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Survival__ Structuring Prosperity for Yourself and the Nation - Charles George Smith [177]

By Root 1993 0
and a willingness to learn.

Dictatorships are ontologically unstable which is why few outlast their founders. Diffusion of power in a household means engaging all members in the AADD and/or OODA loop process of making realistic, transparent appraisals, cost-benefit analyses and then deliberative trade-offs and decisions/action plans.

Capitalism is fundamentally the process of risking capital for a return, and responding to feedback from the market. No one can recommend or predict what enterprises or means of income/wealth creation are available to any particular household; the household itself must become engaged in assessing its assets (skills, interests, capital, tools, etc.) and deciding where best to deploy/invest those assets.

Diffusing wealth/income creation means establishing multiple sources of income and enterprise that are not dependent on only one person in the household or one skillset or one market or even one measure of value.

Since our goal is full-spectrum prosperity, then "enterprise" includes not just income as measured in money but improvements in "soft capital" like health, knowledge, skills, working productively with others (networks and management). Working for "free" (that is, generating no cash money) may well generate significant returns when measured in purpose/goals, the joy of productive work, the building of potentially valuable networks and cooperatives, the process of learning, better health due to physical activity and a hundred other increases in value.

9. Base Decisions on an Integrated Understanding

I illustrate this concept with an example which many may find absurd or foolish. Since we all have to eat, and we all want health and well-being, then let's start by seeking an integrated understanding of the causal connections between food, nutrition, diet, cooking/cuisine, activity and health.

The key feature of an integrated understanding is that it is essentially three-dimensional, not in the spatial sense but in the sense that it combines a structural understanding with a historical and experiential understanding.

Without a knowledge of history, then the present is decontextualized--the precise goal of the status quo's mass-marketing/mass media machine. The person with no awareness of what came before is easily manipulated and exploited by a carefully manufactured politics of experience which supports the status quo.

A structural knowledge means a working knowledge of the moving parts of an entire system. Only those without a working knowledge claim that some task or process is "easy." Partial or shallow knowledge is misleading, and this is the ontological danger of mass media and TV: watching a presentation gives one the illusion of knowledge.

One can watch hundreds of hours of cooking shows but that will not teach one how to actually cook. One can watch hundreds of hours of kung-fu films but that will not teach one a martial art. The "knowledge" gained is illusory because it is not experiential.

An integrated understanding requires two other features: an identification of who controls each link in the causal chain or network, and who benefits from that control (yes, cui bono). Since the politics of experience presented by the mass media/mass marketing complex shapes our understanding, we must be alert to the subtle ways that we surrender control of our lives, our health and thus our prosperity to enterprises whose only purpose is profit.

Once again, the goal of mass-media/marketing is to encourage permanent adolescence and to persuade you that you share the interests of the corporate/financial Power Elites and the State they control. Put another way: the goal is to convince you that they're here to "help" you--to make your life "easier" and "more secure." This is Big Con; their only goal is concentrating and increasing their own income, wealth and power.

Once we understand that our interests are completely divergent from the interests and goals of the State and Power Elites, then we can finally begin to act on our own behalf and in our own interests.

Thus we seek an

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