In zeer-consciousness zandtao began the book with two intro-visions, one for societal infrastructure and one for humans. Here is the intro-vision for society that includes the explanation of system-for-the-rich:-
Suppose zandtao was Gaia consciousness - imagine the planet Earth as a single entity with all kinds of life on it. And this Gaia consciousness looks at all and says what is it all for? Then there’s no sense in what Gaia sees. It might view humanity as the dominant species, and see this dominant species destroying the Earth. But not only that it would see that species fighting wars amongst itself. And they are fighting wars for resources and territory that Gaia gave them. At least originally Gaia gave it to them, but now some say that parts of Gaia belong to them so they say they fight wars to defend their parts.
But that is not straight forward. These parts are called countries, and countries defend and attack other countries. But the people in those countries don’t know why they are attacking. Some say for one reason, others say another. So there is confusion as to why they are fighting. At the beginning of the fighting there is not usually confusion because those in charge of the countries repeatedly message why they want this fighting and there is usually significant acceptance. It is confusing, what’s it all for?
Then Gaia looks at how people live in these countries. Most live in similar ways even amongst the countries that are at war. Most people need money to live - to buy the things humans need to survive - food and shelter - and other materials goods if they still have money. So even though Gaia gave these humans enough food and shelter, they now have to get money to live. Historically these humans got money from landowners by working on land or defending the land of these landowners - or taking land from other landowners. Whilst there are still some of these landowners most people now get money from corporations - either directly or indirectly from corporations. These corporations are very powerful, and it is not clear whether they control countries or not. This is confusing, what’s it all for?
Gaia might ask:- there is a world here for food and shelter, why do people have to work for money? Gaia asks - no money was originally made yet now most humans are working for money. Who has this money? Corporations, banking corporations and governments (system) of countries. What do they use this money for? Is it used to benefit the people? Is it used to make the world - Gaia - a better place? Mostly not, Gaia sees this money stored in bank accounts - doing nothing. What’s it all for?
But some people want to help others - maybe even want to make things better. So these people try to do good things - healing, caring, teaching etc. They are paid money but even though such things ought to make things better they don’t. They tend to heal and care for people so that those people can work to maintain the system - get money for themselves. That makes some sense. Why would powerful people pay money for others to work to end the system? But again what’s it all for?
None of it really makes any sense, how does our system benefit all people? Historically different people and institutions have tried to affect this system. Many people have joined religions but it is not clear what these religions are for. To be fair to these religions all modern religions have moral and compassionate components to them. If you ask the followers of these religions whether they are moral and caring, many will point to the moral codes of the religions and say we are caring. Yet some of these modern religions have been excuses for war, and if not an excuse for war these religions will often support governments fighting wars despite having moral codes that are against war. Within these religions there are many good people but they do not affect the system that includes war. There are also non-religious ideologies that describe the system to a greater or lesser extent, and followers of those ideologies seek change. But their direction is often confusing. People proposing change through these ideologies will disagree with each other, disagree with institutions, and disagree with religions. Meanwhile the system continues with rich people seeming to have more and more, and poorer seeming to have less and less.
On top of this system of flaws and confusion, the rich people of the system are investing in technology and automation. Firstly there is automation that fight wars - drones now and AI coming. Secondly these rich people invest in machines and plant which take away jobs so that people cannot get money for food and shelter. Not only has the system forced people to work for money, now the system is taking that ability away from people. At present governments are able to give some of these people food and shelter but because of automation fewer and fewer people are working and earning money. The corporations need to make profits, they are moving in the direction where automation will make the products more cheaply and more efficiently but who will buy them? Who will have the money to buy them? None of it makes sense, what’s it all for?
Based on this type of vision of society there are answers to what’s it all for? Historically it was all for landowners, people worked as serfs and soldiers so that landowning families could keep their land. With the development of money, owning land was not the only way for greed to be satisfied. Over time a new but similar system-for-the-rich developed in which people worked as wage-slaves and soldiers to maintain the wealth of the corporations, banks and aspects of government.
Over time increasing numbers of people have questioned whether their own lives and the lives of people in their communities can have this dubious purpose of maintaining this system-for-the-rich. Quite sensibly the system-for-the-rich adopted strategies to maintain itself using a mechanism of divide-and-rule to turn people against each other rather than questioning the direction of the system itself. This scapegoatism involved manipulations of perception concerning the nature of the people they were trying to scapegoat. This scapegoatism started in the earlier landowning wars where neighbouring peoples - who are now parts of the same community - were vilified. Over time proximities of war have changed. It is far easier to vilify people you don’t know so we now have the inhuman acts of it being acceptable for drones to target family events in order to target an individual.
But divide-and-rule scapegoatism exists within communities as racial difference, gender difference, religious difference are all manipulated as a means of redirecting attention away from the system-for-the-rich.
Apart from divide-and-rule scapegoatism there are various levels of delusion involved in maintaining this system-for-the-rich, and these delusions usually revolve around materialism. Simplistically society has generally accepted materialism as a raison d’etre - what's it all for. It is quite understandable that materialism has become some form of benchmark because to survive we need food and shelter - basic material survival. At the same time greed comes into play through appropriating various materials - simplistically land initially now the accumulation of money in bank accounts. So people delude themselves into accepting this materialist measure whilst there is ongoing social pressure to maintain this materialist delusion. By observation we can see that most people are not free from suffering, yet they accept the delusion that this system-for-the-rich is somehow the best way - with the delusion often being fuelled by increasing material advantages for privileged people.
Is What's it all for? basically a materialist system-for-the-rich? Are we all deluded to strive for some measure of materialism such as a wealthier home lifestyle? Within this delusion do we not ignore those who have suffered because of war, do we not ignore those who suffer with poverty? Significant in the creation of this delusion is a process of upbringing that conditions this delusion, and as adults an ongoing process of conditioning that maintains the delusion.
Mentally how do people accept all this delusion and cope with all this questioning? When they ask what’s it all for?, they have few answers. Many turn to religion - as zandtao said, and whilst their questions mostly remain unanswered they stay with the religion as it offers some hope. But some aspects of these religions support the system-for-the-rich so in certain ways maybe hope and some solace is all that can be expected from religious institutions; however religions do give us the bases for practice.
Many people have presented similar visions of life on earth. Some have argued for revolution so that Gaia’s original food and shelter can be spread to more people - Gaia’s intention? But such revolutions have never been endorsed by all the peoples in these countries, often just leading to more death for the people the revolution was meant to help. When the revolutions were more popular that country still had to survive in a world that is system-for-the-rich so that country found itself isolated through trade, blockade and propaganda.
zandtao puts forward this intro-vision of societal infrastructure as his "best societal description at the time" but it does not attempt to reflect the levels of complexity that involve many societal interactions and conditioning in order to maintain the system-for-the-rich. But this intro-vision is not for complexity, it is there to help seekers "see the wood for the trees" and see the context in which they are trying to develop love-wisdom.
|
Books:-