Seven or eight Calamities, or Disasters, or Tsunamis, or Biblical Plagues are close to crashing down on us. But at least as important: possible now is also an ASCENT, a Rising Upwards, the climb to a higher, more intelligent, more human, more cheerful next chapter in the human story. That is the fundamental Either/Or of our time.

Anything merely cosmetic is not enough. We must devise something that will engage the vast majority of humankind, that will bring into action not just a marginal small group which will eat less meat, or will do more recycling, or will use less electricity -- but a plan, a goal, a vision that will make sense and will appeal to the overwhelming majority of people on the planet that abhor and hate and loath the current system. (Very much including the people of India and of Africa, where I am at this moment)

Therefore, a radically New Economy is just Part I. Other Parts must be a new System of Work. Why? -- Because the now domineering “Job-System” is the root cause of all the other calamities that threaten to engulf us. The “Job-System” coerces us into the rat-race of economic growth and therefore into the squandering of resources, and therefore into the sinking ever deeper into national debts, and therefore into the heating of the earth, and on and on.

Rub your eyes! Take one look at where we are! North Africa in Revolution, Uprisings in Greece, and Italy and Barcelona, USA downgraded as a dubious risk – 80% of the population of the planet “Desert-people” – not socially weak, not poor, not unemployed –  but “Desert-people” and 20% “Oasis-people”. And the climate, and the waste of resources, and the burning down of the last remnants of the tokens of equality.

Draw from this a very first, obvious conclusion. Dabbing, small, cosmetic changes are not just “too little,” they are dangerous, they piss away precious time – like taking Aspirin instead of facing that you have got Aids. What we need is not here and there the turning of a trivial wheel. We need to stop and think and devise a plan that is adequate to the immense magnitude and the galloping speed of the situation. What we need is major, major: is a new start, a new beginning.

It is the building of a second, supplementary, radically different economy – one for the soon 90% of desert people, based on the highest, the best, the most advanced technologies.

During the last few weeks I have tried to establish some first connections between the groups that initiated the North African Revolutions and New Work. What I have been doing is extraordinarily plain: in various ways I have collected relevant E-mail addresses and in the process of some back and forth exchange I proposed that I would come for a two or three day visit to Cairo or to wherever the person I was writing to suggested. I explained that the sole condition from my side would be that a handful of people – between 8 and 12 – would commit themselves to engage with me in extended conversations during those two or three days. The flight and the rest I would pay for by myself. The purpose is to explore whether there is any conceivable way in which New Work could be of use in the coming stages of these world-altering liberations. The purpose of my posting this both in my blog and in Facebook is to invite any and all of you to send me further addresses, or to assist in any other way that your imagination whispers to you.

Wed. Feb. 9th. Joburg, South Africa

Let us, for a start, observe a few patent surface characteristics of the current “uprising” in Egypt. There is to begin with the fact that it was a surprise. Not a surprise on the scale of the collapse of the Iron Wall between East and West in ’89, but nonetheless similar in that this surprise also shows how many worlds removed from any contact with reality our caste of high-priest politicians and economist seems permanently to be. A gamut of specific features are additional proof that the official rhetoric comes from wooden heads whose ears are sealed with wax. Not one of them would have predicted that an uprising could last as long as this one already has, none of them would have predicted that its support could be as broad – as trans-class, trans-cultural and trans-religious – as it has turned out to be. (observe the kaleidoscope of costumes and dresses that the protesters wear.) Certainly, none of the mud-heads who we permit to rule us would have predicted that an uprising could be as disciplined as this one – despite provocations – has managed to remain.

(I am leaving for India today, and will be there for ten days. We have prepared a Power Point that consists of pictures of the assembled Technologies of New Work. This is the brief Introduction that precedes these pictures.)

The Task is to make a presentation that will be succinct and brief, and that will give a persuasive and attractive introduction of NEW WORK (of what could develop into “Lift India Technologies”) to our Indian hosts.

One crucial difference between NW and virtually all other relief or development efforts of which I know is that NW aims at a complete, comprehensive, fully thought-out alternative SYSTEM profoundly different from the system that we now have.;

Face up to a YES or NO!  A fundamental Either/Or. We can either continue to throw buckets and buckets of money to paper over the calamities that wax ever more virulent because of the deterioration of the Job-System OR we can make a New Start.

The New Start is simple:

1. Take steps in the direction of Economic Independence (Demand the setting up of New Work Centers).

2. Move yourself and encourage others to move towards work that they seriously and deeply desire to do.

The sheer power of the handful of multi-billion investors has reached pinnacles of amazing height. The world over papers constantly write  about their psychological mood. Are they loosing confidence in this or that country (Ireland? Portugal? Italy? Spain?) Are they less optimistic about this or that than they formerly were? It is reminiscent of the era in the cold war in which experts speculated about the exact arrangement of the dignitaries on the Balcony of the Kremlin. What precisely did the shift from one spot to another portend? Of course there are differences, but it nonetheless may be time to introduce a hitherto not used word, so as to make people blink and wake up. Could this not be a new and of course surprisingly different shape of what has been called “Fascism” in the past. One difference is of course that this latest form is not national but global. Every government on every continent grovels in the dung before the pedestal of these  potentates: What social programs shall we cut? What limbs of our budgets must we amputate so that the financiers will not withdraw their billions dropping hands from our land? 

 It is becoming more crassly apparent with the passing of every month that the Carnage Bifurcation is more than the division between the “poor” – the Desert People – and the “rich” the Oasis People. In the last few years the picture has darkened and become far more ominous:  the formerly broad and all else supporting Middle Class has crumbled and turned into rubble, that step by step is approaching the condition of the “poor.”  The United States, but also one by one ever more of the European countries  (Greece, Ireland soon Portugal, Spain, Italy and maybe France) are spiraling downwards into this Carnage Bifurcation between a Financial elite – that in numbers is miniscule (smaller than the Royal families that once ruled Europe) – and  a huge steadily growing  homogenous  mass that comprises the totality of the rest of the population.

 -The Job-System continuously and constantly compels us to create ever more Economic Growth – for the simple reason that we perpetually need more jobs. But this constant coerced enlargement is in collision (like two trains colliding) with all attempts to move us towards a greener economy or culture. Anyone who is serious about Ecology should therefore partner with the campaign of New Work to create a Work-System that is superior and different from the Job-System - that among other great advantages will eliminate the relentless ineluctable pressure for more Economic Growth. To reiterate: if you are in earnest about the climate-- the depletion of resources-- and the ruination of nature-- calamities then partner with New Work and help us to strengthen it.