If capitalism has grown to itself represent perhaps the greatest (underlying) problem of the day, is capitalism adaptable enough to fix itself?

What governs spirit, spirits government, no?

Submitted by one reed on Wed, 10/10/2007 - 19:47.

Reed Burkhart (just one reed among many :-)

Perhaps, paying attention to what governs our spirits (individually or collectively) may be the best way to evolve what spirits our governments.

This discussion seems close to the collective heartbeat of humanity: the evolving alignment or misalignment between the spirits of individuals and the collective spirit of humanity.

If money and its culture tend to define the collective spirit of humanity, is it perhaps true that humanity's spirit tends to be "governed" today by whatever particular capitalist culture (American capitalism, Chinese capitalism, etc.) each of us finds ourself living in?

Everyone would probably agree that our current governing capitalist culture/s (which some have termed the corporatocracy) are still evolving, no? Perhaps to smartocracy? democracy? autocracy? anarchy? monarchy? ____-cracy?

Shoshana Zuboff has researched and written on the historical evolution of capitalism from what she calls Mercantile Capitalism (spirited by valuing trading) to Proprietary Capitalism (spirited by small-scale manufacturing) to the current Managerial Capitalism (spirited by mass-scale manufacturing) -- pointing out capitalism's robustness due to its inherent adaptability to address problems of the day.

The great question I see is the following: "if capitalism has grown to itself represent perhaps the greatest (underlying) problem of the day, is capitalism adaptable enough to fix itself?" I wonder if Joseph Schumpeter (or Morihei Ueshiba, for that matter) ever asked himself this self-Schumpeterian question.

Recasting the same question with terms such as government and spirit, "is the entrepreneurial spirit of mankind sufficient to excite reform of our popular-culture-governing contemporary capitalist culture?"

Can we capitalists (viewing us all as somewhat warranting -- albeit to lesser or greater degrees -- the moniker "capitalist" rather by default, living as we are in a capitalist age in a capitalist society) see far enough, deeply enough and cleverly enough to proactively evolve contemporary culture (including evolving our policies and practices of corporatocratic government especially evolving its relationship to truth, i.e., spirituality) to realign our spirits as individuals so that our efforts are more strategically working towards a global realignment of individual spirits and the collective spirit of humanity?

I hold great optimism for such spiritual realignment, sensing the immense power born of the inherent spiritual connection between the individual and humanity as a whole ... a power surely more than sufficient to enable such a shift -- a spirited renaissance that evolves our governing capitalist culture -- to occur.

After all, the power of common interest enabled the evolution of capitalism from proprietary to managerial form: via subversion of the former by the latter in the market through spirited strategies of mass scale, high-volume, low unit cost (with byproducts of monoculturalization, high-growth, and sometimes the depletion of human and natural resources).

Is it not possible that the next stage evolution of capitalism could be innovated to respond to a step change realization of truth in commerce: shape-shifting amoral capitalism -- by consciously leveraging any sublimely-spirited "invisible hand"-like forces spiriting or governing the universe? Say for example the invisible one-two punch that we can't keep pumping up the CO2 forever? Or other?

How does the spirit that governs each of us -- perhaps telling us that we need to change things somehow -- get into that influential sphere of the spirit governing government: to engage in some type of Aikido, perhaps, with the spirit of the corporatocracy?

How? Any ideas? Is it possible that this transformation is already occuring, or beginning to occur?

(This was first posted at Reality Sandwich http://www.realitysandwich.com/life_during_wartime#comment-1634 )

Re-engineering the nature of capitalism

engineer vs shaman

Submitted by one reed on Tue, 09/18/2007 - 22:27.

Michael Brownstein's interview with John Perkins ends with John's vision for reshaping capitalism -- a theme resonant with using "capitalism to transform capitalism" (Daniel Pinchbeck's Aikido-reminiscent phrase). In this way, John Perkins seems to suggest applying a Shamanic mental visioning model to evolve contemporary capitalist culture.

When I met John after he spoke in San Francisco a few months ago, I asked John (something along the lines of) if he thought it might not be possible to develop a new field of Aikido corporations (that, in essence, "use capitalism to transform capitalism") so that eventually there would be a long, robust and expanding list of such Aikido corporations to *critically* supplement the other lists of corporatocracy-inflecting resources he had collected as go-to resources in the appendix of his latest book -- which resources, from the Shaman/Aikido-perspective, appear to be rather more TRADITIONALLY-SHAPED counterforces to contemporary capitalist culture.

John's response? "Go do it!"

Re-engineering the nature of capitalism (of humanity's dominant cultural dynamo) would be a rather adolescent-capitalist-era-culture-esque (anthropogenic/machine-era) way of describing a vision for consciously invoking renaissance - with rough metaphorical equivalents of step-by-step shamanic shape-shifting of the corporate soul, capitalism, and contemporary culture via one-by-one re-intentioning/re-architecting/re-souling/re-chartering individual new entrepreneurial corporations, applying the sublime, irrepressible and transformative powers of nature and truth in an inspired re-engineering of itself/ourself (humanity).

(The above was originally posted at http://www.realitysandwich.com/john_perkins_corporate_hit_man_american_shaman#comment-1344 )