The Wrong Reality. PartVII Realisation - 48 Peaceable Action - continued

Shelter is a basic need, and life can be bleak where our homes are not welcoming and comfortable. But this does not mean they have to be immaculate, with fashionable furnishings, modern fittings, and all the latest equipment. Modern houses, and much that goes into them, use scarce materials and energy for their production, and gadgets consume electricity. Elaborate decor indicates a search for substitutes to the fundamental poverty of life. Wall-to-wall carpeting is nice, but it is perfectly possible to be happy without it, and it can appear nasty when we are aware of the automatic burden it represents. Bare boards can be adequate, long-lasting and pleasant floors for most rooms.

It is wasteful to throw away furniture merely because it is old or out-of-date. Should we not rather make our furniture simple, ergonomically good and solid, respect it and keep it for as long as it serves? Wood need cost us little in ecological terms if eventually returned to the soil and if trees are constantly replaced. Mature trees used for timber have already long performed an oxygen-producing function. The ideal home shall be both a place where we rest and refresh ourselves, and a working base for our inside and outdoor activities, not a temple to personal acquisition and autoprogression.

We need adequate clothing but, by making it simple and practical and by not discarding it until it is beyond repair, we can strike another blow against the Machine. We can avoid wasteful man-made materials, choosing natural fibres such as home-grown wool but preferably not cotton if it has to be imported as is the case here in the UK. We can shun fashion. Once we have found an effective and becoming style and practical kind of clothing there is no good reason for changing or varying it. Fashion is a wasteful expression of false progress, and a device for stimulating commerce. That humans respond to it is another mark of the poverty of life which has to be enlivened in this way. That we pay such attention to outward appearances is because our being is invested more in our outer shells than our inner minds.

We drive ever more sophisticated vehicles, on ever more complex road systems. In the home we in the West increasingly use other powered gadgets - clothes dryers, carpet cleaners, food blenders and mixers, freezers, dishwashers. In the garden we may use rotavators, mowers and clippers, and buy all kinds of other equipment, often more for novelty value than real worth, or as substitutes for basic manual skills. If we do not actually own all these things, we covet them. They too are subject to fashion, so that we regularly scrap them and buy new, as commerce intends that we should so that obsolescence is built into them.

All these things are pleasures of a human world society which is not very pleasant in itself. Simply living in this society is not its own reward. Saving labour and gaining material rewards are substitute objectives of a Machine which is unworthy of our efforts to serve it. Achieving these objectives is a strain on Earth's means, and they would be mostly unnecessary to a humantrue society.

Independent research is needed to reveal how much of Earth's energy resources the average person consumes compared with that amount which each contributes that is essential to life. It will certainly be found that much more is consumed than returned and much of this is irreplaceable, or carries an unacceptable penalty. We have heads and hands, horses (that build themselves out of the most common plant food on Earth - grass) to draw ploughs and vehicles, sails to drive boats. We should use these things wherever possible, looking to engine-powered devices to assist us only when we can ecologically afford them, and need them. Otherwise we can now sacrifice the convenience of such devices, voluntarily, in order to prepare for the time when, although many of our tasks have to be accomplished by the sweat of our brows, with only those aids which are part of the re-cycling biosphere to help us, we have the freedom, time, space and will to do those tasks, and take satisfaction in so doing.

With increasing general awareness we find that we are already moving in some of these directions. Here in the UK we do now insulate our houses to conserve heat, with government help and encouragement, although the average individual's motive is less likely to be fuel-saving than money-saving. The majority of us are not yet fully awake to the fact that our resources of coal, oil and gas are fast running out, and that the foremost alternative resource, nuclear power, still presents unanswered questions and unsolved problems as to safety. In some developed nations there is strong public resistance to nuclear energy and, in the main, this is now officially supported. A balanced review of this subject is offered towards the end of this chapter (a review given against the background situation of 'favoured' nations in 1990 or so, but still relevant to the state of some of the developing nations ten years on). Whilst these strong suspicions of nuclear energy remain, if we share them we can help lower the demand for nuclear power by reducing our individual consumption of energy. The longer we ignore the dangers of the existing situation, go along with its autoprogressions and so give way to the Machine, as the conventional sources of energy dwindle we shall come to dependon nuclear power, and should it prove to be as dangerous as suspected, to necessarilysuffer the consequences because there is no alternative.

That we subdue our instinct is necessary to the liberation of our intellect. That we make material sacrifices is much less truly hurtful than that we presently sacrifice our natural morality. That we should share equally worldwide is a simple, humantrue, responsible obligation. That we presently maintain a competitive, unequal world causes suffering everywhere, practically but also mentally - it is against reason, and therefore unnatural for us.

There is a money-economic counter-argument which says that if the 'North' reduces its demands this will harm and not help the 'South' because it means shrinking markets which the 'South' depend on supplying. But 'underdeveloped' countries should not be dependent on using their land to grow peanuts, coffee, tea and the like to sell - cheaply - to the 'developed' Northern countries for money - the 'North's kind of money, ie 'hard currency', which is demanded in payment for the supply to the 'South' of goods which they themselves have not the industrial means to manufacture. The 'South's land should be growing food for the South themselves, and the 'North' should supply their essential manufactured needs, regardless of money. It is only by our stepping back from our 'Northern' privileges that the 'South' will, with our help, have space to take steps forward out of deprivation, so that each may eventually meet the other in equality.

But within the present 'Northern' framework of a money economy, if, for any reason, the public financial power to fulfil its normal demand for any thing is reduced, the public financial opportunity to supply it is also reduced. Since supply is equated with jobs, this means that a proportion of the people become unemployed. Since employment provides money to secure demands, unemployment further reduces demand, which further reduces supply and so further increases unemployment. This sequence can occur as the result of economic 'inflation', but it would also occur were a large numnber of humantrue individuals, doing anti-human or unnecessary jobs, suddenly to down tools on moral grounds.

The money-economics system in any case serves the Machine, not humanity. The Machine creates the phenomenon of unemployment which the system also causes automated humanity to translate into selective human suffering because its effects are not equally shared.Those still employed go on supplying, being paid, demanding and receiving at about the same rate per capita as before. Those now unemployed are outcast from the system and excluded from the normal automatic process of living. By the paradoxical effects of their conditioning by automatic concepts, the former do not turn on the Machine out of sympathy with the latter and insist on the burden being equally shared. It is a case of 'devil take the hindmost'.

The Machine's way of recovering from recession is to restore demand from any possible source and, in order to meet it, to increase once more the supply of any saleable thing, by every possible financially economically viablemeans. The humantrue way is to replace this system with the responsible cooperative provision of each other's needs.

So a great barrier to humantrue progress is bound up with the Machine's concept of employment. If large numbers of humantrue individuals didopt out of the Machine at once, before finding alternative means of supporting each other, the result would be disastrous. The weakened Machine, even where its humane welfare laws required it to do so, would be unable to provide for those individuals' survival. In this and other Northern countries the safety net of social security prevents the unemployed falling into destitution, but if unemployment dramatically increased, and prosperity drastically declined, according to automatic lore it is inevitable that this provision would also decline, or cease. The transformation has to be gradual. As each part or function of the Machine is abandoned, the humantrue alternative has to advance a step to fill the gap. Conversely, as each humantrue step forward is taken, that automatic feature which it replaces has to be dismantled to make way.

It is certainly vital and urgent that humantrue individuals do give up jobs and duties which are harmful to humanity, at once, or at least voice their objections to doing what they are called upon to do and resist their obligations until it is possible to give them up. But much of the work we do is basically necessary, if misapplied and improperly oriented to the Machine, and so should continue. We should also continue, for the present, that mass of unnecessary but relatively harmless work which the Machine employs us to do, for it can be turned to some good account, as can the functions of certain institutions. Politics, government, education and law, for example - these can turn back on themselves, by their individual members re-examining their principles and motives and beginning humantruly to reform their functions.

Three benefits would result from humantrue individuals drastically reducing their needs and wants. One is to lessen the hardships of unemployment, in that those out of work and lucky enough to receive social security payment would be better able to live on their low money income. The second and third benefits illustrate how we can all turn our unnecessary labour to good account. The second has already been described - that by making sacrifices we reduce our dependent demands on the Machine and so reduce its pressures on the biosphere. The third is that those of us who are still employed would be able to live well below their money income, so having money to spare. In caring humantrue communities or groups which included both employed and unemployed members, it is altogether reasonable that this money be pooled - that the latter give it and the former take it as a matter of equal sharing. Or, otherwise, that it be used in any way that furthers the humantrue cause.

No one wantsto be deprived of course, but our humantrue aims will not be achieved by all seeking to secure their own advantage. If there is to be deprivation, it will be easier to bear if allare deprived to the same degree. But our aim should be that nobodybe unacceptably deprived, and all share equally. Returning to the matter of insurance, it is the fear of losing, or falling behind in the rat race to gain, which persuades us to insure, in a society where to gain and possess is our way of life, from bare necessities to luxuries. If the practice is to cease we need other means of making good accidental loss.

As the number of humantrue individuals increases, and they decline to be insured, when one of their number suffers loss the rest will repair it and care for him or her and family. With the growth of humantrue awareness this practice will spread as we all move towards a society in which human individualscare and provide for each other,and insurance is unnecessary. In a sense the effect would be almost the same in that most are already protected from loss, but many can't afford to be. The main point is that we would have gone over to moral concepts, reducing our dependence on the Machine and our vulnerability to its dangerous inhumanities. We would also have reduced human anxiety, eroding part of its cause by cutting out one of its financial symptoms - the complex commercial administration of insurance and its professional competitive profit-making activities.

Realising how it will be to live in a humantrue future, and wishing to prepare ourselves for it we can, now, take every opportunity to practice what then will have become human nature. We can resist the coldly, economically calculated automatic way of doing all things. Take building, for instance. By giving our own labour, taking materials locally to hand and using basic human skills, we can by-pass economic constrictions of the money sort, build as we truly need, and give our buildings human character and scale.

Government in Britain presently forbids independent freedom to build, through its planning controls. But planning authorities are broadly institutions of human reaction, formed primarily to control reckless automatic development. This being so it can be expected that growing supraconscious awareness will the more readily percolate those authorities so that they come down in favour of free, independent but thoughtful community building.

Given time, this awareness must surely percolate allinstitutions. The humantrue individuals who are also manufacturers, and employers, will also reduce their personal needs and wants, but they are in a position to go further. They will be able not only to resist but also to refuse to promote the concepts and help create the temptations of the Machine. They can resolutely turn away from the lore of supply and demand and towards the humantrue principles. They can ignore the money-economic dictates which normally automatically decide what they will make, and how it will be made, presented and sold. Instead they will work for, and in, the best interests of whole humanity, relying on support from the many individuals like themselves.

Humantrue manufacturers will refuse to make, or go on making any inhuman product, if need be converting their factories to a better purpose. Although, for the present, they may be producing things which are not strictly humanly necessary, they will not make a bad product. They will not needlessly process, adulterate or refine, package or present their goods. They will on no account advertise, nor will they replace human labour with machinery on grounds of money cost alone. They will not compete, and will cooperate with other humantrue manufacturers in making their similar products available in the most truly economical way. They will put themselves on the same level as all others working with them, and all will be paid the same fair wage.

Such manufacturers will be unlikely to survive commercially in this existing reality. But they will be enabled to do so by the combined support of every individual also working to prepare the way for the humantrue alternative reality. By the same means, the sudden drastic effects of mass unemployment will be avoided. These individuals will themselves spread the word about humantruly produced goods and help with their distribution wherever possible. They will, wherever practicable, go without rather than buy anything else - anything which is advertised, needlessly tampered with or shown off - and will not allow lower cost to tempt them. Wherever needed, humantrue individuals will be willing to work hard for any production process, and to accept the standard fair wage regardless of the job done.

In this spirit, although the framework of automatic reality still exists, more and more of us shall pull away from its concepts and cease pushing them to their lawful limits and beyond. Some of us might set up manufacturing units on humantrue principles, but it is to be hoped that the humantrue ideal will blossom within existing companies. We will give our services honestly according to need, and take money for them only as we need it. To those who have little or nothing we will charge little or nothing. Why should we conform to the automatic ethos? Humantruly aware company directors who are living on less might well abandon the profit motive. Shareholders who can do without them might forego their dividends. Banks and other moneylenders may make a distinction between humantrue and purely automatic activities, raising the rate of interest charged for the latter but reducing it, or writing off loans, or givingmoney for the former.

The humantrue individual must regard the holding of stocks and shares as immoral, because it is an automatic practice of the false, competitive money economy. But supraconscious shareholders who sell their shares will thereby sustain the Machine, not only by keeping the money value but also by enabling the shareholding to be maintained in other, automated hands. Let them donate their stocks and shares to a reform movement which could then exert its shareholding power to good purpose. Where a company is acting contrary to humantrue interests it might then be obliged to mend its ways or even forced into liquidation. This will be simple and direct action against the Machine, quite unlike getting bogged down in politics. It will do human harm only to the financial interests of automated shareholders who could not be said really to suffer in consequence.

That such things rarely happen - that we would presently describe them as miracles - is not only because of self-interest or greed, or what automated mankind sees as prudence. It is also because automatic advantages allow some of us to raise ourselves above the rough and tumble of the Machine and so to cherish and preserve certain limited forms of emotional and intellectual sensitivity like poetry, or delicacy of manner. Most of us, lacking these advantages, have our senses dulled and crushed, and some become insensitive, or rough and violent. Divided by these artificial differences we distrust, despise, avoid or clash with each other. Only by each reaching for the same middleground of humantrue untellectual understanding, and meeting on equal terms of emotional sensitivity thereby, can we agree and cooperate.

In Chapter 8 I cited a soldier, a priest, an economist and a terrorist as examples of automatic conditioning and victims of the Machine whose characters changed when they became supraconscious and were re-motivated by true morality. It may appear impossible that such as they could so radically change despite resistant pressure from the norm. But when supraconsciousness is spreading widely their conversion will reflect a general retreat from the automatic norm. As they give up their automatic functions, the Machine and its need of those functions will correspondingly diminish. Humantrue belief will become increasingly possible as humantrue practices become more common.

While existing reality persists, however, the quality of life as we presently conceive it depends largely on our individual value to the Machine, the status it gives us, the amount of money it pays us. In the light of this concept, to be unemployed is to be relegated to the lowest quality of automated life. This current fact strongly deters humanity from allowing itself even to entertain the possibility of an alternative humantrue concept. And even if we do individually accept that alternative concept in principle, we may be still unwilling to put it into practice by taking a reduction in income or voluntarily giving up our job on moral grounds. We may be unable to tear ourselves free of ingrained automatic lore which says it is not only naive and foolish to make such sacrifices but that if we are so unworldly-wise as to make them others will not follow suit. It is necessary that humantrue individuals unitedly undertaketo put their agreed principles into practice, in order to help and encourage each other by making that practice their common aim, and in order to cooperate in making good the consequences.

Trade unions exist to protect the interests of their membership, particularly the unskilled manual workers who are the lowest units in the Machine's economic calculations, who traditionally receive its least rewards and who are first to suffer when its prosperity declines, and who have most needed to unite against it. Not only this, but the unions are deeply concerned to eradicate alldeprivation and underprivilege. Ideally they stand for equality and against war and other inhuman practices, meaning that in fundamental principle trade unions ought to be wholly opposed to the cause of their concerns - to the concept and lore of automatic reality. The great trade union movement, by undertaking to follow its true principles and reject the unworthy competitive practices into which it has been drawn, and so converting its power into a positive force against the Machine, would represent a strong surge of will for the humantrue alternative, and would be an already united means for making it good.

There is no good humantrue reason why unions should not vote that all wages and salaries be brought to the same adequate level, paid to all individuals of all ages. Nor that they should not join with all other humantrue individuals to insist that unemployment and social security benefits, and all retirements pensions, also be brought to that same equal adult level. They could proceed further, to the logical proposal that everybody be paid this same amount, whether or not classed as employed, including housewives, housefathers, and, in support of parents both combined and single, all children. This proposal, by removing material inequality, would also remove a root cause of conflict. It would also remove the competitive economic factor that persuades us to serve and maintain the Machine, and prevents us from aboloshing it. The proposal would remove the financial obligation on any individual to work or serve contrary to conscience, and society would receive the product of only that labour it was prepared collectively to give. The money-economic argument is that society would then collapse, for we will only work for incentives - by competing for rewards. The humantrue argument is to the contrary - that automatic incentives persuade us to work against our human interests, whilst in this way we would work with a supraconscious will for our humantrue needs.

In money-economy terms there could be no valid objection to this scheme, provided that the levels of wages, benefits and pensions paid were so adjusted that their total precisely equalled the whole amount of money that our combined labours earned, once the whole cost of essential services had been deducted - in other words, that the Machine's books balanced. Again, the ultimate objective would be to get rid of such irrelevant financial calculations altogether. In the meantime the concepts of incentive, profit and taxation, which relate to competitive inequality, would already be on the way out.

Even so, whilst such a scheme would eradicate the most compelling reasons why we cling to this present reality, some solid obstacles remain. As long as the Machine holds its overall grip on our affairs it can retain legal financial claims on us which can not be simply given up. An individual may, for instance, be buying his or her home on mortgage, and by accepting a reduction in income might be unable to meet the repayments. This is another deterrent, the fact that homes can be hard to come by in this reality, giving rise to the fear that if we do not play the Machine's game we shall lose the roof over our heads. It can be an extra hardship of unemployment that because of it we might be forced to sell our house, if we can, and, being now handicapped by poverty only the meanest of living conditions will be available to us, so adding to our degradation.

But it must be supposed that when events have reached a stage where very many of us have voluntarily exposed ourselves to such obstacles and hardships, those events will have been borne along on a wave of humantrue awareness which will have penetrated all walks and conditions of automated life. There shall be humantrue individuals in the hierarchies of government, industry, finance and, for example, building societies. Building societies are (or were, before many of them became banks) semi-public institutions with the obligation to help people obtain homes to live in. Let their executives and members act according to the spirit of their constitution, putting its human purpose before the burden of automatic restrictions. Where one individual can not pay his mortgage interest let another voluntarily forego her investment interest, and the two be cancelled out. Let it go further - that investors relinquish claim to their capital altogether, and this money be used to cancel out the debts of struggling mortgagees.

This will be simply to alter the equation which building societies represent by taking away the money element in all respects except, for the time being, as a token. Instead of borrowing investor's money, on which interest is paid, and lending it to borrowers who gradually pay it back, with heavy interest, so that others can eventually borrow it in turn and also pay interest on it - instead of this, those who have money to spare will give it to others who need it to buy homes.

As the tide of humantruly aware cooperation goes on rising, such Machine-negative acts might progress further still. Individual owners who have been given houses in this way, or any other enlightened owners of houses, can now relinquish the notion of possessionof them and see themselves simply as their needful occupants. They will declare the house to be of no money-value, never again to be sold. The unnecessary deeds of ownership can now be annotated to this effect, or torn up. When the occupants move home, rather than buy and sell they will merely exchange with other such occupants - the houses andmost of their contents, regardless of any consideration but their respective equal needs of a place to live, and without having to pay solicitors' and estate agents' fees, or high costs of complete removal.

This practice will cancel opposite extremes of interest and emotion, from which presently grow contentions that have no place in humantruth - pride in possession of a home and calculations of its resale value, as against the anguish of being without one, or the fears of being dispossessed. As the practice spreads, automatic drives will give way to human interests in other respects. The money motive and income of bankers, solicitors and estate agents will decline to coincide with theirhumantrue willingness to retreat from the automatic norm and accept simpler living standards. In this way much wasted automated effort will be released and freely transferred to purely human concerns and genuinely useful cooperative work. To continue click here