Banking
The Mystery of Money – Beyond Greed and Scarcity | Chapter 9 – Epilogue – Appendix | Bernard Lietaer (2002)
Reproduced from: http://docs.banks-need-boundaries.net/en/Lietaer__Mystery_of_Money.pdf
Table of Contents
Chapter 9: Our Future, Our Money
“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.
We are spiritual beings having a human experience.
Teilhard de Chardin1“What I am is good enough
If I would only do it openly.”
Carl Rogers“How little do we know of which we are!
How less what we may be!”
George Gordon Lord Byron
Money is like an iceberg, only the tip is visible, and we often believe that the visible part is all there is. I hope to have brought some awareness to the existence and importance of the deeper layers on which it all rests, and proposed a language that enables us to talk about it. The psychological and mythological territories explored may have appeared surprising, even puzzling, because the money domain has remained submerged for so long that even its nature as an agreement has remained unconscious.
Let me remind you the purpose of this unfamiliar exploration. We have gone through many historical changes, but our interpretation of money has remained remarkably resilient through it all. If as a society we want to go to a different place than we have been, new roads need to be explored. Making a conscious choice of the kind of money we want to use among each other may become one of the most powerful tools available during the transition phase we are in.
Sustainable Abundance can be achieved. But it will require efforts by many humans on the planet – comparable to the building of Medieval cathedrals in their time – to make it happen in this world. It is only if what is called the Third World can leapfrog into the Knowledge Age, bypassing the intermediary step of the Industrial Age, that this planet has any chance of supporting the human population at its current or projected levels.
I therefore propose as Cathedrals for the 21st century projects like:
- Ecological clean-up and sustainability implementation;
- Climate change mitigation;
- Urban restoration;
- Improving literacy levels globally;
- Feeding, clothing, sheltering, educating, and inspiring billions of humans;
- Ensuring a decent old age for the growing percentage of elderly in our societies;
- Providing learning and creative opportunities for all.
As long as tasks on such “cathedrals” are available, there should be no doubt that there is enough work on the planet for everybody not only for this generation, but also for many generations to come. Therefore is enough work on this planet, but under the existing paradigm of a monopoly of Yang money, finding the money to pay for it all and transform this work into a conventional “paying job” is another matter. In fact, the entire economic history since the Industrial Revolution has proven that there are hundreds of millions of people – until recently mostly in the developing world – for whom jobs paid with conventional Yang currency will simply not become available. Furthermore, new technologies will make jobless growth a growing trend of the next decades, and therefore potentially spread the joblessness problem increasingly to the First World as well. Complementary currencies were shown to be one of the tools that make the transition to the next economic system more easily possible.
The Future of Money provides a detailed action plan for today, on how a systematic strategy for complementary currencies provides a realistic possibility to attain Sustainable Abundance within one generation. Particularly important is the possibility to create complementary currencies in sufficiency, without provoking an inflationary tendency. While in this book the philosophical, psychological and historical dimensions of such a strategy have been emphasized, that other book focuses exclusively on the technical design features of the various contemporary types of complementary currencies, and what they can contribute to pragmatically resolve several key obstacles to the aim of Sustainable Abundance.
At the end, we will move towards Sustainable Abundance if and only if many individual people – including you, if you so choose – are willing to take the necessary initiatives. There is a lot of talk of “learning organizations” and that “knowledge” is becoming the key resource for business as well as other organizations. But the master key for such a “knowledge society” is that many more people have to become creative. For Millennia we have used authority and control to frighten people into conformity and obedience. A centralized monopoly of Yang currencies has been one of the key tools to achieve this. But nobody can frighten people into creativity. Another way is now going to be needed.
That is why I believe that Sustainable Abundance can only happen with a sustainable money system as a precondition. In practice, that means complementing the prevailing Yang currency generated by central hierarchical control with Yin currencies created by the people themselves. Among the money innovations that have proven most effective are:
- mutual credit systems that self-organize to ensure that currency is always available in sufficiency;
- and demurrage charges that encourage exchanges rather than hoarding.
This is what worked in the few historical precedents available where an Integral Economy seems to have been implemented.
But – as we saw in these case studies – money is not the only domain where changes are going to be needed. An even more ambitious aim is to facilitate the integration of the Yin archetypes which have been repressed for thousands of years, and which are now needed to make the next evolutionary step of our species. Hopeful signs have been detected that such integration may be on its way in the form of the surprising emergence of a Cultural Creative subculture.
It is for them that an updating of the archetypal vocabulary may prove useful.
Updating the Archetypal Vocabulary
All the archetypal titles used so far – Sovereign, Warrior, Magician, and so on – refer back to the social structure of long-gone agrarian societies. Therefore, a new vocabulary better adapted to the current transition period is proposed, as summarized in the following graph (Figure 9.1)
Figure 9.1 A Map of the Universal Human for Our Times
This updated map describes processes instead of social labels. Therefore, they are all androgynous, both male and female, so they are more directly accessible for women and men alike. Furthermore, this updated map emphasizes some aspects of the archetypes that otherwise would be less obvious. The proposed form is more holistic; it is interior as opposed to exterior oriented; responsibility instead of obedience based; and relationships are based on equality/cooperation as opposed to hierarchy/control.
The nature of the energies involved in each of these processes is of course the same as those in the old Archetypal Human (Figure 3.1). After all, archetypes by definition remain valid independently of time. To emphasize this paradoxical continuity, this scheme also makes explicit the archetypal “elements” as expressed in ancient traditions, i.e. Fire, Water, Air, Earth and the ‘quintessence’ or Soul.
But paradox may be part of what we need to face.
Holding Paradoxes
One example of a paradox that we may have to learn to live with is the one balancing individual and community priorities. Individualism, the awareness of the importance of the individual, has been a main positive force that has been shaping Western thought over several Millennia. It has been opposed to collectivism, where the individual is invariably sacrificed for the “collective good.” However, Modern civilization has now reached a stage that has been called “terminally individualistic.” The way out of this however, is not to a return to sacrificing the individual to the collective. Instead, a possible next step could be seeing through the individual the connectedness of the whole. Such a breakthrough is at the base of our rediscovering the relevance of community as a support to the individual. Humans are social beings, and they need community to nurture their soul and provide meaning to their adventure. An appropriate metaphor of an individual may be more like the finger of a hand, or a wave in the ocean. Each finger can act individually, develop quite unique skills, and make unique contributions. But no finger can assume that it can live independently from the hand. Each wave is unique, making its unique sound and splash on a beach, but takes it’s full meaning when connected to the ocean.2
Another paradox is the importance of the intersubjectivity of whatever we deal with. Instead of just looking at the nodes of a system – each archetype, each individual, country, academic field, idea, data point – we need to learn to simultaneously look at what links and interacts between them. Until now we have learned primarily to see only the knots in a fisherman’s net. We now need to discover the whole net – knots and links – as one single device.
This should not be considered a trivial task, as the Metalogue by Gregory Bateson illustrates (sidebar).
|
Metalogue3 Daughter: I did an experiment once. Father : Yes? Daughter. I wanted to find out if I could think two thoughts at the same time. So I thought “It’s summer” and I thought “It’s winter.” And I tried to think the two thoughts together. Father. Yes? Daughter. But I found I wasn’t having two thoughts. I was only having one thought about having two thoughts. *** Metalogues illustrate at the structural level the content of the story. Two people (polarity male-female, old-young) engage in one conversation, about having two ideas becoming one. |
Money Outlook
Money is one of these links that has remained mostly invisible to the conscious Western mind. Money is to a civilization as the DNA code is to a species. It replicates structures and behavior patterns that remain active across time and space for generations.
It informs billions of individual and collective decisions, big and small, of investing and consuming every day. The synergy available between mainstream Yang currencies and complementary Yin currencies may appear as one more paradox to those who consider self-evident the monopoly of the familiar national currencies.
Our traditional bank-debt national money, like all of economic theory and most of Western thinking has been designed from a monopoly of legitimacy for a Yang perspective. Until now, independently on whether one is a man or a woman, a “macho” way of thinking has been needed to succeed in economic life. Reaching Sustainable Abundance is going to require giving equal weight to a feminine perspective on money systems and economics. It is not that the male perspective is “wrong” in itself. On the contrary, it is an indispensable ingredient. But problems arise when its shadow wants to impose a monopoly on legitimately interpreting and directing human activity.
The following figure synthesizes this point, by illustrating the close relationship between the Universal Human and the Yin and Yang money systems (Figure 14.2).
Figure 14.2 Relationships between Universal Human and Yin and Yang Economic Cycles
In the long run, Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek utopia fame may prove right when he claims that “Money does not exist in the twenty-fourth century. The accumulation of wealth is no longer the driving force; we work to better ourselves and humanity.”
However, today we still need some crutches before walking in that way. I claim that during the ongoing transition of the early twenty-first century, the activation of complementary and sustainability compatible currencies offer valuable additions to our social tool-kit. Once we have gotten used to live in a balanced Yin-Yang way, we may be able to afford to throw away the dual currency crutches.
Utopia? Of course. So were the Magna Carta, the American Constitution, the Charter of the United Nations, the Red Cross, Human Rights, or Amnesty International.
All this will depend ultimately on each of us, on our own capacity to meet our challenges, and our willingness to provide our own gifts to this process.
Our money is our mirror.
It can reflect more than our shadows.
It can reflect our soul.
Epilogue: A Future Tale
“It is all a question of stories.
We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story.
We are in between stories.
The Old Story is not functioning properly any more,
and we have not learned the New Story.”
Thomas Berry“Once upon a time,
Once beyond time…”
Mother Goose4
This epilogue is in the voice of Mother Goose, the proverbial teller of fairy tales, and the ancient language in which the Great Mother’s ways have been expressed since time immemorial5
Photo 9. This 12th century gilded bronze represents the “woman story teller”, with her characteristic goose emblem. Currently in Lieblehaus Museum, Frankfurt am Main. Catalog MAI 594 82833 (Bildarchiv Foto Marburg (Tel 06421- 28600). |
The Golden Goddess
One early morning in midwinter in the mountain highlands, the Golden Goddess went for her morning walk. She was very lonely in her crystal palace, where all the furnishings were of the purest gold. Her only companion was a snow-white owl, who flew in the airy silence around her. The Goddess arrived near the frozen lake and sat at the foot of a gnarly oak tree whose icicle-covered branches stretched over her a canopy of the finest dazzling lace. In a graceful gesture with her golden hand, she slipped off her golden slipper from her golden feet and dreamily drew spiral patterns on the frosty surface of the lake.
***
In a vast cave deep under the ground the Magician was stoking a tremendous fire under a huge cauldron. His companion, a gorgeous black snake with the charming name of Sofie slithered close by to draw his attention. But the Magician was impatient.
– ” Look, don’t you see I’m very busy. I have no time for games at this point. You know that the Knight is not someone to joke with when he gives an order. We better get it done, and the sooner the better.”
– “But,” hissed Sofie, “it is precisely about that job that I have something to tell you.”
– “What could you tell me about melting all the gold of the world?”
For a moment, Sofie was tempted to sulk in a corner, but she just couldn’t rein in her excitement about her discovery. So she spat out her news:
– “I just returned from the back of the cave, you know, where the great skylight is located. And there is a big nugget of the purest gold sitting on top of it.”
– “Gold? On the skylight?” The tone was half-mocking, half-disbelief.
– “Yes, gold. It wasn’t there yesterday, but it is certainly there now. You better come and look.”
The Magician followed Sofie through the long bluish-violet galleries of amethyst crystals that led to the great skylight room. Once there, he just remained silent. Indeed, Sofie was right. Just at the edge of the skylight glittered what looked like a impressive nugget of gold. He climbed up the sides of the room to get a closer look. As he got closer, he noticed that it was, after all, not a nugget of gold.
It was a golden slipper sitting in the middle of strange milky spirals.
***
The next day, the white owl was flying as quickly as it could to the crystal palace of the Goddess. He had alarming news for his mistress. Something that had never occurred before in memory of a white owl.
– “There are cracks and noises at the great frozen lake. Come and see! There has to be something really wrong at the lake!” he hooted as soon as he could see her in the distance.
They hurried together to the big oak at the edge of the lake and, indeed, from under the ice, cracks could be heard. There was even some movement there. The Golden Goddess decided to plunge her warm arm through the ice, and lo and behold, she suddenly felt another arm reaching for her.
Well, we’ll never know who was more surprised of the two, the Golden Goddess or the Magician, when they found themselves in front of each other. The Magician was overwhelmed by the beauty of the Golden Goddess, and just stood there with half-open mouth. The first surprise over, the Golden Goddess was so happy to finally meet someone else after all this time alone, that she invited the Magician to her crystal palace. The Magician stumbled along, squinting his eyes to protect them from the glistening white landscape all around him. Once in the palace, the Magician was so bedazzled by the resplendent elegance of all the golden furnishings he saw, that he remained completely dumbfounded.
– “I am sorry I can’t offer you much. It has been so long since I had any guests.” the Goddess commented to break the silence, “Even here five thousand years is a long time…”
– “Gold! This is all pure gold!” stammered the Magician, delicately stroking a golden rose in a graceful golden vase perched on a massive golden counter.
– “What else could it be?” smiled the Golden Goddess inquisitively.
– “Well, wood or stone or whatever, but not GOLD!”
– “But gold is the most common material in my world.”
– “The most common? How can that be?” was the surprised answer.
– “Everything I love can turn into gold…” explained the Golden Goddess.
– “Everything?” – “Well, of course, it would also have to desire to change itself. But why is that important?”
– “You don’t understand…” said the Magician, shaking his head in utter disbelief.
And he fell into silence, mesmerized by the golden decor. Suddenly, his face froze, horrified by a realization.
– “But…but….that means I am in trouble. Serious trouble…” he stuttered.
– “Why is that?” responded the Goddess, more and more puzzled by her visitor’s strange concerns.
– “Now I will never be able to execute the orders of the Knight” sighed the Magician.
– “Who? What Knight? What orders?”
– “You really don’t understand anything about my world, do you?” repeated the Magician.
– “Why don’t you start from the beginning?” – “Well, you see, the Knight is the boss in my area. And last week he ordered me to melt down all the gold of the world.”
– “Why does he need you to melt down all the gold?”
– “I don’t really know myself. But he told me he was executing the orders of the Big Boss.”
– “The Big Boss?”
– “Yes, the King, the one who is in charge of the whole world.”
– “You seem to have a complicated world” mused the Goddess.
– “A lot more complicated than you can imagine.”
A minute of uneasy silence fell between them.
Then the Golden Goddess tentatively launched a new idea.
– “Why don’t you take me to your world? I am really curious about what this is all about.”
In fact, she was more than curious; she was not going to drop the opportunity to meet all these new people. Not after living alone all that time…
And so it happened. They made up a very unusual traveling pair, a Magician and a Golden Goddess clambering through the hole in the ice of the Frozen Lake. The White Owl did not like any of it. From the lowest branch on the oak, he just kept hooting repeatedly: “I will just stay here to keep an eye on things.” What he really hoped was that his mistress would change her mind about such a dangerous expedition. But with a last little wave her golden hand disappeared into the dark hole of the unknown.
***
The trip to the Knight’s fortress was long, and turned out quite disappointing. The Knight admitted he didn’t really know the reason for the King’s orders either. So they decided to go all together to the castle of the King. Although the Knight did not have much of a conversation and his big sword on his side made a rattling noise against his shiny armor at every step, the Goddess felt actually safer with this dapper Knight at her side. And the Knight turned out to be quite necessary when the King’s chamberlain stopped them at the castle’s gate:
– “Golden Goddess? I don’t have that name on my protocol list” said the King’s chamberlain, looking up over his reading glasses after consulting the gate-keeper’s book. “And you don’t have an appointment either” he added disdainfully to the other two travelers. He was going to walk away, when the Knight just lifted him up from the ground by his collar.
– “I am sure that an exception can be made” uttered the Knight between his teeth.
The chamberlain’s voice quivered back:
– “I will immediately double-check his agenda personally! The King will have to decide himself! But could you please first deposit me back on the ground?”
And as soon as his feet touched the floor again, he scurried away like a scared mouse.
They were left waiting for fifteen, twenty minutes. And the Knight kept pacing back and forth impatiently. Finally, the chamberlain reappeared prudently at the end of the hallway, and waved them in.
– “It is going to be a short audience,” he declared when they caught up with him, “but I have been able to squeeze you in.”
In reality, the King was just as curious about meeting that Golden Goddess as she was to encounter him. But of course the chamberlain knew better than to convey that information. They hiked through room after room, until they finally arrived at the Throne Room, the seventh and largest room in the palace. It was a vast expanse of colorful carpets with a grandiose throne carved in wood, whose every elaborate nook and cranny was carefully covered with gold paint. The royal seat was positioned in the middle of the back-wall. The beauty of the Goddess took the King’s breath away, but he managed not to show any of that. So after a minute of pregnant silence he asked:
– “You wanted to see me?”
After a moment hesitation the Magician spoke first:
– “Well, Majesty, I met this lady who claims to have some unusual skills” and he made a wide deferential gesture toward the Goddess.
– “Unusual skills?”
– “Yes, she says she can transform anything into gold.”
– “Into gold?”
– “Yes, Majesty, and the purest gold too.”
– “Massive gold?”:
– “Exactly, Majesty. I have seen some of it myself”
– “Well, I will believe that when I see it myself.” countered the King, “Why doesn’t she give me a little demonstration?”
– “I would be willing to give you such a demonstration,” the Golden Goddess intervened with a fleeting smile on her lips, “but there is one condition to it.”
– “A condition?” responded the King, furrowing his brow, for he was not used to people responding to his requests in such a way.
– “Yes, the condition that you will tell us why you need all the gold of the world melted down.”
The King thought for a minute whether there could be any trap in that prerequisite, and finding none, uttered:
– “Granted. Now you show what you can do”
The Golden Goddess walked to the center of the Throne Room and sat down on a big red carpet in the center of the sea of multicolored carpets. She delicately folded her golden legs like a lotus flower, and closed her golden eyelids for exactly three minutes. As she re-opened them, a wave of gold spread across the room. All the carpets, all the walls and the ceiling transformed into brilliant gold. The King even sensed his throne under him shed the gilded paint to reveal massive gold under it. He suddenly felt a little silly sitting in the middle of a circle of gilded paint chips, and squirmed uneasily. So he arose from his throne, and gave a Royal order to the Magician and Knight.
– “Tell me whether this is real gold!”
The Magician and the Knight approached the throne, and tried to rub off some of the gold. The Knight unsheathed his big sword and with a loud harrumph thrust it into the side of the throne, making a deep dent. All of them hunched around the dent in awed silence, and finally the Magician spoke up.
– “This gold is as real as any I have ever seen, Majesty” was the verdict.
At that moment the chamberlain stormed back into the Throne Room, out of breath:
– “Majesty, majesty, have you seen what happened outside?”
The whole group around the throne rushed toward the windows.
– “By Jove…” were the only words that slipped out of the King’s mouth.
The entire palace had also changed into a massive golden building, and had been raised a thousand feet high on what looked like a gigantic gold nugget towering above the landscape.
– “Now I would like to have some answers to my questions” interrupted the Golden Goddess as she approached the group. “Where does that need to melt down all the gold come from?”
It took understandably a little while for the King to re-organize his thoughts. But he still tried to make it sound very normal.
– “Well, that should be pretty obvious” answered the King as he returned to sit on his throne. “All the people of my realm need to have gold coins to trade with each other, and there is just not enough to get around. So I want to make them happy, and therefore ordered to melt down all the gold we can find to make more gold coins available to the people.”
Now it was the turn of the Golden Goddess to remain dumbfounded.
– “You mean…” and suddenly she started laughing, her laugh cascading as a crystal chime through the golden room. The King frowned disapprovingly thinking to himself that this lady was really not suited for courtly life. He interjected
– “Would you explain what is sooo funny.”
But the Golden Goddess had trouble ceasing her laughter. After a while, she finally managed to garner her spirits and explained:
– “Don’t you people know that gold is a way of being, not of having? Anybody can learn that, it is just a question of practice. Why don’t I start with teaching all of you, so you can enlighten in turn all the people in your realm.”
And so it was done.
There was now so much gold in the Kingdom that people realized that gold was only one of the ways to create money. They understood that money needed never to become a limitation to their exchanges again. They just learned how they could create currency themselves whenever needed to complement the King’s gold coins. Finally, people recognized that true wealth was the trust they developed among themselves through their daily exchanges. And this is how the Kingdom became more prosperous than it had ever been before.
As one of the oldest texts predicted: “They all attain perfection when they find joy in their work.”6
***
The Golden Goddess then returned to her crystal palace because she wanted to show the wider world to her White Owl as well. But by the time she walked through the Magician’s cave and reached the Amethyst gallery, everything had changed in her own world as well. The Great Frozen Lake had melted down and left a huge opening connecting the two worlds. The White Owl was still patiently perched on the lowest oak branch, but that branch was now covered with green sprouts. The air in the Goddess’ own world was balmy and teaming with flower fragrances and butterflies. Her world was breaking out in its first Spring after thousands of years. The integration of Her and the King’s realms had already started.
***
There was also another thing that has started happening. Did I tell you that the white owl’s name was Sophos? Well, notwithstanding that they had almost the same name, Sofie and Sophos did not get along as well as their respective masters. After all, what could a black snake have in common with a white owl? So they had a lot of fights over turf and just about everything else.
But the last time I saw them they had actually started talking to each other. At least it was a beginning. But that was the beginning of another story for another day.
Appendix A: A Brief Glossary
(in some cases, the chapter is mentioned in parenthesis where more information about this particular heading is available)
Archetype: A recurrent image that patterns human emotions and behavior, and that can be observed across time and cultures. (Chapter 1)
Barter: the exchange of goods or services without the use of any medium of exchange.
Constellation: Whenever strong emotions activate archetypal images or symbols and link them with a real-life person or situation, a constellation with this archetype has occurred.
Cultural Creatives: An emerging subculture which was still statistically insignificant 25 years ago (less than 3% of the adult population); but represents in the year 2000 about 29% of Western adult population, and is growing by about 1% per year. Its main values are environmentalism and self- actualization (i.e. inner growth as opposed to exterior social prestige). Quality of personal relationships is critical to them as well as the need to rebuild community. They are one of the three main subcultures in Western society (with Traditionalists and Modernists), but are the only ones that are typically unaware of their own importance in numbers. See details in chapter 8; and in Ray, Paul & Anderson, Sherry: The Cultural Creatives (New York Harmony Books, 2000)
Demurrage: A time related charge on holdings of money. It has the effect of discouraging hoarding of the currency, thereby separating its function of medium of payment from its function of store of value. It also tends to shift the perception of time priorities towards longer term thinking in investments. (Chapters 5 and 6 in this book, and Chapters 5 and 8 of The Future of Money).
Ego, Conscious and Unconscious: A good metaphor for these psychological concepts comes from a non-psychologist – Joseph Campbell. He uses a graphic definition as follows.7 The psyche is a circle emanating from a center, the soul from where all our energy comes. The horizontal line represents the separation between the conscious and the unconscious. [Editor: this graph can be reduced in size.]
Soul, Ego, Psyche, Conscious and Unconscious
(adapted from Campbell)
The unconscious is the theater where Archetypes and Shadows play out their favorite scenarios. This unconscious has in turn two layers: the individual and the collective unconscious.
The Ego is that aspect of our consciousness with which we identify as our center. But the Ego is in fact way off-center. We tend to believe the Ego is running the show by itself, while in fact it is only one of the actors in the scene.
Emancipation means freedom from oppressive restrictions imposed on the basis of sex or any other discriminatory criteria. It derives from Roman civil law (e + manus + capere = to come out from under the hand of). Specifically, Women’s Emancipation refers to freedom from paternalistic dominance. Emancipation includes self-determination and autonomy. Self-determination means being free to decide one’s own destiny or social role, such as the freedom to choose one’s own lifestyle to the extent it is not harmful to others. Autonomy means earning one’s own status, including one’s financial independence, not by being born into it or marrying it. Gerda Lerner points out that these words fit the situation of women better than “women’s liberation”. For more details, see Gerda Lerner The Origins of Patriarchy pg 231-243.
Feminism: A Modern political movement that challenges the Patriarchal value system. There have been different historical waves of this movement. Among the best documented are: the suffragette movement (1880-1920), the sexual liberation movement (1960-70) and the postmodern movement (1990-20??). There are also different branches of political thought – sometimes contradictory – that at any one point have been structuring feminist thought, including liberal, Marxist, socialist, radical, and post-structural. Detailed definitions for each in Brooks, A. Postfeminism: Feminism, Cultural Theory and Cultural Forms (London: Routledge, 1997).
Fiat Currency: A currency created out of nothing, by the power of an authority. For example: all our conventional national currencies, including the Euro, are fiat currencies. (Introduction to Part Three, and The Future of Money)
Gender: The cultural interpretation of sexual differences that results in categorization of individuals, artifacts, or standardized behavior patterns. Not to be confused with sex, which is a biological condition determined by differences in sexual organs, bone structures, chromosomes or hormones. In Ken Wilber framework sex is an “Individual-Exterior” phenomenon (upper-right corner of Wilber’s knowledge map on Figure I.1 and I.2 on pages 9-10), while gender operates in the “Collective-Interior” domain. Hence sex can be “objectively” described, while gender requires by definition an interpretation.
Individuation: A concept initially introduced by C.G. Jung, referring to the conscious realization of one’s unique psychological reality, including one’s strengths and weaknesses. It is the final result of the integration of the shadows of all five archetypes. Full individuation is still a rare human achievement at this point of our evolution.
Integral Economy: an economic system that has achieved a balance between the Yin and Yang economic circuits, creating and nurturing respectively social and financial capital, while respecting at the same time both physical and natural capital.
An Integral Economy is claimed to be indispensable for a truly sustainable society to function. One way to achieve that is to have Yin and Yang currencies operational as dual, complementary monetary systems. An integral economy supports the spiritual human evolution towards integration and individuation, in ways that a purely Yang economy cannot achieve. (Chapter 9).
Integration and specifically Integration of an Archetype: process of losing the fear and embracing of the two shadows of that archetype. It frees the Ego to move toward integration with the Archetype and can continue until the Ego coincides with the Archetype itself, accepting its full energy by dissolving into it. (Chapter 1) If all archetypes are integrated, a human has achieved full individuation.
Matriarchal means that women dominate an official governance system which excludes men from power (see Patriarchy as the prototype). It appears at this point that this is a mythical form of society for which no archeological or historical evidence has yet been found (e.g. the Amazon society imagined by Greek mythology). Matrifocal means that the focus of both the mythology and of the system of rewards and appreciation in a society is honoring the feminine. In contrast with Matriarchal societies, there are many examples of Matrifocal societies. These two concepts are sometimes assumed to overlap, but they are not the same. For example, Dynastic Egypt was certainly not matriarchal (particularly not in its public administrative functions); but both its mythology and the social reward system were honoring the feminine (as shown in Chapter 6), justifying that it be called a matrifocal society.
Means of Payment vs. Medium of Exchange: “means of payment” is a function broader than, but including, the function of “medium of exchange”. Jonathan Williams showed that only in Western civilization has the entire focus of money been as a medium of exchange for commercial transactions. Most other civilizations used money for community-building ritual purposes as well as commercial exchanges.
Modernism: A worldview that started with the European Renaissance and became the dominant one during Modern times. Its main values are secularism, universalism, personal freedom and achievement, leading to upward mobility and specifically financial materialism. Organizationally, Modernists believe in the management and technological practices that have arisen from the Industrial Age, including traditional economic theory. They believe that technology will ultimately prevail over all problems. Modernists today still dominate almost completely the media and the other two main contemporary subcultures: Traditionalists and Cultural Creatives. See details in chapter 8 and in Ray, Paul & Anderson, Sherry: The Cultural Creatives (New York, Harmony Books, 2000)
Money : An agreement within a community to use something as a means of payment.
Mutual Credit currencies: currencies that are created as a simultaneous debit and credit among participants themselves at the moment of a transaction. Typical contemporary examples include Time Dollars and Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS, Talent, etc.) (Introduction to Part Three in this book, and The Future of Money Chapters 5, 6 and 7).
Participation Mystique: A term initially introduced by anthropologist Lévy-Bruhl, denoting a primordial psychological connection of the inner world with the outer world. It is a “Yin” way of knowing, which has been dismissed as a characteristic of a “primitive” way of thinking by Modern society.
Patriarchy: “manifestation and institutionalization of male dominance over women and children in the family, and by extension in the society. It implies that men hold power in all the important institutions in society and that women are deprived of access to such power.”8 Such important institutions include religious, social, political, economic and educational organizations.
Sex: vs.Gender, see Gender
Shadow: Manifestation of an archetype when it is repressed. It can be repressed individually and create an individual shadow; or collectively when it creates a collective shadow. It is always characterized by a permanently embodied fear (Chapter 1).
Yin-Yang: Taoist concept of relationship between polarities. Figure 3.2 (page ***) presents a list of the polarities most relevant for the study of money systems.
Yang Currency, Economy: A Yang currency is one whose issuance is based on hierarchy, which encourages accumulation in the form of currency, and which tends to generates competition among its participants. All conventional national currencies are Yang currencies, because they exhibit each one of these features. This is why the competitive economy that they fuel will be called the “Yang economy”. The Yang economy tends to build financial capital.
Yin Currency, Economy: A Yin currency is one whose issuance is based on egalitarianism, which discourages accumulation, and which encourages cooperation among its users. Well-designed complementary currencies will tend to activate a cooperative “Yin economy”. The Yin economy tends to build social capital.
Appendix B: Questionnaire and address for 2020VISA
Bibliography
Index
LINKS TO OTHER CHAPTERS
Table of Contents | INTRODUCTION
PART ONE: ARCHETYPES AND MONEY | CHAPTER 1: THE LANGUAGE OF ARCHETYPES
CHAPTER 2: THE CASE OF THE MISSING ARCHETYPE
CHAPTER 3: THE ARCHETYPAL HUMAN
CHAPTER 5: CASE STUDY OF THE CENTRAL MIDDLE AGES
CHAPTER 6: CASE STUDY OF EGYPT
PART THREE: WHY NOW? | CHAPTER 7: EXPLORING CONTEMPORARY MONEY WITH THE GREAT MOTHER
CHAPTER 9: OUR FUTURE, OUR MONEY | EPILOGUE: A FUTURE TALE | APPENDIX A: A BRIEF GLOSSARY