Richard Lloyd Jones: It's still hitting us hard. Markets are down. Foreclosures are up. Shantytowns are springing up in Southern California. We're officially in recession, it appears. And what got us here varies depending on which side of the political argument you listen to. The only problem with that is, it's a little difficult to get at the real root causes. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, let's try to understand it all a little better in the second in our series of what's going on behind the economic crisis.
You know, depending on how long you've been listening to Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, you may or may not know that our work here is based on the extraordinary discoveries of Brazilian psychoanalyst and social scientist Norberto Keppe. In a profound series of books he wrote back in the 1980s, he essentially created a new branch of social science called sociopathology. This was the application of his psychological assessment, analysis, and treatment of the human psyche to the greater society in which we live.
Our society, he determined, is a reflection of the unrecognized parts of our individual psychological reality. The cycle is centuries old, he wrote. Man creates an increasingly sick society as he is increasingly sickened by it. This awareness happened shortly after he moved to New York City at the request of a number of professors and academics to introduce his work there. He went, expecting American ingenuity and their can-do attitude to take his work and spread it worldwide as they did with everything else, from Bretton Woods' economic policies to pop music.
But he encountered a country in trouble. America has stopped working, he noted. He discovered that America was not producing anymore and was instead content to sit back and let the third world do the work while they applied themselves to making money with money. That the U.S. Was exploiting the globalization of the desire for a piece of the American dream that they'd so artfully perpetrated, stimulated, and fed to chain everyone else to pulling the sled while they rode along behind, sucking up the profits.
Keppe saw a psychological inversion in the creation of an economic system that rewarded a company with increased stock prices for lowering costs by farming out production to Asian sweatshops. He saw a psychological condition in the hunger for power and money and consumer goods that was causing us to destroy the planet in our insatiable desire for more, more, more. The three books I alluded to earlier were, and continue to be, extraordinarily astute and prophetic: Decay of the American People and of the U.S., which we discussed in our last episode of Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, Liberation of the People, the Pathology of Power, and Work and Capital.
These books discussed, analyzed, and clarified the psychopathology of the human being that was manifesting in the social structures we had created. These books also went on to propose some very, very workable solutions to how we could solve the problem. This was something remarkable for the time and remains so even today. You'll find these books totally relevant in today's situation, like they were written yesterday, in fact.
Write me at rich at richjonesvoice.com if you'd like more information on those prophetic and wonderful books. What Keppe noticed was the break our social structures had made from our essential human nature. From philosophy, Keppe knew that the essence of life was goodness, truth, and beauty. At the same time, being successful in society meant going against those values. We can't suggest that the richest and most powerful human beings on the planet got that way, after all, by acting like Mother Teresa or Albert Schweitzer.
And we, the people, have bought into it all, big time. We all want to throw our money into the stock market and see it double or triple or at least bring us 10 or 15 percent returns. For doing what, exactly? As Warren Buffett has noted, we're not a nation of investors anymore, we're a nation of traders. And here we have the images of men and women staring for hours into laptop computer screens to squeeze dollars out of the difference in exchange rates between the yen and the euro.
Surely this is not lost on us. We've given up our previous values of what it meant to live in a civilized society. Our leaders lie about whatever they need to, to convince us that we need a massive, unwinnable, horrendously expensive war. They encourage huge speculative financial systems that slosh trillions of dollars around like giant casinos. They throw billions of taxpayers' money into shoring up totally collapsing economic models that they've promoted.
And then, as it's crashing down around their ears, they admonish us that we're all in this together, lumping in the vast majority of the world's population with the small minority who are playing the game. It's time to wake up a little bit. As Keppe wrote in Liberation of the People, most people believe that the powerful are needed to maintain order among the populace and in the markets, rather than that it's precisely these powerful who cause all the social conflict and disturbance with the dishonest laws and systems they create.
End of quote. That's where I'd like to step out from today, that this economic and social crisis has not just happened. It's come to us as a product of our thinking, our philosophy of life, if you will. Gilbert Gambucci, fresh out of talking about this at our World Conference of Analytical Trilogy a few weeks ago, joins me today. Gilbert, I think we have to see what's behind all this, don't we?
The pathology of power, the ways that people are manipulated, and how we agree with it. This is very important for us to look at, isn't it?
Gilbert Gambucci: Yes, you know, Rich, it's very difficult for people who live in an intense consumerist society to perceive what's really going on. We get caught up in the materialism of having, we want things, we want to buy things, we want to consume things, and we want to patch up the economy.
And the fact is, economy is something secondary in civilization. It's not the basis of a civilization. Economy is the result of a civilization. And so if we're seeing serious signs of a breakdown in our economy, it's because at the roots, the fundaments of civilization, there's something wrong there. That's where we have to look. If we can rectify what's really going on in our society, the economy responds to that.
Look, economy is the result of a civilization. You know, what is economy? Economy is money that facilitates where we have to economize the things that we build in a society. And so if we're no longer building, of course
Richard: the economy collapses. So now you're touching on something that Norberto Keppe discovered when he first went there in the early to mid 1980s. He first went to New York.
He was invited there along with Dr. Cláudia Pacheco.
Gilbert: Yes, I
Richard: remember you were there. And he talked about
a vast decay in all areas of American life today, which is what we need to talk about. This is not a comfortable thing to talk about. It's not particularly easy to hear. But in his very powerful book, Decay of the American People and of the U.S., he always talks about his great love for the country, the United States.
He talks about the great influence that the whole world has received from the true American spirit, that the U.S. Is the leading nation in the world, but it's experiencing a massive decay. He was writing about this in the 80s. And it has been that way for years. So, Keppe wrote about this shortly after going, and you were with him. So, what was he talking about?
What did he notice?
Richard: What is he trying to make us conscious of here?
Gilbert: Yes, there's something fundamental here, Rich, in relation to the interior life of the human being, which reflects in everything that he does. So, for example, the United States was founded on the principles of ethics, of morals. You know, the first vice president of the United States, John Adams, one of really the founding fathers, and he was the second president of the United States, he was very concerned about moral values.
And this came from the French Illuminism. People like this, they studied ethics, the importance of ethics in interior life. I don't mean ethics, things that you learn, you know, rules and regulations. It's things that are inside the being of each of us. This is the study of ontology, really. And we don't really need to get into that today. Maybe we can a bit, you know.
But the human being inside, he is honesty. You know, he is ethics. We know what is honest and dishonest. And so if you begin to leave the ethical aspect, And so then you start to do things that are artificial, things that are against ourselves, actually. We start to create a society, an existence, that is against
Richard: our essence. This is very clear, because this is what Keppe's talking about in terms of decay.
He's talking about a general decay inside the way the human being thinks, the way the human being acts, the way we create our society. Talk a bit more about this, Gilbert. This is interesting. Yes,
Gilbert: you know, Rich, if you start acting in a dishonest way, as though ethics don't exist or as though it's a cultural thing. No, it's an internal thing. Everybody has this in psychic life.
Then what happens? That starts to change our philosophy of life. In the United States, we used to have a very beautiful altruistic philosophy of life. Being active in the community to help others, doing your service for others as well as you could. And then you earned your money as a result. As a result of that, as the result of doing a good service.
But then people started to change that idea. They just wanted to go after the money in any way possible. Started to follow an orientation of the American psychologist and philosopher, William James. William James espoused that the truth is what works. Do you see how convenient that is? The truth is what works. Well, then you don't need ethics in that. If I do something dishonest and I get what they want, so that's the truth.
You know, it's something, this is a lie. You know, it's not a philosophy of life. It's something that takes us away from a spiritualized philosophy of
Richard: life. And how has this impacted the economic situation, Gilbert? How do you see that connection between this decay in ethics, this decay in a desire to serve, and how this has manifested out into the economic stock market Wall Street area.
Gilbert: Oh, Richard, there was a famous case, just to exemplify. There was a case in the 60s where senators were questioning the CEO of a large corporation that made formula powdered milk for babies. And they were selling it in a region in Africa in large amounts. But in this region, the water was not pure. And in the hospitals there instead of the mothers breastfeeding their babies they were selling this formula milk.
They had a plan set up and they were doing this. And what was happening was the the babies were dehydrating because of the water itself and many infants were dying. And so the United States senators got in on this situation because this corporation was not stopping to sell this formula milk in this area. It was a disaster and it was incredible because they were they were questioning the ceo.
You have a moral responsibility here to stop doing this in this region because all of the babies are dying and rich do you know what the ceo was saying. No we have a right to sell our product we're protected by law. And the senators they were just amazed with this attitude that these guys can get away with doing things
Richard: without ethics. Is this happening then generally.
We can certainly see that and they're even talking about this now. Then greed has been an enormous gasoline for this runaway stock market which is now collapsing. This question of greed of wanting money above all else is this part of this decay and ethics that you're talking about. Yes
Gilbert: there's another big confusion here the difference between democracy and capitalism. People think that it's two aspects of the same thing.
You know, democracy is a political system. Capitalism is an economic system. And really, we need capital. It's not the capitalism in itself that is at fault. But if you work in any field in a way that is unethical. There will be problems. So people use capitalism, for example. The freedom that democracy gives. In order to exploit other people. And this is a lack of ethics.
Again, it comes back to the psychological life, Rich.
We have to see where we agree with being unethical. So everybody's finger-pointing at the moment, you know? These guys on Wall Street, now everybody's pointing the finger at them because we're having an obvious result now. But really, aren't these guys, aren't these, how could I call them, robber barons? Industrialist is a nice word for them. These economically powerful people who take everything to themselves.
Don't we admire them? You know, so this shows that if we were in their shoes, we would be doing the same thing. We would practice the same lack of ethics as themselves. So each one of us, we have to check to see where we are being dishonest in our own lives and with our fellow countrymen. And
Richard: where we're supporting that in other people.
For example, our economy today is very much based on a couple of fundamental principles. One is speculation. We have this idea of making money with money. All of the big companies now are investing very heavily in these hedge funds, these derivative funds, these extremely risky speculative ventures. That's, of course, the market that's starting to collapse a little bit now. And this other area that you talked about is the area of exploitation.
Our economy is based on that. All of the production in the United States, almost all of it, has moved offshore into the third world, into Mexico, into China, into Taiwan, into countries like Brazil, where you and I live. So this is profoundly unethical, and an economy cannot survive in that kind of basis, can it?
Gilbert: Rich, there's a point here that I would like to try to make clear.
And that is, the real economy of a country, the workforce, industry, agriculture, the work that we do, is something completely different from the speculative market, from the financial world, the world of finance. There's a little bit of a link, but for the most part, it is another field. Now, those who heavily speculate, the economically powerful as we call them, They want us to believe that if the speculative market goes down or finishes up That we're going to suffer.
But if the speculation, if the speculative market stops All of that money, well most of it may just disappear because it's on paper. The rest of it will come into the real economy. And those of us who work for a living will have more money going, circulating. So it'll take maybe a little while for people to perceive that without a speculative market our lives will be better our economy will function because that money that the economy generates will stop being sucked into the speculative market it will stay in the economy where we
Richard: live.
"It's very nicely put because Keppe says in his great book work in capital that the economy will not develop correctly until it's based on reality." So what you're suggesting is that our inflated speculative market is not a real situation it's like a totally fabricated imaginary speculative bubble and the reality is the actual business of really producing products and goods. So many companies today they they make money not on producing a product but on currency exchange on all sorts of risky derivative ideas futures investments these kinds of things and not really on the actual production at hand.
So you're talking about bringing us back to reality. Keppe was talking about this back in the 80s he was way ahead of what we're hearing now isn't he. Yes he
Gilbert: was predicting in the 80s what we're seeing now he predicted the stock market and Was it 88 or 89?
You can't do this Reaganomics thing for much longer. Your speculative market is going to collapse, you know. And of course, he didn't want to see that happen. He was giving warning about this. But the situation has been patched up and patched up. It's kind of like a hospital patient who's living on artificial means, you know. And now that just can't continue any longer.
And Rich, Keppe said something really interesting, something that struck me recently. He said, the people themselves, they don't realize the power that they have in their hands. You know, I don't know if it's going to be possible for American people to get back working. If the stock market finishes, then we're going to have to work. And you know what? If we get back into doing a good service for each other with a little bit of goodness, a little bit of altruistic philosophy that we used to have, if people start working again, it's very, very possible we can become a very great nation again, once again.
Right now, we really are like a hospital patient who's living by artificial means.
Richard: And this is the purpose of our podcast today, Gilbert, not to point the finger, but really to try to offer something in terms of help. Because if America returns to these values you're talking about, it can be resuscitated. But we need to take ourselves out of the control of this speculative balloon.
Dr. Keppe says that there's no way for any economy, for anything to continue indefinitely in a dishonest situation. It can't continue. It has to fall apart. And so what we see falling is actually this dishonest part, not the honest part of working, of providing a service, of helping people.
Gilbert: Yes, Richard, that's why Keppe is always pointing out errors. Why would somebody do that?
He's a scientist, so that's what he does professionally. He points out psychological and social errors. Why? So that you can correct them in order to grow. Now, most people, they don't understand that. JFK understood that, our late President Kennedy, because he said, look, a free society is a critical society. And he would question people and say, what's going on? Okay, our profits are up, but so is the consumption of tranquilizers.
So is the rate of divorce you know so is the our mental disease so what's going on it's not just profits it's that's not what civilization is
Richard: about. Yes in fact there's a quite a quite a lot of criticism coming up today and i've heard this for many years that one of the challenges in our economy today is we're spending massive amounts of money on non-productive uses we're not using it, to repair the infrastructure, to create alternative energy systems, which the Keppe motor is trying to address now directly.
We're not supporting an invention. The production of good products, of things that help people. And if you look back at the history of stock market crashes, Gilbert, it's very interesting how many of them are related to war, are related to production of things that destroy. There was a crash after the first world war there was a huge crash just before the second world war there was actually a whole economic slowdown during the whole time of the of the second world war during the vietnam war there was a big problem in the economy now with this iraq war.
So we're not using the money that we have intelligently we're using it to destroy to speculate and not to develop the kinds of work that we need to develop today. Yes
Gilbert: we're using the money aggressively this is something psychological and you know a country that is aggressive to other countries you suffer that internally. Let me explain individually somebody who is aggressive to others he suffers that in his being because the the structure of our being doesn't contain aggression it's not meant for that and so you you suffer eternal damage by being aggressive.
Now on a social plane what does that mean if you if you war with other nations then within that within our society we'll see the results of that. That's why for example we see teenagers going into their high schools and shooting their classmates and all of these type of aggressions that people don't quite know how to analyze.
You know, an aggressive nation will suffer the internal consequences of that. And, you know, it was Alexander Hamilton who brought up an interesting point. You know, Rich, we've got to go back to the founding fathers. Yeah, I know
Richard: you're very passionate about this. See what they were
Gilbert: about. It's great that we talk about that. You know, one of the things he said was, somebody who praises the people ends up being a dictator.
And, you know, we see people, People, they want to put everything on the politicians, like a political platform is going to save us, or an economic orientation is going to save us, you know. And they're all the time praising everybody, praising everybody. But we need to analyze the real problems in our civilization, what's
Richard: really going on. And, you know, what's also happening in the society, Gilbert, is we are seeing a lot of problems, and not just the problems of violence.
We're seeing problems of depression, problems of people feeling alienated, disoriented. Especially now, people's foundations are being shaken. So we're trying to help people to understand this by returning to something that America had in the beginning. Founding fathers' values, what Norberto Keppe has been talking about. This is very beautiful to return us to a true reality,
Gilbert: you know? Yes. You know what, Rich?
If you want to get out of your depression, for example, or if you want to cure yourself of some illnesses that you're having, or if you want to even just feel better, go back to work. Just work. It's an incredible therapy. That's who we are in our essence. Our being is pure act as Aristotle put it. We are action in our essence.
We are also feeling and thought, but the most important component is good action.
Richard: Norberto Keppe has been helping us for many years now work with what are called trilogical enterprises, where we work for pleasure and for contribution, not for doing something dishonest, which causes pain for the human being, but going back to real work, real production, providing something of value, something that people can use, not creating something completely worthless, and then developing a whole marketing campaign to create a need for that worthless thing.
But something real, something valuable, something that makes a difference for people. This is a
Gilbert: way out too, right? Yes, something that helps people, right? Something that helps the others. Imagine if everybody does a work that services the others. John Kennedy put it in such a beautiful way. It's a philosophy of life. But he said, look, I'm not trying to give a bigger piece of the pie to some people.
I'm trying to make the pie bigger. For everyone. And then everyone benefits. You know, so we just need to do a good, honest work. That's the solution.
Richard: Now, let's talk a little bit, just a little bit towards the end here now of what's actually happening there. Because one of the things that I think is going on behind all of this that we need to really pay attention to, Gilbert, and maybe we need to start being conscious of this, is that I think there's an international financial system now that's being called for.
There was a guy from the New York branch of the Federal Reserve who was an attendee of the Bilderberg meeting this year who wrote in the Financial Times calling for a global financial system operating under a unified regulatory framework. And just the other day, I saw somebody from the International Monetary Fund saying it should be prohibited to go outside these international sort of regulations.
So I think behind all of this, there's something a little bit tricky, which is to try to control somehow all of this system in a very dishonest way. Do you have any thoughts about that?
Gilbert: Yeah, you know, Rich, if something cannot be understood, it's because it's deceitful. You know, really, economy, it's a very simple science. And if nobody can understand the economy, it's because there's a lot of manipulation going on.
It's very deceitful. Where's all the money gone? It's gone somewhere, all this money. And if the solution is focused only on the financial world, only on economics, it's bad intentioned. Because that's not where the root of the problem lies. If we want to really make a solution for our civilization, we've got to analyze what is really the problem. What is causing the economic problem?
It's not economy. It's something else. It's something more fundamental. And so beware of people who just want to put a Band-Aid on the economy. That's something a group of people who want to control our lives.
Richard: And the media is very, very deceitful in this respect, Gilbert, because they give us smotherage, you know, tons of information, but no context, no understanding of what's going on beneath all of this, which you're trying to provide for us now, which Norberto Keppe has been trying to do for his whole professional life.
Context and explanation, this is crucial for us to understand.
Gilbert: Well, the media is owned by economically powerful people, so rich they act in their interests. I can't put it any simpler than that. So, thank goodness for a podcast like yours, who speak the truth. This is what we need. The media should be the social consciousness. It should be the consciousness that we need in society, but it doesn't act in this way.
Richard: Now, you said something in your lecture in San Diego I thought was really great. You were talking about how we have to get away from this idea that if we criticize, if we look at problems, we're un-American. You said you were referring to the bumper sticker we see around, you know, my country, right or wrong. And you said, no, it's not like that.
And you said something very beautiful. Just reiterate that for us here at the end of our podcast.
Gilbert: Well, yes, you know, that doesn't match up with our heritage at all. This question of America, right or wrong. Well, even if you don't agree with wiping out other nations anyway, I'm going to support the president. That has nothing to do with our American heritage.
For example, Abraham Lincoln said, if a man is right, stand by him. If he goes wrong, part with him. Turn your back on him. What is this? Where is our allegiance? You know, this principle of Lincoln, it shows that we pledge our allegiance to the truth. This is our heritage, not America right or wrong. It's America right, you know, where it's wrong.
We have to turn our backs on that. We have to confront that. We have to create a solution. And that was Jefferson who said, If you expect to be ignorant and free, you expect what never was and never will be.
Richard: And now we have Norberto Keppe's Science of Analytical Trilogy to help us. Waking up is within our grasp. So are some solutions.
I heartily recommend his books and these podcasts for you and your circle of influence. This is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones. Talk to you next time.
