Radical egalitarianism can save the planet, the world, and our souls

Worldwide radical egalitarianism can save the planet, the world, and our souls. We have to examine the whole world and see how it can work together in harmony like the cells and organs of a healthy living body. Instead of nations competing with nations, we can find ways to work together with cooperation and love. We each should make the same ecological footprint. It’s only fair.

Davis Smith in a TED talk entitled “Is Capitalism Saving or Destroying Us?” argues that it will be up to us. He then describes capitalist corporations that are ethical and socially responsible. He presents a graph showing that the percentage of people living in poverty (under $2 a day) in 1820 was 94 percent, but in 2015, it was under 10 percent! However, according to the website Global Issues , almost half the world—over 3 billion people—live on less than $2.50 a day. Davis Smith says that it was the opening of markets in India and China that pulled people out of poverty, yet he does admit that nothing has been more damaging to the earth than capitalism—when we see people and the earth as commodities to consume and discard in order to maximize profits.

Somebody on Facebook asked me a few days ago, if America is so bad, why does everyone want to come here? My question is, do we have so much because we have taken advantage of others such as the Native Americans and African slaves? Have we stolen land from Mexico, and have we exploited other Latin American countries? Have we purposely destabilized many democratically elected governments around the world in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia to further our own interests and business agenda? Have we been unfair to Cuba? Our nation has done a lot of bad things, and it is still doing bad things around the world. There is nothing great about that. Let’s just be honest, tell the truth, and stop taking what is not ours, then we will start being great.

The self-actualization of everyone on the planet can be our goal. What if everyone with entrepreneurial skills could devote to that? Let us start working together, baring our souls, freely sharing what we believe and know. Let us create honesty and transparency at all levels—from the personal to the national to the global level. Imagine how amazing it would be to live in a world where every nation starts working together instead of fighting and competing against one another.

When did Homo Sapiens take a wrong turn? Will Tuttle, author of The World Peace Diet, says it was when herderism emerged. Possibly that led to a top-down, hierarchical and patriarchal system of control and domination that became increasingly entrenched as the norm—in government, in churches, synagogues, and mosques, in marriages and families, in schools, in everything. Hierarchies of authority have their place, but it is much better if they are built from the bottom-up, not from the top-down. They can be built from the bottom-up democratically rather than from the top-down autocratically.

What prevents humans in their current evolution from creating a better world? We live in a matrix controlled by the one percent; some would call it the Deep State or the Shadow Government. Ex-CIA agent Kevin Shipp points out the difference between the the Deep State and the Shadow Government in this video . We have a government that has lied to us about many things, including its contact with aliens. Here are three videos about aliens: one, two, and three. We almost have a $22 trillion dollar national debt, and deficit spending every year takes us deeper and deeper into debt. Wall Street caused the 2008 economic crisis, and then Wall Street gets bailed out, but not the people. The Federal Reserve private central banking system is corrupt. The United States government and the lifestyles of average Americans have been harming and hurting the world. We are not making the world a better place.

According to this Scientific American article, “It is well known that Americans consume far more natural resources and live much less sustainably than people from any other large country of the world.” Moreover, “A child born in the United States will create thirteen times as much ecological damage over the course of his or her lifetime than a child born in Brazil,” reports the Sierra Club’s Dave Tilford, adding that the average American will drain as many resources as 35 natives of India and consume 53 times more goods and services than someone from China.” It has been said that it would take four earths if everyone in the world consumed as much as the average American. This Worldwatch Institute article also describes the state of U.S. consumption today. Can we live simply so others can simply live?

William Blum may be the best expert on U.S. interventions in other countries since World War II. His book America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy has been praised by Michael Parenti, David Swanson, Noam Chomsky, and Cynthia McKinney. In this 13 -minute interview of William Blum by Abby Martin (click here ), Blum mentions that we have attempted to overthrow more than 50 countries and we have attempted to assassinate more than 50 government leaders since World War II. Why is that? It’s primarily because any governments seeking or practicing socialism are considered to be serious threats to us because they will not allow our multinational corporations to go in and take advantage of the local workers by paying them very low wages. Here is William Blum’s website: williamblum.org.

Bush and Cheney: How They Ruined America and the World by David Ray Griffin is a book I am now reading. David Ray Griffin is probably the foremost expert on 9/11, a watershed event in world history because the interventionist foreign policy of the U.S. has gone into overdrive since 9/11.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, our leaders did not convert our enormous military expenditures into social programs because they by their actions created a new enemy—the terrorists. David Ray Griffin’s books make a very convincing case that 9/11 was a government false flag operation to convince Americans that to continue spending astronomical amounts of money on the military is vital to our survival. The military-industrial complex is more concerned about making profits for themselves even if it endangers the general welfare of society. Large corporations control the government and the mainstream media. Moreover, the United States is an empire, which is not what the world needs or wants.

The United States needs to repent of its collective sins and ask each nation it has ever harmed or exploited for forgiveness. It should then vow to help every nation achieve self-determination in a compassionate way. Here are twenty things the United States can do to help itself in a way that also helps the world:

1. We need to shun all lies, misinformation, and disinformation and create a society that values openness, honesty and transparency at all levels.

2. We need to encourage self-awareness by encouraging a deep study of psychology, conflict resolution skills, interpersonal communication skills, yoga, Buddhism, and mindfulness meditation. Even hallucinogenic herbs such as cannabis, peyote, and ayahuasca can have therapeutic uses for some people when their separative ego is transcended and they experience the spiritual oneness of everything being interconnected. Maybe imperialist heads of states need to smoke some weed; it might help eradicate their sociopathic desire for never ending wars. Here is how one young woman describes her life-changing experience from taking ayahuasca. Of course, people very opposed to hallucinogens should not take them. Hallucinogens open us up to the contents of our unconscious; to learn from the experience, it takes humility to handle that.

3. We need to demand that the largest national political parties be allowed to participate in presidential debates. Having candidates from the Libertarian, Socialist, Green, and Constitution parties would broaden the spectrum of viewpoints, but Republicans and Democrats have agreed to not allow that. Though I consider myself more an ecological or democratic socialist than a Marxist-Leninist, I think this article, for example, from a Marxist-Leninist website provides a view about the current migrants marching north from Central America toward the U.S. southern border that you will not hear in the mainstream media. If we had the 7 largest national political parties participating in presidential debates—the Green Party, various socialist parties, and the libertarians would have a much greater impact on our society.

4.We need to value solar and wind, eliminate nuclear power, and especially cultivate hemp, the most versatile plant on earth.

5. We need to study math, science, social studies, and language arts our whole lives and share what we have learned with our children and grandchildren. It would be ideal if everyone could retire at age 60 with a good pension and monthly Social Security payments, so that they could focus full time on making the world a better place.

6. We need to have more trains and buses and far less cars.

7. We need to eliminate imperialism, racism, patriarchalism, and materialism from our hearts and minds and motivations.

8. We need to stop discriminating against the LGBTQ community to encourage others to accept and not hide their sexual orientations.

9. We need to build democratic, consensus, intentional, autonomous, and interrelated communities from the grassroots level to the global level, building from the bottom-up.

For now, we can seek to abolish the Security Council of the United Nations and instead consider the General Assembly of the United Nations as the highest authority. A different democratic world government system can be considered later as needed. Any democratic world government system built democratically can also be dismantled democratically, if the citizens of the world have a change of heart.

We need to value having a democratic world government built from the bottom-up instead of having an autocratic or totalitarian new world order imposed on us from the top-down. Is it fair that individuals in one country earn $1 an hour, and individuals in another nation earn $30 an hour doing essentially the same thing? Let the highest paid worker earn no more than 3 times the lowest earning income. This is what I would consider radical egalitarianism. If more people were allowed to have a greater share of the wealth, and we each made the same ecological footprint, we could drastically reduce need for the military, the police, and surveillance technology.

10. We need to encourage neighborhood control of neighborhood schools to create neighborhood togetherness and intentional communities—something that has never been tried yet. We can implement a decentralized, non-hierarchical, or grassroots, approach to public schools: The neighbors who live within the boundaries of each public elementary school (middle or high schools possibly later) will be encouraged to democratically select their own school board, which will establish and implement a school philosophy and curriculum for the neighborhood school, using public funds. It is not necessary to have the top-down hierarchical chain of command from federal, state, county, and township superintendent control of neighborhood schools. We can build hierarchies of authority from the bottom-up instead of from the top-down, which is a practice and habit that needs to change.

Neighborhood control of public elementary schools will promote local community development and local self-determination. It can reduce crime, as neighborhood school districts ideally become tribal, intentional communities.

Local neighborhood groups will probably search the Internet and study the most effective schools and various school curriculums. Residents will be forced to think independently and philosophically. In the process, neighbors will get to know one another better, and they will build a close-knit community. Parents, other residents, and senior citizens in the neighborhood will become better educated citizens, as they strive to become better teachers and tutors in the neighborhoods where they live.

Using backyards and even front yards—organic and composted, local food production could be incorporated into a school district’s curriculum. Let the neighbors decide who can teach, what to teach, how to teach, and where to teach in their neighborhood school. Many children may learn better in a small group, in a house or in a more personalized home setting. A close-knit neighborhood could provide more tutoring, the ideal way to learn.

11. We ultimately need to call for a fair and democratic Constitutional Convention of 100 delegates proportionally represented from the national political parties that capture at least one percent of the vote to create a new national constitution. Thomas Jefferson thought we should have a new constitution with every new generation.

12. We need to implement public banking and eliminate the Federal Reserve now. Ultimately we can encourage proportional representation with a unicameral national legislature, ranked-choice voting, the elimination of the Electoral College System for electing a president, and the empowerment of multiple political parties.

13. We need to be concerned about every person and species on the planet. The United States government and the lifestyles of average Americans are harming and hurting the world. The United States needs to repent of its collective sins, and in an individualized way, it needs to ask each nation it has ever exploited for forgiveness. This will set a new precedent in international relationships.

14. We need to encourage veganism for ecological, ethical, and health reasons to promote sustainable practices for future generations.

15. We need single-payer health insurance or Medicare for All.

16. Instead of charging students for higher public education, we should make it free. In fact, we could even pay students and older adults for their academic achievements, if we truly value education.

17. We need to break up the large capitalist corporations and require workplace democracy when there are 7 or more employees in a company. The workers create most of the wealth for a company; therefore, they should participate in the decision-making.

18. We need to demand that our government stop intervening in the affairs of other countries in order to implement our own business agenda at their expense, to their detriment.

19. We need to lead the world in drastically reducing all military spending and in dismantling all nuclear weapons that are currently on the face of the earth. The U.S. can bring home all military personnel and close down the government’s 800 military bases around the world. Even with such a drawdown, our nation will retain more than enough capacity to defend its own borders. Some of the money previously spent on the military can be used to create new jobs throughout the world in every country that needs them: “And they shall turn their swords into ploughshares.” (Isaiah 2:4) Many of the existing military ships, submarines, and planes throughout the world can be used for low-budget travel and tourism to promote goodwill among nations and world citizens.

20. State governments can be encouraged to write new constitutions to build government democratically from the bottom-up, from the neighborhood block club, to the voting precinct, to the township level, then to the city or county level, and ultimately to the state level. Each level of legislative government can make executive and judicial branch appointments. Elected legislators at each level could vote among themselves to send a legislator to the next level above it. Giving more power to the legislative branch at each level can work better than the current policy in which many individuals vote a straight ticket for several races, for candidates whom they know nothing about.

In conclusion, if the above 20 recommendations are implemented, we could even create a thousand years of peace if the people in every generation have a longing in their hearts to perpetuate it. Religions of the world in the past have focused on saving individual souls while lacking a concern for world conditions and the ecological needs of the planet. This is changing with religions like Progressive Christianity and Engaged Buddhism. The internet is providing alternative ways to look at the world so that people can wake up from the political brainwashing of the mainstream media. Spiritual disciplines such as mindfulness meditation can help us transcend our mundane mental constructs of duality to experience the interconnectedness and oneness of everything. There is nothing spiritual about allowing the rich to get richer and the poor, poorer. As more people see the need for radical egalitarianism, we can save the world, the planet, and our souls as we develop a spiritual politics.

Roger Copple retired from teaching general elementary and high school special education in Indianapolis in 2010. He currently lives in the Tampa Bay area. His website is www.NowSaveTheWorld.com.