This is the text for Part 1 of the Primer
Open Source
This primer is open source. Anyone can add to the content. The only request, please make additions positive, honest, compassionate and accurate. But don't be shy!
For those who put the strategies suggested in this primer to work in their own lives, welcome to paradigm shift! The benefits can start almost immediately.
There is nothing complicated here. All very straight forward. Here are several aspects of paradigm shift. What would you add?
Points of Departure
There has never been more reason for paradigm shift. The enormous ecological and cultural footprints of the world's affluent, including the middle classes of the United States, Europe, China and many other countries, is forcing the rest of the world towards an increasingly degraded future.
The needs of capitalism and the seduction of the consumer culture are at odds with sustainability, along with much of what could be called positive social and spiritual progress of humanity.
The needs of capitalism and the seduction of the consumer culture have diminished and dis empowered the capacity of individuals, families, neighbors, elected officials and society to respond in an effective way to climate change, damage to the natural world; social, political and economic dis equity and a long list of other problems. “Market forces” are only making the situation worse.
The most important breakthrough for creating a healthy, uplifted and sustainable future is in our own consciousness, not technology.
There are many examples of paradigm shift and many allies and assets to work with in common cause for a preferred future.
Individuals, families, friends and neighbors can self educate and self empower, to create sensible alternatives to the consumer culture's social engineering. No permission required.
This primer is, essentially, a how to, for paradigm shift.
The primer has a lot of text. I am not going to read it all. I will make comments. You can pause the slide show to read what you like. You will find educational fotos and graphics, most from other presentations I have made. There will be links to those other presentations which have greater detail than the primer – such as economics, reducing eco footprints and more examples of paradigm shift.
The primer will describe 20 years transforming a suburban property, allies and assets in the community, conscious economic development, the wisdom of the world's great spiritual traditions, eco villages, defining priorities with our own time and money, how to help pay for the transformation, putting ideas of paradigm shift out to the wider world, the double benefit and much much more.
Contents Part One
Why This Primer
Overview
Paradigm Shift
Open Source
Social Engineering
Liberation Equals Empowerment
A Sequence For Paradigm Shift
Why Paradigm Shift
Deconstructing The Myths of Capitalism
External Costs
The Magic Hand
Informed Choice
Efficiency
Climate Change and Suburbia are Not Efficient
Concentration of Wealth
American Exceptionalism
A Short History of Suburbia
The American Way of Life is Non Negotiable
Paradigm Shift
Paradigm shift, as used in this primer, refers to a movement towards a present and future where humans fit within the boundaries of the natural world, the goal of society is to bring out the best in positive human potential and the economic system is an honest partner and serves the healthy goals of society.
Paradigm shift can start in one's own life then expand with family, friends, neighbors, the community and beyond. One's own example cannot be underestimated. The more people making these changes, the better.
Paradigm shift is a process, not likely to be a sudden event. We prioritize our own time and money. Each small part of paradigm shift helps support other parts, from small scale to larger and serves to help create even more shift. With care and purpose, we can mitigate virtually all of the downward trends at the same time.
Important comments and observations -
1] Many of the most challenging and expensive problems facing individuals and our society are avoidable. Many are lifestyle choices.
2] The very fact that thousands of products and services known to damage public health and the environment are easy to buy is proof that the economic system values money more than people and planet.
3] Every neighborhood and community has surprising allies and assets to work with for creating a preferred future.
4] Purposefully reducing eco footprints leads to a wide range of social, economic, political, environmental and even spiritual benefits.
5] Positive human potential is our greatest renewable resource
6] There is no need for a big break through in technology. The greatest break through needed for a preferred future is our own consciousness.
7] Many positive actions for paradigm shift can take place at the personal and home scale with no permission needed. Untold numbers of people all over the world are already creating paradigm shift in their own lives.
8] We could significantly help pay for paradigm shift, from home scale to nation, simply by how we prioritize our own time and money - what we buy and what we don't buy, what we do with our own time.
Social Engineering
Our lifestyles of affluence and convenience - our housing, transportation, food choices, recreation - are practically all based on over consumption of resources and energy.
WE ARE TAUGHT TO OVERCONSUME
Each of us is the target of social engineering, also known as advertising. In 2021, businesses spent about ¼ trillion dollars on advertising. We are targeted by hundreds of commercial messages every day. Most of that messaging encourages over consumption.
These messages, over the years of our lives and over decades of our society, have profoundly shaped our values, goals, beliefs, lifestyles and how we relate to other and the world around us.
This product of social engineering is commonly referred to as the consumer culture. We are referred to more as consumers and less as citizens.
The consumer culture is, perhaps, the most remarkable product of capitalism, as we know it. Capitalism requires over consumption of energy and resources. It requires externalizing its costs.
Continued, social engineering
When we buy oversized and excess products, we are, essentially, investing in our own social engineering and disempowerment. Capitalism exploits those aspects of the human character most people would say are not desirable - such as vanity, greed, excess, self centeredness and indulgence, and then, celebrates them.
Social engineering damages civic cooperative culture. We spend more time consuming products than participating in making our homes, neighborhoods and communities better places to live for the good of people and planet.
Advertising pushes damaging lifestyles. Along with an environmental footprint, we could say the consumer culture also has a social, political, economic, even spiritual footprint. Just as real, just as damaging.
Still, the mainstream economy does offer many healthy products and services. Paradigm shift calls for patronizing the positive that can assist paradigm shift and boycott what doesn't help move us towards a preferred future.
Liberation Equals Empowerment
This primer calls for our own liberation. It encourages self education and self skill building for speaking and writing effectively to be a positive influence with others. A preferred future calls on reclaiming our personal and collective power! Liberation helps bring about -
1] Personal satisfaction. Opens up new possibilities for our own lives and beyond.
2] It can boost others to do the same and can reduce the size of various footprints.
3] It can diminish the power of capitalism and social engineering at scale from personal to society wide.
4] Personal and collective liberation can help move us towards a preferred future.
5] Liberation is bringing out the best in positive human potential.
A Sequence For Paradigm Shift
Like many dynamic processes, paradigm shift starts simple and can becomes more complex and compelling. Here are several sequence stories from [sub]urban locations that cover a range of scales. These same stories [and more] and text will include fotos and graphics on you tube. The entire primer is about regeneration. Check my website for links, www.suburbanpermaculture.org
First sequence story, a person, Hanna, already a committed bike rider and with a modest lifestyle, attended a workshop about making big changes to a suburban property. She and others saw grass to garden, edible landscaping, a 6500 gal rain water system, a garage turned into a living space, passive solar redesign and much more. All to reduce eco footprints and to produce more basic needs at home like food, energy and rain water collection.
She was impressed.
Hanna said she would never have considered buying a suburban house but just because of that workshop, she bought a small suburban property with the intention of doing to that property what she saw at the work shop.
She organized some work parties and within several years, she had an awesome property. A garage was turned into a living space with a passive solar add on. The grass was traded for garden. The main house was rented to produce income. There was a rain water system. The place now produces much of her daily food, energy, water and creative needs and income. And people who have seen her place, have also been impressed.
The Consumer Culture
1] Avoidable damage to the natural world.
2] Degrades human capacity to act in its own best interests - personal, social, economic, environmental, spiritual.
3] Capitalism and the consumer culture are not allies for creating a sustainable, healthy, peaceful, uplifted world.
4] Humans and the natural world deserve better
The Common Denominator
Capitalism and the consumer culture are the common denominator of so many problems, a critique of the economic system is essential. We live in one of history's most impressive examples of mass social engineering - aka the consumer culture. The damage it causes to people and planet is immense.
Understanding the dishonesty and damage caused by capitalism and the consumer culture can help break the control of its social engineering. The more people who break that control, the better.
There are many other well articulated critiques of capitalism. Self educate and empower yourself. Here are several of my favorite myths and then the deconstruction.
Deconstructing the Myths of Capitalism
There are many other well articulated critiques of capitalism. Self educate and empower yourself. Here are several of my “favorite” myths and deconstructions.
1] The magic hand – Production and consumption, with minimal regulation, allows for the best allocation of resources for the greatest public good.
2] Informed choice – Give customers accurate information about the products they are interested in so they can make a thoughtful judgement of what to buy.
3] Efficiency – Capitalism is the best system to create products and processes that produce the most benefit from a given amount of effort and materials.
4] Democracy – Capitalism and democracy go together
5] American Exceptionalism – the belief that the United States occupies a special position in history and on the global stage by virtue of certain characteristics held to be unique to the United States.
External Costs
The practice of external costs deserves special attention because it is such an essential part of the mainstream economic system. It is a fixture in all the myth. Understanding external costs helps understand deconstructing the myths.
An external cost occurs when a product is sold from a seller to a buyer and the use of that product impacts more than just the buyer. Further, the price paid for that product does not account for the damage it causes. No economist will deny the existence of external costs. Its a reality that essentially, gets a free pass because dealing with it in an honest way would put end to capitalism and the American Way of Life.
A good example of an external cost is cars. Fabricating the cars requires enormous amounts of energy and resources. There is damage to people and planet. Cars pollute the air and water which degrades public health and the environment.
Many freeways for cars in urban areas have ruined inner city neighborhoods, usually minorities. Car accidents cause nearly a trillion dollars of damage each year in the US while killing over 40,000 people each year with millions more people injured.
Gasoline for cars, refined from oil is yet another extensive set of external costs that can include ruining the livelihoods of the people where the oil comes from. Accidents that spill thousands of barrels of oil on coastlines and habitats.
External costs continued
Suburbia, home to half of all Americans, is known as a location with weak culture and civic life thanks to fences, cars and automatic garage doors. Cars are a major cause of climate change. The US military exists to protect American economic interests including oil. Research American foreign policy doctrines over the years.
All these external costs and many more add up to trillions of dollars in costs over just a few years. Individuals, families, communities, society overall and the environment pay those costs. External costs amount to an enormous subsidy to the economic system, affluence and the American Way of Life. The American Dream depends on a dishonest economic system.
Factory farming, junk food, tobacco, gambling, violent entertainment and many other every day products have extensive and often overlapping sets of external costs.
There is abundant literature about the condition of the natural world, all these external costs – habitat, pollution, air quality, water quality, species extinction, dead zones, coral bleaching, wild fires, the Amazon burning for burgers, melting glaciers. On and on. No need to repeat all that information here other than to say, over consumption of resources and energy and externalizing the cost is the driving force behind almost all the damage to the natural world.
Several Myths of Capitalism
The Magic Hand
Through individual self-interest and freedom of production as well as consumption, the best interests of society are fulfilled
Neo liberal economics calls for minimal regulation of business. Let the market decide. There are many books, podcasts, videos critical of capitalism. No need for great detail here.
Many billions spent to repair avoidable damage such as public health; climate change, habitat lost, a dispiriting urban landscape built for cars. Those are all external costs. All in the name of freedom of production and consumption. Repairing the damage does provide jobs.
Informed Choice
Informed choice is another falsehood. This myth declares the economic system provides the buyer with accurate information so they can make an informed choice. External costs clearly show we do not have informed choice. The price we pay is deceptive and dishonest.
For example, the true, honest cost of junk food or gasoline or cars, would be far greater if the price paid accounted for the damage those products cause to public health and the environment.
Some figure the true cost of gasoline, if it were honest, would be 20 to 30 dollars per gallon. Cheap, dishonest prices for almost everything is essential to this economic system and the consumer culture. In effect, damage to people and planet subsidizes the economy and makes some people very rich and provides employment for millions of people from brain surgeons to car repair.
Efficiency
Capitalism claims to be the most efficient system to produce products and services. Efficiency means the most desired output with the least input. Our super sized consumer way of life would collapse if it were efficient. Our wealth, convenience and affluence depends on excess and inefficiency.
Cars are a good example. In a thermodynamic assessment, the vast majority of the energy to run a car is simply to move the mass of the car – the metal, glass, plastic. The actual weight of the person in the car, the reason for the travel, is close to insignificant compared to the energy needed to move the weight of the car. Bikes and transit are far more efficient. Even better, design and re design our cities and towns so cars are far less needed. We could simply avoid many of these problems.
Suburbia
Suburbia is another good example of in efficiency. Are homes intended to provide comfortable, secure and healthy shelter in an efficient way or are they intended to be a symbol of vanity and excess that creates more economic activity and more damage to people and planet?
Suburbia depends heavily, not only on inefficient cars for its very existence, as explained above, but also for the extensive and expensive highway infrastructure cars require, plus all the external costs of oil.
In 1970, the average home was about 1600 square feet with about 3.5 people living in it. By 2020, the average home size is about 2,300 square feet with about 2.5 people living in it. More floor space usually means more stuff, all of which have an environmental footprint, to furnish oversized homes.
There is an enormous amount of excess space in a typical American home. Almost a thousand square feet [more than 30 by 30 feet] per person is far more than a reasonable need.
Those in the housing industry would say big homes are what people want. That's probably true, for those who can afford it. At the same time, millions of people simply want a modest home with security. The market, driven by profits and those with the money to afford their vanity, clearly favors large inefficient homes. Meanwhile, millions of people can't find affordable housing.
Climate Change is Very Inefficient
Climate change is looking to be perhaps the greatest threat to the well being of humans and nature in history. Climate change is a product of excess consumption and external costs.
Climate change will cost untold trillions over the years. We know over consumption is causing climate change yet the economic system still promotes the resource and energy intensive products and lifestyles that deliver rising temperatures, melting ice, mass migrations, global political instability and a lot more. All adding up to a vast level of inefficiency.
There is virtually no discussion of simply using less stuff.
Many millions of jobs depend on overconsumption [suburbia, cars] and many millions of jobs exist to repair the damage overconsumption causes to human well being and the natural world.
That means inefficient use of natural resources requires inefficient use of human resources to clean up the mess. Still, this economic system tells us Gross National Product, how much producing and consuming takes place, is the most important measure of the health of the economy. Something like a delinquent failing student giving himself an A. Sector graphic
Capitalism and Democracy - Concentration Of Wealth
We have never seen so such concentration of wealth in the hands of so few people. The Federal Reserve reports, the most affluent 1% of our nation's population owns sixteen [16] times more wealth than the bottom fifty [50] percent of the population. This statistic is shocking, 3.5 million people have 16 times the wealth of the least affluent 168 million people.
The analysis here is not necessarily Marxist. We simply cannot ignore that, with the occasional exception, the more money people have, the larger their eco logical footprint.
A society with such an imbalance [that is steadily increasing] is a society that is becoming even more unstable [and un ethical]. The wealthy run the country. Certainly some of the wealthy have a sincere concern for the less well off but given the well documented conditions of our society, the well being of millions of Americans is a minor concern.
Over the years, we have seen both violent and non violent push back from those marginalized and disenchanted with the System, such as the race riots and the counter culture in the 1960's and 70's, the Occupy Movement, Black Lives Matter and more. One might even add the attack on the capitol, January 6.
Wealthy people and organizations can influence elections simply because they can donate millions to the candidate of their choice. Poor people cant do that.
Businesses can pay expensive lobbyist and they also have friends and connections poor people simply do not have.
The wealthy control the markets and what is produced because of their buying power. Follow the money. So we have poor neighborhoods with food deserts and over sized subur ban homes & inhabitants with homeless camped out nearby along the railroad tracks.
Elections
Some might say our elections are a place to vote on our goals. In a limited way, that's true. But only in a limited way. Candidates and platforms almost always operate in a narrow band width of choices. There is no challenge to capitalism, the consumer culture and those who control it.
By and large, elections do offer modest variations about how damaging we want to allow capitalism to operate. Something like voting on colors when only certain shades if blue and red are currently allowed and the rest of the spectrum is pretty much ignored. Moving towards paradigm shift is showing there are other colors to choose from.
American Exceptionalism
The term “American Exceptionalism” is used to describe the belief that the United States occupies a special position in history and on the global stage by virtue of certain characteristics held to be unique to the United States.
Again, this belief is like the delinquent student giving himself his own grade.
Yes, America is exceptional. It is the richest and most powerful country in the world. Many of its founding ideals are wonderful. [especially for men with property] The large part of an entire continent it occupies is remarkable in its beauty indigenous people, rivers, forests, mountains, lakes, plains, oceans and abundant resources.
Americans have been exceptional in their capacity to turn so much beauty, real estate and resources into money. The more nature turned into money, the richer & more powerful the country. America has laid waste to untold forests, habitats, rivers, mountains, plains, culture, lakes & beauty. Thats why it is so rich.
Because Its There
The ethos of our society is to use a lot of resources just because there is a lot to use. The wealth generated by overconsumption makes more over consumption affordable along with paying for the military might to protect it all. An unfortunate and regrettable positive feedback loop.
America has meddled in the affairs of dozens of countries on behalf of business interests and has pronounced foreign policy doctrines as if it owned vast expanses of the world's surface.
Its supersized & dishonest economy has been described above. Its concentration of economic & political power into a limited number of hands is exceptional. Both dominant political parties serve the same economic system without question.
America is capable of good but the bad and the ugly substantially compromise the good and wastes enormous positive human potential and natural resources that could be used in ways to address its many exceptional contradictions and problems.
A Short History About Suburbia
Knowing the history of suburbia is important because it shows how the needs of big business have shaped and damaged our own lives and potentials. When we better know how we have been taken advantage of, we can be more effective in pushing back.
Suburbia did not happen by itself. Suburbia is largely a product of business interests and influence on government policy over the past one hundred or so years.
Transportation shapes our way of life. Each innovation in transportation over the past 200 years – the steam ship, the omnibus, the horse railway, the train, the electric trolley, the automobile have all allowed people to live further from where thy work and take care of their needs.
Cars were certainly in the ascendency by the 1920's in the US, but at the same time, there were thriving trolley systems in most cities and towns and even regional trolley systems going out from larger cities to nearby towns like from Dallas to Tyler and Denison, Texas.
During the 1920's, Standard Oil, General Motors, Firestone Rubber and several others became involved with a front company to buy the transit systems of many cities and towns in the US and purposefully allowed them to deteriorate and replaced them with busses and cars. Dozens of mass transit systems were affected such including Baltimore, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, Oakland, Houston, Mobile, Jacksonville and many others.
In 1949, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, GM, and Mack Trucks were convicted of conspiring to monopolize the sale of buses and related products to local transit companies controlled by NCL. Their punishment was negligible. The damage done.
Federal housing policy during the Great Depression favored new suburban development instead of more dense urban residential, in order to create jobs for unemployed construction workers. Business interest lobbied for policies that favored suburbia.
After World War II, there was a severe housing shortage, especially with returning troops. Again, federal housing policy favored new suburban construction, primarily benefiting more well off White people at the expense of urban development which tended to be more Black. Suburban development was lobbied for by construction, automobile and highway construction interests.
The Interstate Highway System came into being in the mid 1950's in part because of recommendations from a commission appointed by President Dwight Eisenhower. The chair of the commission was a board member of General Motors. The recommendation, of course, was to build the massive interstate system which super charged suburban development and cemented in the automobile way of life.
The Interstate Highway System also lead to the construction of freeways through minority neighborhoods. Those neighborhoods, in dozens of cities and towns all across the country, were sacrificed largely so white suburban commuters could drive to the jobs downtown.
The beneficiaries of all this development were businesses that had suburbia, highways, automobiles and related products to sell. At this point, we are only beginning to pay the price for economy and lifestyles that are car dominated even as the problems – external costs - caused by these policies and business interests accumulate steeply.
The American Way of Life is Non Negotiable
On top of all these problems just touched on, and there are many many others not even mentioned, those in control have the nerve to declare The American Way of Life Is Non Negotiable.
We are told the American supersized, over consuming way of life that is degrading the planet, civic culture and positive human potential, is the only choice we have as a society.
One would be challenged to imagine a more arrogant declaration. Those who we elect make policy, budgets and decisions represent business interests far better than ordinary people and the natural world.
Who is not negotiating? The answer is economic interests. That includes business interests that influence elections, government policies and budgets. Those business interests make common cause with politicians of both political parties who serve the growth and profit making needs of capitalism. Many millions of people are complicit, by default, because of their own inaction to push back which allows the current economic system and its consumer culture to continue its excess and become even worse.
On The Other Hand
Even after all this critique, the economy does produce many healthy and useful products and services. Buying doesn't have to be a package deal. Many products and services can help move us towards paradigm shift.
A responsible and accountable economic system is a big wish. There is a growing number of people and projects already creating paradigm shift from small scale to larger. More paradigm shift leads to more paradigm shift. The primer will describe a wide range of them.
Personal & collective priorities - how we use our own time & money & how we make common cause with others - will determine much of the future.
Primer Part 2
Here are links to more content
Jan's website -------------------------www.suburbanpermaculture.org
Critique of capitalism -----------------www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbWfLPNtoBo
Block planning, Pushing back on cars --------------------- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkGvt6h9pgM
Examples of Paradigm Shift--------www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjyhgDoiwi0
Public Places, Pushing Back On Cars, Pedestrians in Europe ------------ https://youtu.be/S2YNv0TLSB4
Tour Jan's Suburban Property------www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsO4K1gG2Ao
Podcasts from Jan's radio show----www.suburbanpermaculture.org/podcasts.html
This primer is open source. Anyone can add to the content. The only request, please make additions positive, honest, compassionate and accurate. But don't be shy!
For those who put the strategies suggested in this primer to work in their own lives, welcome to paradigm shift! The benefits can start almost immediately.
There is nothing complicated here. All very straight forward. Here are several aspects of paradigm shift. What would you add?
Points of Departure
There has never been more reason for paradigm shift. The enormous ecological and cultural footprints of the world's affluent, including the middle classes of the United States, Europe, China and many other countries, is forcing the rest of the world towards an increasingly degraded future.
The needs of capitalism and the seduction of the consumer culture are at odds with sustainability, along with much of what could be called positive social and spiritual progress of humanity.
The needs of capitalism and the seduction of the consumer culture have diminished and dis empowered the capacity of individuals, families, neighbors, elected officials and society to respond in an effective way to climate change, damage to the natural world; social, political and economic dis equity and a long list of other problems. “Market forces” are only making the situation worse.
The most important breakthrough for creating a healthy, uplifted and sustainable future is in our own consciousness, not technology.
There are many examples of paradigm shift and many allies and assets to work with in common cause for a preferred future.
Individuals, families, friends and neighbors can self educate and self empower, to create sensible alternatives to the consumer culture's social engineering. No permission required.
This primer is, essentially, a how to, for paradigm shift.
The primer has a lot of text. I am not going to read it all. I will make comments. You can pause the slide show to read what you like. You will find educational fotos and graphics, most from other presentations I have made. There will be links to those other presentations which have greater detail than the primer – such as economics, reducing eco footprints and more examples of paradigm shift.
The primer will describe 20 years transforming a suburban property, allies and assets in the community, conscious economic development, the wisdom of the world's great spiritual traditions, eco villages, defining priorities with our own time and money, how to help pay for the transformation, putting ideas of paradigm shift out to the wider world, the double benefit and much much more.
Contents Part One
Why This Primer
Overview
Paradigm Shift
Open Source
Social Engineering
Liberation Equals Empowerment
A Sequence For Paradigm Shift
Why Paradigm Shift
Deconstructing The Myths of Capitalism
External Costs
The Magic Hand
Informed Choice
Efficiency
Climate Change and Suburbia are Not Efficient
Concentration of Wealth
American Exceptionalism
A Short History of Suburbia
The American Way of Life is Non Negotiable
Paradigm Shift
Paradigm shift, as used in this primer, refers to a movement towards a present and future where humans fit within the boundaries of the natural world, the goal of society is to bring out the best in positive human potential and the economic system is an honest partner and serves the healthy goals of society.
Paradigm shift can start in one's own life then expand with family, friends, neighbors, the community and beyond. One's own example cannot be underestimated. The more people making these changes, the better.
Paradigm shift is a process, not likely to be a sudden event. We prioritize our own time and money. Each small part of paradigm shift helps support other parts, from small scale to larger and serves to help create even more shift. With care and purpose, we can mitigate virtually all of the downward trends at the same time.
Important comments and observations -
1] Many of the most challenging and expensive problems facing individuals and our society are avoidable. Many are lifestyle choices.
2] The very fact that thousands of products and services known to damage public health and the environment are easy to buy is proof that the economic system values money more than people and planet.
3] Every neighborhood and community has surprising allies and assets to work with for creating a preferred future.
4] Purposefully reducing eco footprints leads to a wide range of social, economic, political, environmental and even spiritual benefits.
5] Positive human potential is our greatest renewable resource
6] There is no need for a big break through in technology. The greatest break through needed for a preferred future is our own consciousness.
7] Many positive actions for paradigm shift can take place at the personal and home scale with no permission needed. Untold numbers of people all over the world are already creating paradigm shift in their own lives.
8] We could significantly help pay for paradigm shift, from home scale to nation, simply by how we prioritize our own time and money - what we buy and what we don't buy, what we do with our own time.
Social Engineering
Our lifestyles of affluence and convenience - our housing, transportation, food choices, recreation - are practically all based on over consumption of resources and energy.
WE ARE TAUGHT TO OVERCONSUME
Each of us is the target of social engineering, also known as advertising. In 2021, businesses spent about ¼ trillion dollars on advertising. We are targeted by hundreds of commercial messages every day. Most of that messaging encourages over consumption.
These messages, over the years of our lives and over decades of our society, have profoundly shaped our values, goals, beliefs, lifestyles and how we relate to other and the world around us.
This product of social engineering is commonly referred to as the consumer culture. We are referred to more as consumers and less as citizens.
The consumer culture is, perhaps, the most remarkable product of capitalism, as we know it. Capitalism requires over consumption of energy and resources. It requires externalizing its costs.
Continued, social engineering
When we buy oversized and excess products, we are, essentially, investing in our own social engineering and disempowerment. Capitalism exploits those aspects of the human character most people would say are not desirable - such as vanity, greed, excess, self centeredness and indulgence, and then, celebrates them.
Social engineering damages civic cooperative culture. We spend more time consuming products than participating in making our homes, neighborhoods and communities better places to live for the good of people and planet.
Advertising pushes damaging lifestyles. Along with an environmental footprint, we could say the consumer culture also has a social, political, economic, even spiritual footprint. Just as real, just as damaging.
Still, the mainstream economy does offer many healthy products and services. Paradigm shift calls for patronizing the positive that can assist paradigm shift and boycott what doesn't help move us towards a preferred future.
Liberation Equals Empowerment
This primer calls for our own liberation. It encourages self education and self skill building for speaking and writing effectively to be a positive influence with others. A preferred future calls on reclaiming our personal and collective power! Liberation helps bring about -
1] Personal satisfaction. Opens up new possibilities for our own lives and beyond.
2] It can boost others to do the same and can reduce the size of various footprints.
3] It can diminish the power of capitalism and social engineering at scale from personal to society wide.
4] Personal and collective liberation can help move us towards a preferred future.
5] Liberation is bringing out the best in positive human potential.
A Sequence For Paradigm Shift
Like many dynamic processes, paradigm shift starts simple and can becomes more complex and compelling. Here are several sequence stories from [sub]urban locations that cover a range of scales. These same stories [and more] and text will include fotos and graphics on you tube. The entire primer is about regeneration. Check my website for links, www.suburbanpermaculture.org
First sequence story, a person, Hanna, already a committed bike rider and with a modest lifestyle, attended a workshop about making big changes to a suburban property. She and others saw grass to garden, edible landscaping, a 6500 gal rain water system, a garage turned into a living space, passive solar redesign and much more. All to reduce eco footprints and to produce more basic needs at home like food, energy and rain water collection.
She was impressed.
Hanna said she would never have considered buying a suburban house but just because of that workshop, she bought a small suburban property with the intention of doing to that property what she saw at the work shop.
She organized some work parties and within several years, she had an awesome property. A garage was turned into a living space with a passive solar add on. The grass was traded for garden. The main house was rented to produce income. There was a rain water system. The place now produces much of her daily food, energy, water and creative needs and income. And people who have seen her place, have also been impressed.
The Consumer Culture
1] Avoidable damage to the natural world.
2] Degrades human capacity to act in its own best interests - personal, social, economic, environmental, spiritual.
3] Capitalism and the consumer culture are not allies for creating a sustainable, healthy, peaceful, uplifted world.
4] Humans and the natural world deserve better
The Common Denominator
Capitalism and the consumer culture are the common denominator of so many problems, a critique of the economic system is essential. We live in one of history's most impressive examples of mass social engineering - aka the consumer culture. The damage it causes to people and planet is immense.
Understanding the dishonesty and damage caused by capitalism and the consumer culture can help break the control of its social engineering. The more people who break that control, the better.
There are many other well articulated critiques of capitalism. Self educate and empower yourself. Here are several of my favorite myths and then the deconstruction.
Deconstructing the Myths of Capitalism
There are many other well articulated critiques of capitalism. Self educate and empower yourself. Here are several of my “favorite” myths and deconstructions.
1] The magic hand – Production and consumption, with minimal regulation, allows for the best allocation of resources for the greatest public good.
2] Informed choice – Give customers accurate information about the products they are interested in so they can make a thoughtful judgement of what to buy.
3] Efficiency – Capitalism is the best system to create products and processes that produce the most benefit from a given amount of effort and materials.
4] Democracy – Capitalism and democracy go together
5] American Exceptionalism – the belief that the United States occupies a special position in history and on the global stage by virtue of certain characteristics held to be unique to the United States.
External Costs
The practice of external costs deserves special attention because it is such an essential part of the mainstream economic system. It is a fixture in all the myth. Understanding external costs helps understand deconstructing the myths.
An external cost occurs when a product is sold from a seller to a buyer and the use of that product impacts more than just the buyer. Further, the price paid for that product does not account for the damage it causes. No economist will deny the existence of external costs. Its a reality that essentially, gets a free pass because dealing with it in an honest way would put end to capitalism and the American Way of Life.
A good example of an external cost is cars. Fabricating the cars requires enormous amounts of energy and resources. There is damage to people and planet. Cars pollute the air and water which degrades public health and the environment.
Many freeways for cars in urban areas have ruined inner city neighborhoods, usually minorities. Car accidents cause nearly a trillion dollars of damage each year in the US while killing over 40,000 people each year with millions more people injured.
Gasoline for cars, refined from oil is yet another extensive set of external costs that can include ruining the livelihoods of the people where the oil comes from. Accidents that spill thousands of barrels of oil on coastlines and habitats.
External costs continued
Suburbia, home to half of all Americans, is known as a location with weak culture and civic life thanks to fences, cars and automatic garage doors. Cars are a major cause of climate change. The US military exists to protect American economic interests including oil. Research American foreign policy doctrines over the years.
All these external costs and many more add up to trillions of dollars in costs over just a few years. Individuals, families, communities, society overall and the environment pay those costs. External costs amount to an enormous subsidy to the economic system, affluence and the American Way of Life. The American Dream depends on a dishonest economic system.
Factory farming, junk food, tobacco, gambling, violent entertainment and many other every day products have extensive and often overlapping sets of external costs.
There is abundant literature about the condition of the natural world, all these external costs – habitat, pollution, air quality, water quality, species extinction, dead zones, coral bleaching, wild fires, the Amazon burning for burgers, melting glaciers. On and on. No need to repeat all that information here other than to say, over consumption of resources and energy and externalizing the cost is the driving force behind almost all the damage to the natural world.
Several Myths of Capitalism
The Magic Hand
Through individual self-interest and freedom of production as well as consumption, the best interests of society are fulfilled
Neo liberal economics calls for minimal regulation of business. Let the market decide. There are many books, podcasts, videos critical of capitalism. No need for great detail here.
Many billions spent to repair avoidable damage such as public health; climate change, habitat lost, a dispiriting urban landscape built for cars. Those are all external costs. All in the name of freedom of production and consumption. Repairing the damage does provide jobs.
Informed Choice
Informed choice is another falsehood. This myth declares the economic system provides the buyer with accurate information so they can make an informed choice. External costs clearly show we do not have informed choice. The price we pay is deceptive and dishonest.
For example, the true, honest cost of junk food or gasoline or cars, would be far greater if the price paid accounted for the damage those products cause to public health and the environment.
Some figure the true cost of gasoline, if it were honest, would be 20 to 30 dollars per gallon. Cheap, dishonest prices for almost everything is essential to this economic system and the consumer culture. In effect, damage to people and planet subsidizes the economy and makes some people very rich and provides employment for millions of people from brain surgeons to car repair.
Efficiency
Capitalism claims to be the most efficient system to produce products and services. Efficiency means the most desired output with the least input. Our super sized consumer way of life would collapse if it were efficient. Our wealth, convenience and affluence depends on excess and inefficiency.
Cars are a good example. In a thermodynamic assessment, the vast majority of the energy to run a car is simply to move the mass of the car – the metal, glass, plastic. The actual weight of the person in the car, the reason for the travel, is close to insignificant compared to the energy needed to move the weight of the car. Bikes and transit are far more efficient. Even better, design and re design our cities and towns so cars are far less needed. We could simply avoid many of these problems.
Suburbia
Suburbia is another good example of in efficiency. Are homes intended to provide comfortable, secure and healthy shelter in an efficient way or are they intended to be a symbol of vanity and excess that creates more economic activity and more damage to people and planet?
Suburbia depends heavily, not only on inefficient cars for its very existence, as explained above, but also for the extensive and expensive highway infrastructure cars require, plus all the external costs of oil.
In 1970, the average home was about 1600 square feet with about 3.5 people living in it. By 2020, the average home size is about 2,300 square feet with about 2.5 people living in it. More floor space usually means more stuff, all of which have an environmental footprint, to furnish oversized homes.
There is an enormous amount of excess space in a typical American home. Almost a thousand square feet [more than 30 by 30 feet] per person is far more than a reasonable need.
Those in the housing industry would say big homes are what people want. That's probably true, for those who can afford it. At the same time, millions of people simply want a modest home with security. The market, driven by profits and those with the money to afford their vanity, clearly favors large inefficient homes. Meanwhile, millions of people can't find affordable housing.
Climate Change is Very Inefficient
Climate change is looking to be perhaps the greatest threat to the well being of humans and nature in history. Climate change is a product of excess consumption and external costs.
Climate change will cost untold trillions over the years. We know over consumption is causing climate change yet the economic system still promotes the resource and energy intensive products and lifestyles that deliver rising temperatures, melting ice, mass migrations, global political instability and a lot more. All adding up to a vast level of inefficiency.
There is virtually no discussion of simply using less stuff.
Many millions of jobs depend on overconsumption [suburbia, cars] and many millions of jobs exist to repair the damage overconsumption causes to human well being and the natural world.
That means inefficient use of natural resources requires inefficient use of human resources to clean up the mess. Still, this economic system tells us Gross National Product, how much producing and consuming takes place, is the most important measure of the health of the economy. Something like a delinquent failing student giving himself an A. Sector graphic
Capitalism and Democracy - Concentration Of Wealth
We have never seen so such concentration of wealth in the hands of so few people. The Federal Reserve reports, the most affluent 1% of our nation's population owns sixteen [16] times more wealth than the bottom fifty [50] percent of the population. This statistic is shocking, 3.5 million people have 16 times the wealth of the least affluent 168 million people.
The analysis here is not necessarily Marxist. We simply cannot ignore that, with the occasional exception, the more money people have, the larger their eco logical footprint.
A society with such an imbalance [that is steadily increasing] is a society that is becoming even more unstable [and un ethical]. The wealthy run the country. Certainly some of the wealthy have a sincere concern for the less well off but given the well documented conditions of our society, the well being of millions of Americans is a minor concern.
Over the years, we have seen both violent and non violent push back from those marginalized and disenchanted with the System, such as the race riots and the counter culture in the 1960's and 70's, the Occupy Movement, Black Lives Matter and more. One might even add the attack on the capitol, January 6.
Wealthy people and organizations can influence elections simply because they can donate millions to the candidate of their choice. Poor people cant do that.
Businesses can pay expensive lobbyist and they also have friends and connections poor people simply do not have.
The wealthy control the markets and what is produced because of their buying power. Follow the money. So we have poor neighborhoods with food deserts and over sized subur ban homes & inhabitants with homeless camped out nearby along the railroad tracks.
Elections
Some might say our elections are a place to vote on our goals. In a limited way, that's true. But only in a limited way. Candidates and platforms almost always operate in a narrow band width of choices. There is no challenge to capitalism, the consumer culture and those who control it.
By and large, elections do offer modest variations about how damaging we want to allow capitalism to operate. Something like voting on colors when only certain shades if blue and red are currently allowed and the rest of the spectrum is pretty much ignored. Moving towards paradigm shift is showing there are other colors to choose from.
American Exceptionalism
The term “American Exceptionalism” is used to describe the belief that the United States occupies a special position in history and on the global stage by virtue of certain characteristics held to be unique to the United States.
Again, this belief is like the delinquent student giving himself his own grade.
Yes, America is exceptional. It is the richest and most powerful country in the world. Many of its founding ideals are wonderful. [especially for men with property] The large part of an entire continent it occupies is remarkable in its beauty indigenous people, rivers, forests, mountains, lakes, plains, oceans and abundant resources.
Americans have been exceptional in their capacity to turn so much beauty, real estate and resources into money. The more nature turned into money, the richer & more powerful the country. America has laid waste to untold forests, habitats, rivers, mountains, plains, culture, lakes & beauty. Thats why it is so rich.
Because Its There
The ethos of our society is to use a lot of resources just because there is a lot to use. The wealth generated by overconsumption makes more over consumption affordable along with paying for the military might to protect it all. An unfortunate and regrettable positive feedback loop.
America has meddled in the affairs of dozens of countries on behalf of business interests and has pronounced foreign policy doctrines as if it owned vast expanses of the world's surface.
Its supersized & dishonest economy has been described above. Its concentration of economic & political power into a limited number of hands is exceptional. Both dominant political parties serve the same economic system without question.
America is capable of good but the bad and the ugly substantially compromise the good and wastes enormous positive human potential and natural resources that could be used in ways to address its many exceptional contradictions and problems.
A Short History About Suburbia
Knowing the history of suburbia is important because it shows how the needs of big business have shaped and damaged our own lives and potentials. When we better know how we have been taken advantage of, we can be more effective in pushing back.
Suburbia did not happen by itself. Suburbia is largely a product of business interests and influence on government policy over the past one hundred or so years.
Transportation shapes our way of life. Each innovation in transportation over the past 200 years – the steam ship, the omnibus, the horse railway, the train, the electric trolley, the automobile have all allowed people to live further from where thy work and take care of their needs.
Cars were certainly in the ascendency by the 1920's in the US, but at the same time, there were thriving trolley systems in most cities and towns and even regional trolley systems going out from larger cities to nearby towns like from Dallas to Tyler and Denison, Texas.
During the 1920's, Standard Oil, General Motors, Firestone Rubber and several others became involved with a front company to buy the transit systems of many cities and towns in the US and purposefully allowed them to deteriorate and replaced them with busses and cars. Dozens of mass transit systems were affected such including Baltimore, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, Oakland, Houston, Mobile, Jacksonville and many others.
In 1949, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, GM, and Mack Trucks were convicted of conspiring to monopolize the sale of buses and related products to local transit companies controlled by NCL. Their punishment was negligible. The damage done.
Federal housing policy during the Great Depression favored new suburban development instead of more dense urban residential, in order to create jobs for unemployed construction workers. Business interest lobbied for policies that favored suburbia.
After World War II, there was a severe housing shortage, especially with returning troops. Again, federal housing policy favored new suburban construction, primarily benefiting more well off White people at the expense of urban development which tended to be more Black. Suburban development was lobbied for by construction, automobile and highway construction interests.
The Interstate Highway System came into being in the mid 1950's in part because of recommendations from a commission appointed by President Dwight Eisenhower. The chair of the commission was a board member of General Motors. The recommendation, of course, was to build the massive interstate system which super charged suburban development and cemented in the automobile way of life.
The Interstate Highway System also lead to the construction of freeways through minority neighborhoods. Those neighborhoods, in dozens of cities and towns all across the country, were sacrificed largely so white suburban commuters could drive to the jobs downtown.
The beneficiaries of all this development were businesses that had suburbia, highways, automobiles and related products to sell. At this point, we are only beginning to pay the price for economy and lifestyles that are car dominated even as the problems – external costs - caused by these policies and business interests accumulate steeply.
The American Way of Life is Non Negotiable
On top of all these problems just touched on, and there are many many others not even mentioned, those in control have the nerve to declare The American Way of Life Is Non Negotiable.
We are told the American supersized, over consuming way of life that is degrading the planet, civic culture and positive human potential, is the only choice we have as a society.
One would be challenged to imagine a more arrogant declaration. Those who we elect make policy, budgets and decisions represent business interests far better than ordinary people and the natural world.
Who is not negotiating? The answer is economic interests. That includes business interests that influence elections, government policies and budgets. Those business interests make common cause with politicians of both political parties who serve the growth and profit making needs of capitalism. Many millions of people are complicit, by default, because of their own inaction to push back which allows the current economic system and its consumer culture to continue its excess and become even worse.
On The Other Hand
Even after all this critique, the economy does produce many healthy and useful products and services. Buying doesn't have to be a package deal. Many products and services can help move us towards paradigm shift.
A responsible and accountable economic system is a big wish. There is a growing number of people and projects already creating paradigm shift from small scale to larger. More paradigm shift leads to more paradigm shift. The primer will describe a wide range of them.
Personal & collective priorities - how we use our own time & money & how we make common cause with others - will determine much of the future.
Primer Part 2
Here are links to more content
Jan's website -------------------------www.suburbanpermaculture.org
Critique of capitalism -----------------www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbWfLPNtoBo
Block planning, Pushing back on cars --------------------- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkGvt6h9pgM
Examples of Paradigm Shift--------www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjyhgDoiwi0
Public Places, Pushing Back On Cars, Pedestrians in Europe ------------ https://youtu.be/S2YNv0TLSB4
Tour Jan's Suburban Property------www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsO4K1gG2Ao
Podcasts from Jan's radio show----www.suburbanpermaculture.org/podcasts.html