0.1.8 Labelling Our Alternative

Version 1.1 October 2022                                            Previous Version

In public discussion there are many proposed solutions to our current critical issues.  Some are partial solutions addressing eg the financial system, and others present as more comprehensive.  Many require some cognitive dissonance between personal and political action.  We need to be able to identify our approach, with a name or a label, so that we can refer to it, and compare it.

●   Many approaches to our critical issues are inconsistent with science and history: 

§  If we all became good Christians (or Buddhists or Muslims …), so some say, then all our issues would be resolved.  Even if it were true (and it’s not), it's not going to happen!

§  If we all adopted democracy, or capitalism, as practiced in the USA, so many Americans believe, then the whole world would be better off.  Few non-Americans agree with them. 

§  The Communists once thought their way was best, but Communism failed.  (Right now in China the economic system is capitalist, but the ruling party still calls itself Communist.)  

●   Many people suggest that the current system is so broken that we must allow it, or help it, to self-destruct.  They have no plans for what happens afterwards, and just hope something good will spontaneously arise in the aftermath that somehow fixes society, with no idea of how it might occur or what that society might be like.  But history tells us that revolutions that destroy the old system, often lead to disasters: huge social disruption, increased poverty and oppression. 

§  In Russia and China the communist revolutions led directly to tens of millions of deaths and totalitarian governments that are ongoing in China and resurging in Russia. 

§  The American destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan did not led to the spontaneous eruption of stability, peace and prosperity in those countries, but the very opposite.

●   Many people who despair of modern society have no label for their feelings.  In the 1960s and 70s Hippies suggested we ‘tune in, turn on, and drop out’, abandoning modern commercial (materialist) society – without explaining how we should maintain our prosperity.  Modern gurus offer similar out-of-this-world approaches, ignoring the realities of economic life.

●   Some people have a simplistic faith in science, hoping that scientific advances will overcome ignorance, so that fundamentalist religious beliefs will simply fade away, political policies will be soundly based on the evidence, and we as individuals will become rational global citizens.

§  Donald Trump’s election as president of the USA shows that one of the oldest and most technically advanced democracies doesn’t choose its leaders based on the evidence.

§  But the USA was just catching up to other parts of the world that had appealed to demagogues to fix their woes: Milosevic, Berlusconi, Duterte, etc.

§  There is a global trend to disregard well established facts and to focus on identity politics.

Where is the viable alternative to counter such limited, false or anachronistic approaches?  Where is the comprehensive plan, one that involves not just reform of a risky global financial system, not just tinkering with political processes, not just countering the narrow mindedness of ethnic, national, religious and racial backgrounds, not just a method to obtain personal peace of mind? 

What we need is a comprehensive understanding, a set of paths on a single map that integrates all the positive aspects of the proposed solutions to our moral vacuum, political malaise, environmental degradation, and all forms of oppression and inequality.  We need to distinguish this alternative from idealistic, anachronistic, parochial, elitist and isolationist proposed solutions. 

We need a handle that identifies the approach, a brand that we can name, linked to an open, transparent and comprehensive set of beliefs and values that satisfy our political aims, intellectual demands, and emotional requirements.  We humbly put forward the proposal outlined here, which we call a Reasonable Global Way, or more briefly REALigion ™.