WATER OF LIFE

I recently joined the Honolulu group, The Righters: Writing for Justice.
Justice for me is about applying universal truths to real life situations. Social Justice is about getting together various groups that are all working towards some piece of universal truth. I suppose we all believe our own personal tuning into universal truth is the best avenue for social change. I personally believe that equality (social, economic, and recognizing and rewarding individuals, etc.) is the master key that will bring about a lot of other universal truths (clean environment, end of violence, etc.)

Writing is about revealing universal truths that have yet to be accepted as common sense or as public truths. Writing taps the collective unconscious (or God) for universal truths stored away within the generations. We are each on a unique wavelength to collective truth, thus each of our writings will contain pieces of the full spectrum. We create social change by writing about truths that have yet to be spoken and therefore create a paradigm shift in the public understanding of truth.

“There is a profound disrespect for human beings in modern life. Business encourages us to think of ourselves as human capital. Advertising appeals to our fears and insecurities to try to get us to buy products we do not need. Too many religious institutions teach people to be good but do not help them to know who they are. Too many psychologists see their jobs as helping people learn to accommodate to what is, not to take their journeys and find out what could be”—Pearson, Awakening the Heroes Within.

Recently, I watched the movie The Girl in the Cafe. The girl says, “A lot of knowledge can be a dangerous thing, too. It stopped you seeing the heart of things.” The point of the movie is that leaders (at the G8 conference) should make deals on trade and economic issues but when it comes to humanitarian issues—where it’s a matter of people living or dying—there should be no compromises.

Understanding and rewarding the gifts of every personality type and culture type is the solution to global inequality: reward individual and cultural differences instead of penalizing them; end capitalist exploitation of individual gifts; and end corporate theft of international resources and global economies.

INFPs with a strong preference for the empathy facet (like myself) resonate with Hofstede’s feminine values dimension—especially the concern for inequality (income, gender, homeless, etc.) Also, according to Pearson, this empathic power comes from the orphan archetype. Archetypes, both individual and cultural, like personality types, have unique gifts to offer.

At the end of my book, Where in the World Do I Belong??, I compare culture types to Hofstede’s dimensions and Pearson’s archetypes.

Next principle:

The total wealth (all assets) of an individual is limited to $500,000 and households are limited to one million dollars.

My friend replied, “A million dollars doesn’t buy what it used to.” Yes, but think about the majority of the world that live on nothing and you will realize that a million is more than fair. The interest alone on a million dollars ($50,000) is what the average American family now lives on. The tax system in place today wouldn’t have to be modified. Only families with assets over a million (which is only 5% of the population) would have to submit a statement of net worth to the IRS and either give the excess (over a million dollars) to the government or to a worthy cause.

My philosophy is probably closer to egalitarian then socialist, and on an international level embodies humanitarianism. It is more about deep, lasting fundamental truths than modern day economic or political reform. It really comes down to the egalitarian principles of all people are created equal and that all human persons are equal in fundamental worth.

David Callahan, the author of The Cheating Culture, said that movements against inequality aren’t long lasting in American culture and suggested many solutions to reform the current political, economic and social systems instead of addressing the issue of inequality directly. Bill Moyers in his Inequality Matters speech seems to think equality probably isn’t achievable but fairness might be. I highly respect both of their writing but I disagree, equality is the real and lasting solution to the problem.

I agree with Callahan in that we are an extreme in America history and we will bounce back like we have before (more than once) in the last century. I absolutely agree that we have become a cheating society. But what will that ‘bounce back’ be? Economic and political reforms that don’t address the real problem of inequality or a revolutionary social change like the civil rights amendment? All indicators point to an awakening to the need for a social change. No bandaid of economic or political reform will halt the momentum of the true solution of equality.

A free market domestically and internationally does not have to be based on capitalism. Capitalism says we are no better than animals that compete for survival. Fair play is the capitalist way of telling you that ‘it’s okay your not given equal opportunity or rewards for your gifts because you’ve had the same shot as everyone else’. Imagine if MLK believed the best blacks could expect in American culture was ‘fair play’ and not equal rights. MLK said, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’” That dream is still not yet realized until we have equal rewards for gifts differing.

No person is ‘more equal’ than another; no person should have multimillions or worse multibillions, while others live in poverty. Every person should have equal opportunity and rewards for using their gifts-no matter what those gifts are. It is time to approach the Supreme Court once again and clarify the fundamental truth of equal rights. Getting the issue of equal rewards in front of the Supreme Court will probably take a mass movement like the civil rights one. The staging ground for the equal rewards movement will be on the Internet and not in the mass media.

As a global movement other countries may embrace the change quicker than the US and those countries may provide aid and support to the movement in the US. My book Where in the World Do I Belong?? determines whether a country is a feeling or thinking culture. Thinking types believe in competition and feeling types believe in cooperation, harmony and people centered values. Feeling type countries outnumber thinking type countries and will probably be the leaders in the equal rewards movement.

Visit: http://www.typeandculture.com

Equal rewards for gifts differing is a philosophy that is simple yet so few prescribe to it or acknowledge the truth of it, and many discount it as fantasy. Okay, so let’s delve a little into the mechanics of how we will achieve the principles I have outlined.

First principle:
Everyone owns the land they live on.

Real estate speculation and landlords profiting off of renters is wrong. The first steals money from honest families trying to own a home, and the second exploits people who can’t make the leap into buying a home. We make a law that states you can only own the land you live on. We keep it simple at first and maybe set limits on the size of land people can own later.

Speculators and landlords would have to sell land they own to the people living on it. The government will help people buy the land they live on by guaranteeing loans. Owners would be given one year to find a buyer or pay extra taxes (say 10% of the appraised land and home value) to a fund that guarantees loans for new home owners. The taxes would be based on the appraised value determined from property taxes.

The goal would be to convert all residential property (houses, apartments, townhomes, condos, etc.) to ownership by occupant. The land under an apartment complex would be divided into equal ownership percentages by the occupants.

Next principle:
Companies are owned only by employees.

All corporations would be owned solely by the employees. This would be the first step to giving equal rewards for gifts differing. This goes back to the principle of people owning the land they live on. They would own the company they work for and thus own the land that is owned by the company.

Employee ownership isn’t a stock program because there wouldn’t be any stock in companies. It is just an equal share of the ownership and profits of the company. If someone leaves the company there is no share to sell, the company ownership and profits are just divided by one less person. Government employees wouldn’t have ownership because the government is owned by all the people and everyone benefits from the profits and losses of it.

Like real estate speculators, stock speculators steal from honest working individuals (because a minority of the population own a majority of the stocks, mutual funds, etc.) There should be no outside ownership. If a company needs investment money it should look to its employees for investment, banks or even its customers for loans.

This plan could be implemented with a transition away from a stock market. Stock owners would be required to sell their stock back to the company only. Stock could be taxed at rate of 10% a year with the goal of eliminating stock and returning ownership to the company and thus the employees. Eventually the stock market would be eliminated completely.

We would see immediate benefits from employees owning the company they work for. These benefits would outweigh any capitalistic ideas of leveraging the company to outside stockholders to try to grow the company. The company would grow organically through employee dedication and honest market demand for products.

This is the sticky part: how would this socio-economic change take place? Through peaceful reform or revolutionary action? The top 1% of the of the US population own the majority of the wealth (income, land, stocks, etc,) and therefore also the government. It will take a social movement that doesn’t rely on the government to facilitate change. Also, this social movement can’t rely on the media for social change as we have in the past. For this social change to happen, Bill Moyers says, “We can’t count on the mass media. What we need is a mass movement of people.”