This TED talk is a great example of how there is already a big cultural change from hyper-consumption to collaboration.
People don’t want a music CD, they want the music that’s on it. They don’t want a power drill, they want the holes in their wall. Most people aren’t interested in a car, they are interested in getting to their destination.
This is but a small part of the cultural shift required to achieve the Resource Based Economy, but it’s happening without people even understanding the full implications.
The foundation of Economics is Adam Smith’s idea that the monetary system works well because everyone works in their own self-interests.
Our current form of Democracy is representative. We vote for people who will then represent the wants, needs and culture of their electorate. So they are meant to be working in the interests of those that they represent.
It sounds like the current form of Democracy is incompatible with the current form of economics.
Extrinsic Motivation is the Reward and Punishment (also called carrot and stick) approach to getting people to do things. The best example is Money. Work harder and you get paid harder, screw up and you loose more, or even worse, the police get sent around.
The monetary systems use of Extrinsic motivation is only good for basic, mechanical tasks. i.e those that are easily automated.
Extrinsic motivation can :
Diminish performance
Crush creativity
Encourage cheating, shortcuts and unethical behaviour
Foster short-term thinking.
Become Addictive
Extinguish Intrinsic Motivation
Intrinsic Motivation
Intrinsic Motivation is a renewable source of productivity which promotes creativity, engagement and quite often collaboration. Companies like Google, and open source communities like Linux, and Wikipedia are powered by intrinsic motivation.
Intrinsic Motivation requires three main points :
Autonomy -The ability to choose whatyou are working on, where, when, howand with whom (you rarely get all those choices, but at least a couple of them).
Mastery -Doing tasks that can get you into a state of Flow. The task level is perfect, not too hard or two easy, but a notch or two beyond your current abilities.
Purpose – Doing your work for a good reason. Hint; money alone isn’t a good reason, if your doing your current job purely for money and would quit if you won the lottery then you have no Intrinsic motivation.
Resource Based Economy
Dan Pink talks about Intrinsic motivation working best when the concept of money is off the table. When people are paid enough that they can have the main things in life they need (e.g food, water, shelter, electricity, and the ability to share that with someone they love), then you allow Intrinsic motivation to shine.
By promoting a world of sustainable, renewable and abundant energy and resources, based on collaboration, open access to knowledge and automation of repetitive tasks, all using the scientific method to select the best possible options, then you end up with a world which shines with intrinsic motivation and no longer has a need for money. That’s when you have a Resource Based Economy.
Professor Philip Zimbardo conveys how our individual perspectives of time affect our work, health and well-being. Time influences who we are as a person, how we view relationships and how we act in the world.
The 6 main types of time perspectives are :
Past Positive – Remembering the good old times.
Past Negative – Remembering the bad times.
Present Hedonistic – Wanting to satisfy your immediate urges. Addictions.
Present Deterministic – Thinking that there’s no reason to do anything because it’s fate. Everything is pre-determined.
Future Oriented – Knowing that planning and the things you do now will help in the future.
Life begins after death – Thinking that your current life is only a transitionary state and that your ‘real’ life is what starts after you die.
As you can tell, the Zeitgeist Movement is mainly composed of and interested in Future Oriented people. The people who want to make a difference to the current and future world in which we all live in.
A TED talk on how our pattern seeking minds are prone to self deception and are most likely why we have concepts of God or larger controllers and beings. Also goes into conspiracy theorists.
Also, some interesting articles on Egalitarianism in Hunter-Gatherer societies:
http://foragers.wikidot.com/egalitarianism — Further information about the social hierarchies of nomadic cultures, tending to vary from pure-egalitarianism through to semi-egalitarian.
