Welcome to World 5.0

And welcome to my blog on my favorite idea. This first entry is to intended to help you get your head and heart wrapped around this crazy notion of World 5.0 – that this moment is all that exists, and that the most valuable and entertaining way to spend it is in Love.

I stumbled upon the notion of World5 in August of 2004, when I realized that the idea of an operating system could be applied to culture, and that we’ve had generally four ages in our cultural past. Later I discovered that each age had a technology level that mirrored the culture and that new technology jumps created new ages. More on that in the upcoming book.

But as I more and more pondered the core of this marvelous idea, I found it intimately connected with my personal journey to find the truth of our nature and our lives here on Earth. Evolving bodies with an Eternal Spark comes close. That spark is Love, and we can grow into it. Love, which is only truly found in the absence of fear. More startling in the context of our world4 culture, is that I found, as I find still, that we commune with Eternal Awareness much more clearly when our minds are without thoughts. Peace.

And so it was and so it continues that discerning the truth of our Reality is tremendously freeing. We more easily let go the hurts of the past and apprehension for the future. We more and more feel the power of Love in This Moment. We no longer fear future pain or toil, as we let the flow of Now take us.

So, we start with a complete shift in our perception of reality. There’s a tendency to assume if God is everywhere in space, then Eternal Awareness must exist everywhere in time, and past and future are as valuable as This Moment. But that is wrong. God, Eternal Awareness, exists only Now. This Moment leaves the past behind like so much dissipating energy, and the energy of Now shapes the future. We flow through time, we Live Here.

The human species is just now beginning to ride the wave of a new technological breakthrough, the Internet, or the InterWeb as I prefer. The farther implications of this include the prospect of Digital Awareness, neither male or female, consciousness that does not face the prospect of death. Imagine that.

Without today’s InterWeb World5 could not come into being. I remind you the term stems from the idea of an operating system. And the communication, research and repository aspects of the InterWeb are required for the sort of movement we seek.

The ramifications of our InterWeb are already sufficient to provide the toolkit for a complete restructuring of our laws, food production, energy generation, health and education infrastructure – all our systems. There is another fabulous mechanism for doing the same which falls under the name of localism. Localism and the InterWeb are the two greatest keys to transforming our culture to one that embraces health and peace.

What has been the constant throughout our long history is the animal tendency toward power and control. In our past this has played out as elitism. In more modern times, this elitism shows itself as corporatism or militarism, but in essence they are the same impulse.

World5 rejects any value to such motives or agendas, recognizing that only in integrity can we find Love. Indeed, one can argue that integrity is the one requirement of Love. We can talk all the bullshit we like, but it is in learning to be impeccable, in being responsible, in keeping our word, that we create the space for Love. Love will not be found when we do not honor ourselves or others, as such behavior in inconsistent with the nature of Love.

Let’s say that again. Love cannot be found in fear. And Love is very clearly right Here, for those peaceful enough to be with Eternal Awareness and each other. All very entertaining.

On Taxes

There is much talk about taxes in the U.S. these days, with the Tea Party Movement as the most vocal group outlining their disagreement with how our government raises and uses taxes. These folks are generally anti-tax, suggesting that the less we are taxed, the better. It’s a Libertarian stance.

Others, often with some sort of social justice leanings, will decry some ways in which our taxes are used, normally for wars like Iraq and Afganistan, and others more against the whole militaristic bend of the U.S. government.

Still a third group, including many independent voters, takes an approach of inevitability toward being taxed, and pretty much allows that taxes are the way of life in the United States, and they take ‘the bad’ with ‘the good’ that this country provides.

For me, I can identify with aspects of all three groups, but there’s a very familiar business term that needs to be attached to taxes. ROI. ROI is Return on Investment, and every business of any size is quite familiar with the concept. From this perspective, it’s not so much whether we pay a larger or smaller percentage of our income in taxes, but what we get in return for these payments.

With taxes, ROI is based on the ‘investments’ of the government [it’s priorities in spending], and on the efficiency of their efforts. Which leads us to another consideration: at what level is government going to be most efficient in dealing with a given situation? Which leads to the classic states rights vs. federal rights in determining who should be the primary controller of a given topic area.

Since the federal government gets most of our tax money, and has the most control over how it’s spent, let’s consider policy, or what they spend our money on.

You’ll often see pie charts of the US. federal budget that suggest over half our annual budget is spend on social programs like Social Security and Medicare. But we know numbers can be fudged. The venerable War Resistor’s League suggests the pie chart seen is as far more accurate.

According to their numbers, military spending for 2009 was 54% of the budget. Let’s be conservative and call it half. Half our spending goes toward military build up, wars, incursions and sustaining bases in over 200 countries. And the ROI? If you’re a huge military contractor or energy company that stands to gain billions, it’s pretty lucrative. If you’re an average citizen, you’re being abused by such practices and priorities. If you’re an average citizen in some country being impacted by U.S. hegemony, that abuse can be death.

And the ready response is some sort of ‘anything for our safety’ bullshit. The truth is, whether ‘threatened’ by the England, Mexico, Spain, Germany, Japan, the Cold War, Granada, Venezuela or Terrorists, our government always finds some excuse to further empower the military/industrial/media complex at our expense. The war budget continues to climb. Even as any expert will tell you social contracts and police actions are far more effective than military actions. But, lest we forget, there’s a lot more money for fat cats in war. ROI.

Then there’s corporate welfare. According to the CATO Institute, in 2006 corporate welfare was 92 billion. Energy companies, paper companies, farm subsidies, and a host of other corporations receive unwarrented assistance. After the deal Obama made with Big Pharma, they are surely part of the fat hogs sucking on the government teat.

The need for federal, state and local control is evident. We cannot have widely disparate views of say, gun control, where one state has very strict ownership and buying guidelines and a neighboring state with very liberal ownership laws. Education, infrastructure projects, social services – in each of these the local influence helps provide local direction – one size does not fit all. And yet local communities don’t have the taxes or resources to honor their own priorities, so local communities are run over with the dictums from the state and federal level.

That’s one component of efficiency. Another is process, with implementation of policy as enacted by the bureaucracy. It takes administrators, project managers and boots on the ground to implement government priorities. We all know waste and abuse within the system, whether it’s government workers who act without integrity, or massive no bid contracts to private war companies like the formerly named Blackwater.

Again, it’s not so much whether taxes are high or low, as what we receive in return. Sweden has a high tax rate [nearly 50%. comparable to the U.S.], but with free healthcare, free education through college, subsistence support for the needy, clean and available water, etc. Plus they have the contentment-inducing knowledge that they are not apart of a far-flung empire imposing its will on the rest of the world through military and economic manipulation.

So to summarize, taxes should be measured by ROI. Taxes and policy decisions need to be balanced among federal, state and local levels to be fair, targeted and efficient. And the process of management must have transparency to minimize the drawbacks of bureaucracy. Is this going to be easy? Hell no. But it’s much easier if we keep focus on what matters.

Oil and The Gulf

Well, geez, what a surprise. We’re getting another serious lesson in sustainability. Oil doesn’t qualify.

Our first big lesson came in the early 1070s, when the U.S. and other Israel supporting countries felt the effects of an oil embargo initiated by oil producing countries in the Middle East. Then in 1979 we suffered another shortage due to the Iranian Revolution which removed the Shah and allowed the Ayatollah Khomeini to rise to power. We throw in the War(s) on Iraq, and the many other conflicts in that part of the world and we reach a simple conclusion. The conclusion is that, from a geopolitical perspective, oil is unsustainable.

From the perspective of consumption, we find another marker. Climate change. Anyone who doesn’t think the science is ‘in’ on this does so at their, and our, peril. There is no question the seas are rising, and that means we’re getting warmer. We may argue the cause, but we cannot argue the likelihood that all the carbon we’ve been throwing into the air these last 300 or 400 years [first coal, then oil] is going to have negative effects. So again we find oil is unsustainable.

Which brings us the BP oil rig explosion and the ensuing mess we’re facing in the Gulf of Mexico. Already experts are suggesting this could be far worse than the Exxon Valdez tanker accident off the coast of Alaska. Some suggest we not use the word ‘spill’, as that implies a finite amount of something being spilled. Continually spewing 25,000 gallons of oil a day, maybe 10 times that? We probably need a new word. We may see contaminated beaches, ruined livelihoods, and ecological disaster from Texas to Florida. Oh yes, and let’s not forget the chemical soup of dispersants being dumped deeply and on the surface to break up this mess. What we are sure of is that no one has any idea of the potential far-reaching effects of thousands of tons of chemicals. Not good.

But when I titled this entry, I was also thinking of another gulf. And this, the gulf between our energy interests and energy policy. With the production crises of the 1970s, there was a lot of talk about conservation and other policies to remove our dependence on foreign oil. How effective was that? Well, we went from 28% in 1979 to 66% in 2007.
And again the uproar 20 years ago with the Alaskan Oil Spill. And again no positive results. And only a few weeks ago President Obama suggested more ‘drill, baby, drill’ options on the East Coast. Yuck.

Chris Matthews made a salient point on Bill Maher’s HBO show last recently. The same time this spill kicks in down south, a massive wind farm off Cape Cod is approved. He described it as ‘a teachable moment’, and I couldn’t agree more.

But if we look at this 40 year history of oil troubles, we see the same pattern emerge as we see emerge in so many other areas of our lives. Elitist interests trumping the common good. Our policies haven’t improved, because our government is controlled by money, in this case energy corporations money.

It’s the same reason we give the billions in subsidies to energy interests while we drip some handful of millions at alternative energy sources. As always, we see more clearly how our world works when we follow the money.

An irony here is that I don’t see our elected officials even seeing the connection between their past policies and sucking up to energy interests. Oh, the word about Cheney, Bush and energy policy is starting to get out, but our whole congress is complicit. And we’re still giving ecological impact exemptions for new drill sites? Another reason to throw the bums out.

In our new World5 world, we appreciate our two most great and constant needs [assuming access to clean air and water] as food and energy. We further appreciate that the more we localize these two needs, the more we gain stability, control and sustainability. Of course it will be some while before we are weaned from oil as an energy source, but that time comes much sooner with an honest and concerted effort, as opposed to the green washing and bullshit we get from massive energy corporations.

In world5, none of this mess happens. Companies don’t think twice about fail-safe valve systems because they care. Absentee ownership doesn’t give one permission to pollute. Indeed, in world5, the word ownership comes to mean stewardship. We are, after all, all in this together.

A Culture of Bullshit

The inimitable George Carlin, in one of his last stand-up routines, had the theme, "It’s bullshit, and it’s bad for you." So true in our world today. The bullshit and the bad. The source of both is the money. You can always follow the money. And where does the money lead? To those that have far and away the most: global corporations and their well-heeled controllers, uber-rich families, the elites of the world who have known nothing else, the Goldmans, the Rothschilds, the Saudi Royal Family, and any number of collaborators and government "servants" who share their misplaced priorities.

At every turn in our lives, as American and global citizens, we see the pattern of bullshit being shoved down our collective throats repeat itself endlessly. Recent events like the oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, the feeble attempt at healthcare reform, and the 2008 Financial Collapse are just the most striking current examples in this parade of bullshit.

It’s an old parade. Our founding fathers used the fear of slaves rising up against their owners in their push for a new republic. They similarly demonized the Red Man to justify their atrocities and aggression against these indigenous Americans. They wanted only property owners to vote, giving the vote to "all white males" only because they needed to increase the tepid support for the revolution. And these were the good guys.

It’s not been much better in other places or at other times. It’s the most repeated story in human history – the powerful abusing those with less power, taking more than their share, destroying the planet for their whim, and squeezing we, the people in every form of shake-down to maintain this corrupt and unjust system. And then some sort of justification based on bullshit. What’s changed today is scope.

Just as there has always been the unscrupulous, there have been those who call them out. The Thomas Paine types, most recently emulated by the marvelous Howard Zinn, who points out in his "A People’s History of the United States" just how our government has consistently sided with the powerful, and the elite. And this while giving the citizenry bullshit in the form of "PR" or public relations, another name for the propaganda machine developed in the 1930s and 1040s. Indeed, the term public relations was invented just for U.S. government elitist purposes.

And curiously, just as honest voices have been shut out from corporate media [television and right-wing radio], the Internet has provided a new outlet for viewpoints that deviate from the corporate mantra of American Exceptionalism. You can google or wiki American Exceptionalism for a more detailed understanding of the term, but to be succinct: It’s bullshit and it’s bad for you.

One part of this notion is that America, due to [presumably] some unfailing dedication to human health and ecological soundness, gets to set the military and economic agenda for the whole world. Especially since WWII, our government has become the main vehicle for the elitist agenda, and there is no interest in noble, life-sustaining goals, except as PR. So we invade, we build and maintain bases, we tout Shock Doctrine Economics, and we continue to destroy our planet. We, as a country, exhibit every characteristic of Empire, and yet the vast majority of American citizens find that idea completely off base. That’s the effectiveness of bullshit in our culture.

Most American people are upside down with the truth. Our country is a democracy in name only, with our political system so infected with corporate dollars there’s no hope for the citizen agenda. We have a two party plutocracy, one nearly as infected by elitism as the other. As our friends at Cyrano’s Journal Online maintain, "If voting could really change things, it would be illegal." That’s why we believe we citizens need to force the issue – rise up and demand a rewrite to the U.S. Constitution based on what we know today. Corporations are not people. CEOs are not overlords. Communities have rights too.

Which brings us to the other part of American Exceptionalism, this notion of individual rights superceding community rights. Much of the Tea Party mentality supports this notion, including the suddenly infamous Rand Paul. But it would seem that this is due to the success of the propaganda machine as opposed to a real threat to individual liberties, such as those that occur with telephone wiretaps and database tracking of individuals. The propaganda machine has been so effective we rail against the constraints of community while barely noticing the end of Habeas Corpus in the United States.

Sadly, Tea Party concerns are often bogus, mimicking the talking points of right-wing radio. Sadly, many seem to lack the ability to discern truth, taking the less-accurate route of chanting slogans. Sadly, most Tea Party proponents do not understand how they undermine their own best interests with their mantras. "Keep your governments hands off my Medicare" is one of striking irony.

Just as an individual cannot yell "fire" in a crowded theater because of obvious community issues, a corporation should not be allowed to treat workers or the environment badly for a few more dollars in profit. The stories of ruined lives and ruined ecologies are endless, consistent and one with the pattern of elitist control mentioned at the beginning of this article. U.S. dependence on oil, mountaintop removal mining, mining waste, deforestation and desertification, child labor and sex slaves, Palistine, global warming, and endlessly on…

Bill Maher recently commented that Al Queda is not nearly as effective at destroying America as Wall Street and BP. What? Could the whole threat of terrorism be bullshit too? OMG!!!

It’s bullshit and it’s bad for you. You want to start reducing the level of bullshit in your life? Find clarity in nature, find discernment in your forgiving, quieted mind, turn off the propaganda machine in your living room, and start with some positive behavior, like boycotting BP corporation and joining the World5 movement. After all, we move from Here.

The World Is A Ghetto

The utter failure of our current systems, whether energy and food production, finance, healthcare, or the war machine, creates a stench that permeates our lives in every corner. Our quality of life is threatened at every turn, whether it’s trying to keep oneself employed, keep a home that’s lost substantial value, keep healthcare while being ripped off, or seeing the death, destruction and waste from U.S. incursions in Iraq, Afganistan and wherever else "our leaders" choose to attack. Our planet is ruled by money, and its concentration among a handful of elites has left the rest of us impoverished.

This is not a new phenomenon. Historically there has always been a large class of paupers. The ‘great experiment’ of the United States did create a middle class, unprecedented in its size and scope from previous cultures. As Howard Zinn described, this middle class became ‘the guards’, protecting the wealthy elites from the rebellions of the impoverished and working poor. What’s changed recently is that this very middle class is now threatened by the rampant greed of the elite class.

The decisions of those with and in power have neglected the communities and environments they exist within for too long. The brutal disregard for the common good is evidenced by just about every global corporation, especially if they’re directly involved with energy, food, money, healthcare, media or war.

The dramatic case-in-point right now is oil gushing out of a 21" hole in the ocean floor 50 miles from New Orleans. The absolute greed of BP was such that it blinded them from using procedures that could have easily prevented this disaster and protected the company’s fortunes, now at risk as their stock value plummets. But the damage is [being] done, and we’ll be dealing with it for a generation, at the least. And our Earth is now the poorer for all the richness of the gulf ecosystem that is lost.

But is this unmitigated disaster unique? Can we look at our world and say, like Kentucky Senatorial Candidate Rand Paul, "accidents happen" as though that’s the end of the story? Pick a problem area – global warming, violence and terrorism, crime, starvation, frankenfoods, community decline, etc. Pick a continent – deforestation, pollution, habitat loss, species extinction, soil depletion, unbridled corporate growth, etc. Pick a people – Asians, Indonisians, Europeans, Africans, Native, African and Euro Americans, etc – we’re all under duress.

Our world has been dominated by Industrial Capitalism for over two hundred years. As Industrialism has morphed into globalism, it’s flaws and failures have become similarly scaled. Government, the supposed bastion of defense against the worst excesses of corporations, is instead a bribed and willing accomplice to such bloated industry. Do not Haliburton, General Dynamics and the company formerly known as Blackwater whisper policy requests to the U.S. Government? Do they not demand more drones, more guns, more killing to keep themselves in luxury? Is there any other reason we go to war when police action would be far more effective in fighting the current straw man, ‘terrorists’? Blatant greed with utter disregard for citizens and ecologies is their operating system There is no other explanation for the state of our world today.

These are long-standing institutions and their attitudes, policies and behaviors will not be willingly changed. Notwithstanding, the elitists, their culture and their methodology are quickly becoming dinosaurs, not yet aware of the sea change going on in our culture.

The Walmarts, the ExxonMobils, the General Electrics, the Haliburtons – they and their ilk must change or die. BP has created the tipping point with the horrific decision-making that led to the gulf gusher, and the equally horrific decisions in responding to this gusher. This situation will not blow over like so many ‘accidents’ in the past. This is too big, too many lives are effected, and the damage to the gulf ecosystem is too enormous. Unless BP does a quick 180degree turn away from their attitude and approach so far, they will bankrupt.

The good news is we are not helpless. Our purchasing decisions impact the situation. We can boycott BP and other offending corporations. We can support emerging industries like organic foods, green buildings, public transit and renewable energies, aiding the transformation. And most importantly, we can migrate our energies toward local energy and food production. To the extent that we strengthen our local communities and meet our needs on the local level, we undermine the model of corporate greed and control that we’ve been witnessing for the last 30 years.

World 5.0. It’s a new way to talk about our common problems. A new way to think about challenges and how to face them. You can be liberal or conservative and still love integrity. You can be Muslim or Jew and still love justice. You can be businessman or environmentalist and still love balance. You can be anyone and still love Love. We have to find our common ground, our areas of common interest, and remove the corporate and governmental obstacles to pursuing those interests. If not now when, if not us who then?

Birth of a Revolution

For centuries the vast majority of humanity has suffered under the thumb of elitism, the system where powerful political and commercial interests collude to take advantage of the rest of us. They start wars, they create globalism, they call us consumers. The classic name for this is plutocracy. It’s a clear sign of the failure of government, serving the interests of elites instead of citizens.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Indeed, throughout the world we see insurrection and the rejection of nation-state colonialism and corporatism.

Here is the U.S., we have an election year of particular note and color. The republicans prostrate themselves for every hater vote, except of course for Trump who so well epitomizes hate. Democrats have a choice between another Clinton and a rare bird in American politics – a person of integrity.

This person claims #notmeus. This person claims money is the central corruptive force in our politics and culture. This person claims we need a revolution. Bernie Sanders has picked up the banner of progressive leaders throughout history, and intends a better day for we, the people.

This better day will not come through ‘negotiating’ with fundamentalists driven by ideology. Nor by those whose souls are owned by elites. The revolution is happening through common values of peace, love, integrity and justice.

We’ve had movements. In my time the sixties was a great movement, with Civil RIghts, the women’s and enviromental movements, we hippies – all told it was a near revolution. But the system was too strong, and we weren’t ready.

Since then we’ve had the Arab Spring, Occupy and Black Lives Matter, all evidence of a yearning we share. A yearing that not only is our system corrupt, but it’s foundations are corrupt as well.

It’s true. In the dominant culture the very premise of human life is that we’re born alone, die alone and need to spend our lives trying to get ahead of the rest of humanity. And so our thoughts race, constantly flooded with the requisite fear, hate, dread mixed with the flush of triumph and domination. Such a poor existence.

The foundation that is true is that we are all here together in Life. This truth ever stares at us as we course through our lives. We call it World 5.0.

Millions of us realize this – especially the young. Millenials are stirring to this new recognition of who and where we are. Millions of us are recognizing that the way out of drama and fear is integrity and love, which open the door to peace.

And now we have a leader. Revolutionaries, Occupiers, BLMers, and activists – we now have a leader. As this most auspicious year plays out, lets not forget who and where we are.

Occupy Life

These are curious times, to say the least. I doubt the handful of fed up citizens who decided to occupy Zuccotti Park in the NYC Financial District on September 17th, 2011 knew going in that within a month they’d have millions of supporters and thousands of occupations popping up across the Earth. They just knew the system was utterly broken, and felt compelled to take action. And here we are.

Indeed, Life Is This Moment. This idea of the totality of Now is the central tenant of World 5.0, the notion that civilization is emerging into a new cultural operating system, and one that contrasts sharply with our previous operating systems.

Consider: For nearly 200,000 years we were Neolithic, simple hunter-gatherers using simple blades to sustain themselves. Then maybe 10,000 years ago we became agrarian, developing new implements like the plow, seed funnel and and irrigation systems. A thousand years ago brought World3, The Medieval Age, where we learned to make machines like the gun and printing press. And then, with the development of the engine, we enabled the Industrial Age, World4. It is this industrial culture of globalism, based on the power of money, failing around us as we speak. We require a new operating system.

The enabling technology for World 5.0? Yes, the Internet, or InterWeb as I prefer.

But let’s get back to ‘Life Is This Moment.’ World4 has been utterly confused about the nature of reality. We have a vague sense that life/reality is ⅓ past, ⅓ present and ⅓ future. But such thinking is only ⅓ correct. Yesterday’s gone and tomorrow never comes. While events continue their never-ending dance, our consciousness, being of Eternal Awareness, stays Here. There is a sense of eternity to this moment, if we’re here to experience it.

One reason this obvious fact of life is so obscured is because the World4 culture places so little value on life. Understanding life, or health for that matter, has never been a serious goal for a system designed for profit.

Another reason? The steady stream of propaganda we’ve all grown up subjected to. Propaganda about the elite 1% being ‘job creators’ instead of the truth, that they control our government for their benefit. Propaganda that we must destroy our ecologies, our Earth, to create jobs, even while studies always show green jobs offering a better return than fossil fuel energy jobs.Propaganda about all these people who are different from us and hence must be feared, Muslims being the current favorite to attack. The elites who control World4 do this to keep us in fear, and to justify spending 75% of l2010’s total global expenditures on war and the war machine.

Finally, we’ve been so caught up in our thoughts and feelings that we rarely allow ourselves the simple experience of being alive, just like any other animal on this planet. We create a bubble of our thoughts and feelings and fears, losing touch with Life. Yet we are alive, we live and breathe here, and only here. We become far more integrated and whole as we use our intent to find ourselves connected to Life in this Moment.

We are literally creating our new cultural operating system right now, each occupation finding its own particular way to organize and each in solidarity with all. What all these occupations share is attention to Life, and a commitment to Peace. One can easily see how the old world, built on war, greed and fear, feels threatened. Which is why we see so much negative press about this movement. But this occupation is here to stay. Too many of us are awakening and impassioned about this effort. Too many of us have been hurt, ruined or killed by the plutocracy of corporations and government. Too many now know it doesn’t have to be that way.

And now, Bernie Sanders is bringing this radical change to our political system. As of March, 2016, we don’t yet know what the outcome will be of the upcomoing presidential election. But what we already know is that the old system cannot hold. The revolution is upon us.

Occupy – Finding Our Core

The Occupy Movement is an amazing phenomenon. In less than two months it’s has aggregated into a global movement, taking a strong stand again the financial forces that have taken over the U.S. and so many other governments. There are no indications of us going away.

Still, there are issues. The corporate media insists we don’t have a clear message, with good reason since we threaten their stranglehold on truth. The Wall Street robber barons insist we are anarchists and lazy hippies, whose only interests are avoiding work and causing trouble. Again it sounds like someone is feeling threatened. Politicians are holding their fingers up to the wind, trying to decide whether it helps or hurts them politically to support us. Such poor leadership.

Regardless of such opinions, those of us who are Occupiers know what is going on. We’ve had enough of a world of lies. We’ve had enough of a world where money rules the political system. We’ve had enough of a world torn by war and globalization. And so we choose a new way forward.

When those heroes decided to Occupy Wall Street on September 17th, they began something extraordinary. The began to create a new culture based on ethics instead of the power of money. They started a process of consensus, where 90% is the minimal threshold to establish principles, areas of focus and policy. They started a process that continues in this moment, a process we Occupiers all share in, though much of this process is not yet explicit.

Yet it is clear we operate by new rules. We accept everyone, regardless of the meager distinctions of looks, color, race, religion or sexual preference. We even accept those without a home, agitators and just-released felons presented to us, so long as they honor our process and principles. We choose peace and solidarity as keys to our process. We choose the power of Love over the power of money.

These new rules are principles, that can generally be described as peace, love, integrity, justice and balance. A system of ethics. And these ethics create a space of peace, compassion and friendship unavailable to most of us in the old system.

What we’re seeing then, is the birth of a new consciousness among us, where our priorities are these principles of ethics, where we rely on truth instead of falseness, abundance instead of greed, and where we intend to get big money out of our political system. And this code of ethics brings us a sense of trust unavailable to the old world.

Curiously, there is a name for this new consciousness. A name for this new cultural operating system. A name for a culture based on principles instead of the power of money. The name is World 5.0.

The name is derived from applying the idea of an operating system to culture. We’ve previously been hunter/gatherers, agrarian, medieval and most recently industrial. Indeed, it is the Industrial Age, World4, collapsing around us from the weight of its own corruption.

The central tenant of World 5.0 is that Life Is This Moment, an idea that finds harmony among many of us. The past is gone and tomorrow never comes. We stay Here. Our process is Here. We move from Here.

I see this pretty clearly as I’m the founder of World 5.0. There is a book and a website on the topic. While the book was written before this movement sprang into being, it reminds of the same things the movement does. We must get money out of politics. We must put an end to war. We must rebuild our communities and ecologies. We must have honest government and a transparent financial system. We must create a culture where globalization, a system based on profit, is replaced by World 5.0, a system based on health and ecology.

In the coming days, week and months we are going to find each other far more easily. We’re building new coalitions with like-minded people and organizations each day. We’re learning process and more effective ways to create this new world. We’re learning that ethics, the power of Love, is bigger and better than the power of money. And we’re loving it.

In spite of the many situations where occupations are threatened by police action and unfriendly government, we stand, peaceful and strong. In spite of the many internal squabbles and difficult decisions, we are growing. In spite of wildly diverse backgrounds, ages and interests, we are Here together.

And now we’re finding our core. An operating system based on the power of Love instead of the power of money. An operating system that says armchair citizenry no longer cuts it. An operating system that focuses us on localism, organic food, sustainable energy and peace, regardless of the challenges to it. Along with the tremendous power and energy of the Occupy Movement, it is holding our core, living World 5.0, that assures us we can never be co-opted, usurped or otherwise turned into something we do not intend. Humanity is finally, through the Occupied Territories and its supporters, finding our home in Life.