Advantage 50 – Incentives for eco-friendly technologies

Excerpt from the book »Gradido – Natural Economy of Life«

»Every natural law that reveals itself to the observer

implies a higher, still unrecognised one.«

– Alexander von Humboldt

German naturalist

The Equalisation and Environment Fund promotes the development of eco-friendly technologies. Entire branches of industry can thus make the changeover to sustainable, eco-friendly products and services without any risk. Nobody need be concerned about their job. Losing their job would in fact not be a financial problem for the person concerned as, after all, we have the basic income. But many people love their jobs, the cooperation with colleagues and the whole social environment: all this is worth preserving.

Just imagine the creativity of entire humankind being concentrated on decontaminating and conserving nature and the environment. This is Swarm Intelligence in its best sense.How quickly we would then arrive at genuine solutions together!

Advantage 93 – Reinforce what is positive

Excerpt from the book »Gradido – Natural Economy of Life«

»Attention brings reinforcement – lack of attention brings liberation«

– Nikolaus B. Enkelmann:

the 11th law of thinking

Once when we were refurbishing our house the architect asked us what colour the rainwater pipe from the roof gutter should be painted. At that time I did not know what this pipe was and so I will explain that it is the pipe that leads down the wall of the house and disappears into the earth, ending up in the drainage system. At that time I was not even aware of the existence of rainwater pipes, let alone what they looked like. So we decided to have a look at the rainwater pipes on houses on our next walk.

And indeed we saw at least one, if not more, on every house. Some of them had a golden sheen because they were made of copper and were still quite new. Old copper pipes were a dark reddish brown. Pipes made of tinplate were sometimes painted in the colour of the roof tiles and sometimes in the colour of the house wall. One particular specimen was even painted in three colours because the wall of the house was painted in a different colour on each floor.

During the following few weeks we almost exclusively saw rainwater pipes in many different colours and models. We now encountered them constantly merely because of our attention to them, although I had not even known of their existence before. They had always been there but they did not enter our lives until we paid attention to them.

The law of attention works with everything: when we primarily pay attention to negative things, actions, circumstances, etc., we will discover more and more of them in our lives. Conversely, when we focus on positive things, actions and circumstances, we will become aware of how many of these are already part of our lives. Both the positive and negative categories were already there before; only our attention to them makes us perceive our lives as having either a negative or a positive tendency.

But unlike the rainwater pipes, which do not really care if we pay attention to them or not, people react very strongly to attention. People who are criticised for their negative qualities in general reinforce these, thus becoming »worse«. Conversely, people become »better« when we praise their positive qualities and actions.

In the present times people mostly pay attention to negative things. They try to fight undesirable things or at least protect themselves from them. We wage wars against terror; we fight unemployment, demographic change, poverty and hunger; we protect ourselves from flower pollen, the sun, rain, insects and body odour. The results are more terrorism, unemployment, poverty and hunger and more allergies to pollen, sun and insect bites. Oh yes, I’d almost forgotten: we try to fight the state debts but they are increasing all the time worldwide.

Now you will certainly understand why the gradido system only provides for positive account balances; why we do not propose punishments for environmental sinners but the Equalisation and Environment to subsidise protection and decontamination of the environment; why the government does not burden citizens with taxes but encourages them to develop their full potential through unconditional participation.

By paying attention to the positive we reinforce it. What works with the individual functions even better in the community because the effects are exponential. By introducing the Natural Economy of Life we can transmit a positive basic attitude to the whole of humanity. The positive effects even exponentiate many times over. A swarm intelligence develops, giving us common abilities we had never even dared dream of before.

Advantage 94 – Promotes swarm intelligence in humans

Excerpt from the book »Gradido – Natural Economy of Life«

»Nature does not know a teaching space, only masterpieces«.

– Johann Peter Hebel

German poet

Have you ever observed a swarm of migrating birds gathering to fly south together, twittering wildly, flying around a little here and there, and then suddenly flying off without any recognisable reason in a closed formation as if they were a single organism? They change their flight direction together in a single moment without even two birds colliding. The strongest birds fly at the front so that the others can take advantage of their wind shadow. When the birds at the front are exhausted they join the ranks behind and other birds take over the leadership. All this happens seemingly automatically. 

Or have you ever observed a bee colony or an ant heap? How does each of these small insects know what to do so exactly? The queen cannot take care of them as she is too occupied with reproduction.

When a group of individual beings begins to behave more intelligently than would be possible for the individual members of the group, we call this group intelligence or swarm intelligence. Behavioural scientists have been investigating this phenomenon in animals for a long time.

And what about human beings? Can humans also possess swarm intelligence or does a group of humans rather develop »swarm stupidity«, as critics claim? This is an issue for complexity research.

Two requirements seem to be crucial for success:

1. A clear objective
2. Only a few rules.

Ailing businesses have been restructured within a short time in this way. The staff were convened and committed themselves to the common goal of saving the company and making it successful again. It was made clear to the staff that absolute confidence was placed in their competence. Each of them knew best how something was to be done in their own job and what possibly needed improving. Accordingly, a simple rule might be: everybody does their best. After a few months the company was in the black again and the staff were proud of their achievement: together they had helped save their enterprise and were able to go on working under good conditions.

What was possible for this company can also be accomplished by the whole of humanity. After the introduction of the Natural Economy of Life we will also look back in pride because together we helped to save the »enterprise of humanity«. And – God willing – we will be allowed to go on living under good conditions.

In our case the goal is to survive together in worldwide prosperity in peace and in harmony with nature. An objective that considers the good of the individual as much as the good of the community and the good of the big scheme of things. The simple rules have been copied from nature. They are the fundamental rules of the Natural Economy of Life – the threefold good and the threefold creation of money derived from it in conjunction with the principle of transience. If we can agree on this, humanity will develop swarm intelligence. In this way we have excellent chances of finding our way back to paradise together.