Trial by Trolls - is there hope for our world?

Isn't it time that each and every one of us started bearing our own share of responsibility in the shaping of our world?

I know that it's 23 years since His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama gave his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1989, but what he said has as much relevance today as then. He emphasized that responsibility doesn't only lie with the leaders of our countries or with those who have been appointed or elected to do a particular job. It lies with each of us individually. The next day in his Nobel Peace Prize lecture he elaborated on the theme:

"The realisation that we are all basically the same human beings, who seek happiness and try to avoid suffering, is very helpful in developing a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood;
a warm feeling of love and compassion for others.
This, in turn, is essential if we are to survive in this ever shrinking world we live in. For if we each selfishly pursue only what we believe to be in our own interest, without caring about the needs of others, we not only may end up harming others but also ourselves. This fact has become very clear during the course of this century. We know that to wage a nuclear war today, for example, would be a form of suicide; or that by polluting the air or the oceans, in order to achieve some short-term benefit, we are destroying the very basis for our survival. As interdependents, therefore, we have no other choice than to develop what I call a sense of universal responsibility."

Where are we 23 years later? Not in a very good place from where I'm sitting.

I read a piece in yesterday's Sunday Times about "The Torment of Trial by Trolls." For the uninitiated a "troll" is technically someone who deliberately disrupts online commentary with assaults on other contributors or by repeatedly taking threads away from the topic. But as the article points out it has become shorthand for all kinds of internet abuse. First we had road rage. Now it seems that many people are prepared to be abusive, obscene, insulting, mocking, bullying, and so on towards other people when they can hide behind the anonymity and distance of Twitter and Facebook and other social media. What is going on here? Why do we abuse strangers so freely?
Have all these people really nothing better to do with their time than abuse strangers? It seems that some of these trolls are perfectly decent people when met face to face.

Where is that " warm feeling of love and compassion for others" within this kind of beahviour? Is there hope for our world? What about empathy for our fellow beings? And what about the Golden Rule? Treating our neighbors as ourselves?
And not only should we confine the scope of our responsibilities to our own home patch. It is a matter of global justice that we have equal concern for the conditions in which our brothers and sisters live in poor parts of the world.
In December 2001 a Statement was issued by 110 Nobel Laureates on the one-hundredth anniversary of the launch of the Nobel Prize. It included a plea for us all to reassess our global obligations to one another. Again it's eleven years ago but it seems we don't learn anything with the passage of time. This is what those Laureates said:
"The most profound danger to world peace in the coming years will stem not from the irrational acts of states or individuals but from the legitimate demands of the world's dispossessed. Of these poor and disenfranchised the majority live a marginal existence in equatorial climates. Global warming, not of their making but originating with the wealthy few, will affect their fragile ecologies most. Their situation will be desperate, and manifestly unjust. It cannot be expected, therefore, that in all cases they will be content to await the beneficence of the rich. If, then, we permit the devastating power of modern weaponry to spread through this combustible human landscape, we invite a conflagration that can engulf both rich and poor."

Eleven years later has much changed? It is a fact that we have the technology and productive resources to eliminate worldwide misery, poverty and injustice. Consider the power of the internet in the Arab Spring, in mobilizing the Occupy Movement.

And it seems that all many of us can do is waste precious moments, hours, days, weeks of our lives in abusive behaviour against our fellow brethren whilst hiding behind the anonymity of that same technology!

Sometimes I feel real despair, ashamed to be a part of the same human race.
Can anyone offer any words of hope?

More about the Occupy protests

I am leaving the photos of Occupy…up on my blog for the time being because I support much of what their protest is all about. So much so in fact that I visited the tent city in London outside St Paul’s Cathedral to chat to some of the occupiers and to see for myself what they are doing and the way they are thinking. I even left a copy of my book at their library, because it addresses the issues with which they have so much concern. This is not just about "fat cats" and bankers bonuses, although these do signal a malaise in our society. This protest is about sustainable living, looking after the environment, and justice for all.
Perhaps we really are now in a slow paradigm shift, when realization is at last dawning that we simply cannot carry on the way we have done to date.
Three quotes I have come across in my reading over the last few days sum it up neatly I think:

“People have had enough of the current economic model. The current political system has failed to deliver on its promise of prosperity for all.”
Richard Murphy founder of The Tax Justice Network

“…people are being persuaded to spend money we don’t have, on things we don’t need, to create impressions that won’t last, on people we don’t care about.”
Tim Jackson Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Prosperity-without-Growth-Economics-Finite/dp/1849713235/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1324478109&sr=1-1

“Money is not wealth; real wealth is land, forest, rivers, animals and people…Let us respect the generous Earth and wild Nature, the eternal source of wellbeing and prosperity. If we take care of people and Nature, then the economy will take care of itself…Some people might say that this is too idealistic; but what have the realists done? They have made a complete mess of the world economy…”
Satish Kumar Resurgence

Richard Murphy in The Courageous State calls for governments and courageous politicians to deliver real transformation in people’s lives. I agree to an extent, but they cannot do it alone. They can only change things so far. Real change for a better world needs us to change our own hearts and minds as well, something I explore in some detail in Healing…, not only in connection with our failed economy, but in many other facets of life as well where we have current concerns.

It’s only because Gandhi was so right that he is quoted so often:

We must be the change we want to see in the world.

Occupy London at St Pauls and Economic Justice part 2

"The human soul can be very powerful when it is sufficiently aroused; even in the context of changing our flawed economy! Alastair McIntosh tells the tale (1) of how in the last decade of the twentieth century the might of a great corporation was broken by spirituality and theology. Scientific and economic values clashed head on with spirituality. Against what seemed like overwhelming opposition the soul in the end prevailed.
The Community of the Isle of Harris, in the Western Isles of Scotland, was threatened by the development in their midst of a devastating super quarry, a wound and scar of massive proportions. With the assistance of a Native American Warrior Chief Sulian Stone Eagle Herney and what was said to be the first ever theological submission put before a public enquiry the islanders were able to prevent a large corporation (Redland Aggregates Plc) from going ahead with their plans. Overnight the share price of the company on the London Stock exchange fell a massive 8% or £160million pounds! If the project had gone ahead who would have gained from the cruel ravages inflicted on a finely balanced community such as Harris?

The flaws of human nature

Some while ago a series of bank advertisements on the management of wealth appeared in the glossy weekend media. One of these featured a lone and pretty girl cantering away on a lovely white stallion into the beautiful and totally unblemished distance. ‘What...[is wealth]…to you?’ the headline asked. ‘It’s being able to tell the world to get lost.’ Whoaaa!
How can any single one of us afford to turn our back on the world in this way in any sense. How can any of us ride away to an unblemished horizon while so many basic human rights are not available to so many? That surely diminishes us as human beings. But someone, indeed a team of people, wrote that advertisement.
In our materially rich Western society it is too easy to be wooed by the power of marketing and advertising. Psychological insights developed to help us understand the healing needs of our souls are instead cynically used for marketing purposes. The advertisers play on our feelings of guilt or fear and our need for love and comfort, which often reflect in some of the worst aspects of human behavior, our insecurity, envy and discontent. These traits fuel our over-consumption and greed for material possessions.
If we would only understand our behavioral faults and allow them to be healed rather than exploited, there may yet be hope for the plight of our global brothers and sisters who through accident of birth are far less privileged than ourselves. Then we can hope to build an economy that is globally just and contributes to a healing world.
Before looking at ways we can all act to help our world towards some monetary justice, let’s look at our current situation.
The current world situation
The divide between the materially wealthy and the hungry poor is massive and the gap is apparently widening. Statistics from the World Bank tell us that in 2005 26% of the developing world was living below US$1.25 a day, representing 1.4 billion people. If we look at the number living on less than $2 a day, that represented 48% of the world population, or around 2.5 billion men, women and children, a massive testament to human suffering. (2) At the same time we have the ‘super rich’, to be found among the celebrities of sport, television and movie, the top bankers, investment fund managers, lawyers and doctors. It is true that many on the ‘rich-list’ are extremely generous in giving their time, talent and wealth for the global good. Microsoft founder Bill Gates is particularly keen to stamp out the world’s worst diseases that afflict and kill millions each year, most often the young and the poor. He has pledged $25 million to buy 100 million oral polio vaccines for Nigeria, and announced in 2009 that he was giving £115 million towards developing a vaccine for Malaria, which kills up to 2.7 million people a year, 75% of them African children. Bono, the Irish lead singer of U2, best known perhaps for his key involvement with the Make Poverty History campaign, uses his celebrity status to fight for social justice worldwide.
There are others whose lavish life-styles breed an envy and greed, particularly it would seem among the young who are being taught by example that material wealth and celebrity status are the measure of ‘success’. And in the developing world others are attracted to our consumer life style and aspire to similar ‘wealth’. Meanwhile the poor of the world continue to struggle for survival.
The truth is that we have forgotten how to live simply and sustainably with totally unselfish regard for those around us. We have lost the ability to generously share, to ensure that everyone in the same household has had their fill before going ourselves for second helpings.
Consider also that we have an obesity epidemic in the developed western world. Indeed obesity is the second leading cause of preventable death in the USA. An estimated 65% of U.S. adults, aged 20 years and older, and 15% of children and adolescents are overweight or obese. Around 34% of adults are obese. That amounts to c. 59 million people! The figures elsewhere are not much better. In 2006 24% of the adult English population were obese, and in children up to 15 years of age the figure was 16%. And both figures are increasing. (3)
We need to find ways to adapt to sustainable living in a world where we can be sure that our good fortune is shared, where everyone has their basic human needs met, where both extremes of wealth and poverty do indeed become history.
We need to build our economy on principles of sustainability and justice for all. Only then can we hope to heal the world.
We must never lose sight of our part as individual players in the world economy. Whether we like it or not, we are all involved as consumers and as investors. Even if we believe we are doing all we can to help, by maximizing our recycling, curbing our expenditure, avoiding waste, and investing ethically, we are still unknowingly or blindly fuelling a wounded economy that is perpetuating the world’s injustices. The responsibility is ours…

And that is why I support the essence of the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy London Stock Exchange protests.

to be continued


1. Alastair McIntosh Soil and Soul Chapter 14 et. seq.
2. World Bank poverty statistics available for 2005 as at March 2009.
3. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, statistics at http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/index.html and Statistics on obesity, physical activity and diet: England, January 2008


© Eleanor Stoneham 2011 Excerpts from Healing this Wounded Earth

Occupy Wall Street and St Paul's - Again

The Occupy Wall Street and St Paul's Demonstrations both have a very good point. We do have a fundamentally flawed current economic system. I've written much on this both on this blog and elsewhere.
Yes we may feel impotent in the face of bureaucracy and the power of the banks and the seeming lack of any progress in addressing the flaws.But there are things we can all do, that will not necessarily change the world's economy in any immediate significant way, but will certainly help at a local level and nibble away at creating more sustainable and responsible living.
There are millions of citizens worldwide who are already making their own practical contributions using local money systems, barter schemes for goods and services, for example. Perhaps you are already involved in some way. Well Done! But none of us can be complacent in the amount we do. Suppose that we all start just one more ripple? The global effect could be profound.
Just as one example, I have in mind the Complementary and Community Currencies.
These flourished in the United States in the Great Depression but did not survive World War II and the post war economic boom. They have been successfully resurrected and now there are thousands of schemes in the United States alone and many more worldwide.
LETS (The Local Exchange Trading System) is probably the most widely available and best-known system and is well established globally. This system trades in Green Dollars, a unit invented and designed by Michael Linton and David Weston in British Colombia Canada in the 1980s.
The principle of these schemes is simple. Units issued by individuals as part of a transaction between provider and recipient of services create an instant and simultaneous debit and credit. No debt is built up with an outside agency, but there is a commitment on the part of the recipient to give service to someone else in the community. Likewise those who have accumulated credits have a commitment to give the opportunity to others in the community to balance their accounts by requesting services from them.
Some of these systems allow for both national and community money to be used, so while they do not have value outside of the particular community where they operate, they allow members to conserve national currency. In this sense they complement national currency.
At community level these schemes are proving to be extremely successful in their various forms and act as cohesive forces to bring communities together in a true spirit of trust and cooperation. They can give a sense of self worth to the poor and marginalized, the unemployed or unemployable. They recognize that everyone has an intrinsic value, has unique and individual gifts. We can all offer something of ourselves to others in such a barter arrangement.
Time Dollars represent another simple system for the provision of labor. With this, one hour is represented by one credit. Everyone is valued for their own contribution regardless of skills. This appropriates equal value to the previously unvalued non-monetary economy, including traditionally unpaid caring skills for example. As a result such systems have a profound and positive effect on a person’s self value.
There are many other variations on the basic idea of the complementary currency, such as Ithaca Hours, Philadelphia- Eastern Neighborhood Exchange (The PEN Exchange) and the WIR in Switzerland that celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary in 2009.(1)

No one solution is ever going to be the right one or the best one to the exclusion of all others. We must see any of these initiatives within the overall big picture and we should celebrate and build upon common features rather than dwell on differences that can stifle progress. Whatever we do should be within the spirit of community and cooperation.

I'd love to hear readers' own experiences of any of these schemes.

(1)See for example: Bernard Lietaer, The Future of Money – Creating New Wealth, Work and a Wiser World, and Thomas H. Greco, Money: 2001.

Occupy Wall Street - Corporate greed protest on NY's Brooklyn Bridge

Island, the last novel that Aldous Huxley wrote in 1962, is set on Pala, an imaginary island community in the Indian Ocean. The peaceful and truly content inhabitants have developed an idyllic society by committing themselves to personal spiritual growth based broadly on Shivaite Buddhism, along with some Hindu, Tao and Confucius influence. In addition they steer clear of the three pillars of Western prosperity: armaments, universal debt and planned obsolescence, the depreciation that is purposefully built into so many of our manufactured goods to encourage continual and wasteful replacement. The Palanese have equality without loss of individual initiative, empathy for all living beings and respect for the environment. And they hold an overriding belief that God is all pervading or immanent, and man is potentially transcendent, constantly seeking to find the Nirvana or Enlightenment of the ancient Eastern wisdoms.
Sadly the earthly paradise of the island is doomed. It is overtaken by the greed and militarism of an adjoining country, triggered when an English sailor shipwrecked on Pala becomes caught up in a world take-over bid for the island’s oil.

Fast forward to the plight we see today - the ever widening gap between the few rich and the very many poor. And much of the reasoning for this is tied up with the many flaws in our global economy, some at corporate level. I know that I am not alone in thinking that the loss of corporate heart and soul is not good for our planet.
As the late Anita Roddick explained, ‘The huge relentless wheel that is global capitalism is driven by faceless, unaccountable bureaucrats and businessmen who seem deaf to the needs of individuals, communities, indeed whole nations. Yet it takes little imagination to see that this situation is unsustainable if we wish to have a planet that is worth living in, and not one where the developed world becomes a fortress to repel the needs of poorer nations’ (or, indeed where, much closer to home, the 1% wealthy are cocooned and oblivious to the needs of the 99% who struggle for a better living). That is what Occupy Wall Street is all about.

Alastair McIntosh observes that a large company is:

"…a mindless monster, unless people all the way through the system devote themselves to making it otherwise. Then, and only then, can it start to become more like a community with values, and maybe even something of a soul…this means …having an ethic that serves profit but transcends mere money making. It is only human goodness that can bring this about and so humanize the otherwise inhumane world created by emergent properties of greed.

The wealthy corporate bosses need to listen to the people. Meanwhile the protest on New York's Brooklyn Bridge continues, and the world is watching.

Anita Roddick, 2001, Take it Personally: How Globalization Effects (sic) You, London: Thornson, 2001, From Introduction, quoted in http://www.pcdf.org/SVN_Living_Economies.htm#N_2_


Alastair McIntosh, Soil and Soul: People versus Corporate Power, London: Aurum Press, 2004.