2012-03-09 – Politics Continued, “me-ism” vs “us-ism”, Energy Alternatives
– Mar. 9, 2012
Conversations with Monjoronson #44
Topics:
Life is a learning experience
What is meant by “interest-based?”
What national hazards have been overlooked?
What are our options to carry us into the future?
Common goals and common beliefs
A segue from material sustainability to social sustainability
Choosing new leaders
Future population will need to understand principles of sustainability
Are our current politicians examples of our culture as it exists?
We have created a hive mentality
Is it time to change to a better system, politically?
Creation of Super PACs
Redirection of national political policies
Electronic town halls
Need for uniform goals in decision-making
Focalizing elements needed for social sustainability
Changing the culture of “me-ism” to “us-ism”
Energy alternatives
Monjoronson’s monologue
TR: Daniel Raphael
Moderator: Michael McCray
March 9, 2012
Prayer: Heavenly Father, Christ Michael and Mother Spirit, we gather together to be in your love and light as we seek for more truth to share with our brethren. We are tremendously grateful for this opportunity to converse with Monjoronson, our mentor and friend, as he leads us forward in our personal and planetary spiritual growth. Amen.
MMc: Good morning, Monjoronson. Welcome!
MONJORONSON: Thank you. It is good to be here again, as always. And you are well?
[Note: reference to Michael’s reason for canceling last Friday’s session.]
MMc: As well as I can be with all the problems associated with old age. I am afraid that my underlying health is not the best.
MONJORONSON: I understand.
MMc: Is there anything you would like to say to us this morning before we begin?
MONJORONSON: Let us begin with your questions today.
Life is a learning experience
MMc: Okay. The last time we met you said, “Life is a learning experience and every day is an opportunity to learn more.” I wonder if you would expand on that thought a little more for us, please.
MONJORONSON: Yes, gladly. Learning from life and learning every day requires the capacity of yourself to be aware of yourself as you engage the day’s activities. If you are unable to do that then you will need to do it as a part of reflection, meaning that you have an experience and then you have a time where you can sit and think about that experience and learn from it by asking, “What are the lessons from that situation and what is the overarching wisdom for related and similar situations.” And of course, the third position is where there is no recognition, no learning that takes place because there is no examination of experience.
A fully conscious individual is one who lives consciously and who is observing each moment that passes during the day as an observer, watching and observing yourself as you engage other individuals, and always aspiring to your higher values and ways of behaving, that you might emulate the life of a morontial being who is evolved and who is growing. It is a fact that even morontial beings—young ones—who have newly arrived, oftentimes are not self-observing, and so they have an advisor who helps them, who provides a sort of a stop-action examination of a situation with them. There are those individuals who are also very stubborn and hardheaded and who still think they know the right way, even though they are living in a completely different universe, so to speak. These require further assistance and remediation in their celestial/morontial education.
You, however, are captives of a mortal life, that there is no escaping the experiences of the material life that you have from day-to-day. You can, however, make the most of that by living your life consciously as though you had already graduated into the morontial realm. It is a remarkable capacity to see yourself re-framing each moment in terms of a celestial lifetime, with the reality and understanding that you are still a material being, and that there are other souls, other individuals out there who may do you harm, and so you must still be nimble in your mind and grounded in the reality of your world, so that you are able to survive and learn even more. I hope this helps.
MMc: I hope it does, too, thank you very much.
What is meant by “interest-based?”
You—the larger you—say you are not political in your work, you are interest-based. What do you mean by being “interest-based?”
MONJORONSON: As I explained last time, we are interested in your growth. We do not take a political position on your growth, saying, “This individual over there, this individual surely must graduate and go to heaven, and this individual over here has not learned their lessons, so they will have to go to confinement and remediation.” Our interest is evenly applied to everyone, and that our interest is in everyone achieving the presence of the Creator, God, the First Source and Center in Paradise in the eventuality of each one’s potential or possible ascension scheme.
There is no program for failure along the way; that is a matter of choice, decisions of the individual in their ascension career. Some, in fact, do come into the morontial realm, look around and say, “No, thank you,” and they are extinguished as though they had never been—as a matter of their choice. They are given every opportunity to achieve the ascendant career that God wants for each individual. We do not take positions on individuals or on the program or the choices that they take. We continue to foster greater awareness of the God presence within them as the component that is necessary for them to achieve fusion and the embrace with the Creator.
MMc: I see, thank you.
What national hazards have been overlooked?
You said that we, as a nation, become so obsessed with our own political struggles that we have become inattentive to the hazards around us. What are these hazards that have been overlooked?
MONJORONSON: The situation in your nation is very classic to all nations, particularly for those in power and those in the power scheme. Those who are “in the system,” who are ascending in power and position of authority and control, become so obsessed or focused on the ends of their career and participating in their system that they lose track of the internal difficulties and struggles and maturation—and lack of maturation—of the social content and context that is around them, in the vast majority of individuals. What has been missing in the political struggles is the separation between the political process and the management process. When our work is successful, we will have developed, evolved and mature managers in your society who understand sustainability and who apply that to the social, financial and economic functions of society, so that they are tuning the processes to the degree that society has the capacity to be self-sustaining.
There has been a division in most nations at all times throughout history, where there is an integration of the power and control with the management of society for its longevity and this, of course, never works. It is a primitive method. Your world is on the very cusp of the beginnings of differentiating between management and politics. Politics is position-taking, saying that “we are better suited to manage the economy and political structure, et cetera, of this nation than the other party.” What will eventually occur, there will be a more unified understanding of politics as necessarily contributing to the sustainability of the nation, the states and the communities. Politics then becomes a place where the person on one hand says, “I am better suited to assist in the management of the sustainability of our nation,” and the other person says, “No, I am.” And so this will be a transitional political era, but it will continue to work for the sustainability of the larger society and of the nation, as it exists in a community of sustainable democracies.
Your nation cannot evolve as it exists, but in fact it will devolve as it exists, that it has fundamentally mined the greatest good that can exist through the existent and historic democratic process of this nation. Other nations have very similar forms of democratic processes and they have, or will soon, come to the maximum potential of expression that the old system has to offer. There must come into being an evolved political system for your nation to survive. As it exists, it is very incapable of surmounting the difficulties that will arise in the next 30-40 years. At that time, if the new political processes are not invested and ingrained and operational, then you will surely see a significant collapse of society and civilization. We want to have these processes in place long, long, long before then and that is why we are beginning now to clarify these processes, so that they are able to become rational and even admired by some individuals as reasonable and logical and capable of producing intuitive answers to your society’s difficulties.
My answer has taken you far afield from your question; I hope this assists you in your understanding.
What are our options to carry us into the future?
MMc: Not terribly far afield. Basically, you are answering my question of what processes should we be looking at, or what are our options for these new processes that will carry us into the future?
MONJORONSON: Just as you… let us say you have a small company and that you have 10 people involved in your company. You are producing some goods and that you need everyone on board, on the same page, so to speak, so that everybody is most effective as you produce this service so that you can make a profit, stay in business and stay financially—not only viable—but you can survive, exist and become sustainable, meaning that you will have the product or service available into the future, to such an extent that you are able to exist and that everyone has earnings and income.
Now, in a nation, a very large nation, such as the United States, you have a very diverse population, yet many of the population are not “on the same page” culturally or in their values and belief systems. Everyone would, perhaps, probably agree on all the basic fundamental values, but when it comes to beliefs, they would like to go their own way. The new systems that are being envisioned by our team, and which are now being distilled and placed in some writings, are those which bring about a dialog at the national level and a dialog at the local levels, and that there is dialog between those two processes. It is essential that there be common understandings, and understandings do not occur until the fundamental assumptions that underlie a person’s thinking or a culture’s thinking, or an ethnographic group within a society [that] has the same assumptions as at the national level.
When everyone has a similar understanding that overlays their assumptions, then you have what might be called cultural coherence, that you are able to go together in the same direction. You saw this as highly visible during the Viet Nam war era, where there arose a larger and larger percentage of population who were on the side of the antiwar movement. Eventually it became culturally dominant and decisions were made to end the war, for various reasons. It eventually brought homogeneity of understanding that this war was highly destructive and could eventually lead to the division internally of your society, and that the political system would be wrecked. A similar situation will occur in the future.
This is what we are trying to prevent in the future in all democracies, that we provide a process by which there can be greater cultural coherence, so that during times of immense stress—which will certainly be forthcoming—that your population will be able to survive that. Even if there is a huge loss of population, the population that remains has the fundamental assumptions of society, its purpose, its goal, and is able to reconstitute itself into functional socially sustainable organizations, from the family to the national level. As it exists now, this is not possible; it would simply end up with numerous regional states, which would be apart and separate from the national organization. You would find yourself again in a very similar situation of the German State under Bismarck, and that there was a need to coalesce, [to] bring cultural unification to a divisive nation. We want to abridge that completely by moving through the process of ongoing peace, to an evolved society that has coherence, unity and is functionally able to continue its work as a national organization, a national society, among others, and can continue to assist in the evolution of this civilization.
MMc: You hope to accomplish this through the encouragement of common beliefs and common goals?
MONJORONSON: Your question is too nebulous for me to grasp or to answer adequately.
Common goals and common beliefs
MMc: In trying to unite the people of this nation, are we looking at bringing about a situation where they have common goals and common beliefs?
MONJORONSON: Yes, most definitely. That is why we have continued to speak about social sustainability. This is the one focal point that must dominate all thought from the individual to national decisions in the future, so that all contribute to the continuance of society. There is too much selfishness at this point in your nation; there are too many divided goals; there is not a unifying goal to draw anyone into the future. This United States and other democracies do not have a focalizing goal to bring all the efforts and energies of society forward into a unified future so that the outcomes support social sustainability. It is our goal as planetary managers to bring that into the thinking of individuals, whether they are ordinary citizens or those people who are in positions of authority to make decisions. It is the one thought that must come in the future.
Our work is most difficult, as this has never been done before, except on a temporary basis, such as at the beginning of World War II, when the United States had an immediate and focalizing event that brought the attention of everyone in the nation to one focal point, that it must survive, and that its survival was threatened by the attack on Pearl Harbor. This provides a perfect example and we wish and we hope to prevent such a delayed and late decision-making of accepting a unified goal. The future is not easy for your nation or other democracies, and I say ‘democracies’ because only a democratic nation has the capacity to engage in social sustainability and movement toward it. That is because everyone must arrive into the future together; there is an egalitarian ethos and value system of democracies that everyone is of equal value, and that everyone is needed to support the society, whereas in authoritarian governments the people are a means by which they can achieve dominance over other nations, and that the individuals do not participate in the decision-making process.
At times of immense crisis, top-down directives and decisions made by those in power and control may not necessarily be accepted by those individual citizens and that there would be pockets of resistance and disobedience. It is necessary to have everyone have a similar belief system that it is necessary to make decisions that lead to social sustainability, and every citizen understands this. This provides the basis of progress in a constructive way, not progress by force or coercion, but progress because of the willingness of individuals to understand the necessity of right decisions that contribute to the sustainability of all. Yes, the folkways and individual thoughts are necessary to participate adequately to achieve those ends.
A segue from material sustainability to social sustainability
MMc: You understand that the term “social sustainability” is not well known in our society.
MONJORONSON: That is correct.
MMc: But the term, “material sustainability” is, and more people are becoming aware of our need for material sustainability, in order to be able to survive. I was wondering if there is a segue or an equation that leads from the cognizance for the need for material sustainability, to the cognizance for social sustainability, or if the two are completely separate?
MONJORONSON: Let me begin by saying that most of your population, when they speak of social sustainability, they assume—there is an assumption there—that sustainability has only to do with material sustainability. They do not even say the word “material,” because to say the word “material” would already have in mind that there is sustainability in something else. Most of your people who read about or think about sustainability only think of that term as assuming it has only to do with material goods, such as when they think of sustainability, they think of petroleum, they think of trees, they think of clean air and clean water and so on. When this becomes known to the public, it will be as though—I would like you to imagine this metaphor—that you have a long dining room table that would seat over 20 people, and that someone says, “Well, this social sustainability is all that we have, meaning the table and the chairs, and that they are seated there and think that is all that exists. What will happen as though by magic is that someone comes along and in this roll at the head of the table, throws out the roll and instantly there you see the dining room table cloth, a full set of settings for each individual, including a plate, goblets, forks and knives, bread plates and candles and so on, instantly—just rolls out completely. And this is how it will be, for we do not want a long, ongoing discussion that debilitates the end results.
Your democratic process of discussion tends to compromise the very truths and understandings and necessities that support those arguments. There are so many compromises along the way that the end result is ineffectual and is incompetent. What we are doing now with this small group of believers and readers is to work through the process of devising and building an almost nearly perfect process that once it is laid out to your society and other democratic societies that they see it and [how] it works, and why fuss with it? So they begin using it as it is, and then adding to the base of knowledge that it produces, such that there are sustainable principles, sustainable designs that are discovered and validated and put in place.
A segue? It will be through your mass media, of course, and how we do that is a process that we are now beginning to invent and put together the pieces so that they all fit and flow, so that when it does become known, it becomes known to everyone very rapidly, as many of these fads and fashions that you have seen around in your country, and western countries, develop very rapidly. It is our hope and our plan that this develops in the same way.
Further, I might say that these will be the processes that will require those who are capable and are interested in this process. In other words, it will require those individuals who were parents of crystal and indigo children to participate and to become a part of this process. We are not talking about an elitist intelligentsia, but those who have a cultural interest and have mental capacity and interest to participate and make this effective, those individuals who see the wisdom of what we have provided and want to engage themselves and their communities in it. The vast majority of your population, however, will become aware of it only in passing and in time.
MMc: I see. In your metaphor, it would seem that the material of sustainability is only the bare bones and when social sustainability is added on to it, we see a flowering of what sustainability might actually mean.
MONJORONSON: Yes. Thinking of material sustainability is thinking at the survival and existence level; it does not truly address the quality of life issues that social sustainability does engage. The mistake of material sustainability, as it is now presented to your world, is that it is a panacea for lack; it is a panacea for deprivation. The reality is that material sustainability and the program to develop that will not help the survival or existence of your world’s populations at all. In fact, it is only those who remain here who will benefit from that preparation. That is a truth that is not revealed by your major national and international leaders, because they do not want to create a sense of despair and hopelessness. This is the real difficulty that your nations do not know how to handle; they do not know how to develop a segue that brings the majority of people into awareness that not everyone will be around to appreciate the work that you are doing now.
This is also the case with our efforts of social sustainability that the work that you are doing now will not necessarily help you survive, but it will help your children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren survive most adequately in a much more evolved society that you have prepared for them. The largess of you individuals now, who live and are contributing to this, is hugely important to the survival of your children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren in a life of not necessarily ease, but of potential growth and development, where life is appreciated and that life is not harsh. Does this help?
MMc: Yes it does, thank you.
Choosing new leaders
You said, “Politics is not a useful social process, and a new method of choosing our leaders is called for.” You mentioned one new method, a verbal jousting of meaningful topics, a presentation of arguments from one person’s position. Would you tell us some of the other options we might pursue?
MONJORONSON: Yes, I will allude to them; I will not tell you what they are because we, most of all, do not want to provide answers that you accept and have not engrained into your belief systems or in your assumptions. To do so would be grossly in error on our part, as you would not be accepting of those. The new processes of choosing leaders and managers must be on the basis of sustainability. Who has ideas of sustainability? When these thoughts and ideas are presented to the table of humanity in the metaphor I just used, that individuals who are candidates or want to be candidates will see this as a tremendous opportunity, a new pasture, so to speak, in which they can graze and prosper, which is now occupied by so many other people vying for these positions of power. This will be a completely new way of arguing for their election, as they are most capable of contributing to the good of society from their local districts to the national level, because they understand what is involved and that the superficial topics that they are discussing now are insignificant and pale in comparison to what needs to be spoken of.
We are looking for the day when one individual, an aspiring candidate or incumbent, sees our work and goes, “Ah-Ha! This is a new way of presenting our political party’s side for the future.” And then, there will be much discussion in your media and among political individuals to discuss this and to dissect it, and to determine what it means. It is our hope that they will mine the resources that we have been providing, so that they will have greater wisdom and greater and greater ability. Just as it exists with The Urantia Book, there will be many people in the future who do not espouse openly the work that we are doing in these transmissions, but who will be secretly reading the material and digesting and ingesting the ideas and assumptions about the universe that we are promoting now. If you are into politics and you are into social change and cultural change, then you will find this very exciting. Potential to be a leader politically and culturally is in the forefront for many individuals who have the foresight and prescience to understand the world in which they are moving and have found this source.
Future population will need to understand principles of sustainability
MMc: In our last session, you mentioned that the events that are forthcoming in our world, the great difficulties, did I understand you correctly when you said that only those who understand the principles of sustainability will survive?
MONJORONSON: Yes, we are looking for a conscious population who understands survival and existence as necessary to underwrite sustainability. Many of your population, who live in the hinterlands of this nation and other nations, you would call “survivalists,” and they understand the necessity of provisioning for the future. Those are just the fundamentals of sustainability, yet they are very necessary for the continuance—material continuance—of communities. Those individuals who understand social sustainability are now provisioning by reading these documents and will group together in the future to have viable, sustainable communities, who are not at each other’s throats when the material sustainability becomes in question. You will, however, see in other communities where no one really understands sustainability, social or material, and they will be almost immediately at each others throats within days and weeks, and certainly in months, to maintain their survival, but they will be far, far, far too late. They, too, will become victims of their own short foresight. I do not want to paint this graphically; I want you to become aware that this is a topic which many and most world leaders already understand and accept, but do not speak about it publicly and never would. It is too volatile, too dangerous and there are those people who would worry and fuss and fret about the future, which has not come into being yet, and would destroy and impact and depreciate their capacity to survive, even now when there is no threat. Do you understand that?
MMc: Yes, I do.
MONJORONSON: For national leaders it is “why bring up a problem we cannot solve?” It will only cause panic, destruction and dismay and hopelessness, and it would start the panic years and decades early. We anticipate that. That is why we are developing these materials now, in anticipation of that, so that when people become seriously concerned about their situation, that they will have something to turn to that is rational, reasonable, workable and has proven itself. You, who are reading this, are far, far past the leading edge of social awareness of sustainability in the world. You are a most remarkable group of individuals who we want to culture. You are not extremists. Yes, you are unusual for the population of your nations, to be reading this esoteric material that seems to be so removed from the reality of what you read about and hear about in your national news, 24 hours a day. You are the leaders of the future, aware of it or not. The culture that you are engraining yourself with now will be essential to the leadership that occurs in the future. You may not become a political leader, and it would be perhaps, advisable that you did not, but that you would be a well-balanced, reasonable advisor to those who are in power who are seeking answers. You will have a formula, a process for developing social sustainability that no one else has, and it will make sense to those individuals who really understand social process and political dynamics.
Are our current politicians examples of our culture as it exists?
MMc: I’ve heard it said that our politicians represent us and as such they can never be any better than the best within us. Looking at it this way, would you say our politicians are but examples of what our culture is really like?
MONJORONSON: I’m afraid so, for the best of your kind have not been elected. The current process of selection is very shallow and superficial and vicious and that it does not really engage the best minds of your nation by any extent. It unfortunately does represent the vast majority of your population as living superficially, and living with low levels of intention for meaningfulness and purpose in their lives. This is a situation that cannot survive the future.
MMc: Are too many of us embedded in the status quo or resistant to change for the change to come about?
We have created a hive mentality
MONJORONSON: Yes. You are more concerned about getting the latest iPad than you are to getting the latest philosophical ideas of superior cultural thinking. Your marketing and your economy has been highly successful; it has created a hive mentality that everyone must go in the same direction. We have spoken of this before as a development of bullying that is occurring in your schools, that anyone who does not fit the mold, does not have the equipment or the uniform of the majority is rejected as eccentric and is an “out-sider,” and it is legitimate to attack them and even to kill them. This is a most unfortunate extreme position of your “think-alike” mentality of this nation and other nations.
Is it time to change to a better system, politically?
MMc: As people become more angry and disenchanted about our political system, does this mean that we are nearing a time when change to a better system is possible?
MONJORONSON: Yes, that is so, but only if there is an option for a better system that is available and visible.
MMc: Otherwise, we get disharmony?
MONJORONSON: Yes, you will get disharmony and you will get hopelessness and despair. And, when despair sets into a society, then anything becomes possible and probable, and this is when society begins to break down rapidly. So far, you do not have despair, as most individuals have hope in the economic improvement of their lives; their focus is on something else. When that is gone, then they will be in despair and they will look at their political system as being incredibly incapable and out of touch of the sentiments and needs of the vast population.
Creation of Super PACs
MMc: Recently, the Supreme Court declared PACs, Political Action Committees, legal. These committees can represent interest groups to flood the airways and other media, typically with negative ads. This sets up our situation where it is often not the best person who wins the election, but the one with the most money. Would you like to comment?
MONJORONSON: I will comment on the unfortunate decision and behavior of the Court as it has historically represented the conscience of the higher good of the nation at large. It represented a critical conscience of the public that could be applied to difficult national situations, and in this case, it has erred.
MMc: I agree. Thank you. Would you advise that there be a ban on paid advertising for political campaigns?
MONJORONSON: It is not a topic that we are concerned with at this time.
Redirection of national political policies
MMc: Because of all the mud-slinging, lies and lack of ethics, good moral individuals who would better serve our country are not inclined to run for elective office. They do not want to put their families and their own reputations in jeopardy by becoming involved in a corrupt system—or in what they see as a corrupt system that we have. How can we encourage a changeover to a system of having statesman run the country, instead of politicians?
MONJORONSON: This was answered in part to your question about redirection of your nation’s policies, and this has to do with sustainability. When this becomes the topic that is in vogue, then the capable individuals who can speak consciously and capably about that will come forward.
MMc: In the future, will we see schools for politicians of local, state and national levels, like those mentioned in Paper 72 (of The Urantia Book), “Government on a Neighboring Planet?”
MONJORONSON: Yes, most definitely, as they will need to… you cannot bluff social sustainability into politics. You must have a means by which you can promote it; you must have a manager’s mind to bring this into existence involving the masses of individuals in each district. They will need to know how to do this and this will be the beginning of training schools. It is our hope that there will exist a non-profit organization that would have this as a component of its existence. We have envisioned an institute for human sustainability and have proposed that to one, two or three individuals, heretofore, and that would be one of its functions. It would be a non-partisan, non-ideological organization that would promote the good of society by training and educating political individuals and non-political public executives in the functions and processes of devising and validating social sustainability.
Electronic town halls
MMc: Do you perceive a need for more normalized town hall-type institutions at the local community and neighborhood level where citizens are able to view and discuss issues of the day?
MONJORONSON: Yes, but this will be far larger than a town hall, where only one or two hundred people can meet. We envision an ‘electronic town hall’ that is suited for even the smallest neighborhood to the national level and perhaps eventually, to the international level, that individuals would be able to express their sentiments and opinions and to state public issues and topics that they feel need to be discussed, aired and developed, and that there would be a gradient of preferences for potential solutions and actions for these public issues and topics. This would be a part of the development of a coherent set of cultural assumptions that would unify a nation from the level of communities to a national/ international level. You are asking questions about the future development of a much larger society that is on the same page of life, so to speak, as everyone else.
Need for uniform goals in decision-making
MMc: At present, platforms are stated over and over and often the planks in these platforms are at odds with one another, as in reducing taxes and reducing the debt. How do we get politicians to explain how their objects will be achieved?
MONJORONSON: Again, it will be done only through a unifying goal of decision-making that applies to all public issues and even private issues, that they would be examined under the light of the validating process of sustainability. There is such a morass of public issues that have been unresolved and are now entangled with each other that it will be almost impossible to untangle them in an orderly way. Therefore, expect a series of crises, one after another, that will bring about the necessity of cutting through this, but it will again become embroiled and entangled if there is not a focalizing goal to bring all divergent energies together to bear upon one end—that is social sustainability. Right now, there are too many goals, unspoken assumptions about budgets and planks and platforms and so on. There is simply chaos in public issues, which will lead to the destruction of your society. You are seeing all of the fundamentals of political, social and economic chaos in the making now, and it is vitally important that your public figures begin to see the need for a focalizing goal or a focalizing achievement, and that would be the vision and envisioned potential future of social sustainability.
MMc: Should laws generally be more concise and to the point, or is it acceptable for bodies of elected representatives to pass laws that are thousands of pages in length?
Focalizing elements needed for social sustainability
MONJORONSON: We are not so concerned about the conciseness or the length of laws that are passed, but that they contain this focalizing element that I continue to speak about. It is essential that all laws, all developments, all discussions have in mind the outcome that contributes to the sustainability, both politically, economically, socially to all people in the nation, in the future. That consideration and that vision will be from the local level to the national and international level.
MMc: I was extremely disappointed that Congress did not pass the “Line Item Veto” during Clinton’s term. I feel that no unrelated items should be attached to any bill before Congress, as I see it as a dishonest form of blackmail to get their vote for a particular bill. Do you have a comment on this?
MONJORONSON: Again, I speak to the focalizing element of social sustainability. This is the way of doing business in your Congress. By avoiding the line item budget process allows for divergence, division and separation. It is selfish; it is power-generating to specific individuals and to groups and corporations, which is inappropriate.
MMc: Our current system of taxation is considered unfair among many. Do you have any suggestions as to how we can make our taxation system fair?
MONJORONSON: This will be one of the items that you will need to sort out in the future, relating to your social sustainability.
MMc: The very word “taxes” has become a dirty word amongst our population. People do not seem to realize that taxes are basically the only income that our governments have, either local or national. There are programs that people cannot supply on their own, such as national defense, interstate highways and other major infrastructure projects. How do we make changes in people’s attitudes about taxation?
MONJORONSON: We are not so much concerned about changing people’s attitudes, but that people understand how the taxes contribute to their sustainability. When people can see that in black and white terms that are validated by the Schematic of Sustainability, then they will be able to voice their opinions about those parts of the budget which meet those validating requirements and those that do not. This will become a much more visible process and we foresee in the future that just as you have environmental impact statements and budgetary balancing statements that are required for laws, you will also have a social sustainability viability statement attached to each bill that is entered into Congress or into state legislatures. This is not visible at this time and must become visible. It will be a factor that will help bring sense and sensibility, rationality to your governmental process.
All of your questions are shot through with a need for understanding your society and the processes of maintaining society in new terms, as the old terms are not broad enough, understandable or humane enough to assist your society in sustaining itself and even to survive.
MMc: A touchy subject right now is that all government programs that help those at the lower economic ranges are labeled ‘socialism,’ and are despised by the wealthy who believe absolutely in capitalism. To what extent are governments, national or local, responsible to the needy, and how much should be borne by donations of individuals and churches?
MONJORONSON: This too will be made clear with thinking of sustainability—economic sustainability—how much contribution to social benefits can a nation make and not destroy its own economic base for continued growth and development, and a quality of life for everyone. This is essential that this be used. The “haves” and “have-nots” must be seen as “all having,” but having what? It must be answered in terms of having that which sustains their life and to develop and grow equally as others are able to live and grow.
Changing the culture of “me-ism” to “us-ism”
MMc: It appears that as our citizens become more disenchanted with those individuals who choose to run for office that they do not trust those that are elected, and instead want to inject their own opinions into every decision that our leaders make. This is particularly at the local level at meetings of school boards and city commissioners. Everyone seems to have their own opinion as to what is best for them personally, rather than what is best for the majority. They do not trust their elected representatives, particularly if they didn’t vote for them. How do we change our culture of “me-ism” to look at the bigger picture?
MONJORONSON: Again, it is necessary that individuals move from the “me-ism” to the “us-ism.” The “me-ism” is predominant because this has been the cultural direction of your nation and this type of economy. There is no way of validating any other means to do that for understanding at the individual level, therefore they are interested in protecting themselves first because other options are not rational in their minds. When there is a rational means of validating the necessity of sustaining all, then individuals in the majority will begin to understand the necessity of supporting others beside themselves. Until that time, the continued “me-ism” will predominate, and particularly so for those who have the capacity of power and influence to direct those laws and decisions locally and nationally, to their own benefit. It is only natural to do so. We are striving to introduce a rational process that everyone can use, from the local level to the national and international level that contributes to a sensible, reasonable and fair operation of government.
MMc: Do you view the Tea Party as another awakening movement similar to the Occupy Wall Street?
MONJORONSON: We are not concerned about that topic at this time.
MMc: Do you think the time is right for super-national unions of countries, such as [the] Central and South American Union?
MONJORONSON: It is past time by decades and centuries.
Energy alternatives
MMc: Civilization in 2012 is extremely dependent upon hydrocarbon and nuclear energy. Even after a drastic reduction in world population, “growth” whether circular or cyclical will be dependent upon energy and hydrocarbon fertilizer. Does nuclear energy as a power/pollution source have a future?
MONJORONSON: Yes, there are other alternatives, which are now coming to the forefront and whose timely arrival on a large mass production basis will come about in a very timely manner as hydrocarbon based economies and energy sources decline. It is our interest to reveal these inventions in the minds of those individuals to develop in a timely manner that supports a sustainable civilization. It is not in the interests of Christ Michael or the Most Highs, Machiventa or myself that your civilizations collapse, due to material needs. This is something that can be forestalled. Petrochemical production will continue into the future, but it will not match the needs if your world population continues as it is on the course to the mid-part of the century. Those new technologies must come on line much sooner than that to be of assistance to maintain a stable civilization that has integrity, both in communications and without worry about energetic supports.
MMc: I will state this question as it was given to me, although you have answered some. If it were my question, I would change it a little bit. “Do you believe that in the long-term we can achieve circular growth without hydrocarbon energy?”
MONJORONSON: Yes, but the circular growth will be very flat.
MMc: As societies become more complex, they need increased energy to sustain them. Do you see large societies becoming substantially less complex, to become more sustainable?
MONJORONSON: Yes, they will become smaller—much smaller. What you are seeing, and if you perceive this from all that I have said in the last several months and years, is that there is a convergence of events coming into the future, which will bring about a radical change in societies and in your civilization, the composition of them, and that this convergence is something that has developed. It is a natural developmental progression that occurs in all societies and all civilizations, on all worlds that are going through similar evolutionary episodes as the Urantian world civilization. That convergence is dependent upon societal and social behaviors and understandings, assumptions and beliefs, and from economic, technological and energy factors. There are many other factors involved, and in your world militarism in particular, and the incredible ethnic and nationalism that has occurred in parts of your world. These can only delay convergence on a global level. What we foresee is that it will be a local, regional convergence, which will precipitate a global convergence of all other forces, and there will be a time of immense change at that time.
MMc: That completes all the prepared questions that I have for the day. Is there anything you would like to say to us before we bid you a fond farewell?
Monjoronson’s monolog
MONJORONSON: Some of you who read this may think that I am simple minded and can only speak about one thing, and that is social sustainability, but this is the factor which will make or break the existence of your civilization from maintaining itself and going forward into the future with stability, or that your civilization will break into little estates and small states around the world, which are separated and incapable by themselves, but also incapable of uniting with others. I am not speaking that these events and this convergence are dire or immediate, but that these are inevitabilities, that they are developments which will occur without social sustainability.
It is a fact that social and material sustainability will be available for those who remain to re-establish a coherent civilization, one that is going in the same direction and finds the necessity of working with others as a requirement to succeed and enter into a sustainable future. Our hope, those of you who are reading this, is that your consciousness would begin to envelop the world in a unified consciousness. Then past the unified consciousness, there must be a unified effort to bring sanity and organization and coherence into your world, so that it has a capability of surviving well into the future. This is necessary to bring your world into the days of light and life. It is an unfortunate and messy process, just as the birth of a child is a difficult and oftentimes traumatic and even messy process, but you end up with a potential of the future, which has no foreseeable limits. Thank you.
MMc: Thank you, Monjoronson for being with us today. We are tremendously grateful for your wisdom.
