Current Western Economic Pardigm

Where does the current western Economic Paradigm come from? ... how did it arise? We once were an agrarian society ... and way before that we were a society based on subsistence hunting...

Today, we are a manufacturing society - we take basic resources from the earth, reshape them, and produce "stuff" ... Our food supply has transformed from being the center of the activity to being now just one more product... and it is truly a "manufactured" product now... is this good?

Of the stuff we produce, some is Fundamental Stuff - housing, clothing, health care ... But usually we have gone way beyond the basic needs. So a huge amount of what we produce is 'luxury' stuff.. But something like 80 or 90 % of our stuff and activity is consumed by something like 10 or 20 % of the world's poplulation. Why is that?

We have become a society that lives at a level of consumption that the planet cannot susttain. Why has all our "increase" been folded back into ourselves? Rather than spreading out to others ... I suppose the answer to that is the old standby - greed; human nature's self-aborption tendancy etc... Our western economic is now spreading to huge parts of the population for the first time in history (China, India)... At a time when one of the basic "fuels" of this system (oil) is peaking out... So what sort of crisis does this cause?

The western economy threatens to engulf the planet at an unsustainable level... Where is the solution? Downsizing our demands and "exporting" a less consumptive business model? Or finding an entirely new paradigm - a new reason for our existence... Right now it seems the main reason for our existence in the west is "to make stufff" or "do stuff" - and most of that stuff and activity is NOT basic stuff but secondary/tertiary industry - non-essential stuff but certainly comforts us. Where's the sustainable level?

I keep coming back to the book of Revelations and Babylon (Chapter 18) as one of the best, most accurate metaphors for an economic system that controls and uses up human beings and indeed the planet, (as opposed to an economic system that is under our control and serves our long-term best interests).

All the dark language in the chapter to me represents the spirits behind the decisions we all make that lead us into this kind of economy. As most of us are merely reacting to what happens around us we end up being managed into a kind of economy that was not necessarily of our own choosing - if you get my drift. We are being 'managed' by the over-arching summation of all our "small" spirits of self-intention and greed that we all succumb to at least part (if not most) of the time.

Here are two interesting videos that provide more insight and hopefully point towards some solutions:

1. The Story of Stuff
http://www.storyofstuff.com/

2. The Fast I Choose
http://signpostvillage.com/thevillagevoice/2007/07/the-fast-i-choose-steve-bells-journey-to-ethiopia/