Famine is the greatest killer in a world right now despite the fact that we have the technology of feeding over 7 billions of people, but we don't just because they don't have money. Also AIDS which is a curable disease makes millions of deaths in Africa because they are poor and they don't afford treatments like people in developed countries. Ghandi said "The deadliest form of violence is poverty".
1% of the population owns more than 40% of the planet wealth, 20% of the worlds population consumes 80% of its resources, more than 50% of the population is working under 2$ per day and more statistics can be depicted in the beautiful referential movie Home (which I invite to see if you didn't until now). So this gap between the rich and the poor is becoming increasingly larger with what it seems to be an exponential change.
One alternative to our society is expressed in the philosophy of the Jacque Fresco's Venus project, which for some is merely an utopia.
One argued on a blog:
I agree whole-heartily with it, but one question I've always had about the Venus Project is how it proposes to handle fair distribution of goods and services. One can't expect everyone to be all 'selfless' all of a sudden and if everything is free, there would be those who took unfair advantage. Controls would need to be put in place and then the whole cycle of crime starts again.
I feel that the problems we face now are not with political, economic and social systems, but with us, individually. We need a radical revolution (or evolution) of mind and spirit on a massive scale from which truly just systems will arise. I've also heard it said that once 10%-20% of humans wake up it would be enough of a shift to initiate real change, primarily by allowing awakened leaders (corporate and political) to emerge.
The change should also be along with one in consciousness in which one should not desire more than what it needs. This "waking up" that everyone is talking about, this paradigm shift is starting to emerge from within all fields, biology, neuroscience, astro-physics, philosophy... and will converge to what we are talking right now, to the revolution of the mind. This is going to be our revolution. And what we expect now? A leader, because no one has the guts to do it on his own. Some of us did it, but the change was small (like Christopher McCandless or Ghandi). In order this to work it must be at a global scale.
The Internet will play a big role and the best example is the recently Egyptian revolution (25 January). The upper elite knows that the power is at the people but they try to keep us as separated as possible. The roman method of "divide and conquer" is working even now. But we must remember that we are the pyramid and the upper elite will fall if the pyramid will crumble.
The revolution of consciousness is referring to the elimination of the ego (or the self) that has been fed with false concepts about the reality, about what our needs are and that is decaying in a general anxiety. This metaphysical revolution will basically create the ground of acceptance of the new radical ideas expressed in the Venus Project. Until then, these ideas will be regarded as a return of Marxism or Communism and they will be criticized and blamed of repeating the history.
Thomas Kuhn said that there are some phases that lead to a change of paradigm.
1. The existing paradigm encounters an anomaly
2. Initially the anomaly is ignored or rejected
3. People try to explain the anomaly with the existing paradigms
4. A new paradigm is proposed in which the anomaly is resolved
5. The solution is rejected often ridiculed (the creator and followers are seen as heretics)
6. The solution finally gains acceptance.
The social anomalies of this society paradigm are wars, famine, destroying mother nature, wasting resources, money... People lived in ignorance or they were eliminated because of their radical ideas (like Ghandi). We are in the phase 4-5 of the revolution or change of the current paradigm of consciousness. There is no one better than Peter Russel to explain this in his great talk, "The Primacy of Consciousness".
We have the power to change but the change must be with their own weapons first. The radical solution would be to try to be independent of money. But first of all, think at what you buy and how you can change the world. This may be the first non-violent step to take as expressed in the movie Home.
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