“Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death.”
- James F. Byrnes (1879 – 1972)
The following is inspired by a Lego-building session with my youngest son, Daniel and numerous conversations with my blood-brother-in-arms, Douglas Castle…
It was the best of times, although many refused to see it as such and considered it the worst of times. Nonetheless, none could deny it was time for a change.
It started out as a noble experiment…a means to prove that people could build a thriving community of riches through a mercantile system and in such a way that would promote equality and freedom but turned into a system of inequality and enslavement.
In its humble beginnings, people, needing to survive together against common threats such as the elements, wild beasts and other adversarial communities used barter and trade of currencies to exchange goods and services.
Some exchanged cattle and other livestock. Others exchanged tools and weapons. Yet others exchanged cowrie shells, rocks, hunks of metal and even chocolate.
Eventually one community developed the trinket, an item that was made from local materials as a viable means of exchange. Trinkets started appearing in other communities as well…they came in different shapes and were made of different materials. And while, at times, trinkets were not always practical for larger purchases, over time, trinkets became the main basis of community economics.
Those who seemed to exchange their trinkets well enough had more, while others who were more disadvantaged through various series of bad choices did not. Those with more trinkets became respected and venerable and held onto power, while those who didn’t became the servants, slaves or even “untouchables”. People who didn’t have as much over time and grew discontent had the following choices:
- Organize a militant revolt and either seize power and control or die trying
- Move to another community to start all over again, fresh
- Find inventive ways to change the trinket system for the better through intellectual and/or political means
- Learn to accept that which (they felt) they couldn’t change and fade into obscurity
- Ignore it and hope that the situation will improve.
With the advent of more successful localized trinket-based economies, growth began within once-smaller communities and they began to experience new pleasures while developing new challenges.
One such challenge was the growing need for raw materials to make more trinkets often led to some communities being trampled under and forgotten; cultures and knowledge lost forever. Other communities were absorbed, increasing manpower to find more raw materials to feed the growing hunger for more trinkets. When two growing communities vied for the same materials skirmishes and battles would break out in which lives were lost. Nonetheless, “civilized” communities spread their “civilization” to other communities and this was called “progress”.
Sometimes, as communities began to overlap more, citizens began to realize and develop an appreciation for other cultures such that healthy trade of trinkets was established. Other times, when one community began to overly-covet another’s trinkets (which might even have been made with better, shinier materials), skirmishes and battles would develop into full-scale wars. Progress continued.
In time, communities grew into countries. Some of these countries were content at their level of trinket-production and chose to trade sparingly with other countries. Other, more ambitious countries chose to continue to grow, and when they could no longer do so, wage war with other countries to get their wealth. Still others did so through economic and diplomatic means, realizing that somehow they could all get a long if they worked together in building each others’ mutual economies into a larger ecosystem.
And still yet, other countries decided that trinkets were like a drug that led to nothing but war and suffering while draining all natural resources to the point of eventual extinction. These countries decided to find other means of exchange and either went back to the “old” ways or decided to base their economy upon one thing that can never be taken away…who they knew and what they knew. They developed their own economic system based upon merit.
Other trinket-based countries with trinket-based economies saw this and laughed. After all, one cannot touch, smell or see merit they way one could a trinket. Trinkets were real and because they were real, they could be measured and studied. In fact, several citizens developed new ways of measuring trinkets, determining trinket-value of goods and services and even predicting the “flow” and “growth” of trinkets.
The eight most predominant trinket-based countries began to encourage other smaller trinket-based countries to join in with them and develop mutually-dependent trinket-based economies together, while completely ignoring the non-trinket-based countries. After all, what good are those countries, if they had no trinkets? Besides, trinkets were much easier to deal with than all that messy emotional stuff that is used to determine merit.
For a while things were going really well for all trinket-based countries. Their political systems began to revolve around trinkets, enterprises began to revolve around trinkets, it seemed that just about everything revolved trinkets. People in power found ways to amass more trinkets through their schemes while the servants, slaves and untouchables did their bidding. Whether rich or poor, there was one thing that all wanted: more trinkets. Why? Because trinkets meant more power, more freedom and still more trinkets. Emotions and feelings were shunned as being non-trinket like and those with less of them, were rewarded with even more trinkets. Those who broke down and showed emotions were labeled as “weak” or even “crazy” and made to work with the rest of the servants, slaves and untouchables.
Those in power in the trinket-based countries began to experience new challenges as they consolidated even more power. They faced limited supplies of raw materials which meant limiting the amount of trinkets that could be produced. Various enterprises and their leaders began to panic as their growth was beginning to level off and stagnate. Some especially ambitious and industrious citizens came up with the idea to create imaginary trinkets, which were just as good as real trinkets and would be accepted by any respectable trinket-based business, even if they had to create new laws to make it so.
In the meantime, the non-trinket-based countries (there seemed so few of them now, especially since some of them were lured away by the other trinket-based countries to develop their own trinket-based economies) viewed the other trinket-based economies, studied their cultures and were shocked by their findings after talking with several of their citizens, ranging from prominence down to servitude. The researchers found the following similarities despite the level of financial wealth:
- Worry over losing what trinkets they had
- Concern that they didn’t have enough trinkets to pay for things like their childrens’ educations, retirement, etc.
- Higher incidences of medical issues within the subjects and their family histories
- The admission to breaking rules to gain more trinkets, whether real or imaginary
- The values of integrity and honor were only valued on the surface, while shrewdness and incompetency were rewarded more, especially the more one was in power.
While not at all significant to the trinket-based countries, the non-trinket-based countries took to heart all they learned from the research and redoubled their efforts to build sustainability into their models. While their merit-based economy might not have been perfect, it would appear as if it were, at least, more sustainable. Their citizens worked together and honored integrity, honesty and personal and professional development. Because of this, there were no levels of stratification of its citizenry. There was fear to some degree, but certainly not as prominent. In fact, they had no fear of invasion from the trinket-based countries because they did not see anything of value to conquer!
Then one day they heard from a few of the poorer citizens of the trinket-based countries. They sought political asylum! When asked why, they said that their economies are crumbling one by one as leading political figures became involved in scandals concerning certain large enterprises. People were beginning to recognize that their trinkets had no value, especially the imaginary ones. There was no way of finding jobs, paying for their housing and they were physically and emotionally exhausted. Several heads of vast enterprises even committed suicide in anticipation of being discovered for fraud or out of losing their vast trinket fortunes.
Those less wealthy citizens were in even worse shape as they were deep in debt and owed more trinkets than they could pay back, and while this was true of many of the larger enterprises that enjoyed so many years of trinket-building, they did not have the backing of the government to give them more trinkets despite their plight. To compound matters, laws were passed to make it impossible to escape their debt and were charged even more trinkets because they didn’t have any. Over the years, the numbers of those with more trinkets began to rapidly dwindle while those with less increased dramatically. The situation had become insufferable and intolerable.
It was the best of times, although many refused to see it as such and considered it the worst of times. Nonetheless, none could deny it was time for a change.
The leaders of the non-trinket-based countries refused to grant the requested asylum as their merit-based economy was extremely delicate. The introduction and immigration of such people to their shores would upset their sustainability models. Nonetheless, they felt it their responsibility to help their fellow human beings by offering them the following options:
- Organize a militant revolt and either seize power and control or die trying
- Move to another community to start all over again, fresh
- Find inventive ways to change the trinket system for the better through intellectual and/or political means
- Learn to accept that which (they felt) they couldn’t change and fade into obscurity
- Ignore it and hope that the situation will improve.
As the world had become a much smaller place due to technological advances in communications and transportation and as entrance into the non-trinket-based countries was not permitted, #2 was not an option. Upon further consideration, they realized that #4 and #5 were basically the same. Therefore their choices were:
- Organize a militant revolt and either seize power and control or die trying
- Find inventive ways to change the trinket system for the better through intellectual and/or political means
- Ignore it, accept it, hope the situation will improve and fade into obscurity.
The people made their choice.
What would YOU chose?
What have YOU ALREADY CHOSEN?
Adam J. Kovitz is the CEO, Founder & Publisher of The National Networker (TNNW).
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