On our African trip in July and August 2018 to Nairobi, and back via Uganda and Rwanda, we saw repeatedly confirmed, the following:
- Local Africans of all colours cloth themselves far less with their fantasies and fears than do people from the West.
- Local Africans are open, more content with their station in life, not ignorant of African affairs, not happy with politicians in general, take responsibility to just do what they can in many parts including a sincere caring and longer term approach to humanity and the environment, want something new and are very willing to listen and try new things out of a kind of frustration with current realities and the lack of viable vision to bring about the change that they seek inwardly.
These realities make it possible for something new to emerge. In the West we know everything. Africa is a basket case to us. Is the materialism of the West not the basket case? Abortion, GMO, guns, drugs, chronic diseases, processed foods, making people economic commodities in production, failed education systems, Unitary States confused by their own policies and lack of conceptual clarity here, are surely indications of a basket case; a big basket.
Also, by way of a short note, what I present below is not meant to be 100% correct. It is meant to show that there are other possibilities other than what Africa or the West employs. Hopefully there is enough in what follows to give a feeling that the Threefold Social Order really does offer a very practical and viable alternative for mankind, and just perhaps, Africa is where it needs to root. The article, and logic, is aimed at an idealistic solution and does not deal with all the obstacles. There will be many obstacles but we will only be able to deal with these once we can see a clear conceptual path and objective.
Let’s be open to what comes next and just allow the logic presented a chance to speak to our inner uprightness that we all experience every time we sleep but bring little if any back with us when we wake up. Despite this unawareness of where we are when we are asleep, the reality remains that we are at home in the world of the Good and the True when we are asleep. The feelings of devotion we have from time to time are awakened because what we experience when awake finds an echo in our unconscious life of the good and the true that we know from when we are asleep.
We are now going to build up a thought process along the lines of the title to this article from within an ‘impoverished’ African village where subsistence farming and limited beneficiation takes place. (See my previous article, ‘Releasing African Economic Stagnation’ ).
The principle is that we need to recognise that something only enters the real economy when we do it for others. This means that subsistence activities need to be evolved into doing things for others. Collecting water needs to be done by one person for several others for example. Growing maize, peanuts and tomatoes also needs to allow for specialisation and needs to be done by allowing for specialisation. We must stop transporting only our own goods but allow a transporter to develop to do this for us so that we can focus on becoming skilled in our specific area of contribution. I must not make a bed for myself but rather make for others. I must not build my own home, I must become a builder for others. At present in the village, people are doing most things for themselves. There are a few selling what they do not consume themselves but the remoteness makes selling rather difficult as the market is far away by foot, bicycle or animal-drawn cart. So how does one assist this village to diversify, do things for others, have the resultant exchange of values between people and hence a system that enters the economic sphere – but within the boundaries of the concepts of a Threefold Social Order?
- Let’s club together as the community on a Stokvel system and buy a water tank and a manual water pump that pumps 200l every ten minutes.
- Then, let’s agree that the Liberty chief, appointed by the community, selects the best person to do the water pumping and sell the water to those that want it.
- The water pumping person is the Fraternity person or businessman in this case.
- The Liberty chief is selected on the basis that he/she will look after the development, education, religious interests, effects on nature, and so on of the other two pillars or individuals in this micro case.
- The Businessman will be tasked with pumping as efficiently as possible and promoting the value of buying water and having extra time available rather than fetching water individually.
- The third person from the Rights sphere will make sure that the Stokvel members get paid by the businessman. They will also make sure that they collect a portion of what is due to this sphere, tax in other words, to make sure that something is available to go back to the Liberty sphere for use for training for example.
- Who is the boss out of these three? Well, nobody is. They have to make deals that they all want to support. Their objective is the functioning of the village society. We now have a businessman, selected by the Liberty sphere for her/his capacities as such, who has a loan from the community. He earns money for pumping, storing and selling water. He does this for others. The Rights sphere person collects tax, watched by the businessman and the Liberty person, and uses this as the Liberty sphere and Fraternity sphere have agreed with the Rights person. The Liberty sphere uses the money for training as watched by the other two. The community benefits from the training and the time not used collecting water. The businessman repays his loan as watched by the other two. In the meantime, farming of vegetables is now taking place with the water and a person that wants to be a vegetable farmer. This farmer was nominated to do so by the Liberty More agreements are made and more tax is collected and used for the benefit of the village. More training is made possible. Someone else with free time now starts a transport system to get more products to neighbouring villages. The Liberty sphere is busy with better teacher training and people development in general. The Rights sphere is making itself more effective in collecting and distributing ‘tax’ as agreed between the three parties. They have worked out that the meetings between them need to have firm and consistent agendas. They start to function better, each defining their own role better and suggesting ways that the others do the same. The Rights and Fraternity spheres are pushing the Liberty sphere for better people because they both need better people to be better themselves. The Liberty and Rights spheres are asking for more efficiency and relevance in what is being done in the Fraternity sphere so that more tax can be paid. The single liberty person can now afford to collaborate with more liberty-oriented people to develop this piece of the puzzle. The Rights person can use some of the tax revenue to make these systems more effective in collecting and distributing tax and providing laws and the policing thereof as directed in the Threefold meeting agreements.
- The Fraternity person can gather representatives in each economic activity area to assist in the collaboration of activities for the benefit of the village society. The system can grow to be able to manage water pumping, farming, transport, beneficiating of nature products, road building, internet supply, bicycle repairs, bicycle trailers, simple stone crushers, supply chains and more.
- The Liberty sphere benefits and invests in humanity development.
- The Rights sphere can improve the justice system.
The gist of the above is that instead of the villagers doing daily chores for themselves, they start to do things for others and realise how important it is that they are conscious of this thought as they go about their daily activities. They have to know what they are doing and how their village has set itself up. Without this consciousness, the whole thing will fail. I see no reason why this is too much for the people of this village. Their activities and consciousness engaged in this way will lead to their actions entering the real economy as opposed to remaining in the Nature economy. There will be no unitary government that cannot orientate itself around the three different areas of interest and consciousness that are required for self-correction. This way, with the Threefold Social Order concepts clear, this village society will be born self-correcting and continue in this via form as it grows and out-performs the conventional system.
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