Could this be a Solution to Economic Crisis and the Future of Business?
The Importance of Philanthropy and The Rise of The Nonprofit Organisation
It takes an evolved individual to recognise that the only response that will solve this economic crisis is to give money away. The reasoning is simple; if you do not reinvest into the roots of society then its flower will surely whither.
There are any number of phrases and sayings that reinforce this, but a purely economic reasoning that underpins this is; if less money comes down from the top of the wealth pyramid than goes up, then there is going to be a ‘cash flow” problem.
The people at the bottom can’t create wealth or employment unless they are given something to work with, and if the governments print money it disappears in overhead, loan repayments and spiralling inflation, filtering upwards into the ‘safe’ commodity markets. Nature hates imbalance in all things and will always seek to achieve an equilibrium, the greater the imbalance, the bigger the impetus is to push back, which is why nonprofit organisations are the fastest growing sector in business today.
There is recognition here that there is significant pressure on decision makers in the private sector to provide substantial returns for their investors and this necessarily leads to questionable decisions being made. Banks who repackage high risk loans, energy companies who falsify oil reserves or cut corners with safety, food and drink manufacturers who bulk with addictive and harmful chemicals, you name it. The irony is that this does not necessarily represent greed as many of the share holders are pension funds trying to provide security for the old at the cost of a future for the young.
Nonprofits are free of these pressures, because of donations and accounting rules all transactions are transparent. Salaries are open to scrutiny and bonuses non excitant. Other businesses find that they prefer to deal with the nonprofit organisation as there are no hidden agendas a trust reputation relationship is easier to establish; equally there may even be the possibility of positive PR!
The lesson of the Chinese monkey trap is clear; the monkey is trapped by his desire to acquire the fruit and his inability to let go of it when it is in his grasp. It takes a lot of courage to trust and let go, by some it is called “a leap of faith”.
“Be the change you want to see“
– Mohandas Mahatma Ghandi
BBC News – Drought summit as rivers in England dry up
Nature has already has (nearly) completely linked water network through the means of the water table. Why are we obsessed with laying pipes sideways underground to do something nature already does for us? Solar powered boreholes straight to the clean mineralised water below obviates all the infrastructure and water treatment processes !!
IS THE TIME RIGHT FOR MORE PHILANTHROPY AND CHARITY?
“See a need? Then fill it!”
Growing up in Cornwall, we were taught be our elders “Be more aware, I should not have to ask”.
This is a fundamental principle that my organisation is promoting. We believe people are more likely to engage in the process when they are actively engaged in helping in something that ‘speaks’ to them on a personal level.
If we are to escape to fate of global economic collapse then people of every social strata need to accept that they have to help in the task of nurturing the roots of society: “If the roots remain untreated then the flower will surely whither”.
Either the problems that beset our world are everybody’s responsibility or it is nobody’s responsibility. It is now no longer sufficient to say that something is “Somebody else’s problem”, because very quickly it becomes nobody’s problem at all..
Perhaps it is now time for every individual to ask, “How can I make a difference?”, instead of taking the opposite view that “One person can’t make a difference”.
After all, how many people would it actually take to improve this world or even a small part of it?
There is an old challenge that springs to mind “Is there such a thing as a selfless act?”, perhaps the best way to find out is by trying to perform one.
A worthy challenge for anyone, anywhere and at any time.
THE TOWER OF BABEL PROBLEM
And so God scattered them upon the face of the Earth, and confused their languages
Fact or fiction the story of the tower of babel is very pertinent in today’s world.
The internet and the information sharing it permits is connecting mankind in such a way that information can be shared almost instantaneously around the world.
There is a problem though and that problem is language.When people do not speak the same language, the transfer of thoughts, concepts and ideas can be fraught with pitfalls; misinterpretation being only one of them.
There is also a tendency for individuals speaking the same language to isolate themselves to their own groups, avoiding communication with people outside that group.
Unfortunately neither Google translate or any translation service can help us here, for the languages I am talking of are those of EXPERTISE.
This is a crying shame, for man now has all the knowledge and all the tools that he needs to solve any given problem that may exist.
If a geneticist, a computer scientist and an ecologist got together might they not conclude that the symbiotic relationship formed by mitochrondria is different than has been previously assumed? That the mitochondria is an interpreter that processes and executes the code contained in the DNA?
If scientists studying Colony Collapse Disorder in bees were collaborating with physicists studying changes in the magnetic field of the earth, would they conclude that bees are unable to collect pollen because it will not stick to them when the magnetic field changes around them?
The fundamental problem that underpins these issues is that we have a very simplistic ‘divide and conquer’ appraoch to problem solving and it is easy to understand why:
Where there is total connectivity, no problem can be truly considered out of context, so the ‘big picture’ keeps on getting bigger and bigger until Man decides there has to be a ‘cut off’ point, and there is the flaw.
Something important always gets left out.
How does the gravitational pull of the moon affect the climate, weather patterns even natural disasters such as hurricanes or earthquakes? As it stands right now no one knows because the experts speak different languages and never meet.
Does climate warming affect the liquidity of the Earth’s crust, influencing plate tectonics and volcano activity? No one knows because the experts speak different languages and do not communicate with each other.
Perhaps it is time for us to try to speak the same languages?
jmcolwill 