The advent of Visionary Capitalism
The change of ideologies
Every epochal passage in the history of humanity has always been preceded by the overturning of ideologies, by a psychological revolution that through an individual was then transmitted to the masses. The heliocentric idea overturned the cornerstones of medieval thought, relocating man from the center to the margins of the universe and opening up the modern age; Protestantism radically changed the vision of work, from a biblical condemnation to an instrument of man’s evolution, creating the conditions for the advent of the industrial revolution and Visionary Capitalism.
The world of being
Today we are facing a new revolution. A psychological revolution based on the idea that being and having are not conflictual dimensions, polarities, but two sides of the same reality. Everything we see and touch, everything we perceive, the skyscrapers of finance, the pyramids of industry, the discoveries and achievements of science and technology, everything we call ‘reality’, is nothing but the projection of a world invisible to our senses, a world of ideas and values that runs vertically to the plane of our existence: the world of being.
Half a century of failures
Being is the cause of having. This explains why the countries richest in natural resources are often also the poorest and why the enrichment of a man is not a sufficient condition to remove him from his destiny, if it does not correspond to an enlargement of his vision. In fact, it is possible to recognize the existence of a sort of homeostatic mechanism that ineluctably brings having back to the level of being. An unprepared man, even if temporarily favored by an event or external circumstances, is thrown back into ancient poverty if having exceeds his level of being. This is true of nations as well. After more than half a century of unsuccessful international aid programs to third world countries, even development economists should have understood by now: it is not possible to help from the outside a country that has not already achieved an adequate degree of wealth in its heritage of ideas (ethical, aesthetic, religious, philosophical, scientific) and in its system of values. Many of these countries would only need to reconnect to their ancient wisdom, to the essence of their origins, and bring sap back into the oldest value system, to achieve levels of prosperity in their living conditions.
Healing proceeds from the inside out
The understanding that ‘to have is to be’ uproots one of man’s oldest prejudices and revolutionizes his conceptual patterns. It is not having that allows one to do and be, but it is being that allows one to do and then to have. Overcoming this form of collective hypnosis means leaving behind a flat vision of the world and accessing a vertical thought: there are layers of reality and infinite levels of being. ‘To have is to be’ is the key to understanding the most complex and vital issues concerning the life of humans and organizational systems, of every order and complexity, and explains the diversity of their destiny. If the dominant thought and the prevailing conception of our entire civilization, until now, has been: to have in order to be able to do and therefore to be, it is time to overthrow it. A man, a country, a civilization, have the capacity to do and to possess only what they can ‘dream’, contain within the range of their vision; the events and circumstances of their history and everything they encounter, for better or for worse, correspond perfectly to their level of being, to the breadth of their ideas, to the depth of their values. In nature as in economics all healing proceeds from the inner to the outer, from the invisible to the visible, from being to having.
The greatest economic truth is sealed in the motto of the European School of Economics: Visibilia ex Invisibilibus. Material, visible wealth is only the reflection of the inner prosperity of a man, of a company, of a nation. Wealth as well as poverty are the material expression of an invisibility: being. It is a process that proceeds from the inside to the outside.” The visible is a projection of the invisible, it depends on it as the shadow depends, in size and shape, on the object that projects it.
All that we can see, feel, touch and hear, physical objects and the whole business of existence, in all its variety, is but the projection of a world invisible to our senses, vertical to it.
Even in a man, all that he has been able to build originates from his invisibility, from his “dream,” and is manifested outwardly in the quality of his life and in the nature of the events that touch him.
A man could accidentally build a kingdom, he could accumulate money, property and castles, but the slightest crack in his “dream” would cause him to fail.
To have is to be
Having and being are one reality but on different planes of existence. Like the ends of the same stick. To have is to be. To have is the being that manifests itself in time and space. Being is having sublimated, the visible transcended and brought to a higher order. This discovery opens the door to an immense revolution in the ordinary perception of the world and is one of those shocks of thought capable of changing the course of an entire civilization.
What is being?
We are rarely aware that we are surrounded by invisibility, that we live in a world produced by the invisible; that everything that matters and is real in a man is invisible.
All our thoughts, feelings, fantasies, imaginations, dreams, are invisible. Our hopes, ambitions, secrets, fears, doubts, perplexities, uncertainties, and all our sensations, attractions, desires, aversions, loves and hates, belong to the invisible world of being.
Science and Consciousness
Every conquest in the visible, every increase in mankind’s ability to do and to have has always been anticipated by a conquest in being. Scientific knowledge and technological progress go hand in hand with the knowledge that man has of himself and with the level of awareness reached. Science and consciousness go hand in hand. The scientific progress and the ability to dispose of energies and resources in the history of our civilization appears to be regulated by the same law that in nature gives every species only the weapons and the force it is able to control. It is the same law that assigns deadly jaws and claws to animals with the best nervous system and less and less powerful weapons to those phylogenetically further back in the scale of control of aggression within and outside their own species. Whether it is an individual, an organization, a nation or an entire civilization, the ability to know, to do and to have depends on the level of being reached by that civilization, that nation, that organization, that individual.
“Knowing, doing, and having depend on being.”
The more you are, the more you know; the more you do, the more you have.
Observing a man or an organization, everyone can perceive the dimension of having, few and with more difficulty that of doing. The dimension of being remains invisible to most: that of the depth and breadth of ideas, values and “dreams”. In reality, the possession, availability and ownership of energies, resources and goods is only an effect, the projection of the ability to do, a function of it. In turn, doing and having depend on being, just as the shadow depends in size and shape on the object that projects it.
The time factor
What prevents us from seeing the perfect balance that exists between being and having is the time factor that, like a smokescreen, illusorily separates them. If, wonderfully, we could compress time, the years of a man’s life or the centuries of a civilization, we would see the perfect correspondence between being and having. They are the same, identical reality at different levels of existence. Sublimated having becomes being and materialized being, essentialized, becomes having.
The discovery of the identity between having and being deeply marks also the economic thought because if the having, and therefore also the production of wealth, is a projection of the being, the invisible in man and in organizations, it will have by right to be among the legitimate subjects of scientific research, even in the field of economics. Together with ethics, the system of beliefs, the system of moral values and, above all, the ‘dream’. For years, the European School of Economics has been carrying out a work of ‘overturning’ the ordinary vision of man, a revolution of thought that recognizes in the individual, in his dream, the cause of all wealth, the origin of all real change.
In order to dig down to the root of the real cause of the problems that face us, we have had to abandon the tracks already marked out, leave the ideological narrowness of traditional economic theories, which have proved unsatisfactory, and dare to formulate and verify new, broader and bolder hypotheses.
A superstitious faith
Old humanity, among its most harmful and inveterate habits, has that of always talking about progress. The common language is full of words like evolution and progress; but everything remains as it is. Nothing has been happening for millennia. The planetary problems, from poverty to crime, up to conflicts and wars, are the same as always, in the stone age as in the digital age. Improvement’ is the watchword of those who want to leave everything as it is; of those who indulge in an obsolete way of thinking, devoid of vitality. Believing that the world can be improved is the superstitious faith of a humanity that does not have the strength to deal with the root of its evil. A revolution of thought is needed. A reversal. Only the individual can do it.
The economy is made by men who love.
As long as humanity remains conflicted, prey to fear and anxiety, poverty is the economy. Crime is the economy. Anyone who discovers an antidote to poverty, to crime, to disease, will be thwarted, and even eliminated. The diseases of the planet, millennia old: endemic poverty of endless regions of the planet, conflict, crime, will perpetuate and exacerbate as long as man’s reason remains armed, as long as antagonisms such as poverty and wealth continue to struggle, not in the world, as opposite poles of existence, but in the consciousness of every man, together with: evil and good, suffering and pleasure, fear and love.
New universities are needed
Special schools and new universities are needed. Their first teaching must be the revolution of being, at the center of their every interest and at the top of their every priority must be the individual. In the being of the individual is the seed. We must begin from within. Like any healing, we must proceed from the inside out, cell by cell, individual by individual. It is an inside-out process.
Every other revolution in history has failed, whether political or economic. True transformation, the solution to humanity’s age-old problems, can only be the product of a revolution of the mind. We have to think differently.
Those who commit crime, those in poverty, have an inverted description of the world. He believes that the outside world can make him rich or happy; that it can promote him or make him safe. But the world, with all its events, and the whole business of existence, is but the effect, the consequence, the shadow cast by being. The world is the projection of our way of thinking and the economy is the reflection of our values and ideas. Whoever does not enrich himself in being, any good, any wealth will lose it.
The individual is the only reality.
Only the individual can transform society and improve it. The revolution is individual, it is the individual who must understand, harmonize, balance his being.
ESE is the university that has announced the ‘individual revolution’, that has put the individual, his intellectual and human preparation, at the center of every activity and at the top of every priority. ESE is a School of Being, announcing the advent of visionary Capitalism. Its mission is the preparation of a leadership that has eliminated selfishness, conflict, scarcity and ignorance of prejudices from its being, and is therefore capable of attracting and creating wealth; of realizing an altruistic, stable and happy society.
The mass is a ghost, a mechanism influenced by everything and anything…. It has no faith, it has no will of its own, it cannot create, it cannot love… And, in fact, it has never created anything. The individual is the only reality. It is the salt of the earth.
In the near future, and already today, everyone will want to see their uniqueness recognized, their dignity as an individual.
Educating. Ex-duco
Man is already ready. Intelligence and love are already in every man. I see it in every student. My experience is that we don’t need to add anything to students, but to make them come out with the beauty of their originality, their innate creativity. For this, there is no need for external teachings, but to peel away layers that have settled over the years: poor descriptions, conflicting visions of the world; negative emotions, destructive thoughts, false ideas that still govern humanity as it is.
The root of educate is to bring out. Ex-duco.
The mass university cannot do that. It cannot reach the individual. The traditional university system is not only obsolete, but extremely fragile. Therefore, ESE cannot accept the authority of tradition and cannot adhere to any of the pre-existing educational concepts.
The University of the Future
The challenges facing universities, like the Battle of Salamis, will be met with flotillas of small boats.
ESE has created a “distributed” university, a single, large university, organized into colleges and campuses each sized to accept a maximum of one hundred new students each year. Just as Greek cities erected their walls as far as the voice of an orator could reach, and were contained within the radius of this communication, so will the universities of the future have to have dimensional walls that allow them to contact all their students, to know their aspirations, their “dream”, to bring out their beauty and their uniqueness. The universities of the future will have the task of continuing, in a secular version, that work that synagogues, convents and ashrams have carried out for millennia and left unfinished, becoming receptacles for the irresponsible, refuges for men and women frightened of existence.
Many universities will disappear and only a few will be entrusted with the vital task of preparing the new leaders: visionary leaders, pragmatic dreamers, impeccable warriors, capable of overcoming the challenges facing our civilization through the qualities of being and the development of new senses: intuition, vision, the ‘dream’.
Happiness is economy.
The educational project of a ‘balanced’ man with apparently paradoxical qualities is thousands of years old. A man who harmonizes in himself shrewdness and innocence, reason and intuition, financial power and love. A bookish knowledge, imposed from the outside, the same for everyone, is a suffocation of the essence… it is false, it is illusory… The ‘true’ knowledge is already in every individual. We just have to ‘remember’, take a trip backwards in vertical memory. Dissect the dream and do what one loves.
Happiness is economics. Only happy men can create a stable and prosperous society.
