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This is a follow on article to the discussion on The International Banking System in the subject Economics, Financing, Banking.

All of the key flaws in the economic system are well known to any who look beyond the web of deception that permeates mass culture - the discussion here at NCN is similar to discussions happening all over the globe, discussions that have been occurring throughout the last century but to little avail. What do all these phenomena point to? Is there some overarching paradigm in which they can all be made sense of? Is it a matter of an elite wielding control or is it something deeper? Is there something practical that can be done about it?

Economics plays an important role in all of the key changes happening in the world but aside from our traditional rationalisations, what purpose does it really serve and what do the many changes signify? From the perspective of system theory, cybernetics and complexity theory the answers are startling!!!!

First I'll briefly introduce the Global Ego and then comment on economics in that context.

Like I say in the preview to my latest (yet to be released) e-book The Gaian-Ego Hypothesis and the article Ego and the Denial of Complexity, there is a broader systemic phenomenon happening, for which we need a more holistic awareness to be able to comprehend. Yes there are conspiracies happening but they are just part of a wider phenomenon. Put very simply, Gaia - the planetary system has formed a nervous system that we call civilisation. That nervous system has been growing over many centuries and is reaching a stage of integration into a single global mind.

We individuals are analogous to nerve cells within the collective organism and our beliefs are like DNA within those cells, which interprets input stimuli and transforms this into a cascade of internal processes that manifests outer behaviour. All of our thoughts, communications and actions are the passage of signals through that global nervous system and economics has emerged as one of the primary metabolic processes that drives that system just as biochemistry drives organisms.

This isn't just an accidental similarity - it is a homology - a pattern of surface similarities that signifies a deeper common origin. Just as the similarities in the bone structures of different animals signifies our common genetic/evolutionary origin, these similarities signify our common origin as complex adaptive systems. All complex adaptive systems undergo a phenomenon called meta-system transition, which is where systems interact and form networks of dependencies that effectively manifest a super-system which then develops emergent properties that control the sub-systems via the network of dependencies. In this way the collective of systems effectively becomes a single system on a higher level and the sub-systems become bound within patterns of collective behaviour.

This is how cells manifest multi-cellular organisms, which then develop minds that control the cells through the metabolic processes. It is how organisms manifest integrated ecosystems (where civilisation is a new type of ecosystem), which then manifest cycles that influence the organisms through the web of dependencies such as food chains, species dynamics and more recently nationalist economies and media fads. These ecosystems then manifest Gaia - which is a collective organism that encompasses the whole planet and controls the ecosystems through global emergent phenomena such as weather patterns, gaseous exchange through the atmosphere and more recently the international economic system and global ideologies such as capitalism.

These systems at each level form power structures or steersman. This is the main focus of the study of cybernetics which studies "control within complex adaptive systems". A cell has a limited power structure but the human mind is a powerful power structure but it is naive in the wider context. Out of ignorance and commonsense realism (see The Scientific Case Against Materialism) the mind perceives the body through the senses and thinks 'I'. Similarly the collective system is beginning to perceive the planet through its senses (civilisation/culture) and is beginning to think 'I'. This is how the ego (or I-thought) arises; it is an illusion that arises from commonsense realism. The ego is just a thought construct within the mind or a cultural construct within a culture but it starts to believe that it IS the underlying system, so the ego identifies with it and becomes a tyrant over it, just like a government that thinks that it IS the nation and that its agendas ARE the nations agendas so it uses the nation to pursue those agendas regardless of what the nation itself thinks about it. In this respect the USA has a very strong and domineering collective ego at the moment.

The subconscious mind of Gaia is the distributed functioning of ecosystems and it is life affirming, but her ego is a different story. Egos often cause problems in beings, it can be clearly seen in ourselves where egos become drug addicts, power junkies, stress heads, murderers, suicidal manic depressives and all kinds of dysfunctional behaviours that ultimately kill the underlying organism. Egos are a construct of commonsense realist illusion so they are very prone to delusion. They are a web of propaganda and they come to believe their own propaganda.

Just as our egos don't understand cells or the body/mind but we form agendas, desires and fears and we use the body/mind to pursue our agendas. So too the global ego doesn't understand people or the society/culture but it is forming agendas, desires and fears and using the society/culture to pursue its agendas. Just as cells within our bodies cannot easily discern the existence of the human ego but they live within an environment (the body) that is driven by the will of the ego - so too we cannot easily discern the existence of the collective ego but we live within an environment (society) that is driven by the will of that ego.

We have been thinking in terms of traditional discourses based on the human ego as the measure of all things and talking about politics, democracy, communism, economics, capitalism, socialism, human rights and so on but existence functions on all levels from particles to galaxies and beyond. All systems experience their inputs, interpret them and respond to them, this drives the systemic dynamics from particles to galaxies and beyond. So the universe is constantly experiencing itself from different perspectives and power structures arise on many different levels. The human mind and ego is just the most tangible power structure to us but cells have their own basic power structures and the planet is developing its own through civilisation.

We have been looking from the perspective of our own egos and focused on the level of human egos acting in the world, and we have not noticed the global ego forming in our midst. Just as we ourselves are systems of trillions of cells bound together by collective metabolic processes and controlled by a nervous system, which manifests a mind within which an ego forms and thinks 'I' and 'me'. So too is the planet a system of billions of organisms bound together by collective metabolic processes (ecosystems) and controlled by a nervous system (civilisation), which manifests a mind (culture) within which an ego forms (power structures) and the planet is beginning to think 'I' and 'me'.

But what is the ego in ourselves and in civilisation? It cannot be located in any particular group of cells or people. It is an emergent phenomenon that arises from the functioning of the whole system. It is more like a collective discourse or trance or memeplex that occupies our minds and our culture, it spreads through all communications, it permeates the collective system and guides all of our interpretations, experiences and responses, thereby causing us to believe in certain things and act in collectively coherent ways such as nationalism, consumerism, capitalism, militarism and all kinds of ism's. The ego is essentially a type of culture and a dysfunctional culture creates an ignorant and psychotic ego, whereas a harmonious culture creates a wise and compassionate ego. It is also a resonance of beliefs, where our beliefs are like DNA within a cell, if we change our beliefs we can change the very species and nature of the collective organism. That is why I say that direct action based upon current beliefs only reinforces the problem regardless of our intentions. What is required is effective discourses that run parallel to the egoic discourse and alter our beliefs thereby shifting the balance of power and uprooting the problem rather than just hacking at its branches, which keep growing back anyway.

Economics within this context...

The pervasive and invasive influence exerted by the economic system is just one symptom of the growing strength of the collective ego. It is no longer we who control the system but the system that controls us. The collective is no longer in a subconscious state where it acts spontaneously based upon the intricate actions of all of us, instead it is becoming conscious, it is forming its own agendas and is controlling us to enact those agendas - such as globalisation and the securing of its control over what it sees as "its body", i.e. humanity, civilisation and the planet as a whole. It is reaching for unification and self-control, which manifests as increasingly global and invasive economic constraints where people are no longer human (that is how we see ourselves), we have become consumers and producers (that is how the collective ego sees us). When the ego has total control the underlying system is totally enslaved. A domineering ego never listens to the underlying system, it only commands.

The changes in the media are another strong sign of the growing strength of the collective ego. No longer is it a subconscious space for our collective dreaming, it is becoming a channel for the conscious psycho-babble of the immature collective ego. The ego is a thought construct within ourselves and a cultural construct within society, the media is like an echo chamber within which the distorted ideas resonate and keep everyone locked into the growing egoic trance. It is enacting the ego's agenda of growing self control and communicating the force of its will through the creation of a manipulative discourse or a web of deception. It is strengthening the egoic trance and binding us into tighter collective behavioural patterns so that we can be dictated to just like when we ourselves lift an arm the signals go out and the body responds.

There are four basic levels of control, that I have identified, through which the collective ego can assert its will upon a civilisation.  Economics plays an important factor in all of them. I briefly mention these below in an excerpt from The Gaian-Ego Hypothesis. I go into detail on each one in the e-book but it is not yet ready for public release. If people are interested I can give excerpts from these sections in other articles.

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The first mechanism or "collective trance" arises naturally as 'culture' but has grown rapidly since the development of the science of psychological manipulation, which is an all pervasive control mechanism that reaches deep into our minds to condition our concept of 'normality' and to subvert the processes of rational self-determination in order to elicit conditioned responses that can be 'programmed' or formed into a vast social 'circuit'. For details see Psychological Manipulation.

But this alone cannot be relied upon because it relies on subconscious control via deception but what if people become un-deceived, there must be a parallel system of coercive control that is subtle enough to not arouse open revolt but is pervasive enough to penetrate and control every aspect of our lives, forcing us to conform if we do not do so by manipulated consent. These in conjunction would form a coordinated mechanism of control.

The modern coercive control mechanism is 'economics', which is the basis of the second and third mechanisms. Tradition and social norms originally played an important role (see the The Man Machine - Organisms to Organisation), then later the myth of 'authority' played an important role but now economics is the primary control mechanism as was realised by Meyer Rothschild back in the 1700's: "Let me issue and control a nation's money, and I care not who writes its laws."[FR] The term "wage slave" [FR] is becoming a household word for many people and there is a good reason why. Work is becoming increasingly invasive into peoples lives and weakening families and communities [FR, FR]. Work no longer supports life, instead life is being re-imagined as a labour market and as a human resource that supports the economy.

Economics is a distributed system of reward and punishment that imposes overarching constraints on all aspects of human behaviour and through the spread of capitalist ideology it is almost universally accepted as a fact of life and as intrinsic to our society as gravity is to the universe. Whereas 'authority' through traditions and legislation is too overt and recognisable to be truly effective as a control mechanism because people react against it or seek to change it whilst with economics people just accept it as an unchangeable fact of life [FR]. It is an unavoidable necessity in some form but what form of economics do we implement, one that facilitates life or one that controls life?

"Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all." (John Maynard Keynes) [FR]

These fundamental questions of economics and social well-being are never seriously addressed except by socialists who seeks to make capital (wealth) serve society rather than society serve capital. But due to capitalist fundamentalism anyone who questions the economic system is labelled part of a "lunatic fringe" or a "communist" which has become a tainted word (a conditioned stimulus that incites the conditioned response of a closed mind, see Psychological Manipulation). This stereotyping instantly disenfranchises them and makes any rational debate on the subject virtually impossible because people's minds are closed to reason. This is just a part of the collective trance and anyone deeply entranced cannot think rationally about economics in the wider context so it has been secure from any serious challenges.

In this economic context the second mechanism of broad spectrum control operates through monetary policy and the system of banking and international finance. For details see Broad Spectrum Economic Control. Whereas the third mechanism or system of detailed control operates through the intricate structure of the economy where industries and people are effectively formed into a complex 'electronic' circuit where the flow isn't electricity but money. In recent times it has become possible to monitor and control this circuit very closely using data acquisition, computer modelling and market controls. It has been said that it is "nearly as easy to predict and control the trend of an economy as to predict and control the trajectory of a projectile... the economy has been transformed into a guided missile on target." [FR] For details see Detailed Economic Control.

The fourth mechanism or centralised power nexus is also intimately related to economics, with capitalism being the central ideology around which the culture has been structured, but it is more complex than what the word 'capitalism' suggests. It involves an authoritarian discourse of power and control that is fuelled and guided by the ideas flowing through all of our minds, but especially by certain elite groups and especially promulgated by the corporate media. In the past there has usually been a separation of authoritarian power and economic power but that distinction has become blurred. There is now a convergence of power, both political and economic on a scale never before seen, where in many cases the interests of the international banking system wields far more power than any nation or alliance of heads of state. As such there has arisen a much closer 'communion' between financial, corporate and political structures, resulting in networks of groups throughout the world where consensus is reached on long term agendas and it is within the context of this consensus that all policy decisions, whether political, financial or corporate, are made. There need not be an organised 'conspiracy' in the traditional sense, in fact the process is most effective when people do not know what they are doing in the wider context; like neurons in the brain they do what they do and the system of interconnections harnesses their activities within the wider context and from this arises the global collective ego. For details see The Central Power Nexus.
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That's a start - there's much more that can be said but I'll let that come out in conversation if anyone is interested in discussing these ideas. Check out the preview of The Gaian-Ego Hypothesis and you'll see how all the key issues in the world at present merge into one single phenomenon. They can be considered not just as separate isolated issues but brought together into a coordinated discourse that can give deeper understanding and help us develop effective strategies for nurturing positive change in the world.

Best wishes :)
John Ringland

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