We have learned to be entertained, encouraged, and dedicated to admiring our son Jacob. When he becomes enthralled, even obsessed, with an idea, we are amazed at the enthusiasm with which he dedicates himself to a project.
We were never more amused nor more admiring than the time he learned how to say “perpetual motion machine.” Most of us have encountered the PMM at some point in our development. Most of have remained enthralled to some degree thinking about a machine that creates enough energy to keep itself functioning without external help. Our Jacob had the plans. We helped him buy the parts. In no time the deck swing had been pushed back to make room for the project work area. As he worked on the project I practiced my spiel which would retain some hope for future projects, offer condolences, suggest ways to analyze his method and continue trying to determine what to do to make it happen when he returned to the project.
He never has returned to the project. He has NEVER returned to the project but his enthusiasm is as boundless as ever and he has had some very successful projects since.
I am convinced the most destructive disease ever to plague society is currently mesmerized by greed. One of the current manifestations of the greed disease that is destined to destroy society and civilization is a version of the perpetual motion machine. Here is how it works.
Like alchemy or “winning” casino strategies, greed is driving an ever increasing number of participants to the PERPETUAL MOTION MACHINE. The machine will never work. It will appear to work best and longest for the richest. The outer fringes of the whirl wind is where the pseudo-rich, or almost rich, or wannabees, will lose adhesion and adherence to the whirl wind.
Ultimately the fringe does considerable harm. In insisting they are not part of the non-rich world, they create disunity of several kinds and destroy vital interfaces of several kinds. Examples are breaks in kinds of relationship that keep society and the economy functioning.
This can be seen already in GOP efforts to discontinue unemployment benefits, and cripple social security (the only element of government that has continued to function as designed and pay for itself). And yes, GOP congress people are on the fringe of the whirl wind. They are not rich. At least they would not be if their pockets were not stuffed by lobbyist pocket stuffers.
Fringers interfere with job creation and the continued functioning of vital social utilities. In their efforts to continue to play the investment games of the perpetual motion machine they distract themselves from high value interfaces with their communities. This is more critical in smaller communities which need particpation of the entire community to function as highly independent and self sufficient social and economic units which will be the ultimate salvation of society overall.
In recent months we have seen the Federal Reserve provide the rich with cash incentives to invest in essentially a closed market. From the fringe to the center of the whirl wind, rich and pseudo-rich have frolicked, greedily excited with getting all they can and canning all they can get as a result of the Fed’s pseudo largesse.
Whether the debt ceiling is raised is really a moot point. The dollar is coming down. The perpetual motion machine will not work. The rich will still be rich. But, dollars will not be a sustainable fuel. At long last the rich will begin to learn the meaning of sustainability.
Outside the whirl wind, communities are bginning to exercise a kind of ostracism of their own. They will continue to cement real values as they replace dollars with their own local currencies, with barter, with exchange work. In doing so they will exhibit a knowledge of the definition of sustainability and a capability of utilizing it and a total lack of concern for perpetual motion machines and the greed diseases that have reached epidemic levels wherever politicians gather.
If that last paragraph is over your head, the better path is 1) thinking about it, 2) discussing it with members of your own community, 3) learning more by looking into the volume of information that we and other community minded researchers and activists have and will be providing, 4) learning how to abandon old paradigms, 5) and speaking of paradigms ultimately wishing you had read my book Psycho Paths and Con Trails when it was published a year ago on Kindle.
Bienestado - State of Well Being 