What's Next?...

Naivety is charming in a child; sad (and disturbing) in an adult i.e any fully functioning person over the age of 45... wake up people - the oligarchy rules!

And if you accept that as a truth, what are you going to DO about it?  Accept it and live under its shackles, or reject, resist, overthrow?

Maybe it's too late to do anything about it... 

I think we are beyond the point of no return... 

My 'sense' of what's happening in the world is usually about two years ahead of the curve... and it's usually pretty accurate - say somewhere between 80-100%...

And what I've been seeing/sensing coming (for about the last six months), is societal breakdown on the back of planet degradation, financial collapse, food and water shortages...

I'm not alone in these views; indigenous elders have been warning about this coming for hundreds (if not thousands) of years, western mystics have foreshadowed it, and even hard-headed academics who are not necessarily in tune with 'energy' are stepping out into the open on this...

Some are calling what is coming the "Post-Industrial Stone Age"...

And why do I think it's going to get so bad? 

WE ARE LIVING IN A CLOSED LOOP.... 

ENERGY CANNOT BE CREATED OR DESTROYED - IT CAN ONLY BE TRANSFORMED...

SO, IF WE ARE LIVING ON A PLANET THAT HAS FINITE ENERGY/RESOURCES, IT IS COMPLETELY ILLOGICAL TO THINK WE CAN HAVE INFINITE GROWTH... it just does not make sense, no matter how you look at it...

We're literally trashing our planet, contaminating and killing the earth and the waters and the air, damaging and disrupting natural cycles like the weather, driving other life-forms to extinction, and with our uncontrolled population growth, we've been spreading like a viral plague...

It's been said that if we wanted all people on the planet to live as westerners do, we'd need the resources of at least four Earths...

Most of the planet's wealth and power is concentrated in the hands of less than 3% of the planet's population.   Everything's been commodified.   Now it's not just the Third World poor who can't afford food, water or shelter - millions in the west are in the same boat...

Here in the US, the housing market has not yet finished its downward spiral; each week foreclosures go up and house prices go down...

The real unemployment/underemployment rate is hovering around 30%; 44 million people receive food stamps and 25% of American children are living in poverty.

This in the richest country in the world, while trillions of dollars are being spent on senseless wars/fighting for control of far off places.... 

In one news story, they tell us that X number of jobs have been created last month... at the next news bulletin, they say that unemployment has climbed yet again... NEVER ONCE, DO YOU GET BOTH SETS OF INFORMATION IN THE SAME NEWS STORY, so that you can tell the number of jobs lost EXCEED the number of jobs created...

Things are worse now than during the Depression, but no one wants to call it that; instead, this time we're living through the Great Recession!

The worst the 'experts' will say is that it will take several years to climb out of this pit...

But our way of life (social structure, economic and political philosophies) got us into this mess, and continuing on with the same ideas and actions will never get us out of it...

And I believe the oligarchs know this... but knowing this, they continue to push us all down this path... they appear willing, determined even, to suck the very LIFE out of us and the earth, the mother who carries us all...

So what's next?   Where do we take this knowledge and build on it?

Maybe the best we can do is get together with like-minded people...

Get as far off the grid as we can...

Create connections and networks and ways of living that make minimum impact on the earth and her resources and wait it out...

While we're waiting it out, support each other and work together to come up with a different system of social organisation - perhaps "thrivalism" in small communities, perhaps a resource-based economy... 

Maybe a "Triple P" society, where the focus is Planet, People, Prosperity...

Where, before we make any decision and take any action, we ask ourselves:

Is it good for the Planet?

Is it good for all the People?

Does it bring Prosperity (which is different to profit)?

If the answer to any of these questions is "no", then we scrap whatever the idea/plan/action is...

What do you think?

The Universal Human - The New Mainstream

 

Radical new possibilities dependent on conscious evolution...

This Is Where The Slavery Starts...

Brainwashed to obey...

Is this what we want for our children and the future?

I don't...

Are You Driven By Altruism Or Self-Interest?

What's true for you?

Death Spiral - Crises in Capitalism...

We're in a death spiral - an economic, social and societal meltdown.... billions hurting, with a favoured few fiddling while Rome burns...

How did this happen?

Black Friday Special: The Story of Stuff...

Here in the US, there's a day called Black Friday... and no, it's not called that because it's a Friday the 13th...

It's the Friday after Thanksgiving, when Americans are urged, encouraged, enticed, manipulated, pressured to go on an orgy of spending (using money they don't have) so that retail receipts/profits can go into the "black"... and it marks the lead-up to the gross excess that is Christmas here...

 

It appears few people question why we would need all this "stuff".   Does it add to our quality of life, does it fulfill us, does it fill a hole in our lives, in our selves, in our souls?

Now here's something you might like to know about the origins, creation and final destination of all that "stuff"...

Will this make a difference to your choices this year?

 

When Neutrality Equals Complicity

 

I was challenged on the Save Seattle Schools blog (link on the sidebar) a couple of days ago, as to whether I ever have a neutral gear?

And the answer is: "No, I don't have a 'neutral' gear when it comes to  education 'deform' and all the many aliases and disguises it comes under/uses to attempt to slink under the wire"...

In my opinion, it's immoral and obscene... and completely undemocratic... half a dozen uber rich people have decided what public education should look like and they're going around using their money and influence to ensure they get it to be that way (and to make sure they and their friends make mountains of money in the process)... and we and our kids are mere pawns...

And here in Seattle it's being pushed through regardless of process or law...

I don't think I have ever encountered anything more arrogant and completely disrespectful in my life...

And this is not about creating a great education system that benefits all kids... in fact, it's not about the kids at all...

It's about oligarchy, it's about privatising the last of the public institutions in this country, it's about exercising complete power and control, it's abusive, it's nothing more than a nasty,  horrible, disgusting example of domestic violence, played out in the societal and economic arena...

And one of the side benefits for those pushing the deform agenda is all the public taxpayer money there is to be siphoned off into their own back pockets...

So I do what I do to highlight where individuals, groups and institutions come from and what their agenda really is, because it seems to me that many people in this town (and country) are not informed...

And if they are, they seem not to get the ramifications of what they support, in the broader picture... or they're sitting in total denial, with their fingers in their ears humming/singing "I can't hear you"... and I can't/won't shut up while that's going on...


There are groups all over this country fighting this deform agenda...

Here's a sample:
 

Parents Across America
Parents and Kids Against Standardised Testing
Support Our Schools
Uniting for Kids
SOS Million Teacher March
Fair Testing
Stop RTTT
Schools Matter
NYC Public School Parents

All acknowledge what is really going on...

You might like to read this:

privatising war and education

and this:

are we handing education over to corporations?

and this:

Klein to advise Newscorp on financing startups providing digital services to education

and this:

NYC Schools: Democratic Public Education, or Corporate Widget-Maker?

and then watch this:

"standardized retardation!"

It's like Germany in the 30s - going on in broad daylight, right under our noses... and we are letting it...

First, Do No Harm....

My spiritual practice is based on the tenet: First,  Do No Harm and John Wesley said:
 

"Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can."

~John Wesley (1703 –1791) Church of England cleric & theologian, Methodist movement founder
 

Does education, and education "deform", first "do no harm"?

I have been thinking about that more and more, since I wrote the letter to my child's teacher, principal and school community, withdrawing him from standardised testing and relieving them of any responsibility and liability for his academic achievement.

As the weeks have gone by, and I've processed the 100% positive feedback I have received on the stand I am taking, and I look at my son as we go to school everyday, I wonder - withdrawing him from testing - is that enough?

There are so many ways in which we don't honour our children as free human beings, and it seems to me the worst is yet to come - in some respects we are going back in time to much darker, almost feudal days...

Merit Pay Turns Children Into Workers

In many ways, I share some of Alfie Kohn's thoughts on education. 

Learning is a lifelong activity – it doesn’t just happen in the time period between 5 – 17 years of age, within the confines of school walls.   I don’t think the purpose of educating for life is to learn academics...  I think the purpose is to turn out a well rounded, balanced, confident, happy, fulfilled individual - physically, intellectually, socially, emotionally, spiritually and to develop all the talents you were born with, not just the intellect, so that you can contribute the best of yourself to your community...

But School = Prison for many kids, something they have to do, that they don’t have a say in...

Do any of us think abut how we would feel if someone came up to us and said:

“For the next 13 years or so, you will do this for five days of the week, whether you like it or not... You don’t get any say in how you spend the day or who you spend it with... 

You will stand when we say so, sit when we say so, talk when we say so, write when we say so, read when we say so, eat when we say so, exercise when we say so, do art (if you're lucky) when we say so... 

You will spend at least five hours of your day in this fashion and you may - if we choose - have up to one hour to be somewhat free and unrestrained - but even then, if you don’t obey us and do exactly as we instruct, in the manner we instruct, you will have that free time rescinded...”

And kids are supposed to believe this is all in their best interests, that the pay-off  (good job, a safe place in society, relationships, happiness, a house - and a mortgage to go with your student debt - and a generous retirement  before slipping into the night-time of death) is worth it and there is something wrong with them if they can’t or won’t conform, or enjoy it, or do their best …

I see the current model as a confining, controlling one of indoctrination into/moulding for the system and it physically hurts me inside (a twisting of the gut) to see my son being changed/restricted every day... 

So, each day I am dithering about his continued participation in formal schooling....

I want freedom for him - freedom for us all... But is that my projection, coming from deep within, my own rejection of, revolt against the dynamic of power and control...   

And am I gambling with his future if I take him out and let him 'educate', ‘unschool’ himself in something like a Sudbury model school, or even at home... (Or am I just preparing him for a different world, one that will come when this system finally collapses, as it surely will?)...

And I wonder, if that is how it is for me, how must it be for teachers who are being forced by their masters to put children through what most of them must know is not real 'education'?   I wonder how they stand there day after day jumping through the hoops a sick society is putting in front of them?

And that is not a criticism - truly... I know that place; I have been in a place where I was asked/expected to do things that I knew intellectually, morally, spiritually were not "for the highest good".   I couldn’t justify it, couldn’t find a good enough reason worth the pay-off and I had to lay it all on the line to stay in personal integrity... 

I am guessing many teachers face that dilemma daily...

My son's teacher is a fine teacher, who is used to mustering and employing all her talents (artistic, dramatic, musical) in the business of teaching her class whether that be in math, language arts, whatever...

But she is being compelled by her principal and the district to teach to the test, in content and form - worksheets, worksheets and more worksheets, formatted exactly as kids will find them on the tests including multiple choice answers with bubbles to fill in...  

It's killing her - the internal conflict and stress is literally making her sick... 

And it's killing me to see my son struggle with boredom in that...

It’s turning him off - now he says “school is boring, math is boring, too much sitting, too much writing, it’s too hard, I don’t get enough time to just read (currently his completely favourite activity), there’s not enough time to eat lunch, recess is too short”...

My son is not unique - this is happening to hundreds of thousands of kids - we are killing their spirit/creativity/curiosity/enthusiasm... I think that's a crime - which is why I do what I do against education deform...

But stopping education deform is not enough;   what was happening in classrooms before education deform wasn’t good either.   

If I know the system is broken and I don’t agree with the values of the system, and the system won't let me change it (but will let others with money change it as they see fit, in ways that I think will harm all children), what do I, as a parent, do?   

What does a teacher do?

I want to know what we as a people do, when the system is so broken it can’t be fixed?  

How do we get our world to a place where we really nurture/educate our children in a holistic way…

Do you do the best you can within the bad system, or create something outside the system?

Its Been a While...

Well... its been nearly a month since I last posted... something to do with it being summer, birthdays (mine and my son's), daughter visiting on her way back to Australia from Istanbul, personal stuff, public education/school district activism and focusing on growing my business/practice - there's still the rent to pay, groceries to buy, utilities to keep from getting cut off, petrol for the car blah, blah, blah...

Why aren't we at the point described in one of the Star Trek movies where everyone's basic needs are provided for because we have the resources and technology to do that?   Buckminster Fuller talked about that in the 60s and Robert Theobald proposed a full unemployment society a decade or more ago.  

An NPR report today focused on the possibility of teleportation: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128910996&sc=fb&cc=fp

Don't get me wrong - I was so excited to see the report.   I thought - "wow, its about time" - because I've always thought that anything we can imagine already exists in some other place/time and if its all about frequencies, we only need to resonate at the same frequency to bring it into our here and now... Shamans and mystics have been doing that for eons.

But I also thought: if we're working on that, why can't we be working on a new socio-economic system that solves the problems we face in the world - population issues, health, education, housing, clean water, the environment, conflict, poverty, debt, sustainability, not enough work to go around, failure to treasure the arts and anything which doesn't contribute to GDP/GNP...

Its so depressing to think that until capitalism has completely sucked the lifeblood out of this planet, our mother, and all of her living inhabitants, until the skies are grey and the seas are black and the land is dry, devoid of trees and infertile - we will not find the will to live differently....

Would it be such a loss if our species went extinct?  Really, we're just fleas on an elephant's back.   The day we finally step irreversibly, irretrievably over the line, Gaia would maybe just do a huge shrug and throw us off.   Gaia would survive, repair herself and thrive, as James Lovelock thinks http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8594000/8594561.stm 

And because energy can only be transmuted, not created or destroyed, the individual and collective 'energy' that is each of us and all of us would surely manifest in another form somewhere else in this awesome creation called LIFE... 

 
 

Counting for Nothing - Women's (non) Value in the World's Accounting Systems

 

From TUC radio: 

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/7310

"There is something fundamentally wrong with the way we measure the well being of a society. In our upside-down system of accounting (GNP & GDP) war is productive, misery caused by it is not taken into account and a dead tree is better than a living forest."

 
This is a radio version of the feminist economics film about the New Zealand author and former member of parliament Marilyn Waring, directed by the Oscar winning Canadian director Terre Nash.

http://emma2.radio4all.net/pub/archive/07.08.03/0628waringone.mp3

http://emma2.radio4all.net/pub/archive/07.08.03/0628waringtwo.mp3

The End Times?

Hopi prophecy: "And the oceans shall turn black".....

Volunteering - Service or Exploitation?

I'd like to make a point about volunteering.
  

I've done my share of volunteering in my life; however, I've always thought that volunteering was a double-edged sword.   

Volunteering ensures that our world keeps running in a somewhat humane manner, that the social supports are there to help those who can't help themselves.


In fact, volunteering and other unpaid work is an entire economy unto itself, without which much of this world would cease to function. 


And there are some economists  (Marilyn Waring for example, in her book "Counting for Nothing") who've made the point that our current national accounting systems seriously misrepresent what's really going on in our world by not counting volunteering and unpaid work, undertaken mostly by women and children. 


Volunteering lets society and its institutions off the hook in fulfilling essential functions/delivering essential services to its citizens, and is also exploitative of people.

I see many non-profits operating from a commercial business model, but paying their staff relatively low wages/salaries.   They claim lack of funds for this disparity in pay between the private and non-profit sector.   

And there's an underlying implication that people ought to be OK about being paid less because its for a 'worthy cause', they're giving of themselves and a degree of altruism is required to prove they're sincere in their motivation.

I think this contributes to the continuation of the imbalance we have in our world.

Firstly because it sends the message that someone else will come along and clean up the mess...

And secondly, those issues are not important anyway, because we use volunteers so much and don't pay staff enough to show we value the work.

Life, Education and Corporatist Education 'Reform'

HEALTHY LIVING IS FOSTERED BY LIFE-LONG LEARNING AND COMMUNITY, not by a narrowly-defined curricula having little relevance to the parameters of daily life, taught over a limited number of years, that is designed primarly to turn out people who will fit with the minimum of fuss, bother, protest and COST into a narrowly-defined range of 'useful', 'productive' (as in profit-making) occupations... 

Which is how corporatist education reformers think the world should be run - teach children what they need to know to be good workers and good consumers and to do that with the minimum of deviation from the norm, minimum individuality, minimum dissent...

The problem with life in a 21st century western capitalist economy fashioned by corporations, is that PEOPLE, even the young and very old - are seen as units of economic production...

Society (or rather big business) is willing to invest just enough in these people (in some countries more than in others - such as basic infrastructure, public health and public education) to get them to maturity, where they will become 'productive' units - working and creating a profit for their private industry employers, paying taxes and consuming goods created via the process of exploitation of natural and human resources... 

Adults are expected to bring a Return on Investment (ROI) for society/corporations; if they don't/wont' fit the mould, are temperamentally unsuited or are too ill/unstable, then they're considered to be worthless, a drain on resources, a DOG in Boston Consulting Group product matrix terms, rather than a STAR or a CASH COW...

And of course, this 'moulding' of people is not a natural, organic, healthy expression of the human spirit, so what the corporatists see as 'dysfunction' breaks out and increases as the pressure to fit square pegs into round holes is increased. This is not dysfunction at all, but a completely predictable expression of a natural response to unnatural pressures and expectations... 

Corporatists are willing to allow some of that 'dysfunction' and rebellion to continue only as long as it doesn't affect profitability beyond a certain point. There's a certain level of acceptable loss in 'human capital' they're willing to carry...

We've had that cycle occurring over the past 200 years.   Public education sprang up in response to the need to convert and move a rural agrarian labour pool into the cities, to man the factories and keep the machines of the Industrial Revolution running...

Over time, profits grew, standards of living generally improved.   But there was an (unintended) side effect of universal education.   Workers - thanks to education giving them the ability to read - developed an independent mentality and wanted a greater share of the pie their sweat created for their bosses.   There was an increase in rebellion and the ability to communicate and mobilise that rebellion into action

And what were once the favoured positions of the upper middle and upper classes, began to be infiltrated by people who came from much 'humbler' roots... the rich were being told to move over and share...

The problem with that is that the rich don't want to share.   Capitalism is the ultimate pyramid-ponzi scheme, sucking up wealth from the base and middle of the pyramid and concentrating it at the top.  And those at the top - quite naturally really, if you think about - don't want to move down the ladder or move over to share their place in the sun with the masses.

That period of liberal education and associated rebellion culminated in the 60s and early 70s, at which point business got seriously worried and decided to take back control of public education.   

The current CORPORATIST EDUCATION REFORM movement is headed by the Billionarie Boys' club of Bill Gates, Eli Broad, convicted junk bond king Mike Milken, economist Milton Friedman, the Waltons and a handful of others, plus banks and hedge funds.   They're working to privatise public education, deprofessionalise the teaching corp, and resegregate schools across the country, hurting mostly children of colour and low income communities through Race to the Top and the viral spread of charter schools.

The movement has been working quite deliberately behind the scenes to push its agenda into public education.  See this from the Broad Foundation’s Annual Report for 2009:

“The election of President Barack Obama and his appointment of Arne Duncan, former CEO of Chicago Public Schools, as the U.S. secretary of education, marked the pinnacle of hope for our work in education reform. In many ways, we feel the stars have finally aligned.

With an agenda that echoes our decade of investments - charter schools, performance pay for teachers, accountability, expanded learning time and national standards - the Obama administration is poised to cultivate and bring to fruition the seeds we and other reformers have planted.”

As Dora Taylor wrote on the Seattle Ed 2010 blog http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/:
"If anyone ever doubted that our Secretary of Education has the same agenda as the Broad Foundation, I believe the above quote will dispel any such thoughts. The relationship between the Broad Foundation and Arne Duncan started when Duncan was CEO of Chicago Public Schools, if not earlier, and according to Eli Broad, it is blossoming for him and other education reformites.

If the hundreds of millions of dollars that the Broad has spent and urged others to spend on this movement had instead been spent on school districts, more teachers to create smaller class sizes, and curriculum materials that are lacking in the classroom, we would all be much farther ahead without people who have no idea about what goes in a classroom dictating to others who do how they should teach and instead creating a high-pressure, factory like atmosphere in our schools."

See here, for the 'how to' for would-be reformers to get involved in shaping public education, while AT THE SAME TIME MAXIMISING THEIR ROI IN SELLING PRODUCTS INTO AND PRIVATISING THE SAME PUBLIC EDUCATION...
http://www.biztools4schools.org/tools_for_action_overview
 

It makes me sick to my stomach... 

The Laws of Attraction and Manifesting Abundance: The Missing Piece of the Puzzle

So many of us have been working hard on mastering the Laws of Attraction and manifesting material abundance. We have many resources available to support us in this process including books and films such as The Secret, teachers such as Abraham Hicks, Wayne Dyer, Michael Bernard Beckwith and so many others. 

Some few of us are experiencing a degree of success, while many others are floundering, feeling stuck, feeling like failures because there's been no outward change in our circumstances despite all the visioning, affirmations, visualizations and trying to move our financial ‘set points’ and core beliefs about worthiness. Why might this be?

My guidance tells me that we're missing a piece of the puzzle. The concepts in the teachings are real and true. They're necessary for us to master so that we move out of our sense of victim-hood and helplessness and into our true heritage as divine, sacred, omni-creative beings –  in essence, God.

But there's another realization that needs to come once one begins to understand and play with these concepts. And that's an understanding about what true abundance is, why we want to manifest it and what are we going to do with it once we achieve that mastery?

Many of us want to manifest material abundance to fill a hole in ourselves. We want abundance to fill the hole of fear, the hole of lack, the hole of anxiety, the hole of low self confidence, the hole of separation, the hole of feeling 'less than'. We want material abundance to give us a sense of security that we're in control and safe in our world, that we'll finally be recognized as being someone worthwhile.

Unfortunately, all of these things we are chasing are illusions. All we have is the 'now', this very moment that I'm writing these words and you're reading them. This 'now' might be followed by another moment of 'now', a series of moments of 'now', but there's no guarantee of that, no foreknowledge of when the end of my physical journey will come – in the next 30 seconds or in 20 years' time.

So perhaps there's not so much sense in trying to create and store up security for the future, in amassing material abundance as a hedge against uncertainty and anxiety? Besides, how much of what we create can we fit in our coffins? How many rooms in your house can you physically occupy, in any one moment? How many pairs of shoes can you wear at any one time? How many pairs of shoes can you wear out in your lifetime? How many cars can you drive? How much food can you eat at any one meal, how many books can you read and CDs can you listen to, in any one moment?

Did you know that most indigenous people lived within their environments taking only what they needed and using every piece of whatever they took? And they did this in a sacred manner, asking permission and giving thanks to the energy that was giving up its life so that they could live.

How often do you drive by those storage complexes dotted along most major arterial roads and think about the origin of the resources spent in creating them, and about the waste of all that 'stuff' gathered inside those units? How often do you think about the feelings and life events of the people who have shut away these parts of their lives but, for whatever reason, are not ready or willing to let these aspects of themselves go? Is this where things are at with you, or someone close to you?

The greatest, most powerful manifestor ever to have lived on Earth was the man/prophet called Jesus. He performed 'miracles', turning water into wine at a wedding feast and feeding thousands at a gathering from a few loaves and fishes. But did he manifest a position of power and social acceptance for himself? Did he manifest lavish homes, an extensive wardrobe, hire servants or a donkey and cart to travel around? Did he align himself with the rich, the powerful and the merchants and extol the virtues of material possessions? He didn't. Instead, he lived a humble life, moving from moment to moment with the flow of his journey, walking lightly on the Earth, trusting that his needs would be met and giving what he could to those who had even less than he did, those needing love and healing. The Buddha walked a similar path – he gave up all his riches, all his material possessions and lived most simply. And yet he did not appear to experience lack.

My guidance tells me that yes, we can master the techniques of manifesting abundance and this is a good thing – abundance brings the capacity to have more choices. But with that power comes responsibility and a requirement to be conscious of the consequences that come with the act of creating.

When we step into our creative, manifesting power, we step into new realities or paradigms on the spiritual, intellectual and emotional levels. But we don’t step into a new physical, Planet Earth, we don’t teleport into a parallel universe, a new 3D reality. We are still living here, sharing this time and space with 6 billion other humans and countless other life forms. And this planet, energetically and physically, is a closed environment/system.

We are all connected in this web of life. What I do, what I create, what I CAUSE in my little corner of the web, has ramifications, consequences, EFFECTS in other parts of the web. According to Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-winning economist, if the entire earth’s human population were to live as we do here in the West, we would need the resources of five or six Earths. And that’s not a possible reality we can co-create, no matter how spiritually aware, conscious, mature, adept we are.
 

When I take from the web more than I need in the moment, someone, something elsewhere in the web has to do without, has to pay a cost. When I buy in bulk at Sam’s Club or Costco, I am encouraged by a false sense of security and plenty to use wastefully, to forget about the natural and human energies that were spent in producing what I am using so carelessly. I am encouraged not to think about the person who was paid less than a living wage to enable me to use more than my share, more than my need in precious resources.

Some would argue that people in other parts of the world, in other parts of the web, live different lives and have different needs. Is it not more of a ‘truth’ that often they need more than they have and we, even many of the ‘poor’ amongst us in the West, need less?

Perhaps, when we are feeling discouraged about our ability to manifest ‘plenty’ in our lives, we might choose to spend some time thinking about what real, lasting ‘plenty’ means and why we are desiring so much more than what we need in the moment. Perhaps we might choose to acknowledge and be truly grateful for the ‘plenty’ we already do have. Perhaps we might choose to focus more of our time and energy manifesting and sharing abundance with the other travelers – human and otherwise - co-journeying through life with us…

Capitalism, Systems Theory and Sustainability

When I was living in Australia, I was involved with a social change group called Reworking Tomorrow/Australia Connects, and we were discussing community and social systems other than the current ones in place, that might bring a more healthy human and natural environment into being... 

There was a a lot systems theory debating going on, as well as discussion about sustainable community, human affairs/decision making management models... the concept of the empty centre, where there is no leader or group of leaders, but where the community is involved in all decision making and concensus decisions arise organically from respectful discussion and listening and more discussion...

I personally am interested in the idea of 'all for one and one for all' because under systems theory, the needs of the individual are made subordinate to the needs of the group... something that is accepted in many eastern cultures and is the complete opposite of the individualism that is so widespread in the west...

But I can't agree that the needs of the group/society should take pre-eminance over the needs of the individual, as speaking of an organic model, if there is dysfunction/dis-ease in a component of the group, there is dysfunction in the whole, it being the web of life and we all being connected etc... I think there needs to be some sort of balance between the individual and society...

Its interesting that the 'West' has moved so far from community and extended family/clan as a way of living... and we have moved so far that even the nuclear family no longer exists... I see the US and its political and social systems as being a very clear example of that and the subsequent consequences... this society is one of the most stridently individualistic; there is no community and no coherent social framework - its a loose grouping of fractured cells really...

There's a huge cost to the whole in that reality... we prosper or we fail mostly by our own efforts... when we prosper, we, rather than the group, profit by the results... when we fail, it costs the group an enormous amount in social and financial terms... and as the group (body) has a vested interest in the wellbeing of its members (cells), one would think the group would see the wisdom in supporting the members to achieve their greatest potential... but in this society, where profit is the ruling ideology, that very self-evident truism, is (purposely) overlooked ... because if capitalism - the ultimate form of individualism - took that thinking on board, it would have no justification to exist as a political and monetary system...

Its kinda weird and doesnt make any sense... capitalism is shooting itself in the foot because this form cannot continue indefinitely... because its based on the exploitation of resources, ultimately its a closed entropic system which will collapse in on itself...