New Currency: Could this be what Jared Loughner was rambling about?

The New Currency Institute aims to promote a deeper understanding of money and its power to reconfigure the global economy and markets for the betterment of all of humanity.

It has long been a truism that money makes the world go ’round. But the quality of world we build is directly a function of the values and mindsets that humans collectively hold about money. At the New Currency Institute we see money as a function of consciousness and therefore a qualitative variable in the global financial system. By changing how we hold money, we literally hold in our hands the power to change the world.

From a holistic point of view, the institute explores emerging monetary tools that carry the potential to dramatically increase global trade, resilience, equity, prosperity, cooperation, long-term thinking and investment. We seek to further explore and enhance the understanding of humanity’s evolving values and world views that inform money creation and economic systems.

Through this way of understanding money and its interconnectedness with all of life we seek the means and processes that catalyze solutions to pertinent global problems and build a framework for enabling the reconciliation and convergence of disparate civilizations, nations and peoples.

At the core of our mission, we hold the objective of developing free market approaches increasingly aligned with resource use and the evolution of human consciousness. Ultimately, it is by making markets more spontaneous, decentralized and self-organizing rather than more centralized, bureaucratic and laden with arbitrary power that much-needed 21st century economic capacities will emerge.

Building effective and powerful new economic systems are vital to enable the continuance of global transformation. Be a part of the solution. Join us in co-creating the economic and monetary tools, values, theories and systems that serve an integrated and thriving humanity.

For more information and background in the conceptual thinking behind the New Currency Institute please consult New Currency: How Money Changes the World As We Know It

The following interview was originally published by Integral Leadership Review (Volume X, No. 2, March 2010).

How Money Changes the World: An interview with author and integral economist Jordan MacLeod.

JM: Well, it’s been a work in progress for a few years, but it really wasn’t until the onset of the financial crisis and other geopolitical factors that really provided the context and impetus to finish the book.

JM: Well, the most significant was learning that Iran had mastered the ability to detonate missiles at high altitudes from (commercial) naval vessels. The only plausible purpose for such capability is launching electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks by detonating nuclear warheads at high altitudes overseas.

JM: Problems like Iran and North Korea are wicked in nature. Tyrants with nuclear weapons—I mean, people with an active disdain for their own people, let alone for Western civilization—it just doesn’t get any tougher than that. I certainly do not envy any world leader charged with protecting his or her own people and then having to face regimes with no interest in integrity or negotiating a reasonable outcome. The alternatives are limited if not bleak in both cases. So ultimately, I agree with Freud that in the long run the only means to counter the death instinct and destructiveness is to further the process of civilization.

JM: Well, when you have as many seemingly wicked problems as we currently do, ranging from exploding national debts to terrorism to nuclear tyrants, we’re reaching a point where the complexity of the problems are far exceeding our abilities to resolve them. In my view, containment and holding things together, often at unsustainable costs, is the most one can hope for until we’re able to make enormous breakthroughs—a quantum leap if you will—in our social capacities. This is what Freud meant. We need to dramatically evolve civilization’s capacity for sublimating the death instinct into more creative outlets. And in my interpretation of history, nothing has been more effective in doing so than the evolution of increasingly free and sophisticated economies and markets. By sophisticated, I mean more conscious and creative.

ILR: So, you are saying that you believe we need to evolve our global economy to provide an alternative to destruction and war?

JM: In the long run if not sooner, that’s precisely what I’m saying. If you are against war and conflict, you better have more than wishful thinking and anti-war demonstrations in your arsenal! You better have a handle on the need to co-create the grounded means to make war and conflict obsolete. Where else but from a more integrated and creative economy are real alternatives to war and egocentric identities going to come from? It’s categorically not to suggest six to ten billion humans are all going to dance around the maypole as a happy, global family. This is about creating conditions that allow people to work, to find a sense of dignity and purpose, to be rewarded for constructive behaviours—economically, socially and culturally—that do not undermine human civilization. And, God forbid, when such events do happen, we need an economy that is highly resilient to its impact. We have a long way to go.

Of course we’re talking about only a part of the challenges we’re facing. Our global economy will also have to evolve if it is to transcend myopic decision making and resource allocation–to get more people working–to stimulate sufficient investment in alternative energy and to generate wiser cultural stories and identities that give meaning to our lives and reverse the unravelling of our social fabric and shared prosperity.

In my view, co-creating a powerful and attractive global economy is the sole means by which we can generate effective responses to our interconnected and increasingly complex challenges. Each of us may resonate more strongly with different parts of our global challenges and emerging solutions, but it’s vital to collectively recognize how critical a new economy is for making our solutions viable.

JM: New Currency establishes money as a leverage point for economic and broader social transformation. It examines the historical evolution of money and economic systems and their interdependent co-emergence with novel subjective stages of development. The evolution of our values, or of what Robert Kegan calls subject-object relations, is constantly altering our capacity to relate with the external world. And at the heart of this relationship—at least for civilized society—is our relationship with money. So what’s key to understand here is that how we hold money sets in motion the properties and propensities of our whole economic system and what’s possible in the broader social system. We are not in some final end state in monetary theory that is perfectly objective and scientific in nature. There is an indispensable subjective dynamic that means money is fully in our power to change in accordance with our evolving values, life conditions and aspirations. But I cannot emphasize enough that this change is not at all arbitrary.

JM: Because each economic stage transcends and includes what preceded it. Therefore, the currencies we create must reflect not only our values, but provide very tangible solutions to preceding problems. It is very tempting to take one part of the problem—say inflation or arbitrary, centralized power–we’re facing and design a currency that addresses that specific part. Yet, unless the monetary design addresses the whole of our problems and opportunities, it is necessarily going to lead to pre/trans fallacies. Or to say it another way, we’ll solve one problem only to suffer unintended consequences that make the overall problem worse!

So, as we take into account the evolutionary patterns of money and economic systems, we notice a couple of critical trends. First, there’s the dematerialization of money—which is well documented. What this means is that we’ve gone from our first currencies being cows (yes cows!) and found objects such as shells, stones and so on to increasingly abstract currencies such as coins and paper money and now to digital currencies.

The second trend is the dematerialization of value. The earliest currencies were the most dense, with cows being the most obvious example and then later we see the emergence of coins made out of precious metal. Over time, we see a clear process of money increasingly relying less on material stuff (such as gold) to guarantee its value and more on its function as a medium of exchange to ensure its value. These processes have been what have enabled money to become increasingly relevant, standardized and accessible to an increasing depth and span of humanity over time. Money, imperfections notwithstanding, has evolved to become compatible with more value systems from more parts of the world than at any point in human history. And there is no question that this has helped align international interests and co-operation to an unprecedented degree, as we’ve seen with the global response to the financial crisis and emergence of the G20. Money is increasingly becoming a universal language.

Today, it is the very fact that a dollar is needed to buy commodities that primarily ensures its value stays in tact. So it is this dematerialization of form and value that has enabled it to function, albeit imperfectly, as a global reserve currency for most of humanity.

JM: Precisely. Since Nixon took the US Dollar off of the Gold Standard, there’s been a widespread perception of an evolutionary wrong turn towards a kind of worthless paper. Yet, that step was necessary to enable the money supply to grow to meet the booming global demand caused by economic growth. At the same time, it is indeed vulnerable to inflation, sell-offs, and so on. So we’re really within an economic stage that is half-baked. The global economy is too integrated and large to go back to commodity based currencies without sending those materials into the stratosphere and thereby making them inaccessible to most of humanity. So we need to go forward. And that means designing currencies to be far more elastic and responsive to changes in demand to ensure stable value and to account for the number of paradigmatic problems currently coming to the fore such as unemployment, growth in a finite planet, discounting the future, income inequality, inflation, boom and busts, and so on. This is what the book attempts to address, along with the complementary subjective understanding that is so necessary to make sense of it.

JM: Yes. The book shows this connection and how money is essentially designed to represent an idealized self, fundamentally separated from nature. This manifests in the economic sphere as a devaluing of nature and an absence of limits on economic activity and production. Quite literally, I propose that the antidote for cultural narcissism is realizing humility in our collective relationships with money and economic processes. There are very specific tools that make this possible and they are discussed in detail.

ILR: How do you think these tools might gain currency in our contentious societies?

JM: That’s a great question. I think they’re only likely to be valued when we collectively realize that this economic system is failing on so many levels—despite the enormous and unprecedented contributions it has made. Money and finance happens to be where we collectively have the most ego-investment and resistance to change so I don’t see it happening any other way. Yet, we see already on Main Street that people are actively looking for alternatives to leaving their money with those they perceive as having acted irresponsibly. As the system fails to solve problems and meet our needs, there’s no doubt that we’ll all have an opportunity to put our money where our mouth is, if you will. There will be a tremendous need to restore trust and to get money flowing again into the hands of entrepreneurs and small businesses and we now have the tools at hand capable of making this happen.

JM: Right now, I’m writing a follow-up book called Onement. This will be the second book in what we’re calling the ”New Currency” trilogy. This book looks at how a new currency could enable the creation of what Kevin Kelly calls the “One Machine;” and also the potential implications of that on consciousness and our economic and political processes. It’s an exit strategy from the current financial crisis and also an entrance strategy for realizing an emerging stage of development. The third book is called Ego, Money, Empire…

JM: (laughing) It is. The book examines the interdependent and evolving nature of these three worldly vehicles. I strongly feel that it’s critical to contextualize all three in such a way that we can recognize their historical value and transcend emotionalized relationships with all three that are prone to demonizing or (often unconscious) worshipping. All three have to do of course with our animal nature, our limited identities and mediating our sense of separateness…None of which we have fully transcended as much as we would like to! The desire and wish to transcend these worldly aspects leaves us prone to naiveté and shadow. The reality of course is that only a handful of human beings have actually done so.

This is something that needs to be taken very seriously, as our yearning for evolution and ascendance can leave us highly vulnerable and naive to the abundance of destructive forces on the planet. I am certainly trying to bring in what I call an evolutionary realism that puts into context the emerging breakthroughs in economic theory and geopolitics. But hopefully it also reminds us to keep our feet on the ground and stay real about the persistence of regressive forces that really would like nothing more than to see humanity’s evolutionary project fail. So as we learn to respect the vital evolutionary functions of each to sublimate and immunize our social systems against destructiveness, we can increasingly see them as impersonal objects and tools rather than identifying with them as subjects, as who we are or who I am. And the more we do that, the more we’ll be able to integrate them collectively into the service of our higher Selves and create the conditions for flourishing as a species.

Jordan MacLeod is the author of New Currency: How Money Changes the World as We Know It. He is a co-founder of Elevator Software Corp., the New Currency Institute and Cornerstone Global Associates. He can be emailed at jm@newcurrency.org

More from the author of this book. This book is anti-capitalist. Imagine that - this killer’s head was infected with left-wing nonsense.

What is Monetary Relativism?

“We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.” — Pope Benedict XVI

“[Relativism] claimed that all truth is culturally situated (except its own truth, which is for all cultures); it claimed there are no transcendental truths (except its own pronouncements, which transcend specific contexts); it claimed that all hierarchies or value rankings are oppressive and marginalizing (except its own value ranking, which is superior to the alternatives); it claimed that there are no universal truths (except its own pluralism, which is universally true for all peoples).” — Ken Wilber, A Theory of Everything

“In economic terms, relativism is clearly an absurd position, for the monetary tools and systems that we choose have profound consequences on social order and dynamics. A relativistic position that suggests barter is equally as ‘good’, ‘true’ or ‘worthwhile’ to use as, say, an international currency such as the Bancor put forth by John Maynard Keynes is utter madness when one takes into account the context of global complexities, capital flows and the instantaneity of transactions on which the international system now depends.” — Jordan MacLeod, New Currency

***

In New Currency I briefly touched on the prevalence of philosophical and moral relativism in academia and Western culture. These positions hold that there are no absolutes in the universe, only relative claims. As Wilber points out, the problem with such ideas is that they themselves are absolute claims dismissing the possibility of absolute claims. Thus, they run into the fatal error of performative contradictions.

These unreasonable positions can only be understood as intellectualized protest against the status quo. When one cannot transcend or resolve the current problems related to globalization, it is apparently in the interest of many academics and activists to attack the systems that are “causing” these problems, as if that will solve anything. Relativism can therefore be understood to have an inherently nihilistic nature that presents itself as a serious roadblock to further economic and social evolution. It simply cannot discern between the shadows of current systems and cultures and their essence and totality. The enormous and indispensable contributions of, say, capitalism are thereby tossed out with its increasingly apparent shortcomings. The baby is thrown out with the bath water.

A relativistic critique of capitalism is inherently unable to transcend its limitations and problems because it ignore the context of the values, technologies, traditions, life conditions and human capabilities that gave birth to it. It merely engages in idealized wishful thinking about how things “should” be, and deems it “oppressive” to the working classes in an act of historical revisionism that utterly ignores the fact it is one of the single-most important driving forces in the escape of slavery, rigid social control and feudalism.

Indeed, capitalism is the worst system – with the exception of all others, as Churchill used to say. It has its flaws and warts to be sure, but its imperfections are also indicative of its success. Its remarkable worldwide acceptance and integration have created entirely new sets of problems and complexities for an interconnected global village, with finite resources and diverse cultures. Its success has brought to light problems such as exponential growth in a world of limited natural resources, the concentration of wealth effect, transnational financial risks, and environmental degradation.

We urgently need new thinking to address these problems. Unfortunately, relativism falls well short in the call for new ideas, for it merely leads to malaise at best and social anarchy at worst. It erodes our capacity to develop brighter visions and greater understanding of our problems. It merely states that nothing is better or worse than anything else, which is a direct attack against not only common sense and reason, but the spiritual wisdom that is the cornerstone of Western cultures, including an authentic cultural creative subculture.

A mature understanding of economics and money, however, holds a powerful key for breaking through narcissistic and anarchic beliefs that anything goes on a fragile, interconnected planet. When we account for the context of global life conditions, for the emergence of green and holistic values, for the yearning for deeper meaning, and the means to actually solve our problems without placing an impossible burden on our children and grandchildren, then we have to acknowledge the need for economic innovation rather than mere relativism.

Many of those involved in the alternative or complementary currencies are some of the best positioned to help lead a positive and grounded transformation of the global economy, because they inherently understand the critical importance of monetary design in determining the qualities and propensities of the economic system(s) that we use.

Once we have acknowledged that only specific qualities in money and economic systems are conducive to resolving global (and local) problems, ranging from unemployment to environmental degradation then we have no choice but to reject monetary relativism and then stand up for innovations - the means - that actually work.

What is Monetary Relativism?

Monetary relativism is not an official position or theory propagated in the world of academia like its moral and philosophical counterparts; but it is every bit as dangerous. It is not perhaps a conscious strand within the complementary currency movement but it is nevertheless prevalent within it.

I define monetary relativism as the belief that all forms of currency are equally valid or appropriate; and that no monetary design can be deemed better than another. As a consequence of this belief, the notion emerges that money can be arbitrarily created at the whims of an individual or group, that anyone and everyone should have the right to create money according to their personal desires and impulses.

As we have seen above, the problem with this position is that it ignores the context of economic, social and environmental life conditions and the impact of currency design on our ability to address what we deem the most critical and relevant challenges of our times.

I would suggest that monetary relativism emerges as a consequence of reacting against national fiat currencies, which are inherently monopolistic, arbitrary and concentrated forms of power that are also widely recognized, at least in the alternative currency movement, as imperfect (if not fatally flawed) for solving the challenges we face. Yet, rather than firmly state that only specific and more conscious monetary tools can address the complexity of global life conditions, monetary relativists react against this reality by stating that everyone should be able to produce the kinds of currencies that they see fit.

This position, unfortunately, does not lead to liberation and the good life, but rather to economic anarchy and the dominance of ego in social affairs. Why? Because it abdicates the responsibility for, and denies the possibility of, making value judgements about money and the context of life conditions on our planet. Further, I would argue that it is precisely because today’s individual is not held accountable for the welfare and integrity of the whole system that we’re in the deep mess we are. Consequently, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to systemically discern ego from individualism, impulsiveness from reason, and myopic greed from constructive self-interest.

An Example of Monetary Relativism

Not long ago, I came across this excellent video by the Wall Street Journal’s Andy Jordan on the coming currency revolution. In it, Jordan introduces Stan Stalnaker, the founder of Hub Culture and its digitized social currency, Ven.

Hub Culture is a brilliant social enterprise and the Ven is a solid example of how complementary currencies are performing important functions where traditional, national currencies are not. Stalnaker rightly compared the emergence of new digital currencies as part of a process where money is shifting its qualities, comparable in its nature to a shift from stone to pebbles and now to sand. What he essentially means by that is money is becoming increasingly accessible, liquid and decentralized. It’s increasingly including more people into an integrated economy in new and innovative ways. Sand can seep into the cracks that stones cannot. His conclusion, however, of where this sand-like currency was taking us almost jolted me out of my seat:

“So we think at some point there will be millions of different currencies, essentially everyone will have their own virtual, personalized currency, and we’ll trade on some sort of, you know, NASDAQ for personal currencies.”

Here, Stalnaker makes a significant error in understanding how money really works. He is literally missing the beach for the sand, the forest for the trees, the ocean for the raindrop. Why? Because he is reducing currency to the idiosyncratic whims of personal taste, and thus overlooks the critical importance of a currency’s relationship to, and appropriateness within, the context in which it operates. It also misses how a single currency creates its own interconnected ecosystem, an ecosystem with unique and distinct properties, that could only possibly function when several people come together to co-create a shared vision of reality.

Currencies are inherently social and cultural creations. Ironically, Ven is a perfect example of the redundancy and pointlessness of individualized, personalized currencies.

Transcending Monetary Relativism

In order to cut through the dangers of gross error via relativistic and idiosyncratic money design, we must ask a simple yet powerful question: What currency (or currencies) is most appropriate within a given set of life conditions?

By first identifying life conditions — the environmental factors, values, technologies, problems, cultural dynamics and so on at a given point in time — we are from the start required to contextualize our monetary design for a specific purpose. After identifying the set of presenting challenges and opportunities, we can then begin to adequately evaluate and judge the appropriateness of specific currencies for a specific job. It might be how well X, Y and Z currencies complement national currencies (and help to compensate for their limitations) or, more importantly, how well a currency is able to transcend the national economic paradigm altogether.

Indeed, for humanity to effectively build the capacity to collectively confront the enormous global challenges of our times, a new economic paradigm is now required. We can’t simply continue to try to impose “solutions” on top of an unsustainable system. The 2,000 page health care and cap and trade bills currently under consideration in the US will saddle this and future generations with higher taxes, energy costs and debt. While they may be well intended, if they pass they will ultimately only accelerate the failure of an already overburdened and overwhelmed system. The sooner the delegates meeting in Copenhagen next month realize this, the better.

At some point, and I believe that time is now, alternative currency thinkers and doers, along with others who are serious about developing new economic capacities, will have to dedicate their energy primarily towards demonstrating how real world economic problems can be solved using specific designs.

While diversity and experimentation has its value, we live in a time when we can no longer afford to be distracted solely by peripheral currencies that have marginal impact on the global economy as a whole. A central emphasis must be placed on making qualitative judgments about which monetary systems are most appropriate in the context of solving our most pressing problems. The more the alternative currency community as a whole is able to coalesce and integrate new ideas and collectively focus their energy like a laser beam on the challenge of transcending national fiat currencies, the more powerful and lasting impact it will have.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

If you read through this interview, you will see that this is exactly the kind of new-agey claptrap that could get into the head of a deranged leftist and drive him over the edge. I stumbled across this doing a Google search for "New Currency," which took me to this Facebook page:

Here's info about the author of this book:

Anyone see a possible connection here to all of Loughner's apparent nonsense to creating new currencies? I haven't heard anyone else talking about this.