I decided to use the metaphor of disease

to describe the current state of social affairs

and the trends it foreshadows and perpetuates.

I was first introduced to this idea

of relating social state to a cellular state

by a man named John McMurtry

who wrote a book called "The Cancer Stage of Capitalism."

The rationale is pretty simple. Just as human beings

have to deal with pathogens invading and harming their life system

so too does the social system we all share.

Of course, these societal diseases are not generated

by ways of physical germs or the like.

Rather, they come in the form

of presupposed principles of preference

cultural "memes" that transfer from one to another based on values

and hence, belief systems.

These "memes" or patterns of perspective and behavior

are what eventually result from or comprise

the cultural manifestations around us

such as the ideas of democracy

Republicans, Democrats, the American Dream, etc.

In Chapter One we will examine the symptoms

and hence diagnose the current stage of disease we are in.

Then in Chapter Two we will establish a prognosis

meaning what can we expect from the future

as the current pathogenic patterns continue.

And finally, in Chapter Three, we will discuss treatment

for our current state of sickness

and this is where the concept of a Resource-Based Economy

will be initially examined.

However, as an introduction to this

I am first going to describe what I call the "invisible prison".

This is the closed, intellectual feedback system

that consistently slows or even stops

new socially altering concepts from coming to fruition.

[It] stops progress. Let me explain.

The social order, as we know it, is created out of ideas

either directly or as a systemic consequence.

In other words, somebody somewhere did something

which generated a group interest, which then led to the implementation

of a specific social component, either in a physical form

philosophical form, or both.

Once a given set of ideas are entrusted

by a large enough group of people, it becomes an institution.

And once that institution is made dominant in some way

while existing for a certain period of time

that institution can then be considered an establishment.

Institutional establishments are simply social traditions

given the illusion of permanence.

In turn, the more established they become

the more cultural influence they tend to have on us

including our values, and hence, our identities and perspectives.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the established institutions

governing a person's environment is no less than a conditioning platform

to program that person with a specific set of values

required to maintain the establishment.

Hence, we're going to call these "established value programs".

I have found the analogy of computer programming

to be a great way to frame this point.

While there is always a debate about genetics

and environmental influence which

Roxanne Meadows will go into at length later in the program

it's very easy to understand in the context of values

meaning what you think is important and not important

that information influences or conditioning

is coming from the world around you.

Make no mistake, every intellectual concept

which each one of us finds merit with

is the result of a cultural information influence

one way or another.

The environment is a self-perpetuating programming process

and just like designing a software program for your computer

each human being is, advertently and inadvertently

programmed into their world view.

To continue the analogy, the human brain is a piece of hardware

and the environment around you constitutes the programming team

which creates the values and perspective.

Every word you know has been taught to you one way or another.

Every concept and belief you have

is a result of this same influence.

Jacque Fresco once asked me

"How much of you is you?"

The answer is kind of a paradox

for either nothing is me, or everything is me

when it comes to the information I understand and act upon.

Information is a serial process, meaning the only way

that a human being can come up with any idea

is through taking in dependent information

that allows that idea to be realized.

We appear to be culturally programmed from the moment

we come into this world to the moment we die

and I'm not going to drill in it much more than that.

However, consequently, the cultural attributes

we maintain as important values

are most often the ones that are reinforced by the external culture.

I'm going to say that again.

The most dominant cultural attributes maintained

are the ones that are reinforced by your environment.

If you are born into a society which rewards competition over collaboration

then you most likely will adopt those values in order to survive.

The point is, we are essentially bio-chemical machines.

While the integrity of our machine-processing power

and memory is contingent, in part, on genetics

the source of our actions come fundamentally

from the ideas and experiences installed

on our mental hardware by the world around us.

However, our biological computer, the human mind

has an evolutionarily-installed operating system

with some seemingly difficult tendencies built in

which tends to limit our objectivity

and, hence, our rational thought process.

This comes in the form of emotional inclinations.

You know, I'm sure many people here have heard the phrase "Be objective!"

No human being can be fully objective.

That's one of the important things I learned, actually, from Mr. Fresco.

Therefore, there's a very common propensity for us humans

to find something that works for our needs

given the social structure, and then to hold on to it for dear life

regardless of new conflicting information which might rationally expect

a logical change to occur.

Change tends to be feared, for it upsets our associations.

And, by the way, when it comes to maintaining income

in the monetary system, you see this propensity in full force

which I will talk about a lot more later.

Therefore, any time someone dares to present an idea outside of

or contrary to the establishment programming

the reaction is often a condemning of the idea as blasphemy

or undermining, or a conspiracy, or simply erroneous.

For example, in the academic world investigation often becomes confined

to self-referring circles of discourse:

closed feedback loops which assume that the foundational assumptions

of their schools of thought are empirical

and only these experts, as defined by their established credentials

are considered viable authorities

therein often dominating influence over the public opinion.

This is a doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis

and please excuse my lack of Hungarian pronunciation

but he was a physician who lived in the mid 1800's

who performed childbirths.

Through a series of events, he realized a pattern

that there was a relationship with the transfer of disease

and the fact that the doctors of the times

never washed their hands after performing autopsies.

The doctors of the time would handle dead bodies

in the lower elements of the hospitals and then they would go up

and they would perform childbirths without washing their hands.

So, this doctor, realizing this pattern

he started to tell his colleagues about this.

He said "You should wash your hands before doing this

before performing any type of surgery or childbirth

especially after handling a dead body."

He was laughed at. He was laughed at and ignored.

He published papers and they were dismissed and ridiculed.

And after many years of trying this issue, he was finally committed

to a mental institution, where he died.

It was many years after his death when Louis Pasteur

developed the germ theory of disease

that his observations were finally understood

and people realized what a horrible mistake had been made.

In the words of John McMurtry, professor of philosophy in Canada

"In the last dark age, one can search

the inquiries of this era's preserved thinkers

from Augustine to Ockham and fail to discover

a single page of criticism of the established social framework

however rationally insupportable feudal bondage, absolute paternalism

divine right of kings, and the rest may be."

In the current final order, is it so different?

Can we see in any media, or even university press

a paragraph of clear unmasking

of the global regime that condemns

a third of all children to malnutrition

with more food than enough available?

In such an order, thought becomes indistinguishable from propaganda.

Only one doctrine is speakable, and a priest caste of its experts

prescribe the necessities and obligations to all.

Social consciousness is incarcerated

within the role of a kind of ceremonial logic

operating entirely within the received framework

of an exhaustively-prescribed regulatory apparatus

protecting the privileges of the privileged.

Methodical censorship triumphs in the guise of scholarly rigor

and the only room left for searching thought

becomes the game of competing rationalizations."

People tend not to criticize the social order

because they are bound within it.

We are running a thought program

which has been installed on our mental hardware

which inherently controls our frame of reference.

To use a different analogy, it's like they're in a game

and the idea of questioning the integrity of the game itself rarely occurs.

In fact, members of society often become so indoctrinated

by their socially acceptable norms, that each person's very meaning

is framed by the dominant established value system

and the interpretation of new information

is consciously, or even sub-consciously, prefiltered

to be consistent with their prior biases.

Now, this basic idea understood

let's hone our focus

and briefly consider this mind-lock phenomenon as you could call it

in the context of economics

specifically, market economics.

Actually, a more accurate term at this stage would be 'economic theology'.

For, as this presentation will explore

the majority of people on this planet

not only have no idea how they are being affected negatively

by the market economy at large, they actually, on average

hold a steadfast commitment to its principles

based on nothing more than the traditional indoctrination.

I got an email once that said to me

"If you're against the free market, you're against freedom."

(Laughter)

And naturally, I shuddered at this state of mind control

that the dominant established orthodoxy has successfully imposed.

Of course, this is how power is maintained and has been maintained

by the dominant established orthodoxies since the beginning of time.

And the trick, again, is to condition people so thoroughly

into the established value systems, that any thought of an alternative

is inherently ruled out without critical examination.

And to show how deeply pervasive this phenomenon is

you will notice that virtually all the activist organizations

in the environmental, social, and political movements of the day

always exclude the market system itself

as a determinant of harmful effects.

It doesn't even occur to them.

Instead, they focus on individuals and certain groups

or corrupt corporations

and while it is needed

in a per-case basis to target problematic areas

it avoids the mechanism which is essentially creating the problem.

This is the fatal flaw of what's happening in the so-called activist community today.

And, as will be firmly and clearly established

over the course of this presentation

the greatest destroyer of ecology;

the greatest source of waste and pollution;

the greatest purveyor of violence, war, crime

inhumanity, poverty, and social distortion;

the greatest generator of social and personal neurosis

mental disorders, depression, anxiety;

and the greatest source of social paralysis

stopping us from moving into new methodologies

for global sustainability and hence progress on this planet