THE NEXT STEP

Wouldn't you say, keep the world economy going for long enough? Obviously, keeping the world economy going, just going, means infinite growth on a finite planet. We're somewhat clear that this cannot be done. Meanwhile, there are essential industries needed to support a degree of civilization. And I would think that 1) identifying those essential industries, and 2) tracking the supply chain and socioeconomic arrangements to allow for those industries would be the next step. 

Barbara,

Thanks for digging into the subject of money. What you say sounds good. 

My response to Gail just now, as to the virus-related missing links in the economy, links that might remain.

"Wouldn't you say, keep the world economy going for long enough? Obviously, keeping the world economy going, just going, means infinite growth on a finite planet. We're somewhat clear that this cannot be done. Meanwhile, there are essential industries needed to support a degree of civilization. And I would think that 1) identifying those essential industries, and 2) tracking the supply chain and socioeconomic arrangements to allow for those industries would be the next step."  

Gail's blog clarified (or even introduced) for me tha concept that money was a representation of future energy supply. There is no use for money when there is no energy supply to back it up.  Beyond  that I'm pretty much lost. 

The C virus (CV) is shutting down decisive parts of global economy. Nothing like this economic system ever existed before, where it is networked over the entire globe. Gail's blog talks about a Leonardo Dome made of sticks that lean against each other in a complex and precarious way. Remove one stick and the whole structure collapses. So, OK, maybe. But I would think humans are ingenious enough to  insert a supporting stick or two before the removal of that problem stick, preventing the dome from collapsing. 

Since the proposing of the Leonard Dome meme I hear talk about the periphery being able to collapse while the core remains: Venezuela vs USA. Or some refer to countries being thrown under the bus--Syria, Yeman, Libya, so on and so forth. So what does that mean for the Leonardo Dome idea? And even so, there are no homeless people on the streets in Venezuela whereas they live under every overpass in the SF Bay Area.

So I'm with you that innovation and creativity are an important missing element of the global discussion. 

So what's to be done? We cant wait for some perfect clarity to emerge, and need to attend to little things right under our noses that we can perhaps influence. 

The trouble I have most are cultural ideas. They operate like groups and spread a large network od support systems that indoctrinate and browbeat or coerce the average person into compliance. It's almost impossible to think straight in the resulting war of muddled paradigms. 

But still I don't sit and twiddle my thumbs. I harp on a few patterns that my (extremely good) intuition has illuminated. A scattershot sample would include the following:

- Land (including place) is more important than people. People emerge from and are dependent on land, and not the other way around

- Aesthetics are the most useful guide: "Truth is Beauty, and beauty truth," or whatever it was Keats said.

- The poor needs close to 100% of our social attention. Yes, a rising tide lifts all boats

- We got into the mess we're in by throwing things, places, peoples, cultures and languages away. We must stop doing this

- Children are the new slaves to run energy on. Historically, energy depended on human slavery, morphing into fossil fuel slavery (on which we now ENTIRELY depend, while it tanks along with it correlated economic system.

- Substituting children as the energy source doesn't mean cruel or stupid forms of coercion; it's just that there might be no other energy source that allows ANYONE to survive.

But I could go on forever. It should be clear why I can't separate the human endeavor from anything else. And why nobody listens to me.