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The people in this film stand for their own points of view,
and might not share the opinions of the authors of the film.
Third party material is also used in this film, and people appearing in it
might not share the views of the authors of this film.
From the smoke cabin to the modern times
A jumping board
Ismo news
Questioning facts presented by the media is forbidden from now on.
Doubting or questioning the news or other information
coming from television, radio and newspapers has
grown to alarming proportions throughout the world.
Legislation has been perceived as the last and most severe method against this threat,
but it was nevertheless taken into practice early on.
Experts are content with the decision.
It was about time we dealt with this kind of rebelling and horsing around.
The new law is planned to be enforced
by a record-breaking amount of police reosurces.
Citizens are still encouraged to be on guard
to stop new criminals.
A criminal can easily be recognized by, for example, rolling of the eyes
or snickering during newscasts.
Just call the police hotline and the authorities will take proper action.
All people who sneer and roll their eyes
should be locked up behind bars.
News anchors are happy with the changes
and wishes everyone good and clean thoughts.
Crazy days
THE ZEITGEIST
We really are in a dream.
The dream of habitual thoughts.
The basis of it is our, I would like to say, genetic inheritance.
The need for safety, fear,
getting ready to fight, the struggle for survival,
that Darwin used to talk about.
This is the undercurrent of our consciousness,
and on top of it lies suggestion upon suggestion.
During millennia, generations have been induced through suggestions,
we've been raised and taught since antiquity,
to prepare for battle, to stand our ground,
to die in a manly and heroic way,
"it is beautiful to die in front of the troops as a hero"
This has been made the highest value.
And additions have been made to this in our time,
since we left antiquity and feudalism behind,
and moved into so called capitalism.
It has given a new content and a new practice
to these old instincts, old drives,
that exist genetically in each of us.
Now we have this security given by the property around us.
We have a competition over who owns more,
which serves our need for safety,
we are driven by this notion.
We live in this state and this is the dream,
that Erich Fromm spoke about and it is a terribly dangerous dream.
MONETARY ECONOMY
Money governs our lives.
Still, most of us do not know,
how money is created and who has the power to create it.
We see news about the economy in the media.
The complexity of the stories often makes us change the channel,
or skip those pages in the paper.
We trust, that there are authorities,
who know more about the economy than we do
and that take care of it for our benefit.
In order to understand, what is happening today,
we have to focus our attention on money.
Control over the economy is not simply control over just one sector of human life,
a sector that can be separated from the others,
it is control over the means to all our goals.
Our economic system is based on exchange,
and in a monetary economy the means of exchange is money.
So the question is: what is money?
Most of the textbooks in economics do not explain what money is,
they just describe what money does.
They define money through its functions.
They describe money as a medium of exchange,
as a measure and store of value.
These are things that money does.
Money in itself moves in a completely different reality.
It is a contract.
Money is nothing but
a contract between people, the symbol,
with which we carry out economic exchange.
The tragedy of the current state of affairs is,
that we have had no part in making the contract.
The current contract is, that banks are allowed to create money
as much as they want, for whatever purpose they want and always with interest.
Private banks.
People were not even asked, if they want this kind of a deal.
They were not even told,
what kind of contract was made.
Money is based on collective trust.
We can trust, that a certain amount of euros
gets us a certain amount of bread in the shop.
The medium of exchange, money, has throughout history had different forms
from squirrel skins to wads of paper.
In fact, the Finnish word for money, "raha", originally meant the skin of an animal.
In order to understand the modern monetary system,
we have to know, how banks operate.
Through centuries it was thought that gold, silver and other precious metals
were the proper form of money.
That was the reason for the conquest of the Americas and other parts of the world,
the search for gold.
But gold is cumbersome in that
it is really heavy and not very secure.
At any time someone may steal your gold,
so everyone wanted to store their gold at the goldsmiths'
who had big vaults for storing gold.
These goldsmiths, who stored the gold for other people,
also loaned gold to those who wanted to borrow it
and charged an interest on these loans.
After some time during the 16th century,
the goldsmiths started noticing that the receipts for gold that they were giving out,
were highly trusted by people.
They were trusted so much, that nobody actually wanted to collect their gold from the vault.
So they started realizing, that when loaning out gold,
they don't even need to have the gold, that they loan.
They can give out receipts for a lot more gold,
than the amount of gold they are actually holding,
because nobody was going to collect their gold.
As long as people don't collect the gold,
they can give out as many receipts as they want.
And the more receipts they give out, the more interest they can charge.
Even if occasionally somebody comes to collect the gold, corresponding to each receipt for gold
given out by the goldsmith, there is someone else who owes
that same amount of gold, with interest, to the goldsmith.
Let us take as an example a goldsmith with one piece of gold.
He can loan out that one and same piece of gold to a hundred people
by giving each a receipt stating, that they have loaned a piece of gold.
If one day someone appears to whom the goldsmith must give a hundred pieces of gold,
he has one hundred debtors, who each owe him a piece of gold.
He can legally possess their property and sell it.
He can take everything from the debtors in order to collect that piece of gold,
that he actually never gave out.
He just gave a receipt for a loan of gold.
The current monetary system was invented in the 16th century.
It was invented by a small number of goldsmiths and it is quite a devious invention.
And even as most of it has changed, there is no gold anymore,
we have the central banks instead.
In a sense, the whole system has been modified, but the principle,
by which money is created through debt, is still the same
as it was 500 years ago when originally invented.
Where does money come from? Is it created by the state?
Or perhaps by the central banks?
Contrary to popular belief, the state does not create the money we use,
and neither do the central banks,
even though they do have a part in it.
In fact, money is born in the banking system.
Money is created through bank loans.
Individuals, companies and governments loan money from the banking system.
In this way every dollar or any other bill you have seen
is debt owed by someone.
Money is created in banks.
New money is created, when someone takes a loan from a bank.
Regardless if the debtor is a company, an individual or a state.
This is the way money is born into the world.
The bank registers the amount of the loan into the debtor's account
and when the debtor uses the amount,
it is deposited back into the bank,
so that the amount of existing money has grown.
The amount of deposits in the banking system is bigger,
than it was before the loan was made.
So money is created out of debt and debt is created out of nothing.
When giving out a mortgage, a normal commercial bank,
like Nordea, is creating money out of nothing.
The bank can do this through a process called credit expansion.
When a bank gives out a loan, it must have in its reserves
a certain amount of central bank money it has loaned from the central bank.
However, the reserve requirements are so small,
that out of one thousand euros of central bank money
a commercial bank can create tens of thousands of euros of new money.
Hence, most of the loans given out, have been created out of nothing,
they are completely new money.
Money is debt.
New money enters the system only through debt
and every euro on your account is debt somebody else owes to the bank.
INTEREST
If everyone were to pay back their debts,
assuming that it would at all be possible,
there would be no money left.
In fact, there is more debt, than there is money,
since the portion of the interest is not created into the system.
When you go to the bank in order to apply for a mortgage of 100 000 euros,
they will check your credit rating.
If the application is approved,
the bank creates the sum of the mortgage by electronically inserting it into your account
and obligates you to pay back 200 000 euros
during the next 20 years.
Thus, the 100 000 euros of the principal of the mortgage have been created as money,
but the other half, the interest, remains uncreated.
So the bank sends you out into the world to compete against others
over who can pay the bank back the other half of the debt they owe.
Consequently, money is kept scarce.
Individuals are forced to compete against each other over the interest portions of their debts;
interest portions, that were never created into the system.
There is always less money, than what is needed.
It is a built-in feature of the system.
The money we receive, when taking out a loan,
is called principal.
It is not enough to pay back
just the amount of the principal to the bank.
All bank loans follow a principle,
where interest must be paid in addition to the principal.
Banks create principal through the process of credit expansion,
but how is the money for the interest created?
Nobody creates it into the system.
Thus the amount of debt is actually bigger
than the existing amount of money.
Still the debtor has to pay it to the bank.
The created money moves in our system in various debt circles.
A farmer from circle 1 takes out a bank loan
in order to pay a mechanic for repairing his tractor.
With the money he just earned, the mechanic buys
pastries from a local bakery.
The baker needs more wheat
and buys it from the farmer who is now able to
pay back the loan he took for repairing his tractor.
The farmer is still left with a problem;
he also has to pay interest on his loan
and he doesn´t have enough money for it.
He has to get more money from a different debt circle,
otherwise he´ll lose his property to the bank.
The farmer sells accommodation services to a tourist from debt circle 2
which enables him to pay the interest, too.
This however, creates a deficit and a problem in circle 2
for the tourist has a car loan.
Circle 2 needs more money
from some other similar debt circle.
All money comes with interest attached,
so there will never be enough money to pay off all existing debts.
This is why some have to go bankrupt
or hand over their property to the bank.
Debt plays a central role in our current infinite economic growth model.
New debt has to be created
in order to pay back old debt and its interest.
This creates immense pressure on states, companies ja individuals
to compete and create economic growth.
A continuous scarcity prevails in economy
which makes bankrupcies inevitable.
This could be compared to a game of musical chairs
where everyone has to find a chair when the music stops
but there is always one chair less than there are players.
The continuous indebtedness of the private and public sectors
and the increase in interest payments, increasingly cause bankrupcies.
It is essential to realize
that the core problem is not just over-consumption.
The current monetary system increases debt and financial difficulties
due to its structural problems.
It is a game where someone always ends up getting the short end of the stick.
Debt always remains somewhere.
It feels like debt is always circling the globe
and one country after another collapses under it.
This time it was Greece, Latvia, Ireland,
Southern European countries.
MARKET ECONOMY
Economic systems are usually divided into two categories:
market economy and planned economy.
In Finland like in the rest of the world, market economy prevails.
Its central concepts are supply and demand,
which determine prices of commodities.
At least in theory.
Our current model of market economy
can be called regulated capitalism.
In it property and means of production are privately owned.
The goal of capitalism is to increase the amount of capital
and to centralize ownership.
The motive behind all actions and decision making
is increasing financial profit.
Earlier in the 20th century,
there were different phases, in Finalnd for example,
with many different types of ownership.
It is not just a case of companies looking to profit financially,
having transformed and become more shortsighted,
demanding faster and bigger profits for shareholders etc.
What has also happened is that there is only
one type of ownership in existence today.
Finland had a lot of cooperatives.
There were also state owned companies
which were at least indirectly managed within
the rules of democracy.
In addition there was a lot of entrepreneurship,
which was strongly tied to a specific location,
so there were all kinds of owners,
who, despite all their authoritative behavior
also were concerned about the wellbeing of the locals
in the regions or areas where they operated.
All this has been transformed.
Due to the financialization
they are ever more dependent on stock markets and financial markets in general.
In this way, the position of stock holders has increased in priority, so that
the logic of action is mainly to maximize
short term profits for stock owners.
Like previously mentioned, in capitalism the motive behind decisions
is solely to increase financial profit.
Human wellbeing, ethics and environmental concern
often remain secondary values.
Corporations have no social responsibility.
They answer only to shareholders.
In the current form of market economy,
corporations are socially responsible only if it brings them profit.
In a way, that is the misson of a corporation, to make money.
It's mission is not to be responsible.
With who does the responsibility lie?
If a CEO of a corporation suddenly gets a moral paroxysm,
and wants to do business responsibly,
and end all exploitation. He'll get fired!
All within the same week,
when shareholders find out.
What? He does not make us money at all.
And this applies to everyone,
on every level,
if they try to do something besides
making a profit for the corporation, they'll lose their power.
They are also in a way forced to play the same game.
Quartal economy - by definition - acts
in periods of quarter years.
Even if the goal might be a little more long term,
product development demands two, three or four
years of planning, in some cases.
Stock markets influence practical decision making;
If 'it' goes down, then you must always
do what the market expect you to do.
It seems, oftentimes the market expects
lots of layoffs and a reorganization of the corporation.
There must be a lot of management of change.
Often this means that, even the people who continue
working in the organization, don't concentrate on doing their job
but on changing the organization.
It is depressing to many people, and it's not
very profitable economically.
When you have such a competitive situation,
the one who can sell their products at the lowest price
is the one whose products get sold.
The one, who can sell his products at the lowest price
is the one, who pays the lowest salary...
who is the least concerned about the environment...
who is the least concerned about anything.
All countries are in a kind of a competition over
who is able to lower these standards most,
who is able to make the lowest price.
Of course, it's not a good situation when
all countries of the world try to do this at same time.
We produce food for over 10 billion people, every day.
And still one out of seven starves to death.
Why?
We would have enough food for everyone right now,
if it was just distributed equally.
As unbelievable as it is,
food exports from famine regions of Africa to Europe, exceed
the amount returned there as foreign aid or imports.
Does the bottled water company have any motive
to fix water refinement in poor countries?
Do the pharmaceutical companies have a true motive to cure diseases
when they make more money off sick people buying pills regularly?
Interest is added to loans, because it is the banks' way to make a profit.
Banks are corporations like any others and they act
according to the mechanisms of markets.
Striving for profit leads to many things which should be done, being
left undone. Many unnecessary things get done instead.
How about economical indicators, like gross domestic product?
Gross domestic product or GDP is one of several indicators of economic growth
and a greater GDP is often claimed to be a positive sign of progress.
There are also different kinds of indicators.
A certain indicator of well being observes, among other things,
income inequality, crime, accidents, divorces,
pollution, geriatric care and voluntary work.
According to this GPI-indicator almost all of the Western countries have
steadily decayed in last 30 years.
The old indicators are breaking down.
In my opinion, it is really scary to observe...
If I were a capitalist, I would be terrified by what is happening
for example, to share prices these days.
Especially to US share prices, which are going up
at the same time as the economy is totally collapsing.
Nothing happens and the unemployment rate rises
to over 20%, etc., but share prices are doing well.
This is similiar to flying an aeroplane with a broken altimeter.
We don't know, where we are at.
The market should be the tool which tells us where we are at,
but it doesn't anymore.
It's because the markets are manipulated
and in practice telling us about an imaginary thing.
Here in Finland it's difficult, since
we live in a Shangri-La in a sense.
We are further away,
and trends arrive here later.
We can make believe longer. Like PM Katainen said:
"This doesn't concern Finland."
It doesn't... until it does.
The monetary system is at the heart of all this.
All money is created as debt.
All that debt is supposed to be payed back, with interest.
Which requires new loans to make it possible,
but new debt creates even more interest and the debt rises.
Rises... rises ... rises ...
In fact, the difference between existing money and
existing debt is rising as well.
This causes the need.
Even though the amount of money increases in a way,
the scarcity of money is getting worse.
The amount of debt in comparison to the amount of money keeps on rising.
That creates an accelerating rat race, in which everyone must participate.
It doesn't matter, if you are single or if you have a family.
You have a mortgage. You cannot jump out of it.
What happens to your mortgage?
Changing this monetary system.
First, it shouldn't be taken for granted.
We should stop thinking that money is money,
that it cannot be changed.
It's a huge blind spot in our culture to think,
that there can only be one kind of money.
If we don't use the current money, we must use squirrel skins.
People really think this way.
People are blind when it comes to money.
We need to get rid of that.
We should begin understanding the mechanisms,
of how money is created today
and start talking about if there could be
some alternative mechanisms,
through which money should be created instead.
POLITICS
In practice, in the house of parliament, in which decisions are made,
there are 199 voters, since the spokesperson is sitting up front.
199 voters, whose task is to vote
according to their conscience and to the best of their abilities.
This doesn't happen obviously, since party discipline,
group discipline, exists in this country.
I don't know, how long it has been so,
since I'm not a researcher of politics, I don't know if it has been so for ages or not.
Practically no decisions are made free of group discipline.
Things are decided somewhere else,
than in the parliament house.
It's rare, that they are even really handled
in group meetings.
In practice, they are commanded.
So who is really leading Finland?
Where is the real power?
I have been in this house for 3 and a half years,
and still I don't know the answer.
Nowadays the financial market has perhaps more power
than ever before.
However, it's more and more outside of political and
democratic desicion making.
The last 30 years have shown,
how there have been changes in ideologies.
Since the 80's
markets have been allowed to work by themselves without interference.
The political power of regulating markets disappeared.
So, the allocation of capital was
regulated unilaterally by the financial market players.
They alone decide who can keep working
and how the economy should work.
They should have not interfered in the economy of countries.
Economy is not political.
Economy is defined outside of politics.
Of course, if we see the notion of politics a little broader,
we can see that it's a rhetorical trick in order to to move
certain things away from public and democratic oversight.
If we look at the history on how this happened -
Nixon's government's decision to end the gold standard
had a direct connection to unemployment.
It was also essentially connected to how they had started to take advantage of
tax havens in London City and in the Caribbean
in order to gain a more competitive edge for US companies.
And specifically, this way they could evade
US taxes.
When we had Euro-Dollar markets in London,
and we had Caribbean tax havens,
they could discharge profits that way,
and that was specifically
Nixon's government's conservative and neoliberal
conscious policy;
to try to enhance US multinational
corporations' competitiveness by creating
a system that is virtually outside national regulation,
which no-one can control,
in the end, not even Americans.
During the last decades the global financial market
has been able to function
more and more freely without being regulated by nations.
Some theories say
that this kind of liberalization of the markets
benefits everyone in the long run.
Has this happened in practice?
Since the 70's there has been a financialization
of the world economy, meaning that
speculations over money and
the expansion or inflation of financial values
has more and more determined
the conditions of economic actions.
And the conditions of politics, too.
Financial markets behavein a strong
cyclical manner.
They aim to produce bubbles,
financial values multiply,
without any real foundation
anywhere else in the economy.
After a certain point, the system
starts to get more chaotic and an ever smaller change
somewhere can launch a crisis.
It doesn't really matter,
if it's a type of mortgage
for poor people in the US,
or some other factor,
which is repackaged in the financial markets
and resold etc.
It can be any weak spot in the system.
This bursting of bubbles has become ever stronger.
The amplitude or oscillation of the cycles in the
financial markets has increased
during these decades
and the crisis of 2008-2009
was clearly the biggest so far.
If we go through another cycle the same way,
the next one is going to be even bigger.
So why do the nations of the world operate
according to the rules of unstable monetary markets?
Wouldn't it be possible to practice a different kind of politics?
GOVERNMENT DEBT
The International Monetary Fund, IMF,
is one of the most important users of financial power.
Its power is based on loans which it gives
to countries in need of money.
It wasn't until during the 70's that the power of the IMF
started to increase over many countries,
as indebtedness started to increase,
and this was related to the oil crisis and its aftermath,
and to the debt crisis, which had continued during that whole period of time.
There has been phases,
where the IMF has had power over
ca. 80-90 countries and their economic policies
in a sovereign way.
This was the situation, for example, in the late 90's
but in the 21st century it changed,
as many countries paid back their debts
to the IMF.
The 2008-2009 financial crisis,
which was the biggest since the 30's,
led to the IMF getting
back in the business.
It was out of the picture for a while.
At the moment we spend
over 2 billion euros
on the interest of our national debt..
National defence expenses are over
2.5 billion euros,
but next year the interest expense is going to be a lot bigger.
Already it's close to the amount of money,
which we spend on the military.
We pay only the interest on the national debt,
no repayment of principal, only interest.
It's going to grow every year.
And if we continue like this,
we will have to submit to the IMF regimen.
When we cannot pay back enough of
the debt.
It's typical that they demand
countries increase exports in order to pay back the debts.
Decrease import
and reduce public spending,
which in practice means decreasing or abandoning
welfare services,
ending transfers of income.
In addition to causing countries internally to rely
even more upon private,
capitalistic market powers,
the overall net effect is deflatory,
meaning that it functions to constrict the economy
of the countries which are already in trouble when put through this kind of a regimen,
they easily get into even more trouble.
It creates this bad,
self-reinforcing cycle.
It has happened in Africa, virtually in every country so far.
It has happened in almost every South-American country so far.
And now it happened in Greece.
The order went out there, too, that everything must be sold.
Including historical islands, they have to be sold.
It's going to be similar in Ireland.
The situation in Ireland is that EU commands
them to approve the budget,
before people can vote in the next elections.
The govenment, which will be elected,
cannot decide on the budget.
The budget has to be decided beforehand.
Only afterwards people can vote,
for who they want to lead them,
when everything is already decided.
This is what paying debts leads to.
INDEPENDENT FINLAND?
Joining the EU was an important thing with regards to Finland's independence.
Finland is part of a whole,
which, despite not being an official federation,
is clearly a supranational entity.
Meaning, that a definition of a classical
sovereign country is no longer fulfilled.
In practice, Finland shares it's govenmental sovereignity
with other countries in the EU.
We all know, that the Lisbon treaty is the same as a EU constitution.
Exactly the same number of new competencies.
Exactly the same number of surrenders of veto rights.
It's virtually identical in every regard and it is constitutional,
because it makes the EU a full blown legal personality,
but worse still, it gives the EU the ability
to amend it in the future,
without having to refer to inter-govenmental conferences.
It gives the EU the ability to legislate
over literally every single aspect of our lives.
I'm told, though, that I shouldn't worry,
because the federal flag and anthem have been dropped.
Well, pull out the other one!
There is a great big flag in the front there.
It's nonsense. It's all part of the lie.
When it comes to independence, the thing is that
when countries were conquered in the old days,
the national army fights another nation's army.
It's beaten, occupied and then taxed.
The conquered country pays taxes to the conquerer.
Finland has not been conquered.
- Not by a military -
but we are in debt.
We have let the banks create
money into our economy.
The central actors regarding countries' economic politics
are those, who determine the credit ratings of countries.
And 2-3 US companies are in this central position,
they can put conditions on countries through
insisting that getting a good credit rating requires
a certain type of economic policy.
And typically, a neoliberal economic policy.
It's a power mechanism, which affects,
how we evaluate, if Finland is independent or not.
I don't think Finland is independent because of the EU.
Neither because of global monetary markets.
There are many other ways in which the economies of different countries
are tied together irreversibly.
"THE WAY OF THE WORLD" - Politics in Finland
The great post-war story - which in a way is a success story -
of creating a welfare state and economic growth,
sharing the ever-growing cake,
is not possible anymore and it doesn't work.
In some sense, the youth of the world is starting to
recognize that, and it does. The idea,
that for many generations there has been the assumption,
that the next generation will do better economically
than the previous one. That's over.
So, the youth come into a different world than their parents.
They cannot take political advice from their parents.
The only chance is to find totally new ways of practicing politics.
In my opinion, the attitude that many young people have
is completely realistic.
That politics is not interesting, and has no relevance
for their lives. That is true.
It has no relevance.
THE VOICE
In Finland there were certain actors, who pushed these interests.
Like everywhere else,
we live in a capitalistic market economy
and we lived in it during the golden days of our democratic welfare nation.
Certain industries are interested in freeing the markets.
For those with capital it would mean
maximal power to do whatever they want.
Doctrines supporting this basic goal
are of course popular among them.
Orthodox economics plays a big role in it.
In the 80's financial markets were freed in Finland.
One essential thing was to bring in well-known foreign experts
such as Alexander Swoboda,
who came invited by the Finnish National Bank and others,
to write reports on Finland's situation
and to give recommendations,
which strictly followed the common doctrines of the IMF,
orthodox economic science and neoliberal ideology.
In Finland, too, the situation seems to be going more into the direction
of big parties strictly following old paradigms,
so that the only cure for the problems is to offer people
longer careers, longer workdays, cutbacks, etc.
This means cutting the welfare nation.
We do more work and hope that the old machinery restarts
and think according to the old rules and old systems.
This is global,
as seen in the US, Europe etc.
and now it can be seen in Finland too,
this authoritarian centralist policy.
The dividing line will not be between the left and the right,
it's going to be between big parties – representing an authoritarian approach to leadership,
as seen at its worst in Italy and Russia
– and decentralized anti-authoritarian grassroot politics.
We have the rhetorics of necessity and of competitiveness,
which both are easily combined with the rhetorics of survival.
So competitiveness is about economic survival.
That's why we need to understand it being a necessity,
that must be accepted.
It's more essential to see,
that those doctrines can easily turn against their own goals.
They don't create the effects they are supposed to.
Things can be done in the name of competitiveness,
which change distribution of income and power relations.
But does it produce the economic efficiency, which it claims to do,
that's highly doubtful.
The economic growth, per capita, has decreased
in Finland as well.
At the same time growth spreads more unequally.
In practice, a very small part of the population benefits from economic growth.
In Finland, as in many other countries,
the economical and the political elite has a really close relationship.
One sign of this is the so-called revolving door phenomena,
where politicians in high positions move to
the service of market powers – and vice versa.
This connection clearly influences the decisions concerning everyone.
"Now we save Greece and Ireland!"
They are not saved.
The people in these countries will suffer.
The only ones saved are the creditors.
Both of them owe money to European banks.
If the banks don't get their money,
they will have credit losses, which would be awful.
You can see, how decisions are passed unanimously in the parliaments
on an extremely fast schedule, without
even raising any conversation, since the situation is supposedly so urgent.
That says something about the power structures in our society.
When the banks are in trouble,
Western governments suddenly agree.
During a weekend, governments make
decisions worth billions.
Decisions, which when examined, don't make any sense...
To lend more money to someone who cannot pay their debts.
But still these decisions all pass.
Since the decisions had to be made during a weekend.
These issues are presented as very pressing
and no-one explained why the stability pact, for example, had to be ready
the next Monday morning before the Japanese stock exchange opened.
What kind of an apocalyptic collapse would have happened otherwise?
No-one even tried to speculate mathematically,
on how Europe would have ended then and there.
A well-proven practice was followed; they said, that this just has to be done,
and the time-frame given was extremely short, so in practice
the grand committee had a telephone meeting. And the finance committee, which it also concerns,
was given hardly any time to prepare a proper statement.
The way we got the grand committee papers was that
we were required to finish the statement within one hour, so we
were left with no real possibility to make a statement on the matter.
These are usually matters where it is said
that this must be done now, or everything collapses.
This is just how it happened in the depression in the 90's.
Decisions were made in the quiet of the night, and all the documents were declared secret.
When I started to research this, on how this was allowed to happen,
I quite quickly realized, that I'm going to hit a wall, no documents can be obtained,
no-one knows, who made the decisions, and on what grounds.
DEMOCRACY?
We do have institutions like the WTO and Bretton Woods.
We have, in fact, thousands of different international agreements
and hundreds of significant international organizations.
And their actions play a crucial part in everything that happens,
including in Finland.
But there is very little transparency or democratic
accountability, especially straight accountability to citizens.
The Kokoomus (National Coalition) party has been quite honest and straight forward on this, saying they support a membership in NATO,
because it would a) enhance our safety,
and b) enhance our international influence.
Our policy and that of the cabinet is: we'll keep all doors open
but on the other hand, the Social Democratic party has announced we're not going to join in the next 4 years
which in practice means that NATO membership is ruled out
for the next cabinet cycle.
But the elections are coming, are you going to lead us to join NATO,
if you are the PM party?
I don't think we are.
That's my basic idea, since it's not the wish of the majority of the people or political...
Can you promise that?
There are many kinds of promises...
Kokoomus wins the elections and Finland will join NATO - Joni Arvonen, assistant to cabinet member Stubb.
Source: US documents/Wikileaks
British researcher Ted Honderich has described well
how this is a hierarchical democracy that we have here at the moment.
In the sense that the highest decile in fact decides more
compared to the lowest decile in this democracy.
So in that sense it is hierarchical by income classes and thus not truly democratic.
The notion that we can vote for someone to influence things is all theatrics,
it's a hoax.
It's a theatrical play, set up by monetary powers.
Vote for this or that party.
Alternating every year. As seen in the US, the democrats
and republicans take turns.
One always comes in and saves the situation, and blames the other.
In Finland it works exactly the same way. We just happen have 3 parties taking turns.
As far as I know the global monetary economy is based on so called fiat-money
and on getting into debt for the sake of it,
which gives a huge amount of power
to those who have the power to give this debt, and control the actions of the debt system.
That is such a fundamentally big part
of the functions of the society today and so wrong and twisted
that we really don't need any specific conspiracy theories
to understand the fact that we are screwed!
SOCIETY
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted
to a profoundly sick society. - J. Krishnamurti
The society is usually divided into three different sectors.
They are: the governmental or the public sector,
the financial or the private sector,
and the civil society.
We have just explored the actions of economy and politics.
What about the third sector? What is the role of a citizen in our society?
If we look at the developments - especially in OECD countries -
we have quite a strong decline in participation
so that civil society, and especially political civil society,
has experienced quite a collapse.
In the 70's in Finland there were hundreds of thousands of members in political parties.
We had a huge amount of different associations and non-governmental organizations
in which people took part, many even in several of them.
And now most of the people are taking part in nothing.
They are not members of parties and do not belong to associations either in the same way.
I really don't know what this civil society is
that people talk about so much.
Who represents it?
I don't know if there is such a thing in Finland.
When do people take to the streets on behalf of something in Finland?
When has the people's opinion changed anything?
The elite was going to do this but after a revolt by the people
it was done differently.
Like you see in France every now and then.
Such a thing has never happened in Finland in my lifetime.
The situation in Europe is quite interesting now because
in parts of Europe it seems that
the cutbacks and continuation of these old politics
are swallowed easier
than in other places such as Greece and France
they don't swallow those things so easily.
It is actually quite funny and a good thing that this debt crisis started in Greece.
Had it started in Finland,
the Finnish people would have simply been satisfied : "Yeah, cut our wages and benefits."
But since it starts in Greece and France,
people here might not be so timid
or nice after all when our turn comes.
For democracy to work
we, the people, must take part in handling common issues.
If we don't
someone else will decide on our behalf.
The poor get poorer, the rich get richer.
We do have the money but it's not given to us.
The poor are kept poor and that's that.
We have this development where the income gap is growing.
So also in Finland we are starting to see
a small amount of really rich people.
So at the same time luxury shops are appearing
luxury cars and houses are sold.
And this in part covers up the fact,
that at the same time, middle-class consumption decreases,
business premises and shops are abandoned.
The situation becomes polarized: while luxury piles up
on one end,
for the majority of people the majority of consumtion is moved toward cheaper and smaller
and so on.
Some people say that as the income gap grows
the wealth of the society increases and everyone is better off.
It's not that simple after all.
This research shows, that even the richest countries can have severe problems,
such as crime, disease and mental health problems.
Monetary wealth alone
is not a a sufficient indicator to assess social well-being.
This picture shows that the smaller the income gap in a society is
the less health- and social problems occur.
Problems increase clearly when the income gap grows.
The secret of well-being is not wealth but equality.
We are moving towards this American style
monetary power society
where the rich have everything and the poor only get handouts
from Christmas-time charity collection pots in some street corner.
I don't understand.
Feels like no-one cares about that.
The poverty of others is easily forgotten when you are doing well yourself.
In Finland we still have a big so-called middle-class.
They go to work and they can afford to consume and travel.
DEBT + WORK + STRESS = RAT RACE
I argue that about 95% of family disputes and problems
and family breakups happen because of money.
And this is a probably a low estimate.
Why do we let money destroy families?
Why is it so common?
The kind of morality that all debt is bad
is too simple.
But on the other hand, the way debt is created
and developed in the last 30-40 years,
has been increasingly unsustainable.
It affects people's everyday lives in many ways.
One essential effect is
that it starts to change the nature of human actions.
The intended effect of people becoming more
rational economical operators
"*** economicus",
calculating egoists.
Or at least people who aim to maximize benefits,
it also has pretty far-reaching social consequences
with respect to everyday human life.
It changes the way people arrange their relationships with others.
In work organizations, educational institutions
and in everyday life including intimate relationships.
It's interesting that whether you are a man or a woman
aggressive by nature or very nice and co-operative,
if you need to make money to survive,
most likely you will have to fight for it.
You have to compete for it.
Is it nature? Is the world just like that?
Or is it the monetary system that's between us and the world?
I would argue the latter.
Getting into debt is a part of financialization. A straight consequence of it
and the most important debts with regards to everyday life are mortgages and similar debts.
But also, of course, consumer credit.
Minsky and many other economists have said and argued
that we have this built-in tendency
in a capitalistic market economy
that money starts increasingly controlling
the lives of people and it happens by getting into debt.
And not just the lives of people, but companies and countries as well.
It happens by getting into debt.
We are encouraged to consume and get into debt
because that's how the wheels of the economy are kept turning.
The more we take out loans and buy goods
the more we need money.
The more we need money,
the tighter we need to commit to work.
Yesterday's top performance is today's basis for negotiations,
which must be exceeded or you'll be in danger of being dropped out.
Middle-class fantasy is ruled by falling or dropping out
like Barbara Ehrenreich says.
1 out of 6 Finnish workers are afraid to be voted out
as the weakest link.
The average working hours, including for the underemployed, have decreased.
Among the hard working experts,in the highest postitions
it has instead gotten tougher.
Workdays are getting longer and you don't recover from them.
Work controls everyday life much more.
It gets into homes, fills up the mind and that's why
there is more demand for short-term satisfaction.
Shopping, drinking, getting something, anything.
When there's always a threat of loss,
nobody's position is certain and objects of comfort and security are needed more.
Maximum top performance is set in more or less all aspects of life.
Top performance is apparently required in the health sector too.
Top performance at work,
at school, and you have to be highly efficient even in your spare time.
You need to have certain important hobbies to be a decent person.
The most characteristic feature of our relationship to our bodies today is
that you are supposed to forget and put aside the body's basic needs.
If you're hungry, try to put it aside
or if you are tired, a superhuman still keeps on going, the Baggins-man keeps on going.
This kind of maximum target level can only cause
chronic fatigue, not well-being.
The way problem-eating and eating disorders are increasing among the youth
is a specially noteworthy sign of this.
There is a lot of interest in the body and people strive to keep it
unchanged and youthful and try to erase all the features
of aging.
We have an extremely taxing relationship to our own bodies.
The unreachable is set as a goal for us.
Work causes many to be hurried and stressed, while the contents of the work itself
can be completely meaningless or even frustrating.
The word "job" was invented during the industrial age in England.
It wasn't known before.
It mirrors many things, which people do for money.
Work is a really old concept.
Work is something that a person does out of passion
or because he's good at it or loves doing it.
A job, on the other hand, is a set of duties that has been taken up in return of a wage
payable in a national currency.
Of course we think that we're free.
Let's consider a successful businessman with a nice house and a sports car.
The wife has everything, the kids have nice toys.
But one day this successful businessman gets
a sudden urge for freedom: "Wait a minute I'm a free man.
I'm not going to work. I'm going to go skiing or something."
He takes one day off from work and says: "I won't go!"
What happens? He gets fired the same day!
He calls his work and says "I'm not coming in today."
When he gets fired he cannot afford the next mortgage payment.
When he can not pay his loans he loses his house
and his car and then the woman.
Then he loses everything and soon he'll be drinking in the gutter.
We have all kinds of nice stuff,
but if even once you would do something out of free will and say:
"Wait a minute I'm not agreeing to this" even for only one day.
That would be the end of it. That's the amount of freedom we have!
"Let food be your medicine" -Hippokrates 460-370 BC.
Our current way of life is not as physically demanding as it was before,
but stress caused by pressure to perform and appear a certain way puts
many people's health at risk.
Even though times are changing, one thing stays the same.
The basis of good health is proper food.
Next to a shopping mall there is a huge factory for processed food.
An immense facility, in which all photographing is strictly forbidden.
We know however, that by using chemicals and industrial additives,
the production time of the goods has been shortened,
the consumption and expenses of raw materials has been dropped to a minimum
and what's most important, the shelf life of the food has been multiplied
compared to the original, authentic alternative.
Many of the food additives are completely unknown to the average person.
Many foods include, for example, phosphates,
which, as research has shown, inhibit the intake of nutrients
and can even cause osteoporosis.
Then why does the food industry use phosphates?
Maybe that question should be asked the industry directly, how do they see it?
Are they replaceable or are they necessary?
There must be some legitimate usefulness,
since they have been accepted in our legislation on additives.
So the content of food is decided by the interests of the food industry.
Like any other industry, it is guided by the logic of competition and profit,
so the freshness and health effects of the food are secondary.
If we do not get the needed nutrients from our food, we get sick,
and eventually have to turn to doctors.
Our society is quickly being medicalized,
which means, that medical science plays an ever greater role in the lives of each of us.
Since the 80's, the medical science has tragically been transformed into pure business.
In my understanding, if we would get proper food,
most of the people would need no medications or doctors.
We are, in a way, made sick.
Formerly each medical company would produce a wide range of different medications,
but would still conduct proper research.
Now most of the outlays of Pfizer and other big companies
go into marketing and bribing doctors.
Research gets a minuscule part.
That's because they don't do any research, but rather play around with old molecules,
transforming them a little bit here and there.
I think that cancer is a man made disease,
caused mostly by food and the poor quality of it.
This can be seen in different cultures,
where people eat an unaltered, original diet, cancer is almost non-existent.
But when the Western wisdom enters the area, they get all these diseases,
such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer.
They all come from the same source, just through different reactions.
One British analysis, that quickly disappeared from the maket
because it was a threat to the business, claimed that with the onset of cytostatic treatment,
one third of the patients die, because of the medication.
A third of the patients right away. And then it is blamed on the cancer.
Often these treatments are more dangerous that the disease itself.
For example, the way of keeping statistics is completely faulty.
We do not even know, what the situation really is regarding cancer.
Cancer has become a business.
The truth is, that food nutrients and vitamins have a tremendous effect
on human wellbeing and mental health.
And now one of the main goals of Codex Alimentarius is,
if not making vitamins and other supplements illegal,
then at least including them in the monopoly of the medical industry.
So that the stuff, that comes out of the factories, is legal and healthy,
and the stuff, that comes from nature, is forbidden and pathological.
In short, the way I see it,
is that these are international, global, monolithic orders from above
to be carried out.
This can be seen in Finnish grocery stores,
the idiotic EU rules
implemented by nit-picking Finnish officials
making the selling of most anything impossible.
I have talked with sellers of organic foodstuffs, and they tell me that everything you do is illegal.
The only legal things are wrapped in plastic, sterilized and probably irradiated.
If you were a medical company and your main business was to produce medications,
then through these Codex rules you will also start to produce vitamins.
Would it be in your interest to produce good vitamins?
The medical industry was aware from the start,
that the biggest competitiors to psychoactive drugs are vitamins.
If you are producing both the vitamins and the psychoactive medicines,
what quality of vitamins you are going to produce?
One more thing about Codex,
if, for instance, spearmint is included in it,
there is a strong whiff of business interest there, making spearmint controlled by doctors.
Only doctors could prescribe vitamins.
Only doctors could prescribe spearmint.
At the same time, the possibility of self-treatment is taken away from the people.
In that sense, it has to be absolutely resisted.
One thing, that is extremely irritating here, is that these matters
are outside of democratic discussion.
These regulations suddenly appear. Then it is said,
that "these are the regulations", and in my mind it is incomprehesible,
now that we have the elections coming up, that anybody would vote for these
people, who do nothing about these matters
that concern everyone of us.
THE VOICE
Here we should use Gandhi's principles, civil disobedience.
If ten people go out to collect organic food, they can be imprisoned,
but if there are ten thousand, the system grinds to a halt.
It has always been known, and recently extensive studies have been done
showing, that vaccination against influenza is of no use.
There are only disadvantages.
So this campaign to vaccinate has no grounds.
This, in my opinion, is simply a matter of manipulation:
suddenly an artificial pandemic is declared, wich makes no sense whatsoever.
Now that the hype around cholesterol is starting to wane, when it has been scientifically proven,
– and in fact - it has been known for long to be just hype.
People were coerced into buying pills through fearmongering,
in order to gain a longer life.
Now they sell these quick systems,
sudden threats are created and quick profits are made.
It is a shameless game, and there is no scientific ground to it.
It is a scientific fact, that there is no point in developing vaccines against viral influenza.
THE VOICE
We know, that it is a disease, that spreads quickly, but is not dangerous.
It is clear that terminally ill people
will die because of one inflammation or another,
even if there is no influenza going around.
There are always viral diseases going around, and people who die randomly
from a common disease for reasons that we do not know.
On a larger scale, these are small parts in a greater whole.
But what the vaccination does,
can be considerably more detrimental than the disease.
It is claimed, that the influenza causes narcolepsy.
That is rubbish, since Finland and Sweden have more cases of narcolepsy,
than other places, where the same influenza disease has been.
So the problem has to be caused by the vaccinations, which were used here,
and which are different from the ones used elsewhere.
The past spirituality or divinity and access to heaven
has now been transposed to the body, which in a way has become spirituality,
and there is a set of rules, on how to take care of it.
This medical church tells you to eat this holy bread,
these pills, in order to stay in shape. And if you don't do that,
you will be exiled.
Many doctors get angry, when a patient says "I don't take medication."
So the response is: "Don't come here then."
Once I went to see a doctor, and happened to mention something about Chinese medicine
and acupuncture, and the doctor almost attacked me.
I was ejected from the room as a heretic.
All of this is built as a joint venture, where,
if a medical company gets money, so do the doctors.
So they support each other.
If you step outside the system and try to look for other solutions, you´re completely cut off.
It is a vicious circle, which will end in catastrophe.
When I was a child,
all the boys wanted to become policemen or firemen or something like that.
Kids today want to become celebrities.
What do celebrities do? They are visible. What skills do celebrities have?
It is not even defined. You just have to be out there for everyone to look at.
That is the spirit of the time.
Who fed these values to our children?
Not likely their parents.
When we explain the centralization of production and economic organizations,
an essential part of it is marketing, and advertising in particular.
The flip side of it is a cultural transformation,
because the propaganda machinery shouting about the benefits of commodities
has such a huge impact,
and increasingly sucks people into that frame of mind.
You can buy a good life by buying certain products,
in the same way as you can build the right kind of identity and image
by consuming certain products.
Then this becomes an essential part of culture in a way,
that is not necessarily understood or grasped by the people themselves.
So, given some description, people may have a fairly precise understanding of
what happens, when they go shopping and buy certain commodities.
But they do not know, where their behavior stems from.
And they do not necessarily understand, what their behaviour causes,
including what it causes within themselves.
People are minimally spiritual, they uphold material values,
and are constantly worrying and taking care of their jobs, without questioning anything.
That is how the elite think the world is best kept turning.
And I have to say, they have done a great job in marketing these values.
An excellent job.
The media has been transformed.
The commercialization of media is a part of the situation, in which we find ourselves.
It also means, that the idea of competition and market ideas are put everywhere,
including the media.
When these ideas are applied to the media, it causes a fragmentation of consciousness,
as the media has great power in modern society.
It is unpredictable in a way, even if we just think about the TV, not to mention the internet.
It has existed just for a few decades,
and it's influence on society and culture is not often
even attempted to be understood in any greater depth.
Now the logic brought about by neo-liberalism,
according to which media tries to maximize advertising revenue
by capturing people with simple tricks for short periods of time,
but long enough to see the ads.
This undermines classical investigative journalism and any attempt to
grasp things in a wider or deeper sense,
that has no essential function.
We still have national TV and radio channels and some quality newspapers,
that try to do that, but they are choked tighter and tighter,
and easily start emulating the logic of commercial media.
The media is really in bad shape.
And it is not because there are no intelligent or humane journalists,
but because they are given no space.
The problem is that media is becoming more and more a channel for marketing.
If you look at, for instance, these magazines, all of them are selling something
and they don't contain any articles – or if they do, the articles are connected to the stuff on sale.
There is no more criticism, as that would interfere with advertisement income.
I only have very lackluster suggestions to make here,
like that we should turn off our televison sets.
There is some hope in the fact, that nowadays the types of media are more diverse,
there is the internet and so on.
It's no longer the case, that everyone gets their information from the same tube.
That is a big factor.
But still, unfortunately,
a big part of the people get most of their information
from centrally controlled sources, and trust it completely.
I think it is a sign of a disease or a malfunction in society,
when those, that raise inconvenient questions, are condemned,
especially, when there are facts to back up the questions.
If somebody has control over the radio frequencies and television,
then he ultimately has control over what is said on radio and TV.
The Internet has made it much easier
to have the abitlity to broadcast.
To set up a blog or a wiki is much easier technically,
than printing of books or doing a TV broadcast, plus it is cheaper.
Everyone is allowed and able to publish on the internet.
This has brought up the idea, that when media becomes open for everyone
consequently, all totalitarian systems become impossible,
because they typically rely on controlling information.
For example, certain institutions and powers are troubled by the existence of the internet in its current state,
because some central functions of the modern society
simply can not bear that kind of visibility and openness of information,
that the internet makes possible.
Technology almost forces a spark of optimism.
The internet is at the same time essential to the current system,
but also structurally anarchistic, so that it can not be completely tamed.
However, it can be regulated up to a point,
slowed down, as it were, and delayed.
When speaking, for example, about these dictatorships of intellectuals, where certain
concepts and ideas are forcefully pushed aside somewhere
and a certain consensus based on lies is kept up.
For example, about economical actions or the war on terror, big things,
then we're moving in a very dangerous territory.
The media doesn't interfere in things like it should.
The media is keeping busy with different kinds of things, which sell well,
which they think people are interested in.
If the media considers itself to be an source of information, whose job it is
to keep people up to date on what's going on in the world, and what is important,
the media would be talking about totally different things.
That would be responsibe media.
Now the media is, in a way, only a money making machine for itself.
Apparently, also in the case of media, it's primary function, spreading information,
has been overshadowed by the profit motive.
But what kind of things should the media present?
What's going on in the world that we should all be aware of?
THIS HUMAN WORLD
We have these great experts, like Albert Einstein.
He said:
In 1945,
when the first nuclear bombs were detonated, first at test sites,
then in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with horrible consequences.
Everything on this planet has changed.
Nothing is the same, exept
the thoughts and values held by people.
Unless there is an equally radical change
in people's thought patterns,
we will surely go towards a total destruction.
Planetary destruction.
Nothing changed.
The old thought and value patterns ruled
and for the most part, still do.
I'd like to say that they still rule decisively.
The state of the earth is critical. This is the basic issue.
We have two catasthrophies, which are advancing side by side.
One could be called an ecological disaster and the other one a social disaster.
And they are dependent on each other in that they feed off each other.
This is a so-called labile state.
It means that the earth is in a similrar state,
as a tipping stick.
The life ground on earth is a fragile whole. If it loses its balance,
it won't revert back, instead it goes further from the original state.
The change is slow at first, but it accelerates and gets stronger, the further it goes.
The most remarkable feature is, that it goes unnoticed until it's too late.
ECOLOGICAL DISASTER
The ecological disaster includes many things, which are connected to nature.
Fresh water shortage, changes in the atmosphere, deforestation, desertification.
As a result of this, the most irreverseable thing,
is the extinction of animal species.
This is a type of mass destruction, where we see that when rainforests are cut down,
a specific number of species go extinct each day,
which is a terrifying amount, compared to how many species
died out before these actions by humanity.
SOCIAL DISASTER
Simultaneously there is a social disaster going forth,
which is connected to urbanization everywhere in the world,
famine, disease, crime, terrorism, massive immigration.
This can bee seen as poverty
and as different kinds of dysfunctions all around the world.
Monsanto, which is a mafia when it comes to food in the world,
creates genetically modified products
claiming it is making more food for the poor.
It's a perfect lie!
Because the problem with food is not the types crop species,
it's the imbalance of land ownership.
These are political issues. If they were solved the right way,
everyone would have a balanced food supply.
It's a political issue, not biological. There is enough food.
150 years ago, 1 out of 6 Finns died from famine and famine-related diseases.
During the last great famine years. There just wasn't enough food.
Today people die of hunger basically because it's good budget discipline.
It's cheaper to kill citizens through starvation, than it is to send soldiers to kill them.
That's the issue regarding the hunger in Sudan, Ethiopia and other famine countries.
If you buy genetically modified seeds, you pay a percentage to the mafia,
and if you use glyphosates to keep them alive,
you will end up in a cycle of expences, which will destroy you.
In India, thousands of farmers have committed suicide,
because they have been ruined financially.
We condemn the historical slavery. Still, we keep slaves now,
but they are in some sweatshop far away, where we can't see them.
It's not called slavery, because they get just enough money for it
to keep themselves alive,
where as before, they got no money and were still kept alive.
We consider ourselves so much more civilized than before.
PEAK OIL
In short, peak oil means the moment of maximum oil production,
when the highest amount of oil is produced, adding together all fields from all
oil producing countries, and after which point the oil production declines.
It seems that the global peak of oil production was around 2005,
and it has been slightly declining ever since, for 5 years.
The fact alone that oil production is not increasing,
not to mention it's declining, has an effect on almost everything.
Oil is such a unique raw material. One can make almost anything out of oil,
it is easy to transport, you can burn it, you can eat it,
and while it has been readily available, it has been used for almost everything
in our economy and in transportation especially, electricity is in many places produced through oil.
If the production of oil would flatline, that would already be a problem,
and the fact that production is declining, is another matter entirely.
The third point is net energy, also discussed as EROEI (energy return on energy invested),
or how much society gets in terms of freely usable energy.
Even though there is still oil,
the utility of the available oil is declining.
One has to work more and more, in order to get freely available energy.
The amount of work performed by fossil fuels
is tens of times more than the work performed by human muscle.
In practice, all western individuals have tens of so-called energy-slaves at their disposal.
These three phenomena,
that oil production is not growing, that it's even declining,
and that net energy or EROEI is going down, especially this third one, have a dramatic effect
on how much work society can perform and what happens to the economy.
This effect has been visible since the 70's,
that real wages have not gone up anymore in places like the US
and many European countries, so that debt has been the only solution.
Both individuals and nations get deeper into debt,
since there is less free energy available to the economy,
as EROEI goes down.
This process accelerates, which is one of the causes of the financial crisis.
There are other causes as well, but one of the triggers that set off the financial crisis was peak oil,
since peak oil increases the pressure to increase debts
and also makes the repayment of debts increasingly hard.
Paul Krugman, who got the so-called "Nobel" in economics,
calculated that the price of oil that directly causes friction, slowing down world economy
is 80 USD per barrel and above.
This friction is created by the cost of things like hauling a container from China
and the cost of taking it back.
Krugman estimated, that at around 85 dollars per barrel, the price of oil
has a dampening effect on world trade.
RESOURCE WARS
Resources play an essential role in many conflicts.
I wouldn't say, that any conflict would be purely over resources,
but, for example, the Iraq war had political economy factors in the background,
of course oil was the most important one, but also the value of the dollar in the world economy.
We do have situations where water plays a really imoportant role.
Conflicts in Israel and Palestine were always also conflicts about the control over water.
As I see it, this will come to a head,
as a result of economic growth, this is quite a small planet after all,
so many resources are becoming more scarce
and the limits to growth will be met in that sense, too.
The economical crisis and peak oil are already clearly visible, if you just look.
For instance, there are several resource wars going on in many countries at the moment.
Afghanistan and Iraq are the most obvious examples.
This is often forgotten, when people say
"No, in Afghanistan we are fighting terrorism and the al Qaida."
but why does al Qaida even exist in the first place?
One main message from Bin Laden has been
that American troops have to leave Saudi Arabia.
So, why are there US troops in Saudi Arabia?
Because there is oil.
So the war in Afghanistan is 100% a war over resources,
like the war in Iraq.
In Sudan and Nigeria there are resource wars, likewise in the Congo.
Mexico is falling apart as we speak,
as the revenues from the Cantarell oil field have collapsed.
Also what China is doing, buying agricultural land
all over the world, especially in Africa.
They buy tangible resources, land, minerals,
oil fields, oil companies.
This big power play is already going on
and should be recognized.
If the production of oil continues to decline at the same rate
as it has declined from 2005 to 2010,
and if the oil imports to China and India continue to increase at the same rate
as they have increased from 2005 to 2010
then all of the oil from the five biggest oil producing countries
will go to China and India alone in 2018.
Not a drop will be available to other countries,
which gives us some sort of a time limit.
Before 2018, something has got to give
in the global order of things.
There is no other way out,
since a situation where all the oil from the five biggest oil producing countries
would go to China and India, is simply unsustainable.
In any case, there is a clear tendency
to go towards a world in which we are fighting over resources,
a little like during the 19th century,
including with the use of military force.
THE FUTURE?
If we talk about the worst case scenario,
we are in the same boat with the whole world.
Quite many anticipate a planet-wide disaster in some form
during the next decades.
Two of my favourites are:
W. Warren Wagar - A Short History of the Future
"This era will end in a nuclear war in 2040",
and it's essentially connected to the capitalistic logic in the world economy.
A crisis, which will end in conflict escalation, begins as an economic crisis,
world-wide depression and collapse, leading to all kinds of consequences.
Jacques Attali anticipated, that the tyranny of markets will be followed by planet-wide conflict,
which could mean a total, widespread war.
If we look at the facts in a cold, empirical manner
we see that there is not one single example
of a sustainable Western lifestyle.
No example of a way of life that would not have destroyed the environment,
and that would have been capable of exsisting in that environment
for let us say, 100 or 200 years,
so that the environment would maintain its usability.
Such an example does not exist, pure and simple.
To turn the viewpoint around, if we would get visitors from, e.g., Siberia,
or from a jungle, members of an indigenous tribe that would tell us
"We accidentally killed all the animals and
poured poison in the waters and now we can't live there any more,
what should we do?"
Would we really have something to say,
could we, the Western culture, impart them knowledge
and say "live like this and this and everything is going to be ok."
No, we have no such knowledge, we couldn't tell them anything.
I would like to look a little bit further into the future.
I am in favor of a definition of civilization,
where civilization is a collective whole,
capable of thinking and outlining it's future at least
over a timespan of 200 years.
This is quite far from our current reality.
The West sees itself as somehow superior, or most likely to survive,
but we don't know that for a fact, because this hasn't ended yet.
It is possible, in principle, that the western civilization disappears
and the other civilizations remain.
Then we have to state, empirically,
that it wasn't the most likely to survive after all.
In these social structures and economic models which we have,
unfortunately, it's really hard to shift
to other solutions without having some horrible disaster.
The ones in power don't want to give up their power.
Everything must be turned upside down and start from the beginning,
for humanity to no longer see the world in terms of us and them,
but instead in terms of being one.
We are so screwed that we really need to start thinking,
about which is the best option.
We tend to evaluate the past in a way
that we are very critical about what past generations have done.
But if you think about the views ahead of us,
let's say in 30 or 60 years,
unless a radical change happens in the world.
And we do see all the misery and disasters ahead of us.
Let's think about how many of those things are discussed today,
how people are most certainly aware of these things,
even those, who want to cover their eyes with their hands,
and don't want to see them.
You can only imagine, the judgement in 30 or 60 years
of today's humanity by our children and grandchildren.
The fact, that we have clearly seen where we are going and still kept arguing about small things
at the climate conferences in Copenhagen and elsewhere
without ever doing anything radical.
We cannot defend our actions by saying we didn't know,
because surely the people in the world with influence do know.
We are talking about a certain era and a generation
of unmeasurable greed and selfishness.
The decision-makers either don't think about it,
or they think, that in a few thousand years
someone will have invented a way to save this globe.
We can screw around here limitlessly until then.
Our generation is *** in the cereal bowl of their own offspring.
It's pretty much in the hands of our generation
and this era, to determine how things will happen in the future.
If we make things better,
I'll be proud of this whole generation.
If not, I'll be really ashamed.
The term most in need for updating is "hippies",
and the image it produces:
dirty, unwashed treehuggers.
It's a term, which is used
with the intention, that if you get that label slapped on you,
no-one needs to listen to you and they can just return to the old model,
that's where the reality is.
However, the reality seems to be,
that a tree takes a certain time to grow,
and sea currents go in certain directions.
Now we have 120 or by the wildest estimates 200 animal species,
that are going extinct each day.
In America, 3% of the original forests are left,
In Finland only about 5%.
Every life supporting system is expiring and being destroyed,
the food is poisoned and there are carcinogens in the water, there is a sea of plastic,
floating around the Pacific Ocean.
Hippies were a marginal group.
If this same term still applies to all these people,
who are worried about this, that these structures are breaking down,
structures which literally keep us alive,
then we must up the ante
and start to give some labels to those
who do not care about these things.
Let's say a "market-sleepwalker."
If your real value is the growth curve,
you are stuck big time
in a construction, which has nothing to do with reality.
We already have the technology to build
these small local energy powerplants all across Finland.
We would have the resources for all of it.
We would have the people, the skills, the technology, everything.
And we have the will.
But we cannot do so, because we don't have the money for it.
We need to understand, that the durability of our ecosystem depends on,
if we do what we have to, now,
or if are we going to continue like this.
To think, that there is no money to fix these problems,
because money is just our creation.
There is as much money as we agree there is.
Don't take this as an apocalyptic prophecy,
take it as a warning statement of facts by scientists.
Like said, we are talking about the protection of our enviroment,
fighting against pollution of water and the atmosphere.
It's not an apocalyptic prophecy.
It's coming from the mouths of scientists and with their authority, so that we would wake up,
and not head towards intentional suicide.
"Why do my eyes hurt?" "You've never used them." - Matrix 1999
One of the easiest ways to make the world a better place
would be, for all of us to try to see the world with more open eyes.
Everyone has their own religions, ideologies, -isms.
Now we have Ajan Henki, The Zeitgeist Movement, etc.
There have been all kinds of utopistic movements, communities, ideologies and such.
Some of them have done good, some bad,
most a bit of good and a bit of bad.
It's hard to count a budget.
The thing, that everyone can do in their everyday lives,
is to try not to collect only those things from the world,
which support what we thought we knew before
and try to see the opposite alternative views,
things, as for example, when
we talk with others without trying to convert them
to our own thoughts, instead trying to understand why others think differently.
Even though their ideas and thoughts may seem stupid and witless,
we should still try to doubt ourselves,
not so much the other people around us,
who don´t agree with us.
The system is built in a way, that once you are born,
everything is pretty much laid out ready in front of you.
There is such a political system, such religions,
such cultures and you are expected to take everything for granted.
I do understand very well,
that if your world view is intertwined with the official one,
questioning it can be quite a scary thing to do
and one's ego will hold on to that worldview tooth and nail.
It can feel really rough,
when you start to weed through your conception of reality,
but I definitely see it as a rewarding experience,
because then the responsibility lies with us
and looking at it from that perspective, there is nothing to fear.
I see humans as spiritual beings,
who go through different phases in their lives.
You go through these transformations
from child to adult and from adult to mature.
In these transformations, the past reality loses its meaning
and new ones start to grow in it's place.
This growth is usually introverted.
From a medical point of view, this change is often very painful.
It makes you anxious and can be depressing,
it can make you feel ill and so on.
This is my philosophy of pain: most of our pain
is caused by something inside of us trying to say;
"listen to me" or "move forward" or "let go".
The me that's accustomed to the previous concept fights back
and the pain is created by the tension between these two elements.
Our body reacts to them.
But there is a huge potential for change, when a person sees,
that this is the case.
He'll see the world from an entirely different perspective.
HUMAN BEING
"History and anthropology teaches us, that a human community does not survive long
unless its members take part psychologically in it's central living myth.
Such a myth provides members with a reason for existence." -Edward Edinger
There is a major contradiction in humanity's development.
We have achieved many great things with science and technology.
At the same time, we have caused severe problems,
that endanger the future of the whole planet.
How is this possible?
Is there a design flaw within us?
Perhaps it is bad genes or the original sin, that drive us towards disasters.
One central reason for our problems can be found in our culture
or more precisely in its rapid change.
As the science and technology has progressed, we have
for the most part, given up so called indigenous cultures.
In what kind of harmony have people been able to live with nature
and simultaneously be scientifically advanced,
is something we can only guess.
It would seem, that some a little more honorable, yet equally civilized
operations have existed here before our current civilization.
Many pieces of Finnish culture and the life of Finns
fall into place, when we start thinking that the Finns are actually an indigenous people.
You hear a whole series of clicking sounds, when the pieces go together.
Many of the phenomena in Finnish culture, that often seem to be odd,
are normal things that happen to the Navajos, to the Aborigines, etc.
We can clearly see phenomena, that are not at all strange,
that are on the contrary familiar from all the cases, where a dominant culture
takes over a smaller culture:
alcoholism, suicides, mutism,
escape and going back to the forests, etc.
What is different in our case, of course,
is that here our elite speaks the same language as the common people.
In other words, we do have our Finnish-speaking mainstream culture,
a layer of Europeanized culture, that was born in the few centuries
that we have been a part of Europe.
In this way, our situation is in some sense actually harder,
because in Africa or Latin America people are at least aware of the fact,
that they are under occupation
and that the mainstream culture is colonialist.
Therefore they are also aware, that some kind of battle over independence
or liberation is needed.
Unfortunately, we are not very aware of this
and therefore, things are somewhat more difficult for us.
We have really been made to feel
as if
we are the same as the occupier.
"Women's tales and children's wisdom. Tell the story of creation, tell me of the world's beginning."
- Wäinämöinen, Finnish folk lore
One great thing in the Kalevala is the
notion and poems about so-called "synnyt" ("the births of things"), it speaks about a knowledge of births or origins,
and Väinämöinen is the singer of the "deep births",
for instance, in the competition between Väinämöinen and Joukahainen,
Joukahainen keeps on giving lists of facts, like
when is the time for the pike and the perch to spawn,
which are the biggest and the longest rivers,
and other lists of facts, items of knowledge much like the Western kind.
After a while, Väinämöinen gets angry, and says
"Women's knowledge and children's memory! Sing us deeply into births!"
But that Joukahainen can not do.
And, as is well known, Väinämöinen proceeds to sing
Joukahainen into the mire.
I have been trying to think about this knowledge of births,
what are these "births of things"?
They are a field of knowledge of their own.
It is a kind of knowledge,
that ties together the meaningfulness of a way of living.
When it is said, that Väinämöinen knows
these profound births, or that he sings them,
it means, that Väinämöinen knows
how to conduct that way of life,
so that
life has a purpose, life is meaningful, life is felt
or experienced as meaningful, with a direction,
and so that the way of life is kept coherent, so that it does not destroy
it's environment and can continue over generations.
This is a kind of knowledge that is not individual,
but rather collective or social,
and also spans over several generations.
It is transmitted through the generations
and can not basically even be possessed by a single individual.
This, to me, is what the Kalevala calls "knowledge of the birth of things".
And this is precisely the kind of knowledge
that, for example, we as Westerns lack.
North Amercican Indians
have, for example, based their
big decisions
on how the decisions are going to effect
the next seven generations.
We do not really know,
how many people with our living standard this earth is capable of carrying.
We may have some knowledge, some facts, we can calculate,
but that has no effect on our lives,
we do not change our conduct based on that calculation.
But knowledge of the births of things
in the sense, that Väinämöinen gets it,
is knowledge, that directly transforms life,
if you know it, if you have the skill, then you live according to it,
which means things like
treating some things as sacred, some things as taboo,
some things are always done in a specific way,
which all together forms a cultural whole,
that can stay in balance with its environment,
does not overfish, or hunt too much, does not overpopulate, or do any such things.
We do not truly know these "wholes".
Even if we do know them, we know them in a superficial,
factual level, not on a level that would have an effect on our behaviour
and the way of life.
A sustainable way of life is symbiotic with nature.
We have to know nature's carrying capacity
and adjust our actions accordingly.
The interaction between people is also important,
in order for us to be able to form communities.
Such a society is ecologically and socially
on solid ground.
However, our connection to the nature has been distorted,
since a long production chain has come between us.
We consume food and things,
but do not see the impact our actions have on nature.
Our connection to community has also been lost.
Constant rush and competition has driven us apart.
We strive for our own success
and forget, that we are dependent on our community.
Mass media, saturated with entertainment and advertizing has replaced the community.
It gives life substance and keeps us in it's grip.
Thus we have become prisoners of our own unsustainable culture.
Would it be possible for us to rediscover our connection to nature
and other people?
What is needed
for this kind of transformation?
That is a tricky question.
We have lost precisely what is needed, because
knowledge of the births of things
spans over generations and over individuals.
It can not be done by anyone alone.
It is impossible
to alone in your own head, as it were,
decide over it. Rather, it has to be changed collectively,
and moreover, in a collective including grandmothers and small babies.
That is the only possibility. The smallest scale or unit.
that can give rise to knowledge of the birth of things is a collective,
that is multi-generational and includes a lot of different individuals.
So, we have to device ways of living that support such collectives.
There knowledge of the births can grow and live.
These can be families, or they can be
something, that in English is called "intentional communities."
A kind of collective,
that is gathererd together by
an ecological or a religious
or some similar ideology.
In cultural evolution, it is not necessary for individuals to die or species to go extinct,
for harmful information to be purged. It is possible to learn not to act in ways
that are no longer beneficial, or new ideas can be learned that replace the old ones.
- Pekka Kuusi
Our culture is an inheritance layered over thousands of years.
Each generation passes information and know-how to its descendants.
As time goes by, this information increases and develops.
This process is called cultural evolution.
These old
systems and ideologies just do not work anymore.
Not one of these earlier
ideologies, that have existed,
that have been executed in some form,
none of them include the idea,
that we might just live on a planet with finite resources.
Or that we might poison our water systems
or anything like that.
We are undergoing a historical period of phase transition.
Like water turning into ice or ice into water.
Many long-lived beliefs or presumptions,
that we have taken to be true,
are no longer valid.
And this is becoming more evident.
That is why the old ways of running things no longer function,
or do not produce the effects,
that we suppose them to produce.
Unlike other species,
us humans can consciously affect the way
our culture develops.
We can study, which parts of our culture are beneficial
and pass them on to the generations to come.
The same applies vice versa.
Once we have figured out, which things are harmful and bad,
we can decide to give them up and not behave in accordance with them.
School plays an important role,
when we grow up to become a part of our culture.
All the education we get, starting from kindergarten,
how we are taught to relate to other people.
Are we encouraged to be fair,
equal, just
or are we encouraged perhaps indirectly, perhaps unnoticed,
to be greedy and self-centered?
Our group takes care of its own, those others out there will just have to cope
the best they can.
Learning the Western world-view
is not at all easy.
You have to go to school for at least 12 years,
several hours a day, in order to be trained in it.
It does not come naturally.
It is not an innate
or self-evident way of participating in the world,
but rather is produced through a long period of training.
If you think about the tradition, in which
now for 2000 years generations of Europeans have gone to school
and every new generation is processed through the same machine,
it is clear that
a certain shared or common world-view is being produced.
"What we have done for ourselves alone, dies with us; what we have done for others
and the world remains and is immortal." - Albert Pike
It is obvious, that people are also motivated by other things besides money and competition.
Perhaps a human being can achieve more,
when working driven by different motives.
Maybe co-operation, sharing and creativity are the things,
that best lead people and societies towards success.
Some say that competition is natural for humans.
That may be true, maybe people want to compete with each other.
But it is ridiculous to think, that
the only thing to compete about is
who has the most money.
People could compete over
who is the sharpest philosopher,
whose song is the most beautiful, who dances the best,
who paints the best picture,
who gives the most to others.
We should absolutely get different values.
Actually, we do not have any quality values at all,
there is only one quantitative value, the value of money, the amount of it.
People are, in fact, not very motivated by
a system, that forces them to act as
*** Oeconomicus, only maximizing their own benefit.
People act much better, when
they share a common moral basis in the organisation they are a part of.
And they follow a logic of respect.
They have a moral ground, that mediates things,
including the struggles inside the organisation,
making it possible to refer to a shared background,
that motivates them all.
And people also receive recognition through that common ground.
That motivates people much better.
People function much better co-operatively,
and based on a common moral ground,
than when they are competing against each other
for monetary rewards.
It is very difficult to imagine, that anyone
would start doing research, because of money or fame.
I don't think I have ever met such a person.
Everybody is driven by curiosity,
by the need to find things out,
and often also by the will to make the world a better place
one way or another, directly or indirectly.
The idea, that nobody would write music,
software or books, if there were no copyright laws,
is, first of all, empirically incorrect,
since books, music and other intellectual products
have been made centuries before copyright
ever existed.
In addition, even today many people produce them
and give up their copyright, or do not think about
copyright at all.
Moreover, it is still true, that
most of the people in the world have nothing to do with copyright
or the internet and copyrights
in their entire lives.
Most of the people in the world
live outside the reach of copyright,
which means, that copyright is in no way essential
to human culture, to music,
literature and so on.
There is nothing in human nature,
that would force us to live the way we do today.
Greed, selfishness, and competition may be part of the view of humans that we hold,
but there are also other, better sides.
We can consciously strive towards a way of life,
that brings out the best in us.
RESOURCE BASED ECONOMY
Removing all the problems facing our world
will become the first priority for mankind. -Jacque Fresco
How many terrorist would there be?
Or how many exceedingly angry people,
if the basic needs of everyone were
more or less fulfilled. And that is more than possible.
People tend to take their own culture for granted.
We have the Western culture,
with it's endless needs, materialistic wants.
It is only a part of cultural conditioning.
THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH
One of the biggest pleas for capitalism is, that our current standard of living
is in some way due to capitalism, that competition and selfishness have brought it about.
In reality, we see quite clearly that it is
based on scientific progress, the industrial revolution, technological progress,
and especially the harnessing of hydrocarbon energy, that has made it possible
to have so many people on earth as we have today.
And with the current standard of living.
We may say that science is a neutral way, and it is in a way our only hope.
But it is another matter, what parts of science we are using.
Once we realize the complexity of it all,
we become more humble with regard to how much
nature, humans or environments can be transformed.
We should start learning to live
in symbiosis with it.
Jacque Fresco, born in 1916, is a
social engineer and industrial designer.
He started to think about solutions for the problems in the world:
That people have needs, and how to fulfill them
in a way, that we will never face problems, such as war, violence and poverty.
And also, how to live in equilibrium
with planet earth, and to find an equilibrium.
During the 70's, Fresco developed an organisation called The Venus Project,
which also launched the idea of a Resource Based Economy, RBE.
The basic idea of a resource based economy is
using the scientific method
in solving social problems.
All the big desicions are thought through scientifically,
when it comes to human needs and the carrying capacity of the earth in a relevant way.
The biggest difference between a RBE and a monetary market economy is,
that monetary market economy is focused only on circulation of money,
where a RBE is more focused on circulation of life.
So there human needs are taken into account,
such as the circle of life, and the carrying capacity of our planet.
PRODUCTION
In principle, it would be possible to apply the technology today
to transition into a so-called cyclical economy,
or a cradle-to-cradle economy,
where we would know in advance with regad to every product
already, while they are being designed and produced,
what is going to happen to them after use.
The product never ends up at the dump, but rather re-enters circulation,
preferably somehow upgraded, upshifted,
not downgraded, not as something of lesser quality but as something of better quality.
This would be possible, in principle, with today's information technology.
In a Resource Based Economy, production is concretely based on
how much energy is needed
and how scarce the original resource is.
Does the production process pollute?
Is the product itself durable? Recyclable?
All of this is taken into account.
The ruling concept of financial profitability in producing things
for consumerism will be useless,
as a RBE focuses on resources, not money.
Energy efficiency, not money.
That is what sustainable production is all about.
A remarkable technical achievement, that has been changing our ways
during the recent decades, is the revolution of information.
We have almost unlimited capacity for calculation at our disposal
to do the work for us.
This enables a new kind of economical system, that is
mainly based on computerization.
A RBE is all about maximising the use of our common resources
by researching the global possibilities locally
to be able to calculate exactly, what should be built where,
on what scale, and which materials should be used.
To achieve this, we need computers as tools.
That is the future we are heading towards, and in my opinion this should be taken into account,
whatever our economical or social system will be.
We really do possess the needed tools now,
to optimize production
more efficiently than ever before.
DESICION MAKING
The basic decision making process is
that if for example an engineer or a designer
or anybody has an idea
a plan, or some kind of solution to a problem
or a new model for building a house
or a new traffic system he has come up with.
He inputs the model into the computer.
Then the scientific method is used
which is the basis of this system
and the model is simulated and tested.
We'll find out whether it will work.
If we see that the new solution or idea is resource efficient
it will be put into practice right away.
There is no cost efficiency process involved
like we have today.
You need to have money, it needs to be cheap enough or something similar.
I don't think that having leaders is the way forward anymore.
I don't think any rational person believes anymore
that through actions of one person whether a religious savior
financial leader, anyone.
It doesn't come from a single person
or by lifting him up to some kind of
a miraculous status.
I think of it as a Wikipedia type of system.
All information is completely open.
In principle anyone can take part in the system, maintain it.
It is easy to see
if there is some kind of misuse
if there is corrupt behaviour
if someone is trying to cheat.
It is very easy to see and correct.
If there is a Wikipedia article which somebody messes up
that is very quickly noticed and the article gets locked
and a consensus is sought
through a discussion over the correctness of the article.
And by referring to scientific sources a result is reached.
Regarding controversial subjects
it was the Smash ASEM demonstrations that
taught me that the Wikipedia article on Smash ASEM
was much more reliable than the reports in any of the papers
or on national TV or any such source.
Precisely because all the interested parties write their own point of view
and nobody can monopolize it.
That's why full openness in a way guarantees reliability
when it comes to something like the Venus Project
instead of diminishing it.
FUTURE CITIES
We will change the whole structure of our technology.
This question relates to, for instance, what I've being done in China
for the past few years.
Meaning these ecological cities.
They are places where technologies of different sectors are combined
and their interactions are taken into account.
An ecological city is an area that doesn't pollute the environment
air, water or soil
and uses natural resources in the most economical way.
Third factor here is the point of view presented by Richard Register.
He said that in an ecological city, nature
and the man made environment coexist in harmony.
Ecological cities have a different kind of traffic,
energy production, production in general, waste disposal,
water supply, land use and construction.
All of these are different from today's cities.
Paloheimo and Fresco have many kinds of city models,
which are really interesting. They are examples of how to
create a city systematically so that everything is taken into account.
The basic starting point is that all details and
their interactions are examined scientifically.
And everything is made the in most ecological, energy efficient
and resource efficient way.
That's the idea of the ecological city!
OWNERSHIP
In a Resource Based Economy there is an attempt to move away from
owning and hoarding stuff and an attempt to move towards sharing things.
Consider that we have 7 billion people and at the moment we consume
way more than earth's carrying capacity allows.
One good solution for that would be thinking about sharing of resources.
In Finland we have a good example of this, the summer cottages.
We have over 500 000 summer cottages.
I think it's funny that they are unused for most of the year.
And we have about 6 000 000 people in Finland.
500 000 cottages would be more than enough
for everyone's summer cottage needs.
For a society it's more resource efficient, in a way
to ensure access to everything people need
when they need it. Not like now when people have some private object,
which just lays around unused.
That's a waste of resources!
And to think that we have 7 billion people and this is happening in an ever wider
scale the waste just keeps on piling up.
In reality our production needs are a lot smaller
than we think.
THE ROLE OF JOBS IN THE FUTURE
The nature of work has already changed.
Less and less people work because it's absolutely necessary.
Especially as much as many do.
It's done because of the extra benefit gained.
You are a decent man or a woman if you work hard.
Doing overtime, getting more money being able to buy more.
Fancier car, more trips to Thailand a year.
Or the work is just fun to do.
It's social, you see friends, it passes the time.
We are quite far from the concept of work as it was during our grandparent's time.
Then a job was a must. You either worked or you starved.
Or you were forced to work.
Work is changing to be an option for spending time.
And likewise the type of work needed is changing.
You don't have to go cut lumber at the age of 13
Lumberjacks have mostly disappeared from Finland.
They are replaced by machines.
The Social Democratic party is thinking about what to do after realizing
that wait a minute! The working class has disappeared!
What is the working class party supposed to do now?
The world is changing dear Esko!
The service sector employs most of the people today,
if it became heavily automated the unemployment rates
would skyrocket.
The monetary economy has not prepared for this at all.
In a Resource Based Economy this is turned upside down.
It's seen as a good thing!
Currently it is a bad thing when people lose their jobs
and their standard of living is decreased, but in a RBE
the standard of living is provided without people having to work.
We see it as an important goal for society to automate
all the jobs people don't want to do voluntarily.
So we try to get rid of the concept of paid jobs.
Slowly moving away from the need to have a job.
This frees people completely
to do the things they want to do based on internal incentives.
Education plays a big role in what people are encouraged to do.
In a RBE when work becomes more voluntary,
people's imagination wakes up to see what they can do.
You can do a lot of things. You can be an artist, practice science, be a teacher
you can help people,
or start building space rockets if space is your passion!
The possibilities are endless!
People live in a box. That there's only this one option.
Now we live to be almost 100 years old.
If there was an educational system that lasted throughout your whole life,
like in a RBE where you can develop yourself all the time
for as long as you live
the possibilities for what you can do during the 100 years
are much broader than what we think today!
Now when you graduate from a school, you have a profession, you do that
for 40-50 years and that's it...
EDUCATION AND INCENTIVES
Today's education methods are
based on textbooks, authorities and teachers.
You read certain things in a book.
Then you cram, copy them into your head.
And then you copy them to an exam paper.
After doing this process you get a grade and you have supposedly
completed and undestood the thing.
But if we take a closer look, does the person understand
anything about the subject in reality?
Does it develop a person's understanding?
Or is it just copying things onto an exam paper?
And in a few weeks the "learned" things are totally forgotten.
Education should be interactive and develop understanding.
Starting from elementary school.
HOW CAN WE CHANGE THE WORLD
It feels boring to listen to all of these accusations of beng a cult and such.
It's true that people are passionate about this thing,
because they see how important it is that life supporting structures
are fixed. And if you're not passionate about that...
Then something is a bit wrong.
It's a wholesome change of attitude.
It's not like: OK bring me The Venus Project
and give me a ready-made package to jump into
and then everything is free and fun!
No. Of course not!
It's about a certain basis and a structure being made.
Like an infrastructure diagram.
And then we can see logically: "Whoa! That might work,
but there are challenges such as this and that."
To really change the world
we need an internal change in people.
That's why this has to start at the grassroots level.
People need to start thinking about what is important in life.
The richer we get the less money matters.
In my opinion it's a key to a better society
because power symbolized by money is rarely anything good or positive.
The only chance is to develop science and technology in a way
that we can get a better life for more people
and simultaneously decrease the stress on the environment,
nature and other forms of life.
This is where science and technology provide the means.
But the wisdom and the will to use them must come from the people.
The amount of resources we waste fighting each other...
If we had built upward for the last 50 years,
this would be an awesome place already!
ACTION
"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment
before starting to improve the world." -Anne Frank
We have an unique opportunity to build such a reality
or steer it in a direction, where these unsustainable structures
are fading slowly, forcibly, because the greatest utopia is
that things could continue as they have for a long time
and to the distant future.
It will not happen like that! And that's just pure math.
Now we could steer this in a better direction.
Real life is not a movie!
In the real life we need to do something.
We need to confront issues and deal with them.
As far as I know, that's how it works in any healing process.
Even on an individual level. First you need to confront the problems
and let the cat out of the bag. Then we can start looking for solutions.
A somewhat encouraging thing is that in the end
many people are not very committed to this system.
Even though seemingly people go to work, watch TV,
go shopping and live so-called "normal lives".
In the end not too many have an internal commitment to that.
It feels more like you are sort of a visitor in your own life.
And so, the push needed doesn't necessarily have to be
so dramatic for all of us.
This 2008-2009 crisis though it didn't lead
to any significant change in paradigms,
it was so big and pointed out so many things,
that it almost did it.
We don't need so much more to change things.
And now we can systematically analyze different scenarios,
where this dialect of change and crisis leads to peaceful
improvements on a global level.
People, and every individual, should start taking positions.
Change comes from individuals. No-one will make the change for us.
Responsibility for yourself. If your conciousness changes, it has a radical
influence on the world.
Think about historical figures, whose conciousness has changed,
individuals, who have accomplished remarkably great things.
Can de done right now (days or weeks). INDIVIDUAL Examine your values.
Reject greed and competition. Love life, people and nature.
Be a responsible part of humankind.
Educate yourself. Learn new skills. Know what is happening around you.
Keep a critical eye on the media. Enjoy realizing new things.
Take care of yourself. Eat pure food. Excercise. Avoid stress.
Know yourself. Find your balance. Search for happiness, spirituality and creativity.
Conquer your fears.
Get along. Know what is enough. Have savings rather than debt.
Recycle, repair, lend instead of owning.
Be independent from things like; mass media, banks, the pharmaceutical industry.
Anyone can take concrete actions
and start to make the change.
Whether it is to become politically active,
to grow your own potatoes, to give up brand name clothing
or to take your money out of the bank.
You can surely think of something, that you could do right now.
After all, it is not that hard.
You can start with whatever feels easy, and keep on moving forward from there.
We need to change our values completely.
We need to understand better, what happiness is all about.
How we should respect each other,
and why we should respect each other.
Most of this modern waste of precious resources
is not about making our lives more comfortable, but wanting others to
respect us for what we have.
Rich people are respected,
but this is a false principle.
Everybody should stop to think about how much money we actually need
to live a life that is satisfying.
I ask my patients with all kinds of anxieties, what if you won a super lottery,
and could by new cars and stuff you want. What would you want after that?
In the end what we really need are very basic and simple things,
that are practically almost free of charge.
Then I ask why can't you do that today, since there is
no need to win a lottery for that.
Our time provides us with huge amounts of information.
The Internet. Anyone can find information on the net,
you can get any information you need.
You can contact people around the world.
A new awareness if forming around the things happening in the world.
That is good in our time.
Sometimes people talk about personal learning environments, PLEs.
The idea is that you have the net, the libraries, you have friends, folk high schools,
associations and organizations offering a wide variety of events.
So you use all of these tools.
You use blogs and wikis, you adopt as mentors or teachers
some of the people you already interact with.
And so you device a network, in which you learn.
Regardless of whether what you are learning corresponds to a curriculum.
We don't need a church, all the elements are within us.
Our modern congregations are all about connecting people.
Who interact genuinely, because they have common interests and
want to learn from each other.
And want to share their knowledge with others.
It is largely thanks to the internet and such,
that we don't have to do things alone.
One can find like-minded people to help in almost any activity.
And it really is rewarding too.
Don't start going at it alone, instead check who else is doing to same thing,
see how they do it, and start collaborating.
COMMUNITY. Can be done in weeks/months. TAKE CARE OF THE PEOPLE CLOSE TO YOU.
Enjoy spending time with each other. Lend, share, help, give... Create a network.
SEE THE PEOPLE AROUND YOU. Meet new people. See the people on the streets.
Talk to your neighbor. Search for similarities instead of differences.
SPREAD INFORMATION ON IMPORTANT TOPICS. Make use of the internet.
Discuss things. Teach others and learn from them. Encourage, inspire and support others.
Tell people about this movie.
Get organized. Study groups, exchange groups, time banks, knowledge banks. Communes, eco-villages.
Self-sustainability. Clean local food.
PARTICIPATE. Movements, unions, organizations, political parties.
Petitions, boycots, marches, demonstrations.
The monetary system needs to be changed. That's the number one priority.
It has to be changed. If some political party wants to change it, vote for that party.
Help them. If there is some local currency, an exchange group or a time bank
in your community - join them.
If none exist, start one.
In any case, this current money paradigm has to be broken.
It is quite a radical revolution, which should be done.
But the intriguing thing about this revolution is,
that in the end you wouldn't have to do anything else,
but to change the world into a place,
most people think it already is.
A lot of people think that money is created by sovereign states.
A lot of people think that when a bank loans out money,
it loans other people's savings or their own money.
If we were to change the world into a place people already think it is,
I'd say about 90 % of the problems we have today could suddenly be resolved.
Thinking about a revolution, I don't think it is enough just to oppose
or fight against something.
It is important and it has to be done too, but you also need some kind of
a positive side, saying what should be done instead.
Let's say; let's not do that, but it is more important to say
and do, what the preferable option suggests.
It is up to all of us. This can not be emphasized enough. It is up to each of us,
what happens in the world.
Therefore, there are possibilities in the world if we decide so!
I decide, you decide, they decide, we all decide!
That now we do things like this and not like that.
People think the nature of these problems and processes is such,
that they can not be answered by operating for example in Finland alone,
or any other single country for that matter.
When you look at the global economy and follow production chains,
or ways of labor distribution and exchange relations and how
organizations are arranged, all of a sudden you realize, that everything
is so profoundly intertwined with everything,
that it is by no means controllable in Finland or by the state of Finland.
What comes to mind then is, if we think about it from a holistic
perspective, maybe that is the level we have to operate on to make a change.
And from that comes the basic idea, that we have to get organized.
Create open public spaces, global political spaces
and enable democratic participation in them.
There are many grassroot groups.
It would be desirable for them to start being more co-operative,
because somehow we'll have to start to unite.
But perhaps the situation isn't as hopeless as the media suggests.
A great thing would be, if the media actually tried to help us
build this world into a better place and talk about all the good stuff
that is going on and who is doing what and where
and help us assemble these pieces together.
In the end, when there are enough aware people and groups,
even the biggest problems aren't too big to solve.
SOCIETY. Can be done in months/years
CO-OPERATION ACROSS THE BORDERS. Movements, organizations, associations
Parties, ideologies, religions. Skin colour, language, citizenship.
MAKE TRUE PARTICIPATION POSSIBLE.
In Finland and other countries. Global people's front.
FREE SCIENCE AND CULTURE
Secure freedom of information. Remove harmful patents.
CHANGE THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE ECONOMY
Free ourselves from the power of money. Create debtless money. Abandon destructive economic growth.
CREATE A SUSTAINABLE LIFESTYLE
Know the carrying capacity of the earth. Use technology rationally.
Move into a resource based economy. Decisions have to take into account
the future of the whole planet and humankind.
This is the point, where this kind of rough democracy and sustainable development
actually unite.
And precisely, because we cannot know in advance,
what it should include it has to be
ultra, turbo-democratic.
And evolutionary. And everyone has to take part in it.
Different people and different areas of expertise are needed.
Developing it evolutionarily in small bits and assembling them together
and this way it can progress.
So when it comes to progress, sustainability and democracy
are in fact intertwined.
That's why it has to be democratic.
I said ultra democratic, so people wouldn't think
of it as the representative democracy we have in
the west and in Finland.
It seems like people are increasingly becoming aware or interested in these issues.
Well "these issues" - Human issues!
Human issues are our issues.
Issues of nature are our issues.
Nobody has messed this planet up, except us.
There's no point in blaming it on the starlings or salmon.
When I got acquainted with peak oil and other similar matters in 2010,
I started to get this funny hope, that in fact in my lifetime,
this thing might change.
I believe, that in 21st century humankind may end up in an extensive catastrophy.
It is possible and plausible, although not the most likely
option in any way.
It can happen.
It is up to our actions, whether it will happen or not.
But even that won't necessarily mean the end of the story for humankind.
In any case this technological progress and industrial revolution
have led to a situation, where we have to
learn completely new ways of responding anyway.
I am pretty convinced, that people have the capability to do this.
In the long run.
Where people live among each other,
provided, that awakening and liberation occurs, a notion of
voluntary, planned co-operation for the common good
can be applied.
It is something completely different, than the ape culture we have embraced so far!
This mad rat race.
This greed. This slavery. Exploitation!
There is a possibility in man. A natural possibility that is
kind of pre-charged and when woken up
a person is able to be systematic, rational
and humane in his actions for the common good.
This has been proven and I believe it is possible.
The question is, can we get enough people to wake up
for the tide of history to change?
So what is the spirit of the times?
It is actually change.
Personal and collective healing.
Seeking of authentic experiences and vibes.
Casting aside bad things.
Moving forward.
Letting go of old burdens.
And expanding one's conciousness.
...Cheers!
This movie was done out of love for the people of Finland,
in hope of a better future.
No politicians or bankers were harmed during the production of this movie.
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- MAHATMA GANDHI