Introduction

The Common Purpose is a statement of purpose and principle and an outline of what these lead to. 

The fundamental purpose is fulfilment. This is the purpose of life. Living is realising potential and seeking fulfilment. This purpose should be self-evident. However, current systems do not promote it. The Common Purpose states it and explains it so it can be achieved. 

Life is complex. In this complexity the simple purpose of life is forgotten. It needs to be recalled to guide the individual paths people take. If this is done, people may, much more clearly and progressively, work towards creating a society that enables it. 

The common purpose of fulfilment requires the principle of no harm. This principle must be recognised for the purpose to be realised. 

Fulfilment without harm can guide people in all their contributions, systems and lives. To be achieved, it must be acknowledged and pursued. 

Understanding and acting in agreement with the purpose of fulfilment without harm is the right way of living. Living and acting in ignorance and contradiction to the purpose and principle is the wrong way. 

The understanding that life is about fulfilment without harm, may be seen as simplistic or idealistic. But this understanding is needed to ensure society and the purposes of companies, governments, groups, communities, and individuals concur. 

After stating the purpose and principle, and the right and wrong ways, the Common Purpose outlines what these lead to in economies, organisations and societies so people can recognise where things are and where things need to be. Finally, it outlines how change can be made. The first step is to recognise the common purpose of fulfilment without harm. 

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The Common Purpose

Fulfilment

The Common Principle

No Harm

Fulfilment is through realising potential, whatever that potential is. People find their potential by trying things, and selecting, for their greatest efforts, those they are good at. However, this realisation of potential must accord with the principle of no harm.

From the common purpose and principle of no harm comes the right way of doing things and from this way, human rights. The right way of doing things complies with the principle, the wrong way does not.

Cultures are a mix of the right and wrong ways, but until the right way is predominant, with the principle heeded, realisation of potential will be poor and fulfilment diminished.

Conversely, when the right way is the only way, and the principle always heeded, then the common purpose is universal and greatest fulfilment enabled.

To assess whether a situation is right or wrong return to the principle: fulfilment without harm to or from others. If a situation harms others it is wrong and needs to be remedied.

Why is the common purpose fulfilment? Fulfilment is the outcome of the essence of life which is to grow. Growth is life. Fulfilment is the realising of growth. Fulfilment is not just human purpose, it is the purpose of all life, to realise potential in each and every organism.

Why is the common principle no harm? No harm is the human principle, the learned principle, the humane principle. It has not been lived up to. Fulfilment is limited by the extent fallen short of it.

How is common fulfilment possible? Fulfilment or growth is possible because limited world resources are transformed into unlimited product via the unlimited contribution of human intelligence. It is intelligence, ideas, intuition and ingenuity that make limited resources unlimited and fulfilment for all possible.

What harms? Any act or situation that disrupts the fulfilment of potential is harmful. This includes the obvious harm of violence and theft, but also the harm of constraint and control, and the harm of unequal opportunity. No harm thus means freedom from violence, control and unequal opportunity. People must neither harm, nor accept harm, for fulfilment to be achieved.

The Right Way

The right way is to realise potential and find fulfilment without harming others fulfilment.

Fulfilment and the realisation of potential comes from people making their best contributions, from being themselves and realising themselves in their ideas and their product. This realisation is growth, is life.

Those who pursue the right way of fulfilment without harm are characteristically persuasive, tolerant, responsible, free and fair, because these attributes facilitate fulfilment without harm.

Pursuit of the right way breeds flexibility and the strength to see others points of view and attain win-win scenarios. Understanding the unlimited nature of human potential leads those who pursue fulfilment to see the world as an open game in which people act independently but without harm, so all can grow.

The pursuit of fulfilment without harm leads to free and fair markets, shared income, and democratic organisations operating in accordance with the purpose of fulfilment and the principle of no harm.

The Wrong Way

The wrong way is to harm in the pursuit of power and money.

Pursued power and money comes from exploitation and harm, from accumulating excess resources and expropriating the ideas and labour of others. This pursuit comes with great cost in wasted lives and damaged environments.

Those who pursue the wrong way of power or money with harm are characteristically coercive, intolerant, demanding, restrictive, biased, bullying, controlling and manipulative, because these attributes facilitate the pursuit of power and money.

Those who pursue power or money celebrate being hard and tough, firm and strong – attributes equated to inflexibility and aggression. These attributes lead to conflict and win-lose scenarios, scenarios they seek to create. Understanding the world as one of only limited resources leads those who pursue power and money to see life as a game with only winners and losers.

The pursuit of money or power with harm leads to unfair markets, massive wealth disparities, and monopolistic, non-democratic organisations pursuing power and money, ignorant of fulfilment and causing harm.


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Rights

Fulfilment is harmed by situations where people are treated unequally, whether in law, economy, organisation or society. Human rights state basic entitlements all people must receive equally.

Human rights are also statements against treatment that harms people and their fulfilment. They make clear, even though it should already be clear, that the acts they protect people from are harmful.

Torture, servitude, arbitrary arrest, presumption of guilt, restriction of movement, deprival of identity – all clearly harm people and their fulfilment. In a system with a structure and culture based in fulfilment without harm these rights are intrinsic. But in cultures where the wrong way is prevalent, where pursuit of power and money with harm is systemic, rights are ignored or unknown, undermined and violated.

Human rights are a protection for appealing against harm and a checklist for evaluating laws, economies, organisations and societies.

Listed below are rights based on the United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights [with related article references where applicable]. In italics are three specific rights not captured in the declaration but deserving recognition.

We have the right…

• To life, liberty and security. [A. 3]
• To not be held in servitude or slavery. [A. 4]
• To not be tortured or subjected to cruel or degrading treatment or punishment. [A. 5]
• To recognition as a person (before the law). [A. 6]
• To equal treatment (before the law). [A. 7]
• To effective remedy for acts violating our rights. [A. 8]
• To not be arbitrarily arrested, detained or exiled. [A. 9]
• To a fair and public hearing by an impartial tribunal in determination of rights and charges. [A. 10]
• To be presumed innocent until proven guilty. [A. 11.1]
• To not be held guilty of any penal offence not constituting an offence when committed. [A. 11.2]
• To not be subject to arbitrary interference with our privacy or to attacks on our reputation. [A. 12]
• To freedom of movement and residence within the borders of our State. [A. 13.1]
• To leave a country and return to our country. [A. 13.2]
• To seek in other countries asylum from political persecution. [A. 14.1]
• To a nationality. [A. 15.1]
• To not be arbitrarily deprived of nationality nor denied the right to change nationality. [A. 15.2]
• To an ethnicity.
• To not be arbitrarily deprived of ethnicity and the right to reside in our homeland.
• To marry. [A. 16.1]
• To own property, alone as well as in association with others. [A. 17.1]
• To not be arbitrarily deprived of property. [A. 17.2]
• To freedom of thought. [A. 18]
• To freedom of opinion and expression of opinion through any medium. [A. 19]
• To freedom of assembly and association. [A. 20.1]
• To not be compelled to belong to an association. [A. 20.2]
• To take part in government directly or through freely chosen representatives. [A. 21.1]
• To equal access to public service. [A. 21.2]
• To social security and to economic, social and cultural rights for personal development. [A. 22]
• To work, choice of employment, just and favourable conditions, and unemployment protection. [A. 23.1]
• To equal pay for equal work. [A. 23.2]
• To just and favourable remuneration. [A. 23.3]
• To form and join trade unions for the protection of our interests. [A. 23.4]
• To rest and leisure. [A. 24]
• To a standard of living adequate for health and wellbeing. [A. 25.1]
• To a clean, attractive, harmonious environment.
• To education. [A. 26.1]
• To choose the kind of education given to our children. [A. 26.3]
• To participate in the community. [A. 27.1]
• To material interest from our ideas. [A. 27.2]
• To a social and international order in which these rights can be fully realised. [A. 28]

We have all of these rights and they are worth recalling. By identifying these harms, and asserting common rights against them, fulfilment is assisted. The more human rights are adopted in laws, economies, organisations and societies the more fulfilment without harm becomes the basis of the system and the greater it is realised.


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Law

It is up to the judiciary to interpret the law. Justice is served more by a just judiciary than a written law.

If there is any sacrosanct law it is the principle of no harm. Good law legislates for fulfilment without harm. It is based in the principle of no harm and human rights. The Declaration of Human Rights assists fulfilment without harm by asserting specific rights.

The legal system and associated laws, conventions, principles and declarations are a paramount record of society, the way it has been, the way it is intended to be, and the way it is. To know the law, particularly international law, is to know history and, to some extent, the practical bounds of society.

Written law should be interpreted with an idea of the society we wish for, an idea grounded in fulfilment without harm.

Common understanding of fulfilment without harm will manifest in a society that enables and abides by the purpose and principle. The precise form cannot be predicted, but it will be known when fulfilment without harm is both its basis and its outcome.

Without knowledge of law people will still likely operate within it if they abide by the principle of no harm.

The occasions when this is not the case are cases where the law reflects interests not in accordance with fulfilment without harm.

Excessive interest in formal, technical application can breach the principle of no harm and damage fulfilment. Laws, by their nature, cannot be written for every situation. They must be defined generally with wide application. This carries the risk of interpretations causing harm.

Interpretation is a subject of tension between the public, law enforcers and the judiciary. Whatever the case, the prime guide to interpretation should be human rights and the purpose of fulfilment without harm.


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Atonement

For sentencing, the legal system should adopt atonement, rejecting wrong, but not rejecting people when they change their ways.

When a person pleads guilty the query, “How do you think you should atone?” should be made.

It is beneficial to understanding and judgement to attain an idea of what those committing an offence consider sufficient atonement and why. A statement of what is considered sufficient helps those harmed consider conciliation and those who have harmed consider their actions and the harm they have done.

Conciliation requires the willingness to atone and make amends. Those harmed need to hear those who have harmed express their desire to make amends and atone.

The offer to make amends must indicate how, in what form and to what extent. This conveys what is felt to be appropriate and sufficient atonement for the harm done. A person’s statement must reflect the circumstances of their case.

The willingness to make amends and atone attends to genuine contrition. This facilitates the conciliation of those harmed with those who have harmed and humanity in general. It assists closure and a new beginning.

In all legal cases the common purpose should be made clear so fulfilment without harm can be chosen over further harm. However, if pursuing fulfilment without harm is refused, then the liberty to cause harm must be constrained.

There must be a willingness to conciliate, otherwise those who have harmed are bound as harmful for life. However, harm must always be rejected, and there must be protection from those who continually harm.

Making amends is not as important as the commitment to not harm again. If this is genuine, then whatever is done next will contribute without harm, and that contribution is the best amends for harm done.

Zero tolerance for harm does not mean harming in return – that amplifies and perpetuates harm. Zero tolerance means rejecting harm. This may mean depriving people of the freedom to inflict harm, as well as providing people with the understanding to choose not to harm.

Crimes and the widespread abuse of human rights are the failures of societies in which harm is rewarded or punished with greater harm.


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Competition

When people compete, they must not harm. Competing by doing their best, their way, and seeing who is best at what, is fair competition. Competing by harming, denigrating or excluding others (or their contributions) is unfair.

Fair competition tells people who is better at different things and what methods produce the best results. Fair competition provides a driver for improvement. It helps people find niches where they are best and steers them from areas where they are worst. Fair competition is an important, democratic method of sorting and filtering effort and stimulating improvement without central planning or control.

Competition is not a zero sum game. There are not absolute winners or losers. It is not a game with a fixed beginning and end. It is unending, with limitless options. Only in unfair competition, when the overriding principle is the pursuit of power or money with harm, do people try to win absolutely by putting others out of business.

There is a place for all people in the market if they have equal opportunity to realise their potential, for there are as many niches as there are differences, and the larger the market the greater the number. The internet has further expanded markets, increasing their diversity by connecting producers and consumers internationally.

Markets are not always fair. They distribute wealth less evenly than optimal when people compete for power or money by harming others efforts. A situation that diminishes productivity.

Unfair competition, in markets closed or controlled by the state or large corporates, bends people toward pursuing financial accumulation at the expense of realising their true potential. Unfair competition informs on who has greatest control of the market. It does not inform on what products are best or what methods are most productive.

The internet undermines unfair practices as it opens up channels between producers and consumers, increases information on products so they can be properly differentiated, and enables distribution outside the outlets of dominant players.

A re-balancing of global wealth is taking place through free and fair trade. It is far from over. China’s products are still cheaper, at least in part, because its people are still poorer. Until this changes the balance of trade will favour it.


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Contribution

In an economy built on fulfilment without harm, all people contribute their best. The most popular contributions may gain the greatest financial reward, but the purpose is not this reward, the purpose is fulfilling potential through the contributions made.

An economy in which decisions on contribution are made by people, according to what they see is needed and can provide, is a good economy. A bad economy is one where decisions are centralised in the hands of the few who own and control most resources.

The resources controlled by the few are directed to secure, financial return, not to realising potential. The secure, financial return motivation quashes decentralised, informed, decision-making and replaces it with central decision-making designed to reduce financial risk by controlling and limiting what is done.

Centrally controlled corporations can work for secure financial return because most people employed are not independently secure. They depend on the corporation for their earnings.

With this power over incomes, corporations can force people to choose between financial security and the right to ideas, the right to speak publicly, and the freedom to contribute how they best can.

A focus on financial security is only absolutely necessary at the most basic level. Most who realise their unique potential do not do it primarily for security. Artists, entrepreneurs, scientists, and anyone expressing themselves in their work do it primarily because it is fulfilling, and often do it over other work that pays more.

Tragically, the requirement to realise financial security and pursue material gain prevents many people from realising their potential, channelling them into work they are not particularly suited to in order to survive or pointlessly pursue possession of material things.

Real value, real gain is realised in expressing the self through contributing. When people see a better way of doing things, and do things that way, they realise their potential.

A good system mechanises pointless, repetitive work, and evokes contributions that fulfil those making them. A good system shares and enhances ideas without limit. Shared ideas are borrowed, copied and continually enhanced. Unshared ideas stay still, frozen by patents and unfair competition.


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Income

Direct income inequalities from trade are inevitable in any market. Incomes cannot be distributed evenly in the first instance because people do not spend evenly. When people trade it is always the case that some products and ideas are more popular than others, and as soon as money becomes economically necessary some people accumulate more wealth than they can consume immediately, and imbalances occur.

Free and open trade with a common currency (or easily convertible currencies) is the only efficient mechanism for determining what is needed and distributing limited resources in complex societies. Central control cannot supplant free trade, as production and distribution decisions are too complex for this. Attempting to do so limits diversity, freedom and growth.

Because direct income equality from free trade is impossible, and free trade is vital, a shared base income, ensuring equal opportunity for all to realise potential, must be created by sharing the earnings made on trade.

Shared earnings and a shared base income do not eliminate income inequality, some will still earn incomes far greater than the average, but sharing half of all income earned from trade, via a base income shared between all, helps eliminate poverty and ensures all people have the opportunity to realise their potential. It also inculcates a common spirit of sharing in society, a sense of community and belonging.

Why half? Because it is an equal share, half for ourselves, half for others. Such a share is also simple - simple to comprehend and simpler to implement than any tiered system.

How a shared income is structured accords to the society in question and what works, through a range of direct (monetary) and indirect forms (universal healthcare, free education). The key is that the steps taken are considered and constructed to further fulfilment without harm.


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Incentive

A shared base income obscures the market forces that lead people to take work which harms their fulfilment, realises none of their potential, and may physically harm them.

Market forces are often wrong or late. They do not directly reward research, thought, art, science, and many other forms of production not directly resulting in popular, packaged products.

Funding individual production with a shared base income means people are able to form organisations as equal members. It means they have some security to demand the flexibility they need to live the way that enables them to make their best contributions.

On welfare benefits the amount received is so little there is a powerful incentive to earn additional income without declaring it. A shared base income is retained when more is earned.

In the security of a shared based income, fulfilment is stronger than financial incentives. When people value fulfilment greater than money, they do not waste their lives for money to live them, they live them and the money comes.

The shared base income assists people to improve their situations and relieves the stresses that cause self-harm and dangerous drug use, activities that would otherwise damage fulfilment.

The signals of fulfilment are in what people find fulfilling and what is needed to further all people’s fulfilment.

The financial disincentives to fulfilment are reversed by a shared base income. With this income the incentive for each person becomes making fulfilling contributions. These do not require financial rewards, but may well result in them.


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Ideas & Growth

The unlimited productive potential of ideas gives them enormous monetary potential. When the pursuit of power and money overrides the pursuit of fulfilment, then the development of ideas’ monetary potential overrides the development of its unlimited productive potential.

In this scenario, a few gain exclusive control of idea development and distribution in order to limit supply for their financial gain. This purpose is best realised within corporations of control and hierarchy, where people’s ideas are co-opted by the corporation in order for the owners to attain increasing financial returns.

Without intellectual exclusivity, with the voluntary sharing of ideas amongst all participants, there has to be cooperation and agreement for large tasks to be achieved. Organisations which do not co-opt the ideas of members have to be bottom up, democratic and participative.

Realising potential, by conceiving and implementing ideas, is fulfilling. Realising potential realises selves. This is fulfilment and growth. Realising potential, by making best contributions and growing, is true productivity. The current system, structured toward financial wealth for the few pursuing it most avidly, limits productivity and fulfilment.

For true potential to be realised the structure of the system must be altered to one where fulfilment is pursued. Within this system, ideas and products are shared according to what can be afforded. Some product will always be limited, as physical resources are limited. There will always be an income from these to share. But other products tend towards abundance. With the sharing of income, these products become almost free, as people can afford to provide them for free.

If financial wealth were not a prior need, then all people would be free to write their stories, build their theories, construct their inventions, design their houses, play their sports, and compete at the things they are best at. Fulfilment would be great.

Sharing knowledge and the earnings generated from trade generates a fulfilling spiral of increasing knowledge and productivity.


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Production

The dilemma of scarce or limited resources can be resolved. Things mass produced today are less expensive than ever, and through ideas, immaterial and limitless, resources are converted into an unlimited diversity of desirable products.

Material things, even homes, are encroaching on mass production in unlimited variety. The cost of variable, bespoke units are dropping to the cost of units in mass production as mechanised production lines become highly flexible.

The resources used are, like the digital resource replacing paper and plastic, becoming unlimited. Their limits are extended by the development of new production methods, recycling, and alternative sources.

These factors free economics from the unsustainable model of exploited limited resources converted to costly products of limited variety.

Fulfilment for all requires that mundane, repetitive work is automated. Jobs that take on the challenge of solving how to automate this work are satisfying and challenging, and free more people to discover more solutions.

In this system, not just what affects what is observed, but how things affect each other. With understanding of how, the capacity to find solutions expands.

Self-designed clothes, houses, cars, furniture, trainers, and jobs. Technology and automation mean creativity and diversity is harnessed to express unique contributions in all aspects of life.

The objects that matter most are those injected with a sense of self through their selection or conception. When electron-ic, digitalised, and manufactured product diversity is expanded, enough is available to express everyone’s individuality.

With an acknowledged common purpose of fulfilment, people seek to discover the social, economic, physical, biological, and mechanical solutions that enable fulfilment for everyone. The path is self-fulfilling.

In a common purpose economy, fulfilment is in creating products and solutions for everyone. The shared base income means costs are low and contributions are self-directed to produce what people are best at and most appreciate.

Sharing, and the avoidance of greater profit for a few, means profit margins are slimmer. Lower costs and smaller margins decrease the price of produce at every stage of production.


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Market

An evolving market model that incentivises fulfilment without harm and ameliorates power and money with harm is the internet.

The internet encourages a non-patent, author only, intellectual rights model that furthers and sustains individual contribution in voluntary partnerships and open membership collaborations. People can become members of any project they are interested in.

The costs of online digital distribution and transactions are negligible. Popular newspapers and blogs can charge less than a penny an article and still cover the cost of distribution and production if tiny transaction payments are enabled.

In this market, promotion is free. Everyone can have a page promoting different aspects of themselves, and the services and products they contribute.

The danger to the online market is governments acting to protect profit-structured organisations over people. In this scenario, governments legislate the internet for organisations right to profit over the right of people to access and share content online.

Such legislation protects organisations’ profits and enables them to regionalise distribution and raise transaction and duplication costs to extract higher profits. Prices are forced higher, and to different levels in different regions, as corporations gain the right to prosecute through the courts people that trade or share any product the corporations claim a right to.

High prices reduce distribution of resources, information and product, curtailing further production and limiting individual contribution.

Protection against the regionalisation of distribution and pricing is needed to ensure that content is available to everyone at free and fair prices.


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Pricing

With a shared base income, people can afford to contribute digitally unlimited resources for close to free. Physically limited resources need to be charged for, and the earnings shared, but online resources need be only minimally. The shared base income means people can afford the resources they need.

Even with a shared income, people should earn from their digital produce. It should generate the value put into it, but sustainable and fair online prices are still being determined, and are at risk of inflation by high-overhead corporates protective of profits.

The fair price needs to reflect the minimal cost of online delivery and duplication. The original product should retail it at a price that appeals over copies.

The means of payment needs to be easy and the size of the market factored in at the beginning. First adopter premiums have little validity or workability when delivery and duplication costs are minimal and alternate options freely available.

Prices may need to be tiny, maybe smaller than the smallest unit of currency. As transactions are electronic, banks can facilitate these.

For instance, a print newspaper is purchased as a total unit for a few dollars, it cannot be purchased any other way. The earnings from one sale cover a fraction of the total costs of writing, printing and distributing all the papers produced that day.

An online newspaper is not consumed as a single unit – its consumption is by article. The earnings from an article must cover a fraction of the total cost of writing that article.

Distributed online, the earnings a single article needs to generate to cover its costs are low. For a popular newspaper, the per article price could be smaller than the smallest unit of currency. Some articles will cover the cost of many articles according to their popularity.

As for newspaper stories, so for any product distributed online: minimal costs with massive potential markets and cheap electronic transactions can be reflected in minimal prices.

The success of minimal transaction charges is demonstrated by M-Pesa – the mobile phone service in Kenya that allows mobile users to electronically transfer funds to others mobiles for a tiny cost, making numerous small transactions possible while generating enough revenue for the provider.


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Money

The supply of money is intrinsically linked to assets and capital, revenue and expenditure, due to the requirements of solvency and a balanced balance sheet for banks and all organisations, including government.

When money is lent to entities on the basis of their future revenue and asset values (whether to government, organisa-tions or individuals) then levels of risk and predictability are involved. The greater the risk taken in lending, the greater the money supply. Whether price inflation results, depends on what borrowings are spent on and what prices are measured.

In the lead up to the 2008/09 global financial crisis (GFC), the money supply increase was ‘invested’ in houses, stocks and derivatives (unproductive assets) and this is where the price inflation took place. So, except for house costs, it did not figure in consumer price index (CPI) measures of inflation.

Unfortunately, many householders were lent more than their predictable net worth over the period and could not pay back. When mortgage sales brought down the value of houses (their greatest asset) more people were caught in less and less solvent positions. Mortgage repayments were also linked to financial markets by the derivatives on them. These ‘assets’ became worthless, undermining the solvency of the investors in them who also had interests in other markets, so reducing demand and assets values in those markets and the solvency of other investors.

Time, knowledge and ideas make unpredictable the future value of assets and revenue from production – hence the risk in lending. However, there is a tight relationship between the money supply and the assets and revenue of all entities, because accounts must balance, and organisations, governments and people must be solvent.

If there is a lesson from the crisis it is to lend and borrow for investment in productive assets that produce revenue, which includes people, although they have no book value as an asset. The difficulty in investing in people is knowing who will produce revenue. The solution is to invest in those producing a service or a product. Some production will make little revenue, many will make some revenue, and some more will make much revenue.

Do not, however, lend for investment or consumption of assets and goods that do not directly support production, such as houses bought for investment (not living), stocks unlinked from asset value, luxuries, and derivatives – as these purchases inflate prices and expand money without expanding production.

Private banks are mandated to make profit. They will not take the risk to lend to all people trying to produce. Rather they will lend to those that already have large assets. Bank loans are also inflexible, they are either repaid or not, so banks do not get the benefit of lending to all producers, because they earn no more if the product generates much revenue or some.

Investment funds that take a stake in business ownership are more likely to invest in new ventures, as when a product generates great revenue they will share in it. However, they only invest in businesses and are motivated to select only those likely to produce great revenue, excluding those that may earn a satisfactory revenue or little.

Governments on the other hand are best placed to take the risk of funding production to all people, and build it into policy. Governments can fund individual productive ventures because they also always share in those ventures which produce income or profits (via taxes). By coordinating this funding with taxes, principally by collecting half of all incomes and profits and distributing them via a shared base income, the greatest number gain fulfilment from contributing and total production grows.

Money is the tool to facilitate transactions in trade so people can select what they need, and the means to share wealth so everyone has the opportunity to contribute.

Money is tied to direct investment in productive activity, as what is spent by businesses on materials, stock, and rent is subtracted from earnings before profits are made.

But the pursuit of money will not achieve fulfilment. Those pursuing wealth serve those who have wealth, selling their skills and ideas to employers that own the use of them. In this respect, the undesiring of wealth, employing their own skills and ideas to produce their own products (no matter the meagre return), can be happier than those who have wealth but desire more.


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Finance

Sustainable, equitable productivity is through realising potential and contributing without harm in free and fair markets, not through gambling and speculating for financial gain.

Money is as abundant as productivity, but non-productive financial speculation de-links money growth from productivity growth resulting in inflation of money without inflation of productivity. This discrepancy leads inevitably to market corrections and economic recessions that damage those trying to make an honest contribution, innocent of speculation. These corrections are a factor of current market systems, but not an inevitable factor.

The way current markets are designed permits and encourages non-productive financial speculation. National and international markets which centralise the trading of a single non-perishable resource to a single central market and allow the resource to be bought without taking hold of it distort the real price of the resource (the price set by the cost of production, supply and consumer demand). These markets allow financial corporations and individual speculators, that do not use the resource for consumption or production, to purchase a large portion of supply and withhold it from users that rely on the resource for consumption and production. The purchase of a great portion of supply makes the financial speculator a virtual monopoly that can name the price those needing the resource must pay, there being no alternative sources.

It is not necessary that the financial speculator be a single corporation or individual (although a single speculator has sole control) – numerous uncoordinated speculators also reduce the supply to users needing it for consumption and production, so raising the price beyond what would be mediated by production, supply and consumer demand alone.

The price of a resource in this market will keep rising for as long as increasing amounts of speculative finance purchase it, not to use, but to hold and on sell.

Any market centralised on a national or international level, confined to a single non-perishable resource, and allowing purchase without possession, permits and facilitates financial speculation that raises the price of resources beyond their full cost of production, regardless of whether producer supply is enough to meet user demand (as user access to supply is restricted by speculators pulling it from the market).

If resource producers were to increase supply so financial speculators could not purchase enough to restrict it to less than needed by users, the price would eventually collapse as speculators released their holdings back onto market. The situation would now be producer supply massively greater than needed by users (due to prior speculative removal of supply from the market) supplemented by the flood of withheld supplies released back onto market by speculators fleeing the market.

Such speculator-friendly markets should be eliminated or, the traders that buy, not to use, but to on sell, should be banned from these markets. Imagine a physical market of growers and sellers in which one person came along and bought all the produce, then proceeded to sell that produce at whatever price he demanded. There would be outrage, but, in one form or another, this is what happens on international markets.

To ban speculative trading:

In resource markets (gold, crude oil, rice, milk powder, cocoa, coffee, and so on), disallow financial derivatives that enable a right-to-use, without taking possession of, a resource.

In share markets, disallow trading in shares. Make shares only purchasable from the organisation. Shares cannot be traded, only transferred back to the organisation at cost. The only revenue from shares is from dividends or interest and there is no speculative trading in them.

In property markets, allow only ownership with occupancy.

In currency markets (foreign exchange markets), monitor and slow the market, restrict to sale for use, not for currency trading.

If the financial system is not improved, bubbles and crashes will happen more rapidly, the economic peaks and troughs will tighten. When energy (money) is introduced into markets faster than before (via borrowing) the bubbles are bigger, the crashes deeper, and the cycles quicker.


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Value

Real value is not money. Real value is fulfilment. Fulfilment is from realising potential, achieving understanding, having ideas, contributing and producing, learning and growing.

Fulfilment is a factor of realisation, understanding, ideas, contribution and productivity, learning and growth. All of this is enabled and permitted by the principle of no harm.

A good economy enables contributions. It is sustainable, not sabotaged by speculation. Its reward is not a steady rate of return (or wild riches), but fulfilment through the realisation of potential, through people enabled to make their best contributions.

In the same vein, real costs are not financial in the real economy, they are human. These are the hidden but also often blatant costs people pay when they are unable to realise their potential, find fulfilment and contribute. This is the real cost. Financial cost is not the key factor of importance; harm to people’s ability to realise potential and find fulfilment is.

A common purpose economy is not only politically democratic, but also organisationally, in businesses and bureaucracies. It is an economy with equal opportunity to contribute, where financial inequities are reduced so they do not constrict opportunities.

When freedom to pursue fulfilment is the measure ask, “Am I fulfilled? Am I free?”

Another measure of success in constructing an economy that enables fulfilment is the level of the shared base income. This can be measured by valuing the direct (monetary) and indirect components (free education, universal health care) that comprise it, and comparing this to similar measures in other nations.


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Purpose

Common purpose organisations are collectives of individuals, come together to achieve a particular purpose that accords with the purpose of fulfilment without harm.

Financial success is not the purpose, but a by-product of the organisation’s success in realising human potential and achieving its particular purpose.

It is essential to trust, distribution, fairness, and productivity that all organisations distribute responsibility, open up information systems, and democratise collective decision-making.

The common purpose organisation lowers the risk of trying new things, of new ideas, of realising human potential, and assists in the coordination of human endeavour to a purpose that accords with and furthers the common purpose.

Common purpose organisations distribute the costs of failure and the profits of success. At all times human potential is realised, whether new ways of doing things are financial failures or large or small financial successes.

To direct assets and effort toward the realisation of human potential organisations should:

• Share an organisational purpose in accordance with the purpose of fulfilment without harm.
• Decentralise local decisions and distribute responsibility.
• Democratise collective decisions.
• Open and pool information so all people are informed.
• Structure for co-ordination and communication.
• Elect organisers.
• Ensure no harm and equal respect.
• Deal fairly in ideas (so all earn from contributions).
• Have liable contributor-members.
• Maintain flexibility in all roles.
• Share earnings.

These organisations must internalise equal respect for all members. Organisations in which people retain the right to their ideas and deal with each other fairly enable the greatest realisation of human potential.

The best means to achieving an organisation’s particular purpose, in line with the common purpose, is through enabling individuals to do things in better ways when they see better ways of doing things.

An organisation’s particular purpose could be phrased: ‘This organisation furthers human fulfilment without harm through improving (for example) transportation (or computation, communications, banking, retail, investment, entertainment, et cetera).

People partner in these organisations to realise their own potential, but also to increase opportunities for all to do so. This is their purpose: increasing opportunity for all to realise potential through the products they produce from diverse, individual contributions. Their products enable fulfilment through their development and their use.

People may join multiple organisations according to what they can contribute. Organisations should be open and flexible to attract and retain as much talent as possible.

Harmony is important in organisations to encourage shared ideas and informed agreement. Harmony is not contrary to diversity if the principle of no harm (with its accompanying consideration, but not servility, to others) is maintained.

Central planning is a characteristic of communist and capitalist organisation. These organisations:

• Do not recognise the purpose of fulfilment.
• Centralise local decisions and restrict responsibility.
• Dictate collective decisions.
• Close and silo information so no-one is well informed.
• Structure for control.
• Appoint controllers.
• Harm and demand unequal respect.
• Confiscate ideas (so people lose from contributions).
• Have unliable owners.
• Contract employees subservient to employers.
• Maintain no flexibility for difference.
• Divide earnings according to position.

Common purpose organisations respect the rights of people, because the people in them respect the rights of others. When an organisation’s rules conflict with fulfilment without harm (and contradict the rights that emerge from this) they are flawed, and must be amended.

Common purpose organisations are not socialist organisations or capitalist organisations. They are a form for an era where the fulfilment of human potential is the principle purpose.


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Responsibilty & Information

Decentralised, distributed responsibility (decision-making) and open information systems, lower the cost of conceiving, implementing and distributing ideas, and liberate individual fulfilment. Recording individual decisions in open information systems distributes knowledge, informs future decision-making, and ensures accountability.

Ideas (better ways of doing things or human potential) and implementing them (realising potential) are most effective and inexpensive when they are conceived and implemented by those whom they affect. At this level ideas are only adopted if they make a real improvement to people’s work, making it more efficient or more effective, that is, reducing the amount of work required or improving the result from the same amount of work.

At the level where an idea is applicable people often do not ask (or receive) extra money for the development and implementation of their ideas, but they still develop and implement them because they make their jobs easier and because contributing realises their potential.

The pursuit of power or money leads to central control of ideas and information silos. An idea adopted by the top of a control hierarchy and put through a centralised approval process is expensive to implement.

It gets expensive as soon as the boss asks for the business case, the business plan, the meeting of controllers to approve the money to start the project, which then begins with the project plan, the project manager, the IT development team, cross-organisation working team, needless documentation, transport, accommodation, numerous meetings, pilot, roll out, and grudging implementation of a centralised, inflexible new process that is not any better than the last (which had been adapted under the radar to work).

And it is not any better, because what is needed is a flexible, decentralised decision-making system in which people at the local level implement their ideas, and a central, open information system that lets ideas spread; a change that invalidates centralised, top-down decision-making and the implementation of inflexible systems in the first place.

There may still be a hierarchical structure in an organisation, but it is one that facilitates communication and organisation, not control. It is a structure that forms organically according to the communication channels available and what best meets the need.

The best performance measure of the individual is their own measure of their contribution towards meeting that organisation’s particular purpose. The best way to know their contribution is to ask them.

Measuring people’s contribution on predefined activity targets is an attribute of control cultures. It demonstrates distrust. These measures limit ingenuity and do not measure against the far more important factor of meeting the customer’s need for what the organisation provides.

The only true, real and relevant measures are people’s own measure of their contribution to the organisation meeting its customer’s needs, and the measure of their customer’s need being met.

The fixed and inflexible, unsympathetic and intolerant, application of fixed rules, morals or policies is what makes the by-the-book manager, bureaucrat or police officer so harmful. Fixed rules applied rigidly do not cater for the diversity of human nature and circumstance. Fixed rules, applied rigidly, harm.

Rules must be considered guidelines and their interpretation and application based on individual circumstance. There must be a higher principle at play, which is fulfilment without harm.

Distributed responsibility means that people apply whatever rules they need flexibly in regard to individual circumstances, recording all decisions. This means that those with different circumstances are catered for according to their need and are not harmed because their circumstances do not fit the code. Recording decisions and circumstances means that decisions are accountable and learnings are shared.

In common purpose organisations, people can always feedback through open channels. There is a continuous conversation, a continuous learning and adaptation process as feedback is continuously fed in and acted on.

Through idea markets, collective intelligence and wikis, all people in an organisation can assess and contribute ideas for fulfilling that organisation’s particular purpose. The wiki, ideas market or collective intelligence zone is a website in which people (anonymously or otherwise) submit ideas that are rated by whoever desires to rate them. The website filters ideas, giving recognition to the best ideas and distributing them.

A key element is the self-filtering by self-interest, which ensures that those who are more likely to be well-informed take part.

Responsibility, in common purpose organisations, is ensured by distributed responsibility and individual accountability. The organisation’s members are treated as individuals so customers can be treated as individuals. Policies, guidelines and rules are interpretable by individual members to the individual circumstances of customers. Members are individually responsible for their contributions and so individually accountable for them too.


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Decision-Making

In common purpose organisations, collective decisions are democratised through the feedback of interested (self-selected) people in open information systems. Democracy is measured by the openness of the system, not by the number that vote or the level of feedback. Feedback is self-filtered by interest – those that are interested feedback, those that are not, do not.

The democratic, open information system works because those with most interest in a particular issue are those most informed on the issue and most affected by it.

Pursuing power or money leads to autocratic decision-making. No feedback is sought. Policy and collective decisions are made by experts and controllers appointed by fiat. The only democracy is of elected officials, not present in most organisations. Decisions are autocratic whether a controller is elected or not. Policy and decision formation is closed and delivered as decree.

In current democracies there is little difference between decisions dictated by elected representatives and an enlightened, self-appointed dictator. They both work for what they believe will benefit the public, but both without open, democratic systems for public feedback.

Protest and media freedom are rough versions of feedback in society, but these are heavily constrained in commercial and public sector organisations, and are not as legitimating or democratic as open information systems. The mainstream media also has its own interests, and these often align more with what is scandalous than informative.

In the common purpose organisation of decentralised, distributed responsibility and open information systems, all participants are leaders. They lead in their areas of responsibility on the parts they contribute.

A common purpose organisation is a collective of responsible individuals managing their own contribution and making the decisions they are best placed to make – those at their locale. However, central decision-making is still required on issues that affect many and these are mediated through open information systems where those affected feed in, rate others feedback, and arrive at consensual decisions.

The expectation that a single, central decision-maker, makes immediate decisions for the whole group, automatically prevents the best decision being made, as it excludes the relevant information needed to make such a decision in the first place.

Information must be gathered from dispersed sources – that is the nature of information in its natural state. Decisions must be made at the point where information naturally converges. For a central decision, this is at the center, but, this requires the convergence of all the dispersed information, including information on the preferred decisions at each location.

The first step is to gather information, to collect and consult. If a decision is urgent, then it must be decided on the balance of information, urgency and risk so far calculated, and then be constantly reviewed.

Ideally an organisation has open information systems that allows decision-making in any and every part of the organisation to be currently informed.

There have to be democratically elected representatives. But these representatives need to transparently factor and use the methods of open information systems and feedback to come to their decisions, which is a form of direct, participative, deliberate democracy.

These decisions must reflect the feedback of the most popular ideas submitted via open information systems. People cannot expect an open information system to organise all the detail of policy implementation and practice, but it can input on key themes and specific details that policy should follow.

The democratically elected representative helps institute the methods and the culture. People need leaders to institute free and responsible cultures and participatory methods of democracy. People need national leaders to represent them on the world stage. At the local level people need leaders to represent their localities at the national level. But their mandates and programs must be based on the feedback from open information systems.

Leadership is not in knowing everything, that is ludicrous, but in knowing to listen, confronting the truth, seeking answers and enabling responsible freedom.

A democratic structure of multiple elected organisers and representatives in multiple groups each working to democratically prioritised tasks is an organic organisation.

If everyone knows what their work is, and are free to contribute their labour and improve their work as they wish, they can all be fulfilled. But if there are controllers, then the game comes to be evading that control, not contributing; and the greater the control, the less the fulfilment.

The solution is democratic, common purpose organisations with decentralised local decisions, distributed responsibility and shared information.


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Permission

In common purpose organisations, managers are leaders, organisers and team members. They may also be spokespeople, administrators, coordinators, facilitators, representatives and referees, but they are not controllers, commanders, masters or autocrats. If there is a hierarchical structure, it is for facilitating co-ordination and communication, not for control.

Collective decisions are democratised through the feedback of interested (self-selected) persons in open information systems or open teams.

Individual decisions and responsibility are distributed, with information on them recorded in open information systems that inform future decision-making and ensure accountability.

The manager organises by permission and is elected and appointed by the team. Every person is an equal member and partner.

There is a correlation between permission and command, for in a sense all rule is by permission, as people give permission for commands by obeying them. Given this, all commands should be considered requests. The alternative, doing what is commanded when it is wrong, permits wrong.

People are appointed to positions of authority (managers, teachers, police, doctors, judges, ministers, et al). Those appointed have a responsibility to carry out their authority without harm.

Any authority that harms people pursuing fulfilment without harm is an abuse of authority. The authority must be removed by another authority revoking its rights and by people refusing to recognise it. The second step is essential.

When an authority acts harmfully, and is supported, there is an authority of fear, of command and control. This authority is based in ignorance and the pursuit of power.

The prerequisite of all authority is that the holders understand and respect the freedom of everyone to pursue fulfilment without harm.


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Salaries

Income differentials do not work well in central, decision-making organisations. An income differential ideally accords with realised potential, ideas, and new ways of doing things - the property most corporations effectively eliminate (as well disenfranchise) from employees, though it is employees’ greatest potential contribution.

Current income distribution in corporations accords with people’s positions in the hierarchy of command. This rewards command-and-control type behaviour, rather than behaviour permitting free expression of potential and ideas (and related improvements to productivity).

Rewards from ideas should not be co-opted, but they are in corporations with central decision-making. When central management earns more than workers this sends a signal that it is position, not contribution, that matters.

If everyone is performing and contributing equal effort (though in different roles and by different means) they should be rewarded equally, but organisations’ performance management systems contradict this.

With recognition that fulfilment without harm is for everyone there is a shift to earnings shared more evenly, which arises partially in concert, and partially as a consequence, of changes in organisation responsibility, information sharing, decision-making, and ownership.

Recognition is peer driven in open, non-controlled systems, so without the abuse or individual error of closed systems.

Attempting to measure the financial value of ideas in an organisation and equating it to compensation is unwise. If financial compensation is tied to ideas this incentive warps open information systems and the feedback in them. Rather, ideas are shared just as earnings are shared.

In organisations where all people are free to realise their potential, ideas and proceeds are shared evenly. People share ideas so all can grow them and share in that growth. No one should earn twice that of another.

Eventually organisations could become voluntary, with open entry-and-exit participation, in which all participants earn relatively evenly regardless of their form of contribution. The purpose of people working and organising together is to facilitate their fulfilment and enable others.

With understanding of the common purpose the primary reason for participating is the fulfilment people find in contributing.

Need is met by people seeing a need (having it also) and distributing their solutions. Great incomes are unnecessary to the creation or distribution of a solution if people have a base income. The system still requires communication and markets to signal what is going on and what is needed to be done, but people are willing to contribute for fulfilment more than finances.

There is a difference between the effort contributed and the effect. CEO’s would say the effect from their efforts is many times greater than the effect from others efforts. Thus they are worth more. But their effects are not greater, just different.

While financial viability is important and profit welcome these are not the purpose of common purpose organisations or their members. The focus for members is not how much can they earn but in what ways can they best contribute.

In common purpose organisations, half of earnings are shared evenly and half returned directly to the shared base income, which raises all incomes.

The tie to the shared base income means that all incomes are linked. The tie to the shared base income means that profit is not an individual motivation, but a collective one. By this, the profit motivation is subordinated to the motivation of fulfilment via the best contributions people can make.


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Accounting

Business revenue is taxed only after expenses are subtracted (so on profits), while all the earnings of salary and wage earners are subject to taxes. This assists businesses to expand and helps link revenue to spending on productive activity.

Salary and wage earners' work expenses are paid for by their employing organisations. Personal expenditure on homes, medicine, food and education is not, and is not deductible from taxes.

However, personal expenditure is necessary for productivity and fulfilment. This expenditure is assisted by the shared base income, through universal direct payments and indirect payments like free education and health care.

Incomes from work are dependent on the revenue of organisations, so organisations’ financial situations need to be known to ensure fair treatment. This requires open and transparent accounting.

To start a business, the shared base income may be all that is required, but as revenues increase, the business will be able to pay participants and pay company taxes.

If a business’s expenses are greater than earnings it runs at a loss. The cost of producing its product must eventually be less than the revenue from selling it or a business will have to be dismantled.

In common purpose organisations the revenues over expenses (the profits) are saved, paid to shareholders or reinvested in the organisation after they have been shared in half between the organisation and society. They are shared as people’s incomes are shared, half for them and half for others.


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Ownership

Ownership, in common purpose organisations, is by membership. Membership is by contribution – if people contribute they are members and owners of the organisation.

The transition to common purpose organisations is facilitated by making financial owners liable to ensure responsibility, and by protecting people’s rights to their ideas, not allowing them to be autocratically co-opted by corporates for financial gain.

When organisations become voluntary owner-contributor-member organisations, then organisation assets are developed or bought by the organisations owner-contributor-members. This begins when people get responsibility for their contributions, and share and receive the benefits from them.

The financial funders of a common purpose organisation are people or other organisations with the excess cash to afford to buy shares in, or give loans to, the organisation.

Funders are paid interest or dividends or other benefits in kind on the funds they have provided. There are no tradable shares, as these invite speculation. Shares may be of limited duration and can only be sold for what they cost in the initial offering.

The participants own an organisation when its funders are repaid. Real ownership is liquid and transient. People, more than assets, are the organisation. An organisation may feasibly have no significant assets other than people, although people are counted as expenses in financial accounts.

Organisations are formed for as long as their products and services are desired. Organisations may morph to produce other products and services chosen by its participants. This is the most likely scenario in a common purpose organisation.

Founders are not controllers. They are funders, leaders and real owner participants of organisations which, as they grow, adhere to democratic central decision-making, decentralised local decisions, distributed responsibility and shared information in which everyone participating is an owner and a leader in making their own contribution.


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Membership

Fulfilment without harm leads to voluntary membership organisations, not employer-employee organisations. In common purpose organisations all participants are employees, members, and partners.

The motivation for membership is fulfilment via the best contributions people can make in the areas that interest them. Even customers can become contributors.

Organisations that produce products with increasing demand find increasing contributors and expand. Success in based in the members and what they provide, not in intellectual property rights, financial speculation, exclusive resources or exploitation of labour.

The organisation is comprised of and owned by its people, who are more important and integral than fixed assets. Its sustainability and existence is according to people’s need for it and their willingness to contribute to it.

Members are free agents. The common purpose organisation cannot limit the free thought and expression of members operating without harm to each other.

Co-ordinators are agreed implicitly or explicitly by members and may vary from project to project. Everybody is a leader in their form of contribution. However, group leadership and influence varies according to individual persons, issues and circumstances.

People are empowered if the produce demands of work are understood by them and they are given the space to achieve them in their own way.

Production demands are agreed to, and not altered without agreement. The means of producing produce is unrestricted providing it is without harm.

Hours are flexible for efficiency and peak human capability. A good contributor benefits from efficient production methods and can dedicate more time to other things.

If products are not completed to the quality or variety people require they may purchase them from other organisations or contribute themselves to their redevelopment.

Being a member of one organisation does not deny membership of another. Multiple membership is applicable and desirable as people’s interests are diverse and so are their contributions.


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Effort

Work for the sake of work is foolish, wasteful and inefficient. It occurs when ease is not recognised as the state in which best contributions occur.

Orders to do the wrong things, at the wrong times, inflict harm on those forced to spend their efforts on these endeavours. The cost is not trivial. These circumstances occur when rights are ignored in cultures of fear and control.

In a common purpose organisation, rights are respected and protected, and things are done easily. This is the most productive state.

The easiest route is the most efficient route, the least energy route. This is the route to take, doing what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, how it needs to be done.

Using the least effort required to achieve a desired result is the most sustainable method. The key is to understand where and when to apply effort, an understanding best perceived at ease.

Triggers, resonance and flow can be used to generate timely, future actions with least effort. These timed actions generate further actions via feedback on prior actions in a cyclical, rhythmic fashion.

Each action takes place in response to previous actions. Feedback from prior actions generates further actions generating further feedback and further actions. This method requires a keen awareness of social and organisational systems, and a feeling for what things will influence other things and when is the right time to do them.

Social and organisational systems are complex. People can conceive actions to influence change on parts of these systems, but due to their complexity, intended changes will be accompanied by unpredictable changes. The timing and form of events dictated by initial actions are uncertain.

To panic is to perform what should be done with ease at the wrong time, in the wrong way. This is harmful and inefficient, even in emergencies. Any command or system that demands this behaviour should be rejected. All commands should be interpreted as requests and responded to accordingly.

Thought generates value through ideas for technology and technique. So organisations should emphasise work practices conducive to thinking.

Slow and steady wins the race. Contribution is not a sprint but a journey. Commitment and perseverance are the best guarantees of lasting fulfilment.

Even when it is hard, it is done, if it is right. And when it is right, even though it is hard, it feels easy.


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Diversity

Difference should be appreciated. As long as people live by the principle of no harm, non-violence and tolerance, there is no cause to censure different paths to a common goal.

There is no excuse for sadists, dictators, and slave masters. All of them care for their own families, but at the expense of others. Even the tyrant is insecure when the principle of no harm is betrayed.

If people do not wish harm done to them, they must not harm others. Harm includes any constraints that harm some more than others. Any constraint must be an equal constraint on everyone or be removed.

Growth is in diversity. When the principle of no harm is held in common all people experience their greatest growth contributing in their own ways, because all are free and secure to do so.

Individuals are in the best position to determine their own fulfilment according to their own situations. How they fulfil their responsibilities are their own decisions. As such there is an unlimited variety of community forms and family structures.

Marriage may be religiously sacrosanct, but the forms of family that fulfil the lives of all participants are best, and any relationship where one participant asserts control over another is harmful.

If dependants are harmed they should reside with whom their lives will be best fulfilled, even if that is not the natural parents. People in abusive homes are not safe. They need havens and sanctuaries to escape the structures of abuse and control that afflict their families.

Millions are wasted on prisons and mental health services that catch those damaged at the end of their breakdown. People need safe places where they can escape their homes, and advisors who can help them think what to do, before they break.

Extended families, uncles, aunts, grandparents, even friends can make a vital difference providing sanctuary for others. For children, indirect universal incomes – free childcare, healthcare and education – targeting them and not their parents can make a powerful difference.

Stress is a symptom of discord with the prevalent culture. It is a result of potential not being fulfilled in cultures of control and inequality, where opportunity is distributed unevenly and avenues of expression are limited.

When wealth is unshared people become desperate. This leads people to harm because they are harmed.

Homelessness is a symptom of the stress that comes with living in a culture where harm prevails and fulfilment is limited. Alcohol and drug abuse are self-medication for a lack of purpose and harm. Depression, anxiety and suicide are other symptoms.

Education on the harmful effects of drugs is not enough. People who use them addictively are using them to self-medicate or self-harm themselves in a bid to escape their own mental angst. If physical harm results it only reflects the harm they feel inside.

Alcohol, drug abuse and crime can be reduced when fulfilment without harm is paramount. If the fundamentals are right the rest can be resolved.


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Culture

Fulfilment is control free when everyone (except dependants) are responsible individuals. There must not be harm or disadvantage to others. This does not require directly assisting others. However, assisting others directly may be pursued because it is fulfilling.

Acting without harm to others fulfilment allows others to find their own fulfilment, irrespective of direct assistance, because opportunities are equalised where fulfilment without harm is enabled.

Societies with control cultures are dominated by people who believe in controlling their own lives and the lives of others. They believe they have the right to determine how others should live their lives, as they wish to minimise the impact of others lives on their own or bend them to their own purposes.

Controllers will use any method to gain control over the personal decisions of others, limited only by what they can get away with. These include demands that others should conform their lives to complement theirs. If they do not get their way they resort to anger and rage. These rages may extend to violence. If they are in a position of authority they use this authority to get their way.

The first method for dealing with controllers is to avoid them, the second, to leave them; the third, is to actively reject their control.

But the first two are often not viable, and rejecting control is hard, requiring courage and determination. Rejections of control will not be accepted by controllers. They use guilt, pleas, accusations, tempers and rage to gain their way, and the worse have few limits on their behaviour.

In extreme cases, authorities need to be called to impose restrictions on controllers that refuse others rights. Where these are breached, prison restraints may be required. In places where there is no authority to intervene, fleeing may be the only choice. Where this is restricted, freedom is lost until a way out can be found. It is the duty of nations and persons living without harm to shelter those escaping control.

The control culture is self-sustaining: its insecurity breeds the new breed of controllers seeking security in power and money. Only shared security through a shared purpose of fulfilment without harm can dispel it.


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Respect

People have equal right to be taken seriously when speaking seriously. To not be humoured or mocked, but listened to.

Everyone’s views should be treated with the respect and equality due every human, providing their views respect every human equally. Not having views and requests considered respectfully can result in substantial harm. Unfortunately, there are also any number of views that do not respect every human equally, and in fact, discriminate based on race, sexual orientation, belief, and more.

Some people will ask you to respect them while they harm you. But accepting harm from them is not respect, it is acquiescence, and disrespecting yourself. Real respect, for yourself and them, is to stand up to them, and be open and honest about the harm they do.

Universal respect is mutual respect. The call for mutual respect differs from the calls of ‘seniors’, ‘betters’ or ‘superiors’ for greater respect than the respect due everybody. Differential respect is unnecessary. No one deserves greater respect than the equal respect everyone is entitled to.


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Governance

Common purpose governments enable fulfilment and contribution for everyone. This requires equal opportunity for everyone. For this, governments use blunt instruments as they are simplest to understand and easiest to administrate.

Simple, straightforward policies for fulfilment without harm include a half share of all income and profits into a shared base income of direct and indirect measures, including free universal health care, free universal education, and a universal income.

Complicated methods of wealth distribution with lengthy policy justifications should be avoided. Government should not attempt to implement targeted policies in complex social systems. Blunt instruments allow complexity to flourish because they are easily understood and complied with.

The government distributes equality of opportunity to ensure no-one is harmed by the inequalities of earnings in free trade. Free trade is necessary for a complex system. Blunt tools, easily understood, are the best tool for distributing opportunity while allowing free trade to flourish.

How much should be provided by the state, and how much privately? The line between private and public sectors becomes blurred when organisation decision-making becomes decentralised and democratic, and fulfilment is the common purpose. When this happens all organisations serve the public, whether private or public.

For instance, free universal health care and education enables everyone to access it, regardless of whether it is through public or private providers. Online health and education information also enables people to access health advice and learning much more efficiently and productively, without physical institutions.

Government targeting and management can never work as well as people determining their own needs within universal schemes. External governance gets in the way and results in inefficiencies and inequity.

In common purpose organisations, people can set their own rules and self-organise themselves and their contributions to achieve the objectives they designate.

Real, widespread collaboration with government agencies and commercial corporations will not be accomplished without a shared base income. There has to be a sense of fairness: individual contributions benefit everyone and must be recognised by a shared income. With a shared income, ideas, labour and time are also shared.

Sharing the rewards and the contributions mean everyone can pursue fulfilment. Putting in mechanisms that enable self-determination, and eliminating those that invoke control, help people realise their fulfilment without harm.


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Education

Education must be freely available regardless of age, race or gender. Any degree of discrimination causes harm to those discriminated against.

The purpose of fulfilment without harm needs to be taught in schools as does the origin of education. Where education came from, its history and development, needs to be understood so people know why they study at school.

Lack of purpose is a prime cause of the shiftless, soulless modern reality many find themselves in, with some turning to religion, although its truths, revealing purpose and principle, are so mired in contradiction and obscurity they are missed or mistaken.

Education should be as flexible as it can be to the interests of the student, and individual expression encouraged, as the diversity of potential human contributions is unlimited.

Academic institutions and educational achievements within academia are not good predictors of knowledge. They should not be taken as the sole indicators of knowledge and understanding, as these can be developed outside of academia through personal study and experience.

Much of academia is built up around bodies of knowledge that complicate the subjects they deal with. The success of academic institutions is linked to this complexity, as they hold the key to it.

Fulfilment without harm is knowledge people can easily grasp and share. That this understanding is the vital foundation to build a working, cooperative society, undermines the idea that years of academic education is required to comprehend big issues.

That people, following their own lines of inquiry, their own interests, and their own ideas, can educate themselves to greater discovery and enlightenment than an institutional course is not what institutions want commonly known.

Institutions prefer the doctrine that no great things can be known until people have completed lengthy study at academic institutions. But the basic principles most important to people’s growth do not require great intellect or qualifications.

For greatest learning, people need to direct their own learning. For this, open institutions, open information, and open assessment are needed.

The internet facilitates self-directed study and shared, non-institutionalised knowledge. With its resource and facility people become learners in the greatest library of the world, directing their own lines of enquiry, sharing their thoughts and making discoveries.

The development of technologies like the internet give people more time to develop more technologies in a virtuous cycle of technological development.

The formal structure of university subjects, papers and assessment is restrictive. Universities would be better to foster the love of learning, providing facilities rather than formalising the process and delineating subject areas.

The learning process and subject matter can be left to students. If they are free to choose their subjects outside of the formal structure of departments and disciplines, develop their own reading lists in harmony with their own subject interests, and create their own questions according to their interests, they will love learning and create new thought.

Learning, expression and originality should be assessed, not the regurgitation of subject matter in response to standardised questions developed in separate departments.

It is the knowledge of those interested in the areas they are interested in that makes for the so called ‘wisdom of crowds’, but the people in the crowds who contribute in their areas of interest are not crowds of people, they are the self-selected few with an active interest.

Opening the gates to any contribution (to the ‘crowds’) enables all those with interest in an area to contribute, not just those within academia. The people with interest in an area, for whom the structured, departmental world of academia jars, can be the most informed and knowledgeable because their knowledge is unbound by academic boundaries.


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Health

Living is made more healthy by a shared base income. It enables greater choice on contribution and time spent, which benefits health and wellbeing.

Costs of healthcare are lowered when health information is available by more means than the health practitioner. People are the experts in their own symptoms. Enable people with their knowledge of their own conditions to discover all they can about them and they will diagnose the best treatments.

“… a society that asks questions and has the power to answer them is a healthier society than one that simply accepts what it’s told from a narrow range of experts and institutions.”
p191, The Long Tail, Chris Anderson (2007)

This was not written with the health system in mind, but it applies just the same.

Of most ill is the ethos of power and money with harm. People with misguided purpose find no happiness. The harm that accompanies pursuing power and money amplifies the ill so that everyone is affected by it. It damages people and the environment.

To be healthy understand the purpose of fulfilment without harm and create systems that abide with it.


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Environment

"It’s not the Earth that’s in peril, it’s us." Earth, BBC (2007).

Environmental responsibility is an element of the responsibility that arises from realising the common purpose is fulfilment without harm to, or from, others.

The environment is all aspects of people’s surroundings, not just nature, but homes, neighbourhoods, streets, parks, families, communities, schools and offices.

Given the world is one place, damage to one part harms all. Damaging the environment harms everyone. This is why the right to a clean, attractive, harmonious environment should be declared a human right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

When the purpose and principle are recognised people act to realise their potential without harming others, without acting to control others, and without harming the environment they share.

Recklessness and control are two aspects of pursuing power and money with harm. Both aspects arise with ignorance of the common nature of fulfilment and the principle of no harm.

Environmental recklessness is a symptom of reckless disregard for others fulfilment, a disregard that reflects ignorance of the principle of no harm. When the purpose and principle are recognised people do not act recklessly in ways that harm others.

Sustainability cannot mean reversing living standards. Sustainable ways to maintain and increase the standard of living need to be found. Cut backs are unsustainable.

Ways to reduce pollution and the finite resources used in aviation, shipping, and road transport need to be found. Giving these things up, or settling for poor substitutes, is not sustainable.

Shared resources need to be paid for. These resources include:

• fish stock (and fishing)
• water quality (and water pollution)
• air quality (and air pollution)
• sound levels (and noise pollution)
• atmosphere (and atmospheric depletion)
• orbital space (and satellite population)

To determine the price, the resource must be measured. As resources diminish prices must rise. There should never be a price at which resources are depleted.

Most resources are not strictly limited, they do replace themselves given time. A price that will reduce their use rate to their replacement rate needs to be found. It may be that this price will lead to the need to find alternative resources or to artificially produce it with new technology.

For national measures of fish stock, water quality and air quality the measures and charges can be national (although the same model can be replicated everywhere). For sound levels the noise pollution will be local with the price agreed by residents.

For resources that can only be measured globally the cost has to be international and the same per unit for everyone.

Undeveloped countries do not have to replace existing resource processes. They can institute cleaner technologies immediately. Advanced economies may be able to afford to pay, with the revenues distributed evenly to everyone. Whatever the case, the price must reach a level where use is balanced by natural replacement.

The revenue from common resources needs to be shared in common – for national resources, across the nation; for global resources, globally.

With a shared base income the need to over exploit resources out of necessity is reduced.


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Media

The democratic, open nature of the internet and the communication it allows is critical for sharing knowledge and information. This sharing increases people’s understanding of the world and each other, making the wisdom of pursuing fulfilment without harm clearer.

On the internet people feel free of censure. It is liberating. People are free to express themselves and be themselves. It is a place where even the most introverted can share. But there is a risk of censure and, more covertly, a risk that the information revealed will be used to harm. It is a freedom that must be protected.

People are all media through the medium of the internet. But the mainstream, traditionally organised news media broadcasts on all channels, as well as the internet, giving it a powerful influence.

Unfortunately the culture of the mainstream media is driven by the profit it makes interpreting events as scandals, reporting selectively, and commenting cynically. This media amplifies discord, ignores agreement, and encourages damaging behaviour.

Media journalists have become more like the mob demanding blood, while the public has grown wiser. Ultimately there must be a correction as the mainstream media loses its connection with the interests of a better informed, more independent public.

A symptom of the media’s cynicism and demand for strong political leadership, is the large portion that discounts the importance of a positive political vision. It is ironic that journalists writing news stories do not see the importance of changing the story to changing reality. Changing the story is what true political leaders do. No leader can change reality from the bottom up except by changing the story.

Positive change was not possible under Bush junior because he chose the negative story of fear and confrontation. Obama brought a positive story, and this drove a ground swell of positive change. His greatest struggle will be maintaining this in an ocean of media cynicism.

Access to full coverage of live events is needed to be fully informed. Media summaries alter the narrative of what actually happens and what is actually meant. Trials, for instance, should be public and broadcast on the internet.

Concerned persons need to judge based on what participants say and do. They cannot have sympathy or understanding of, for instance, an offender’s contrition if they never see or hear it.


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Faith

Fulfilment without harm corresponds with free faith and trust in people’s ability to discern what they should do. Knowledge of self and individual purpose arises from a complex mix of personality and environment that resists comprehensive, rational analysis.

Trust in purpose and the hope of fulfilment in a world people cannot control can be equated with faith – individual’s faith in their ability to know what is right for them even when it seems irrational against the criteria of acceptable social behaviour, family expectations, and economic rationality.

How can people know if their feeling for what to do is right? What they do is right because they feel it is right for them. It can only be wrong on someone else’s conception of what is right for them, which is invalid.

Fulfilment cannot be predicted - the world is too complex for that - so people must act with faith and determination to persevere.

People can equate the feeling for what is right as coming from God – God in everything, in the universe, in nature, in individuals. Faith in God, in these terms, is unquestioning trust that what people feel is right for them is right.

Realising direction requires thought - it may be lost when people do not consider it, and they end up performing roles conditioned by social or parental expectations that are not their own. This causes a divergence, a rupture, of their lived existence with their own natures that expresses itself in unhappiness (and the related symptoms of this). It can be difficult to diagnose, but it is likely most unhappiness is a consequence of this divergence.

Only thought (meditation, contemplation) can reveal this divergence, and only faith in themselves and the universe can lead to the steps necessary for them to do what is right for them, to heal the gap between their current existence and an existence that fulfils their potential. To take these steps and to have this faith is courageous.

Holy places are still important in this conception of faith. These places and others like them (natural or manmade) are ideal places of thought and prayer. Prayer is like a form of contemplation and meditation on direction and the universe, of seeking guidance.

Most religious figures are grand examples of people who have listened to their feelings of what is right for themselves, and have exemplified, by their actions, what is right in respect to the treatment of others. Many followed difficult paths, ones that involved sacrifice and hardship, but ones they knew were right. The inner harmony that comes from equating actions with internally inspired directions more than compensates for this hardship: no real happiness is possible without it.

There is faith that at some fundamental level the universe makes sense, and that, at a more Earthly level, people will be permitted to pursue their own direction: a faith that obstructions will, in the end, be overcome. However, this is not inevitable, many religious figures died, as others have died, living as themselves, following the paths they felt were right for them. The most important element is that, whatever people do, it is as much as possible in harmony with what they feel is right for them to do. There is no other way to fulfilment and happiness.

Pursuing power with harm leads to exclusive religion. Most religions are inclusive in the sense that anyone can join, the exclusive proviso being that people must accept only their version of God as the determiner of human purpose. They discriminate by asserting that the only faith, is their faith, in their God, and that the only purpose is their God’s purpose. By this, they disempower human faith and human purpose.

A prescribed or prescriptive God is not needed to have faith or purpose - people can have faith in themselves and their universe, agreeing their own purpose and principle, and realising their own potential. If there is a God, it is a God for and in everyone and everything.

Faith reinforces perseverance and resilience. To realise potential, contribute and find fulfilment, people need to commit and persevere. Faith that things will turn out alright is an important asset.

Even if God is just a human construct, an ideal people collectively approve of, this does not make the theme less worthy. If Jesus were taken as a role model that people emulated not just worshiped his function would still be great.

Religious prejudice and moral rectitude does not allow consideration of circumstance and results in a closed mind.

Religious prejudice is not based in principle, but in the learnt morality of a particular religious doctrine, decreeing that people must not get divorced, that sex outside marriage is wrong, and so on.

In this sense, right can be wrong. Taught morality, preached precepts, religiously inspired decrees of what is right may contradict fulfilment without harm, and indeed cause harm. In this sense, the negative aspect of righteousness is illustrated, that of the morally righteous that declare how others should behave based on religious decree, regardless of the harm it does.

Moral rules are never greater than principle. People may try to reinterpret what others do as wrong and castigate them for breaking the rules. They may try to cast others actions in a different light from those performing them, seeing others acts through their own filters, their own lenses, not conceiving fulfilment without harm as allowing flexibility for everyone to shape their own lives in their own way.

These moral rules are determined as definitive instructions for acceptable behaviour in particular situations, instructions that generally accord with the principle of no harm. But rules are never right for everyone in every situation.

Unfortunately, some cling to rules dogmatically, and rather than interpreting others actions and their own lives against the purpose of fulfilment without harm, they judge lives against rules. Those who dogmatically stick to rules cause damage to themselves and those they judge and influence.

The final measure must be against the principle of fulfilment without harm. This is the measure people should use in their own ways. There can be shared guidelines, but all guides must be considered with understanding for individual circumstance, and when guidelines conflict with acts done without harm, they should be overruled.

To judge everything according to rules, rather than according to principle, is to judge wrong. Rules are never greater than the purpose of fulfilment without harm.


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