Liberation From Excess
Question: At the very beginning of implementing the program of an integral society we will need to somehow overcome all sorts of disagreements. For instance, how do we convince a person that he can do with an apartment that’s 500 square feet and not 2,000 square feet like his neighbor’s? What kind of arguments can we use?
Answer: As we continue to move toward integration, people will be changing their lifestyle. Every person will need their own room in order to study and not bother others. I think that one room per person is enough, plus a common living room and other auxiliary rooms—that’s a normal living area. We can provide everyone with these conditions, assuming we stop chasing after excess and adopt this standard as the model home.
The same applies to food. It’s very easy to calculate the necessary amount of food for a person. This could be a certain set that complies with one’s habits: national, cultural, and so on, but restricted in terms of assortment, meaning less than 50 kinds of sausage that currently line the supermarket shelves. All this variety is simply pointless. Presently someone is making money off you with this, but once the issue of livelihood is settled, all this excess automatically disappears.
Over the course of the crisis hundreds of millions of people will lose their jobs, and their purchasing power will take a nosedive. This will force dozens of redundant kinds of food off the shelves as no one will be buying them. These cutbacks will happen naturally, and we don’t have to worry about them. The world will naturally sever all the excess from the basic necessities for a normal and healthy life.
Comment: For people who have lived in socialist regimes and experienced the phenomenon of a growing deficit, which forced them to spend tremendous amounts of time and efforts to acquire the bare necessities, this sounds kind of scary because they immediately picture long lines.
Answer: There won’t be any lines. I think that everything will be delivered to people’s homes. You will order what you require, and an organization responsible for food supply will deliver everything to you. Similarly, other organizations will provide apartment repair and other types of services.
These are the necessary types of jobs that will remain with humanity, aside from specific industries, agriculture, and so on. Essentially, we will be spending our time and efforts on what is really necessary.
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From a “Talk on Integral Education” 12/12/11
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Who’s to say who gets what, and determines what another person needs? For example a Man who is 6 feet tall needs a higher roof than a man who is say 5 feet tall. When someone tries to determine what someone else needs via whatever method, he is trying to be a sovereign over them and still playing King.