A. Structures and systems of the world

The attribution of ‘Evil’ to the triumvirate, however, is a mere value judgment that obscures the underlying systemic disorder. In fact, I now see the free enterprise system, capitalism, the market economy as the underlying systemic disorder. Taking a global and historical view, I see this economic system as the scourge of the earth. The free enterprise system is propelled by the amoral, or more properly labeled the immoral, profit motive. Reduced to the simplest analogy, the free enterprise system means that businesspersons, or their businesses, to put it impersonally, must get more than they give. Ultimately, they must get more than their competitors get. Ultimately, getting more than your competitors means eventually running them out of business and taking their share of the market.

B. The pathology of the free enterprise system

Globally speaking, the free enterprise ‘über-system’ is not only enslaving and impoverishing the world’s ‘unter-populace’, it is propelled toward rapidly destroying the natural ecosystems of the earth. I used the word propelled but the word more properly is impelled. Impelled as it is, the free enterprise system defies regulation from outside, and it certainly cannot be reformed to become pro-social and pro-nature from within. It is the most unnatural system from the point of view of the welfare and survival of all of nature and its species. Ethically speaking, it is the opposite of a pro-social, positive reciprocity between fellow human beings. It is, likewise, the opposite of mutual support between humans and nature. A clear example of this pathology is what happens when someone, particularly a politician, publicly proclaims a plan that has the idea that free enterprise ideologists should or could include even a smattering of socialism. Currently, TV, radio stations, and the internet are deluged with frantic denunciations that scream against ‘Socialism!’, as if it were a death knell for civilization. This is ironic since now drastic measures have to be taken to patch up a world economic system that is crashing. This is going on while, simultaneously, the earth is facing eventual doom from climate change induced by massive, powerful corporations running amuck and destroying the natural environment all over the globe.

Historically, the extraordinary and glowing success of free enterprise also has been a blinding light that has prevented the US populace and populations of the industrialized countries from detecting the growing signs of impending disaster. Alarms are being sent out by scientists and responsible leaders that the world, the earth and its people, is in crisis. Those with the greatest power are fighting with all of their might and economic resources to combat and suppress the message of these heroes of humanity.

To get us out of the recession, people must spend. They have no spare cash so they must use credit cards. Using credit cards cost high interest so they have less to spend. No spending, no profit for corporations, no profit means cutting costs and cutting costs means laying off and laying off means no money to spend and government worker compensation to pay and that means the government goes further into debt and that means curtailing government spending and more unemployment and less profits and the cycle goes round and round and down and down.

C. The genius of advertizing is working against the people

All parts of the holistic, natural system of humans and nature depend on one another and must mutually facilitate each other. Working against this human imperative is the genius of advertizing. Advertising is the handmaiden of corporate profiteering. Through the now vast variety of media that are for the most part controlled by the large corporations, advertising makes the people feel that they need more and more and larger and larger amounts of a multiplicity of goods that are genuinely unnecessary except as signs of keeping abreast of the conspicuous consumption race.

In our modern world, hypnotized by the media, intense motives that imitate and serve the free enterprise model are subliminally droned into and infused into every American’s personality and identity. Like the corporations, to maintain their status, or to succeed and to surpass the status of their fellow human ‘rivals’, people will give over almost all of their time and energy, even to the point of destroying family members, friends, innocent fellow humans, and the earth. Irrationally, people now will work their hearts out for things such the latest, best, or biggest in jewelry, clothes, cars, homes, recreation, and all of the vain, inane, senseless, and counterproductive goods promoted through advertisements. This corporate controlled media ingeniously has found a way to reshape interpersonal relations in their image.

This ingenious corporatized media has also found ways to transform programs that are destructive to all into an ideology that is hallowed and revered to such a degree that its life destructiveness is virtually invisible. For example, their approach to health care is insane from a humane cost-benefits perspective and, for all but the most affluent, is ruining the majority’s health. On a grand scale, it is damaging the health and emotional stability of American individuals, spouses, and children. It is not just in America. This is the case worldwide, even in underdeveloped countries. Nevertheless, the corporate controlled media is persuading the mesmerized majority of Americans and others that their glitzy products are the products that they want and even need. Sanity and reason has been decommissioned. For example, the heath care and related industries convince almost everyone that our current health care system is really for the welfare of all.

D. Cost of managed care.

Corps paying for health care and using managed care rations health care and increases profits for health services and pharmaceutical industries. Why would government and the health industries support a system like Managed Care that was specifically designed to refuse to pay for treatment to the ill even though it drove up the cost of health care so that 25 cents of every dollar went to an administrative industry designed to screen out the legitimately ill from access to care and give their employees bonuses based on how many they turned down and how much expense they saved insurance companies. GENETICS AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, PARTICULARLY RIGHT WING ELITIST.

E. Media popularizes the tiny number of people who grow up in extremely disadvantaged ghettos and yet become highly successful.

F. The media is a pimp for products and services that are harmful to the health and welfare of the people.

Furthermore, walk into any grocery store and look over what is on the shelves. You will see a massive, noxious, cornucopia of items that are harmful to your health and depleting your budget but the glitz created by marketing genius always wins over rationality. As another example, consider the pharmaceutical industry. Television is saturated with highly appealing ads that make people feel they may have an ailment and there is a new wonder drug that will fix it. Suggestible viewers become convinced that they have the ailment. They go to their doctor, report the advertized symptoms, and request the advertized drug. The overwhelmed medical professionals give in and prescribe it knowing that they are doing so just to appease a nagging patient and to avoid losing that patient. A recent survey has found that about fifty percent of all doctors actually substitute a placebo. This incipient betrayal of patients, nevertheless, sustains the sick, symbiotic, mutually self-sustaining system upon which these doctors, the pharmaceuticals, the health insurance industry, and media corporations who reap revenue from the ads of these sectors, and the politicians who rake in money from their lobbyists are all equally dependent. All facets mentioned are parts of a symbiotic, mutually reinforcing, life destroying system. The conclusion applies to everything within the free enterprise, capitalist system.

The individuals working within the free enterprise-capitalist system dare not speak out against it lest they be fired and blacklisted. If this happens, they and their families who are dependent upon them will fall into abject poverty. They realize that this defiance, even if philosophically correct, not only will lead to losing all their material gains but also to mutual recriminations to the point of destroying their family. Fate has so placed these hapless individuals who are employed within ‘a system’, unwittingly or with full recognition of the dilemma, that they inevitably are in the ‘either or’ situation of not only having to support ‘a system’ that is destroying the earth/man-whole but which in the end will destroy them individually as well. They do not commit harmful acts out of a motive to be mean or cruel. The employees of corporations do these things because they must if they are to avoid losing out to their competition. If you put two fighters in a ring and you tell them that winning means that they must kill their opponent and, if they refuse to kill, they both will be killed. Kill or be killed. That is the model for corporations: compete and destroy and the spoils go to the winner.

Just as the individual is in a dammed if you do and dammed if you do not situation, so is this true of every part of the global system, from the smallest to the largest part. If you try to reform any part, or subsystem, of this global system, toward a system that is natural, meaning pro-human, and pro-earth, the rest of the subsystems or parts will relentlessly work to return that part to the status quo of the whole, global, conscienceless, deceptively successful yet, in reality, globally destructive, free enterprise-capitalist system. The whole world is now an integrated system. Like the US, it is "E Pluribus Unum"! We are all in this thing together. We are all failing together.

G. "Demography is Destiny"

We can extend the concept of the smallest part to aspects of the inner person. Every aspect of the earth’s people, and what constitutes each person’s psyche, are all molded by this global system. The expression "Demography is Destiny" applies to all, albeit each somewhat uniquely within the demography that is characterized by their unique cultures and subcultures. The personalities of all are devoured by this global, exterior, self-cannibalizing system.

Consider how ‘the system’ affects person’s personalities. Statistical studies of the mental health of Americans have uncovered a disturbing trend. A very large and growing percentage of Americans are suffering from depression, anxiety, psychosomatic illnesses, and a host of other symptoms. In light of the conclusion in the preceding two paragraphs, I would say that it would be abnormal if people were not suffering from such symptoms. For example, if you are an actor who is a celebrity, your life is the epitome of what it means to become a success in our free enterprise system. In a film, a celebrity must play a part that is different from the way they are at home and with friends and family. In public, they must conform to the image created by their publicists. Their lives are in the public spotlight a great deal of the time. Every nugget that can be dug up about their personal lives can become front-page in the Tabloids. What this means is that to become and remain a successful actor and celebrity, they can seldom be themselves. If they begin to long to be able to opt out of the profession, their choices are severely limited. This means that they must live a life in which they are nearly perpetually estranged from themselves. A huge gap is created between their public persona and their private person. Being estranged from one’s inner, authentic self is the most common cause of depression, anxiety, depersonalization, wide mood swings, drug use, and self-defeating behavior in general. While being diagnosed with these symptoms, the mental health professionals usually toss into the diagnosis, or ascription of cause, that there is an imbalance in brain chemistry. Imbalances in brain chemistry, conveniently, are treated with mind-altering medications or psychotropic drugs. It seems absurd but quite understandable to me that the professionals do not cite the characteristics of the structures and systems of their world as the cause of both the brain chemistry imbalance and the personality symptoms. Like everyone else, these unfortunate successful celebrities are caught up in the same ‘dammed if you do and dammed if you don’t situation’ as the rest of Americans. They just have their special brand of the dilemma.

Furthermore, consider those who are not suffering from any of aforementioned types of painful symptoms? This leads me to a slightly different way of couching the question of the psychological state of the world. Can cultures be sociopathic and psychopathic? What about ordinary Germans who carried out Hitler’s Holocaust and Germany’s devastation of countries and millions of people in World War II. Hitler's combination of genius and madness was only possible within a society suffering from the aftermath, which they brought upon themselves, resulting from having perpetrated World War I. A major influence that determined this outcome was the way the western victors structured the Treaty of Versailles. No one seemed to be aware of the roles of history and the structures and systems of the world during those times. They were incapable of seeing Germany’s devastating acts as a consequence of the structures, systems, and history of the world, particularly the Western world. No one lost any sleep or felt any guilt since these oblivious, victorious leaders were channeled, by a severely limited worldview, to attribute evil to a nation and its leader. As for not losing sleep, consider this. Consistently enough, Harry Truman is said to have slept well in spite of the Hiroshima bombing that killed millions of innocent Japanese. Furthermore, the Japanese even felt heroic in taking on America. They felt pride about committing their atrocities because they were done with a sense of loyalty to the Emperor who was considered to be God. The Japanese were not inherently, morally defective people anymore than United States was morally defective for the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, and so many others.

Acceptance of the way of the world and all of the horrendous consequences spawned by Western culture is understood as learning to accept reality and as an important stage in becoming a grownup. This kind of acceptance and therefore obliviousness to this role of the structures and systems of the world in causing people to perpetrate destructiveness serves to absolve corporations of guilt and social responsibility as well. Consider the moral insensitivity displayed by American corporations in the cases of exposing children and families to deadly toxins, toxic waste, and all manner of pollutants. The depravity of European and American governments and corporations in cruelly exploiting the people’s of underdeveloped countries and turning their lush natural world into wastelands were likewise carried out with impunity and with a sense of loyalty to profit motive of their corporations and responsibility to stock holders. With world enough and time, I could go on forever listing these psychopathic deeds. However, the point is that the CEOs and political leaders involved in perpetrating these inexcusable horrors had no ‘imbalance in brain chemistry’, nor did they have ‘genetically caused’, intra-psychically generated personality disorders, or they simply had weak wills or bad intentions. In fact, these leaders’ behaviors were regarded as admirable. They were continually rewarded with all manner of positive reinforcements. The negative consequences of their actions were rationalized away as a necessary part of succeeding in business.

From the point of view of ‘Natural Systems’ this kind of cultural endorsed approval of our leaders’ behavior signifies that they are psychopathic pawns in sociopathic free enterprise-capitalist systems. Each nation has its own brand of sociopathy and psychopathic business behavior within their peculiarly, sadistically perverse national cultures that is spreading with increasing trends toward homogeneity from the West to the rest of the world. There is a difference between these immoral players in the corporate and political worlds and that of outsiders such as much more isolated celebrities. Members of the corpotocracy are all receiving orders and rewards that were not just condoned but applauded in descending order top down from stockholders, CEOs, presidents and the like, and on down through the ranks of their respective hierarchies within humungous organizations and even small businesses. They were not hounded by negative media attention, castigated by associates, pressured by community representatives, nor subject to frequent law suits; rather, they were a part of a cohesive organizational in-group and related fraternal associations all having the same adherence an unspoken code of loyalty to the concept of ‘company above principle’ and to the ‘rules of the Machiavellian game’. They are heroes of the free enterprise system. They are winners and champions in the world-wise sport of global corporate competition. They are the modern exemplars of Nietzsche’s superman. They and their predecessors are the strong survivors in the Pseudo-Social-Darwinian struggle for survival of the fittest.

Competition, profit motive, advertising attention getting and product favoring, media insuring large audience, conflict draws audiences, advertising brings customers, corporations pay media, media captures and molds minds, political parties must win, winning requires successful ads, conflict brings audiences, demonizing opponents wins, political parties pay media, corporations need support of political parties, corporations pay parties to place ads that win, demonizing ads win audiences, political party wins, corporations win, audiences lose.

I. "the crisis affects all but the very rich"

There you have it! That is the challenge. The 'people' must work hard to understand how the rich have been the causal force behind everything that is wrong with America. Figuring out what we have been herded into, how our culture has been shaped, how the structures and systems created by the élites have determined our ambitions and preferences, and how we have unwittingly slaved on their treadmill and had the blood sucked out of us; that is the challenge. A challenge that may require a brutal honesty of ourselves! A challenge that will require a radical reshaping of the life styles our individual selves, our communities, and our institutions.

George Soros: Stock markets and fundamentals of economies are reflexive but the two do not go in lock step and be disastrously deviant from one another.

Communicating about the economy is unintelligible to all citizens except the experts. This creates a bonanza for demagogues

NOW, IF YOU COMBINED FREE ENTERPRISE WITH CORPORATE WELFARE, AS IN THE CURRENT BAILOUTS, YOU NOT ONLY HAVE A REAFIED OXYMORON BUT AN INCENTIVE FOR CORPORATE RECKLESS RAVAGING OF EVERY OTHER ASPECT OF THE CULTURE. THIS IS LIKE GIVING A GREEDY VICIOUS IRRESPONSIBLE KID A HUGE ALLOWANCE FOR DOING NOTHING IN RETURN.

U. Horizontal Systems

There is something called the step theory of thought processes. The significance of the ‘stepper’ theory is that when you see a person whom you think might be a three or even a two stepper on TV, you should stop and first think how what they are saying today may be a covert way to set the stage for a possible significant future related event or ploy. Second, stop and think how what is happening now may have been previously set-up to have, specifically, the kind of staging effect it is now having on the political scene. In other words, the media public is being ‘led on’.

As an example of step-wise strategies, a legislator commits a misdemeanor that is disgraceful, such as soliciting for sex in a men’s bathroom, but it is not justification for expulsion. He stages a media conference to admit that he has brought a dark cloud over his state (notice he does not say a dark cloud over him), denies he is gay (does not mention the possibility of bisexuality), and says he intends to resign. Later, he announces that he is reconsidering resigning.

The laws governing expulsion from the senate state that a senator must be guilty of a specific type of felony, one that involves misfeasance, treason, or other acts equally threatening to the nation. He knows this. He knows conservatives in his party must renounce ‘the act’ but maintain reservations with respect to grounds for expulsion. They further state they must do more research into the situation, especially with respect to the stipulation that its relevance with reference to the statues of the legislature must be examined. The senator and his colleagues have first satisfied the requirement that they sympathize with the outrage of constituents, but also included the subdued, somewhat obfuscated, statement that the issue requires further deliberation.

The senator and his colleagues have made step-one and they are now setup for setting the stage for step-two. Step two will come in with the senator’s colleagues humbly admitting that, ‘actually’, there are no legal grounds for expulsion and given the fact of his humiliating, though subtly equivocating, public admission, perhaps he has suffered enough. Furthermore, they will support the contention that he, otherwise, has been a hard working, productive, and honorable senator. Now the stage is set for step three, which is publicly to announce that they remit their call for his resignation and admit that while his sexual conduct is unbefitting a senator, it has no relevance for the performance of his duties and maintaining his senatorial seat.

Now one could reason that these senators, having fought countless political battles over issues of similar gravity though not of similar type, that they would not be masters at the art of three-step thought processes. In fact, they are highly prepared to be masters of three-step thinking.

Finally, consider how these media staging occasions of two-step or three-step maneuvers may have de facto effects in the political world. A master of two-step and three-step thinking can easily play a gullible, one-step thinking, public along on any subject, even with respect to policies that are totally opposite to their best interests and even opposite to their deeply held values. A master of three-step thinking could even convince a public to sacrifice their sons and daughters to a hyped-up, glorified, bogus war. This same pattern of strategies also may work just as well with respect to other prominent media coverage(s) in other arenas such as the worlds of entertainment, the stock market, and the like.

Carl Rove, I suspect is a master three-stepper and his opponents never know when they have been had.

I suspect that no more than a few journalists, newscasters, commentators, and pundits are capable of being more than one-steppers are. Consequently, they communicate as though the comments of those about whom they are reporting, or whom they are interviewing or have interviewed, can be taken at face value. They do not speculate about step-wise thinking. If they did, they would probably be ridiculed as proponents of the existence of conspiracy theories in politics. If, privately, they do endorse the conspiracy theory of politics, they must not display this reasoning to the public. They would probably be fired if they seemed to be encouraging ‘conspiracy theory thinking’ in their audiences. That kind of conspiracy journalism is reserved for the treatment of topics like UFOs that have no political consequences.

High-level criminals are typically three-steppers as illustrated in the "Thomas Crown Affair" and "Oceans Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen". Expert three-step thinking is extraordinarily difficult to master and is probably extraordinarily rare.

Educating the public about step-wise thinking may be possible. Presentations of steps and how these ‘steppers’ can throw you a curve and startle you with surprising twists and turns in the directions of events that have you convinced one way only to swiftly have you convinced about the opposite, as in clever detective stories, could be safe and helpful to the public. Nevertheless, being led by the media to discount step-wise thinking and conspiracy theories, as we now are, is like tilling the public as if they were soil being prepared to receive seeds for their own exploitation and self-destruction. The public is left vulnerable for unscrupulous politicos like Carl Rove.

X. Bringing a Structures and Systems Analysis to the Crisis in American History

By Edwin L. Young, PhD

Remember, folks, what you are buying when you buy stocks.　 If you buy preferred stock, blue chip stocks, you own the chance to get dividends if the corporation makes a profit and you, usually, own the right to vote at stock holder meetings (often, this right is usurped by special rules and behind the scenes manipulations by management and large stock holders).　 If you buy common stocks, the largest percentage of available stocks, you own hope for the possibility that your stock increases in value (stock price on the stock exchanges) and you can sell it at a profit.　 The point is that playing the stock market with common stocks is playing Monopoly but with your real money at stake.　 If you buy bonds, typically, you own what you put in plus what the interest yields over time.　 What happens with buying and selling common stocks is that records of the parties and amounts involved in the exchange are merely recorded on the brokers’ and/or the corporation’s accounting books.　 That’s it!　 If your stock price goes down and you sell, you lose real money in the stock market Monopoly game.　 Incidentally, a corporation’s stock price can go up or down regardless of how solvent their business is.　 A corporation could be making huge profits and have tons of liquidity and cash-on-hand and still their stock price can go down.　 If it goes down, do they go out of business?　 No.　

If the economy appears to be in great shape, it is hard to argue that economic conditions for the population are getting bad if the stock market is soaring; there is a censuring or blackout of countervailing news; and a distraction such as the ‘illegal immigrant’ issue.　 Yet, that was just what was happening:　 the economic conditions were getting very bad as seen with the outsourcing of jobs, closing of plants, and the steadily and ever-increasing statistics concerning national job loss.　 The federal government added a million jobs; a million full time jobs changed to part time jobs with no benefits, particularly health insurance; and, of course, a large percentage of the male work force was shipped, as military, to Iraq, and Afghanistan.　 These latter phenomena made the unemployment statistics look far less bad than they actually were.　 While the media was focusing on immigrant, Mexican workers as the problem affecting the downturn in the economic welfare of average Americans, it was, in fact:

So, who is to blame for this cesspool?　 Remember, it is never the individual person; it is the system!　 It is the system!　 The system:　 all of the government and its agencies, the structure of our economy, our legal system, the entire media as a system within itself, our political system, our educational system, and the way we think about and structure our organizations in general, and, finally, our view and interpretation of our history.　 You cannot reform one part and not the whole because, eventually, the whole will such the one part back into the status quo ante.

BIGNESS IN BUSINESS AND ITS EFFECTS ON LOCAL, DOMESTIC LIVING AND QUALITY OF LIFE: CONSIDER WAL-MART, AIG, CITIBANK, AUTO-INDUSTRY, AND OUTSOURCING.

Dealing with massive dislocation of workers

5% unemployment rate versus full employment

Health care and health insurance

Oil

Energy and cars

Military budget and wars

Worldwide military bases

International crossed wires

Nationalize banks

Stock market chicanery with hedge funds robbing bank when they were flooded with liquidity

Immigrants

Dislocation of workers

Offshore accounts

Bogus products sold with bogus advertizing

Laws on drugs, alcohol, cigarettes,

Elections and financing

Media horizontal and vertical mergers

Assembly line education

Law and corrections

Y. Corporate Law

It is the system!　 I do not mean just the financial system, nor the encompassing system, inclusive of all of the branches and agencies of the government, nor independent regulatory system, nor free enterprise and capitalism. 　Rather, it is all of these plus multinational corporations, plus US corporate law and especially the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and Clayton Act and the economic regulatory agencies; plus the Tax system and recent tax legislation; plus the structure of the media and the FCC; plus the structure of our two party election system and its system for campaign finance; plus the marketing and advertizing sector; plus the conspicuous consumer culture; plus our monetary system; plus the IMF and World Bank; plus the all parties involved in the our energy system; plus the exploitation of the natural resources and labor of underdeveloped countries by the developed nations; plus the failure of public policy to heed the scientific and engineering community; plus the structure of our educational system; plus the structure of the lobbying system and its undue influence; plus the blind subservience to ideology rather than pragmatism; plus the worship of the past, especially a constitution that has not been revised to adapt to the modern world that is so vastly different from 18^th century America.　

No, pointing the finger of blame at CEOs or even agencies is a philosophically deadly ineffectual way to approach our current problems.　 Rather, we must step back as mature, knowledgeable, intelligent leaders and take on the daunting task of examining each of these systems and examining them all as components of the encompassing, interconnected, structure and systems of our nation and gradually but systematically experiment with alternative solutions across the entire spectrum and then revise as flaws are detected in each. 　Management by objectives is one tool from the business community that could be of great help in achieving these goals.

SOLUTIONS Neighborhood organizations to replace justice system