Harm before Judgement

Hello Yanick,

I have read your document “Harm before judgement” and for me it started promisingly in the analysis.

At the point where you gave substance to what should change, our ideas diverge. The reason for that is that they are responses to what continues to exist, while you began with "contributing to the collective work of building systems that genuinely serve the wellbeing of people, communities, and the planet."

I will probably interpret this sentence very differently from others.

Most people, namely, try through systems, such as the legal, economic, and political systems, to provide an answer to that which reality itself does not provide. That includes things such as behaviour, distribution, and internal and external relations.

For me, the answer does not lie within realising what reality does not provide, but in the question of why reality does not provide it.

Questions such as the destruction of the earth are also part of this. Are people so foolish or selfish that they do not care, or is there a forced necessity that, as a condition within our lives, has taken a place that has nothing to do with natural functioning but is instead directed toward functioning systematically?

And it is this latter point that I see as causality. We live within a system that does not provide for the wellbeing of people and their environment. Any answer found internally within that system will not change that.

The only way out, as I see it, is a total change in the structure of reality.

Now that sounds grand, but it actually concerns only our motivation.

You mentioned us-versus-them, dualism, which is probably the greatest driving force within our thinking.

We know nothing else, so it simply appears normal. In my view it originated somewhere around 300,000 years ago, when people could not access knowledge as they can now, the world was hostile, and self-preservation was the order of the day.

We still live according to that principle, by stating that we must take care of ourselves.

For everyone it is important to have income. If you look at behaviour, this is true both within what is morally accepted and within what is morally rejected. Within communities, from family -> circle of friends -> town -> country -> continent, there is always a "we" opposed to an increasingly different "them." Everything revolves around rivalry, individual interest in obtaining work, and national interest in securing market position on the world stage.

Doing better than the other, acquiring positions of power, and securing sources of income.

The us against them, until it becomes me against you.

That structure can never place humanity at its centre, because it does the opposite.

It can never place the living environment at its centre, because everything within that environment has value, and that value provides for our existence. A tree to look at produces nothing, but wood puts bread on the table.

That tree becomes more important as bread on the table than as something that creates ecological balance by producing oxygen. There will always be the excuse that there are enough trees, because the need to acquire income is the leading factor in decision making.

According to me, this is what should be broken through.

What has already been mentioned is dualism and the form of existence that we have adopted.

At its foundation, a system should therefore not contain these things.

Then you arrive at a gift economy, in which we take care of one another so that we provide for each other's needs. And need is not only about goods and having as much as possible, but also about a qualitative life in which there is balance between work and free time.

If taking care of one another, excluding no one, thus worldwide, means that borders no longer exist and nationality has no significance, then you create a conditional foundation in which the other person becomes important in relation to yourself as things currently are. You yourself are always also another person, so you will never be left lacking.

Overconsumption will be socially corrected through criticism such as: "I do not live merely to keep working for you." The absence of advertisements that stimulate desires, together with social correction, will ensure a very different pattern of consumption. This also affects how we use goods, because if everyone must own everything, then enormous production is required, whereas if production is aligned with access, perhaps 10% would be sufficient.

It is no longer about earning.

And it is not about having to give something back.

The only condition is that we take care of one another.

If you then look at the structure and read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, you can see that it becomes realised and no longer needs to be written down as something that ought to be.

I hope you can do something with my feedback.

Kind regards,

Bertus Boelman