by Mia Kristine, a Moneyless Society Volunteer
Everything is changing right now. You and I are about to enter into a world that no one has ever seen before. We will look different, feel different and act different. Our cities will work differently. Our schools will teach differently. We’re going to change because we’ve got to change, because the way we’re doing things now is directly on path to destroy itself. Every generation has their own narrative of total annihilation — and this is ours.
Ours is a little bit different.
We’ve got technology. We’ve got AI. We’ve got the Internet. We’ve got worldwide contact in our back pocket. We can answer any question we have in seconds. We’ve got toddlers using iPads being raised by parents who used typewriters. We live in a society governed by grandparents who graduated college writing cursive. This change is moving fast, faster than any change we’ve seen before in our record of human history. Our society has never seen a generation like this one. This generation is different. They have been wired to think in another world; their expectation will create this next world while we move closer to the point of no return.
It’s a neat little story of destruction; all going to shit, but all part of the plan.
How is it going to shit? Here is a short summary: we keep coming up with solutions that don’t fix the problem.
Jailing people is not reducing crime. Economic policy is not promoting general welfare. Education is not eradicating ignorance. Our political system is not liberating the people from tyranny. Food and medicine are making people sicker. People are too stressed out to enjoy their lives. Energy consumption is cooking the ocean. Warfare is not extinguishing terrorism. Dropping bombs is not bringing about world peace and dropping bombs is never going to bring about world peace. Don’t we all want world peace? Why do we keep bombing civilians? Although these solutions don’t work, our approach never really changes — we just try them stronger, harder, and faster.
Humanity likes to make absolutely sure that what we’re doing isn’t working until we scrap the whole thing — and we are there, my friend. We know that our current social system does not work to solve our problems, yet we continue the practices which created them, hoping for a better outcome. This is insanity. Humanity has become an example of “what not to do” if you want to survive and be happy.
But don’t worry! It’s all part of the plan, man. While the immense structure of society furiously feeds the wildfire of global apocalypse, the tide is slowly coming in. There is a deeply rooted and unconscious dream rising up to the surface and all you’ve got to do is get on the boat. There are so many problems to worry about — hate, crime, illness, ignorance, poverty, corruption, war, and violence — the list of things to be scared of goes on and on and on. Our behaviors produce too many battlegrounds for what we need to change and what we need to fix. No matter where you start, you’ll run into a new problem which makes the original one impossible to solve. This is the kind of thing that makes people give up. This is the realization which causes people to medicate their depression. This is just one of two ways to approach our situation.
Simply considering the behaviors which create our problems, we face too many systems which need unraveling and reconstructing to really make a difference. It’s like we’ve been trying to force our way through a locked front door, without ever checking the back which happens to swing open with the breeze. The way to the next world is close and it is easy. Every choice we make is motivated by a belief. When you study the trend of our problematic behaviors, you find many — too many. When you study the trend of our problematic beliefs, you find one. Right now, we make sense of the world as if everything is made up of fundamentally separate pieces and we fight for the pieces we want to be our own. We and our world will transform once we act from the belief that everything is One. We and our world will transform once we shift our mindset from inherent separation, to inherent connection.
Let me break it down for you.
Major societal revolutions are always predicted by major ideological change. Before each significant shift in living, there is a transformation in thinking which makes that conclusion inevitable because suddenly things don’t make sense. The way we do things just doesn’t work and we can’t pretend anymore. It has become unacceptable. An entire world crumbles into inadequacy while a new and irresistible idea takes hold. Millions of people have already recognized that our society is no longer operable the way it currently stands. They are choosing to enact their own dreams, rather than pursue promises given to them by a corrupt authority. But as more and more people come to the conclusion that perhaps there is another way to fix our problems, our nation and world seem even more divided. The conflict and corruption we are choosing to abandon seems to be growing stronger and spreading wider, as does the darkness before dawn.
This is because the dying belief system driving our society was birthed within a war. This war is going on in every realm of human study. It is the medical dilemma between Mind and Body; it is the political contest of Red and Blue; it is the holy battle of Good and Evil; it is the moral battle of Right and Wrong; it is the personal battle between me and you. This is the reason why the world has not yet come together: we have embraced Duality, the identification of “a” and “not a” as an excuse to pick teams. I separate myself from what is considered the opposing force, the “not me”, the “not what I choose”, the “not what I believe.” We have mistaken our beliefs for our bodies, saying, “I am a Republican, instead of I believe in republican ideals.” We declare, “I am an American, instead of I was born in America.” When we look for meaning in the world, as what we can see and what we can touch — we are never aware of the beliefs behind our bodies. When we consider ourselves separate from the “not me,” the “not what I choose,” we fail to see our living connection as human beings. So these choices of Blue or Red, of Good or Evil, engulf our identities — and we are bound to live and die by their success. Duality has taken our world and split it in half. It is no wonder that we have lost our balance.
Humanity is so much smarter now! We have access to so much more information that we can finally figure out how things work. Doctors are realizing that Mind affects Body, just as Body affects Mind. Citizens are understanding that this dual party system only keeps us from finding common ground. People everywhere are asking only for Love and for Forgiveness. We are ready. It is time to make the jump.
When you consider our different bodies and different beliefs, it is very easy to conclude that we must be separate. That’s why it makes sense to screw someone over — that person has no connection to you. It’s inconsequential to be cruel, since you can just walk away, unaffected and unconnected. Remember, we all behave in ways appropriate to our own model of the world. This is why we need a new model. We can see now that Duality creates artificial separation within a shared Unity. It creates the field of choice. So that any one thing can be present in the world, its opposite must exist to give it meaning. How can we know what Cold is without Heat? How can we know Joy without Pain ? How can we know what we want, without understanding what we don’t want? Opposite expressions need each other to exist, thus are they a single entity — belonging to one another, connected. To attempt to destroy one, is to destroy them both. We find our unity not in our beliefs which are measurements, and not in our bodies, which are pictures. We find our sameness, our belonging with each other when we speak of our dreams. Our ideal world is always the same, no matter where you come from. We all want to go to the same place.
Do you want to be happy? Are you inspired by beauty? Do you want to be respected and loved? Do you want to be bombed or terrorized? Do you want to feel safe? Do you like being scared? Do you want success? Do you like having fun? Do you want to feel good?
Welcome to the Shared Dream of Humanity. While the circumstances of these dreams will be as different as we are — they remain the same experience across the board. We all act towards the release of serotonin; we act to avoid the release of cortisol. We are different, but we are not separate — we are One.
THIS is the ideal world, the world which lives in our hope for the future. The world of what we want and what we’re looking for that we keep forgetting we can make ourselves. We don’t have to fight for it. We want to feel happy. We want to have fun. Are you and I so different? What are we fighting about? When we share the same dream, it would seem that within all of us beats the same heart. We argue about what Good and Bad looks like — but that doesn’t change how it feels. Goodness fills us, strengthens us — like delicious chocolate, fresh strawberries, or a sick beat. Badness aches within us — it tears us from ourselves, like losing love, feeling sick, or screaming at a child. Would any of us prefer the latter to the first? These feelings do not change between us, they only change their picture. Yet, everyone is so convinced that these feelings belong only to their picture. We assume that because we feel something is good, that we have stumbled upon the “way it is” and that someone who sees a different picture is wrong. Our beliefs determine our picture; our pictures reinforce our beliefs. If you want to end the war, stop fighting it.
Truth doesn’t live in the world, waiting for us to discover it. Truth arises from the dance of our experience — each picture as unique as we are. Words do not hold truth; words describe the picture we see. Every word we use is either a relative term or a title we just made up one day to distinguish one object from the rest. Is a chair really a chair or is that word free to describe anything we sit on? Are you tall or short, good or bad? It depends on what two things you are comparing. When we consider words to hold truth outside us, language is used to slice up our experience into little organized bits. When we understand truth to flow through us, language is used to paint a picture of what we choose to see.
Every time we name something, we separate it from its surroundings and from its potential. Look around and don’t use any words. You will see One thing. You will see the potential of the Ideal World.
If things do not make sense, or if they do not work to give us what we want — we can change the words we use to change the world we see. We are a conduit for “the way things are”. We are responsible for “the way things are”. We must consider our beliefs and behaviors constructively because we have constructed them. We have built our problems; we can rebuild, so they are problems no longer. The only reason we even think they are problems is because we consider ourselves separate from what we want and what we need. Yet what we want lives in the heart of every human being, and everything we need is something we can build with our own hands. When we understand that we are not separate, but One — with truth, with each other, with what we want. Our problems are no longer problems, they become jobs.
We’ve got a job to do.
If you’d like to get involved in helping to make a “moneyless society” a reality in your local community, you can sign up to be a volunteer here, join our discord, and/or connect with us on social media by following @MoneylessSociety.
We also encourage you to check out the new book by our co-founder, Matthew Holten, Moneyless Society: The Next Economic Evolution, and our podcast to learn more about who we are, what we do, and how you too can help create a new, better, and more sustainable future.
