The obsession with economic growth

“David Cameron must reassure us that he has a strategy for growth”

 It is THIS belief in the paramount importance of “economic growth” which is the REAL problem. Trouble is that it lies so deep and underlies so much (forming the very foundation of our economy) that it is obviously very difficult – especially for politicians and newspaper editors – to recognise.

The obsession with economic growth is a seemingly more benign expression of the earlier obsession with military might. It’s all about POWER, as it relates to man’s perverted Darwinian nature, which, having given rise to civilisation, is now driving us towards self-destruction. And, because we fail to recognise it, there is nothing we can do to prevent it.

Continued on my blog:

I’ve been trying to point this out to Telegraph editors and others for years, but it is like trying to point out the absurdity of their literal interpretation of the Bible to Jehovah Witnesses: no one is as blind as he who will not see, especially when confirmed in their blindness by most of their peers and superiors.

But who am I to tell the esteemed editors of the Telegraph, or anyone else, that they are blind? Perhaps, if I were to explain HOW they are blinded . . . ? It didn’t have any effect on the Jehovah Witnesses I’ve attempted explaining it to, although, to be honest, I didn’t push it with them, because they obviously have a strong social and personal/psychological need to believe what they do, and are harmless enough; their absurd beliefs and blindness to reality are not leading to our self-destruction, as belief in the imperative of economic growth is.

Post-hypnotic suggestion offers an impressive demonstration of how we can be deliberately blinded to normally quite obvious aspects of reality, and examples of how OTHERS are naturally blinded to aspects of reality, we see all around us. But our own blindness, by definition, we cannot see, except in retrospect, AFTER we have recognised it.

The reality is that we are naturally blind, and must learn to see. Only, our brains did not evolve to see “reality” itself, but to “interpret”, i.e. produce a concept or model, of it. These interpretations are more or less useful, and we generally learn (subconsciously) to select the more useful ones. But what our brain considers “useful” may have little to do with objective reality itself. For Jehovah Witnesses it is useful (for social, personal/psychological and perhaps material reasons) to stick with their literal interpretation of the Bible.

Belief in the imperative of economic growth is obviously very useful, which is why we are so reluctant to give it up, despite the (one would have thought, obvious) insanity of it on a finite, vulnerable and already overpopulated planet.

To be continued . . .