My Friend Ian Browde's Right Brain Reflections

With the election of Barack Obama as U.S. president, the world has entered a new economic context, "social or community capitalism," which will become our paradigm by 2015 - 2020.
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

His intent is to share what his right brain perceives is the most meaningful contextual shift for humanity since the Industrial revolution about 250 years ago. Since the shift, the Sustainability Revolution, is contextual, and much of what we think, feel and do is changing fundamentally.

The economic context shift is picking up speed ...

We are in the midst of what we call the "economic downturn," or "the recession," or "the economic crisis." The reality is much deeper than any of those terms imply. In fact, my right brain avers, we are experiencing the demise of individualistic capitalism, the system we thought of as synonymous with democracy; as the way the world should function!

Wait, wait! Before you jump to conclusions, get defensive, argumentative or dismissive and at least hear my right brain out.

It began in 1980 with Ronald Reagan becoming president of the United States, the leading example of "the capitalist system." During those years, Reagan et al focused on cutting taxes and reducing reliance on government while increasing U.S. national defense (calling it "defense" is actually a misnomer - a topic my right brain will explore down the road) It was when capitalism as individualistic economic ideology culminated and began its decline, which is now accelerating and it feels like a crisis.

If my right brain remembers correctly the 1980s was the "me" era when Leona Helmsley, Ivan Boesky and Donald Trump emerged as icons of "the haves," and the United States triumphed at the LA Olympic Games while the Soviets sat out "citing security concerns and chauvinistic sentiments and an anti-Soviet hysteria being whipped up in the United States." (Wikipedia/NY Times).

With Apple, Microsoft and Silicon Valley growing prodigiously, Michael Jackson, and Madonna wowing the world, Americans that had it flaunted it and turned a blind eye while Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North traded drugs and guns with Iran and the Contras in the basement of the White House.

Simultaneously, the antithesis of individualistic capitalism, communism or state capitalism, was nearing the end of its disgusting run. Led by a person of intellect, Mikhail Gorbachev, whose 'perestroika' (restructuring) was actually aimed at opening up the choking Soviet economy, the Soviet system collapsed in part in the period 1987 - 1991. My right brain says "in part" because it is resurging again temporarily under Putin like individualistic capitalism did under Bush-Cheney for a few years. Ironically, while Reagan took, and America gave him, credit for the collapse of communism, it was really the first phase of individualistic capitalism's demise that he, and we, had achieved!

Individualistic capitalism ("capitalism"), the thesis, had to have state capitalism ("communism"), the antithesis, to survive. Once communism fell, it was just a matter of time before capitalism went too. And now it is on its way, inexorably, unequivocally.

"Why is individualistic capitalism over?" my right brain asks, "and what is replacing it?"
It is over because it is unsustainable, simple as that. It is unsustainable because its two keystone principles "individualism" and "maximal growth" attempt to defy the laws of Nature.

Human beings are not individualistic evolutionarily or by design. We are relational creatures who need one another to survive. In fact, we not only need other humans to survive, we need a healthy ecosystem of water, air, soil, plant, insect and animal life - there is no doubt about it.

In Nature, growth is optimal not maximal and where that precept is denied the organism dies out like the brontosaurus did. Trees, animals, humans and all other organisms grow and then they reach a level of sustainability where aspects of them are shed for new growth (innovation) to appear.

With the election of Barack Obama as U.S. president, the world has entered a new economic context, "social or community capitalism," which will become our paradigm by 2015 - 2020. The economy will never return to what it was.

Over the next decade we will see the emergence of local and community-based micro-economies, of companies and corporations that we will assess by 3 if not 4 bottom lines; financial, social benefit, environmental and even spiritual. We will address climate change and thus we will learn to become green (read: sustainable) in everything we do; how we think, converse, lead, govern, manage, tend, attend, work, play and relate. We will significantly alleviate poverty, hunger and violence on the large scale i.e., government, cartel and gang related.

This is an exhilarating time to be alive!

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot