Commonway Visioning

[This is the second of four installments examining the roots of our financial, moral and spiritual crises, along with suggesting solutions.]

“DOW JONES MUST DIE!!!”

Okay, that’s more inflammatory and over-the-top than I usually go for. But, for reasons stated below, it may be inflammatory but it’s also true.

First of all, “Dow Jones” is not a person, never was. (And, it was never “alive”, so I can’t really call for its “death”.) It is a company started over 100 years ago by three guys, Charles Henry Dow, Edward Davis Jones and Charles Milford Bergstresser in a small basement office in New York. (Dow Jones early history is fairly interesting…)

It is an arbitrary average of 40 selected stocks, out of the thousands of companies represented on the New York Stock Exchange. It was created back in the horse-and-buggy days, when no one had the ability to track all of the stocks traded on the exchange. (Nowadays, you could track all of the trades in real time, with no more computing power than what’s in your iPhone.) The Dow Jones Average assumes that this small cross-section of stocks reflects what is happening in the market as a whole.

The people who run this average select the stocks of the largest, most profitable and most wildly successful corporate entities in America. The Dow Jones Averages is made up of corporations that are household names: AT&T, Boeing, Coca-Cola, Exxon-Mobil, General Electric, McDonald’s, Pfizer, Wal-Mart. From time to time, some organizations are taken off (American Cotton Oil Company) while others migrate on (Microsoft).

So, the largest, most inefficient, wasteful, socially and ecologically damaging corporate giants become the benchmarks for “success” in this society. Collectively, the ONLY thing these corporations are good at is… making more money.

Well, that is, up until recently. As we watch the Dow Jones Averages plummet and the financial credit markets face total meltdown, some of us realize that the ENTIRE world economy isn’t going down – only the parts of the economy that are inefficient, wasteful and ecologically damaging… EXACTLY those parts that are measured by Dow Jones!

Unfortunately, when these dinosaurs die, it isn’t quiet or pretty. We see them now, thrashing around, taking down hundreds or thousands of other organizations in their death throes, and making miserable the lives of millions of people around the world.

We are being told that “the global economy” is troubled because these 40 companies represent “the Market”. They do. But, WHAT market? The mainstream media, the business colleges, the Wall St. types all pay attention to ONE type of “market”, and that market is very well represented by the Dow Jones Averages. But, it’s not the only market, and (from the point of view of regular human beings) is not the most important one.

In an article I wrote back in 1989, I identified FIVE different markets, all tangled together in a global financial stew:

THE BLACK MARKET (The Rats): Illegal, immoral and destructive. Drug sales; armed robbery; trading in stolen goods; cops taking kickbacks; counterfeiters; illegal weapons sales; dumping toxic chemicals for profit. The Black Market is completely intertwined in all of the other markets, as George Bush the First found out when, as Vice President, he tried to block the flow of drug money into US banks. Within weeks, banks in Florida almost went under. The anti-money laundering laws were relaxed, so that the drug dealers and the banks could go back to doing business. The Black Market thrives on despair and depression; it breeds immorality and social ruin.

THE GRAY MARKET (The Roaches): Dubious legality and at times negative effects. “Survival economics”. Neighborhood junkyards; unregistered child care centers and food preparation. Unlicensed street-corner vendors and musicians. Illegal tree cutting in most parts of the world. People who paint themselves and act like statues for tips. The guy trying to squeegee your windshield during a traffic stop. While the Gray Market is largely ignored by the mainstream, it is the LARGEST of the five different markets, comprising the majority of people on our planet. Ignored by entities like the World Bank and the IMF, the Gray Market is how people LIVE. Over half of the humans on this planet, over THREE BILLION HUMANS, live on $2.00 per day or less. This is the Gray Market.

THE WHITE MARKET (The Rabbits): Legal and largely neutral. Restaurants, offices, taxis, manual laborers, managers… What most of us think about (and work in) when we think about “the economy”.

THE RED MARKET (The Dinosaurs): Super-legal (they own the system and make the rules); Industrial Age wastefulness of resources; inefficient, unbalanced, poisonous. Buckminster Fuller called this “the global casino”. Incomprehensible buying, selling and trading of largely fictitious “assets”, with little or no regulation. The Red Market, based on greed and corruption, feeds off of the White and Gray Markets. The Red Market, exemplified by the Dow Jones Averages, is endangered and soon to become extinct. Those who created the Mess cannot even understand the problem, let alone fix it.

THE GREEN MARKET (The Gazelles): Ecological, positive, adaptive, responsive, decentralized, healing, worker-owned and community-owned businesses. Examples include green energy; organic and sustainable food production; bio-damage remediation and the entire emerging sustainable, “green” business sector. This is the market of the future. Our collective future lies in moving the billions (of people and dollars) currently in the Gray Market into the Green Market.

Hyping the Red Market:

Those who are the proponents of Red Market economics have done a great job in convincing you that the Red Market is the ONLY market, and that its demise means that YOU will die, YOUR retirement is on the line, and the entire world will come to an end if you don’t pump your hard-earned tax dollars into CPR for dinosaurs.

You have choices. You can choose to react out of fear and panic. You can believe that the same people who told you that Iraq would be a breeze can be trusted when it comes to the Red Market economy. Or, you can do something different.

If we can’t trust the government (Republicans or Democrats), then who can we trust? The answer is very, very simple. So simple, in fact, we completely overlook it.

We must trust each other.

My friend Meg Wheatley, in her two EXCELLENT books, “A Simpler Way” and “Turning To One Another”, outlines the path we all must follow. Our future lies in community. The measure of “wealth” in the future will NOT be how many digits are in your bank account; “wealth” WILL be measured by how many communities you connect with. Developing community through self-reflection, talking and listening with others, followed by action that is human-oriented and community-scaled… this is our pathway to survival.

For decades, we have placed our faith in all of the things our wisdom teachers told us NOT to believe in. We have placed our faith in money, in banks, in corporations, faith in big government and big business. Our current economic and political systems RUN on this faith. They cannot exist without it.

It’s time to change the paradigm. It is time for new leaders to step forward, armed with a radically different vision of what “success” means in America. It is time to identify leaders who hold a vision of a world that works for all beings. Leaders who have shed the blinders of old theories like “capitalism” (which I believe is dysfunctional) and “communism/ socialism” (which is equally dysfunctional, just in a different direction).

From where will these leaders emerge? That answer is simple, also. We each can/will/must be those leaders.

It is time for us to divest ourselves from mutual funds, investment banks, hedge funds… Our mantra must be: if (personally) you can’t control it and you don’t understand it, you shouldn’t be invested in it. Period.

It is time to invest in your community. Invest in your bio-region. Invest in your continent. Invest in your planet. You have a choice: you can invest in Red Market “Dow Jones” companies that make money (correction: made money in the past), or you can invest in companies pledged to make a better world (and hopefully make money, too).

It is time for your investments to be MORAL. Your investment strategies must place “making money” SECOND to other, more important considerations. Assume that your immediate neighbors, your children and grandchildren are sitting in your circle as you are making your investment decisions. Assume you are telling them, “I am investing in XYZ Company so that the world will be a better place for you”. (Yes, this includes those crazy neighbors you don’t really get along with. They may have the best ideas. Your survival is linked with theirs.)

In these turbulent times, we must have trust and we must have faith. It’s all a matter of trust and faith. (What do I mean by “faith”? That’s in next week’s message…)

Peace,

Sharif

[PS: Next week: the financial crisis is a crisis of faith and spirit.]