Richard Lloyd Jones: I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and welcome once again to Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. It's been blamed on mortgage malpractice, poor or non-existent regulation, greed for banking bonuses that caused risky lending to be conducted. And it seems clear that all of this is implicated in the current economic meltdown being led by the U.S. Regulators want to blame Wall Street. Wall Street wants to blame the regulators.
Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, the apologist for the Bilderbergers and the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral commission, groups like that, wants to blame the baby boomers. And all of this just muddies the waters. You listen to the pundits on the news, or the attempt at debate on Fox or MSNBC, or the comedians like Bill Maher and Jon Stewart, or the talk show blowhards and op-ed scribes, and end up believing in whichever espouses the economic or political philosophy you already adhere to.
And after it all, where are we? No further ahead. Don't you wind up with a feeling that you don't really know what's going on, no matter how informed you are? Let us humbly try to throw some light on that, illuminating the causes of the economic meltdown. Our program today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. I feel daunted wandering into this arena. Let me tell you, I'm not an economist or political scientist.
I'm not so versed in the nuts and bolts or the stats that others wield in the scramble to explain what's happened. I am, however, a student of Dr. Norberto Keppe's Science of Analytical Trilogy, and his comprehensive and laser-like analysis of the human psychosocial landscape does arm me with some tools to effect an analysis. First of all, I'm struck in the media I'm consuming with the lack of historical perspective on this thing.
I suspect this is because of our journalistic body does not have the sufficient and psychological understanding to be able to analyze correctly what happened. They generally see the dismantling of the strict banking regulations imposed in the 1930s as an inevitable and innocent process by well-meaning elected officials and free enterprise financial executives who, unfortunately, made a few mistakes. Now we have to be a little bit smarter than that.
First of all, we have to try to bring this enormous process of deregulating the financial industry down into some understandable steps. Nothing like this that we're facing today could have happened without significant planning and organization over many, many years. Heck, I'm going to Canada in a couple of weeks, and I've got a fair bit of organizing to do before I can get away.
Just imagine what's behind riding roughshod over the Glass-Steagall Act. That farsighted act from the early 1930s sought to control the financial skullduggery that led to the collapse of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression that impacted a generation. How do you whittle away at that? That's the process that's been going on that's cleared the way for the levels of insane lending and borrowing and speculating.
That's very much the issue as we look at the financial collapse that we're currently going through. Think with me in a Machiavelli-like fashion as to how you do that. How would you take away that regulation? One, and these are not in any order, by the way, set up a very potent lobbying system, people it with highly paid Washington players who know the roots for gaining influence.
Second, fund both parties with significant campaign contributions. Third, work to get Wall Street reps into high-ranking political positions. And to see how effective that's been, check out how many Wall Street leaders have been inserted in Washington power circles since Reagan's presidency. It's so interesting that who's developing all the multi-billion dollar bailout packages are Wall Street guys. Can you say conflict of interest, Mr.
Rogers? Ah, it's a tangled web we weave when we practice to deceive, is how Shakespeare put it in his best iamic pentameter. And if you want more, check out the Nobel Prizes in Economics since 1980 to see how many have been awarded for economic theories related to finance and the stock market. That will be an eye-opener for you. The financial meltdown smells very bad from where I'm sitting, and today we'll dig into it.
A program today of conscious Americans who are all linked to Norberto Keppe's work. Let's look at this through Analytical Trilogy science. Gilbert Gambucci, a frequent contributor to Thinking with Somebody Else's Head up first. Gilbert, a number of years ago, you put together a very interesting video series that you've published on the internet about the origins of the crisis. You did this back in 2008, I guess, with the first crisis, the so-called first crisis.
Now we have, here we are in 2011, a second crisis. Let's do again. Let's look, what is the origin of this? What's going on here?
Gilbert Gambucci: I like your radio programs, Rich, because we have a chance to speak the truth. And it's not really a second crisis. It's the same one. They keep, let's say, postponing. They're trying to postpone the consequences of where we've gone wrong without analyzing the origin of the problem.
I have to say this very clearly, Rich, the origin of the problem has not been analyzed until today. So the situation is going to continue. You know, they're trying to delay it for another six months And then it's just going to continue because they don't get to the origin. And there is an origin to the problem. And it's not so difficult
Richard: to understand.
Let me give you a little bit of encouragement. The U.S. Government has listened to every one of our programs, Gilbert. Every one of our radio programs has been downloaded by somebody in the U.S. Government, U.S. Government offices in Washington. So maybe there's some hope that somebody is listening to what you're going to say now. What is the origin? What's
Gilbert: going on? Well, let's hope that it's somebody with good intentions or
Richard: somebody intelligent enough to grasp this, because normally
Gilbert: they don't.
And so here we go, Rich, for the general public, many of us do. And it's like this. Let me just lay a little groundwork, because the founding principles of our nation, the principal writer of the Constitution itself, Thomas Jefferson. And he said something very interesting, and that is, mistakes are preferable to inaction because it's the indifference of a people that will kill a nation.
Gilbert: It's a very interesting idea, this question of indifference, of being inactive. He says this will kill a nation. And they knew what they were talking about. Of course, they came from this Illuminist philosophy of life, where this equality and liberty, fraternity, you know, this French Illuminism. Coupled with the fact that they were escaping, trying to get out from under a despotism there in England.
So they knew in practice what they were doing. And even Martin Luther King, you know, he said that the thing that bothered him most was the indifference of some people. You know, we see a problem, it's right there in front of us, and then people don't react. This is not in our heritage. We see right from the foundations of our civilization that the principal element of existence is action.
And that's why the United States had such a development, perhaps more than any other nation on our planet, was because of this question of action. We are a people of action. We have always been, right, since its formation. It was formed in action, the spirit of... It's a revolutionary spirit. You know, that's the real American spirit. And the famous presidential inaugural address of John Kennedy, it was a call to action.
You know, this altruistic philosophy of life, of working in benefit of your community, of acting in benefit of society. You know, this is a part of our heritage as Americans. You
Richard: know, there's a very interesting scene in the film, Clint Eastwood's film, Gran Torino, that shows this aspect of action, Gilbert, that you talk about. He's visiting his neighbors who are from Malaysia or Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, one of these areas.
And their washing machine is out of balance. You know, when he leans on it, it kind of moves like it's tilts, you know. So he gets down on his hands and knees and he adjusts the thing to make it level, you know. And I love this scene in the movie. It shows in a very simple way that Americans have always been about doing things, getting things done.
You think about this in the American spirit all the time, you know, just do it. He didn't think twice. No. Just fix it. Didn't ask permission. He went and fixed the thing. And so what you're saying here is really interesting. And if we look at this, analyze this now, we can see that America has lost this sense of action, right?
Gilbert: Well, how?
This is the thing. You know, when, of course, when Dr. Keppe came to live and work in the United States in the 80s in New York, and I worked with him there, at this time, he was analyzing... Problems that he was seeing. He became kind of alarmed with the inactivity that was happening in the United States. And, for example, I have a quote here of Kennedy, who was also concerned about certain things.
He said that a free society is a critical society. And let me quote Kennedy here. He said one time, What has happened to us as a nation? Profits are up. Our standard of living is up. But so is our crime rate. So is the rate of divorce and juvenile delinquency and mental illness. So are the sales of tranquilizers and the number of children dropping out of schools.
So he was looking for analysis of the real problems in the United States. And Dr. Keppe, being the analyst that he is, social scientist, psychoanalyst, social analyst, he was noticing that the people of the United States were stopping. And I remember seeing a television program of his in 83 or 84, because his programs were aired several times a week in the New York area and other regions afterwards.
For example, one show was about the sudden influx of Hinduistic and Eastern philosophy that was coming into the United States. And the fascination that people had at that time with meditation and contemplation and things like to stop people from being active, he noticed that their philosophy of life was changing, and not for the better. And this had nothing to do with how our nation was founded.
And he was also analyzing, at that time, Reaganomics, which was at the same time in the 80s. Because he was saying, if Reaganomics takes hold in this country, it will bring the nation to a halt. Now, how is that? How can we understand that? Why would he say that? I have friends, Rich, who they would take their paychecks, because Reaganomics was to stimulate the stock market, invest your money in the stock market.
We're going to let the bull loose, he said. Yes, exactly this. And they would invest their paychecks in the stock market. And what would happen after a period of time? They would start making more money with their investments than with their paychecks, with working. So many people, after a certain period of time, what happened? They're just playing the stock market and stopped working.
You know, many people say, oh, what are you doing nowadays? Oh, I'm retired. Oh, you retire at 35 years of age, 45 you're retired. What happened, Richard, was they stopped working. They were just playing the market. Many people, a large percentage of the people. And so this deactivated the people. This deactivated the nation. And it's very subtle, this, because, well, Reagan, when he was re-elected, apparently it was by the highest popular vote in the history of the United States.
So people wanted money without working. This was clear. Without realizing exactly what was going on. They were like being tricked. And as Keppe began to analyze this in a very clear way, so that people can become aware of what's happening. And it was very interesting to see the reaction of people to have their eyes opened about this, how we were being duped into becoming inactive.
Yeah,
Richard: this is a great point, Gilbert, and I want to come back to talk with you about that at the end of our program. I want to take a little break now between you and me and bring in another American analysis from three people who are living there now. You and I have been out of it for a while. Bob Butler, Susan Berkley, and Monene Daly-Hart are going to join me to analyze this from their point of view deep inside the system.
But I'm just thinking as you're speaking, remembering Jimmy Carter's speech at the end of his presidency, close to the end of his presidency, where he was talking about trying to warn America of consumerism, materialism, of not working. He was trying to warn people about that. It was like one of the most unpopular speeches, I think, in American history. And shortly after that, they brought in Reagan.
So as you're saying, there's this desire to live in kind of an illusion that forms the basis of this. So we'll get into that in the last part of our program. You
Gilbert: know, Jefferson said, if you want to be ignorant and free, you want what never was and never will be.
Richard: Yeah, so consciousness is essential. And of course, they weren't so happy about Keppe's consciousness at that time.
Let's see if they're more open to it this time. We're back in a moment on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head to talk with Susan Berkley, Bob Butler, and Monene Daly-Harding. Gilbert will join us again at the end of the last segment of our program. We're back in just a moment on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. Don't go away.
And maybe the biggest news or the most pressing news, things we're reading about, certainly in North America today, would be our economic debacle. There's a word you don't hear very often, but I think it describes exactly what's going on. And I'm joined by three Americans now, three of my dear friends, to try and look at this situation, try and penetrate a little bit and find out, maybe analyzing this, what in the hell is going on?
So, joining me from the Boston area is Monene Daly-Hart. Monene, very nice to have you here with us today.
Oh, thank you for having me, Rich. Hello.
Richard: Great pleasure. My dear friend in New York, Susan Berkley, is also on the line. Hi, Susan.
Hi, Rich. Pleasure to be here.
Richard: Great to have you here. And Bob Butler is in the studio with me.
We have a kind of a sophisticated recording apparatus going on here. We'll record all three of us together. Hello, Bob. Hi, Rich. Okay. Now, maybe we could get some initial thoughts from you guys individually. What do you think is happening? What's maybe the root cause? Or just give me an analysis overview initially of what you think is going on here. Susan, you could start.
And then Monine and Bob, pitch in after she's finished, please.
Well, you know, back in 1984, Dr. Keppe wrote a book called The Decay of the United States and the American People. At the time, the book was, people didn't react warmly, let's put it that way. It was at the height of the Reagan era, you know, the go-go 80s, as we called it.
But what was interesting about that book, Dr. Keppe wrote it to help us see that underlying, you know, sort of a hidden corrosion that was occurring in our great nation. And he wrote that book because he loves the United States, loved it then, loves it now, deeply, deeply respects the principles on which our great country was founded. But he observed when he came here to work that already things were starting to crumble kind of behind the scenes.
He's a very perceptive man. He's a psychoanalyst and often sees things that other people don't. So he saw it as his duty to bring those things to attention. And what happened was nobody paid attention. People just didn't understand it. They didn't get it. And now, all these years later, we're seeing the results. So the point is that, and it's sort of like another worldly bizarre experience for those of us who've been following his work for so long, because we're seeing everything that he predicted back then come to fruition, you know, or not fruition in a negative sense.
Things start to fall apart because the country has been, our economic system has been founded on speculation, not work, in a nutshell. And you can't sustain something like that. Speculation is a fantasy. It's not real. We have to, real work is what built this nation and what will recover it. But I think people are so confused they've lost that whole concept. How do you see
Richard: it, Monique?
What do you see is going on? And you've been studying Dr. Keppe's work for a number of years now. How are you analyzing this or explaining it to your
kids? Well, it certainly is complicated, but it kind of goes back to your very first question. You said, gee, what is the root cause? And it's so very interesting, Rich, because no one is talking about the root cause of the economic crisis.
I saw this gentleman, Dylan Rattigan on MSNBC, really kind of had quite an explosive commentary, but really he's the hyperbole from the left to the right, up, down. It really, really doesn't matter, but as Susan was talking about, real work. Another one of Dr. Keppe's books, Work and Capital, that I've become very familiar with, is talking about the sickness of not earning your money, not providing real goods and services.
This is what an economy is. It's not financial services, corrupting trade, taxes, banking. It's not money making off of money, speculation, as Susan said. It is real goods and services. And so if you go to the origin of the problem, the root cause of the problem, it is pathological. And we don't like to look at this because, you see, what we see in the outside world is reflective of what we see in ourselves, which requires correction and consciousness.
And a lot of analysis, right, Monique? A lot of analysis. You have to look deep inside yourself. It seems to me that we have very much this something-for-nothing mentality very well developed in North America in a negative sense, right? We want to get something by doing nothing, and this is causing a huge problem, as you said. Bob, chime in here. What are your quick observations in light of what Susan and Monique have been talking about and your own observations as well?
You know, at one time the concept, The American Dream, I believe, was viable. It was real. People could work and, you know, earn their way to be able to afford their homes. They lived within their means. And then society became manipulated by major corporations, banking institutions, and other organizations to the point today that the incomes of people, and they have been for the last 10 or 15 years, have been steadily declining.
Artificial balloons, such as housing prices, based upon speculation, were growing. The end result became that all of a sudden, 60 to 70 percent of the American people owned their own home. They became to the point where they were indebted that they had to work. They needed the capital in order to survive. The bottom line is they didn't enjoy their work anymore. And then the advent of credit cards.
So it seems like the Americans have really been duped, you know, by their greed, by the greed of the profit takers or profit seekers to kind of trap them to the point where now they're really in big trouble. Just mortgage foreclosures alone. If you look at the U.S. Debt clock, the bottom line, it's like over 980,000 foreclosures. And that's just not homes.
That's, you know, buildings and enterprises as well, just for this calendar year alone.
Richard: Yeah, the picture is pretty bleak, and we could talk about statistics all day and get us anywhere resolving it, but it will make us feel very depressed, so that's really something to see. You know, Susan and Monene, just to fill you in, Bob and I were doing a class with a couple of students this morning, talking, trying to look at all the process that went into place to deregulate the financial sector.
All those regulations that were put in place in the 1930s with the Glass-Steagall Act of Roosevelt to regulate very strongly the financial services industry. And that was over the last 60 or 70 years has been strongly deregulated. And most people aren't really aware of the process that happened there. But if you look at the influence now of Wall Street in politics in the United States, it's scary to see how many of the Wall Street guys have infiltrated themselves into the government.
And this has had an enormous, into all areas of the government, this has had an enormous effect on deregulating the financial industry, which is causing a huge amount of our problems today. But, Susan, I wanted to come back to something you said at the very beginning, this idea of work, and Monin mentioned it, too, with work and capital. Talk a little bit about Dr.
Keppe's ideas and how you guys see them in this way, the difference between the disinversion of work and capital. How do you see that, Susan?
Okay. I'm so glad you mentioned Roosevelt because he was really on the right track. And I think that what we're missing right now in America is the vision and leadership that he brought about, because he really said no to big business interests.
And he said, you know what, the way we're going to recover this country is through work. He instituted the Works Progress Administration, the WPA, I think it stands for, Works Progress. And, you know, Rich, what I think is important, because I want to interject a note of optimism in this conversation. We, the people, have the ability and the potential to recover not just our country but our lives through using our talents, because each one of us, every single person was gifted with amazing gifts that if put into action will help to rebuild our society.
And the point is that we have lost confidence in those gifts and those abilities because of how inverted, this is another term that Dr. Keppe has invented and found in his research, how inverted we are placing, you know, work, not work, placing money over our talents and our abilities and inner quality and inner gift. So the point is that it's time now, I think, for the American people to wake up, start sharing their talents in their own area, contribute where they can.
What will happen is those talents will be increased and bit by bit will start to recover. Now, I know there's a lot that needs to be done and we have to be conscientized of why we have not been doing that. Last night, Rich, I don't know if I can get into a little bit about a discussion we had last night about where our talents and abilities come from.
Can I
Richard: do that now? Yeah, sure, Susan. I have a couple of comments to make about what you're saying, but I made notes here, so I think I can follow, so carry on.
Okay. You know, the important thing, and I think something that Dr. Keppe's work gives us, like a very deep hope and optimism, a key point that he shows us. Which is the why we don't have the confidence, why we don't move forward with our talents and abilities for each of us to become great Americans, great leaders in our own area, why more people are not stepping up to the plate and doing what needs to be done in this country.
What Dr. Keppe shows us through his research is that we don't want to work with our own talents and abilities because we did not create them. They came from God. They came from the creator. And internally, deep, deep down inside, therefore, we reject them because we don't want to glorify the giver. And that, I think, is something for each of us to consider deeply.
Deeply. But having that awareness, then we can start to recover these gifts that we have to share, develop them for each of us to recover the nation in our own way, how we can.
Richard: Yeah. I was thinking as you were speaking that one of the things that we've lost is our sense of dignity in real work. This idea of speculation that has been so spread in our economic system today takes away our dignity.
Dr. Kepley talks about that a lot. We're getting something by doing nothing. And it seems to me that we've created this idea that it's undignified to do real work. Can
I just quickly add something? So like people are clinging to their, it's like their future rests on their 401k. And so then when the stock market goes up and down, they're like flipping out because like you say, Rich, they don't, they've lost the sense of dignity in doing their own work.
Yeah, no, just everything that you're saying is right on the money. And I just have to say that Bob and I wouldn't even be speaking with you, Rich, and you, Susan, if you weren't sharing your talent. So thank you for that. But it's really about action. And Dr. Keppe talks about this in Work and Capital, too, that action is the result of the union of feeling and thought.
By doing, by working, this is how we get to correct activity. So the more we're lazy, pathological, and take a step back, the sicker we become. And then we go looking to sort of hide from that. And then we get into health issues and the pharmaceutical industry. And My family comes from agriculture in the Midwest, our farming business that disintegrated, and also from General Motors, an automotive industry that disintegrated.
So my family knows very, very well, generation by generation, the deterioration and the sickness that has occurred. It's quite profound to experience. But this is for all of us. This is a universal situation. It's not North America. It's not these people, that people. It's not a political faction. It is all of us, isn't it?
Richard: Yeah, it sure is. And, you know, I was looking at Bob across the studio from me thinking, you know, I'm sounding a bit like my father here.
Who used to say, Richard, there's nothing wrong with really hard work. And we've got this idea that getting our hands dirty is a bad thing, Bob.
And I think it's important at this time to really, in the words of Dr. Keppe, a number of years ago, Richard did an interview with Dr. Keppe and Dr. Cláudia, and the term inversion came up. This was a new term to Richard.
He had no idea. And in Dr. Keppe's words, he described it as the following. In means no. Version means what is right. Inversion means no to what is right. So envy means a non-correct version of things. It means that the person does not accept what is right and instead accepts what is wrong. Yeah,
Richard: there's our problem. That's the root of our problem immediately.
Well, come back and we'll talk about that. I have to take a break. Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, we are back in just a moment. A very interesting discussion today about the root causes, and I think we'll get to those even more in our next segment. Stay tuned. We're coming right back. This is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. You can find all the archives of our programs, by the way, on our excellent site prepared very well by our good friend in Edmonton, Will Lajeunesse, who's coming down, Bob and Susan and Monine, coming down to Brazil very shortly to join us here.
Oh,
fantastic. Yeah, it's very nice to have him down here.
You can join us there and join us on Facebook too. Our Thinking with Somebody Else's Head page is getting some comments and people liking it lately. This is very nice to see. Well, let's get back to our discussion. Bob, you raised it right at the end. And there, I love to leave them wanting more, and that was a really enticing piece you were reading for us there, about inversion and envy and its relationship to the situation we're in today.
Maybe expand on that thought a bit, and then I'm sure Monine and Susan will have comments about that too. Expand on what you're thinking about there, Bob. You know, many times we look at things. For example, we look at things that are good, and we determine that they're bad. This is a form of envy. And again, I like to quote the people who really have developed this science.
And Dr. Cláudia Pacheco, she described it as this. We could say also that because of envy, the person gives value to evil and rejects good. The envious person cannot stand what is good. He does not accept beauty. He automatically sees good and beauty as something bad for his life, as something that is going to harm him. And unfortunately, that's what's happened in the country with the speculation, the stock market.
Oh, if I put a dollar, I'll get three back. And that's why some of these Ponzi schemes became so successful in the United States, because all of a sudden people could see that they could put money and get money back for doing nothing. And the bottom line that reminds me of the people from Analytical Trilogy who went to the United States. People who were academic, who had advanced degrees like mining engineers, and in order that they could do good work, they became experts in floor sanding, painting, moving, everything outside of what they trained for, which demonstrates that the human being has talents and the ability to do things if only they take action to do them.
Richard: Okay, Bob. So now you mentioned something there about the, as Cláudia's words, we accept what's bad because of our inversion, our envy, and we reject what's good. Maybe Monique and Susan, you have some more thoughts about that. What have we accepted that's bad and rejected of what's good in this current situation?
Yeah. You know, one of the components of envy is that it unconsciously causes us to detonate what's most valuable.
And I think that in our, you know, our country is such a beautiful jewel, what was built by our forebearers and in many, many ways and in our individual lives. You know, if you look at, you know, they have a saying in Portuguese, which is, you know, rich father, noble son and poor grandson. You know, I think that in many, many ways we have become the poor grandchildren because we haven't been able to appreciate or we've been envious of what our forefathers have created in this country.
And you see how quickly it's happened. You know, if you look at the American spirit, and of course, this country, I mean, it's got a lot of problems, of course, it always has had, but there was a different spirit that our grandparents had. And we've somehow wanted to rebuild things to our own liking, and in the process detonated. It's this one thing that envy does is it causes us to be dissatisfied with who we are and what we have, to always want something new, better, new addition, rather than trying to go back and improve and enhance who we are and what we already have.
We you know enhance it, so we're always trying to destroy and rebuild in our own image, and as we see the quality, um, the experience, the aesthetic sensibility of the United States becomes poorer and poorer and poorer, to the point where ugliness becomes the norm.
You did a beautiful podcast some weeks ago, Rich, about Amy Winehouse and why artists, these wonderful artists, tend to destroy their talents through drugs. We've done that on the national scene. And it's only on the national scene, and it's only through an understanding of envy that Dr. Keppe brings that I think we can start to recover some of that.
Richard: You know, I think it was Milton Friedman who talked about that North Americans, Americans especially, shouldn't work anymore.
They should develop the knowledge economy, you know, this kind of idea. And this is an enormous megalomania. As we're doing this radio program, I am speaking to you on a handmade microphone from Latvia. And I'm saying this specifically because I was watching a video of how they make these things in a small factory in Riga, Latvia. They make these incredible microphones totally by hand.
The only thing they machine is the metal parts, and everything else is put together laboriously by hand, constructed and created. America could get back to that. We could get back to creating beautiful, incredible products instead of just trying to make our money in the stock market all the time.
Yeah, people just want to retire early. They want to hang out, do nothing, retire, retire, retire, you know.
Richard: Yeah. Monique, what do you think?
Well, you know, everything that's being said is so true, so beautiful. And it has me thinking about our will. Dr. Keppe talks about our inverted will, that we have to frustrate our inverted will. We have to accept the fact that we are a bit lazy, that we do have these desires. We do want to avoid and skirt.
And if you can, I don't know, I mean sometimes literally I sit on my hands, I literally sit on my hands to stop myself from spinning into some kind of distraction, to think about what is it that needs to be done, and it really is who needs me, how can I serve right now. It's not about what will you know feed my ego or or anything like that, and even though this is my teeny example, it is um you know the microcosm is the macrocosm, so you know if we can serve instead of take.
Yes, yes, and it's hard, because because right around this time that Dr. Keppe was writing these three books that were so powerful when he was living in New York in the mid 80s, and and predicted all of this, and and saw all of this, um everything ballooned from there. When I talked about General Motors and the car industry, we don't need to get on that.
But you see, rather than concentrate on the craftsmanship, the theomania of being a large corporation like that, they wanted to dominate and own. So what did they do? They went into mortgages. They went into the financial services industry. Not make a better car, not be concerned about the environment, but to just make money off of money. And, of course, there's countless examples of this, and it's never, ever been recognized.
It's never, ever been looked at. It just gets more elaborate and more complex.
Richard: They even talked about in the 50s of building in planned obsolescence. So, you know, everything would be obsolete in five years or ten years or sometimes 15 minutes. Certainly, one day after the warranty runs out, it's usually obsolete. Absolutely. The books you mentioned, Decay of the American People, Liberation of the People, and Work and Capital, are all available on our website at heatingthroughconsciousness.com.
Bob, I want to return to what you were talking about in terms of trilogical companies. Monene was talking about service, and you've had experience here now for a number of months. Susan has a lot of experience, too, so I expect, Susan, you'll have lots to say about this. But start with you, Bob. The way we organize businesses here gives a lot of hope for Americans, doesn't it?
I really do believe so. The time has come with wages decreasing in the United States, profits for some companies soaring astronomically, if you look at the numbers. This is the time for us to, you know, take our lives back, to bring dignity to our lives, to bring value to our lives. And when people have talents within them, if they take the action, they can start their own businesses.
They could start with two or three people. They make a decision to just begin to do the work, to do it good, true, and beautiful, honestly, ethically, to stand behind their work and begin to build their own enterprise. Now what will happen is you're going to share equally in the work. You're going to share equally in the revenue that comes in. You'll establish yourself and set some money aside for future investments.
But this money will be yours. You'll be working for yourself. The end result is, I think people who do this and accept it, they'll find a new energy in their life. They'll stop using the word but. And as Dr. Cláudia would say, the envious person always says but to justify his unhappiness. Everything is okay, but this but identifies an envious expression. The attitude of the envious person makes is unconscious.
They're not aware of it. So this is an opportunity for now for people really to stop being dependent on others, to put into action the things that they have the ability to do, and it'll benefit themselves, it'll benefit their families, and it'll benefit society. And when it benefits everybody, that's a good thing.
Richard: Yeah, this word, but, is always interesting. Richard's a really nice guy, but, you know, negates everything that's ever said after that.
Susan,
you were around for the birth of the Trilogical Companies in New York. That must have been a pretty exciting experience. Yes, and I am still in business, going on 24 years. My business is thriving. Thanks to the orientation I've received from Dr. Keppe. And you know what? What I've, and you know, my business started literally under my loft bed in New York City, and our means of advertising was putting up posters on New York City, on the street polls, you know.
It's crazy. But what I saw was like what Bob was saying, and it's so beautiful that as you start to work, as you start to share, as you start to put your talents into action, what you get in in return, that the consciousness, how your mind expands, how your life expands, how your health improves. So this is the phenomenon. Why are people lacking in confidence?
Now, I've also been able to observe in Brazil that these concepts work not just here in the first world, but in Brazil and the developing countries. You have such a beautiful program down there, which is the Healing Through Arts program, where you have like a social currency. I saw with my own eyes recently, when I was down there, how local people, poor people, with you know starving people, are put into action, encouraged and supported to start their own business, taught basic skills like brick making and seamstress and things like that.
And they are, they exchange their work using this social currency for food. You guys have given away like three tons of food, not given away, to these people who pay for it with their work. It is beautiful. This is the stuff that needs to be supported. It works all around the world. And this is what's going to recover our economy so we can take it back from the speculators and the to use, you know, the economic rapists to be really frank and crude about it.
Exactly
Richard: what's happening, because this area you're talking about where we have this social program is one of the richest areas of Brazil in terms of resources. I mean, you just throw seeds in the land and they grow there. It's unbelievably rich agriculturally. There are enormous mines. The name of the state is General Mines. It's full of resources and minerals, but none for the people because it's controlled by, you know, a few multinational corporations.
So what we're trying to do there is to empower, to use that sort of overused word, to help people to develop the skills they need to develop their own businesses, their own means of support. So they step outside the system that we've created today. And this is where Americans are resourceful. You're entrepreneurial people in your nature. It's like this. You built the country on this spirit.
So you of all the countries of the world should be or could be leading in this area of developing new enterprises that step us outside the current status quo. This would be very exciting for the world.
Yeah, because like people just quickly, people think that they need massive amounts of seed capital or venture capital money. You don't. You can start on a shoestring with your talents and your abilities.
And as Bob was saying, gather other like-minded people together, you know, even for projects. It's amazing what can be done. The problem is we lack confidence because we undermine our own confidence. And Dr. Keppe's work helps us to see that and to fix that situation. Yeah,
Richard: we've also inverted ourselves. We think that doing this kind of work is like demeaning in some way.
Final thoughts. We got about a minute left, Monine and Bob, quickly. I
just love that. I just love that, you know, the old fashioned barter system that we don't need to praise the powerful. We don't need to be indebted to them. In fact, we don't need to be in debt. Our family has been without credit for over four years. So what does that mean?
Is it uncomfortable? Yes. Do we have to live within our means? Yes. How about that for trying that on for size? You know, if the individual can do that, so if I, if there's a need, if my gray hair is coming in and I don't have 150 to go do what I want to do, then I'm going to make a trade. I'm going to work with someone who's ethical and say hey, cover my gray, make me feel better about myself, and what can I do for you.
And uh you know that's a, it's a esoteric example, but you see where you can create your own little economy with like-minded ethical people as the trilogical enterprises and residences are.
Richard: Are doing. Last word,
Bob, quickly. The time is now. America, we can take advantage of what lies before us and take action to change it for ourselves, or we can continue to follow the road that our government has laid before us, which is to spend money that they don't have and to borrow.
All we need is food, clothing, and shelter, folks, and the action within us, and it's all ours.
Richard: You are beautiful Americans, leaders in your field. Thank you very much for joining me today. It's been wonderful to have you on the show. Thanks a lot.
Thank you, Rich.
Richard: Okay, this is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. We're back in a moment. Don't go away.
I encourage you to join us there. Check out that site. And also join us on Facebook, okay? We need some more likes there. We want to get some more viral things going on with our program. I think it's important.
Gilbert is back again to talk with us. And Susan made reference in the first couple of segments there before us, Gilbert, about the campaign that was launched in the United States when Dr. Keppe and Dr. Cláudia Pacheco and a number of you were there in New York. The campaign to stop the decay of what was going on. And Keppe was surprised when he got to America, wasn't he?
He was expecting something quite different from what he found there in the early 1980s.
Gilbert: Yes, well, Reaganomics was something new happening there. And try to imagine, if you will, the kind of euphoria that was happening with Reaganomics, with getting money from the stock market, and people were being deactivated, and just after the money, and then Keppe analyzing the consequence of this. What will be the consequence of this?
And he predicted very clearly, you know, this is going to cause a severe financial and economic collapse.
Richard: I remember in one of his books, he talked about one of the stockbrokers saying it was like picking huge fruit off the tree. There was this euphoria of getting all this money for nothing. So you're right, Gilbert, it was like a euphoric situation, out of reality in some way.
Gilbert: And you know, as he is a scientist and speaks from that premise, many people became fascinated with his analysis and began to see that this is something serious that we need to consider. And at the same time, the powerful people, certain auspices of the United States government, together with a little group of economically powerful people, you know, these international bankers who are all the time trying to hide themselves and who dominate Washington, they attacked Keppe.
And this shows that a conflict of interest, doesn't it? Keppe wanted to help people to recover their original philosophy of life, which was that of action in benefit of the community. And the powerful people opposed this idea. Now, why would they want to oppose this? Of course, to better control people. If we're deactivated, then we can become better slaves, if I can use that term.
And so this is what was happening. There was a conflict of interest, so Keppe was attacked. It's a kind of a proof that they don't have our interests in mind, not at all.
Richard: The powerful power structure, not the people of the country, right, who were quite open to what he was saying. Yes, the
Gilbert: powerful people. We call them the powerful people. Yes, they're basically, they're an economic power.
And they've completely infiltrated and dominated Washington as well. So there were politicians involved as well. So what was this campaign? What
Richard: were you doing? What was the sort of day-by-day activities of what you were doing in the early, mid-1980s? You
Gilbert: know, it was a campaign of simply bringing consciousness of what is going on. Consciousness of the problems. And Keppe's science, it's interesting because he analyzes social questions and see the psychological component involved.
You know, for example, alienation, why people don't want to see what's going on in their life. There's the psychological component and the social consequence. And so people, 800, 900 people were attending his lectures and we were doing demonstrations in the streets, really.
Yeah, rekindling the 60s almost. Of many different cities, including Washington. We went out west to California, wherever we had invited to do conferences.
We did campaign also. You know, the book that Keppe wrote at that time, The Decay of the American People and of the United States, and afterwards, Liberation of the People, The Pathology of Power, these two books, they were sent to all politicians in the country at all levels, local, federal, you know, congressmen, representatives. Department of Justice, FBI.
Gilbert: Yes, all kinds of institutions in order to try to save the situation.
And so many people became very interested in the reality of what we needed to face in order to recover the situation. And the powerful people didn't like this. This really should open our eyes as to what their intentions are for us.
Richard: They attacked very strongly, didn't they? They started to watch. What was going on? They started to pay attention to the businesses that were happening there in New York that you guys were developing.
They started to tap telephones and there was a lot of very serious surveillance going on of Keppe's activities, weren't
Gilbert: there? And nowadays, Rich, as the consequence of all of this, of Keppe's work not being allowed to benefit people in the United States, nowadays I see people are very very upset and and just uh down, sad uh with the situation. People um they want our life back that we had before reaganomics, without perceiving that it was, it was reaganomics that was the turning point.
But before reaganomics uh people had a better life when we were active, you know, not afterwards when we had all this money but things shutting down, and the life that we had is being closed down. And now I see people are very sad and very without hope, and we're reaping the consequences of this.
Richard: For some time now, it's been some time in the making, and because we're not having this analysis, as you said in the opening segment of our program, we're not analyzing what's going on.
We're not getting to the bottom of this situation at all, are we?
Gilbert: So we see many people who are dependent on the pharmaceutical industry. We don't know how to do things very well anymore. Even if you think you can, I don't know about that. It's because we've been deactivated. And so we are indifferent even when we see problems in front of us because we are inactive.
And this was planned. You know, it was on purpose in a certain way. We were tricked into being deactivated and we need to like um accept the reality of that so that we can recover ourselves. That's the first step. Normally people, they don't, no, it was not like that, no, I, I do lots of things, I work all the time, you know, you hear all kinds of excuses to not uh see what is really going on.
It's very clear
Richard: that america is not producing as it could. This is very clear. The production has all been moved offshore. So this is clear. And Reagan was very much involved in the wholesale dismantling of the industrial infrastructure of the United States, was one of the primary leaders of that, as Michael Moore explores in his documentary. But let's go into Brazil, Gilbert, and look at what you guys are doing there in a small town about 350 kilometers outside of São Paulo, a small town called Cambuquita.
There's like a kind of a miracle happening in this town of regeneration, a town that was completely stopped, almost like a ghost town, nothing going on, is being rejuvenated, regenerated. Let's see if we can talk about that as offering solutions for Americans. Because Americans are practical people. If they take the ball with something like this, they will run
Gilbert: with it. Yeah, sometimes science can look like a miracle because you get to the root of the problem.
And if you treat that, then things go. If you just treat the symptom all the time, if you just want to throw money at something, invest in this, invest in that, and just stay in the superficial part, nothing happens. It continues. You put a band-aid on it and then after some months you have to put another band-aid, you know. But if you analyze the situation scientifically to find out what's going on and you accept consciousness of that problem, then the dynamic happens.
Then there's even an energetic dynamic, because when you augment your consciousness, and especially of something of an evil that you are participating in, you change, even energetically you vibrate differently, and the person becomes energized. It's a kind of phenomenon how the truth heals the person.
Richard: Yeah, vibrational, people pick up the same energy vibrationally and begin to follow in some way.
Gilbert: Yeah, so it's not running from the truth, it's not hiding from the truth that gives results, it's embracing the truth even if it's difficult to swallow, because this is where the consciousness, it's a kind of an energy.
It energizes the person. So in this little town that you were referring to, it was a little town that entered into a severe decadence. And we are there trying to see if it can be recovered. And what we're doing is we're introducing arts for the children who love to learn. They're learning how to play the piano, how to paint, how to dance.
Ballet, Russian dance, different folkloric dances, and various types of artistic activities. There's guitar lessons going on there. Yeah, guitar lessons, and we have theater and ballet. And it's like reactivating the community, as
Richard: well as helping them how to build homes, how to construct things. And what are some of the other things? Yeah, there's a very interesting there, Gilbert, because people don't have the means to survive.
They live in a rich area, but they don't have food. So we're doing things like building community gardens. And then as people work, do various work around the city in building these tiles, these bricks to build homes, to work in the gardens and things. As they're doing work around the city, they're receiving a social currency that we have created. And they're able to, with that social currency, buy food in a market that we've set up.
They can buy the basic food to survive. They can buy basic clothing for their families. They're doing this by working inside the community to improve the community.
Gilbert: Yes, it's a money of the town. And more and more people are accepting to use this money. And so it's creating a, how could I say, a development in the town. A new economy, actually. You know
Richard: what was
the biggest problem to deal with, Rich?
As the town was in decadence, nobody
Gilbert: worked. Nobody works. Everybody's hanging around doing nothing. And the biggest thing is to try to show people the benefits of being in action, of taking a posture of being active. And then there's the problem of disciplining people to stay at it, to go with it. And as this begins to happen, this is a part of the structure of the human being.
Action is a part of his very being, and so when a person begins to experience that, it starts to go, he starts to reactivate himself,
Richard: especially if this action is based towards something good, beautiful and truthful, right, the essence of human beings. I mean, we're not talking about any kind of action, but the kind of action that would be involved in restoring your community, uh providing necessities for your families, these kinds of basic fundamental work.
This is, this is absolutely essential for the human being. And
Gilbert: this is where we have erred in United States, Rich. We think we have a negative idea about work nowadays, that it's a kind of humiliation or it's for stupid people that are other, there are other ways to get money and people don't do anything anymore. And that's where we fall ill. You know, if you are an inactive person, this plays a large part of your psychic life.
