NEC #52 - Machiventa Melchizedek - Leadership; Punishment - Sep 07, 2015 - Daniel Raphael, Colorado
PR
New Era Conversations #52 – Leadership; Current Global Situation; Punishment – Sept. 7, 2015
Teacher: Machiventa Melchizedek, Planetary Manager
Topics:
1. An Era That Needs Leadership
2. Response to Leadership
3. Nominating Individuals in Times of Crisis to Become Leaders
4. Energized Followers
5. The Socially Sustainable Society Is Non-competitive
6. The Social Cataclysm of Refuges into Europe
7. The Global Situation Will Destabilize Many Regimes
8. Mortals Are Ultimately Responsible for the Decisions They Make
9. The Way of Social, Political and Economic Evolution
10. Human History Is Littered with the Destruction of Human Organizations
11. The Mega-egos Will Try to Scare People Away from Social Sustainability
12. The Strength of Social Sustainability
13. Humane Co-responsible Relationship Between Leaders and Followers
14. Question about the Laws as a Tool of Regulation
15. Developing Simple Laws for an Advanced Society
16. In Advanced Society, There Is No Punishment
17. Social Education Is the Acceptance of Personal Responsibility
18. Creating a Paradigm Cultural Change over Decades
19. It Is Important That People Have Hope
20. How Would You Devise an Advanced Nation with Low Taxation?
21. Creating Enclaves of Enlightened, Educated, Cooperative Individuals
22. The Way of Social Sustainability Is a Way of Life
TR: Daniel Raphael
Team members: Roxanne Andrews, Michael McCray and a Student
September 7, 2015
Invocation
An era that needs leadership
MACHIVENTA: Good morning, this is Machiventa Melchizedek. It is a pleasure to be in your company once again. (Roxie: It is our pleasure to have you!) Thank you. Today I would like to speak to you again about leadership, but this time the response to leadership and the response to circumstances surrounding you in the time and era that need leadership.
You have a sense of what authentic leadership is about and how it performs, that it is not self-serving, does not seek self-aggrandizement and special favors, but seeks to coordinate and energize the elements and energies of those around him or her, and the environment to bring about movement toward the solution of some situation or difficulty. Enduring leadership requires this to occur repeatedly over a period of days, months and years; many good examples as that were shown during WWII, with Winston Churchill and other leaders of democracy and freedom.
Response to leadership
There is always the necessity of a response to leadership—we have not discussed this before—and that is when a situation arises, and the known leaders are dithering about and have no capability, or no shown demonstration of capability to engage the situation, then it lies in the minds and hearts of those people in the nation to point toward individuals who have those leadership capabilities and could possibly provide the leadership that is needed. If members of the public are as dull as the leaders who seem so incapable of providing leadership and movement forward to resolve the situation, if the public is as dull as that, then there will be no response and no leadership internally or externally. One of the intentions of the Correcting Time and the Teaching Mission and Magisterial Mission is to develop the authentic, genuine internal, personal leadership within each of you, individually.
Nominating individuals in times of crisis to become leaders
You who have followed these lessons for these many years are well trained in recognizing who is a leader and who is not. You will need to point to those latent leaders who have the capability and capacity, but have not demonstrated that or brought it to the surface of your society. It may be that you, as members of the public, would encourage that individual or individuals to engage with others to provide ideas concerning solutions to the problem. If you have no inclination to do so, and none comes forward, then you have a flock of sheep without a Shepard. Christ Michael is your Shepard of Nebadon, and I am your Shepard of Urantia, of this planet. We, however call upon you to nominate individuals in times of crisis to become leaders. You must be able to address, write to, call, fax, email someone in positions of leadership, and recommend some individual to come forward. It may be on the opposite end, that you urge a potential leader and self-nominate them and join them with others who are like thinkers, so that the solutions can begin to be developed and implemented.
Energized followers
Wherever there is leadership, there must be followers, those individuals who are responsible under leadership to move society or their group forward to resolve some problem. Leadership is often seen as a lonely place and position; truly in most instances it is. However, when there is leadership with active, enthusiastic, and energized followers, then there is no loneliness, but there is oneness. It is oneness that we seek in the resolution of the problems of Urantia. You who have read the Urantia Book see the Days of Light and Life and the settlement of a nation and planet in that status, as a desirable end. But to be candid and quite frank with you, the road to that in the beginning is very tumultuous, very difficult, arduous and challenging, as it requires compromise after compromise with old traditions and old cultural ideas about how the world should be. This is why social sustainability is such a neglected, almost rejected idea, in that it is so “exo-cultural.”
The socially sustainable society is non-competitive
It is so much outside of your culture in operation that it is totally unfamiliar to you. In some instances is so distant and different from the way business is handled in your society that that it is repugnant to many people. Fundamentally, the socially sustainable society is non-competitive. It has finally come to the point where it is able to design systems within systems, and systems of systems, so that there is a continuous flow, much like a figure 8; it goes around from one end to the other without stopping—there is a continuous flow; it is non-linear. This is the height of difficulty for many contemporary minds to accept. The concept of money has been developed to such an extent that it is something to compete for, something to be stacked up, even after all the needs of an individual, family or community have been fulfilled and satisfied. That is a very hostile environment for sustainability and for the Days of Light and Life.
The social cataclysm of refuges into Europe
There seems little need to bring to your attention to the global situation of your world. The wave of refuges from the Middle East and from Africa into Europe will be a development that will repercuss for many, many decades. It will be the cause of much social and economic, and even political instability in years ahead. You have not recognized it as a cataclysm, but it is a social cataclysm. It is much like a huge reservoir behind a dam, and an earthquake occurs, cracks the dam and the water rushes forward destroying towns along the riverbank/riverbed, for not just a mile or two, but for tens of miles, 50 miles, 100 miles down river. This is a social cataclysm of catastrophic proportions. It will repercuss in ways that will cause much unsettlement.
The global situation will destabilize many regimes
You have seen the devaluation of the Renminbi in China, which has had a tremendous rippling effect. Though your economy of the United States seems to be robust, other nations around the world are not so fortunate. We have told you before that because of the history of immigration and geographic development North and South America have been spared from many developments of past millennia. So too now, it is very much in the same similar situation that many of these social cataclysms that are occurring and will occur, seem to pass the United States and South American democracies. A stable economy and exchange of goods is fundamental to social and political stability, yet, the global situation will have repercussions in every nation, and will destabilize many regimes and administrations.
Mortals are ultimately responsible for the decisions they make
All of these developments will point to the necessity of social, economic, and political stability. But who, and how, will this develop? You recall that the first mandate of the relationship between mortals and celestials is that celestials will not abrogate the will decisions of mortals, that mortals are ultimately responsible for the decisions they make—and the decisions they do not make. That leaves us with a great deal of room to work with your organizations as they meet and make decisions in their boardrooms and committees and so on. This is the realm of the Most Highs, in Edentia. They are intimately involved in the decision-making of those groups and organizations.
The way of social, political, and economic evolution
What we are waiting for is a situation that requires a decision by such boards of directors, committees, agencies and bureaus when they see the choices of moving towards social, political and economic stability, as opposed to maintaining the current situation, which would then be involved in decline, disintegration and dissolution—ultimately in collapse. There will come a time when those groups—and individuals—will choose the way of progress and social, political, and economic evolution, rather than maintaining unsustainable organizations, processes and procedures and policies of decision-making. This will be the tipping point of your world toward social stability.
Human history is littered with the destruction of human organizations
In order to prepare for that tipping point, there must be, of course, a new set of concepts and ideas that are presented to those groups to help them make the decision. It will be truly an “either/or” decision; there will not be many choices involved; there will not be many options. We have striven to make it very clear that civilizations, societies, nations, administrations, dynasties, empires and so on, have all failed. All of human history is littered with the destruction of human organizations. That is the “either;” the “or” is to engage in developing and formulating policies and decision-making processes that lead to social evolution, to systems development that contribute to the sustainability of not just that organization only, but to other organizations in society.
It is not that these organizations become mutually dependent upon each other, but they become mutually engaged in one enterprise of social, political, and economic sustainability. The “either/or” is to see that your organization’s decision-making processes are one part of thousands that contribute to the continuity of societies. For profit-making organizations, the “either/or” will be the choice between huge growth and huge losses, or continual growth at low percentages of return, for not just a decade or two, but for centuries and millennia. The advent of organizational survivability over decades and centuries, on toward millennia, surely must surely begin to some appeal for individuals and organizations. The sacrifice will be the mega-egos that evolve out of organizations that trounce and step upon the shoulders of those who are not as adept or as competitive.
The mega-egos will try to scare people away from social sustainability
You will see great efforts to raise fear in the minds of the public concerning the fundamentals of social sustainability. That is why we have begun at the local level of individuals to understand the fundamentals of social sustainability, that everyone, anyone can use this process to validate the authenticity—or the fears—that are mongered by others to scare people away from social sustainability. They will portray it as something that is viciously destructive. Most certainly it will be destructive to UNsustainable processes to create an ongoing, constructive society that builds the oneness that naturally develops from a system of systems.
The strength of social sustainability
You will more clearly understand these concepts were you to read the “Fifth Discipline” by Peter Senge that he published in 1994. That is a remarkable book that points the way to the integration of societies. Richard Buckminster Fuller is another who was an avant-garde social realist, who saw the necessity of social, political, and economic integration, rather than the destructive separation that we see in your societies. It is the difference between building a large column of concrete and stones that support each other, as opposed to the separate stones in a stream that bounce and knock against each other and eventually wear each other down to stone talcum that is seen in mountain rivers, that white, frothy water coming out of the mountains that is from the debris and particulates of rocks that have bounced against each other in the streams of fast moving rivers. The strength of social sustainability is a strength that will support the Days of Light and Life; all parts of such society work together through a conscious effort to rely upon each other and to contribute to everyone’s sustainability.
Humane co-responsible relationship between leaders and followers
We are striving to help you prepare for your position as followers. Followers are the powerful elements that make leadership possible. Without conscientious thoughtful, contributing followers, leadership is impossible. This is not leadership by force or coercion, but leadership as a facilitator; the leadership that facilitates the resources of people and the elements they live with is powerful. We are not talking about abject dictatorial leadership; we are talking about the humane co-responsible relationship between leaders and followers to support the good of everyone. When you nominate someone for leadership, you must nominate those who are not vainglorious; but nominate those who do not seek their own ego embellishment or self-aggrandizement, or special privileges that authority can provide.
I am open for questions if you have any. (Long pause.)
Question about the laws as a tool of regulation
Roxie: I don’t have any questions on the topic of leadership; I think you have been very thorough, but I do have a question from one of our readers. One of our readers asked about “laws that are a regulation tool of any situation.” He says, “Obviously, high moral and spiritual development could eliminate existing volumes of laws. According to human laws, there are different levels of punishment acting as a tool to control our society. It fines, imprisons, tortures, and even puts to death. Could you reveal your vision on our laws and solutions in a highly developed society?”
Developing simple laws for an advanced society
MACHIVENTA: I applaud you for your well-formed question. It is very thoughtful and offers us many opportunities to speak about social organization and evolution. In an advanced society, there is oneness among societies; that oneness comes from the very existence of individuals/people. The sovereign boundaries of nations, states, provinces, districts and so on, is superficial and artificial, and does not relate to the oneness of all humanity. To develop simple laws for an advanced society—global society—it is necessary to rely upon the factors that are common to all people. What is it that has sustained your species for so long? Whatever it is, it is so durable, and so consistent that it is universal and timeless and irreducible among all people, and that this is a commonality among all races, all cultures, all ethnic groups, nations and the genders.
When laws are developed from this nature of humanity, then you will see uniformity, even among different nations. That uniformity comes out of the values that have sustained your species. Now, when we speak about laws, those laws are man-made, arbitrary, legalistic morality; they provide a decision-making system, a legal-based morality. In the case of nations now, it is a legal morality. If you were to use the values that sustained your species, those values would create a value-based morality, a universal morality, a universal way of making consistent decisions among all races, all cultures, all ethnic groups, and all nations for all time.
In an advanced society, there is no punishment
Advanced societies have oneness among them; there is an interpretation that may apply to their nation and to their culture, but they are all founded on the same values. In an advanced society, consideration is given towards the behavior of individuals as to whether their behavior violates the quality of life of another. Does their behavior violate the other’s capacity and capability to grow into their innate potential? Does it violate an individual as an equal of others? In a developed, advanced society, there is no punishment. Punishment is an antiquarian way of coercing, cajoling, convincing and persuading a public of individuals to conform to good social conduct, yet you have seen throughout the 4,000-5,000 years of recorded human history that punitive measures do not insure conformity, does not insure moral behavior. How then, would you convince those individuals who are selfish enough to violate the values of an individual, or a group of individuals, or a whole society without punishing them?
In the case of an advanced society, incarceration is an UNsustainable option. Incarceration takes away the resources of the public to support individuals who refuse to conform to the morality of that society. The real question becomes, “Where does a society begin to eliminate punishment as a necessity?” First of all, it begins by the responsible education of individuals. What you have asked for as an answer requires a culture change, a complete paradigm change of culture from the archaic fundamentals of your current societies to an advanced paradigm of social behavior. It begins with individuals; it begins by informing potential parents; it begins in a pre-pubescent era where individuals are children are enculturated in the morality of their advanced society. Much of it is rote; much of it will be interpreted; it will be given much attention in your primary, secondary and university educational programs.
Social education is the acceptance of personal responsibility
You have seen how the culture of Japan has created a great deal of social conformity. For you who live in the United States, you are seen as a bunch of “cowboys” by civilizations of the East. Your independence causes a great deal of selfish grievance upon other individuals. Democracies have a particularly developed and advanced problem: How to develop liberty without license; how to develop a maturing social milieu environment where individuals want to succeed, want to benefit from living in their society. It begins by the education of pre-pubescent students across the world, using a program of enculturation that teaches them how to be students, how to be children, how to be children who are maturing into early adulthood, and then adulthood. The first element of enculturation and social education is the acceptance of personal responsibility for behavior.
Creating a paradigm cultural change over decades
You will not empty your prisons of the inmates overnight. It occurs over decades. We have said in the past that such a cultural change would take minimally two generations, approximately 40-50-60 years to change the culture of a nation. To change the culture of your world would take, perhaps, with concerted effort, as each nation chooses voluntarily to take on this new culture of sustainability, 200-300 years. Your world could be well on the way to the Days of Light and Life within one millennium.
Your question takes in the full scope of Planetary Management. The answers take on the necessity of all people on a planet to manage themselves, to become responsible for their behavior, and to act accordingly, and to teach their children how to live in a socially sustainable society. Many of the liberties that your people take will no longer exist; and they will no longer exist because individuals want to give them up. What will be the return for individuals during this transition era? It would be that they will see hope in an ever-improving quality of life. It will not mean a bigger and bigger and bigger houses, with bigger and bigger mortgages; it will mean that you will eventually have your own residence, which is adequate for your needs. It would also mean that you have an opportunity to grow into the infinite potential of your mind, throughout your life; that educational, self-development will become trans-generational, meaning that when you begin to learn, you will have the opportunity to learn and grow throughout your life. Your society will offer that to you to grow into the potential that you “wish” to become. You must understand that your potential does not end its expression at the end of high school or college, or at age 45 or 55. Through continuing expansion of your inner potential, you can reinvent yourself over and over again in positive and constructive ways, and in doing so you will make more and more positive contributions to your society. Lastly, you will have an equal ability to improve your quality of life and to grow into your potential as other people do, as other people would, or as they could.
It is important that people have hope
It is important that people have hope. When you see the tremendous exodus of people from the Middle East and from Africa into Europe, you are seeing those three values in living expression, people seeking to have the fundamentals of survival, and then to learn to grow into their potential, and in doing so, improve their quality of life. The element of inequality looms so large in the minds of those people that they have so little compared to those who have so much. It is not that they are seeking to go from a bicycle to a Lamborghini, but simply to walk in streets that are peaceful, to be able to walk to work or to their local grocery store or café in peace. That would be a tremendous luxury, one that cannot be purchased by money, or any other method of exchange. It is a condition of living. And so, to fulfill your answer, in part, requires the change of social conditions, political conditions, and economic conditions.
How would you devise an advanced nation with low taxation?
I will tease you a little bit with a question: How would you devise an advanced nation with low taxation? Again, the key is personal and organizational responsibility. I will leave you with that to think about in the coming days and weeks. Thank you for your wonderful question. As you can see, it would truly require at least a two-year, full-time college participation to teach you the fundamentals of global and planetary management. Thank you.
MMc: At least two! (Machiventa: At least!)
[Daniel: They would just be scratching the surface. Wouldn’t it be fun to write a curriculum like that? I could do it. I have always wanted to win the lottery, not for a Lamborghini, but to hire curriculum developers and advisors who would write curricula for new mothers and fathers, for this enculturation of prepubescent children, and all through their life, from the fundamentals of motherhood, the fundamentals of fatherhood, the fundamentals of husband and wife and children. Oh gosh, I could drop $100,000 in a week, hiring people to do that.
Roxie: We may have to do that if people don’t step up to starting their co-creative design teams.
Daniel: Yes, you are exactly right; it’s going to take some philanthropic individual or group to do this without ever expecting any personal or organizational benefit to accrue to them. There are people who exist like that. Lets go on.]
MMc: Machiventa, if I understand correctly, the enculturation of each individual in this new—it is new for now—but in time when the enculturation happens, it will be something that is unnecessarily tried and true, but at least well founded, or there will be a feeling that it is well founded in the culture. My question is: Do you feel that this enculturation will bring about a change in people’s outlook about what they wish to involve their life in, in the future? I can see that there is going to be a large amount of, as you say, tumultuous beginning-ness, and as it goes on, how do you… what happens to those people who do not wish to become enculturated? How do you send them back to school? Is that the punishment for their “punishment” for not complying with the culture, or are they shunned by society, or how is that handled?
MACHIVENTA: Well, young man, you have really tied yourself in a knot, have you not? You have asked at least a half-dozen questions. For the purposes of your development, I would ask you to select one question that you would propose.
MMc: Okay. In the process of enculturating people, you are going to find people who will reject the enculturation; how do you deal with that?
Creating enclaves of enlightened, educated, cooperative individuals
MACHIVENTA: Good, that is a good start. Thank you for your question. An advanced society does not coerce people. What you do is you create enclaves of enlightened, educated, cooperative individuals who want to live in harmony, live in synchronistic, symbiotic existence with others in a community. This is not so unusual as it may sound, as you already have within your nation and other nations intentional communities, but almost all those intentional communities have a singular purpose to their existence. One of the oldest intentional cultures is the nudist colony—people come together with the intention of socializing without clothes and everyone gets along quite well.
You have intentional communities that want to live in an enclave, a housing development, a district, a subdivision where there is uniformity among them, that they have highly efficient houses, that there is a commons building where they have meals at least once a week together that are made and prepared by a rotating circle of individuals—all individuals. There are shared responsibilities in this intentional community. That is one-half of the answer to your question — is that people want to live in harmony with others, and in a community that wishes to become socially, politically, and economically advanced, individuals take on far more responsibilities. Individuals learn how to become parents; they learn how to enculturate their children so that their children eventually can enculturate the grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and so on.
It is a system, a process of building oneness within a small cell of individuals who have intentional purpose, a conscientious intentional purpose, to live together in harmony, to live in a symbiotic relationship in all regards, who want to live in a socially sustainable community. For our purposes, that is the answer to your question, that individuals will find each other; they will advertise, they will market, they will show the benefits of living in a socially sustainable society as a community—and they will not only know how to do it, they will do it, and they will have the trans-generational education and enculturating materials to teach them how to do it.
It will not be a matter of isolated inclusion; neither will it be an isolated exclusion of others. It will be an opportunity for individuals to live in a completely new cultural way that shares responsibilities. You build from what is positive and constructive, rather than coercing people and convincing them to participate. We need people of the New Era to be of one heart, of one mind, of one belief of shared values that are common to everyone who choose to live in peace and harmony, rather than conflict and in war. Thank you, we appreciate your question.
Student: I have a question, Machiventa. As a society, we are very impatient; we want things to happen as soon as possible. How do you convince people/humans that this will take a long, long time—hundreds and hundreds of years, but it will happen; not today, not tomorrow but it will happen. How do you convince them?
MACHIVENTA: You convince them by showing them the results in their personal lives from accepting the values that are common to all people; and to understand those values and how to differentiate, how to discern and improved quality of their life for themselves. The Buddhist tradition is very good at this; it has been doing this for millennia. It is a way of life that shows individuals how to live in peace, rather than conflict; how to live with less, so that more have as much as you do, so that you value others as equally deserving and worthy of what you have. It is not communism, because there is no central authority. The central authority of a sustainable advanced society is the individual. The individual must come to understand and appreciate—thoroughly appreciate—what a peaceful life is about. A peaceful life comes about by the loss of inner conflict by thinking that they have to have more material goods to be worth more, to be more important, and so on than other people.
The way of social sustainability is a way of life
Really, the way of social sustainability is a way of life; it is a way of living that brings harmony to the individual in their lifetime, even within weeks or months, and certainly within years, and that they would want to pass this on to their children and their great-grandchildren, and so on, and that there is a way of living that brings this about. It begins with the individual. The intentional community begins with the individual who wants to live with other individuals peacefully, in harmony and co-responsibly. The results of a widening community of like-thinking people become a sub-division, and then a city or a county, a village, a state, a nation, a continent and a world. It begins slowly. How long has your nation known a time without war? Of the last 60 years, how many years has your nation not been involved in war? Almost none. War has become a way of living and life and of business in your nation. When you have war and conflict and contention it seeps into the minds and hearts and souls of individuals. Just as it is necessary to take a hiatus from life and living in the tension and stresses that you as individuals develop in your lives, so too must communities and families and nations do the same.
What would it be like if your nation took a hiatus from war for 30 years? It would be amazing! The resources of war take so much away from the individual, and from the sustainability of individuals. You would be learning how to be non-competitive without war, without conflict. The answers to your question is always that it begins with the individual—the individual that is convinced that this is the way to live, and wants to live with other people who think the same way. Your question and the preceding question are directly related. It begins with the individual without the concern for how much time it takes, but what it takes for individuals to learn in terms of happiness and joy and peace in their lifetime—not in ten years or twenty years, but now, this week, next week. And so, it begins in your lifetime. The rewards of thinking this way in terms of social sustainability truly means personal mental and emotional and physical sustainability as well.
Student: Thank you. I was not personally thinking about this—I know it is within the individual—I was thinking about the general response that has happened a few times when someone has posed it up to you that they want to work toward something that is going to happen in five years—not a hundred years. But thank you; I do understand what you are saying.
MACHIVENTA: Thank you.
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PR
New Era Conversations #52 – Leadership; Current Global Situation; Punishment – Sept. 7, 2015
Teacher: Machiventa Melchizedek, Planetary Manager
Topics:
An era that needs leadership
Response to leadership
Nominating individuals in times of crisis to become leaders
Energized followers
The socially sustainable society is non-competitive
The social cataclysm of refuges into Europe
The global situation will destabilize many regimes
Mortals are ultimately responsible for the decisions they make
The way of social, political and economic evolution
Human history is littered with the destruction of human organizations
The mega-egos will try to scare people away from social sustainability
The strength of social sustainability
Humane co-responsible relationship between leaders and followers
Question about the laws as a tool of regulation
Developing simple laws for an advanced society
In advanced society, there is no punishment
Social education is the acceptance of personal responsibility
Creating a paradigm cultural change over decades
It is important that people have hope
How would you devise an advanced nation with low taxation?
Creating enclaves of enlightened, educated, cooperative individuals
The way of social sustainability is a way of life
TR: Daniel Raphael
Team members: Roxanne Andrews, Michael McCray and a Student
September 7, 2015
Invocation
An era that needs leadership
MACHIVENTA: Good morning, this is Machiventa Melchizedek. It is a pleasure to be in your company once again. (Roxie: It is our pleasure to have you!) Thank you. Today I would like to speak to you again about leadership, but this time the response to leadership and the response to circumstances surrounding you in the time and era that need leadership.
You have a sense of what authentic leadership is about and how it performs, that it is not self-serving, does not seek self-aggrandizement and special favors, but seeks to coordinate and energize the elements and energies of those around him or her, and the environment to bring about movement toward the solution of some situation or difficulty. Enduring leadership requires this to occur repeatedly over a period of days, months and years; many good examples as that were shown during WWII, with Winston Churchill and other leaders of democracy and freedom.
Response to leadership
There is always the necessity of a response to leadership—we have not discussed this before—and that is when a situation arises, and the known leaders are dithering about and have no capability, or no shown demonstration of capability to engage the situation, then it lies in the minds and hearts of those people in the nation to point toward individuals who have those leadership capabilities and could possibly provide the leadership that is needed. If members of the public are as dull as the leaders who seem so incapable of providing leadership and movement forward to resolve the situation, if the public is as dull as that, then there will be no response and no leadership internally or externally. One of the intentions of the Correcting Time and the Teaching Mission and Magisterial Mission is to develop the authentic, genuine internal, personal leadership within each of you, individually.
Nominating individuals in times of crisis to become leaders
You who have followed these lessons for these many years are well trained in recognizing who is a leader and who is not. You will need to point to those latent leaders who have the capability and capacity, but have not demonstrated that or brought it to the surface of your society. It may be that you, as members of the public, would encourage that individual or individuals to engage with others to provide ideas concerning solutions to the problem. If you have no inclination to do so, and none comes forward, then you have a flock of sheep without a Shepard. Christ Michael is your Shepard of Nebadon, and I am your Shepard of Urantia, of this planet. We, however call upon you to nominate individuals in times of crisis to become leaders. You must be able to address, write to, call, fax, email someone in positions of leadership, and recommend some individual to come forward. It may be on the opposite end, that you urge a potential leader and self-nominate them and join them with others who are like thinkers, so that the solutions can begin to be developed and implemented.
Energized followers
Wherever there is leadership, there must be followers, those individuals who are responsible under leadership to move society or their group forward to resolve some problem. Leadership is often seen as a lonely place and position; truly in most instances it is. However, when there is leadership with active, enthusiastic, and energized followers, then there is no loneliness, but there is oneness. It is oneness that we seek in the resolution of the problems of Urantia. You who have read the Urantia Book see the Days of Light and Life and the settlement of a nation and planet in that status, as a desirable end. But to be candid and quite frank with you, the road to that in the beginning is very tumultuous, very difficult, arduous and challenging, as it requires compromise after compromise with old traditions and old cultural ideas about how the world should be. This is why social sustainability is such a neglected, almost rejected idea, in that it is so “exo-cultural.”
The socially sustainable society is non-competitive
It is so much outside of your culture in operation that it is totally unfamiliar to you. In some instances is so distant and different from the way business is handled in your society that that it is repugnant to many people. Fundamentally, the socially sustainable society is non-competitive. It has finally come to the point where it is able to design systems within systems, and systems of systems, so that there is a continuous flow, much like a figure 8; it goes around from one end to the other without stopping—there is a continuous flow; it is non-linear. This is the height of difficulty for many contemporary minds to accept. The concept of money has been developed to such an extent that it is something to compete for, something to be stacked up, even after all the needs of an individual, family or community have been fulfilled and satisfied. That is a very hostile environment for sustainability and for the Days of Light and Life.
The social cataclysm of refuges into Europe
There seems little need to bring to your attention to the global situation of your world. The wave of refuges from the Middle East and from Africa into Europe will be a development that will repercuss for many, many decades. It will be the cause of much social and economic, and even political instability in years ahead. You have not recognized it as a cataclysm, but it is a social cataclysm. It is much like a huge reservoir behind a dam, and an earthquake occurs, cracks the dam and the water rushes forward destroying towns along the riverbank/riverbed, for not just a mile or two, but for tens of miles, 50 miles, 100 miles down river. This is a social cataclysm of catastrophic proportions. It will repercuss in ways that will cause much unsettlement.
The global situation will destabilize many regimes
You have seen the devaluation of the Renminbi in China, which has had a tremendous rippling effect. Though your economy of the United States seems to be robust, other nations around the world are not so fortunate. We have told you before that because of the history of immigration and geographic development North and South America have been spared from many developments of past millennia. So too now, it is very much in the same similar situation that many of these social cataclysms that are occurring and will occur, seem to pass the United States and South American democracies. A stable economy and exchange of goods is fundamental to social and political stability, yet, the global situation will have repercussions in every nation, and will destabilize many regimes and administrations.
Mortals are ultimately responsible for the decisions they make
All of these developments will point to the necessity of social, economic, and political stability. But who, and how, will this develop? You recall that the first mandate of the relationship between mortals and celestials is that celestials will not abrogate the will decisions of mortals, that mortals are ultimately responsible for the decisions they make—and the decisions they do not make. That leaves us with a great deal of room to work with your organizations as they meet and make decisions in their boardrooms and committees and so on. This is the realm of the Most Highs, in Edentia. They are intimately involved in the decision-making of those groups and organizations.
The way of social, political, and economic evolution
What we are waiting for is a situation that requires a decision by such boards of directors, committees, agencies and bureaus when they see the choices of moving towards social, political and economic stability, as opposed to maintaining the current situation, which would then be involved in decline, disintegration and dissolution—ultimately in collapse. There will come a time when those groups—and individuals—will choose the way of progress and social, political, and economic evolution, rather than maintaining unsustainable organizations, processes and procedures and policies of decision-making. This will be the tipping point of your world toward social stability.
Human history is littered with the destruction of human organizations
In order to prepare for that tipping point, there must be, of course, a new set of concepts and ideas that are presented to those groups to help them make the decision. It will be truly an “either/or” decision; there will not be many choices involved; there will not be many options. We have striven to make it very clear that civilizations, societies, nations, administrations, dynasties, empires and so on, have all failed. All of human history is littered with the destruction of human organizations. That is the “either;” the “or” is to engage in developing and formulating policies and decision-making processes that lead to social evolution, to systems development that contribute to the sustainability of not just that organization only, but to other organizations in society.
It is not that these organizations become mutually dependent upon each other, but they become mutually engaged in one enterprise of social, political, and economic sustainability. The “either/or” is to see that your organization’s decision-making processes are one part of thousands that contribute to the continuity of societies. For profit-making organizations, the “either/or” will be the choice between huge growth and huge losses, or continual growth at low percentages of return, for not just a decade or two, but for centuries and millennia. The advent of organizational survivability over decades and centuries, on toward millennia, surely must surely begin to some appeal for individuals and organizations. The sacrifice will be the mega-egos that evolve out of organizations that trounce and step upon the shoulders of those who are not as adept or as competitive.
The mega-egos will try to scare people away from social sustainability
You will see great efforts to raise fear in the minds of the public concerning the fundamentals of social sustainability. That is why we have begun at the local level of individuals to understand the fundamentals of social sustainability, that everyone, anyone can use this process to validate the authenticity—or the fears—that are mongered by others to scare people away from social sustainability. They will portray it as something that is viciously destructive. Most certainly it will be destructive to UNsustainable processes to create an ongoing, constructive society that builds the oneness that naturally develops from a system of systems.
The strength of social sustainability
You will more clearly understand these concepts were you to read the “Fifth Discipline” by Peter Senge that he published in 1994. That is a remarkable book that points the way to the integration of societies. Richard Buckminster Fuller is another who was an avant-garde social realist, who saw the necessity of social, political, and economic integration, rather than the destructive separation that we see in your societies. It is the difference between building a large column of concrete and stones that support each other, as opposed to the separate stones in a stream that bounce and knock against each other and eventually wear each other down to stone talcum that is seen in mountain rivers, that white, frothy water coming out of the mountains that is from the debris and particulates of rocks that have bounced against each other in the streams of fast moving rivers. The strength of social sustainability is a strength that will support the Days of Light and Life; all parts of such society work together through a conscious effort to rely upon each other and to contribute to everyone’s sustainability.
Humane co-responsible relationship between leaders and followers
We are striving to help you prepare for your position as followers. Followers are the powerful elements that make leadership possible. Without conscientious thoughtful, contributing followers, leadership is impossible. This is not leadership by force or coercion, but leadership as a facilitator; the leadership that facilitates the resources of people and the elements they live with is powerful. We are not talking about abject dictatorial leadership; we are talking about the humane co-responsible relationship between leaders and followers to support the good of everyone. When you nominate someone for leadership, you must nominate those who are not vainglorious; but nominate those who do not seek their own ego embellishment or self-aggrandizement, or special privileges that authority can provide.
I am open for questions if you have any. (Long pause.)
Question about the laws as a tool of regulation
Roxie: I don’t have any questions on the topic of leadership; I think you have been very thorough, but I do have a question from one of our readers. One of our readers asked about “laws that are a regulation tool of any situation.” He says, “Obviously, high moral and spiritual development could eliminate existing volumes of laws. According to human laws, there are different levels of punishment acting as a tool to control our society. It fines, imprisons, tortures, and even puts to death. Could you reveal your vision on our laws and solutions in a highly developed society?”
Developing simple laws for an advanced society
MACHIVENTA: I applaud you for your well-formed question. It is very thoughtful and offers us many opportunities to speak about social organization and evolution. In an advanced society, there is oneness among societies; that oneness comes from the very existence of individuals/people. The sovereign boundaries of nations, states, provinces, districts and so on, is superficial and artificial, and does not relate to the oneness of all humanity. To develop simple laws for an advanced society—global society—it is necessary to rely upon the factors that are common to all people. What is it that has sustained your species for so long? Whatever it is, it is so durable, and so consistent that it is universal and timeless and irreducible among all people, and that this is a commonality among all races, all cultures, all ethnic groups, nations and the genders.
When laws are developed from this nature of humanity, then you will see uniformity, even among different nations. That uniformity comes out of the values that have sustained your species. Now, when we speak about laws, those laws are man-made, arbitrary, legalistic morality; they provide a decision-making system, a legal-based morality. In the case of nations now, it is a legal morality. If you were to use the values that sustained your species, those values would create a value-based morality, a universal morality, a universal way of making consistent decisions among all races, all cultures, all ethnic groups, and all nations for all time.
In an advanced society, there is no punishment
Advanced societies have oneness among them; there is an interpretation that may apply to their nation and to their culture, but they are all founded on the same values. In an advanced society, consideration is given towards the behavior of individuals as to whether their behavior violates the quality of life of another. Does their behavior violate the other’s capacity and capability to grow into their innate potential? Does it violate an individual as an equal of others? In a developed, advanced society, there is no punishment. Punishment is an antiquarian way of coercing, cajoling, convincing and persuading a public of individuals to conform to good social conduct, yet you have seen throughout the 4,000-5,000 years of recorded human history that punitive measures do not insure conformity, does not insure moral behavior. How then, would you convince those individuals who are selfish enough to violate the values of an individual, or a group of individuals, or a whole society without punishing them?
In the case of an advanced society, incarceration is an UNsustainable option. Incarceration takes away the resources of the public to support individuals who refuse to conform to the morality of that society. The real question becomes, “Where does a society begin to eliminate punishment as a necessity?” First of all, it begins by the responsible education of individuals. What you have asked for as an answer requires a culture change, a complete paradigm change of culture from the archaic fundamentals of your current societies to an advanced paradigm of social behavior. It begins with individuals; it begins by informing potential parents; it begins in a pre-pubescent era where individuals are children are enculturated in the morality of their advanced society. Much of it is rote; much of it will be interpreted; it will be given much attention in your primary, secondary and university educational programs.
Social education is the acceptance of personal responsibility
You have seen how the culture of Japan has created a great deal of social conformity. For you who live in the United States, you are seen as a bunch of “cowboys” by civilizations of the East. Your independence causes a great deal of selfish grievance upon other individuals. Democracies have a particularly developed and advanced problem: How to develop liberty without license; how to develop a maturing social milieu environment where individuals want to succeed, want to benefit from living in their society. It begins by the education of pre-pubescent students across the world, using a program of enculturation that teaches them how to be students, how to be children, how to be children who are maturing into early adulthood, and then adulthood. The first element of enculturation and social education is the acceptance of personal responsibility for behavior.
Creating a paradigm cultural change over decades
You will not empty your prisons of the inmates overnight. It occurs over decades. We have said in the past that such a cultural change would take minimally two generations, approximately 40-50-60 years to change the culture of a nation. To change the culture of your world would take, perhaps, with concerted effort, as each nation chooses voluntarily to take on this new culture of sustainability, 200-300 years. Your world could be well on the way to the Days of Light and Life within one millennium.
Your question takes in the full scope of Planetary Management. The answers take on the necessity of all people on a planet to manage themselves, to become responsible for their behavior, and to act accordingly, and to teach their children how to live in a socially sustainable society. Many of the liberties that your people take will no longer exist; and they will no longer exist because individuals want to give them up. What will be the return for individuals during this transition era? It would be that they will see hope in an ever-improving quality of life. It will not mean a bigger and bigger and bigger houses, with bigger and bigger mortgages; it will mean that you will eventually have your own residence, which is adequate for your needs. It would also mean that you have an opportunity to grow into the infinite potential of your mind, throughout your life; that educational, self-development will become trans-generational, meaning that when you begin to learn, you will have the opportunity to learn and grow throughout your life. Your society will offer that to you to grow into the potential that you “wish” to become. You must understand that your potential does not end its expression at the end of high school or college, or at age 45 or 55. Through continuing expansion of your inner potential, you can reinvent yourself over and over again in positive and constructive ways, and in doing so you will make more and more positive contributions to your society. Lastly, you will have an equal ability to improve your quality of life and to grow into your potential as other people do, as other people would, or as they could.
It is important that people have hope
It is important that people have hope. When you see the tremendous exodus of people from the Middle East and from Africa into Europe, you are seeing those three values in living expression, people seeking to have the fundamentals of survival, and then to learn to grow into their potential, and in doing so, improve their quality of life. The element of inequality looms so large in the minds of those people that they have so little compared to those who have so much. It is not that they are seeking to go from a bicycle to a Lamborghini, but simply to walk in streets that are peaceful, to be able to walk to work or to their local grocery store or café in peace. That would be a tremendous luxury, one that cannot be purchased by money, or any other method of exchange. It is a condition of living. And so, to fulfill your answer, in part, requires the change of social conditions, political conditions, and economic conditions.
How would you devise an advanced nation with low taxation?
I will tease you a little bit with a question: How would you devise an advanced nation with low taxation? Again, the key is personal and organizational responsibility. I will leave you with that to think about in the coming days and weeks. Thank you for your wonderful question. As you can see, it would truly require at least a two-year, full-time college participation to teach you the fundamentals of global and planetary management. Thank you.
MMc: At least two! (Machiventa: At least!)
[Daniel: They would just be scratching the surface. Wouldn’t it be fun to write a curriculum like that? I could do it. I have always wanted to win the lottery, not for a Lamborghini, but to hire curriculum developers and advisors who would write curricula for new mothers and fathers, for this enculturation of prepubescent children, and all through their life, from the fundamentals of motherhood, the fundamentals of fatherhood, the fundamentals of husband and wife and children. Oh gosh, I could drop $100,000 in a week, hiring people to do that.
Roxie: We may have to do that if people don’t step up to starting their co-creative design teams.
Daniel: Yes, you are exactly right; it’s going to take some philanthropic individual or group to do this without ever expecting any personal or organizational benefit to accrue to them. There are people who exist like that. Lets go on.]
MMc: Machiventa, if I understand correctly, the enculturation of each individual in this new—it is new for now—but in time when the enculturation happens, it will be something that is unnecessarily tried and true, but at least well founded, or there will be a feeling that it is well founded in the culture. My question is: Do you feel that this enculturation will bring about a change in people’s outlook about what they wish to involve their life in, in the future? I can see that there is going to be a large amount of, as you say, tumultuous beginning-ness, and as it goes on, how do you… what happens to those people who do not wish to become enculturated? How do you send them back to school? Is that the punishment for their “punishment” for not complying with the culture, or are they shunned by society, or how is that handled?
MACHIVENTA: Well, young man, you have really tied yourself in a knot, have you not? You have asked at least a half-dozen questions. For the purposes of your development, I would ask you to select one question that you would propose.
MMc: Okay. In the process of enculturating people, you are going to find people who will reject the enculturation; how do you deal with that?
Creating enclaves of enlightened, educated, cooperative individuals
MACHIVENTA: Good, that is a good start. Thank you for your question. An advanced society does not coerce people. What you do is you create enclaves of enlightened, educated, cooperative individuals who want to live in harmony, live in synchronistic, symbiotic existence with others in a community. This is not so unusual as it may sound, as you already have within your nation and other nations intentional communities, but almost all those intentional communities have a singular purpose to their existence. One of the oldest intentional cultures is the nudist colony—people come together with the intention of socializing without clothes and everyone gets along quite well.
You have intentional communities that want to live in an enclave, a housing development, a district, a subdivision where there is uniformity among them, that they have highly efficient houses, that there is a commons building where they have meals at least once a week together that are made and prepared by a rotating circle of individuals—all individuals. There are shared responsibilities in this intentional community. That is one-half of the answer to your question — is that people want to live in harmony with others, and in a community that wishes to become socially, politically, and economically advanced, individuals take on far more responsibilities. Individuals learn how to become parents; they learn how to enculturate their children so that their children eventually can enculturate the grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and so on.
It is a system, a process of building oneness within a small cell of individuals who have intentional purpose, a conscientious intentional purpose, to live together in harmony, to live in a symbiotic relationship in all regards, who want to live in a socially sustainable community. For our purposes, that is the answer to your question, that individuals will find each other; they will advertise, they will market, they will show the benefits of living in a socially sustainable society as a community—and they will not only know how to do it, they will do it, and they will have the trans-generational education and enculturating materials to teach them how to do it.
It will not be a matter of isolated inclusion; neither will it be an isolated exclusion of others. It will be an opportunity for individuals to live in a completely new cultural way that shares responsibilities. You build from what is positive and constructive, rather than coercing people and convincing them to participate. We need people of the New Era to be of one heart, of one mind, of one belief of shared values that are common to everyone who choose to live in peace and harmony, rather than conflict and in war. Thank you, we appreciate your question.
Student: I have a question, Machiventa. As a society, we are very impatient; we want things to happen as soon as possible. How do you convince people/humans that this will take a long, long time—hundreds and hundreds of years, but it will happen; not today, not tomorrow but it will happen. How do you convince them?
MACHIVENTA: You convince them by showing them the results in their personal lives from accepting the values that are common to all people; and to understand those values and how to differentiate, how to discern and improved quality of their life for themselves. The Buddhist tradition is very good at this; it has been doing this for millennia. It is a way of life that shows individuals how to live in peace, rather than conflict; how to live with less, so that more have as much as you do, so that you value others as equally deserving and worthy of what you have. It is not communism, because there is no central authority. The central authority of a sustainable advanced society is the individual. The individual must come to understand and appreciate—thoroughly appreciate—what a peaceful life is about. A peaceful life comes about by the loss of inner conflict by thinking that they have to have more material goods to be worth more, to be more important, and so on than other people.
The way of social sustainability is a way of life
Really, the way of social sustainability is a way of life; it is a way of living that brings harmony to the individual in their lifetime, even within weeks or months, and certainly within years, and that they would want to pass this on to their children and their great-grandchildren, and so on, and that there is a way of living that brings this about. It begins with the individual. The intentional community begins with the individual who wants to live with other individuals peacefully, in harmony and co-responsibly. The results of a widening community of like-thinking people become a sub-division, and then a city or a county, a village, a state, a nation, a continent and a world. It begins slowly. How long has your nation known a time without war? Of the last 60 years, how many years has your nation not been involved in war? Almost none. War has become a way of living and life and of business in your nation. When you have war and conflict and contention it seeps into the minds and hearts and souls of individuals. Just as it is necessary to take a hiatus from life and living in the tension and stresses that you as individuals develop in your lives, so too must communities and families and nations do the same.
What would it be like if your nation took a hiatus from war for 30 years? It would be amazing! The resources of war take so much away from the individual, and from the sustainability of individuals. You would be learning how to be non-competitive without war, without conflict. The answers to your question is always that it begins with the individual—the individual that is convinced that this is the way to live, and wants to live with other people who think the same way. Your question and the preceding question are directly related. It begins with the individual without the concern for how much time it takes, but what it takes for individuals to learn in terms of happiness and joy and peace in their lifetime—not in ten years or twenty years, but now, this week, next week. And so, it begins in your lifetime. The rewards of thinking this way in terms of social sustainability truly means personal mental and emotional and physical sustainability as well.
Student: Thank you. I was not personally thinking about this—I know it is within the individual—I was thinking about the general response that has happened a few times when someone has posed it up to you that they want to work toward something that is going to happen in five years—not a hundred years. But thank you; I do understand what you are saying.
MACHIVENTA: Thank you.
END