Notions and Musings
This collection of thoughts, hunches, riffs, meditations and the like are born of brief moments of insight and inspiration which crystallize unconscious proto-ideas into coherent shape.
Planetixation v. Globalization

How is "Planetization" different from "Globalization"? Is it just about a choice of words?

Yes, and then decidedly - No!

Before we begin to delve into the differences, we must emphasize that both concepts are not names for conscious and organized movements. They are attempts to capture in an evocative, resonant label some essential aspect of the current Zeitgeist. This act of giving a set of cultural gradients a unifying name is clearly an attempt to raise them to the level of popular myth. For after all, it's myths that we live by.
The difference then is one of both the underlying values and of stated and unstated goals.
Planetization seeks to authenticate the inner and communal lives of all people. In contrast, Globalization only concerns itself with people - individually, or in groups - in as far as they act as consumers of goods and services. It's unstated, but pervasive and inevitable aim is to mediate every life experience - or altogether replace them with - acts of buying and selling.
Best yet, for those who profit handsomely from the pervasiveness of consumerism, would be to transform each and every life/biography into a narrative that reads like a credit card statement - a selection of pre-selected, sanitized, homogenized, circumscribed experiences, whose real heroes are not the person, but the product brands.

Work v. Jobs

One of the difficulties faced by virtually every society on the Planet is the mismatch between people and their individual and collective skills on the one hand, and the seeming "scarcity" of jobs.

One way to understand this problem is to look at it from the perspective of whole and parts.  Let us call all the tasks that a society needs to accomplish to enable its own being and becoming "Work".  Various sub-tasks of the Work call for particular skills, ranging from simple, physical prowess and strength to nuanced, compassionately intellectual ideation and creativity.  And of course every talent in between the two extremes of "pure" doing and thinking.

In the present age of extreme specialization (current socio-economic arrangements favoring individuals who "know  more and more about less and less") the scope of Work that needs to be done is vast and is only partially covered via the sum total of work that can be done within strictures of all of the "Jobs"   This is so for several reasons.  

Firstly, because most "job" descriptions are very rigid in terms of limits of authority and responsibility for the worker in question.  The scope and nature of Work on the other hand are in a constant flux, requiring level of flexibility that a fixed collection of "Jobs" cannot exhibit.  

Secondly, because the tasks that comprise the Work vary tremendously, they require both generalists' and specialists' skills, often in rapidly alternating sequences.  Jobs are now almost exclusively specialist in nature.  Thus to perform all of any whole piece of Work, either many people would need to be involved, on a part-time, chaotic schedule basis (to get it all done), or a few specialists would only address certain aspects of the Work and call it a day.  The latter scenario is what usually transpires.


Self-Actualization

Fair Planet Movement strives to create socio-cultural circumstances and conditions enabling self-actualization of the greatest possible number of people. This is crucial, since new social holons can only arise from non-coerced/non-coercive interactions between authentic persons - who must be the primary originators of their individual and communal experiences.
These people make purposeful, informed, compassionate and frugal choices about what - and how - they "consume". And more importantly, what - and how - they "produce".  These choices are made with full awareness of the balanced needs/wants they are intended to satisfy.


Sameness v. Differentiation

Globalization process homogenizes people instead of uniting them. The desired outcome for those who profit from globalization is to predispose people to make ever more purchases of brand-name goods and services. Each purchase then signifies to others and affirms "belonging" in the Big World. Omnipresent advertising messages, subtly or unsubtly seek to devalue the local, the personal, the authentic expression - by exclusively promoting new or established brands. The ads suggest that one's public persona and acceptable level of personal style can be assembled successfully solely with collections of globally-branded items.


Flexible economic arrangements

Laws regulating primarily economic relationships must have built-in flexibility, including provisions for expiration once their purpose is substantially achieved. This applies foremost to legislation designed to correct any imbalance (defined elsewhere on this website). For example, changing any tax rates requires a gradual phase-in period, a build-up to required efficacy level and then a fade-out - once a sustainable plateau range has been achieved. Over time, any regulations need to continue to stay adjustable as they respond to unfiltered feedback of their actual effectiveness and ability achieve their aims.


Latter-days Capitalism

Capital has transformed itself from one of several necessary ingredients in process of material wealth formation into a self-contained vehicle of virtual wealth generation that pretends to also had created real wealth.  It can do that with ease because in the electronic, digital age it has acquired super-mobility as well as the ability to grow without ever having to be subject to a "reality check".  It accomplishes this by progressively extending indebtedness to more and more people and institutions.  Its balance sheet gains are are derived primarily from debt service payments rather than from tangible returns on investment such as actual goods produced and/or services rendered.


Succesful v. Maladapted Society

A truly functioning society facilitates processes which allow it to take care of its most vulnerable members.  This is true for cases of both acture and chronic vulnerability.

On the other hand, a maladapted society will seek to cover up its consistent failure to take care of its most vulenrable members by invariably placing the blame for any vulnarability on the vicitm of such failure.  Thus, for example, difficulties of coping with illness and/or lack of access to resources are portrayed as an instance of a strictly personal failure, never as a symptom of overall societal malfunctioning.

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