Credit To The People
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Home~ Helping people understand and take responsibility
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Definitions
The following provides definitions in three categories:
Money definitions
Systems definitions
Evolutionary definitions
MONEY DEFINITIONS
Money:
Classical definition of money - A medium of exchange, a store of value, a unit of account
Social definitions of money
- A social agreement based on a human story that assigns meanings and roles; the primary agent for the coordination of human activity and the focusing of collective human intention. A social construction that we have the power to change.
- A contrivance (an artificial arrangement or development; a mechanical device). The role money plays in a society is a function of who manages it and to what end.
Under capitalism, money is managed to enrich those who control it, enslave those who don't, and civilization and the environment be damned.
In a healthy society, credit creates money and we are all responsible for its use for the common good. A healthy use of money is to capitalize people’s capacities and gifts and facilitate the manifestation of dreams, visions, and highest potentials.
Usury Money
- The lending of money with an interest charge for its use. Part of a story of separation in which "more for me is less for you", the motto of the ego. It is based on a grow-or-die imperative. On the systemic level, interest on money creates competition, anxiety, and the polarization of wealth.
- An instrument of empire
- What distinguishes the existing system from the new paradigm monetary system.
New Money
- Money is just information, a way we measure what we trade, nothing of value in itself. And we can make it ourselves, to work as a complement to conventional money. It's just a matter of design.
- Still a talisman, whether physical or electronic, applied to the physical world as a creative template; through which we assign roles, focus intention, and coordinate human activity. A currency however that embodies new agreements about the planet, the species, and what we hold sacred; that reflects a mature, connected self, the self of interbeingness that comes into balance between giving and receiving, in which one gives according to one's abilities, and, linked with others of like spirit, receives according to one's needs. It is cyclical, rather than exponential, always returning to it's source; it encourages the protection and enrichment of nature, not its depletion; it redefines wealth as a function of one's generosity, not one's accumulation; it is a manifestation of abundance, not scarcity. It has the potential of bringing forth human gifts and directing them toward planetary needs.
- A token of society's gratitude for one's gifts, and therefore public and transparent.
(Excerpts from Charles Eisenstein's book, Sacred Economics.)
- A common good means of community building.
- Reflects the full faith and credit of We the People.
- An agreement in a community of people to use something as the means of payment.
- Money serves the following functions:
A unit of value
A store of value
A means of exchange
A community identifier
An instrument of a just and sustainable abundance
- A currency or flow of exchange that connects us to all that is, and provides a stabilizing and unifying force for the universe.
- Facilitates giving and receiving, continuous connection, enough for all, fraternity, equality, worth, and empowerment.
Credit:
Classical definition of credit - The provision of money, goods, or services with the expectation of future payment.
Bank Credit - is based on monetizing as an accounting entry a borrower's credit, which is a borrower's promise to pay with money representing real value. It demonstrates that money is an accounting system. In reality, the borrower, the so-called debtor, is actually the creditor, the one providing the value. "Credit to the People" (CTTP) advocates monetizing people's credit as a public service, but not based on interest. The fact that traditional banks charge interest on a borrower's promise to pay is usurious and exploitative.
Social Credit - proposes that it is better to pay all citizens a "social dividend" - a guaranteed income without any strings, that is deemed to be a natural surplus, the rightful inheritance of everyone. Work would then be entered into with more care toward its actual value rather than its mere price in the form of wages.
Under the present rule of capital, in which wages are of paramount importance, many valuable and important things that need doing are not done at all, or not done well, which is the obvious consequence of too many people doing too many things that they shouldn't be doing for the sake of earning a living or even amassing wealth. Presently it is the wage that allocates labor; Price overrides value. And so we have become a nation of wage-earners and consumers who know the price of everything, but who have little or no regard for what is truly of value.
In the spirit of a plentiful economy and dividends to all, instead of the spirit of a rationing economy and income restricted to employment, we would have the economic freedom to pursue our transcendent purpose, our vocation of destiny, to truly serve others, and make a real difference in the world.
New definition of credit - The provision of money, goods, or services based on trust that it will be used to meet the needs of and improve the commons for the benefit of all.
Community Created Credit; Mutual Credit - The honoring of each other's credit based on a mutual agreement to facilitate the exchange of goods and services and the issuance of money within an intentional community-controlled economy that serves the common good; a common good economy.
Common Good - a "mutual credit system" that provides a way for us to give each other credit in our community, so that, in effect, there is more money to go around. More money for individuals, local businesses, and communities. One can spend Common Good and be paid with Common Good just as with US Dollars, and fund what we need, without having to depend on US Dollars.
Creditor - The one who provides the value.
Inderdependence Fund - A common fund to transform wealth from private use for the common good, while preserving private proportionate ownership in the fund. This common fund could be source of money for local private enterprises and local public works.
Socially Responsible Investments (SRI) are concerned with the environment, social justice, and corporate governance - as in “environmental social governance” (ESG). In general, socially responsible investors encourage corporate practices that promote environmental stewardship, consumer protection, human rights, animal rights, and diversity. Some avoid businesses involved in alcohol, tobacco, gambling, pornography, weapons, military, nuclear power, and/or predatory lending.
Impact investing is one form of socially responsible investing and serves as a guide for various investment strategies. Impact investments are investments made into companies, organizations, and funds with the intention to generate a measurable, beneficial social and environmental impact alongside a financial return.
Community Investing, a subset of socially responsible investing, allows for investment directly into community based organizations, such as small businesses, start-ups, and enterprises with a social mission. By investing directly in an institution, rather than purchasing stock, an investor is able to create a greater social impact.
Crowd Funding - Via the jobs bill implemented by Obama, crowd funding is opening up a new dimension of investing. The bill created a new kind of exemption within the securities laws that results in people being allowed to put up $2k/business/year to provide a crowd funding offering. The result will be that the proliferation of local and small businesses that are issuing stock and options to put money into their businesses will expand dramatically. Crowd funding sites:
Shareholder advocacy - seeks to change corporate behavior through proposing and representing resolutions at annual stockholder meetings.
Shareholder activism efforts to positively influence corporate behavior include:
- initiating conversations as a stockholder with corporate management and filing a proxy resolution to change company behavior based on our values and concerns.
- Appealing to the fiduciary responsibilities of pension fund money managers and urging them to offer socially responsible investment options.
www.socialk.com is a resource for local investment advisors to help employers establish open architecture 401(k) plans that include socially responsible investment options.
Divestment - involves removing from a portfolio investments that are unethical, morally ambiguous, and/or toxic, (e.g., fossil fuel investments, food commodities and futures, which are driving up the price of food of the hungry people around the world, causing great hardship.)
Nelson Mandela, for example, thanked social investors for their South African divestment movement, which ended Apartheid and resulted in free and open elections. 350.org is leading a campus divestment movement calling on institutions to divest from all fossil fuel companies.
Voting with our dollars
As consumers, we need to be mindful about where we are directing our consumer dollars, because whenever we buy something, we are voting with our money. By making more environmentally and socially conscious purchases, we can create a higher demand for better products, lessen our impact on the environment, and support better working conditions for people around the world.
Suggestions: Local farmers, local food, Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs), green goods and services, Credit Unions, Community Development Banks, socially responsible credit cards, companies that “internalize” stakeholder costs…
Credit unions, mutual building societies, and mutual banks have a mutual structure. Their first point of business is to focus on their members (customers). Each member of a credit union, mutual building society, and mutual bank owns the organization they belong to, and have a vote in the organization’s governance.
Credit Unions differ from banks and other financial institutions in that those who have accounts in the credit union are its members and owners, and they elect their board of directors in a one-person-one-vote system regardless of their amount invested. Credit unions see themselves as different from mainstream banks, with a mission to be "community-oriented" and "serve people, not profit".
Mutual Bank is a community bank that is owned either by its depositors or shareholders and is operated for the benefit of its depositors or shareholders. It is a small, conservative financial institution that is an alternative to large, regional banking institutions.
Holistic Financial Planning
A holistic, integrated and comprehensive approach to financial planning empowers us on our path toward financial and overall well-being, independence, peace of mind, and freedom. It helps us manifest our goals and dreams, and a fulfilling and abundant life in alignment with our deepest values and life purpose.
It begins with an understanding of our circumstances, lifestyle, beliefs, values, purpose, needs, goals, dreams, and visions.
In the existing monetary system, it involves a comprehensive planning process, and addresses the five cornerstones to financial planning: risk management, wealth building, wealth preservation, wealth distribution, and wealth transfer. Most importantly, it involves aligning our planning and investing with our values. Knowing that one’s assets are working toward meeting one’s goals and dreams as well as making a difference in the world if one so chooses is highly significant.
Note that in the existing monetary system, there is an inequitable distribution of wealth. In the new paradigm monetary system, the wealth distribution is equitable, money is not scarce, and financial planning will more likely be needed by all.
Because a new paradigm system rewards flow, not accumulation, creating, not owning, and giving, not having, financial planning will be oriented towards what the community decides is good and of value.
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SYSTEMS DEFINITIONS
Classical economics - is widely regarded as the first modern school of economic thought. Its major developers include Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus and John Stuart Mill.
Classical economists claimed that free markets regulate themselves, when free of any intervention. Adam Smith referred to a metaphorical "invisible hand," which will move markets towards their natural equilibrium, without requiring any outside intervention.
As opposed to Keynesian economics, classical economics assumes flexible prices both in the case of goods and wages. Another main assumption is based on Say's Law: supply creates its own demand – that is, aggregate production will generate an income enough to purchase all the output produced; this implicitly assumes, in contrast to Keynes, that there will be net saving or spending of cash or financial instruments. Another postulate of classical economics is the equality of savings and investment, assuming that flexible interest rates will always maintain equilibrium.
Keynesian economics is the view that in the short run, especially during recessions, economic output is strongly influenced by aggregate demand (total spending in the economy). In the Keynesian view, aggregate demand does not necessarily equal the productive capacity of the economy; instead, it is influenced by a host of factors and sometimes behaves erratically, affecting production, employment, and inflation.
Keynesian economists often argue that private sector decisions sometimes lead to inefficient macroeconomic outcomes which require active policy responses by the public sector, in particular, monetary policy actions by the central bank and fiscal policy actions by the government, in order to stabilize output over the business cycle. Keynesian economics advocates a mixed economy – predominantly private sector, but with a role for government intervention during recessions.
New Sacred Economy
- An economic system that liberates, celebrates, and rewards the innate impulse to give. A system that rewards flow, not accumulation, creating, not owning, and giving, not having, reflecting a new state of human beingness and consciousness defined by a more fluid, more inclusive sense of self, connectedness, and co-creative partnership with one another and the natural world. A system in which our collective ingenuity and amassed knowledge is turned toward purposes aligned with consciousness of ecology, connectedness, and healing; Money is used to restore and protect the natural, social, cultural,
and spiritual commons from which it was originally created.
- A money economy that connects human and nonhuman needs with the gifts of humans and nature that can meet them.
- It is egalitarian, inclusive, personal, bond-creating, sustainable, and non-accumulative.
- The foundation of a sacred economy is gift consciousness.
(Excerpts from Charles Eisenstein's book, Sacred Economics.)
- Based on a civil society which consists of nonprofit organizations that attend to the things in life we make and share as a community.
- A gift and sharing economy based on living together as an interdependent, collaborative, global commons.
- An economic system in which credit is controlled by and used for the benefit of the People, the common good, the stakeholders – for the benefit of all.
- A holistic economy in which the well-being of the Earth and future generations is an integral part of economic thinking. It provides for people and is harnessed for the well-being of society within ecological limits. Globalization is balanced with intense localization and the building of resilient communities with local food supplies, local currencies, local histories, and hopes for the future. It is about livelihoods, the provision of a household, the betterment of community, human development, and a healthy eco-system.
- Inspiration incarnated into and manifested in the material world through the community granting credit. Credit could be issued up-front by the community to those who will invest the time making valuable the credit granted to them based on the work one does through "vocational arousal" as well as how it is valued by the community, which is demonstrated by the accounting. The wealth generated could address what we as a community decide, for example, taking care of our basic needs, cleaning our environment, creating the conditions for individuals to thrive, distributing wealth equitably, and rewarding those involved in helping create the wealth.
Gift economy, gift culture or gift exchange is a mode of exchange where goods and services are not sold, but rather given without an explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards. Gifts circulate, rather than accumulate, and flow toward the greatest need. As such, they can serve to encourage relationship amongst people about things, foster connectedness and the manifestation of an underlying unity of being, and build communities.
"The gift economy that we all know in our hearts is possible and desirable still needs an accounting system to stay grounded and give us the feedback we need to form objective judgments about the veracity of our endeavors." - John G. Root, Jr.
Sharing Economy - The sharing economy (a.k.a. share economy, shared economy, mesh, collaborative economy, collaborative consumption) is an economic system built around the sharing of human and physical assets. It includes the shared creation, production, distribution, trade, and consumption of goods and services by different people and organizations. These systems take a variety of forms but all leverage information technology to empower individuals and organizations with information that enables distribution, sharing, and reuse of excess capacity in goods and services. A common premise is that when information about goods is shared, the value of those goods may increase, for the business, for individuals, and for the community.
Share-based offerings are based on a set of values that often includes trust, transparency, economic empowerment, creative expression, authenticity, community resilience, and human connection.
"What makes the social commons more relevant today is that we are constructing an Internet of Things infrastructure that optimizes collaboration, universal access and inclusion, all of which are critical to the creation of social capital and the ushering in of a sharing economy. The Internet of Things is a game-changing platform that enables an emerging collaborative commons to flourish alongside the capitalist market. This collaborative rather than capitalistic approach is about shared access rather than private ownership...." "We are... entering a world partly beyond markets, where we are learning how to live together in an increasingly interdependent, collaborative, global commons." - Jeremy Rifkin
Zero Marginal Cost Society - A phenomenon in which the "inherent dynamism of competitive markets is bringing costs so far down that many goods and services are becoming nearly free, abundant, and no longer subject to market forces."
"A formidable new technology infrastructure — the Internet of Things — is emerging with the potential to push much of economic life to near zero marginal cost over the course of the next two decades. This new technology platform is beginning to connect everything and everyone."
"...how will this economy of the future function when millions of people can make and share goods and services nearly free? The answer lies in the civil society, which consists of nonprofit organizations that attend to the things in life we make and share as a community."
- Jeremy Rifkin
For more information, see the definition on "Sharing Economy" and the article The Rise of Anti-Capitalism, by Jeremy Rifkin
Commons refers to the natural resources (such as air, water, common land, and a habitable earth - elements of the environment), cultural resources (such as information, the arts, media, the internet, and sites of heritage), and public goods (such as public space, public education, health, and the infrastructure that allows our society to function) - accessible to all members of a society.
Peter Barnes describes commons as a set of assets that have two characteristics: they are all gifts, and they are all shared.
There are a number of important aspects that can be used to describe true commons. The first is that the commons cannot be commodified. If they are, they cease to be commons. The second aspect is that unlike private property, the commons are inclusive rather than exclusive; their nature is to share ownership as widely, rather than as narrowly, as possible. The third aspect is that the assets in commons are meant to be preserved regardless of their return of capital. Just as we receive them as shared gifts, so we have a duty to pass them on to future generations in at least the same condition as we received them. If we can add to their value, so much the better, but at a minimum we must not degrade them, and we certainly have no right to destroy them.
Caring for the commons is an act of individual stewardship and collective trusteeship for the benefit of oneself and others, including the resource itself.
When commonly held resources or property is transformed into private property, this process is termed "enclosure" or more commonly, "privatization."
Common Good - That which we agree is necessary to have a healthy society, economy, and planet.
Examples:
- Transparency and accountability
- Accountability for all the stakeholders
- Objective feedback
- The conditions that empower people to take initiative with meaningful projects and provide appropriate goods and services
- The social capital and the natural capital necessary for the people and planet to thrive
- Environmental sustainability
- Sociocracy as an example of a healthy governance process
Triple Bottom Line - People, Planet, Profit
Quadruple Bottom Line - People, Planet, Profit, Purpose
Right Price - Prices that reflect the total true costs of production, including environmental and social costs.
Right Livelihood - Giving one's energies toward something one loves, following one's "compass of joy" and allowing for "vocational arousal", sharing one's gifts and talents, and bowing into service each day, asking "What opportunity is there to give?" and "How may I best give of my gifts?".
Sustainability
- When environmental, social, or socio-ecological systems maintain important indicators of system integrity, functioning, or well-being over extended periods of time.
- From a human perspective, sustainability is the potential for long-term maintenance of well being, which has ecological, economic, political, and cultural dimensions.
- Sustainability requires the reconciliation of environmental, social equity, and economic demands - also referred to as the "three pillars" of sustainability or the 3 Es.
- Sustainability is affected by the social and environmental consequences of economic activity. Sustainability economics involves ecological economics that recognizes that healthy ecosystems and environments are necessary to the survival and flourishing of humans and other living beings, and that all activities, social, cultural, health-related, and monetary/financial, need to be integrated.
- Ways to reduce negative human impact include environmental protection; management of environmental resources, human consumption of resources, cultural, political, and economic influences, and national and international laws; urban planning and transport; evaluating individual and local lifestyles; and ethical consumerism.
- Ways of living more sustainably can take many forms, such as reorganizing living conditions (e.g., ecovillages, eco-municipalities, and sustainable cities), reappraising economic sectors (permaculture, green building, sustainable agriculture) and work practices (sustainable architecture), using science to develop new technologies (green technologies, renewable energy, and sustainable Fission and Fusion power), and adjustments in individual lifestyles that conserve natural resources.
Of greatest concern is continued environmental degradation, climate change, overconsumption, and societies' pursuit of indefinite economic growth in a closed system.
Deep Ecology is a contemporary ecological and environmental philosophy based on a holistic understanding that the separate parts of the ecosystem (including humans) function as a whole. It understands the natural world to be a subtle balance of complex inter-relationships in which the existence of organisms is dependent on the existence of others within ecosystems.
The ethics of deep ecology hold that the survival of any part is dependent upon the well-being of the whole. It is based on the belief that the living environment as a whole should be respected and regarded as having certain inalienable legal rights to live and flourish, independent of their utilitarian instrumental benefits for human use.
Given the interference with or destruction of the natural world by humans, posing a threat not only to humans but to all organisms constituting the natural order, deep ecologists advocate a new connection between humanity and the eco-sphere.
The philosophy of deep ecology provides a foundation for the environmental, ecology, and green movements and has fostered a new system of environmental ethics advocating wilderness preservation, human population control, and simple living.
Biomimicry - A new science that studies nature's models and then uses these designs and processes to solve human problems. http://biomimicry.net
Ephemeralization - a term coined by R. Buckminster Fuller, is the ability of technological advancement to do "more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing". Fuller's vision was that ephemeralization will result in ever-increasing standards of living for an ever-growing population despite finite resources.
Common Law - The part of English law that is derived from custom and judicial precedent rather than statutes. Often contrasted with statutory law. See the following web site on Our American Common Law http://svpvril.com/OACL.html.
Statutory Law - The body of laws created by legislative statutes.
Commercial Law - Mercantile law: the body of rules applied to commercial transactions; derived from the practices of traders rather than from jurisprudence.
Corporatocracy - Huge multinational corporations whose big money corrupted our politics and unduly influenced what should be, but is not, our government.
Cost externalization - occurs when a company transfers some of its moral responsibilities as costs directly to the community or as degradation to the environment. Externalizing true costs to the community or the environment become lost in analysis because they are non-quantifiable and neither the community nor the environment have effective advocates to recoup the damages.
Glass–Steagall Act usually refers to four provisions of the U.S. Banking Act of 1933 that limited commercial bank securities activities and affiliations between commercial banks and securities firms.
Citizens United - The Supreme Court held in Citizens United that it was unconstitutional to ban free speech through the limitation of independent communications by corporations, associations, and unions, i.e. that corporations and labor unions may spend their own money to support or oppose political candidates through independent communications like television advertisements. The ruling removed the previous ban on corporations and organizations using their treasury funds for direct advocacy. These groups were freed to expressly endorse or call to vote for or against specific candidates, actions that were previously prohibited.
McCutcheon v. FEC Supreme Court ruling would lift limits on how much individuals can give to candidates every election cycle.
The Government By the People Act (HR 20) and the Fair Elections Now Act (S 2023) -- can help fix our election laws and help boost the influence of grassroots donors so that we can all play a central role in determining who runs for Congress, who wins elections, and what makes it onto the agenda in Washington.
Sovereign - Having independent authority and the right to govern itself.
Democracy - A government by the people through the rule of the majority. A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.
Pros: Encourages debate, majority rule, more opportunity for collaboration, fairness, efficiency, everyone has a vote.
Cons: mobocracy, the minority voice is not heard, can be competitive, domineering, polarizing, contentious, encourages lobbying and gaming the system, run-off voting, plurality representation, dualistic thinking, mistrust, and division.
Sociocracy is a dynamic system of self-governance, using consent-based decision making among equal individuals.
All decisions start in a well-facilitated circle of people in which each voice is heard and proposals are consented to based on an agreed time frame and method of evaluation. A sociocratic organization is based on leadership from the general to the more specific, and representation from the specific to the more general. For example, a Board of Directors would be made up of the "leaders" of functions and projects and the representatives from those functions and projects.
Sociocracy is based on the human being's ability to communicate using rational arguments, build individual and organizational capacities, and serve a transcendent purpose.
For more information, go to the following link.
Rudolf Steiner developed the idea between 1917 and 1922. The core concept recognizes three domains of human social activity: economic, legal, and cultural. Steiner maintained that the health of human society depended on understanding the characteristics of each domain and could thereby organize society so that each domain enjoyed independence and autonomy.
From the threefold perspective, economic activity should be organized and carried out in the spirit of brotherhood with the objective of meeting the needs of all human beings on the planet.
The middle realm of the threefold social organism is the legal domain (also called the political or rights domain). Its role is to establish laws that govern the behavior of all adults equally. From the threefold perspective, this domain is exclusively about human rights and, in particular, there is no room here for business entities. From this it follows that there is no place in the legal domain for corporations as legal persons. Regulation of business life is a matter for associations of the economic life. Political questions concerning human rights and obligations are the sole subject matter of the political\rights domain. The laws formulated in this domain should be formulated independent of economic concerns and power. This means that economic resources should play no role in deciding the rights, laws and obligations of human beings.
Culture, in the widest sense, is about the cultivation and recognition of human capacities. Finding the best way of unfolding these capacities is the task of the cultural domain. The key ingredient for this is freedom.
The three qualities, freedom, equality, brotherhood were the famous cry of the French Revolution: liberté, egalité, fraternité, a symptom of humanity’s unconscious longing for a threefold social organism. Threefolding is necessary precisely because these three ideals are incompatible. It was Steiner’s insight that society should be structured so that each of the three domains had its own organization and autonomy and that the domains would negotiate among themselves on matters of common concern.
For more information, go to: http://www.rudolfsteinerweb.com/Threefold_Social_Order.php
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EVOLUTIONARY DEFINITIONS
To create new systems, a new paradigm, we need new memes, evolutionary language, for carrying and transmitting cultural ideas, symbols, and practices from one mind, one heart to another.
This is based on the wisdom that every individual's energy contributes to the global field environment, the noosphere, the planetary network and convergence of minds and hearts. Our thoughts, emotions, and intentions affect the field. By taking responsibility for our own energy; becoming more conscious of our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and actions, we increase the frequency of the global field environment.
As enough individuals achieve coherence through new memes and heart-based living, this leads to social coherence, which leads to a critical mass of global coherence and sustainable peace.
As stated by Barbara Marx Hubbard, “Small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos can shift the whole system to a higher order.”
Ultimately, practicing heart-based living is our rite of passage into the next level of consciousness.
As a mid-wife of the conscious evolution movement, Barbara Marx Hubbard offers, along with her teachings, evolutionary language to evolve our consciousness and world at the following link.
Meme - a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation and replication; any idea or element of social behavior or cultural entity that replicates; the transmission and spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Origin: ‘to imitate, copy’, analogous to the biological transmission of genes; coined in 1976 by R. Dawkins, British biologist.
Meme evolution -
Richard Dawkins regards memes as also having the properties necessary for evolution, and thus sees meme evolution as not simply analogous to genetic evolution, but as a real phenomenon subject to the laws of natural selection.
He notes the three conditions that must exist for evolution to occur:
1. variation, or the introduction of new change to existing elements;
2. heredity or replication, or the capacity to create copies of elements;
3. differential "fitness", or the opportunity for one element to be more or less suited to the environment than another.
Dawkins emphasizes that the process of evolution naturally occurs whenever these conditions co-exist.
He noted that as various ideas pass from one generation to the next, they may either enhance or detract from the survival of the people who obtain those ideas, or influence the survival of the ideas themselves.
Noosphere - is a concept that denotes the "sphere of human thought". The word derives from the Greek νοῦς (nous "mind") and σφαῖρα (sphaira "sphere"), and was introduced by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in 1922. It emerges through and is constituted by the interaction and convergence of human minds and hearts. Just as the emergence of life fundamentally transformed the geosphere (inanimate matter), the emergence of human cognition fundamentally transforms the biosphere (biological life). As humankind organizes itself in more complex social networks, the higher the noosphere will grow in awareness. When human consciousness becomes coherent, the behavior of random systems will change. Coherent consciousness will create a higher order in the world. This concept extends Teilhard's Law of Complexity/Consciousness, the law describing the nature of evolution in the universe. Teilhard contended that the noosphere is growing towards an even greater integration and unification, culminating in the Omega Point - an apex of thought/consciousness - which he saw as the goal of history.
Collective Consciousness or Collective Conscience - is the set of shared beliefs, ideas, and values which operate as a unifying force within society.
Global Brain - is a conceptualization of the worldwide network formed by all the people on this planet together with the information and communication technologies that connect them into an intelligent, self-organizing, adaptive system. As the internet becomes faster, more intelligent, and more encompassing, it increasingly ties its users together into a single information processing system, which functions like a nervous system for the planet Earth.
Morphogenetic Fields - Fields which influence the pattern or form of things. British biologist Rupert Sheldrake postulated that there is a field of habitual patterns that links all people, which influences and is influenced by the habits of all people. The more people have a habit pattern -- whether of knowledge, perception, or behavior -- the stronger it is in the field, and the more easily it replicates in a new person. In fact, it seems such fields exist for other entities too -- for birds, plants, even crystals. Sheldrake named these phenomena morphogenetic fields.
Oneness Consciousness -
An awareness that everything is part of and an expression of a whole, that we are all from one common source and share a common spirit.
“Unity in diversity” explains, honors, and cherishes all the natural and unique forms and expressions of diversity that exist both within the human family and in the natural world.
Holistic refers to the treatment of any subject as a whole integrated system. It references the theory that reality is made up of organic or unified wholes that are greater than the simple sum of their parts.
It is based on an understanding that we are all profoundly interconnected and we affect one another and the planet with our intentions, thoughts and actions. As Indian elder Chief Seattle says, “Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves…”
It also means bringing into balance and harmony the mind and the heart, the rational and the intuitive, the secular and the sacred, rate of return and what serves the whole.
In addition, it means addressing the whole of our lives, which begins with our state of consciousness and our process of personal integration. As stated by Meister Eckhart, "If our inner work is great, our outer work will be great."
Personal Integration requires that one (a) take full responsibility for one's faith-in-self and subsequent choices; (b) remind oneself that one is responding to one's limited interpretations of one's limited perceptions of events, and not the events themselves; and (c) get into inner consensus about one's motives and actions.
Heart’s Intuitive Intelligence - a path to personal, social and global coherence. See the following video by The Institute of HeartMath: http://www.heartmath.org/about-us/about-us-home/hearts-intuitive-intelligence.html
Age of Reunion - The more beautiful world our hearts tell us is possible, (the name of Charles Eisenstein's new book).
When we see the highest in ourselves and one another, live with the awareness that "we are thy neighbor", all is innerconnected, all is One, and allow for evolutionary, creative impulse to guide us in following our "compass of joy", allowing for "vocational arousal", and co-creating and manifesting our dreams together.
Cultural Creatives - are leading-edge thinkers who value self-actualization, altruism, and spirituality. Core values include authenticity, idealism, activism, actions consistent with words and beliefs, whole process learning, seeing the world as interwoven and connected, ecological sustainability, and the importance of women.
In their book Cultural Creatives, How 50 Million People Are Changing the World (first published in 2000), sociologist Paul H. Ray and psychologist Sherry Ruth Anderson introduced the term "Cultural Creatives" to describe a large segment in Western society that has recently developed, beyond the standard paradigm of modernists or progressives versus traditionalists or conservatives, but toward the creation of a new synthesis, an "Integral Culture". Ray and Anderson claim to have found that 50 million adult Americans (slightly over one quarter of the adult population) can now be identified as belonging to this group. They estimated that there were an additional 80–90 million "Cultural Creatives" in Europe as of 2000.
Steward – one who embodies the ethic of responsible planning, management, and protection of resources with consideration of the effects of our actions on the next seven generations in regards to the social and natural world.
Ayni - a Quechua term that means ‘sacred reciprocity’. When we bring deep awareness and mindfulness to giving and receiving, we tap into the sacred web of life, we learn the art of Evocation. When we attend to all of our relations, seen and unseen, we become a healing force in the world.
Ubuntu - an idea from the Southern African region which means literally "human-ness," and is often translated as "humanity towards others," but is often used in a more philosophical sense to mean "the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity".
Our True Nature - Our being, our Essence, the divine within us, what is real and unconditioned in the human being.
