WMail ezine "Non-Monetary Economics" Essay

STROKE ECONOMY
        Part of Transactional Analysis – see Wmail issues #17 and #38 – is the ‘Stroke Economy’. Elements include Strokes (‘warm & fuzzy’ strokes or ‘cold & prickly’ strokes) and Stamps (which are collected until one can redeem them for a ‘prize’).
        When each human decides or senses that he/she is lacking in Strokes, the impulse is to seek them. If one cannot locate Warm Fuzzies, then the choices are to continue the search, to find some way to earn them, or to settle for Cold Pricklies.
        Stamps are designated by color: Red stamps, for example, are for anger – save up enough and you can blow your stack. Such a blowup is not based on strict accounting, it just happens and the ‘account’ is depleted. The next insult adds back to the accrued collection, and more is added whenever the person holds their anger in check, or stifles a reaction, or turns the other cheek.
        Green stamps are about envy. Brown stamps are about taking crap from people (real or perceived snobbery or slights, actual physical attack, etc.). Righteousness comes with a fool’s gold stamp. Real gold stamps (love, joy, acknowledgement) are often difficult to deal with, since Game-playing humans don’t expect them and are unclear where to put them. There are also counterfeit stamps, where the holder did not actually ‘earn’ them.
        The Stroke economy and the collecting of Stamps both work much like mountain snow pack: it builds, it melts away, and the cycle repeats.

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        The central T/A element of Games has an economy where each player keeps score. If one sits in the stands (of Life), then one misses the accrual of genuine Strokes. So we play Games. In the realm of Games, Strokes occur in the form of Win-Lose.
        We each play the Games that we are best at, while dealing with the Games presented by everyone around us. The best-equipped among us are able to (metaphorically) swat a tennis ball, kick a soccer ball, and catch a Frisbee all at the same time: The adept are able to handle many such human-games at one time. Or better yet, get others to play the Games that the adept gamer wins at.
        Gamblers don’t play to win, they play in order to be in the Game, i.e. to collect Strokes.

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        Money is not Power unless you believe that that is so. The Oligarchy controls 83% of the assets of America, but they are unsatisfied and they kill and destroy in an attempt to grab the rest. They lack self-esteem and are bankrupt of Strokes, and are scared because all they know how to do is collect (mere) money.
        The Oligarchy hungers for what it cannot obtain, except by use of propaganda, manipulation, coercion and force. (How we know this is that this is what the Culture-Structure machinery of the Oligarchy is designed to do.)
        The Oligarchy can only steal. They are caught in a destructive Game, one that is their best shot at protecting their DNA. The False Mind tells them what to do, and the results are damage to the environment and human suffering – all of it caused by their societal commitment to anti-Reason Values, i.e. dis-empowerment.
        The Oligarchy seeks Power by taking it from others, which digs deeper the hole containing the emptiness in their lives. They rob themselves, and then steal more to replace the missing Power.

Reason gives entirely different Values, and also different results. Reason, invoked for the purpose of Mankind’s survival, will produce Mankind’s survival and an idyllic life for everyone. It can be done, but existential effort is necessary.
The sheep will never revolt, it is up to Reasoning Individuals to lead the way. Sheep being sheep, some of them will follow, and that is enough to ignite the Revolution.

        We are indeed all in this together: genocide is not an empowering activity. The definition of a progressive is someone who intends to make the world a better place. The world is better without fear, without exploitation, without pollution, without slavery, without death by starvation, without war for any reason.
        The war-mongers reduce their Power by using Force against their fellows, then rally the mindless sheep for another war, seeking some economic steady-state where they have enough False Power to stop, to relax, to be able to let the machinery take over. Yet they can never get there because their Values cause the dis-empowerment of others, which then causes dis-empowerment of themselves.
        And then there are those pesky things like Reason, Freedom, Tolerance, and the Rule of Law that get in their way.

        Every action of the Working Mind derives from the intention to cause Empowerment. The Culture-Structure (which perpetuates False Mind) has no access to Empowerment, which is why they can only steal and bully and threaten and propagandize for what they want from others.
        The Individual receives Power by giving it away.
        Only an individual can perform any action.
        All wealth is created by the labor of an Individual. (As I’ve said before, "Labor is the source of all wealth.")

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INTERNAL ECONOMICS
        The internal economy of an Individual is an accrual of various values, much like a bank account, from the external world. These imaginary values are stored in many forms, alongside external values, such as reputation and money and underlings. But settling for external values without awareness that internal values matter most leads Mankind to hollow lives and suffering. Addressing the internal economy – of a person, of a group, of a society or country – is the only route to a Satisfied Life.
        And satisfaction in one’s Life derives only from the empowering actions that the Individual performs.
        You can resist the Universe – by sheep-ly obedience to the Oligarchy, the Culture-Structure, and the False Mind – but you cannot cheat, you cannot cajole, you cannot threaten the Universe to get your way.
        This is how the Universe works.
        Mankind will not survive unless Mankind takes a Stand to act for Mankind’s survival.
        If you do not, then Mankind is soon extinct.

* * * * * * * *
Bill Gates may be the wealthiest man in the world, but he smiles a lot because that is secondary. Bill Gates values and operates from and for Empowerment. Which Warren Buffett agrees with, so he donated $30 billion to the non-profit machinery that Gates set up for Empowerment of others.

One thing that really frustrates and frightens the Oligarchy is that Power cannot be hoarded. One can only Empower (others) and the resulting Power lasts however long it does. To generate more Power (in one’s personal and internal economy) one can only Empower another.
Bill Gates smiles and travels the world solving health crises, and Warren Buffett drives his pickup truck and plays with his grandchildren, while Donald Trump snarls at his betters and struts on television, Limp Rushbaugh doses his emptiness with OxyContin & Viagra, and George W. Bush stomps on the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Convention and prays for Armageddon.

        The path that you choose gives you your destination. Choose and intend Empowerment, and Power is the result.
        Or choose and intend ‘winning at all costs’ or “I deserve it because I want it”, or the psychopathology of ‘nobody else matters’ and the result will be depletion of Power.
        The machinery of the Universe works the way that it does, and Mankind as a whole avoids operating consistent with that machinery to its (literal) peril.
        Empower. Or die.
        Reason. Or subjugation.

        The Universe does not care what you do.
        Accept that you are the source of Power, of Satisfaction, and the Universe will deliver more Power, and more Power, and still more Power.
        Bill Gates has not exceeded the level of Power that the Universe is willing to provide, nor should you limit yourself.
        Power is created from acts of Empowerment, and your chances to Empower others are limitless.
        Just empower. Any way that you can. Every chance that you get, with strangers and loved ones.
        The emptiness fills with Power, the internal accounts swell with esteem and Satisfaction, and one has nothing more to seek – except for further opportunities to Empower.

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EXTERNAL ECONOMICS
        While internal Stroke accounts ebb and swell based on local activity among one’s circle of relationships and on random meetings with strangers, the False Mind is hardly able to generate enough Strokes for Satisfaction to be present.
        Thus the phrase ‘lives of quiet desperation’ [Thoreau’s “Walden”, 1854]. The common man lives in a poverty of Strokes. Even having a spouse or kids or a large family circle brings little in the way of Real Strokes, because nobody else knows how to generate them (thru Empowering each other).
        So the False Mind advises bogus strategies, which produce only more False Strokes. Need self esteem? Buy a Lexus. Or answer that email offering fake Rolex watches.
        The single individual escalates from dating to ‘scoring’, to ‘prove’ that they are legitimate in the world of relationships. Corporate executives award themselves more money than they can legitimately spend in a lifetime to ‘prove’ they are good managers – while the books are cooked to cover for their mismanagement. Football/soccer fans chugalug the suds to demonstrate that they know how to have ‘fun’. Kids with cars turn the sound system volume up so high that it sets off car alarms – to block out their emptiness and to demonstrate that they have the latest machinery of entertainment, that they obeyed the propaganda and bought the most popular tripe.
        Their emptiness causes them to seek a solution, and the solution provided by the Culture-Structure makes matters worse.

        And if mass consumption finally leaves them unsatisfied, they expand their grasp. The MySpace website may serve a social function for most, but the Stroke-deprived will soon spend hours and hours ‘scoring’ new friends, as if a displayed list of pseudo-‘Friends’ makes them popular.
        And feckless dweebs who cannot make small talk with their peers fixate on celebrities, becoming stalkers. The economics of such activity is that when a person lacks Strokes from within his/her environment, then the only way to fill that void is to kiss the hem of somebody in People Magazine. Local-life, real Strokes have no value in this mindset, but going to the same club as Paris Hilton, or being first in line to see “Star Trek 27” adds a million counterfeit Strokes.
        Better than nothing, huh?

        Nope. Counterfeit Strokes are still counterfeit. False Values from the False Mind are always False. Empty lives cannot be filled by seeking what is provided by the emptiness of the Culture-Structure.
        The design of the Universe is this: The internal economy of each human receives Real Strokes by action to Empower another. External, materialist consumption cannot and will not provide the same result. In fact, consumption is the opposite of Empowerment.
        Eric Hoffer said that “You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy.”
        As all wealth is generated by the Individual, so is all sense of worth. When a person values external, materialist ways of ‘proving’ self-worth, they begin a never-ending spiral of ‘more, more, more’. The Individual becomes worthy by standing AS an Individual, in the face of the onslaught of counter propaganda from – surprise! – the purveyors of those materialist products.

        The Individual with a developed Working Mind causes the generation of Power externally in another. The task is never certain, nor easy. But the determination is quite simple: You have empowered another when your internal sense of Value increases. When you attempt to Empower, and it works, then the other person experiences Satisfaction, and your own Satisfaction accrues a precisely equal increase.
        The other way – that of the pervasive Culture-Structure machinery – does not work.
        To choose another result, Mankind must choose another path.

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The WMail Newsletter EssaysVolume VII - Issue #61 - July 2006

"Non-Monetary Economics"

The WMail Newsletter Essays
Volume VII - Issue #61 - July 2006