Lifting the blinds, and curing PISD
My PISD – my Post-India Stress Disorder – has been cured!!! Well, at least for the most part, for now.
This post concludes over a month’s worth of writings on re-adjusting to life in Sydney post India’s turning my worldview up-side-down experience. I feel more humble – with a clearer understanding just how much I don’t know and how much I will probably never know. I realise that while I can make a positive impact on the state of our present and future worlds, there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
I think have used my writing on this blog as a form of therapy to deal with what I saw to be massive issues : population, inequality, capitalism, and our global ecological crisis.
Out of this I have come to an understanding of my Capitalistic cynicism and my World Peace idealism, and I feel good about that.
I have come to realise that while I’ll always search for The Truth and strive to live The Truth, my truth will probably always be different from your truth, and that’s okay. No matter how similar or different our perceptions of Truth are, the best thing we can do is accept each other person’s right to that perception and not want to change it. No one’s perception is ever static anyway – The Truth, or at least one’s perception of The Truth, is a constantly changing conception.
Similar to this unobtainable truth, while “World Peace” appears to be further out of reach than ever before, I think it is still a worthwhile objective.
Never say never, and never say forever.
Peace may be possible, but as soon as it is reached it will surely disappear. This is the Yin and Yang. The Way of the universe. The way of my own mind, body and soul. The rollercoaster – that is life.
Life may seem more harsh from this perspective, but it also seems more authentic. And I’m ready for it. While fantasy and idealims are fun, at least for the moment I want something real.
George Carlin and Bill Hicks tell it like it is:
I guess now that I see both sides, and glimpse the dynamics that lay beyond, I just have to shrug my shoulders and say – peace may be an absolutely impossible objective but, like the pursuit for an unattainable Truth, I can enjoy the process of striving for it. While I’m sure these experiences and reflections will influence the rest my life, I’m now well and truly ready to start something new.
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What makes more sense?
What makes more sense?
1. That God selected ONE species to be his “chosen” species, abandoning all His other creations to nothingness.
OR
2. That God values ALL of his creations. The idea that humans are the only creations with souls, is a narrative created by humans not God.
What makes more sense?
1. That God selected ONE group of people to be His “chosen people, to help them conquer other groups of people (as long as they obeyed Him) and to punish all other people in the world who strive to discover Him and His will.
OR
2. That this group of people crowned themselves God’s chosen people, and that in times where these people won battles they believed it was because of their obedience to God, while in times of trouble their scapegoat was to disobedience to God.
What makes more sense?
1. That the world was created in 6 days, 6,000 years ago, by a God who is an entity separate from the world, that watches the world from afar. And yet is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent?
OR
2. That some component of the universe has always existed, and this has be personified as God. That the universe is, like the breath of God, currently expanding, and one day it will compress back to a single quantum atom at which time the process of expansion will start again. That the process of creation, destruction and recreation never ends, hence presenting the beautiful process and nature of “God”. A never-ending process of yin and yang, good and evil, diametrical opposites that allow us, (and God) to know the other.
What makes more sense?
1. That carbon and other dating methods are inaccurate by millions/billions of years, that evolution is incorrect, and that the 30,000-year history of the aborigines is a complete fabrication.
OR
2. That the biblical account of Genesis is, like many other (very similar) creation stories about human beings that lived between 5-2000 years ago, a mythological symbolic account that explained the origins of life in a non-literal sense.
What makes more sense?
1. That God selected one point in time, that is, 2000 years ago, to impregnate a human woman to bare His one son, who is also an incarnation of Himself, in order to save humanity and provide an opportunity for people born lucky enough to hear this story, to have a relationship with Him. That this path to heaven does not come through how people live their lives, but they come from His “grace” that allows “anyone who believes in Him” – and the biblically narratated account of His divine Son dying on a cross and physically rising again for my, or your, sin, can have a relationship with God and go to heaven when they die.
OR
2. That God would love ALL the human (and non-human) beings He created and continues and will always continue to create over billions and zillions of years – before our universe’s beginning, and after it will end. That each group of people, through myriad circumstances, have developed a unique relationship with “Him” (referring to a personification of what is not human nor of any gender), discovering different aspects of the macrocosmic, omnipotent, omnipresent entity to which we are all a part of.
What makes more sense?
1. That all the Mayans and Incas in South America, the Aborigines in Australia, the Chinese, Japanese, Indians – all the people that were born into other cultures and see the world through a different lens that they have been brought up in, people who believe they have a relashionship with God – are actually wrong and are worshiping false gods, and hence will go to hell unless they repent and abandon the beliefs of their ancestors, and believe in the Christian God and Jesus Christ His son.
OR
2. That none of these religions have discovered the whole of who (or what) “God” is?
Is it possible that by exploring each tradition in it’s historical context, alongside the ongoing scientific and astronomical discoveries, that we can together continue to uncover more about the nature of the powers driving the universe?
What makes more sense?
1. That one simple story behind every incredible complexity that this world has to offer, was magically captured in One Holy Book, which was gathered, translated and interpreted without any human political motivations entering the decision process.
OR
2. That all Holy Books contain historical complexities surrounding the “truth”, “myth”, “Midrash”, myriad political intentions, and mis-translations, and that they as much as one strives to discover the “Truth” in it, there will always be different interpretations, and mis-interpretations of passages when taken outside their original language and context.
What makes more sense?
1. That God created such a narrative of the battle of good vs evil, of creation 6000 years ago, of one saviour in one part of the world 2000 years ago – all so that He can still continue to choose who He wants to hear this narrative, who He will reveal Himself to and have a relationship with…
OR
2. That man made up this narrative over thousands of years of a developing human consciousness, evolving moralities, political motivations, desires to know where we came from, to feel special, to deal with the inequalities and injustices in life, to provide hope of justice and eternal life, and to provide a grand-narrative of purpose and rid sense of emptiness and meaningless.
What makes more sense?
1. That Jesus is a “liar, lunatic, or Lord.”
OR
2. That the Bible contains some flaws.
There are many alternative scenarios than Jesus being a liar, a lunatic, or Lord. This manipulative argument is based on the presumption that everything in the Bible is literally true – a presumption to which any thinking person can see is an biased argument. Even if you allow for evidence from within this paradigm, does the bible claim not to contain mythos? Does it claim to contain no error? Even if God inspired the words, through translations and interpretations you can be guaranteed there are errors (and in other writings I have listed but a few of the many).
Think about it – couldn’t the virgin birth and rising from dead have a deep symbolic meaning without literally being true. Could these parts have been added when, after Jesus’ death his teachings were being transformed into a Jewish social revolution and then a religion taken to the Roman pagans? The fact that many pagan gods were born of a virgin died and rose from the dead, for example Ishtar from who Easter is based upon, infers that this scenario is a highly reasonable one to consider. Could Jesus be a prophet, a fantastic example of how we can know God? Could he be a mythical legend inspired by a number of heroic social and spiritual revolutionaries at the time? Maybe.
…
What makes more sense?
1. That God used various men to write, edit, collate, translate and interpret the Bible – exactly the way that He wanted it to be done – bridging the language and cultural barriers as if everyone understands everything the way he intended.
OR
2. That men wrote the books of the Bible, feeling inspired by God but remaining human and hence fallible. In the version of events and “facts” that they had access to, open to political interference, additions and manipulation, open to errors in translation and open to much debate over various ways to interpret the words in different circumstances that the rader finds themselves?
Debates over the divinity of Jesus, the Trinity… and existence of so many contradicting divisions of Christianity demonstrates the openness for such a human filtering process.
Jesus was an incarnation of God himself, and simultameously God’s one and only Son, and that a belief in this God-Man’s special birth, life’s teachings, humiliating and horrifying death, miraculous resurrection and incomprehensible ascension in to the earth’s atmosphere (to where-ver Heaven supposedly is located in the sky)
What makes more sense?
1. That one groups are the rare lucky people that God has chosen to be provided with the particular circumstances that lead us to the “right’ religion – the “right’ relationship with God through the belief in the “right” interpretation of history and historical writings.
OR
2. That humans of a particular culture and particular period made up the exclusiveness side of this story, that writings were manipulated so that the powerful could control the masses.
Might all religions record the experiences of various people with the great divine power, not with “other fake gods”? Is it possible that we do not know everything there is to know about God? Doesn’t God have a right to interact with different people however he wants to? Is it possible that by saying that God chose us and not people in Australia 500-years ago, that we are the ones playing God? Who are we to say what God is thinking, planning and choosing? Who are we to interpret a book out of their written context, and applying it to different cultures within this globalised society where such an attitude can have a rippling violent effect? Might it be better to let God be God, and us humans be humans? Might we be better to keep open toward all the humans of the world and seek to discover everything we can about the historical relationships between non-Western humans and God?
Does it really make sense that people in other cultures, whose circumstances have led them to belief Jesus was a human and not a God-incarnate – are sent to hell by no fault of their own? Why – if there is one God, and people in other cultures, and people who have lived for thousands of years seeking God within these cultures -would God reject them and accord that only one culture of people in one period of time, will have the correct story.
What makes more sense?
1. That life is a battle between good and evil, that people who choose to do evil will be punished in hell – an afterlife of eternal suffering.
OR
2. That those who do good in the world largely to so due to their life experiences, and that whots who do “evil” do so as a consequence of theirs?
Those who steal do so because they can’t afford to eat, or maybe because of an addiction to a drug they have developed due to a parent dying when they are young, or maybe just because they have been brought up with the overtly materialistic dreams that they hence believe will make them happy, even if it means harming other sto get there. Those who murder often do so because their psychy is completely fucked up by whatever circumstances they have withstood in their lifetime. Our definition of good, bad, and justice, and our knowledge about how to move toward peace, is an ever-evolving process. As our knowledge grows it may not mean wemove toward it however could it be structural circumstances that lead this to be?
…
In summary, think about these questions:
- Why would God create populations of people for thousands of years before Jesus, on unreachable areas of the world, eg the Australian Aborigines, only to send them to hell?
- Is it more likely that God chose one group of people, or that they crowned this title to themselves?
- Don’t you think that God would be powerful enough to love us without having to come to earth in human form so that he could forgive us? If you are all powerful, can’t you just forgive without people pleading for that forgiveness? Can’t you be happy with your achievements without needing someone else’s applaud?
- What is more likely: God incarnated Himself as a human ONCE in the whole history of the universe, or that God incarnates Himself in each and every one of us, and in every life orm, every cell and every quantum atom that makes up our universe?
- What is more likely: Jesus was a God-incarnation who three days after laying dead, rose back to life, and ascended into the earth’s atmosphere to wherever heaven exists up there; or that the supernatural parts of this story are reflections of the Roman pagan influence, additions to the story of Jesus that occurred in between Jesus’ death and the writings of the gospels?
Think about the complexities that surround us: the nature of life, humanity, consciousness, the connections between us and the micro and macro world that surrounds us… how can we uncover more about how we got to where we are, why, and where we are going from here?
Via a collective exploration it would seem that we might be able to get closer to knowing “God”, discovering more about “His” nature (taking “him” as a personification for the laws of nature), learning about how He created us, what He wants for us to do with this understanding and with our live (which I think is the same as Him discovering these things about Himself).
…
If not an absolute and elitist Christian God, then what???
To answer this question I think it is useful to return to the question: Who, or what is “God”??? Click here for some blog entries on this topic.
This process of questioning isn’t easy. It not only takes a lot of time. It can involve a roller coaster of emotions. It can cause conflict within yourself, as you question the roots of how you understand the world. It can cause conflict within social groups, even between you and family members. For me it was all these things. And so here, in hope of easing the pain of anyone else that might be facing the same dilemma, I documented my question and answers, and I offer it to you in this book I wrote in 2007-8: Journey of an Intuitive Christian
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Microcosms and macrocosms – we are specks of dust in a giant’s eye
“India’s chaos was bigger than your ego,” said Farhad Azad. “You have to remember we are but drops in the ocean.” He was right, India’s incomprehensibility had put me back in my place. Somewhere along the line I came across this song, it’s pretty funny. By Kimya Dawson:
I like it. “I am a speck of dust inside a giant’s eye”
As you can see, over a few rounds of longneck Himalaya (Nepali beer) on two brief occasions, I learned a lot from Farhad. It’s amazing how when you are open to the universe, you meet the right people at the right time in the most random ways. Similarly, I find it amazing how sometimes I come across little you-tube clips like this one, or words or ideas, that stick with you for life. Coincidence? Synchronicity??
As a drop of water in a vast infinite ocean, I am starting to consceitize (as Lederach, a famous conflict specialist would say,) that is, I am becoming more and more aware of myself-in-context.
As I see it I am a microcosms of microcosms, inside macrocosms of macrocosms.
I am a seemingly insignificant yet an utmost essential piece of an infinitely expandable fractal pattern.
If that’s not a paradox, I don’t know what is.
Picture:
Just a photo of a cactus plant a friend gave me for Christmas… it’s still alive!!! (I don’t have a very good reputation when it comes to plants…) But in terms of fractal patterns it’s probably not the most appropriate shot. If I had a photo of a fern, I would have put that up… you’ll just have to use your imagination 
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Leftist idealist or right-wing conservative?
Have you noticed the reoccurring pattern of almost hypocritical contradictions contained in my most recent entries? There seems to be a battle going on inside my mind:a battle between my leftist idealistic side (a perspective largely shared at the peace conference) that seems to abruptly clash with my more right-wing conservative side (a result of my experiences in India).
I care about people. I care about those who live in unsanitary conditions, those who suffer from war, from hunger, from all forms of slavery – be it economic slavery sitting in front of a sewing machine 12 hours a day, physical slavery forced and whipped to pick cocoa beans without a drop of pay, sexual slavery, or mental slavery.
I care about animals. I don’t like they are our slaves, pumping out our eggs, milk, and that they are bred and killed for my meat. Yet I am not a vegetarian.
I care about our planet. I don’t like that my car pollutes it. I don’t like that the plastic packaging of my products is toxic to it. I don’t like that humanity is chopping down its trees for my paper and digging up its insides for my electricity. Yet I still drive a car, buy too many products, use too much paper, and too much electricity.
I want every life-form to reach it’s full potential and yet I kill ants without a second thought and I am okay with abortion (believing the woman should have a choice over and above the not-yet-conscious entity forming inside her).
I believe in human rights yet I support population control – something has to be done.
I don’t think of different races as “better” or smarter than others, yet I don’t particularly want to see the whole world dominated by one or two of them.
I want to let all the asylum seekers into Australia, but I also don’t like feeling I’m a minority in my own city (the other day I swear I was the only caucasian-Australian walking down George Street in Sydney.)
I want Australia to pull troops out of the war, actually I want all the wars to end, but I don’t complain about the cheap oil and security that comes from their actions.
I am generous but I am greedy. I want everyone to have somewhere like Australia to live, but I don’t want everyone to live in Australia.
In short, I want my cake, and I want to eat it too. And I don’t quite know what to do about it.
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Potential: innate or situational?
Does the value of life reside in a life form’s innate potential – the potential that their DNA allows one to have, or to the potential that a life’s situation provides the opportunity to achieve?
There is quite a difference and the implications are quite significant. You see, if innate potential is the dictator of life’s value, then I feel bad for cattle we breed to eat, for chickens that lay my eggs, and even for the horses whose sides I kick and neck I pull on to stop and go when I please. These animals have an innate potential that can only be discovered if they are FREE TO DISCOVER IT - something that, in these days of human dominion, such an opportunity is not really allowed.
But, how can the true potential of life be evaluated in our modern times?
In the last six thousand years or so, many animals have evolved into a state of dependency. Dogs, in the process of human’s domestication, have replaced the fierceness of their days as wolves with floppy ears and wagging tails. While they appear to like their new roles as man’s best friend and while they receive much love from humans in return… were they ever asked if they wanted to give up their freedom to roam the woods and instead spend their days lazing around our homes?
I guess this process of “co-evolution” wasn’t exactly a conscious decision of our ancestors – it just happened as a result of changing environments and changing levels of awareness – as a result of decisions made by ALL the species involved.
So… who is to judge what is right and what is wrong, what is the creative potential of these animals, and how this fits with the creative potential of other species, including our own?
Applying such ideas to human situations I consider those sitting behind sewing machines for 12 hour days 7 days a week, getting paid a pittance, and I try to think about the limitations their situation puts on their potential. But then I reflect – if I hadn’t made some pretty radical decisions about my own life, I may have been slaving away my life behind a computer pumping out 12 hour days 7 days a week working on spreadsheets (in a past life – around 8 years ago when I first left uni – I was an Accountant)…
And I ask myself: what allowed me the opportunity to pursue my own creative potential?
A few key people in my life who provided me the encouragement, and maybe even more so the people who provided me the dis-encouragement (which makes one even more determined to prove them wrong), spurred me to quit Accounting and travel to Japan where a new process of self-discovery first began.
It’s slightly controversial to say, and I know many will disagree with this statement, but in my opinion ALL humans have the innate potential to be academics, artists, accountants or actors – it’s just a matter of the opportunities they receive through their education and the cultivation of a vision of how they perceive their own capabilities in life.
This idea seems to make the ethical dilemmas of our unjust world even more difficult to deal with…
If I truly believe that anyone can achieve ANYTHING that they set their mind to – if they truly believe it to be possible – then where is the limit to anyone’s potential? Maybe there is no limit. So if you think of violence as being anything that prevents someone from reaching their true potential, then does that make everything in the world violent? Ok, now I’m really tying myself in knots.
Of course seeing the most unlikely dreams come true in my own life doesn’t this ask and recieve concept a universal law… yet when I combine these ideas with the concepts of innate and situational potential, I return to situation: if anyone else were born into my shoes, would be typing these exact words in this exact minute? I’m no psycho-analytical genetic expert, but my hunch is that they would… I’m not so sure how much of us is innate – might everything be situational?
What is it that prevents some dreams from becoming reality? In my observation it seems that it is fear and lack of confidence and faith in oneself, and a lack of ability to imagine the possibilities, that prevents ones ability to dream or prevents the dreams one has from manifesting in their reality.
Is it possible that we are limited only by our own minds?
Or, as Henry Ford put it: “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, either way you are right.”
But then, there’s something to be said for innate factors – like the genetics of our parents, the skills our ancestors have learned and passed on… but are these innate, or situational to the choices or our ancestors?
Maybe in the end it is a combination of both the innate and the situational potential we are each presented that dictates the creative achievements of our lives? Maybe this whole idea of one or the other is just a play with words and concepts and all dependent on my own culturally cultivated perceptions…
It’s nice to think we are all “worth the same”, but when you see in other cultures the lack of value placed on human lives, and the extra value placed on, for example, a cow’s life.. you remember that grand cultural influence that shapes our perspectives and values. Are our creative achievements something we can use to evaluate the value of one life or life form over another?
Ok, I hope this entry isn’t too randomly haphazardly put together – I did warn you about my grasshopper mental state I blame on my PISD – my Post India Stress Disorder…
Anyway, in conclusion, let me just share that I’m starting to think that when it comes solutions to poverty and environment and conflicts and all the other stuff I rant on about, maybe the greatest gift we can give is the ability to imagine the possibilities – the ability to dream… And to share a little secret: the only person who can empower you to achieve your dreams, is yourself.
Photo:
Set up by mwah and snapped by Lucinda Amon on the morning after my sister’s wedding in Bowral. Another one for my ongoing series – which I think I’m going to name “The Bridge” rather than “The Crab” so I can write up in artist blurbs as “symbolising the bridging of present to future” … opinions???
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Human rights or a collective future? The problem with definitions.
If the pursuit of peace is an attempt to rid the world of violence, we must ask ourselves – “violence” through the eyes of who? Defining violence from the perception of a collective-humanity, is very different form defining it from the perception of each individual:
- If we define violence from the perception of all-humans-together, then are we not opening the doors for evil dictator, idealistic warfare and other devastating forms of violence to be committed on individuals?
- But, if we define violence as purely from an individual perspective, eg broaching on a woman’s right to have as many children as she pleases, then are we not lending ourselves to neglect the big-picture?
If we prioritise individual human rights over the rights of all life collectively, might we not cause the greatest violence of all - the destruction of our planet - a violence against all humans and life of today and the future???
Oh woe woe: what confusion, what a predicament, what a trade off…
Does this mean peace is a vain pursuit? An idealist impossibility? An unattainable objective? Maybe.
But is, like the quest for Truth and Balance, the process of pursuing peace still a valuable one?
The last couple of years I have studied “Peace And Conflict Studies”, and while this has influenced many of my entries, I think it might be useful to outline some of the key terms and concepts. I guess where the idea of peace gets airy fairy is in it’s definition… what exactly are we talking about when we talk of “peace”?
First I wish to clarify that peace is NOT the absence of conflict.
Life is defined by dualisms, by the dynamic relationships between opposing forces, by conflict. Conflict leads to evolution, to growth, innovation and improvement. Conflict is good. Violence, however, is not. And violence need not be a part or a result of conflict.
Professor Galtung defines two categories of peace:
- Negative Peace - the elimination of war; and
- Positive Peace - the elimination of poverty and other forms of violence including Direct Violence (eg stop me from hitting you) and Indirect Violence (eg stop me from constraining your freedoms) and Structural Violence (a form of indirect violence that is concealed by a system structure).
Peace involves the resolution of conflict through non-violent means - something I think our schools could do better providing us the skills to put into practice. For example, the learning conflict resolution skills such as how to map out a conflict :
- how to define the central issue (in a blame-free language)
- identify the manifest and un-manifest pressures
- distinguish transitory interests from cultural values and unchanging needs
- as well as identifying the fears and concerns of the parties involved,
This framework allows common visions and strategies to be designed in a far more efficient and effective way. (See Burton (1990) and Tillet (1999) if you are interested in learning more.
Positive Peace is about JUSTICE…
Which brings me back to the problem with words and definition.
Whose justice are we talking about?
My idea of justice, or yours? What kind of justice? Economic? Social? Intellectual? All of the above? The problem with a definition like this is that my idea of justice might very well be your idea of oppression. Our means of evaluating is relative to our culture, education, and experience.
And I start to wonder: is the predicament between human rights and planetary rights, anything like the difference between capitalist mentalities and communist ones? How is can it be I feel I empathise with both?
What do YOU think?
Should we prioritise human rights at the expense of planetary ones?
What is more important, our individual present or our collective future?
Give me a shorter more fulfilling life over a long drawn out crappy one - in my mind quality trumps quantity, and planetary rights trump human ones – but maybe that’s just me.
References:
Barash, D.P. (1991) “The Meaning of Peace” & “The Debate Over Peace Studies” in Introduction to Peace Studies. Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing.
Burton, J. (1990a). Human Needs Theory. Conflict: Resolution and Prevention. Macmillan. London, UK.
Galtung, J. (2000). TRANSCEND: 40 Years, 40 Conflicts. Searching for Peace: The Road to TRANSCEND. J. J. Galtung, C G. London, Pluto Press.
Tillett, G. and B. French (2006). Conflict and its Resolution. Resolving Conflict: A Practical Approach Melbourne, Oxford University Press. 3rd edn.
Photo:
A pile of rubbish in Kathmandu, Nepal. While the west buries their rubbish in the ground or out at sea, to me this site (and even more so the wretched smell) was a stark reminder of humanity’s impact. It was seriously grotesque, and if it’s avoidable I think it should be avoided.
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Population Vs. luxury… QUALITY OR QUANTITY?
“On the technical side there is no limit to population,” said a scholar after talking about solving world hunger. “We just need more efficient systems, and for the rich to eat less.” This may be true, BUT the greater question (in my opinion) is: Do we want more people living “simply” in a crowded place, or less people living lives of luxury?
“The population of the poor isn’t the problem,” so the idealists (like I used to be) say… “We actually need less white people.”
Given the ecological footprint of the one billion in rich industrialised countries compared to the six billion in non-industrial countries, this statement speaks some truth. But I’m not so sure that decreasing the population of white people will solve our ecological predicament.
I realise the basic solution is suggested to be the connection between income, education and birthrates. The more money people have, the more educated people get, the less children women want… and this will (somehow magically) stop the population at around 10 billion… but will it?
Just because a majority of white people have chosen to have less children as they get richer, largely because we have fallen for consumerist ideals and the economic slave system that supports this, does not mean that people in other cultures are going to respond to wealth in the same way. I’m not an anthropologist but it seems rather presumptuous to think we can understand people of other cultures, and predict how these people will react to education and money.
In the last two hundred years we have allowed one billion people to be become almost seven billion, and almost six of those billion have not been educated or had money. What will they do when they are educated or have money? In China as they get more money, they build more, buy more cars and have more children, not less of them.
“Human rights are meaningless without ecological rights,” said another one of the speakers. This seems to be getting closer to the real issue. Surely there are limits??? EVENTUALLY, when the planet has 5 billion, or 50 billion, there’s going to have to be some sort of population controls implemented – so why not be proactive and do it NOW, before there are even more ridiculous numbers of us?
How? I don’t know… I guess through some kind of recognition of collective responsibility and gaining momentum in a collective desire to make the world the place we want it to be. Should that involve some legalities that compromise individualistic human rights? In my opinion, yes. I think the future of life-on-earth as a whole is more important than us as individual humans having a right to choose the number of children we are going to have.
What do you think?
What’s more important: quality of life, or quantity of lives?
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Greed: the JOY of having more than you need… Taoism and more about that frickin elephant.
I used to think we could all be less greedy – that if we wanted less “stuff” we would be happier, and some of that wealth would be shared with the poor. Apparently this simple shift has the power to end world hunger – the rich do with less, so the poor can have more. More recently I have realised that when I contemplate greed I have been wondering if it is actually a human problem that we have the ability to change? Or is greed simple a part of all life’s struggle to survive?
In a universe that (at least at present) is constantly expanding, getting more and more complex, and consuming more and more space, could greed be a universal constant? Is greed embedded in our DNA?
Check out the monkey who found a bag of food in India…
Maybe greed is so deep in our nature, it’s not something that can be fought? Maybe we humans are just greedy monkeys, so we just have to accept ourselves and allow greed to be?
If we accept greed, and hence accept that humans will always want more and better, should we give up on dealing with this elephant? While reading a book on religions in Nepal, I noted a Taoist teaching: “DO NOT QUIT”. So let us take their advice, and continue.
Also in Nepal, I met some travelers who were happily living a nomadic non-attached way of life.
“Money will come when, and if, I need it,” the cool collected hippy explained. She had been traveling for over 15 years or more, living on nothing yet living in abundance. “When you are traveling cheap you really don’t need much.” At $3 a roof over your head, and $2 for a massive meal, you are talking $1500 a year, so if you spent a few years working to save up $100,000 you could retire for life. We really don’t need much to survive. Especially if, like this hippy’s neighbor, you paraglide from place to place! Now that’s seriously “following the wind”. And no footprint whatsoever.
“Desire nothing, enjoy everything.” I think there is something in this Buddhist-approach to life – I definitely prefer life when I’m not fussing over money.
But how about non-attachment to other things? Do we really want to give up our desires?
Isn’t some attachment is what life is all about? Isn’t it the desire for something we don’t have, what keeps us going?
Be it attachment to people you love, attachment to a job you enjoy, attachment to a computer that carries hours upon hours worth of writing on it, or attachment to life itself, I’m not so sure I want to let that part of life go… There is something to be said for life’s dynamism – for the highs and lows, for the enjoyment that comes from pain and fear that adjoins attachment – it keeps things interesting. A life lived completely without attachment may contain no suffering, but it also (in my opinion) doesn’t contain much joy.
Of this book on religion the Taoist philosophies really resonated with me, mainly because Taoism values the opposites, the ups and downs, the yin and yang, rather than wishing them away. Taoists describe“Ziran” – state of “self-so” which means living in a state of being that ‘allows things and circumstances to unfold’. I really like this idea – connecting to everything, and allowing the most desirable scenarios manifest in reality.
Taoists describe the universe as our body, and the universe our nature; and they recommend we ‘keep in mind both the manifested and the unrevealed sides of the ultimate reality’ – I like these ideas too. We know the many things we know, but we must never forget there is SO SO SOOOO MUCH THAT WE DO NOT, AND CANNOT KNOW.
According to the Taoists, ‘The Way” is found in balance, in knowing what is enough – and they say that learning to say “enough” is achieved through an ‘intuitive observation of oneself and the universe’.
Coming back to my question from yesterday: can Buddha help us deal with the elephant in the room? Can finding inner peace help us do something about the population problem? I guess feeling peaceful inside ourselves can open the channels to creative solutions (like that magic biodegradable bag they put my underwear in), so I wonder, if we combine this with the idea of learning how to say “enough”, can we start to shrink the elephant?
References on Taoism:
Bede Bidlock, Why I am a believer – edited by Aruino Sharma (2007) p.200.
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Can Buddha help us deal with the elephant?
I am starting to understand what Buddha meant when he said all life is suffering. No matter which financial situation you are born into, we always want more. It is very rare we reach a stage where we happily say “enough”. The more chocolate I have, the more chocolate I want. The more countries I go to, the more countries I want to go to. The more money I have the bigger apartment I can get, the better the car, the more vintage the scooter, the more designer the clothes, the better quality the beauty products, the more fancy dinners etc etc. Sorry Ecclesiastes quotes are in my head at the moment – 6:7 says “A man’s efforts are for his mouth, yet his appetite is never satisfied.” I think you could say that is pretty much on the money – things haven’t changed much in the last 2-3000 years.
When it comes to dealing with the elephant in the room (the world population), it would seem it is largely due to an inability for humans to say enough (be it enough children or enough consumption of products that harm our environment), that means that eradicating poverty will eradicate humanity, if we are still the billions we are today.
As I see it we have few options. Either:
1. we accept that billions of people will always live in poverty and allow them to continue creating more and more billions of people to live in poverty (given that those people living in poverty don’t have much of an ecological footprint so while they stay in poverty there isn’t really a problem). Or,
2. we somehow get rid of a few billion people (I’m not inferring not overnight, but thinking some kind of population control with a 100 year plan would be a good start). Or,
3. we suicide of our species (seeing as it doesn’t seem possible for 7 billion people we grow to to live the American lifestyle without destroying our habitat, let alone 10 or 50 or whatever ridiculous number of billion people we allow ourselves to grow to).
I really don’t like any of these options, not one bit.
Surely there are alternatives??? I wonder if Buddha can help?
Buddha observed that greed, anger and hatred were the root causes of the world’s problems. He thought that these three evils were rooted in ignorance about what will make us happy, and that solutions come from non-attachment, from meditating into a state of inner peace, and changing the attitudes that were causing the violence in the first place.
Does this help with the population problem?
I suppose monks don’t have sex so if we all became Buddhist monks that might help – but that’s no more appealing than the first three options.
I guess Buddha’s suggestions do seem to be pointing us toward a less materialistic lifestyle, which means less consumption and less planetary damage, so maybe there is something practical we can learn from it.
The problem with a solution the comes from decreasing consumption, is that for our economy this equates to a dead economy, no jobs, and a downward spiral into depression... I heard from my Opa about depressions, eating rosebuds to stay alive. Nope, don’t like that option either…
One of the best solutions I have come across is the suggestion that GOOD DESIGN can solve all the worlds problems. We need to find ways to consume in ways that don’t harm our environment: designing products and housing that don’t do any damage, setting up more efficient agriculture and trade systems, and consuming more equally around the world. Maybe we don’t have to cut our consumption – we can just learn to consume in different ways?
The exciting thing about this is that a few days ago, while doing a little lingerie shopping, I discovered it is already happening!!! Check out this Simone Perele biodegradable bag. I bought underwear from three shops and put it all in this little bag.
How good is that!!! With a little ingenuity maybe humans change the world. I’m definitely liking the sound of this option…
BUT do more efficient, non-polluting systems and more ecological product designs actually address the elephant in the room?
Will these systems remain ecologically sustainably when 7 billion become 70 billion? And what about 700 billion? Where do you draw the line? And if you don’t draw a line and implement some kind of population control, what will ever cause people to stop having so many babies?
I know there are predictions that the population will stop at 10 billion – but I don’t understand the logic behind it. Just because western countries have bought into the “have less children because children are too expensive” idea, doesn’t mean that other civilisations, as they develop, will culturally adapt in the same way. If a culture values having ten children, why will having enough food to feed them not make them have twenty? Maybe it will, but I’m not convinced.
“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed” – said Gandhi.
I think this is true but I wonder: is greed something that will ever disappear? I’m not so sure. To be continued…
Note on the picture:
I am not actually sure if this is Buddha – I think it’s a Hindu god – if anyone knows, please let me know. I took this in Kathmandu, Nepal and am too lazy to find a better pic to suit this entry.
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MOMENTO MORI (remember that you will die) so CARPE DIUM (seize the day)!!!
Whoever we are, and whatever what we have accomplished in our life, we all eventually face the same fears: fears of being old, ill, of being a burden to our families, fears of going insanity, of losing liberty, losing dignity, of being neglected in our old age, and last but not least, the fear of facing the biggest unknown in our lives, death. (Unless, of course, if scientists find a way to preserve our mind in artificial/cloned bodies… but let’s ignore this scenario for now.)
With age we meet the consequences of our youth – the consequences of the way we treated our body, the rewards of our study, our experiences, our toil, and of the memories of our years… and the haunts of the same. We enjoy any assets we have earned for ourselves, or live out the consequences of a lack of them. We suffer the balding and wrinkles of our worry, and the sicknesses of our stress. No matter how well we do in the game of life, as the writer of Ecclesiastes says, “we all share a common destiny”.
How can we transcend these fears? In a way we can’t. Unless we die young, we will all be old one day. Most of us will end up sick, with dementia or disease, fat, ugly, in a nursing home… and all of us will, one day, die.
So I have decided not to run from death. I may as well just accept it – build a bridge and get over it.
Instead I ask myself a new question: How can I make the most of TODAY? If there is something I want to do, then I will try to do it. If I want to go back to Latin America, and if I can save enough money this next six months to do so, then I will.
I ask myself: what is my life purpose? In which direction does fulfilling my physical, mental, and creative potential lie? I try to listen to my intuition, to imagine where my skills and talents could be of most value, and then I try to follow the signs and manifest my vision into my reality.
I have, at times, asked myself if this approach to life – focusing on yourself, seeking to fulfill your creative destiny – is a selfish way to live?
Farhad Azad, my Iranian friend from Nepal, explained the difference between selfishness and what he called “self-love”, with a powerful metaphor:
“Imagine you am a wine glass, full of wine, with empty glasses surrounding you,” he said. “You want to share the wine you have with those who have none, and there are a number of ways you can do it. One way is to pour what you have between the empty glasses. Everyone ends up with a little, but no one has enough. No one is really satisfied, and you am left with nothing.
Alternatively instead of sharing what you have in your glass, you can find ways to continue filling up your own glass with more wine. You can keep filling it so much that it starts to overflow and fill up the other glasses. Eventually all the glasses will be full and they too will overflow into more empty glasses.
That is the benefit of loving one’s self: like the wine, self-love overflows, and causes others to love themselves more, and eventually everyone has a full glass of wine.”
The more we care for ourselves, the more we can care for others. The more we open our minds, the more we will learn, and the more we will inspire others to do the same. The more of us that allow our intuition (instead of money) to take the lead in our daily life decisions, the more of us will enjoy the feeling of fulfillment that comes from working toward our creative potential.
The more others see us do this, the more they will seek their own potential, and like a virus the creativity will spread, causing humanity as a whole to move toward our ultimate peak of collective creativity.
So… I think it’s important to remember:
MOMENTO MORI (we are mortal and will die)… so CARPIDIUM (seize the day). The best thing we can do during our time in this world, is love ourselves, and let our love overflow into the world.
Maybe we can learn from the Mayfly?
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IS LIFE MEANINGLESS?
“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.”
What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again.
All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun…. There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow…
I thought in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good.” But that also proved to be meaningless. “Laughter,” I said, “is foolish. And what does pleasure accomplish?” I tried cheering myself with wine, and embracing folly – my mind was still guiding me with wisdom. I wanted to see what was worthwhile for men to do under heaven during the few days of their lives.
I undertook great projects: I built houses for myself and planted vineyards. I made gardens and parks and planted all kinds of fruit trees in them. I made reservoirs to water groves of flourishing trees… I amassed silver and gold for myself, and the treasure of kings and provinces… I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my work, and this was the reward for all my labor. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.
Then I turned my thoughts to consider wisdom, and also madness and folly… I saw that wisdom is better than folly, just as light is better than darkness… but I came to realize that the same fate overtakes them both… For the wise man, like the fool, will not be long remembered; in the days to come both will be forgotten. Like the fool, the wise man too must die!
So I hated life… I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me. And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will have control over all the work into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is meaningless. So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun. For a man may do his work with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then he must leave all he owns to someone who has not worked for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune… a chasing after the wind.
I also thought, “As for men, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. Man’s fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both. As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come form dust, and to dust all return. Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?” So I saw that there is nothing better for a man than to enjoy his work, because that is his lot. For who can bring him to see what will happen after him?
Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun: I saw the tears of the oppressed – and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors – and they (too) have no comforter. And I declared that the dead, who had already died , are happier than the living, who are still alive. But better than both is he who has not yet been, who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun.
If you see the poor oppressed in a district, and justice and rights denied, do not be surprised at such things; for one official is eyed by a higher one, and over them both are others higher still. The increase from the land is taken by all; the king himself profits from the fields. Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. This too is meaningless.
As goods increase, so do those who consume them. And what benefit are they to the owner except to feast his eyes on them? The sleep of a laborer is sweet, whether he eats little or much, but the abundance of a rich man permits him no sleep... Naked a man comes from his mother’s womb, and as he comes so he departs. He takes nothing from his labor that he can carry in his hand. This too is a grievous evil…
So I reflected on all this and concluded that the righteous and the wise and what they do are in God’s hands, but no man knows whether love or hate awaits him. All share a common destiny – the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not… This is the evil under the sun: The same destiny overtakes all.
Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favor what you do… Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.
“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Everything is meaningless!”
The above could quite easily be my words, but they are not. Believe it or not they come from the OLD TESTAMENT of the Christian Bible!!! They come from the BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES, by paragraph: Ecclesiastes 1:2-11; Ecclesiastes 2:1-3; Ecclesiastes 2:4-11; Ecclesiastes 2: 13-26; Ecclesiastes 3:18-22; Ecclesiastes 4:1-3; Ecclesiastes 5:8-16; Ecclesiastes 9:1-3; Ecclesiastes 9:7-11; Ecclesiastes 11:5; Ecclesiastes 12:8.
In times that I feel a little down about life, times where I’m exhausted, times that I see myself using chocolate, coffee or alcohol to give me little highs, times when I feel confused, lacking motivation, or fed-up with the projects I’m working on… Ecclesiastes captures the thoughts I am thinking: WHAT IS THE POINT OF IT ALL? Maybe I am a reincarnate of this old depressed soul…
While they don’t know when or by who the book of Ecclesiastes was written, (their wild guess is King Solomon, which could very well be true but no one really knows), it is pretty clear that it was written by a man who had everything yet felt empty, a man who is bitter about life, who is has been hurt by a woman (or women), and who doesn’t want to get old and die but knows this time is approaching. I guess maybe we can or will all relate, at one stage or another, to the lack of satisfaction that comes from consumption, materialism, love, and the unavoidable death that awaits us.
Ecclesiastes is not a long book – all of ten pages long – and I think it’s a worthwhile read. If you do, then maybe you will notice what I did – a few out-of-place passages that more or less say, that this meaningless life is made meaningful by obedience to God: “Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.” (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14)
I don’t blame the editors for adding that – actually I’m more surprised the rest of the book made it in the published version at all. I suppose the publishers of the book wanted readers to confront these philosophical ideas with the conclusion to obey whatever they told them God wanted them to do. I think it’s funny the way in which it was done – with sloppily placed paragraphs that don’t interfere with what appears (to me) to be the key messages of the original writer.
Still I guess a note of something is a little more or a positive finishing point than the depressing note my summary above leaves it…
IS LIFE REALLY SO MEANINGLESS?
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Envisioning the future of humanity-on-earth
While in a recent entry I concluded that I simply need to accept the world as it is, today I wonder, does this mean accepting the projectory of the world’s future? If we have the foresight to see that the present path we are on has the potential to destroy humanity-on-earth, do we have a responsibility to pave a new path?
I think yes, we do.
I think that what Deepak is saying is that the uncovering of a new path begins with an acceptance of the past – an acceptance of the inequalities exist today – and an awareness of our culturally conditions definitions of good and bad. That’s where it starts. Accept the world as it is, for now.
Then, and only then, can we begin to predict possible futures and work toward the most desirable one. And so I ponder: what does a desirable future look like? And what kind of path might take us there?
Before I went to India I wrote an entry that talked about the “Changing the Dream” initiative, that looked at how we can to redefine our values and the place of money in our life ambitions. (Click here to revisit entry: “Where are we, where are we going, and how.“). This entry and this initiative still stand strong. It’s the motivation behind this, for me, which has changed.
While I have returned with a far less idealistic perspective, I have not lost my optimism altogether. I have lost my altruism. I have a more realistic optimism and and more self-centred motivation julietnow.
Capitalism has many points that can be improved upon. The perception of people as resources, commodities to be profited from, and earth as here for our exploitation and destruction, are two components that not good for any body’s conscience, or any body’s future.
Physical, sexual and mental slavery (of people at all economic levels), war, poverty, over-population, unhappiness, loneliness, and lives run by an obsessions with money, are also elements of capitalism that I believe can and need to be to be addressed.
How? How can such things be addressed? Are they embedded in the capitalistic model? Do we need a new model or can we adjust our current one?
My favourite professor Johan Galtung, who I met and chatted with at the International Peace Research Association conference last week, takes what I believe to be the best approach to conflict resolution I’ve ever heard of. It’s called the TRANSCEND model, and it can be applied to anything. It involves deeply exploring the roots of the problems,separating the conflicting people from the conflicting goals, and then thinking creatively about a solution that neither parties have thought about, but which transcends the conflict in it’s entirety.
It all starts with a vision.
Solutions to the world’s problems requires us to imagine what we WANT the world to look like:
What long-term vision to we have for humanity on this planet? How many people live in each country? Do we still have “countries” and “passports” or are we free to be citizens of the planet? What kind of diversity still exists between our races? What do we do for fun? Do we still work? Have a career? What place does technology have in our lives? Do we still use money? Still many currencies or just a few? Do we care about owning houses and shares? Does the share market still exist? How do we express our creativity? How many rainforests have survived? Do we have enough water? How clean is our air? What do we eat? How do we interact with each other?
The post-India me is still interested in the future. A realistic future. An amazing future. And to get there we need that vision. The new paradigm I see the word through is dreaming of a better world, one that lies in our own personal interests, and one that doesn’t seem completely impossible.
Picture:
A possible future that is “Beyond Poverty, Politics & War” might be The Venus Project - www.thevenusproject.com – Designs by Jacque Fresco – Models and photos by Jacque Fresco & Roxanne Meadows.
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The eye of the storm and the calm that follows.
I knew my final peaceful week of yoga and relaxation in Pokhara was the calm before the storm, and boy I was right. The eye of the storm hit the day I arrived home with every day and night packed full-to-the-brim with hens parties, farewells, birthdays (including my own big two-eight), shopping, weekend weddings, welcome-home celebrations, and a five-day International Peace Research Association conference where I photographed, attended, networked and presented.
A coffee, sugar and chocolate addiction later, yesterday the storm let out it’s final blow. I went cold turkey. I felt depressed. I was mentally and physically exhausted. But with the help of family, friends, and a laugh (and little cry) watching Toy Story 3, I got through the day.
Today the storm has calmed, and the sun is shining. How one can go from down and depressed to up and happy overnight I don’t know. Maybe there is something to the New Moon thing? Today even news of not receiving the PhD scholarship I’d been hoping for hasn’t got me down.
While I could be worried about my future, now not having my next few years secured, I’m not. These things happen for a reason. Good thing a few days ago I accepted a part-time admin job at my university’s Centre for Peace and Conflict studies – at least I’ll have a little money coming in to survive on given my savings are almost sucked dry.
On a positive note, I received a dose of independent feedback from an editor about the second draft of my book (the one about South America) and guess what? Someone who doesn’t know me actually enjoyed reading it!!! But at 450 pages still too long. Begin Draft Number Three…
I’m getting sidetracked. I would like to apologize for the lack of entries over the duration of this storm. And now for this long rant about my own life.
The point of this entry is to prepare you for the entries to come. Now the storm is over I finally feel ready to process and publish the daunting thoughts that have come from the leftist idealism that experienced at the peace conference juxtaposed with the more right-wing conservatism resulting from my experiences in India.
I have a lot of interesting (and controversial) entries written in my head so it’s just a matter of getting them out in a way that makes sense.
A warning: while I don’t want to offend, in the name of a “pursuit for truth” I will continue my overtly honest style of writing. I write what I think. That’s what I do. And I hope that anyone reading my thoughts will be able to empathise with the lens from which they come from, and engage with me in a dialogue if you have an opposing view. Or if you agree – I really love hearing your thoughts.
No idea is static. No thought is ever permanent. While this is the danger of writing down one’s thoughts, my hope is that because on this blog so many of thoughts are being shared, and because one can see that such thoughts change quite rapidly, the process of dynamic thought is in some way being captured. The pluses and minuses of the live nature of blogs…
So please, when reading the entries that follow in the weeks (or years) to come, take them as snapshots of a thinking process – thoughts and perspectives as they develop over time. And know that they are coming from a somewhere that (at least what I perceive to be) a peace-loving, truth-loving, people-loving and planet-loving place.
Picture:
Uyuni Salt Lakes, Bolivia. Only the most beautiful most heavenly experience of my life. There was no storm, but it looks like an eye inside a storm to me.
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Capitalistic karma: reinterpreting reincarnation
Walking up in the mountains outside Kathmandu I contemplated the connection between the world’s inequalities today, the actions of one’s ancestors, and the idea of karma and reincarnation that I had been reading about in some books on the Eastern Religions.
Be they the ancestors who split from the group to discover new worlds fifty thousand years ago, or be they the innovators of new technologies that won them last century’s battles, the connection is pretty clear… and I wondered, is this what the yogis are talking about when they talk about karma? Are the people of today the reincarnations of ancestors, manifested through the processes of material, genetic and education inheritance? The closer we get to a person, the more the other embodies our ideas. If we, say, write a book and disperse our ideas, are we, on some level, reincarnating ourselves through the people that these ideas influence? Are our children simply more direct reincarnations of ourselves as they gain more of our energy through our genes and through the time we spend with them?
At the end of the day we are all responsible for the consequences of our own actions, be they consequences experienced our own lifetime, or in that of our children and childrens’ childrens’ childrens’ lifetimes. If we do bad to another person, animal, or to our environment, be it in our lifetime or in sometime in the distant future, the universe eventually balances itself out… Is this, in a wider sense, our “karma”? Could the cycle of birth-death-rebirth that the yogis talk about be less about a separate soul reincarnating (for example, that if you kill a bee in this life you will come back as an bee in your next life), and actually be describing the process of evolution (for example, if many people kill many bees, humanity will have to adapt to a world with less flowers and foods)?
When the caste system tells people that they have been born into their caste as a consequence of their actions in a past life I typically respond (in my head) with “what a load of bullocks!” But, when viewed from this understanding of karma and reincarnation, this idea starts to make sense… Could poverty actually be the karmic result of the decisions of one’s ancestors?
When I compare the capitalist system to the caste system I can’t help but appreciate the open opportunities capitalism provides. Sure it’s not a perfect system with the opportunities it provides not exactly equal (for example, children in wealthy families are sure to have more opportunities than less wealthy families) but on the other side I also think that if a person dedicates their life to provide such opportunities for their children, isn’t it fair that this child benefits from their parent’s hard work? Is such their good fortune, their parent or grandparent’s karma?
Or is maybe this just my wishful thinking, in hope of justifying the unjustifiable, I’m not quite sure. Karma and reincarnation aside, as I consider the advantages and disadvantages of capitalism and I wonder: if you take away the ability to transfer wealth to your children, will people still be motivated to innovate and work hard? At least in this system, children in the less wealthy family still get a decent education and decent amount of opportunity. While life may not be as easy as it is for the child born in the wealthy family, the challenges this presents can actually an opportunity for even more growth for that individual, and at least no one is completely left out of the system and being condemned to be an untouchable for all their future generations.
It is starting to seem to me that as we reincarnate ourselves, from generation to generation of cell to plant to animal to self-aware human, our creativity is growing, our sense of morality and ethics is deepening, and our capability to consider the future of the whole planet is expanding. And so I wonder, if we continue collective learn from each other and from the past, what incredible species will the reincarnates of humanity be like in the future?
Picture notes
Photographer: Edwina Hughes.
Taken at my sister’s wedding at Craigiburn in Bowral on the weekend, this photo doesn’t really have anything to do with this blog entry although I guess in a way it represents the passing on of traditions and possibly the beginning of a new generation of Bennetts. And it’s nice to share considering it was such an incredible wedding, very fun, my sister looked GORGEOUS, and my new brother-in-law spunky… Congratulations guys!