1. The Joyful Science
Economics has been called the dismal science since it was said to deal with the allocation of scarce resources to meet unlimited needs and wants[1]. This book proposes a new definition, “allocating infinitely abundant resources towards limited needs and wants” and suggests that henceforth, economics could more rightly be called the joyful science.
Indeed, the dual concept of utopia as “an ideally perfect place,” but also “an impractical, idealistic scheme for social and political reform”[2] is in dire need of revision. The latter definition has negative connotations that may only serve to dissuade efforts to risk new paths towards creating a better world. Nothing short of a new paradigm for the fusion of both economics and utopia, utoponomics, is needed to help humankind focus its attention and energy on desired outcomes in the future.
The concept that we create our reality, both individually and collectively, has been around for many years. Perhaps James Allen, said it best in the opening paragraph of his classic work As a Man Thinketh:
The aphorism, “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he,” not only embraces the whole of a man’s being, but is so comprehensive as to reach out to every condition and circumstance of his life. A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all of his thoughts.[3]
Napoleon Hill, the famed motivational speaker, after 20 years of systematically studying wealth and successful people, had this to say about the power of our thoughts:
Truly, “thoughts are things,” and powerful things at that when they are mixed with definiteness of purpose, persistence, and a burning desire for their translation into riches, or other material objects.[4]
Thus our choice of words, with their accepted meanings, originating from our internal world (our thoughts) affects both our internal world (how we think) which in turn directly affects our outcomes in the external (physical) world of everyday life. This process can be visualized as a circle, an endless loop.
A new paradigm of abundance as opposed to scarcity, will change our attitudes and behaviors. This will naturally lead society towards cooperation and away from the compulsive and unnecessary competition which is rampant in the world today.
Research by Marija Gimbutas, the pioneer of archeo-mythology, which studies how mythology can help bring meaning and insight into archeology, suggests that our so-called pre-civilized ancient Western ancestors (from 6500 BCE to 3500 BCE in Southeast Europe and to 1450 BCE in Crete and the Aegean Islands) actually led a peaceful, prosperous life under an egalitarian gylanic (male-female partnership, non-dominator) primarily goddess-worshipping society. [5]
The physical evidence leading Gimbutas to this view is summarized by Professor Mara Keller, who has studied her work extensively:
(1) the frequent placement of villages on open plains without fortifications; the absence of caches of weapons; no artistic images of weapons, warfare, or warrior deities, and no evidence of violent destruction of villages (until the Kurgan invasions); (2) comparable burials for women and men in terms of wealth and social status; and (3) a much higher proportion of stylized female figures in ritual or sanctuary contexts (interpreted as goddesses) in comparison to images of stylized male figures in similar contexts (interpreted as gods) in the “approximately 30,000 miniature sculptures in clay, marble, bone, copper and gold from some 3000 sites from southeastern Europe alone.”[6]
This enlightened view of ancient societies is in stark contrast to the commonly held notion that primitive man lived a life in nature that was, as the pessimistic English philosopher Thomas Hobbes put it in 1651 in his Leviathan, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”[7] He believed that only a government with the power to force its will on the citizens would be able to maintain order, saying “covenants without the sword are but words.”[8]
The importance of Gimbutas’ work is that it provides us with a precedent for what otherwise would be considered an impossible paradigm shift. Perhaps the realization of a new economic reality of abundance will bring us full circle back-to-the-future to a cooperative, sustainable, and spiritually fulfilling way of living.
[1] Thomas Carlyle [1795-1881], British historian, essayest, and social critic], Latter Day Pamphlet, No. 1. (1850), “Respectable Professors of the Dismal Science” and his essay on “The Nigger Question” (1849), “What we might call, by way of Eminence, the Dismal Science.”
[2] The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 3rd Edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992).
[3] James Allen, As a Man Thinketh (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1959), p. 3. Originally published in England approximately 1904.
[4] Napolean Hill, Think and Grow Rich (Fawcett Crest, 1937, Revised edition 1963), p. 19.
[5] Marija Gimbutas {1921-1994] The Language of the Goddess 1989.
[6] Mara Lynn Keller, Ph.D., The Interface of Archaeology and Mythology: A Philosophical Evaluation of the Gimbutas Paradigm, published in From the Realm of the Ancestors: An Anthology in Honor of Marija Gimbutas, edited by Joan Marler, (Manchester, CT: Knowledge, Ideas, and Trends, Inc., 1997), pp. 381-2.
[7] Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan 1651. Part 1, Chapter 13, Line 9.
[8] Ibid., p. 17.2