Let's Reclaim Our Rights
By Gunther Ostermann
27 November, 2007
Countercurrents.orgMissed Opportunities? Conspiracy? Vested interests? Or just plain stupidity?
What are human beings fundamental birthrights? We need to know- and claim it, especially for the disenfranchised and future generations, who cannot speak for themselves.Many people are concerned about injustice, unemployment, poverty, homelessness, drug addicts, healthcare, crime, war, terrorism, globalization, species extinction, natural resource depletion, pollution, climate change, and many other miseries that are destroying our beautiful planet.
The late scientist Buckminster Fuller researched those problems and came to the following conclusion, in his book CRITICAL PATH in 1982. “It is now possible to give every man, woman and child a standard of living comparable to that of a modern-day billionaire. This is not an opinion or a hope-it is an engineering demonstrable fact…World Game makes it eminently clear that we have four billion billionaires aboard our planet, as accounted by REAL WEALTH, which fact is obscured from public knowledge by the exclusively conceived and operated money-game and its monopolized credit system accounting…We find all the no-life-support-wealth-producing people going to their 1980s jobs in their cars and buses, spending billions of dollars’ worth of petroleum to get to their no wealth-producing jobs. It doesn’t take a computer to tell you that it will save both Earth and humanity billions of dollars a day to pay them handsomely to stay at home.”
This statement can be verified by the US research organization Technocracy, which stated some 70 years ago that, if we would operate our society in an intelligent manner, with the ‘Energy Certificate’, instead of money, than these could be our benefits…The first 25 years of anybody’s life could be devoted to schooling and job training, suiting a person’s aptitude and ability, with no financial burden to student and family…A working age from 25 to 45 with perhaps a quarter the present working hours and then retirement with full purchasing power and privileges…Equality of men and women…Full medical and dental care for life…No more debts of any kind to anybody…An orderly planned society obviates competition, advertisement and shoddy products to assure continuous sales and service. The whole fear industry could be transformed to render useful service…The present reason for economic crimes, alcohol and drug abuse would be gone…No more need for anybody to prostitute themselves. And no more wars!
Imagine what it could be like now, 70 years later, if this would have been promoted like an automobile commercial?
The late psychoanalyst, social theorist, and humanitarian Erich Fromm confirms what Fuller and Technocracy disclosed in his book THE SANE SOCIETY, with many examples. In view of the previously verifiable statements, it should be obvious that the people in education, business, and politics missed a fantastic opportunity to create, for the first time in history, a just and sustainable society.
Sadly, there is nobody in ‘Who is Who’ who will talk about such possibilities publicly.Shall we call it Missed Opportunities? Conspiracy? Or vested interests, as too many people are financially too comfortable to talk about it? But in view of our escalating problems, it is STUPIDITY if we carry on as usual.
Anybody who professes to be concerned about Global Warming and global justice should live and lead by example with a new Global Ethic “ Do not expect others to live with less than what you’re willing to live with.”
We should always remember; we come with nothing, and leave just the same. And for over one hundred thousand people the departure date is today.
On January 6.1992 I saw a glimmer of hope in Time Magazine, when Ted Turner announced that “he is not going to rest until all the worlds problems have been solved. Homelessness, Aids etc.” And he further stated “If we don’t make the right choice after we have all the information, then we don’t deserve to live.” Well, as history shows, Ted never delivered. Nobody since has stepped up to the plate. Guess it’s up to all of us.
Our consumption oriented “Having” society should be encouraged to explore the concept of “BEING”, a philosophy articulated by one of the greatest Jewish thinkers, the late Erich Fromm, in his books. Quote: ”If life’s tendency to grow, to be lived, is thwarted, the energy thus blocked undergoes a process of change and is transformed into life- destructive energy. Destructiveness is the outcome of unlived life. Evil constitutes the crippling of human beings power. Criminals (and terrorists) are made not born.”
The late scientist Ashley Montagu, is both frank and explicit in his book “ The humanization of man”
“Evil is not inherent in human nature, it is learned…Aggressiveness is taught, as are all forms of violence which human beings exhibit.”
Why don’t we apply such wisdom in society and the world, instead of clogging up the prisons and destroying our world in endless wars and wasteful competitions? In view of such powerful and verifiable statements, by these humanitarians, all members of past and present governments should be held morally, and some criminally. responsible, and that includes CEO’s as well.
Gunther Ostermann can be reached at gco@shaw.ca
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