IntegralJournal

The Two Progressive Camps

It is my observation that those who are concerned about the health of the planet fall into two camps: the tribalists and the non-profiteers.  Neither is the answer to the planetary predicament.  (If you were not aware that there was a predicament, please do a Google search of "Limits to Growth" at this site.)

The Tribalists

There is much talk online about how we ought to revert to living tribally.  Those who are attracted to the concept should read The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution.  Tribalism is regressive.  We've been there and done it -- still doing it -- and it doesn't lead to quality of life.

The Non-Profiteers

The other camp believes that having more non-profits will save the planet.  One example is the proliferation of Microfinance.  Those who get a warm and fuzzy feeling about micro lending need to be aware that the average loan rate for a group like Kiva.org is approximately 24%.  The original definition of usury was charging interest period.  Credit is the root cause of our predicament -- not the solution.

What to Do?

First of all, we have to acknowledge that the following is true:

There is as yet no civilized society,
But only a society in the process of becoming civilized.
There is as yet no civilized nation,
But only nations in the process of becoming civilized.
From this standpoint,
We can now speak of a collective task of humankind.
The task of humanity is to build a genuine civilization.

— Felix Adler (1851-1933)

We have to come up with something that has not been tried.  Tribalism has been tried and it failed miserably.  Non-profiteering is being tried on a massive scale and has not shifted our destructive course in any macro measurable way.

I've probably bogged readers down in the detail that I've provided at this site in the past.  The details are not important.  The important thing is to establish an institution that provides capital for quality environments -- whether single family homes or larger, comprehensive campuses -- around the world.  Those who provide the capital will not earn interest.  The concept of money earning interest discounts the future.  Instead, our new breed of capitalists will have access to the assets at the lesser of cost or market.

We have made things far too complicated.  It's time for a change.

The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size.

--Oliver Wendell Holmes  

Mindful Capital Club Presentation

Presentation and Background Information

From the back cover:

Those who are mindful are beginning to realize that only an entirely new operating system can prevent the collapse of civilization. However, to date, no one has presented such a system. This presentation outlines a system that has the potential to serve as a viable replacement for the current paradigm.

So Many Threads...So Little Fabric

Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,
Rains from the sky a meteoric shower
Of facts…they lie unquestioned, uncombined.
Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill
Is daily spun; but there exists no loom
To weave it into fabric.

--Edna St. Vincent Millay
(As quoted in A Bridge to the 18th Century)

Some "Biological Baseline" thoughts from Morris Berman in Wandering God: A Study in Nomadic Spirituality :

There are certain experiences common to the human race...that constitute a biological baseline.  One of these is existential awareness, the perception of having a self separate from the environment....this moment of identity is also the moment of alienation, of distinctness from the rest of the world....the human race has tried to grapple with it in three basic ways.  The first is the mode of consciousness associated with the HG [Hunter Gatherer] civilization, which I shall refer to as "paradox," or the experience of "space."...It is not characterized by a search for "meaning," an insistence or hope that the world will be this way or that....

The second mode is very much about meaning and the process of being absorbed in it.  I call this constellation the "sacred authority complex" (SAC); and despite what seems to be antecedents of it in Paleolithic times, I believe that its real flowering, certainly its institutionalization, coincides with agricultural, sedentary civilization....fear of death has assumed a prominent place.  The human being has not so much a world as a world view; and the perception tends to be vertical in nature.  In other words, whereas with paradox the "sacred," such as it is, simply is the world, in the case of the SAC sacrality has been projected upward, into the realm of the gods....The SAC forms a kind of psychological cocoon, in which security is relatively assured and potential alienation kept under control.

Sometime around 2000 B.C. or after, the verticality of the SAC became even sharper.  This was the emergence of what I have referred to elsewhere as the "ascent experience," although traces of it may have existed in the Paleolithic.  By "ascent experience" I mean the phenomenon of unitive trance or ecstasy, which is the most dramatic way of generating (temporary) psychological security....

In contrast to paradox, or the diffuse alertness of HG consciousness, ascent experience is vertical and intense; it provides "certainty" both in terms of its overwhelming numinous quality and in terms of the spiritual/political hierarchy it inevitably generates.  [Dalai Lama?]  In religious forms such as the Greek mystery cults, ritual practices were used to obliterate consciousness, to submerge the ego into the One, the Absolute.  It was from these cults that Gnosticism, and eventually Christianity, flourished, and they had a heavy impact on Plato's Dialogues as well, which often entered Western civilization as a kind of countercultural, underground stream (the Neoplatonism of the Renaissance, for example).  All of this served to offset the pain of ego-consciousness by means of a mystical experience that merged the psyche with the rest of the creation, what Freud called the "oceanic experience."  In his view, the experience was regressive, the attempt to return to a fetal state, or to the primitive, archaic mother.  Jung, as is well known, regarded it as progressive, the contacting of a certain kind of primitive wisdom.  Both were probably correct; and since the two views are irreconcilable, there is a conundrum within Western culture especially that sits with us, very uneasily, to this day.

The third way of dealing with ego-consciousness is the mode of industrial societies, what might rightly be called "dullardism" -- lowering consciousness, in other words, "spacing out."  Trance practices still exists in these societies, but only as a type of "heresy" among marginal or fringe groups.  This is why drugs such as Valium and Prozac are legal in the United Sates and Europe and why peyote (mescaline) and magic mushrooms (psilocybin) are not.  With dullardism, the goal is simple to go unconscious, by means of tranquilizers, alcohol, TV, spectator sports, organized religion, compulsive busyness and workholism, and so on.

...civilization, whether agricultural or industrial, is a seamless whole.  In both, political arrangements are vertical, and the sacred is elsewhere, "in heaven," with the leadership partaking of sanctity (a divine order) or imbued with aura, charisma.  This is not to say that democracies don't often elect dull and unimaginative leaders, but the ideal, at any rate, is a heroic one, which accounts for the survival of monarchies in many democratic countries as well as the attraction to popular charismatic figures, such as the Kennedys.  Hence the famous observation by the German sociologist, Max Weber, that we swing between bureaucracy and charisma.  Indeed the two seem to need each other.

As institutionalized entities, at any rate, vertical politics and consciousness have not been with us for very long.  On an anthropological time scale, for example, the state is clearly aberrant.  Whether one reads Oswald Spengler (The Decline of the West) or Joseph Tainter (The Collapse of Complex Societies), one comes away with a similar impression, that civilizations are inherently unstable; they inevitably collapse.  Pursuing a vertical ideal, their center of gravity is too high. [p.3-5]

As many have pointed out, although mankind survived these collapses in the past, the scale of the destruction may not permit us to this time.  All of the above paradigms threaten survival except for "paradox" or some similar state of consciousness.

Interestingly enough, charismatic figures such as Ken Wilber are caught up in the vertical and cannot step outside the vertical paradigm.

And...Morris Berman, in my opinion, does as well as anyone these days in coming up with the fabric.

A Wisdom Economy

As Herman Daly noted in one of his books, we need to move beyond a knowledge economy.  He suggests a wisdom economy.  Most system experts think that the world is overpopulated by at least 5 billion people.  The benchmark for attaining a wisdom economy would be a world in which we did not feed the fish and a world in which all food products are grown organically.  If you do not agree that this is a worthwhile goal then you may as well stop reading right now.  If this is our goal we are obviously overpopulated and have a lot of work to do. We have to dramatically reduce our consumption in order to have even a slim chance at avoiding the collapse that many already believe is inevitable.

Why have we got ourselves in this mess?  It appears that biologically and psychologically we are pre-disposed to be breeders and consumers -- both habits do not bode well for a quality future.  Much has been written on the topic and many of the books are listed in the left column of this page.  I personally think that boredom -- inactive minds -- is behind both activities.

How do we get ourselves out of this mess?  We have to get beyond the dogma of the right and left and to me this will require active minds, rather than the closed ones of the right and the wide open ones of the left.  Active-mind education -- let's call it a liberal education -- is a key component of reversing our destructive and unethical course.  Education is a key.

We also have to switch from an economy that is remarkably inefficient in delivering a quality life to one that is efficient.  As one example, let's think about the process of getting food to our tables.  The downside of fast food is so obvious that we'll skip the discussion and focus on the supermarket.  Most of us drive to the supermarket.  If we look around the supermarket these days we notice all the vendors who are roaming the aisles stocking their products.  We notice all of the packaging.  And the fact that there are actually people who do nothing all day but scan items over a scanner.  (No wonder that they just want to go home to breed and consume!)  Why not deliver meals through a series of neighborhood dining clubs who grow their own produce to the extent possible?

To be ethical, we have to start to occupy less and less square footage.  In order to house the entire world in a quality way, we will eventually have to exclusively occupy less than 200 to 300 square feet per family.  Keep in mind that this will be the wisdom economy.  An economy that will not even remotely resemble the one we have now.  Indeed, it will grant us the leisure time to develop personally and intellectually.  One finds that the more one develops personally and intellectually, the less material things one needs.

Timing is of the essence.  How do we launch the wisdom economy before much more destruction of our minds, bodies, spirits, and the environment occurs?  It will likely involve the greatest marketing mechanism created to date: Wall Street.  We create a company that grants access to its assets -- 200 to 300 square foot suites with a restaurant/club nearby -- based on the number of shares that are held by respective shareholders.  Everything is at cost and all shares issued will be priced at $1.00 per share.  The company is non-profit, ethical, and operated by fellows (not the kind who work for the think tanks dedicated to defending the status quo) who are interested in learning and serving in exchange for room, board, and incidentals.  This will give investors the opportunity to put their wealth in a system that recognizes that resources are finite.

Questions? Comments?    

Ethics and the Second Law of Thermodynamics

In a comment to an earlier post, I linked to an essay that I believe provides some good counsel for our times.  The abstract of that essay follows:

An Abstract of "A General Statement of Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons"

Although "The Tragedy of the Commons" is widely acclaimed, activists in environmental causes as well as professionals in ethics continue to act as if the essay had never been written. They ignore the central thesis that traditional, a priori thinking in ethics is mistaken and must be discarded. Hence the need remains to give the tragedy of the commons a more general statement--one which can convince a wide public of the correctness of its method and principles. In essence Hardin's essay is a thought experiment. Its purpose is not to make a historical statement but rather to demonstrate that tragic consequences can follow from practicing mistaken moral theories. Then it proposes a system-sensitive ethics that can prevent tragedy. The general statement of the tragedy of the commons demonstrates that an a priori ethics constructed on human-centered, moral principles and a definition of equal justice cannot prevent and indeed always supports growth in population and consumption. Such growth, though not inevitable, is a constant threat. If continual growth should ever occur, it eventually causes the breakdown of the ecosystems which support civilization. Henceforth, any viable ethics must satisfy these related requirements:
(1) An acceptable system of ethics is contingent on its ability to preserve the ecosystems which sustain it.
(2) Biological necessity has a veto over the behavior which any set of moral beliefs can allow or require.
(3) Biological success is a necessary (though not a sufficient) condition for any acceptable ethical theory. In summary, no ethics can be grounded in biological impossibility; no ethics can be incoherent in that it requires ethical behavior that ends all further ethical behavior. Clearly any ethics which tries to do so is mistaken; it is wrong.

February 26, 1997
Herschel Elliott
Emeritus Philosophy
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL 32611

Intuitively, many people know this to be true.  Most have not thought about how to live their lives under this new system of ethics.  Over the years, I have given it a great deal of thought and the result is the "club" that has been described at this blog.

Young people in particular have a strong incentive to see society move towards this new system.  The old one screws them big time.  The following excerpt from Beyond Growth is relevant:

In standard economics ["mainstream" economics that does not acknowledge the Second Law of Thermodynamics] the balancing of future against present costs and benefits is done by discounting.  A time discount rate is a numerical way of expressing the value judgment that beyond a certain point the future is not worth anything to presently living people.  The higher the discount rate, the sooner that point is reached.  The value of the future to future people does not count in the standard approach. [p.36]

This is in some ways related to the immorality of usury that I have discussed in earlier posts.  Although I think that most people will find it difficult to move away from the current, materialistic paradigm, interestingly enough, unmanageable levels of debt may force people to another paradigm -- one in which there is not any monetary income for the creditors to come after.  Although debt is an individual responsibility, it is also a societal problem.  Debt is embedded in almost all costs of goods and services.

It is possible to see ones life neither as self-made nor as the product of human society alone but as a gift of the total evolutionary process.  If I view myself primarily in this way, then it is appropriate for my response to be one of gratitude.  The fitting ethical action then is service of that to which I find myself so comprehensively indebted.  To serve the evolutionary process can be understood to mean furthering its inclusive work.  One would then strive in general to contribute to the progress or growth of life in all its diversity of forms, beginning with human life but by no means limiting oneself to it. [From an essay titled Ecology, Ethics, and Theology by John Cobb, Included in Toward A Steady-State Economy]

There are so many reasons to live differently.  Over the past few days I have come to realize that what I am proposing is a liberal arts club -- something that we can get involved with at an early age and have throughout our lives.  Most people never get a liberal arts education and most of those that do inevitably enter the world of materialism.

I'll end with one excerpt from A General Statement of the Tragedy of the Commons:

In fact some people, who reason correctly, reason from different premises.  They may choose to live simply so as to meet the needs of life with the least effort and with the least damaging impact on the environment.  For such persons, simplicity and frugality can afford a better life because they allow more opportunity for leisure, for cultural and social activity, and for intellectual development.

Matt

A Way of Thinking About Life and Living

Please note that I start with "A" in the Title of this post.  I often think about how Christopher Alexander got his book at the head of the list on the left of this page by using "A" rather than "The".  This distinction between "a" and "the" happens to be critical to my philosophy on life and living.

..."Thinking, reading, and art require a cultural space," writes Russell Jacoby in Dogmatic Wisdom, "a zone free from the angst of moneymaking and practicality.  Without a certain repose or leisure, a liberal education shrivels." [p.122 of The Twilight of American Culture]

The university may look like an institution for the advancement of higher culture, in other words, but its content and organization are corporate, and the result is that the coinage of education is severely debased.  ("Another bad effect of commerce," wrote Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations, "is that the minds of men are contracted, and rendered incapable of elevation.  Education is despised, or at least neglected....") [p.123 of The Twilight of American Culture]

The key to life and living is to have the time to learn in a liberal arts -- and sciences -- sort of way.  However, this learning must continue throughout our lives and indeed this learning -- in my opinion -- is the meaning of our lives.  Any time we think we know "the" way, we stop learning and transition from an active mind to a closed mind.  As indicated in the excerpt above, the corporate nature of our learning -- and living -- contracts our minds.  The expectation is for us to be clever rather than wise.

The Jesuits were [are?] fond of saying, "Give us the child for the first seven years; after that, nothing much matters." [p.241 of Dark Ages America]

This is true of our culture in general.  We indoctrinate our young through required pledges in our public schools.  The result is a nationalistic and close-minded perspective that thoroughly inhibits our ability to be humble.  The mind closes down early and stays shut down for the remainder of most people's lives.  Most end up believing in a Supreme Being rather than experiencing the joy of being -- and the joy of not setting any boundaries to our learning.

A Related Note on the movie An Inconvenient Truth:

The suggestions for reducing your carbon footprint at the end of the movie are not enough to make a difference.  Our only hope for getting closer to a sustainable world is to dramatically change the way we live.  Rather than buying a hybrid car, for example, we must do without a car or share one with dozens of other people.  I've found that one of the consequences of the on-going learning that is described above is that the more you learn the less you need.  In other words, there is a practical reason to initiate a philosophy of expanding your learning boundaries.

Learn and Live. Matt

Paradigm Club Presentation

Paradigm Club™-- A Zen-Inspired Fusion of Living, Learning and Wealth Management

Imagine spending a week a year or fifty-two weeks a year in an environment without cell phones, offices, and the propaganda and stress that "normal" life has come to represent.  Imagine an environment that is designed, built, and operated by scholars of all ages who are interested in learning for the sake of learning.  Imagine an environment where primary health care is on-site.  Imagine living well.  Why spend your time waiting to die -- or waiting for that next investment statement -- when you can live in the moment?

Problem

• Planetary Overload
• Peak Oil Consequences
• Staggering Health Issues -- Obesity and Mental Health For Starters
• Denial and Delusion
• Usury/Mortgage
• Most Individuals Have Their Wealth In The Conventional Paradigm

Solution

• New Paradigm in Living and Learning
• Shifting From Possession to Access
• Re-tooling Education to Reflect the Realities of Peak Oil
• Providing A Way to Store Wealth Outside of The Conventional Paradigm
• An Evolutionary Residence Club

Business Model

A fusion of:

• REI (Recreational Equipment, Inc.)
• Jesuits
• Chez Panisse
• Trappist Monks
• Exclusive Resorts
• A Non-profit Bank

Underlying Magic

• Engaging
• Ecological
• Zen-like
• Inflation-Free

Marketing and Sales

• Realtors
• Wall Street
• Fund Raising For Selected Non-Profits
• Private Online Portal

Competition

• If it exists, let me know and I'll move In tomorrow

Management Team

• Two Multi-Dimensional Professionals
• The Process and Product Serve As Compensation
• On-Site
• Hands-On
• Committed to Excellence

Key Metrics

• Initial Project To Be Completed Within 2 Years After Funding

Zen Buddhism and the Paradigm Club

Like others, I believe that the applied teachings of Buddha may help prevent the collapse of our living systems.  The teaching/insight of Buddha is also important because of a similarity to the teachings of saints and sages of most religions throughout history.  As a consequence, they can serve as a jumping-off point for human race unification -- so necessary for a quality future.

I have a theory (credit goes mainly to my spouse who believes that there are two separate species of man) that for certain personality types (maybe 2% of the population), the teachings of Buddha and other enlightened individuals are innate (can be understood at an intellectual and even intuitive level without meditation -- albeit not in the same way as with meditation).  The Path of the Human Being by Dennis Genpo Merzel helped me gain insight into Zen teachings.  I found the following excerpts to be particularly helpful:

Perhaps what I've said makes you wonder about the way the word Buddha is understood in Zen.  Certainly how you understand Buddha can make a critical difference in your practice.  If I say that Buddha is the Enlightened One who lived twenty-five hundred years ago, who can argue?  Shakyamuni Buddha is the historical Buddha who first awakened to his true nature.  But if I limit my understanding of Buddha to Shakyamuni, to whom can I go for guidance in this day and age?  One option is to go to Buddha's recorded teaching, the sutras, to help us clarify and confirm our understanding.  That is the path of the Theravada school of Buddhism.  Thus, the Theravada tradition is similar to the tradition of Christianity that relies on the Bible, and the tradition of Islam that relies on the Koran.  If we want to determine whether we are following the Path of Shakyamuni Buddha, we can turn to the sutras.  The Theravadin tradition is strong and well grounded, but it is also limited to the Dharma as it has been preserved in written form for more than two thousand years.  And from that point of reference, the teaching can't be alive today because Shakyamuni Buddha is dead.

Zen Buddhism has a different view of Buddha's teaching.  We say that the recorded teachings of the Buddha are not only sutras: the Dharma is being expounded today by living Buddhas.  This Zen view was expressed beautifully by Hannyatara, Bodhidharma's teacher.  When Hannyatara was asked by the king to recite a sutra as a blessing before a meal, he did something amazing.  Standing before the king and his guests, Hannyatara said, "Every time I breathe in, I recite the eighty-four thousand sutras.  Every time I breathe out, I recite the eighty-four thousand sutras."  He knew from his own realization that the Dharma abided within his very breath.  Hannyatara was telling the king's guests -- and he is telling you and me -- something very profound and very simple: If we want to understand Buddha's teaching and learn the truth about our nature, we don't need to look any further than our own breath.  Breathing in, breathing out, we express the Dharma perfectly.  And in zazen [sitting meditation], when we focus our mind on the breath and become one with it, we become one with Buddha. [p. 88]

Different personality types are likely attracted to one method or the other.  Some want to refer to a book, while others are more comfortable relying on their powers of observation or intuition.  So far, however, it would seem that an over-reliance on literalism has not served us well in addressing -- or preventing -- our current predicament.  This is not to say that our situation could not be improved substantially with the right type of leadership from gospel-based religions around the world.

I believe that by living our ordinary lives with more wisdom and compassion, we somehow influence the planet as a whole: we counterbalance some of the anger and fear in our world.  All around the globe, wars are being fought over territory, politics, and religion; but to think that those are the real issues is just another form of ignorance.  Most wars are based on greed. [p.210]

We begin, of course, by working with ourselves and our own greed, anger, and ignorance; but at some point we need to move beyond ourselves if we hope to save the planet.  Our world is being consumed by greed, and we are running out of resources and time.  To become aware of the problem is not enough.  We have to do something.  One of the most important tasks is to fight against our tendency to fall back into denial.  We all have strong resistance to staying open and aware.  It hurts!  We share the pain of the world when we are truly awake and present, so it takes great commitment and effort to continue to expand our awareness.  We also need to keep going: we need to draw on the wisdom and compassion that come from awareness and act.  [The 2% mentioned above find it hard to act.  There is always more analysis to be done.]  We are all in this together and need to work as a team -- as a world -- if we want to save ourselves.

Zen practice empowers us with a unique orientation to working with the problems of the world.  Buddhism has always been about going to the root of the problem.  [This is why I think I've found a partner in Zen.]  That doesn't mean we should ignore the branches, but if we really want to solve the problem, we have to go to the root.  We Westerners love quick remedies; we like to apply Band-Aids and to hand out aspirin.  But quick fixes will never touch the underlying illness.  But quick fixes will never touch the underlying illness; ignorance -- the idea of self and other.  To see myself as an island, different and completely separate from everyone else, is delusion.  There are no islands!  What we do affects everything and everybody, and it is our responsibility to stay awake and to do what we can to help others wake up.  Global consciousness needs to be our aspiration.

Bodhisattvas are called "heroes" because they accept this task and vow to continue working until all sentient beings have awakened.  Bodhisattvas know that nothing less will do the job because we are one body and mind; separateness is only an illusion.  The Buddha is also known by another name, the "Great Physician," because after awakening to Oneness, he was driven by compassion to go straight to the root of the disease and to lay out a path to the cure -- waking up to our complete interconnectedness.  Each of us has a role to play in bringing about this shift in consciousness on a global scale.  As individuals, our practice can always be to deepen our own awareness and to manifest it more clearly in everything we do.  Our ordinary life then becomes a vehicle for the Dharma.  The Way is created right under our feet!

For the first time in history, we have the ability to destroy life as we know it.  This awesome fact means we each have a responsibility to awaken to the absolute Truth, to fully realize this one body, one world, One Mind.  We must also remain aware of the relative reality: as individuals, we are completely interconnected.  What I do affects you, what you do affects me, and what we do affects the rest of the world.  In Buddhism this interconnectedness is depicted by Indra's net, a cosmic net with a multifaceted diamond at every knot so that every other diamond reflects all the other diamonds.  Our lives are those diamonds. We cannot separate ourselves from one another, and the fate of the planet depends on how conscious we become.  By realizing our oneness, we are more able to act with compassion and love for every being every stone, this whole earth.  To save ourselves and this planet, we must see who is responsible.  Then we must live it. [p.211 and 212]

Most people are not inclined to wake up unless some crisis or another prompts them.  (It used to be said that we wouldn't start worrying about air pollution until the quality of the air impacted our television reception.  Cable went and screwed that up.)  We should establish a system that grants people the time and inclination to discover Zen and other consciousness raising methods.  Through the process of creating and operating the system, we are always acting to increase awareness.

Over the past few months, I've been discussing a concept that will enable us to live lower impact lifestyles in a comprehensive way.  My wife and I currently have our home for sale.  Since it is something that one can see -- at least virtually -- maybe it can serve as a hypothetical method of gaining insight into the Paradigm Club -- A Zen-Inspired Fusion of Living, Learning, and Wealth Management.

One of the impediments to raising awareness is our desire -- maybe more cultural than anything else -- to possess.  Through the desire to possess -- and a constant barrage of propadanda -- many of us end up with a mortgage that makes it difficult to tell the boss to go to hell.  My goal is to provide a system that enables individuals to envision a life different from the conventional one of debt and delusion.

It will be difficult to transition to a dynamic living system overnight.  Therefore, for most it has to be done in small steps.  Paradigm Club provides the system for doing so.  I can use my home as an example of the dynamics of a new system that recognizes the wholeness of the world.  The house is listed at $265,000.  I would like to use the equity in the home to build a destination spa and an integrated academy.  If the house is the first property in the club, members who make a deposit would have the right to use the house based on the size of their deposit and the timing of their deposit.  For the sake of simplicity, let's say that the home is sold to the club for $260,000 -- including all furnishings.  A member who deposits $5000 ($260,000 divided by 52 weeks) in a membership account would have the right to reserve the home for one week per year.  A member who has less than $5000 deposited would pay the actual cost of the home using an amortization schedule.  For example, if the home and furnishings are expected to fully depreciate over 50 years, the cost to stay for one week would be $100 ($260,000/50 years/52 weeks).  If the reserving member has an unapplied membership deposit of $1000 then he or she has already paid for 20% of the stay ($1000/$5000).  Therefore, only $80 is due for capital costs.  In addition, the member would pay actual costs over the amount of any dues on deposit.

We rarely talk about the tremendous societal costs that spring from charging interest.  We need to start to visualize the dynamics of a usury-free system.  Contrast the costs of the conventional system with those outlined above.

I'm going to close this post with a quote from Jared Diamond's Collapse:

I already mentioned the seeming political impossibility of inducing First World citizens to lower their impact on the world.  But the alternative, of continuing our current impact, is more impossible.  This dilemma reminds me of Winston Churchill's response to criticisms of democracy [I thought it was capitalism.]:  "It has been said that Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."  In that spirit, a lower-impact society is the most impossible scenario for our future -- except for all other conceivable scenarios. [p.524]

A lower-impact society can be a wonderful society.  We only need to see through the delusion that traps us in a world that has no imagination.

Matt