Breaking stereotypes, altering mindsets, broadening narrowed paradigms can be a beautiful art. To effect deep change at any level of society in a non-violent way requires directness, practicality, erudition and courage. All these attributes meet in a soon to be published teaching text designed to transform the approach to economics in the midst of contemporary dilemmas that are almost overwhelming in scale. It is entitled The Modern Universal Paradigm* and it is written as an act of faith in humanity when we are able to take account and make application of the best in mature religious faith and in diffident serious science.
God's lack of boundaries is partly what the story of faith is about. Scientists, in their natural humility before the immensity of the creativity of the planet, also acknowledge that as both the scope and the limit of science. Inclusive justice is, it seems today, a behavioural requirement springing from faith and science, and requiring structural expression in law and audit.
I draw attention to this teaching text because it is about such law and audit in an economic system. It is written with clarity and dignity about effecting radical change at a pace that the present financial system can absorb, while the system's incumbent managers can appreciate that a non-violent revolution is occurring, not a violent rebellion.
Realism about our recent human behaviour under neo-classical economics and what it will take to change it, is neatly summarised in this passage from a novel ,'The Burning':: 'A subversive new paradigm arguing that the neo-classical model of economy, wherein production and consumption circle each other endlessly within a closed system, cannot hold when you take environmental degradation into account. The closed model theory has a huge hole in it. And hooked up to the hole is a huge vacuum tube that sucks up wood, minerals, water, and all the riches of our finite earth.' Thomas Legendre
Introducing a paradigm change as comprehensive as that which the quotation shows, is now required of us. It means believing in the possibility of the impossible as the subject of all our Disciplines. In The Modern Universal Paradigm, Rodney Shakespeare is bold to contribute this contribution in the realm of economics; and its lynchpin, the money supply.
Step aside a moment to sense the urgency for change in the structures.
José Saramago, accepting the Nobel Prize in 1998, as the author of twin novels 'Blindness' and 'Seeing', calling himself 'the apprentice' said. "We pervert reason when we humiliate life, that human dignity is insulted everyday by the powerful of our world, that the universal lie has replaced the plural truths, that man has stopped respecting himself when he lost the respect due to his fellow creatures" – and the earth?
This is serious criticism and Rodney Shakespeare bravely develops strategies worked out in his earlier co-authored books* to promote the practical graduated way to get at the roots of contagious myopia and effect acceptable change that over time will work for everyone and protect the earth. The recognition of distinction in the roles of labour and capital in a highly technical, competitive, contemporary society is the doorway to proving that interest is not necessary in a monetary system that is based on principles of inclusive structural justice. This sane approach to mutuality and justice will, overtime, start to work for everyone and protect the earth. The peace for which we long will come with the new paradigm: not in wishful thinking, but in the practical steps recommended in this challenging text.
It is bold to claim The Universal Paradigm, though the need for such is widely appreciated as the threats to human life on earth mount inexorably. This urgent need and its possibility is suggested in A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the Bottom down' by Robert Laughlin. R. B. Laughlin (Basic Books, New York, 2005). The book champions the phenomena of emergence – the search for a 'physical principle of organisation' in nature – as a key to unlocking the universe's mysteries. We are at the end of the Age of Reductionism and at the dawn of that Age of Emergence, 'a time when the search for ultimate causes of things shifts from the behaviour of the parts to the behaviour of the collective.' Inclusive justice with sensitive stewardship is the target for restoring the unity of this astonishing and resilient planet.
From close range, the brush strokes in an impressionist painting might seem imperfect: but take a step back and the whole is immensely satisfying. Nature is full of similar examples, such as the 'cohesiveness of water or the rigidity of steel.' That all physical laws have 'collective origins' is the reason why a paradigm shift in all disciplines is overdue, and is in some measure also appearing in them all. We have urgent need to rediscover the cohesiveness of humanity in the rhythms of life on a finite planet.
Physical reality is deeply ambiguous, yet pregnant with undiscovered miracles. How can we describe this subtle truth about the universe in simple language? In the work to which I point, Shakespeare leads us in an impressive step towards recognising that economics is primarily about the economy of the planet over time. He is committed to the sovereignty of each human person and the responsibility each has in stewardship of the planet on which we all depend, under the only higher and limitless sovereignty, that of the Creator over all that exists and all absolute values.
The quest for emergent interdependence found in our ecological identity is as ancient as it is modern. Even back in the 3rd century, St. Cyprian [d. 258 AD] was ringing bells for unity!
'Tintinntabulation is an area I sometimes wander into when I am searching for answers – in my life, in my music, in my work. In my dark hours I have the certain feeling that everything outside this one thing has no meaning. The complex and many faceted only confuses me, and I must search for unity.
What is it, this unity, and how do I find my way to it? Traces of this perfect thing appear in many guises – and everything that is unimportant falls away..……. I build with the most primitive materials - with the triad, with one specific tonality. The three notes of a triad are like bells. That is why I called it tintinnabulation'
This relates, I like to think, to the triad I have long felt needed to be understood: that life is in constant oscillation between the intimate, corporate and global levels of inclusive structural justice, never better illustrated than in the ‘Gaia Atlas of Planet Management.’ 1985
Primordial yin and yang exists in creative tension, in a union of all that we consider opposites making them apposites. This is fittingly translated into the teaching text, The Modern Universal Paradigm, as it relates the respective place of labour and of capital for those who must administer an economic system and its financial engine in which interest is not necessary and that works for everyone and protects the earth.
* Binary Economics – The New Paradigm, Robert Ashford and Rodney Shakespeare, 1999
Seven Steps to Justice Rodney Shakespeare and Peter Challen 2002
The Modern Universal Paradigm, Rodney Shakespeare, 2006
