Daniel Pinchbeck: Changing the DNA of Capitalism

We need the ecological crisis to push us out of our comfort zones. And if we look back we know we have been heading in this direction like a half century really.

Probably we're undergoing kind of an evolutionary process as a species like we've developed a kind of perception that we're separate from nature and cosmos, and we're just, you know, independent. But actually what we're experiencing at this rapid evolution of technologies and the matching together of humanity into a global brain has similarities to what we often see in nature in the evolution of species and the birth of individuals. The way the brain of a fetus is formed, as all these neuropathways connect, so now it seems like a birth also involves a lot of trauma and, you know, blood and suffering and so on. So it feels to me quite likely that we're in a kind of evolutionary birthing process. And a lot of things that are hard for us to understand from our present perspective could make sense from a different advantage point. I think that's a very hopeful way of understanding because nature is usually intelligent and usually has a way of orchestrating things towards, you know, new and more imaginative ends in a way. So we might be for instance on the birth of a true planetary civilisation. We might be on the birth of exploring other worlds or acquainting a financial system that provides everybody with a basic income. It's much easier to see the negative and the shadow of what's possible than it is to see the positive and the light in what's happening.

These three areas of technical, technological, infrastructure, social system and then also kind of consciousness which is shaped by culture and media and education, these are the three sort of big areas I think we need to look at. Technically, we know what we need to do in terms of energy, we need to shift to renewable energies very quickly, and we're seeing more and more capacity that makes that possible whether it's the evolution of solar which has now reached kind of grid parity or the evolution of storage systems, the internet of energy, the internet of things which will allow energy to be shared efficiently, so that actually people could become ... individuals or communities could become net producers of energy and feed it back to the grid. In terms of industry the whole idea of a cradle-to-cradle manufacturing, you could have like things that are packaging, being compostable, having seeds in it so that you can create new gardens or something. In terms of agriculture we shift to renewable, regenerative farming practices, no chill farming, permaculture. At the moment we know that the industrial farming system according to the UN there are about 60 years left we can farm in this way before we can't produce anymore food. But luckily we know there are these other ways of farming. Some are not new innovations, they are ancient innovations, we can theoretically learn from the past and scale up these types of models and shift our direction. Other technological areas are very intrigued by the social networks, social media, media in general, and the fact that 15 years ago something like Facebook that now reaches 2 billion people on the planet every day was basically unimaginable. More than one quarter of the planet, various populations matched together in a gobal communications infrastructure that could allow for rapid evolution, new ideas, social innovations I'm extremely interested in. Basically, the thesis of the book is not that we, you know, destroy capitalism but that we recognize the limits in capitalism, that it's a very unsubstainable system and we evolve ways to work past those limits. So for instance we could use mass manufacturing to create housing units that are totally self-sufficient so that people can grow their own food, hydroponics, create their own energy from solar, compost their own waste. There is a Stanford group that is pioneering what they are calling vegan villages as a model for that. Then you think about how there is a refugee problem, and all these refugees are being settled in one of these tent complexes where they are totally dependent from the outside. What if that's turned around and we're able to create, you know, kind of mass manufacturable housing units where people can support themselves in a zillion ways. So I think if we're going to deal with the ecological crisis that we created which really is very dire in many respects, it's going to require innovation that's exponentially scalable quite rapidly, and it seems like we've created the technical means for those innovations to scale, with the communication systems that allow everybody to communicate and the distribution of manufacturing systems. That capitalism will probably need big fundamental shifts in our financial system and our decision-making structures to bring about that types of rapid innovations that are necessary.

We would need to rethink the gaín system so that it's not just about financial capital, financial profit. It's also about corporations becoming more a cooperative of infrastructure with supporting health and biodiversity of ecosystems, you know, health and biodiversity of local communities, and then in terms of the tool that we use to exchange value, you know, that's also something that just had a kind of certain kind of evolution. You know, the idea that money is a fiat currency that is issued by a central bank that’s based on bank debt, you know, it's a form of currency that forces competitive and aggressive behaviour across the society because when you go to a bank to get a loan they value your credit score which means they are valuating your capacity to bring back the interest in that loan, you know, against anybody else in society. And if they think that you‘re a good risk, that you're competitive enough, that you‘ll be able to make more money that they are giving you then they'll give you the loan, right? So the financial system that we have now is built on artificial scarcity, it automatically creates debt and bankrupcy and anxiety and discomfort, and it does that systemically. So then we can ask yourself: OK, how can we do better than that? If there's enough food and resources for people, could it be a universal basic income, could it be, I'm really interested in etats, working on a book called "The Future of Money", it analyses the history of money systems. It argues that there is kind of ying and yang currencies. There are currencies that actually are more ying that support cooperation and community and so on. People propose they have a negative interest currency called the terra and the global scale. The idea is that people have no, like you would get it, it has like a time stamp on it, so it loses value the longer you hold on to it. So instead of holding it you want to share it back because there's no value in holding it. And what's interesting about the blockchain is that it allows people to create kind of tokens, cryptocurrencies that are based uopn, agreed on rules by whoever wants to get involved by supporting it. So if these ideas gain a currency in a sense you could create tokens or cryptocurrencies or distributing autonomous organisations that had more of this ecological and social benefit built into them.

I like this model of thinking about it as an initiation which is something we see over and over again in films, whether it's Avatar or Star Wars or Matrix or whatever, that this is like a crossing over a point and instead of resisting change and the dangers of what's happening people could say: OK, this is the existential situation that we're in and I'm going to step into. This is my hero's journey, this is my mission, my initiation, and how can I be the best contributor to a positive outcome for my family, for humanity, for the planet as a whole? And then it becomes very exciting, almost like a game or something, to see how much can you give, how much can you contribute? But yes I understand that, you know, many people are in established structures and they fear for the future, they have a lot of equity in the systems as it exists. And, you know, that's legitimate also. But, you know, it is a time of profound change, and people are feeling that shaking, as you said, in their value structures ... the stuff that they thought that they want isn't even really that satisfying, and that actually maybe, for instance, you know, in New York there is a lot of people and their culture, young people in their 20s and 30s, but there isn't like communities that are multigenerational, people really care for each other, and it gets tiring as you get older that actually these models of the things that would make the planet more livable and thrivable would also mentally be much more satisfying for the indivdual after a change that admitedly is uncomfortable and weird and difficult and turbulent, and we don't even know quite how to make totally right now. So it is an experimental time, I understand many people would feel threatened, but there's in a sense the die is cast in certain respects like whether it's technology and automation or what's happening environmentally, we're rapidly moving into a different circumstance, and we have to adapt to that kind of mindset of flexibility and fludity and change.