created by human action and leverage. It belongs to the individual(s) whose action and leverage created it. All humans are entitled to the fruits of their action and leverage. All human-made wealth is property, and all property has an owner. The owners of property have 100% control over their property as long as such control does not injure others, this prohibition of injury includes other individuals’ property, and the synergic trusts.

Intellectual Property —>Thinking is recognized as a powerful form of action. Ideas, discoveries, hypotheses, theories, technology designs, inventions, as well as art, music, and writing are therefore property. Synergic science recognizes Galambos’ definition of Primary Property and fully accepts Intellectual Property Rights. Primary Property — Ideas, discoveries, hypotheses, theories, and technology designs can be used to develop Secondary Property—technology artifacts or tools which leverage further action.

Property Rights —> Owner(s) may transfer partial or complete control of their own property to others as they choose. They may sell, trade, rent, lease, license, gift, or donate their property as they please.

In today’s world there is much interest in intellectual property. Property in ideas are protected to some extent under patent and copyright statutes. Patent & Intellectual Property Lawyers Laurence R. Hefter and Robert D. Litowitz explain: 

“In today’s world a patent is a contract between society as a whole and an individual inventor. Under the terms of this social contract, the inventor is given the exclusive right to prevent others from making, using, and selling a patented invention for a fixed period of time in return for the inventor’s disclosing the details of the invention to the public. Thus, patent systems encourage the disclosure of information to the public by rewarding an inventor for his or her endeavors.

“Although the word “patent” finds its origins from documents issued by the sovereign of England in the Middle Ages for granting a privilege, today the word is linked synonymously with this exclusive right granted to inventors. The World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights provides the international standard for duration of patent exclusivity, which is 20 years from the date of filing. All World Trade Organization members will be obligated to meet this standard. Under all patent systems, once this period has expired, people are free to use the invention as they wish.

“Any invention, either a product or a process for creating a product, “provided that they are new, involve an inventive step, and are capable of industrial application.” In other words, to be patentable, an invention must be novel, useful, and nonobvious. A prerequisite to patentability is that the invention must be capable of some practical application.

“A copyright is an exclusive right to reproduce an original work of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, to prepare derivative works based upon the original work, and to perform or display the work in the case of musical, dramatic, choreographic, and sculptural works. Copyright protection does not extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, or embodied. Rather, copyright protection is limited to an author s particular expression of an idea, process, concept, and the like in a tangible medium.

“Copyright protection automatically subsists in all works of authorship from the moment of creation. The World Trade Organization Agreement provides a minimum standard for duration of copyright protection. In the case of a person, the term is the life of the author plus 50 years.

“The exclusive rights granted to the copyright owner do not include the right to prevent others from making fair use of the owner s work. Such fair use may include use of the work for purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching or education, and scholarship or research.

“To secure copyright protection, the work in question must be an original work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Works of authorship that fall within this definition may include:

Literary works (including computer programs);

Musical works and accompanying lyrics;

Dramatic works and dialogue;

Pantomimes and choreographic works;

Pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works;

Motion pictures and other audiovisual works; and

Sound recordings.

“It is important to note that the laws of many countries do not limit the type or form of work because authors are continuing to invent new ways of expressing themselves.

Property clearly plays an important role in our present Neutral political-economic system. Property will play an important role in a Synergic political economic system as well. Those those desiring to use Intellectual Property will need to come to terms with the owner of the property. I expect most owners would want their property used as widely as possible, happy to receive a use fee or Lever Royalty. The terms and amount of the royalty would be negotiated and determined by the owner and those desiring to use the Intellectual Property. Elsewhere in my paper entitled the Organizational Tensegrity, I discuss synergic mechanisms for determining and paying Lever Royalites for the use of Intellectual Property.  

 

Intellectual Property Rights

Recall as Hefter and Litowitz explained, in today’s world:

“Authors which incudes scientists, writers, artists, and musicians can copyright their works. However, copyright protection is limited to an author’s particular expression of an idea, process, concept, and the like in a tangible medium. Copyright protection does not extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, or embodied.”

Galambos’s definition of property provided much greater rights to both Inventors and Authors. Under Moral Capitalism the right to control one’s property was an absolute with the only limitation being that you could not hurt others with your property. This right of course extended to intellectual property since after life itself, primary property was the most important form of property.

And, Intellectual Property rights were not limited to an author’s particular expression of an idea, process, concept, and the like in a tangible medium. Intellectual Property rights did extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, or embodied.

Galambos recognized that independent discoveries and independent inventions did and do occur. So individuals with strong evidence of independent discovery or independent invention were fully entitled to property rights.

As a synergic scientist, I am in agreement with Galambos’ call for a greater degree of intellectual property rights, and I accept the occurrence of genuine independent discoveries and inventions, and the need for a mechanism of justice to abitrate property disputes. 

Duration of Property Rights

Again, Hefter and Litowitz decribe our present world: 

“Current international statutes degree that the inventor of a new tool can file for a patent granting exclusive right of ownership for a period of 20 years from date of filing.

“The duration of copyright protection in the case of a person is for the duration of the life of the author plus 50 years.”

In Moral Capitalism, the duration of property rights were not to be limited.

According to the precepts of Moral Capitalism, Isaac Newton as the recognized innovator of the Laws of Motion would have intellectual property rights throughout his life, and these would not terminate even upon his death. Galambos invented the concept of a “Natural Estate”, the intellectual property rights of an innovator persisted even after death. A Moral Corporation was to be charged with the authority and responsibility for managing the intellectual property rights of the deceased innovator within his “Natural Estate”.

This Moral Corporation, representing the “Natural Estate”, would license the intellectual property of the deceased innovator to present humanity for moral (non-coercive) use. In our example, Newton’s intellectual property (The Laws of Motion) would earn revenue shares as a monetary payment of gratitude.

Since the Industrial Revolution is based in large part on the secondary property derived from Isaac Newton’s primary property (the Laws of Motion), one could easily imagine that the size of Isaac Newton’s “Natural Estate” would result in the creation of an enormously wealthy and powerful Moral Corporation.

With the large amount of intellectual property in the history of humanity there would be need for many Natural Estates. The largest Natural Estates would be those of the most important innovators in human history — Archimedes, Leonardo da Vinci, Hippocrates, Louis Pasteur, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, George Washington Carver, Rudolf Diesel, George Eastman, Albert Einstein, Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, Michael Faraday, Galileo Galilei, etc., etc., etc..

Galambos envisioned that the Natural Estate industry would become the dominant industry in a proprietary future dominated by Moral Capitalism. He saw the Natural Estate mechanism as a complete replacement for government. After all in a world where everything is property and where there is no such thing as a small interference with property, protecting property is the only rule. Moral Capitalism results in a completely proprietary world.

Unfortunately, the Natural Estate mechanism while a clever idea does not work, and in fact can not work. 

The Nature of Intellectual Property

Intellectual Property is slippery, hard to keep track of. When I learn something, I often place the fact in my mind without a proprietary footnote. This is true for all humans. There is presently no way to record or print out a copy of the human mind. And, if I am reading many different authors, talking with many different people, surfing the internet, listening to the radio, watching televison, there are enormous numbers of different ideas and thoughts that I am exposed daily, let alone in a lifetime of living and thinking. Is this my original idea ? Sometimes I don’t even know for sure myself.

And, my mind was already full of all the knowing that I have learned and mastered from the past. If I think in English, then the very structure of the languange I use to order my thoughts would belong to whoever invented the English language. And since language is build overtime often one word or phrase at a time, we are probably not talking about one innovator, but maybe hundreds, or thousands, or millions. And then, there is the language of mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry, art and music. Most of what I know I learned from the dead. If that is property how do we sort it all out.

And, some of what I learned is from people who are still living. That is other people’s intellectual property, but at least they are still alive to represent themselves and their property rights.

Objectifying a living individual’s knowing is difficult, but doable. I can write down my ideas. I can tell my ideas to others. I can make written, digital, audio and video recordings. I can be interviewed, questioned. Asked to explain how I created the idea, and what was my train of thought.

However, all ability to objectify my knowing ends with my death.

It would create a world full of humans looking back at the past with endless struggles between “Natural Estates” arguing over who owns what. And, how do you settle these property disputes, when all the principles are dead ? 

Creating human organizations to the manage the intellectual property of the dead is fraught with enormous difficulties. Do the executors of Albert Einstein’s Natural Estate even understand his intellectual property.

Worse yet, who has the right to select those living humans to manage Natural Estates. It is first come, first served. I could announce tomorrow that I am the executor of Archimedes’ Natural Estate and that everyone who uses leverage in anyway owes Archimedes a revenue share. Imagine the revenue that could produce. And, of course I could pay myself quite well as Archimedes’ executor. Who decides ? Who arbitrates ? Certainly, Archimedes wouldn’t care.

And, why not just announce myself as the executor of the Natural Estate for the Inventor of the wheel or for the inventor of  language. Wheels are everywhere from ox carts to 767s, who wouldn’t pay royalties on the wheel. And, language there is no one who is called human that doesn’t use languge.  Everyone who talks must pay my company a royalty. 

Death and Inheritance

The dead have no needs including no need of wealth.

WEALTH —def—> That which promotes human well being — that which satisfies human needs — that which promotes both human survival and human meaning.

The dead have no actions nor do they lever others action. The dead cannot control Property or Trust, and therefore have no Property rights nor Trust privileges.

PROPERTY—def—> Wealth created by human action and leverage. It belongs to the individual(s) whose action and leverage created it. All humans are entitled to the fruits of their action and leverage. All human-made wealth is property, and all property has an owner. The owners of property have 100% control over their property as long as such control doesn’t hurt others.

At the time of death, all primary property of the deceased passes into the Time-binding Trust. This includes all known ideas, discoveries, hypotheses, theories, and technology designs.

When a creator of scientific knowledge dies their Primary Property passes into the Time-binding Trust. Those desiring to use Time-binding Trust like Haskell’s Periodic Coordinate System^TT, Galambos’ Automatic Remoteness Dilution^TT, or Einstein’s Theory of Relativity^TT can do so as long as their use of these Trusts with synergic responsibilty — they do not hurt anyone with the leverage gained by using the trust, and they acknowledge and give credit to the innovator of that knowledge. No revenue share is paid for use of a Time-binding Trust.

Synergic Associate Daan Joubert asks: “Suppose an innovator dies suddenly. What happens to the immediate family and the dependents that are supported from the income stream provided by the licensing of the innovator’s intellectual property.  – wife or husband, and minor children ?”

In a truely synergic culture. The basic life support for all humans individuals is provided by Humanity as Community using Wealth from the Earth, Life, and Time-binding Trusts. I will describe this completely in a later paper.

 

And, of course this is the proper roll of insurance. To provide for immediate family in the event of unexpected death.

But, during the bridge period, perhaps there could be some time period when existing contracts for use of the innovator’s intellectual property would continue. How long? The life of the spouse? Until minor children reach some age of adulthood. In today’s world perhaps that should be after college. (age 21) ?

Daan Joubert asks: “And, what about the situation where the work of the innovator was in progress at the time of the innovator’s death, suppose his/her innovations were not finished. Shouldn’t it be possible to appoint a curator of the ideas with a protected period of say 10 years, to complete the work as envisioned by the innovator?”

I think this is a valid concern, but I think the mechanisms as described would handle this OK. When the Innovator died, all his intellectual property becomes Time-binding Trust. It is now available to anyone to use with synergic responsibility. This would include those qualified to act as a curator of the ideas. Also it is possible that those most qualified to continue the innovator’s work were not even known by him. So, the release of the deceased innovators intellectual property to the Time-binding Trust opens up an opportunity for new minds to access and extend the work.

However with that said, if the innovation has not yet been disclosed to the public, or only partially disclosed to the public, then the innovation is still  private. There is no mechanism for private (not know by the public) intellectual property to enter the Time-binding Trust until it is made public by the act of disclosure. If the innovator was working with an associate, or team of associates, they could continue, finish the innovation and then go public.

Also, it is important to note any individual(s) who continue working on the innovation, making improvements to that  innovation are creating new intellectual property of their own with intellectual property rights.

So innovations should not be stranded by the sudden death of an innovator.

If you want to use the intellectual property of a living innovator. You have to ask permission and make an agreement for that use. The living innovator has property rights.  As an owner he/she may transfer partial or complete control of their own property to others as they choose. They may sell, trade, rent, lease, license, gift, or donate their property as they please.

Secondary property can be inherited — this includes artifacts of any kind or size — houses, buildings material possessions and physical products — technology artifacts or tools.

Land can not be owned. If you inherited a house or building you would be responsible to make the lease payments to the Earth Trust for the site upon which the house or building stand.

To be continued …

 

I have recently written about the enormous power of modern tools in my article on the need for Synergic Disarmament. Yesterday, I read this speech by an old friend of mine that was originally delivered at the Ninth Fukushima International Seminar in 1990.

Unlimited Technology Requires Synergic Morality

Peter Russell

Technology is one of humanity’s greatest assets. With it we have changed the face of the Earth and developed in ways that no other creature could ever have done. Yet this same power for change now threatens the survival of our species. The issue that I would like to explore here is how this dangerous situation has arisen and how we might be able to adopt a more appropriate value system.

In essence all technology can be considered as an amplifiacation of our innate capacities. One ability that makes humanity unique is our opposable thumb – a thumb that can rotate fully about its base, allowing it to be put in direct opposition to each of the fingers. This unique feature allows us to grasp objects of varying shapes and sizes, manipulate them, and perform delicate operations with them. It transforms the human hand into one of the most elegantly skillful biological organs ever evolved.

These hands have led us to become one of the most proficient and prolific tool-users on the planet. We moved from hammers to axes, clothes, boats, wheels, windmills, steam engines, telephones, computers and space vehicles.

All of this technology is, in essence, the amplification of the potential inherent in the human thumb.

In addition to amplifying the power inherent in the human thumb, we have also amplified our other unique asset – language and our ability to share ideas. Unlike other creatures we do not have to learn everything anew; we can learn from each other. With the advent of language we began learning together as a single species.

Limited to speech alone ideas could not travel far without becoming lost. So we developed new technologies that increased our ability to share ideas and process information. We moved from speech to writing, to printing press, to telegraph and telephone, to radio, television, tape recording, photocopying and electronic data processing.

This enhanced processing capacity had an immediate positive feedback on material technology. It allowed us to design and build bigger and more complex systems – bridges, aircraft, dams, buildings, tunnels, boats, engines and such. High technology could be guided and controlled – leading the way to the workerless factory, and opening the door into space.

Towards a Global Brain

Perhaps the greatest impact of the information technology has been that of telecommunications. Artificial satellites, fibre optics, digital coding, computerized switching, faxes, video links other advances in telecommunications are weaving an ever-thickening web of information around the world. And we, the billions of minds of this huge ‘global brain’ are being linked together by the ‘fibres’ of our telecommunication systems in much the same way as the billions of cells in our own brain are linked.

The integration of the human species that began with the advent of verbal language and our ability to learn from each other’s experience, is now reaching fruition. We can now share ideas and experiences not just with those around us, but with anyone, anywhere on the planet.

This emerging global brain now has global senses. A video camera in Beijing can instantly relay events to anyone who cares (or is permitted) to watch. A microphone in the Brazilian rain-forest can allow each us to listen to the life abounding there. While sensors aboard a space probe can relay back to Earth views of the Solar System that no human being has ever experienced.

The eyes and ears of our telecommunications network are becoming the eyes and ears of humanity, allowing us to share new sets of experiences. And as our experiences expand so does our awareness of ourselves. No longer is home our village or town, or even our country. Home is now our planet. We are becoming increasingly aware that we are all fellow passengers on `Spaceship Earth’; we are a single species, sharing not only a common home, but also a common destiny.

An Insane Global Brain

This global linkage is not, however, sufficient to ensure the future welfare of humanity. A human brain consists of billions of cells, all linked together and interacting, but that person could be either a wise, sensitive, caring person, or they could be a rather egocentric or even mad person. Having an intact brain does not determine how it functions. The same is true of humanity. We could link together to form a “global brain”, but if we’re not careful the result could be a rather insane global brain.

In some respects we are already behaving rather insanely. We are releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere much faster than the planet can absorb it, creating a greenhouse effect that may destroy civilization. At the same time we are destroying the tropical rain forests, which are one of the main regulators of our planet’s environment. Automobiles, power stations and chemical plants in the industrial countries pour noxious gases into the atmosphere, to later fall as acid rain. Intensive agricultural practices are turning soil into sterile dust to be washed or blown away – and at a time when the number of mouths to feed is still increasing rapidly. Most dangerous of all, the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere, which protects all life from the sun’s damaging ultraviolet rays, is being destroyed by the chloroflorocarbons.

To be doing all this damage accidently would be bad enough. But is it not insane to continue to behaving this way even though we know it may destroy us?

Thus the most important questions that humanity today needs to address are: Why, in the face of so much evidence, do we continue doing things which are very likely to destroy us? What is wrong with us?

An Inner Crisis

Everything that is going wrong in the world around us has originated from decisions made by human beings. We may have made those decisions very consciously or without much thinking; we may have made them individually or in groups; but ultimately all of the crises stem from human action and human thinking. The error is inside our own heads, in our minds, in our attitudes, in our values. This is what underlies the global crisis we find ourselves in. It is a crisis of consciousness, of what we regard as important.

Much of our activity is dominated by our psychological needs. There is, for example, the need for security, which often expresses itself as the need for money, to gather wealth. If this dominates the mind then we may find ourselves doing things which are not in our own best interests; indeed, financial security often becomes more important that our own future.

For some people what is important is a sense of power, feeling in control. Many people do not do or say the things they should, because they are concerned about losing their influence over other people. For others it may be the need for approval and recognition that dominate their decisions and behavior.

If this were as far as it went, such sad and unnecessary behavior would be fairly benign. But its consequences spread out into the world around. We develop an exploitative attitude to the world, using other people and the environment for the ways in which they can fulfil our needs. The need for approval can lead us to make inappropriate political, economic, environmental or industrial decisions. We consume resources we do not need, disperse toxins we could contain, and carelessly eliminate thousands of other species sharing our planet. The need for security can lead us to make too many choices in the name of financial expediency. Our need to defend our own beliefs turns others into enemies, makes us kill en masse, and focuses half our scientific research on weapons of war.

In short, our apparent needs for approval, recognition, stimulus, power, control, security, etc. dominate our thinking to such an extent that we behave in ways which clearly are no longer in our own best interests. So the next question we must ask, is can we move beyond this rather counter-productive inner programming?

Our Fundamental Need

If these needs were really fundamental – like, for example, the needs for air and food are – there will be little hope for humanity. But it turns out that they are not so fundamental. They are more like beliefs that we have got ourselves stuck with.

Let us ask ourselves for a moment what lies behind these needs. What does having security give us? Perhaps we believe we will feel happier and more at peace. What does stimulus and excitement bring us? Maybe it makes us feel good or full of joy. What comes from having approval and recognition? Possibly a feeling of inner well-being and satisfaction.

In fact these various goals are not that different from each other. Happiness, peace, feeling good, joy, inner well- being and satisfaction are just different ways of describing the same thing. We could equally use terms such as fulfillment, serenity, contentment, at ease or peace of mind. However we may describe it, we are, in the final analysis, after the same thing. Beneath everything we do, everything we desire, and everything we need is one common goal. We want to be happy. We want to be free from suffering and pain. We want to be at peace within.

The alleviation of suffering and the search for a more satisfying state of mind – call it happiness, fulfillment, inner peace, joy, pleasure or what you will – has been the fundamental motivation of human beings throughout history. It is this that led us to take shelter in caves, build fires, wear clothes, develop agriculture, improve health, share work and develop labour-saving technologies. This has been the motivation behind all our revolutions and breakthroughs.

The Fundamental Belief

There is nothing wrong with seeking inner peace. Where we have gone is in the ways in which we seek peace of mind.

Beneath our many desires lies a common assumption: Whether or not I am at peace within depends upon my experience of the world around. If it is sunny I will be happy. If I get promotion I will be content. If no one disturbs me I will be at peace. This is the fundamental operating principle that guides many of our decisions and behavior.

The belief that inner well-being depends upon outer well-being runs deep through our societies – indeed it is their keystone. Much of our education focuses on knowing the ways of the world in order that we may better manage our affairs and so satisfy our needs. And, as we go though life, the daily deluge of television, radio, newspapers, magazines and billboards reinforces the belief that happiness comes from what we do or have. Wherever we turn we seem to find confirmation that outer well-being determines inner well-being. We have, in effect, been hypnotized into accepting that this external side of the equation is all there is.

Yet most of us know that this fundamental operating principle does not actually work. Examples abound of those who have gathered all the wealth or possessions they could desire, achieved all the fame or respect they wished for, gained all the power or influence they wanted, or found all the excitement or stimulation that they cared to have, yet still remain dissatisfied and not at peace within. We know that whether or not we are at peace comes as much from how we are within as on how things are around us. But our social conditioning is so strong that this inner knowledge rarely comes to the surface. We are caught between what we have been taught to believe and what we know.

A parallel phenomenon occurs in ordinary hypnosis. In one experiment a subject under hypnosis was given the suggestion that a bucket of water was at room temperature, when in reality it was ice-cold – and anyone who as ever experienced ice-cold water will know that it can be quite painful. The person was asked to sit with one arm immersed in the water and report on how it felt. She said that it felt fine; there was no discomfort and no pain. The hypnosis was apparently successful. She was then asked to allow her other hand to engage in some ‘automatic writing’ without looking at what was written. And she started writing ‘It’s freezing.’ ‘Take my hand out.’ ‘It hurts.’ Although the hypnosis had elicited the desired behavior it had not been able to over-ride a deeper level of truth.

The same would seem to happen with our search for peace. We have plenty of evidence that the key to fulfillment lies within. There are those who can remain cheerful when everything seems to be going wrong, or who do not get upset at having to wait in a long queue. And we hear of more extreme examples of those who maintained an inner equanimity despite the atrocities of war, or of yogis who can apparently sleep peacefully on a bed of nails. Yet in our own lives most of us continue to behave as if outer well-being were the only path to peace.

Until, that is, we engage in some ‘automatic writing’, when our deeper knowing reveals itself. For others this truth may reveal itself in other ways – through meditation, dreams, or some other process or circumstance that allows us temporarily to step beyond our conditioned response and remember the truth.

The Fundamental Error

The truth is that our inner well-being is dependant upon the way we choose to perceive and react to circumstances. Whether or not we experience peace of mind in any particular situation is a reflection of how we perceive and judge our experience. This realization has been the foundation of the world’s great spiritual teachings.

Considering that many great scholars have written volumes and volumes of books comparing the different religions and exploring their common thread, it may seem a little presumptuous of me to try to encapsulate them all in a few sentences, and I know that in doing so I may miss out many importance aspects. Nevertheless, let me give you what I consider to be four key points underlying the major spiritual traditions.

1. Our minds have become trapped. In one way or another we have become stuck in various attachments to the things we think are important – our material possessions, our relationships, or our ideas and beliefs. Whatever their form, each attachment can be threatened. We continually wonder if somebody or something is going to take away our favourite attachment. Thus we spend much of our life in fear.

2. Such attachments are neither necessary nor helpful. There is another way of living our lives. We can live in an inner freedom. But to attain this freedom requires a very fundamental change of thinking, a change in how we see the world.

3. So long as we see people through the eyes of fear, wondering how this person or situation may be a threat to what we think we need, we will remain stuck in our old patterns. We need some process, technique or practice that will allow us to let go of the old ways of seeing.

4. This shift of perception changes the way we act in the world. If we can see other people as they are, without judgement, we can begin to see them through the eyes of compassion and love. If we can act out of love then we can begin to act appropriately.

The Challenge Ahead

Making this shift in consciousness is not only important for our individual growth. It is, I believe, the most important challenge facing humanity today.

Consider for a moment a person who has fallen sick. His skin may be erupting in boils; he may have pains in the stomach and be running a fever. A doctor who merely gave the person ointments, pain relievers and something to suppress the temperature would not be considered very wise. Clearly, true healing requires that, in addition to treating the various symptoms, one must also look more deeply at what underlies them. Perhaps a foreign bacteria is present; maybe there is vitamin deficiency; or possibly the person’s emotional state is responsible. Any wise doctor knows that as well as treating the symptoms one must also find out what the cause is, and seek to treat that as well. Otherwise the sickness will reappear, possibly in other forms.

Humanity as a whole is in a very similar position. The symptoms of our sickness can be seen all around; acid rain, holes in the ozone layer, changing weather patterns, food shortages, pollution, desertification, depletion of the planet’s resources, economic crises, social tensions, etc. Certainly we need to find solutions to these problems – and very quickly – but if that is all we do we are like a doctor who only treats a patient’s symptoms, and then declares the patient well again. We must also seek to remedy the root cause of humanity’s problems.

At present we have very little understanding of our inner psychological functioning – particularly in the areas of values and spiritual development. I believe that what we most need today is a concerted international effort to discover the best ways of fostering a widespread shift in consciousness.

The basic wisdom already exists. It is there in the spiritual traditions of all cultures; it is there in the saints and wise people of all times; and it is there inside every one of us. It is the truth we each know deep within. The question is can we tap this wisdom? Can we live it, rather than just talk about it? Can we learn to put it into practice so that it permeates our minds and hearts ?

Let me finish with a poem from Christopher Fry’s play “The Sleep of Prisoners” that summarizes our situation very succinctly.

The human heart can go the length of God.
Dark and cold we may be, but this is no winter now.
The frozen misery of centuries cracks, breaks, begins to move.
The thunder is the thunder of the floes, the thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring.
Thank God our time is now, when wrong comes up to meet us everywhere.
Never to leave us, till we take,
The longest stride of soul men ever took
Affairs are now soul size,
The enterprise is exploration into God
But where are you making for?
It takes so many thousand years to wake,
But will you wake for pity’s sake?

---

This speech was originally given under the title: Challenge and Creation – Ethics for a New Era.

More about Peter Russell, Visit the Peter Russell website

I first met Peter Russell in May of 1980. He was even then decades ahead of his peers. This essay was delivered at meeting in Paris in 2000.

The Awakening Society

Peter Russell

We saw earlier how the growth of computing, data banks, electronic networks and telecommunications, in short the global information revolution, is leading human society to link together in a manner very reminiscent of a “global brain”. But simply having a global nervous system in place is not sufficient to ensure that the world will begin to work together; the billions of neurons in a human brain may be all intact, and interconnected, but the person can still behave in insane ways and cause his own destruction. The important question we still have to answer concerns how we use the immense potential of our burgeoning information revolution.

Technology is, in essence, neutral. It is the ways in which it is used which is crucial. Any technology, whether it be nuclear, chemical, biological or information, can be used in ways which are for the overall benefit of humanity, or in ways which have questionable benefits and side-effects for society as a whole. Behind our actions are decisions, and behind decisions are values and motivations. Thus one crucial question we need to ask about information technology in particular concerns the uses to which it is put, and how can it be used in ways which are in the long term interest of humanity and the planet as a whole rather than the special interests of particular groups? How do we ensure that the perceived needs of an individual or group are in line with the overall needs of humanity as a whole?

The key issue is one of synergy. The word “synergy” comes from the Greek word “syn-ergos”, meaning “to act together”. And in information theory the word is used in the sense “common programming”. Synergy is a measure of the extent to which the elements of a system have common needs and goals. When applied to society, synergy is therefore the degree to which the needs of an individual, or particular group, and the needs of the society as a whole are in parallel.

To see what this means in practice, we might think of the synergy in a system we are all very familiar with – our own bodies. Indeed, the healthy human body is probably the best example there is of high synergy. A skin cell in my fingertip behaves as it is programmed to. It knows nothing of the needs of a skin cell in the toe, or of a liver cell, or a nerve cell. Yet, in following its own needs it does not come into conflict with the needs of these or any other cells in the body. It may not know what the other cells need, but nevertheless because of the “common programming” inherent in the genes, the need of a skin cell are in alignment with the needs of all the other cells and organs in the body. And it is because of this synergy that I actually exist as a human being – otherwise I would just be a pool of biological soup. Synergy therefore occurs when the elements of a system act for their own good and in doing so act for the good of the systen as a whole, without any coercion or higher control.

A good example of low synergy in the human body occurs with cancer. When a cell becomes malignant the genetic information which it shares with the rest of the body is disrupted in some way, and the cell can become a selfish rogue cell, looking after its own modified programming at the expense of the organism as a whole. And, if it is succesful, may end up destroying the very organism on which it is so dependent for its continued existence.

The total loss of synergy in the human body is what occurs at death. Every cell in your body is still alive at the moment you die, and maybe for several hours afterwards; but the synergy has gone; the cells no longer support the organism as a whole. And, as a result, the individual cells soon meet their demise.

One principal characteristic of low synergy is conflict. The individuals in a group, whether they be cells in a body or people in a society, find themsleves in conflict with each other, and with the overall needs of the system. We can see examples of this within the setting of a corporation. If the synergy is low, a situation may arise where the needs of the individuals come into conflict with the needs of the organisation as a whole – a conflict typically manifest as a conflict between unions and management. The representatives of the individuals may perceive their needs as that of higher wages, while the representatives of the organisation, looking at the needs of overall organisation may feel that this is undesirable.

At a global level we could similarly consider the synergy between a corporation and its larger context, the planet. A corporation may decide that it is in its own financial interests to exploit the timber potential of the Amazonian rain forests. Yet this is almost certainly not going to be in the long-term interest of humanity or the planet, and the result is a conflict between the representatives of the organisation and the represenatives of the environment.

Desirable as synergy may be, you cannot force it to it happen. You can certainly make the individuals in a system behave in a manner that supports the system as a whole, but this has not created synergy. The needs of the individual have not become aligned with the needs of the system, they have merely been subjugated in service of the system. Thus when we come to the issue of encouraging synergy amongst the peoples of this planet, it is not a question of supressing individualty and demanding that everybody wants the same thing, but of uncovering a deeper alignment; to find goals and activities that both support the various needs of the many indiviudals and the needs of humanity as whole.

So a key question facing humanity today is how do we create greater synergy, a greater alignment between the needs of the individual and the needs of the group? But before we can answer this question we first have to look at why such an alignment does not naturally exist? And that takes us into the whole question of our basic needs and values. And these in turn depend upon the even deeper issue of how we see ourselves: our self-image.

If someone is asked to define themself, they usually do so in terms of things they have or do. Thus I might describe myself in terms of my name, my nationality, my occupation, my physical characterisitcs, and the roles I play. But none of these are really what I am; they are only things I have or do, and from which I draw a certain sense of identity. I could, for example, change my name, or my nationality, or my occupation, or most of the other aspects I think of as me, but would the sense of “I- ness” have changed? Would that inner experience of existence which we refer to as “I” have changed? Beyond the surface descriptions of the self which we use both to define what we are, and to distinguish ourselves from others, is this thing called “I”. It is something we all know well, but it is also something which is very hard to grasp. Indeed if you ask people to define that simple word “I”, they can spend a whole day on the task and not get very far. The reason it is so hard to grasp the self is another story, and would take us into the mystical literature of the ages; but the conclusion of this exploration would show that our sense of “I-ness”, may well be the most intimate part of our lives, yet it is actually beyond definition – the very act of trying to define “I” makes it into a something – which it is not.

Nevertheless in everyday life we do indeed attempt to define ourselves, and usually in terms of things we have or do. And if we truly believe that these things are what we really are, then anything which threatens any of these aspects of our identity will be perceived as a threat to the sense of self. Thus this derived sense of identity needs to be continuously reaffirmed and supported. We create a whole series of needs, which we believe are necessary for our inner sense of well-being.

One perceived need which many of us have is the need for money, the gathering of financial wealth. Other needs which stem from this derived sense of identity are the need to gather possessions, the need to be seen to follow current fashion, or the need to have stimulating experiences. These are all examples of things that we may believe we need in order to feel content. However, none of these needs are physical needs, necessary for our biological survival; they are psychological needs, which we believe are neccesary if we are to survive psychologically, i.e. if our sense of who we are is to stay intact.

The net result is that most of us believe we need far more than we need physically. That would not be so bad were there not so many of us – about 4.5 billion at the last count, and the number is steadily increasing. And those of us who have their basic physical needs met, want more and more from the world in order to satisfy our perceived psychogical needs. Yet there are limits to what we can demand from our surroundings, or from other peoples. The net result is that we misuse the reources of the planet, gobbling them up in order to satisfy our need for yet more sources of internal satisfaction, and at the same time upsetting the delicate ecological balance of life on which we are so dependent. This is the essence of low synergy behaviour – the perceived needs of the individual being in conflict with those of the system as a whole – and is very reminiscent of cancer in an organism. We have become like rogue cells, consuming the environment on which we are so dependent in order to satisfy our own immediate ends.

Some commentators, observing the tragic behaviour of human beings have suggested that there may be something intrinsically wrong with human beings; that our selfishness stems from a basic error in the way our brains have evolved, and that only radical neurosurgery or drug treatment will correct the error. In computer terms, this is equivalent to saying that humanity has a hardware problem. But I would argue that the problem is essentially one of software. The source of our inappropriate selfishness lies not so much in the structure of the brain itself, but in the beliefs we have adopted as to what we need in order to feel satisfied. In short we have confused our wants with our real needs. A “want” is something that we believe will satisfy a need. A few days ago I was with someone who suddenly wanted a bar of chocolate. At least that was what she thought she wanted. On closer investigation it turned out what she really needed was sugar – her blood sugar had dropped, she was feeling low on energy. She could have satisfied this in many ways – any confectionery, ice cream, alcohol, glucose, fruit – but as a result of past experience she had locked on to the belief that what she needed was chocolate. A similar situation can often occur with that taboo subject of sex. People often believe that they want a sexual relationship with a certain person; but often what they are really wanting is love or nourishment, or power, or excitement. But because they have found that sex can sometimes satisfy these deeper needs, they believe that sex is what they need, and may not see other ways of satisfying the more basic need.

A “want” is, then, a belief we have about how to satisfy a need. But too often we confuse our wants with our needs. And the key to resolving an apparent conflict of interests is to look behind the wants to the real needs. We may think we want money, but the underlying need behind wanting financial wealth is very often the need for security. Accumulating money is simply a means through which we believe we can satisfy the need for security. Or we may feel that we need to engage in risk sports or live an exciting life, and here the underlying need is usually for stimulus. Or people may feel it is important to follow the latest fashion. In this case the underlying need is usually for approval and recognition.

In similar ways most apparent wants come down to just a few dozen basic needs; needs such as security, stimulus, approval and control. If these are our fundamental motivations we might well be justified in feeling that there is something essentially at fault with us. But I would question whether even these are our most fundamental needs. If these were indeed our most fundamental needs then satisfying them should lead to a state of fulfilment, and our “needing” should stop. But it doesn’t. Most of us have probably heard tales of the wealthy industrialist who had every form of material security he could wish for, only to find he was unhappy because he had no love in his life; or of the actress who had all the recogniton and fame she could ask for but found that she had lost her creativity and job satisfaction. Security, approval, control and excitement may appear to be basic needs which society tells us we should satsfy if we are to be fulfilled, but life seems to tell us something different. The key question we have to ask ourselves is “What is it I really need?” What is it I really need beyond the various wants I have; beyond the things society tells me I should want?

When people take time to ponder this question at some length, challenging their ingrained expections and social conditioning, they frequently come up with answers such as to love, to be creative, to make a contribution, to experience inner well-being, to have peace of mind. Such needs, it appears, are our fundamental goals. These are the things we are really after in life. These are what bring us true fulfilment. Thus when we begin to consider our real needs we discover that they are very similar to everbody else’s real needs. Moreover, if you look at these fundmental motivations you will notice that they do not demand that other people behave or think in certain ways as the needs for security, control and approval do; they are all needs which are fulfilled through the actualisation of our own inner potentials. Thus we can fulfil these needs without coming into any conflict with other’s fundamental needs. This is the basis of a high synergy society.

We can see similar patterns applying at the level of a corporation. A corporation engages in various activities, and underlying these activities are various “wants”. It may want that the people who work for the organisation put in a full day’s work (or a full week’s or month’s work if the company works flexible hours); and that they work reasonably hard. It may also want to develop new products, hold a position in the market place, and beat the competition. But underlying these wants are some more fundamental needs – showing a profit, providing a satisfactory return to shareholders, and staying in business. These are some of the basic needs of a corporatation, and their “wants” are ways in which they believe they can satisfy those needs.

And we could apply the same principles to the global system. What is it that humanity, and the planet as a whole really needs? Here the fundamental needs would seem to be things like decisions which take the long-term welfare of the biosystem into account; strategies which are ecologically viable, that do not destroy the very fabric of life; attitudes which are essentially non-exploitative; activities which are generally supportive of the well being of the planet, and the survival of humanity and life in general. These are some of the basic the needs of the planetary system.

So the question of how to create synergy between individuals, organisations and humanity as a whole, is not so much one of how to reconcile different apparent wants and needs, how to force our goals into alignment; it’s more a question of discovering what the deeper needs are, and then choosing those activities that will satisfy these various basic needs. We need to find approaches that will satisfy the individual’s needs for love, creativity and peace of mind; and at the same time satisfy the coporation’s needs to stay in business and provide an adequate return to shareholders; and also satisfy the long term needs of humanity as a whole. By addressing the fundamental needs in this manner, not only is there no conflict between the different parts and different levels of a system, but the strategies can usually be discovered that fulfil the different needs simultaneously.

Most companies already pay considerable attention to satisfying the needs of their clients and customers – indeed the current approach to quality, which has become fashionable over the last few years is one of “conforming to requirements”. I believe that corporations must now expand this appproach downwards to include the needs of the individuals who work within the company, and upwards to include the needs of humanity as a whole.

A customer may see a company as high quality if its services and products conform to requirements. But what does it take for an employee to feel that he is working for a high quality company? For most people it means that working for the company satisfies the needs of an employee. On one level this may mean giving security, satisfactory wages, and a good working envirnoment; but it also means addressing the more fundamental needs related to inner well-being. A company which can satisfy these needs is going to find itself much more in alignement with its employees.

Moving in the other direction, what will it take for a company to be seen as a high quality organisation by the public at large, most of whom neither work for the company nor buy its products or services? I suggest that it entails attending to the long-term, overall needs of humanity as a whole. We have already seen several examples of companies which, in looking after their own needs to maximise profit, have followed policies which have run counter to what large sectors of the public have felt is desirable, and found themselves involved in large-scale boycotts or very costly legal actions. If an enterprise is to ensure its survival in the years ahead, it is going to have to take into account not only the requirements of the customer, and the deeper needs of the employee, but also the long-term interests of humanity as a whole. True quality then is equivalent to high synergy.

To achieve this is going to require a willingness to step back and explore our fundamental requirements. Over the last few centuries western society has made tremendous strides in external growth and development. But in terms of really understanding ourselves and what we really need, both individually and collectively, we have not really progressed much since the time of the Greeks. We now stand at a very important time in human development. We are becoming aware that inner exploration and development has now become as crucial, if not more, to our future welfare as outer development.

We are very much in a time of balance. It is a time both of crisis and of challenge. And it is the decisions that we make today that are going to determine the future. The quality of those decisions is going to depend upon the extent to which we really understand ourselves, understand what it is we really want, understand our deeper values, rather than just our apparent superficial needs. The more that we can begin to explore ourselves and open up to the inner potential, then the greater will be our chances of moving through the most exciting time in history.

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More about Peter Russell, Visit the Peter Russell website

Elsewhere this morning on SynEARTH see: Necessary Evil  and More Reader Reactions  

We are beginning to hear the same kind of talk these days. Let’s go off in the woods and just survive. Good idea ?

This morning’s author tells us that won’t work. We need lots of other humans to survive. We need a team working together. Remember synergy is “working together.”

Survival Requires Synergy

Steven D. Ramseur

Once you have studied the realities involved in surviving a long term catastrophe (years, not weeks), it becomes painfully obvious that maintenance of a reasonably comfortable standard of living in a post disaster situation is beyond the resources of one individual or one family.

It is simply impossible to know enough… to learn enough… or to afford enough to meet all the needs of a family unit living at more than a bare subsistence standard of living… a standard of living far below what we would now consider to be “third world”. This is a future I would wish upon my family only if death were the only alternative. We can, however, do better… much better.

“How?”, you ask. “With a little help from our friends” is the answer.

Team work is the key to survival, not only individual survival, but survival of an acceptable standard of living… even survival of a productive society. It is simply not possible to cover all of your future needs from within your family unit.

For example, you may be a great gardener, but can you build and maintain the tools necessary for production level farming. Even if you can forge plowshares and tan leather for tack, what if your animal gets sick, or what if your family gets sick? Can you diagnose the problem, and if you can, will you have stored the supplies needed to treat the problem?

What if you are a great farmer, a great blacksmith, a great vet, and a physician on the side? What if someone attacks your family while you are in the field?

Who will spin the yarn? Who will weave the cloth? Who will make the clothes? Who will tan the leather? Who will make the shoes?

Who will teach your children? Even if you have every one of these skills, you are not likely to have the current resources to stock the supplies needed to maintain the trade. Even if you stock everything that might possibly be needed for every one of these trades, there will simply not be enough hours in the day to meet even your most basic needs.

What is the answer? The answer is specialization. This is the root foundation for human society. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Forget the idea that you will survive in your secure fortress with your solar power, your tons of wheat, and your thousands of rounds of ammunition. You will succumb to a superior force, or to disease, to starvation, or to isolation and depression.

The “dream” survival situation would be a small, relatively isolated community with a large agricultural base and some manufacturing resources. It would have its own power supply, temperate weather, and a good mix of trade skills. Very few of us have the luxury to live in such a plane. In fact there are very few such places at all. Even if you can find one, they are not likely to welcome a total stranger into their community during the turmoil of a post-catastrophe situation.

If you know of such a place, consider moving there now, even if it means a career change and an income reduction. You may have to give up your weekly trips to the symphony and the theatre, and you might not have a choice if 15 different French restaurants, but you might find your live very much richer for the safety, fraternity, and slower pace of life.

I realize that we cannot all live in small town utopia, and even in these communities, the vast majority of people don’t give a moment’s thought to post-disaster survival. They don’t have on hand even a fraction of the supplies needed to carry on their trade for even a few days out of touch from the regional and national distribution system. Life in America is just too comfortable just now to think about things.

So what can you do? You can learn all you can about everything you can. You can stock up on reference books. You can collect all the supplies needed for short term survival and intermediate term subsistence. But most importantly, you can learn a practical skill, then stock deep in what you do well, then recruit friends of like mind who will do the same for other complementary skills. A carpenter with some wheat and a rifle with loads of ammunition might be in a poor situation with a sick or hungry child. A carpenter who has seen fit to put aside a top quality set of hand tools and several hundred pounds of nails might be a rich man in a community with a need for shelter and building skills.

A physician may be a lousy shot and unable to defend his family, but a physician with the tools to diagnose illness and a stockpile of medicines to treat them is guaranteed to have the whole community turn out in his defense. The combination of his knowledge and his supplies, not necessarily either one alone is what makes him an immense asset to the community. The whole is again worth more than the sum of the parts.

After realizing that the team or group approach to preparedness is superior, one must consider what skills are essential in order to know what to learn or who to recruit.

Skills might be divided into essential or primary, and desirable or secondary, based on whether they are necessary for personal or cultural survival respectively. Primary skills needed for personal survival, and the people to provide them, might include:

1) Sustenance – storage, preparation, and production of food and water

• A) farmers
• B) serious gardeners
• C) cooks and bakers

2) Shelter – short and long term protection from hazards of toxins, fire, radiation, the environment, and antisocial behavior, including maintenance of existing shelter

• A) builders – electricians, plumbers, carpenters, masons
• B) wood cutters
• C) sanitation or radiation engineers
• D) mechanics

3) Security – protection from the antisocial conduct of insiders or outsiders

• A) law officers
• B) military personnel or veterans
• C) hunters or others skilled with weapons
• D) administrators (yes, even after the great disaster there will be a need for a few petty bureaucrats. Someone has to keep the ducks in a row.

4) Medical care – maintenance of the personal and public health of the community

• A) physicians, especially Family Practitioners and Surgeons, a Pathologist might have his place but would be of less general use than a primary care clinician or surgeon.
• B) dentists
• C) nurses, physicians’ assistants, paramedics, EMTs, ex-military medics
• D) pharmacists
• E) sanitarians and public health officials

Secondary skills are things you personally might be able to live without, but society cannot.

1) Education

• A) teachers – parents can teach, but not as well or as comprehensively as someone who is trained in it professionally. Note also that teachers frequently make good administrators if you don’t want any real bureaucrats in the group.
• B) parents – education is their principle job anyway. C) lawyers and accountants – Their primary skills may be useless, but they are well educated people. Don’t let lawyers administrate, however, unless you want a new world as screwed up as the old.

2) Transportation – life proceeds very slowly when you must walk everywhere.

• A) mechanics – There will be no shortage of surplus vehicles, but keeping them running will be a task.
• B) chemists and/or distillers – Those surplus vehicles and machines must run on something.
• C) animal breeders – If you can’t get the truck run you can ride an animal. This form of transportation is also edible and produces fertilizer. Petroleum may be hard to come by as well.
• D) wood and leather workers – to make harnesses, saddles, wagons, etc.

3) Communications and Electronics – vastly increases the efficiency of production, distribution, and security.

• A) ham radio operators – they almost always have plenty of equipment and they think a lot about emergency preparedness.
• B) telephone technicians – the telephone system will still be there but keeping it working will be a vital help to the community.
• C) electricians or electronics technicians – the generation and storage of electricity is vital to communications and very helpful to almost every other sector of the community.
• D) athletes – If you can’t get the message there any other way, you can always send a runner.

Others might add quite a few more categories to this list, but it’s easy to see that the scale of the task in mastering even a fraction of these skills is beyond reasonable expectation.

A practical way of dealing with this problem can be found in studying the organizational principles of the U. S. Army Special Forces.

Among the concepts taught in the Special Forces is the idea of limited specialization. Every Special Forces soldier is expert in the basic skills of soldiering such as weapons, movement, concealment, survival, etc., but he is also a specialist with very advanced knowledge in one particular area such as communications, intelligence, demolition, or medical. Every team member is familiar with the skills of the others, but he is expected not only to be able to utilize his skills in a superior manner, but also to teach his skills to others.

The Special Forces soldier is a consummate warrior, but his principle mission is not to fight but to teach, lead, and inspire. The “survivalist” should consider this to be his mission as well. The Regular Army NCO would be expected to lead a squad of ten or so men. The Special Forces NCO would be expected to teach his skills to a large number of indigenous sympathizers and then lead a group as large as a company or a battalion… jobs usually held by captains or lieutenant colonels.

So too should the dedicated survivalist consider himself a leader and teacher. After having mastered the basic skills of self- reliance his next priority must be to master his specialty skill, and having learned it well, to stockpile the tools of his trade. He must then work on the other specialties important to survival, with special emphasis on skills not yet filled by recruitment.

A good plan would be to become a specialist in one of the primary or secondary skills, develop a good working knowledge of all of the primary skills, and become familiar with the secondary skills.

The camouflage-clad, rifle toting loner of the popular media isn’t practicing survival, he is practicing for suicide. Don’t imitate him, and don’t recruit him. Survival means teamwork, and the bigger the team the more comfortable the future.

Just think, if everyone thought like a survivalist, then it’s likely none of us would ever need these skills and supplies we work so hard to obtain. The best life insurance policy is the one you don’t have to collect on.

9 December, 1990

This is the sequel to Beyond Property. Elsewhere at SynEARTH, read The Unsustainability of Sustainability and Reaction to Synergic Containment.

Wealthy Beyond our Dreams

Timothy Wilken, MD

If we humans synergically reorganized our world, we would all be wealthy beyond our wildest dreams. Today in 2002, if we were to reclaim the gift of all the land and natural resources presently held on planet Earth as individual property. And if we were to further reclaim the gift of Progress from those few who control it today, and then divided these two gifts equally among the 6 billions of us living on the planet, we would discover to our surprise and amazement that every man, woman, and child is wealthy beyond their dreams.

With synergic organization, and careful utilization of the planet’s total wealth for the benefit of all humanity, the carrying capacity of the Earth could be maximized to solve all our human problems and meet our all our needs. And this is without any need to damage the Earth, or degrade our environment.

There would never be any need for humans to earn their livings again. Our livings have already been earned by all those humans who lived and died to give us the great gift of progess. Then all humans would be free to spend their time making their lives meaningful by creating more wealth to be gifted to living and future humanity.

To better understand my proposal for a synergic future, it is important to understand what I mean by wealth. 

‘Wealth’

The collective term we humans use to describe what we value is ‘wealth’.

The human species emerged in the world of space-binding. Here the rule of survival was fight or flight. The values in this world were adversarial. Adversary relationship originates on earth in the animal world. Earth supplies limited space for the animals. Space is finite. Good space is even more finite. This means it is very limited. There is only so much good water, so much good grazing land, so much good shelter, and so much good food. There is not enough to go around. The space-binders must compete for this limited amount of good space. They compete adversarialy. They compete by fighting and flighting. They compete by attacking and killing other space-binders. Humans living as space-binders follow the adversarial rule. They compete by fighting and flighting. They compete by attacking and killing their enemies. In this world survival depends on securing good space and avoiding bad space. Bad space is where the predators live — bad space is where you lose — bad space is where you die. Bad space has threatened humans for a very long time as Jared Diamond explains:

“For most of the time since the ancestors of modern humans diverged from the ancestors of the living great apes, around 7 million years ago, all humans on Earth fed themselves exclusively by hunting wild animals and gathering wild plants, as the Blackfeet still did in the 19th century. It was only within the last 11,000 years that some peoples turned to what is termed food production: that is, domesticating wild animals and plants and eating the resulting livestock and crops.”

Jared Diamond makes the point, that for 99.9% of the seven-million-years that our species has existed, we have been hunter-gatherers. And, for that same period, our species has been dominated by the adversary way, and all human values have been adversarial values.

Adversarial Wealth — Physical Force

The human species emerged in the world of space-binding. Here the rule of survival was fight or flight. Their values were adversarial. Adversary relationship originates on earth in the animal world. Earth supplies limited space for the animals. Space is finite. Good space is even more finite. Thus, it is very limited. There is only so much good water, so much good grazing land, so much good shelter, and so much good potential food. There is not enough to go around. The space-binders must compete for this limited amount of good space. They compete adversarily. They compete by fighting and flighting. They compete by attacking and killing other space-binders.

Humans living as space-binders follow the adversarial rule. The compete by fighting and flighting. The compete by attacking and killing their enemies. Physical force is what adversarial humans value most. The force to physically control other humans. Adversarial wealth is fighting men, weapons, horses, fortresses, that which gives me the adversarial advantage. Adversarial humanity uses force and coercion to protect life, to promote human well being and satisfy human needs.

The adversary world is a game of with losers and winners. This is a world of fighting and flighting — of pain and dying. To win in this game someone must lose. Winning is always at the cost of another.

All humans living in the adversarial world are struggling to avoid losing — struggling to avoid being hurt.

CONFLICT —def—> The struggle to avoid loss — the struggle to avoid being hurt.

Here humans must fight and flee to stay alive, and they do. Always ready at a moments notice to go tooth and nail to avoid losing — to avoid death. Losers/winners is the harshest of games. Winning is always at the cost of another’s life. The loser tends to resist with all of his might occasionally prevailing by killing or wounding his attacker. So both parties can lose, turning the game — losers/winners into losers/losers. If we analyze adversary relationships, we discover that individuals are less after the relationship. 1+1<2. In the adversarial world where the loser forfeits his life 1+1=1. Or in the end game of losers/losers, both adversaries may die in battle, then 1+1=0.

The adversarial value system is much intact in our present world. Much of today’s wealth is weapons. Nearly all of today’s nations maintain large armies, navies, and airforces. The number of weapons in private hands is equally enormous. Adversary wealth is physical force.

With the emergence of Neutrality which became institutionalized in 1776, came a new option for humanity. And with this option came a new set of values — neutral values. 

Neutral Wealth — Money

Neutral relationships originated in the plant world.

Sunlight provides unlimited energy for the plants. Each individual plant needs only the sun, and adequate water and minerals to survive. Plant survival does not require any relationship with other. This fact makes plants the independent class of life — independent of other.

Humans living in the world of Institutional Neutrality view themselves as independent of others. They should not deliberately hurt another human, but they are also are never required to help another human. Their success or failure depends solely on their own efforts and talents. Individuals have no relationship with each other. Individuals have no awareness of each other, they ignore each other. To survive in the neutral world, you must be self-sufficient. If we analyze neutral relationships, we discover that individuals are unchanged by their relationship. They are neither less or more after the relationship. They are the same. 1+1=2.

Choices which do not hurt or help are neutral. Actions which do not hurt or help are neutral. Relationships which do not hurt or help are neutral. The mechanism of relationship is conducted through a free and fair market with the honest exchange of merchandise of good value at a fair price.

FAIR TRADE —def—> The bartering to insure that the exchange is fair — to insure that the price is not too high or too low — to insure that neither party loses.

Institutional Neutrality is about fairness. The market place is a fair and safe place to exchange goods and services. Neither seller nor buyer should be injured in the exchange. Products should represent a good value and be sold at a fair price. All citizens are quaranteed freedom from loss.

The medium of exchange in the neutral world is money. Money is used as symbolic representation of all real wealth. For all intensive purposes in the Neutral world money and real wealth are the same.

Money is what neutral humans most value. The money to purchase help. Neutral wealth is any negotiable security — cash, stocks, bonds, Certi?ates of Deposit, that which can be exchanged in the fair market. Neutral humanity uses money to buy life protection, to buy human well being and satisfy human needs.

Today, humanity has the option for synergic relationship. If we choose synergy we will adopt a new set of values — synergic values. 

Synergic Wealth — Mutual Life Support

In a synergic culture wealth is defined very differently. Synergic wealth is that which supports life for self and others. It is mutually life affirming. This by definition excludes adversary wealth — physical force that hurts other human beings, and neutral wealth — money that ignores other human beings.

Synergic humans recognize that interdependence is the human condition. They recognize that all humans need help unless they wish to live at the level of animal subsistence.

They know that adversarial humans make people help them. This is help obtained with coercion — force or fraud. Those providing the help are losing. When you force others to help you, they do the least they possibly can. Because the helper is hurt, adversary help produces the lowest quality help.

They know that neutral humans purchase help through the open market place. This is help purchased from others. This is the way most of us living in the free world get help today. We hire it or we buy it in the market place. When I go to McDonald’s, I pay them five dollars to help feed me. The focus in the market place is on a fair price. Because the helper is ignored, neutral help is of average quality.

They understand that synergic humans attract help by helping others. This is help attracted by helping others — when another individual understands that by helping you, they will also be helped, they will automatically help you. When others understand that when you win, they win, they will support and celebrate your success. This is the power of the win-win relationship. Show those who can help you, how they will win by doing so. Show them how they will be helped by helping you. Because the helper is helped, synergic help is of highest quality.

Co-OPERATION — def — > Operating together to insure that both parties win and that neither party loses. The negotiation to insure that both parties are helped and neither party is hurt.

Synergic relationships are mutually helpful. Both parties in the relationship experience a gain. In Synergic relationships, one individual plus another individual is more after their relationship than before: 1+1>>2. Synergic relationships are marked by low conflict with high effectiveness and enormous productivity.

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The wealth available to humanity in a synergic future is mutual life support. Synergic wealth resulting from Synergic Organization and Synergic Government can produce a high quality of life for all humanity.

While Adversary-Neutral Organization and Adversary-Neutral Government can only offer a decent quality of life to a fraction of the 6 billion humans currently living on the Earth. And that achievement is possible only with the exploitation and squandering of Nature’s great gift of the fossil fuels.

Petroleum, natural gas, and coal are are called fossil fuels because they are all made from decayed plants and animals that have been preserved in the earth’s crust by pressure, bacterial processes and heat. It takes millions of years for these organisms to chemically change into fossil fuels.

With the exhaustion of the fossil fuels, our current Adversary — Neutral Organizations and Governments can only offer humanity an Earth with a carrying capacity for ~100 million humans. That means a lot of people will die.

The truth is especially hard to believe if it requires that we take action — if it requires that we change. If humanity is to have a future, we must take action — we must change. If humanity is to have a future, we must believe the truth.

 

A Synergic Future  Begins with Synergic Values

Thousands of years ago the synergic way was discovered intuitively by Jesus of Nazareth. He gave us the rules in his sermon on the mount:

“Love our enemies, do good to them that hate us, bless them that curse us, and pray for them that despitefully use us, I say unto you, that every one who is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgement. Go be reconciled with thy brother.”

Jesus of Nazareth may have been the first human to embrace synergy. His words seem to capture the very essence of synergic morality. Synergic morality is more than not hurting other, it requires helping other. Jesus was the first human to state the fundamental law of synergic relationship. It is known as the Golden Rule:

“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law.”

What would you have others do to you? The best one word answer I can find for this question is help. “Help others as you would have them help you.”

Synergic morality requires helping. Andrew J. Galambos in his lectures describing “Moral Capitalism” often quoted the negative version of the Golden Rule: “Do not do to others what you would not have them do to you.”

What would you not have others do to you? Here the best one word answer is hurt. “Do not hurt others as you would have them not hurt you.”

This is where Galambos’ “Moral Capitalism” is incomplete. The negative version of the Golden Rule is just and right, but Synergic Morality requires more of us than simple not hurting. It requires more of us than simply ignoring others. It requires us to help others—to help each other. Jesus of Nazareth understood this on the deepest of levels. He did not call for simply a prohibition against hurting others. He called on us to help each other. Synergic Morality is more than the absence of hurting.  It is the presence of helping.

Recall Universe is now understood to be process. Reality is a happening. Many things are going on all at once. Living systems—the plants, animals, and we humans all live within the EVENT paradigm. Fuller defined an event to be a triad of related phenomena— action, reaction, resultant.

The dynamics of all human behavior can be understood using these three concepts. Fuller discovered for every action there is a reaction, and a precessional resultant.

I can decide on an action. I can then implement my action. The environment including all life forms react to my action, the vector sum of the two produce a resultant. I act, the rest of the world reacts, and when it all settles down the change made by the interaction is the resultant.

Adversary action tends to provoke adversary reaction ending in an adversary resultant. Neutral action tends to provoke neutral reaction ending in a neutral resultant. And synergic action tends to provoke synergic reaction and end in a synergic resultant. This is the Law of Karma. Synergic Morality rests then on the premise—that when we help others, we can hope to find ourselves helped in return.

Humans who would organize themselves synergically, must commit to synergic values. If they wish to gain the power of synergic interdependence they must understand synergic mechanism, accept synergic responsibility, and embrace synergic morality. Synergic individuals do not hurt others, and to extent that they are capable, they help others.

The Life Force

Life forms the basis then for all synergic values. All forms of life are animated by the life force. The life force is not well understood, but it seeks to survive and to extend itself into universe. The life force is known to be three and one half billion years old on this planet. It is like a special flame, sort of a living fire, we pass it to our children in the act of reproduction. But, we do not know how to rekindle the flame should it go out. The life force itself is the very basis of living action.

(Life Force) x (Time) = Living Action.

No life force. No living action. Therefore, the the sanctity of life itself must be the highest synergic value. Therefore, Synergic Wealth is defined as life itself and that which promotes human well being generally—that which satisfies the human needs of self and other—that which promotes mutual survival and makes life meaningful for self and other. Now recalling that an event is made up of three parts—action, reaction, and resultant. We are ready to further define our synergic value system. 

IMPORTANCE—def—> The amount of Wealth effected by an event compared to the total amount of Wealth.

WEALTH (effected)
WEALTH (total)

RISK—def—> What is the amount Wealth that could be lost during an event—action, reaction & resultant.

OPPORTUNITY—def—> What is the amount of Wealth that could be gained during an event—action, reaction & resultant.

ALLOWED ACTION—def—> Any action is allowed which does not injure or hurt another human individual.

SYNERGIC ACTION—def—> Any allowed action which helps others.

DYMAXION ACTION—def—> The least action that triggers an event that produces the greatest gain in Wealth.

 

The truth is especially hard to believe if it requires that we take action — if it requires that we change. If humanity is to have a future, we must take action — we must change. If humanity is to have a future, we must believe the truth.

 

SYNOCRACY 

How will we make decisions in a synergic future? In today’s world 2002, it is assumed without question that majority rule democracy is the best way to organize humanity. To even offer a criticism of majority rule democracy is to invite an immediate and often emotional charged attack on oneself. We are quickly asked to choose between majority rule democracy or the dictatorships of communism/fascism. We are quickly reminded that if we don’t like it here in a majority ruled democracy, we are free to leave.

Majority rule democracy is clearly a major advance over the adversary systems of dictatorships—the rule by one, or oliarchies—the rule by the few.

Majority rule democracy in its purest form was found in the Ancient Greek city-states and Early Roman Republic, these were direct democracies in which all citizens could speak and vote in assemblies. This was possible because of the small size of the city-states almost never more than 10,000 citizens. However, even these Ancient democracys did not presuppose equality of all individuals; the majority of the populace, notably slaves and women, had no political rights at all. So even here the majority really did not rule.

In modern representative democracies we find the majority rule mechanism used to select our representatives, to make decisions within committees and to make decisions within the legislative bodies, however careful analysis reveals we really have rule by the few.

In the United States, we elect one president, 100 Senators and 435 Congressman. This is one President for ~271 million Americans. There are two Senators for each state. Senatorial representation would vary from one Senator for ~16 million Californians down to one Senator for ~350,000 Delawarians. The members of the first House of Representatives were elected on the basis of 1 representative for every 30,000 inhabitants, but at least 1 for each state. At present the size of the House is fixed at 435 members, elected on the basis of 1 representative for about 500,000 inhabitants. Our representatives do not even know us. If any Congressman met with 10 of his constituents every day for 365 days a year, it would take over 137 years for him just to meet all of them. And Congressmen are only elected for two year terms. If our Congressman don’t even know us how can they represent us?

Both houses facilitate business by the committee system, and each has a fixed number of permanent committees, called standing committees, the chief function of which is considering and preparing legislation.

As the United States grew in population and in influence in world affairs, the volume and complexity of the matters arising inCongress also increased. Due consideration to all matters submitted to the Congress could not be given in open debate on the floor of the Senate and House. As a result, the standing committees of the Congress became the arbiters of the fate of practically all legislation. There are 22 standing committees in the House and 16 standing committees in the Senate. Even though majority rule is used to make decisions in these committees once the decision is made the results are imposed on ~271,000,000 Americans.

Recently, the American people have attempted to exert their will by making use of ballot initiatives. Almost always if these initiatives are not popular with the Few that Rule, they are quickly dismantled. In November of 1996, the majority of Californians voted for Proposition 209, which banned affirmative action, Proposition 215, which legalized medical use of marijuana, and Proposition 187, which denied legal benefits to illegal immigrants. By January of 1997, all three were hung up in the courts or in a jurisdictional squabble with the federal government. None was close to being enforced. By May of 1998, Proposition 215, the Marijuanna for Medical Use Initiative which passed by a 56% majority throughout the state and by an 80% majority in San Francisco has all but been dismantled by the Few who Rule. They had succeeded in closing the majority of the medical marijuanna clinics which had opened throughout the state, and were pressing criminal charges against many of those involved in the clinics. Obviously, the majority does not rule in California. This fact is not lost on the electorate.More more citizens have realized that voting in our representative democracy does not make any difference. For despite the fact that our American Goverment is more and more intrusive in our lives, we are less and less interested in pretending that our voting makes any real difference.

Voter turnout has been declining steadily since 1960. And as reported in the Wall Street Journal for November 9, 2000:

“Overall voter turnout for this week’s election barely budged despite nearly $1 billion of campaign television advertisements and the closest presidential contest in decades.

“About 50.7% of the nation’s 200 million eligible voters cast ballots this week, marginally greater than the rock-bottom level seen in 1996, but significantly lower than the 1992 level, said Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate. Four years ago, only 49% of those qualified to vote actually did so, the lowest turnout since 1924. By contrast, some 55% of the electorate went to the polls in 1992’s close race between Bill Clinton and President George H.W. Bush.”

Seeking Synergic Government

However, even if we had direct democracies using majority rule, it would not be a synergic form of govenment. In fact, if we use the criteria of prohibition of loss, majority rule democracy is not even a neutral form of government. In majority rule democracy, the minority often loses. As Andrew J. Galambos writes:

“The word Democracy comes from the Greek words which mean “rule of the people.” However, the practice of Democracy can be no better than the understanding of the concept of “rule of the people.” Over the past 2,000 years, most people have come to accept without question or reservation the idea that Democracy means the ability of the people to choose their mode of social organization by means of majority vote.

“The political concept of Democracy arose as a consequence of counting yeas and nays on particular issues and than selecting the men who would decide how issues were to be resolved. Whichever man could muster the choice of more persons than his opposition could muster became the dominant person for the society. This was and is nothing more than an application of the old dictum, might makes right.

“This concept of Democracy (which prevails to this day) relies upon the ability of the winning political leaders to count upon the support of more people than their losing opponents. However, this concept does nothing to ensure the protection of the property, hence, the freedom of those who may disagree. Furthermore, those who may be in the majority with respect to a given issue or political candidate will eventually find themselves in the minority with respect to other issues or candidates. In the long run, therefore, everyone loses. This concept of Democracy eventually breaks down and leads to a destruction of freedom.”

Rule by the Majority

In today’s “FREE” world all political decisions are made using majority rule democracy. The the group deciding may be small—a committee faced with solving some particular problem, or large—the entire voting electorate of a nation choosing a President. Regardless of the size of the group deciding, decision is made when one faction within the group achieves a simple majority. That faction wins the minority faction loses. Majority rule consensus requires only a simple majority to force the minority—the losing voters to accept the position of the majority—the winning voters. There is no need to gain the agreement of all of the members.There is no need to prevent the minority from losing.

Majority rule democracy of which the committee is the most common example is filled with political intrigue and back room deals to obtain majority concensus and defeat the minority. This often results in the dark art of politics which makes strange bedfellows. Even when the majority wins they are not assured of the cooperation of the minority. Often the minority may only support the elected plan half-heartedly, or even seek to sabotage the plan they didn’t vote for since they feel they are losing anyway.

Compared to dictatorship—the rule by one, or olioarchy—the rule by a few, majority rule democracy—the rule by most is clearly a much fairer way. It should come as no surprise then that majority rule democracy is so attractive to Institutional Neutrality since fairness is one of Neutrality’s highest values.

While it should now be clear to the reader that Neutral political-economic systems are better for humanity then Adversary political-economic systems. Representative democracy’s Rule by the Few is also better for humanity then a dictatorship’s rule of by one. But the advantages that Neutrality and majority ruled Representative democracy have over Adversary dictatorships does not mean there is nothing better for Humanity

Unanimous Rule Democracy

Synergic consensus is a much more powerful mechanism of decision making than the majority rule of present day democracy.

Synergic consensus occurs when a group of humans sitting in heterarchy negotiate to reach a decision in which they all win and in which no one loses. In a synergic heterarchy, all members sit on the same level as “equals”. No one has more authority than anyone else. Every one has equal responsibility and equal authority within the heterarchy. The assignment for the heterarchy is to find a plan of action so that all members win. It is the collective responsibility of the entire heterarchy to find this “best” solution. Anyone can propose a plan to accomplish the needs of the group. All problems related to accomplishing the needs would be discussed at length within the heterarchy.

The proposed action for solving a problem is examined by all members of the heterarchy. Anyone can suggest a modification, or even an alternative action to solve the problem. All members of the heterarchy serve as information sources for each other. The heterarchy continues in discussion until a plan of action is found that will work for everyone. When all are in agreement and only then can the plan be implemented. The plan insures that all members of the synergic heterarchy win. All members are required to veto any plan where they or anyone else would lose. But all vetoes are immediately followed by renegotiation to modify the plan so the loss can be eliminated.

Synergic Equality

All members of a synergic heterarchy are equal. They share equal responsibility for the actions chosen by the group. They share equal authority in the process of choosing those actions. When individuals work together in synergic relationship to a accomplish a common goal. They are considered as a single system.

When individuals work together in synergic relationship, new abilities, skills, talents, etc., emerge as a part of that relationship, that are not there when the individuals work separately. The individuals working in synergic group are more efficient, more productive, more creative, and more intelligent, than they are when working separately. The result of their synergy is that they create “more” together than they could create apart. This wealth that produced by “working together” was called the CoOperator’s surplus by synergic scientist Edward Haskell.

When individuals work together in synergic relationship, they equally contribute to the synergic emergents, and will share equally in the Co-Operators’ surplus. Haskell’s “Co-Operators Surplus” is property and it is owned equally by all who synergized within the synergic group to create it.

What happens in a synergic group when finding a win is impossible?

Synergic science realizes and accepts there will be times and situations where loss is unavoidable. When this occurs synergic mechanism dictates that the group accept reality and focus on minimizing the loss, and then share the loss equally. In synergy, we are one. In synergy are equal. In synergy we strive to win together. But if we are forced to lose, then we will lose together—this means we will share equally in the loss.

1) In synergy, I am ONE with my associates.

2) In synergy, I am MORE with my asscociates than by myself.

3) In synergy, I am EQUAL to all my associates.

4) In synergy when we WIN, I will win MORE with my associates than by myself and I will share equally in the GAINS.

5) In synergy, when we LOSE, I will lose LESS with my associates than by myself and I will share equally in the LOSSES.

6) In synergy, we will win together or lose together, but we are TOGETHER.

 

Is Unanimous Rule Democracy Feasible?

Synergic consensus is unanimous consensus. I can hear the objections now. “That’s impossible, you will never get everyone in the group to agree.” “Decisions will never get made.” “It is hard enough to get a majority to agree.”

A Japanese business heterarchy is slower at making decisions than a single manager in an American business hierarcy. It takes longer for a group of individuals to discuss, negotiate, and come to agreement than it takes for a single American manager to decide all by himself. If the speed of making decisions is the only criteria for choosing a mechanism of decision making then the dictatorship—the rule by one is the clear standout.

However, humanity has moved beyond dictatorships for reasons of fairness and justice. Majority rule democracy is not a rapid decision making process. Individuals within a group deciding—whether the group is a small committee or a large nation choosing a President—are seeking to gain the majority of support. This takes time—sometimes a lot of time. Our national elections often take place over an entire year. The focus is on lining up votes—working deals—in a word—politics. This process is anything but rapid. If all decisions in American businesses were made by majority rule, decision making would probably be even slower than in Japanese companies using heterarchical consensus.

Synergic consensus is not availability to humanity today. We do not yet know how fast it will be at making decisions. But, I predict that unanimous rule democracy will prove faster than majority rule democracy. Synergic consensus elimates conflict. Recall conflict is the stuggle to avoid loss. Conflict is at the very heart of majority rule democracy. The focus of synergic consensus is very different. The entire group knows from the outset that they cannot lose. They are focused on choosing a plan of action that serves the needs of all the members in the group—to choose a plan of action that causes no one to lose.  The synergic veto is not invoked capriciously. The only basis for synergic veto is to prevent someone from losing. This is a mechanism to eliminate loss—to choose the very best plan of action for everyone. This may well speed up the process of decison making. In any event regardless of the speed of decision, implimentation will be rapid. There is no conflict. This is a major advantage over majority rule democracy.

Life Utilizes Synergic Consensus

Today, mind and brain scientists have made enormous progress in understanding how the human brain works. There has been many surprises in these recent advances. But the biggest shocker is that the brain doesn’t decide what to do. Decision making is not controlled centrally in the brain. The mind-brain appears to act as a coordination and consensus system for meeting all the needs of the cells, tissues, and organs of the body. The brain doesn’t decide to eat. The cells of the body decide to eat, the brain coordinates their activity and carries out the consensus will.

Our human brain stores the gathered information from the body’s sensing of its environment, the brain presents opportunities for action reflective of both the sensing of environment and the needs and goals of the 40,000,000,000 cells it serves. The brain is not the leader of the body, it is the follower of the body. It is a system that matches needs of the body with its sensing of opportunities to meet these needs by action within the environment. The brain is a ‘synergic government’ that truly serves its constituents—the cells, tissues, and organs that make up the human body. The body is governed by a unanimous rule democracy that has survived millions of years.

The apparent ‘I’ is not real. It is really a ‘we’. We humans have mistaken the self-organization of synergic consensus for the directed organization of an ego decider.

If the human body can using unanimous rule democracy and synergic consensus can organize and coordinate the actions of 40,000,000,000 cells so totally that we identify the whole organism as a single idividual, then we humans should be able to use these same mechanisms to organize our species and solve our human problems. 

Barbara Hubbard originally coined the term Synocracy to refer to a not yet defined future system of “rule by the people” in a co-Operative society.

Andrew J. Galambos, Thrust for Freedom #7 —What is True Democracy?, Free Enterprise Institute, 1963

Well if majority rule democracy is obsolete and no longer the best system of human government, what other things do we believe that are equally wrong?

A SYNERGIC FUTURE - II

Aggression and Violence

Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman

To understand the nature of aggression and violence on the battlefield, it must first be recognized that most participants in close combat are literally “frightened out of their wits.” Once the bullets start flying, most combatants stop thinking with the forebrain (that portion of the brain that makes us human) and start thinking with the midbrain (the primitive portion of our brain, which is indistinguishable from that of an animal).

In conflict situations, this primitive, midbrain processing can be observed in the existence of a powerful resistance to killing one’s own kind. Animals with antlers and horns slam together in a relatively harmless head-to-head fashion, and piranha fish fight their own kind with flicks of the tail, but against any other species these creatures unleash their horns and teeth without restraint. This is an essential survival mechanism that prevents a species from destroying itself during territorial and mating rituals.

One major modern revelation in the field of military psychology is the observation that such resistance to killing one’s own species is also a key factor in human combat. *Brig. Gen. S. L. A. Marshall first observed this during his work as an official U.S. Army historian in the Pacific and European theaters of operations in World War II. Based on his post-combat interviews, Marshall concluded in his book Men Against Fire (1946, 1978) that only 15 to 20 percent of the individual riflemen in World War II fired their own weapons at an exposed enemy soldier. Key weapons, such as *flame-throwers, were usually fired. Crew-served weapons, such as *machine guns, almost always were fired. And action would increase greatly if a nearby leader demanded that the soldier fire. But when left on their own, the great majority of individual combatants appear to have been unable or unwilling to kill.

Marshall’s findings were and have remained controversial. Faced with scholarly concern about a researcher’s methodology and conclusions, the scientific method involves replicating the research. In Marshall’s case, every available parallel, scholarly study validates his basic findings. One of these studies was Ardant du Picq’s survey of French officers in the Korean War when the rate of psychiatric casualties was almost seven times higher than the average for World War II. Only after the war settled down, lines stabilized, and the threat of having enemy in rear areas decreased did the average rate go down to that of World War II. Again, just the potential for close-up, inescapable, interpersonal confrontation is more effective and has greater impact on human behavior than the actual presence of inescapable, impersonal death and destruction.

Ardant du Picq’s surveys of French officers in the 1860s and his observations about ancient battles (Battle Studies, 1946), John Keegan and Richard Holmes’ numerous accounts of ineffectual firing throughout history (Soldiers, 1985), Holmes’ assessment of Argentine firing rates in the Falklands War (Acts of War, 1985), Paddy Griffith’s data on the extraordinarily low firing rate among Napoleonic and American *Civil War regiments (Battle Tactics of the American Civil War, 1989), the British army’s laser reenactments of historical battles, the FBI’s studies of nonfiring rates among law enforcement officers in the 1950s and 1960s, and countless other individual and anecdotal observations, all confirm Marshall’s fundamental conclusion that human beings are not, by nature, killers. Indeed, from a psychological perspective, the history of warfare can be viewed as a series of successively more effective tactical and mechanical mechanisms to enable or force combatants to overcome their resistance to killing other human beings, even when defined as the enemy.

By 1946, the US Army had accepted Marshall’s conclusions, and the Human Resources Research Office of the US Army subsequently pioneered a revolution in combat training, which eventually replaced firing at targets with deeply ingrained conditioning, using realistic, man-shaped pop-up targets that fall when hit. Psychologists assert that this kind of powerful operant conditioning is the only technique that will reliably influence the primitive, midbrain processing of a frightened human being. Fire drills condition schoolchildren to respond properly even when terrified during a fire. Conditioning in flight simulators enables pilots to respond reflexively to emergency situations even when frightened. And similar application and perfection of basic conditioning techniques increased the rate of fire to approximately 55 percent in Korea and around 95 percent in Vietnam.

Equally high rates of fire resulting from modern conditioning techniques can be seen in Holmes’ observation of British firing rates in the Falklands and FBI data on law enforcement firing rates since the nationwide introduction of modern conditioning techniques in the late 1960s.

The extraordinarily high firing rate resulting from these processes was a key factor in the American ability to claim that the United States never lost a major engagement in Vietnam. But conditioning that overrides such a powerful, innate resistance has enormous potential for psychological backlash. Every warrior society has a “purification ritual” to help the returning warrior deal with his “blood guilt” and to reassure him that what he did in combat was “good.” In primitive tribes, this generally involves ritual bathing, ritual separation (which serves as a cooling-off and “group therapy” session), and a ceremony embracing the veteran back into the tribe. Modern Western rituals traditionally involve long separation while marching or sailing home, parades, monuments, and unconditional acceptance from society and family.

In the *Vietnam War, this purification ritual was turned on its head. The returning American veteran was attacked and condemned in an unprecedented manner. The traditional horrors of combat were magnified by modern conditioning techniques, and this combined with societal condemnation to create a circumstance that resulted in 0.5 to 1.5 million cases of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in Vietnam veterans. The mass incidence of psychiatric disorders among Vietnam veterans resulted in the “discovery” of PTSD, a condition that we now know traditionally occurred as a result of warfare, but never in such quantity.

PTSD seldom results in violent criminal acts, and upon returning to society, the recipient of modern military conditioning is statistically no more likely to engage in violent crime than a nonveteran of the same age. The key safeguard in this process appears to be the deeply ingrained discipline that the combat soldier internalizes with his military training. However, with the advent of interactive “point-and-shoot” arcade and video games, there is significant concern that society is aping military conditioning, but without the vital safeguard of discipline. There is strong evidence to indicate that the indiscriminate civilian application of combat conditioning techniques as entertainment may be a factor in worldwide, skyrocketing violent crime rates, including a sevenfold increase in per capita aggravated assaults in America since 1956. Thus, the latest chapter in American military history may be occurring in the city streets.

©2000 Killology Research Group ~ All Rights Reserved.

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* Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, 1963. John Keegan, The Face of Battle, 1976. Jim Goodwin, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders: A Handbook for Clinicians, 1988. Dave Grossman, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, 1995. Dave Grossman, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, 8th ed., 1996. Dave Grossman and Gloria DeGaetano, Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill: A Call to Action Against TV Movie, and Video Game Violence, 1999.

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Reposted from Killology Research Group.

Read Dave Grossman’s Evolution of the Weapon.