Creating Abundance from Scarcity

The bottom line is that The Priority of Profit sets up an ‘us against them’ duality mentality, for, within the monetary system, there has to be a buyer-seller; a worker-employer; a client-owner; a have havenot. Given this reality, each party is forced to enable conditions that are most profitable for them, therefore strategic edges are always sought and thus a constant battle is always raging. We are constantly at war with each other in order to live. This battle creates little over time in the way of sustainable human progress, and the sick, polluted, distorted world you see around you is the result.|

Now, ‘Vanity’ aside, we must also examine the distorted values created in the form of mentalities and worldviews. This constant need of self-interest often spreads like a cancer into other psychological areas, creating and reinforcing such neurosis as “Greed”, “Jealousy” and “Ego”.

Greed is likely the driving force of the monetary system’s perpetuation, beyond just survival. Due to the inherent stratification of goods and services (and hence standards of living) available to those with more and more purchasing power, the human being is groomed to perpetually want “more” material wealth, for the “more” seems to go to infinity. The result is a culture which doesn’t have a concept of balance, or a sense of what is actually important, or “enough”. Advertising compounds this by its constant depictions of “the possibilities”, often making people question their own self worth because they do not “have the best things in life”, etc.

Jealousy appears to begin cultivation at a very early age, perhaps when the school teacher would praise the student who would make high marks, and scold the student who didn’t, making that student feel envious of the person who made the high grade. Regardless of its origin, a classic tactic of advertising is to exploit this neurosis by using the media to depict a person with something that you do not have, making you feel as though you need to have it in order to be “equal”. This is very similar to greed, with the exception being that people grow to despise others for what they have, creating social tension and often conflict.

Ego is often defined as ‘a feeling of superiority to others’. This distortion takes essentially two forms:
1) General superiority based on wealth class / or position in the social hierarchy
2) Arrogance regarding one’s creative contribution, demanding prestige, acknowledgement or other “rewards”.

Now, as for the former distinction of Ego noted above (“General superiority based…”) this is a class oriented disposition which, on one level, is a psychological means to make one feel better for having more than another human.

A wealthy person walking down the street finds it much easier to dismiss a homeless person, by saying “he is just a lazy bum”, as opposed to recognizing him as a victim of culture. On another level, blind elitism, in the form of a kind of ‘class based racism’ leads people to dismiss those with less purchasing power as simply being “inferior” or “undeserving”, for the social stature, education and lifestyle afforded by this elite, is vastly out of reach for those without similar
purchasing power, therefore creating gross differences in culture.

In the end, our values are based on what works and helps us create easier, better lives. If we live in a system that rewards competition, unenlightened self-interest, corruption, vanity and arrogance, then these are the values that will constantly be perpetuated in society. While many people give lip service to ‘honesty, caring for others and humility’, it is easy to see why these qualities do not prevail, for the
system of survival in society today does not support or reinforce them.

The Scientific Method basically has three steps:

1) Recognizing a new idea or problem that needs to be solved.
2) The use of logical reasoning to create a hypothesis, considering all information available.
3) Test the hypothesis in the physical world through observation.

A classical example of this goes back to Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC). He hypothesized, through logical reasoning based on what he understood at that time, that a heavy object would fall faster than a lighter object of the same shape and material. He logically assumed that the more weight an object had, the faster an object would fall in a vacuum. However, he didn’t test the idea.

Because of this failure to properly use the scientific method, the world had to wait 2000 more years, for when Galileo finally tested Aristotle’s hypothesis…he found Aristotle to be wrong - weight does not determine the rate at which an object falls in a vacuum.

The point here is that it doesn’t matter how correctly reasoned our conclusions might be, they have to be tested . If we throw water onto a wood burning fire, the fire will likely go out. This gives us a certain degree of information that we gain inference from: “Water puts out fire”. While this theory might hold true for most fire scenarios, if you throw water onto an Oil Fire, the oil will quickly float to the top of the water and the fire will spread. Therefore the hypothesis that “Water puts out fire” is not exactly true, and would need to be revised to take this new scenario into account.

The Scientific Method is also an attitude; a perspective. No matter how ‘right’ something may seem, we are going to check it out by observational testing and actually see if it holds validity. In fact, we should to be very skeptical of any claim that cannot be seen or tested in the physical world.