Anna Brix Thomsen | The Socjournal

In the article Reconceptualizing Human Capital, Nancy Folbre and Paula England present “capabilities” as a concept to describe the basic requirements humans need to function effectively in the world. They use this as a platform to critique the neoclassical notion of “human capital”. They introduce capabilities (or capital) from the perspective that these until now have not been valued as actual skills that human beings require to develop; and that requires to be a part of the political, economic and educational policies of the world. What is interesting about this perspective is that it offers an actual critical alternative to capabilities that as human capital until now (through neoclassical economics) has been seen more as preferences taken on by the rational self-interested human being.

The perspective I present in this article, is an amalgamation of the neoclassical notion of the rational and self-interested human being and Folbre and England’s notion of altruism as inherent (or at least emergent) in the development of capabilities. I do this to engage in a discussion on developing an educational policy applicable in an Equal Money System that is based on what is best for all. From this it is my aim to investigate what basic capabilities are to develop ourselves as human beings to a point of utmost support for our own well-being and for the well-being of all. I will go through the capabilities as they are described by Folbre and England and consequently discuss these in relation to an Equal Money System.

Let’s first have a look at what Folbre and England’s definition of capabilities:

A capability is a state that requires effort from the individual. It requires to be developed and enables one to function effectively in society, once applied and implemented. Capabilities are beneficial both for the individual and for the collective well-being. Folbre and England describe four different types of capabilities: physical, cognitive, self-regulating and caring capabilities.

Capabilities

Physical Capabilities

The physical capabilities are the basic physical requirements for caring physically for oneself, such as cooking food, getting dressed, cleaning the house, knowing when to respond to pain etc. However with these basic physical functioning capabilities, Folbre and England contends that they are often not discussed or emphasized (in social science or in economy) and suggests that this can be because of the tradition in this of valuing “mind over matter” in these traditions ranging back to a focus on the metaphysical . (C.F Descartes famous quote: “I think, therefore I am”.) [i]

Cognitive Capabilities

Cognitive capabilities include what is considered “formal education” that according to Folbre and England has an extensive impact on one’s income earning abilities. Besides these capabilities that is achieved through education, such as reading, writing and math, Folbre and England describe capabilities such as house hold economy, the ability to see the cause and effect of one’s actions and points such as mental health and emotions as part of the cognitive capabilities.

Self-Regulation Capabilities

Self-Regulation capabilities are based on the ability to have self-discipline and Folbre and England suggests that this capability is the basis for the other capabilities, because without self-discipline, one is not capable to develop for example the ability to write. When self-discipline is developed one becomes able to perform tasks that one does not necessarily want to do or experience as difficult. Folbre and England suggest that self-regulation as a capability is not valued by economics as a human capital because economic theory would define self-regulation as a preference and not as a skill. Instead Folbre and England contends that self-regulation in fact is both a skill and a preference and they mention how becoming skilled and enjoying oneself once skilled mutually constitutes.

Care Capabilities

Folbre and England describes Caring capabilities as a “service” that differs from the other capabilities in that it also contains an element of altruism where having the capability might not (only) benefit oneself but also others and even that one within this could express care without it being of benefit for oneself, something that according to Folbre and England, refutes the neo-classical notion of rational self-interest. Caring capability also requires the other capabilities to function effectively, yet however also requires certain emotions and motives exactly as altruism, but also affection and warmth. Folbre and England contends that that even though caring as a service can be exchanged on the labor market, it is still valued as less than other types of work. As with self-regulation, neo classical economy sees altruism as a preference, but also here Folbre and England contends that altruism and the capability of care, requires skills. These then in turn requires to be developed.

How are capabilities developed?

In Human Capital theory, capital is considered a “stock” as a long-lasting transformation of the human that focuses on self-investment within the definition of investment as “present cause for later pay-off”. Folbre and England however introduces the notion of “input” instead of investment and uses the transference of capabilities between parents and children as an example for why this is. This is then also used to argue for the notion of altruism in the caring capabilities, where parents act in supporting ways for the child to benefit, without getting anything out of it themselves. They are teaching the children skills that the children will use independently of the parents.

Why are capabilities important for society?

Folbre and England contends that capabilities are dependent on social embeddedness and as such exists as a social capital. They claim that as well new as traditional economics “underestimated the social and political nature that effects which children will have their capabilities developed the most” and that as such that “resource constraints should not be ignored.” What this means is that an assumption in neoclassical economic thinking (that which our world systems are based upon) is that everyone intrinsically have ‘equal opportunities’ to develop skills and capabilities. Folbre and England highlights the fact that the conditions we are born into determines to an utmost extend what opportunities we have to learn and develop skills and capabilities. These conditions are created through a political and financial system that in turn is created by us as human beings. Who and what we live as human beings is something we decide individually and collectively interdependent. The same goes for the capabilities that we support the development of, in ourselves, in our children and in society as a whole.

It is a Matter of stopping the Mind

For a long time physical work has been disregarded as “crude” and “simple”. This is reflected in how people that primarily work with the physical receive a much lower wage than those working in (and as) “mind-jobs”. When our children are sent to school, one of the primary points they are too learn, is to disconnect the mind from the body and use the body as a tool for the mind to expand, for example in sitting still and listening to the teacher and suppress the body’s urge to jump or sing or move. In all educational policies, it is thus the cognitive capabilities that are prioritized which can be seen in how all forms of craft classes and sports are minimized and cut back. But if we look at what it is the children are learning about the world, that which they are supposed to learn, to enable themselves to live as effective human beings, it is all in the head. They are expected to grow up and direct their physical world and reality, from within and as the mind, while the body remains a mere vehicle, a tool. In very few schools do children learn about their own bodies or how their bodies feel.They do not learn how to cook, clean or care for animals.

They do not (at least not effectively) learn how to interact with nature, with animals or with the bodies of other children and adults. Instead they learn to disconnect themselves from the physical, to use the body for competitive sports or transportation and as they grow up, they are expected to know how to move and care for their bodies, without actually being in (contact with) their bodies. They might learn about health regimes and that milk is good for you, but they don’t learn to feel in their stomach when some food is not supportive for them. They do not learn to touch or support themselves or each other in ways to alleviate pain or simply for enjoyment. We can draw a straight line from how the physical is disregarded in the current education system to how the state the world currently is in. What thrives is mind-based designs and constructs at the expense of the physical world – the real world – in which and as we live and which we cannot live without. The aspect of physical functioning thus reaches beyond learning basic skills of buttoning buttons – it involves caring for the entire planet as well as for ourselves and each other. A Destonian perspective on education will thus focus exactly on the physical, on us getting out of our heads and into the physical to actually learn to care and nurture ourselves, our bodies and the planet.

Learning is not fun in a capitalistic system

According to Folbre and England, self-regulation and discipline is both a preference and a skill. It becomes a preference when we discover the joy of completing a task or in learning something new. But as education is designed in the current system, a sole emphasis is on the skill aspect of self-discipline, where we are skilling ourselves to be able to compete with others on an unstable job market. The competition is based on fear of not survival and in many countries that is what enables children to remain disciplined – not because they are enjoying what they are learning or perfecting themselves within it. Furthermore, the way education systems are designed, children and adults are most often running on tight deadlines where text books have to be consumed with the speed of light and there is absolutely no focus on disciplining oneself for the sake of self-enjoyment. Furthermore: those of us who has had teachers that enjoyed teaching and teachers that did not, know that there is a lot more to learn from a teacher that enjoys what they are doing. But how can we expect teachers to enjoy themselves, when they get placed close to nothing and are stuffed into a small room with 40-60 students, disconnected and high on sugar and an old curriculum to teach from?

A Destonian perspective is that learning is about expanding and exploring oneself, alone and together with others – teaching is about standing as a living example, not a regurgitator of indoctrinating brainwash that only has the purpose of creating stupid obedient consumer slaves. Furthermore: learning is physical and education, both physical and cognitive could be developed in a variety of ways that incorporate physical learning – if only the focus was on developing capabilities that are best for all as well as the individual in a setting that is not based on fear of not surviving, but instead on self-expression, dedication and openness. If self-discipline is taught without self-consideration or direction, we educate followers that will create secret inner lives where they can live out their desires, we create workers that only do exactly as much as they have to for then to go home and leave the rest to someone else – instead we can educate ourselves (and the children) to develop a self-discipline that is based on dignity, on self-integrity and on doing what is best for all, simply in seeing the basic common sense in that principle – because the world-systems are based on equality.

Caring is Equal Money For all

A mentioned by Folbre and England, the caring sector is highly underpaid compared to occupations that favor cognitive capabilities. This includes teachers, nurses and all other professions where it is the care for other humans (and animals) that is the primary work function. What this means is that Care in itself is highly under-prioritized in our societies, something that can clearly be seen in the many cases of negligence and lack of funding in many care facilities. We are as a species underdeveloped in our ability to care for others (as well as ourselves and the planet). Care as a capability is furthermore a physical act, that one can do even if one does not get something out of it – this is also why there are still people volunteering and working in these positions even though they get no or little pay for their work. Obviously there is in this, a dimension of self-interest, in that a person in a care position can get something out of defining themselves as ‘carers’, something we shall come back to. However there are also people who place themselves in such positions, because they can see that it is of benefit for the group or individual they are working with or because they can see that it is best for all.

We live in a world that does not prioritize what is best for all – that in fact demotes the people who work for what is best for all, and as such stand in direct opposition to creating a world (and an education system) that is best for all. By implementing an Equal Money System that in fact is Best for All, caring will be a basic fundamental priority as it is embedded directly into the very notion of what is Best for All and in the practical policies developed therewith. Another important point here to mention is that care work traditionally has been women’s work. And in that is thus also an intrinsic degradation of women, instead promoting only a patriarchal system that emphasizes traditional masculine values (note: not the values of males) that essentially is based on competition and war. By bringing caring into the forefront of a political and economic (and educational) system, we can no longer deny or ignore the suffering of others. We can no longer justify the exploitation of some for benefit of others. We can no longer push and pressure ourselves to only excel and not consider the consequences of our thrusting through the earth. Finally we no longer need to compete, deceive and fight each other to survive.

Altruism and Self-Interest

Folbre and England mentions that children begin developing capabilities even before such a point as “self-investment” even emerges. In this, adults are required that are able to act in ways that are not based on self-interest with then as mentioned conflicts with the rationality of neoclassical economy. A critical (Destonian) perspective on this is that when parents support children to develop specific capabilities, they are in fact acting in self-interest as they see the children as reflections of themselves; thus how ‘successful’ the children become, will reflect back on the parents as ‘successful parents’ and as such ‘successful individuals’.

This shows how altruism is difficult to apply and questions whether such an application is even possible. According to the neoclassical economists, it is not. In relation to care work Folbre and England emphasizes this capability as one that benefits all and as such is best for all. Within this they bring up an interesting perspective, that there perhaps are other ways to make care work more valuable for society and in this they wish to challenge neoclassical definitions of human capital. Instead they suggest collective strategies for example within using taxes or policies to create inputs that emphasizes care as a capability.

Humans self-interested by nature but that does not mean we cannot educate ourselves to change

Neither acknowledging altruism as inherent (or at least emergent in how parents support their children to develop capabilities) or in the neoclassical theory of rational self-interest is common sense applied.

Therefore an amalgamating perspective is required in an understanding that in spite of self-interest being pre-dominant in human beings, policies and education (as developing skills and capabilities) can be applied to support the development of capabilities currently defined as ‘altruism’ and ‘care’, without expecting that parents do this because of some innate altruism. Through basing policies on principles that are created to implement solutions that are best for all, will support an actual emergence of altruism. In this, if all live in a way that is best for all, an application such as altruism will not even exist, as it exists directly in opposition to ‘self-interest’. If all are educated, skilled and capable of supporting what is best for all, practically speaking, the concept of altruism will be redundant.

In the development of an Equal Money System, we are researching and developing policies based on the practical and physical capabilities that each human being requires to live a dignified life and the implementations of such policies in our society, based on what is Best for All at a practical, physical level. It is open for anyone to participate, who are willing an interested in creating a world, where children can thrive and learn how to support themselves and the earth to live a life of self-expression, dignity, care and enjoyment – a life that in all ways will be best for all. Join us at the Equal Money Forum, on the Destonians Network, join the Desteni Group on YouTube and Facebook and partake in making this Earth a heaven for the Children to come.

“The Equal Money System have as Goal to Educate prospective parents with the skills and understanding necessary BEFORE a child is Born to make sure that the Child have every opportunity of an excellent Life and the required Base foundation as example of what it means to give as you would receive with a dedication to care for Life in all ways. We are what we are taught form Birth and changing our Beginning Here will change Human Nature. We all know this, yet we continue to ignore what can be changed” Bernard Poolman

[i] As a critique of Folbre and England’s theory, I suggest considering the emerging trends in sociology of sociology of body and sociology of sports. Because the paper is written in 1997, a certain progression in development of the field must be taken into account, but it is interesting to consider that there in fact has been some movement on this point in social science.

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Family is Fascism

February 20th, 2012

What is family… Really?

The paradox is, that the answer to that question, in all self-honesty, for most people, is a shock to discover, yet at the same time so univocally familiar.

The word, originating from c.1.400 is said to mean “servants of a household” and was only later giving it’s meaning of “connected by blood”. We shall here discuss exactly how accurate that first definition really is.

In looking at the root of the word, as the original meaning which we’re living into manifestation, often without knowing it, it is evident that what that is portrayed through TV (smoke) screens, is but a layer of varnish covering up the cracked foundation that is the family system and construct in this world.

Natalism is the belief that human reproduction is the basis for individual existence and thus glorifies birth (latin: natalis) and parenthood. In this article we shall discuss how the construct of the family system and the role it plays in this world, is based on a fundamentalistic and natalistic belief bordering on an ideological dictatorship that has everyone on earth spellbound through its propaganda machinery.

“Family is all that matters”

“Blood is thicker than water”

“Family must stick together”

“Family first”

But it is not so much about family in itself, as it is about how the understanding of what family really is, and more importantly what family DOES and why.

In 1966 Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann wrote a book called”The Social Construction of Reality”. This book has become a classic in the field of sociology for its description of how we create the reality we perceive, experience and exist in, through social construction in groups, intuitions and families. One of the points they’ve been famous for describing is the process of socialization, as how the child becomes ‘a person’ that is integrated into the culture and society one is a part of. It is this ‘how’ that is so fascinating and which reveals not only the construct behind family-structures but also behind school systems, knowledge systems, cultures and the entity of society as a whole.

Berger and Luckmann describes with exact precision the social constructs that influence how a child is integrated into the family, culture and society it is born into, and how it comes to accept itself as an integrated part of its world.

“The central concept of The Social Construction of Reality is that persons and groups interacting in a social system form, over time, concepts or mental representations of each other’s actions, and that these concepts eventually become habituated into reciprocal roles played by the actors in relation to each other. When these roles are made available to other members of society to enter into and play out, the reciprocal interactions are said to be institutionalised. In the process of this institutionalisation, meaning is embedded in society. Knowledge and people’s conception (and belief) of what reality is becomes embedded in the institutional fabric of society. Social reality is therefore said to be socially constructed.” – Summary from Wikipedia

When I first read the book, I was surprised that such a book has been written without having created at least ripples in the veil that is our co-existence – because the descriptions are so spot on and so directly describing to the very last detail exactly how the process of social programming takes place. I simply could not understand how someone could read this book from a “safe scientific distance” and in a sense not place the writing into perspective, where also we ourselves, have been equally programmed into a certain mold and pattern.

So either Berger and Luckmann’s description of the programming is not outrageous or penetrating enough to influence the larger society to actually look at itself and consider whether they way we exist requires to be changed OR the person reading is so engulfed in the programming themselves, that they can in fact only read from a “safe scientific distance”. That is not only ironic, but also absurd as we’re so clearly presented with the exact formula into how we’re continuously and monotonously programming ourselves to re-create the same social constructs and patterns.

Ironically Berger and Luckmann write:

“The history of legitimating theories is always part of the history of society as a whole. No ‘history of ideas’ take place in isolation from the blood and sweat of general history. But we must once again stress that this does not mean that these theories are nothing but reflections of ‘underlying’ institutional processes; the relationship between  ‘ideas’  and their sustaining social processes is always a dialectical one.  It is correct to say that theories are concocted in order to legitimate already existing social institutions. But it also happens that social institutions are changed in order to bring them into conformity with already existing theories, that is, to make them more ‘legitimate’.  The experts in legitimation may operate as theoretical justifiers of the status quo; they may also appear as revolutionary ideologists. Definitions of reality have self-fulfilling potency.” (pg. 145)

So theories about society and the explicit programming of society goes hand in hand and as such is Berger and Luckmann’s theory more ‘meta’ or ‘behind the curtain’ as it describes the rules with which the ‘game’ of society is being ‘played’ on.

Let’s have a look at the detail with which these rules of construction are described:

Berger and Luckmann describe how the child is integrated and will integrate itself into society and develop an identity based on this ‘socialization’ into the system. They describe how the child is born into a situation with ‘significant others’, who most often will be immediate family members who’re in charge of introducing them to the world.

So the child has no choice – it’s total existence is dependent on these people and it is upon this basis that the premises of socialization is founded. They decide who the child is gonna be and how the child is gonna see the world around it, what it will prefer, what it will desire and fear and they do so simply according to their own programming either explicitly or implicitly.

This is where family exists as a specifically influential ‘unit’ or institution, because the child is not only introduced into a specific larger culture, but also according to a specific interpretation of that culture. Two of the most important aspects of this process, is according to Berger and Luckmann the programming of language and the emotional relationship between caretaker and child.

“The child identifies with the significant others in a variety of emotional ways. Whatever they may be, internalization occurs only as identification occurs. The child takes on the significant others roles and attitudes, that is, internalizes them and makes them his own. And by this identification with significant others the child becomes capable of identifying himself, of acquiring a subjectively coherent and plausible identity. In other words, the self is a reflected entity, reflecting the attitudes first taken on by significant others towards it, the individual becomes what he is addressed as by as his significant others. “(pg. 152)

So it is no wonder we keep recreating the same fucked up world with the same fucked up families, wherein to we’re born, never being able to escape “the sins of the fathers”, be that genetically or socially through this stream lined process of indoctrination. It also explains why it for so many people seems almost impossible to step out of the family role, because as we’re socialized into existence, our entire life is dependent on us fitting in with these people, of us mimicking them as well as eventually taken on their habits and preferences as our own.

“The child learns that he IS what he is called.” (pg. 152)

What is also interesting is that no alternative is provided; this is simply how it works. According to Berger and Luckmann, the child does however also go through a process of secondary socialization in which it is integrated in the world around it. This explains according to Berger and Luckmann the, often contradicting, preferences a person can experience where  they on one hand believes it is bad to steal based on values Impulsed into them via their family and on the other hand place value into being accepted by a group of friends that steal. The difference however is that the child within the primary socialization perceives the significant others as ‘THE world’, where they when integrating with school mates and co-workers, are aware of these being but ‘A PART OF’ a greater world.

What is created on the basis of this system is not only generational child abuse in which singular people have enormous power to shape the future, but also a trapped and closed system that does not end, because it’s premise is based on the re-production of itself without validated reason or direction. We simply keep having babies generation after generations, with only the biologically engineered triggers and the socially manufactured propaganda as directive principles.

And within doing so, we’re constantly recreating a flawed world with flawed human beings that pretend they got everything under control. No one can even remember who started it , let alone how to stop, so we try – generation after generation, to redeem the damages and make the perfect match, the perfect child – but all that happens is that we make more and more of the same mess.

So we exist, as Berger and Luckmann has described, as mere reflections Impulsing that which will ensure our survival in the world, that which responds in a way to us that is filled with the least conflict and battle. And so we suppress, mold, lie, deceive, manipulate, try, compromise – with whatever means possible to get by, as our parents have done before us and theirs before them.

As children, we’re thus entirely submitted to the quirks and ways of the people who’ve brought us into the world and even the most successful and effective families are thus abusing their children by simply participating in continuous and meticulously patterned brain wash – and the worst part? We don’t know any better, so we do the same to our children, as has been done to us.

Thus we’re able to see the programming and exactly how it works – but changing it, has never until now been possible. The seeing, understanding and exposing of these social systems is what we do at Desteni. We do it through the basic understanding that we’re all equally responsible for the world and the reality we’ve created – we’ve created it ourselves and thus it is by changing ourselves, as a whole, that we can change what is here, system by system.

The family system is the engine that drives the reproduction of the systems of inequality that we’ve accepted as the foundation for our existence on this Earth.

It is within the families and as the families that we justify who we’ve become as that inequality – when we refuse to share or where we feel forced to steal or why we work until we bleed. It is where everything that is wrong with this world is justified as legitimate.

Family is like the clue that keeps the world system of inequality and abuse intact, with the deception of the family as the center, the nucleus of the world, bound by emotional strings and words in our childhood that holds us forever indebted.

So many people feel trapped in their families, others trap themselves and others again have no choice but to rely on family – a condition that only supports the notion of family being the foundation of our existence on this earth and the key to our survival.

But we forget that as this earth, as a whole, we all combine and compile into a nucleus one could call a family – connected by the blood that is this earth, consisting of the exact same molecules and atoms as the life we see around us – yet we treat this family as an intruder in our house instead of embracing all of it, life in it’s entirety. And  ironically, from this perspective, it is true that we can only rely on family to survive, that family in deed do come first, because without us stepping up to the plate of taking care of our family, the plants, the earth, the animals, each other , who will we be?

Are we merely ‘servants’ of the ‘household’ that is this system of abusive and inequality?

Created as and by ourselves in ways most of us don’t even remember because we’ve compartmentalized ourselves into separate units, in the believe that only as such could we survive, by hiding all parts of ourselves, from ourselves, scattered throughout the earth – brought together in artificial units of ‘support’ called ‘family’ – yet always and only supporting the system of separation to re-produce itself into smaller and smaller pieces.

If that is what family is – then it is time we get rid of it – and to come together in the family that is this earth, as all of us, to re-define family into the unconditional support  system it was supposed to be, bringing ourselves together and embracing what is here as a whole in mutual support and care.

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The Secret of North Korea is Within You

December 13th, 2011

North Korea is a secret state that is accepted by the general World society, perhaps because of the fear that they have nuclear weapons — or perhaps North Korea is accepted in the world as it is, because we each accept a living North Korea within ourselves – as secret states of dictatorship, fear and self-delusion, that we keep hidden from everyone, including ourselves.

The following is an exposure of the secret mind of humanity as an example of how what exists inside us, in and as mind-realities, is existing outside of us equally, manifested as the worldly reality we all share. We have as human beings compartmentalized ourselves within and as the mind, where some parts that ‘fit the bill’ of ‘civilization’ is allowed to be expressed out into the open, both within ourselves and in participation with others, were other ‘parts’ are keep securely hidden and suppressed, so to avoid being exposed.

Many probably know a few details about the North Korean regime or it’s absurd leadership with Kim Jun-Sun as the “father” of the country known as “the eternal president” and his son Kim-Jung-Il who is currently in the process of handing down the role of sole dictator to another son in the line of ill’s. According to Kim Il-sung, the way of living in North Korea is based on the Juche Idea which is based on the belief that “man is the master of everything and decides everything.” So how exactly is it that man is the master and what kind of master is he?

Let’s have a look at ‘who’ we, as North Korea, are:

There are not many secret places left on earth, and ironically, the one’s that are, are not the pretty rainforest Lagunas as one might imagine, but instead secret places of torture and suffering.

One of those places is now being exposed by Amnesty International:  The secret political prison work camps in North Korea.

Amnesty has gained access to satellite photos of the area, where they camps are situated in 2001 and again in 2011 and through analyzing the photos, they were able to see that more camps with more “political prisoners” had emerged in the ten years. The camps are believed to have been existing since the 1950’s. According to Amnesty’s Asia Pacific director, Sam Zarifi:“These are places out of sight of the rest of the world, where almost the entire range of human rights protections that international law has tried to set up for the last 60 years are ignored,”

Subsequently, Amnesty has released a detailed document describing the life in the camps as horrific, where torture, starvation and mass execution is everyday life for the, estimated, more than 200.000 inmates. The document is based on testimonies from over 15 North Koreans who have escaped the camps as well as guards working in the camps.

Life as a Prison

According to the Amnesty report, the people, arrested and incarcerated as criminals, are often people who have done nothing but tried to get out of the country, are exposed to torture and imprisonment, water-boarding, sleep deprivation, bamboo pieces placed under the fingernails and imprisonment – sometimes for months on end – inside a 4ft (1.22m) by 4ft cell. This is the stuff nightmares is made of, yet for the people of North Korea, it is a plausible every day scenario.

In the camps it is even custom that people are held as ‘guilty-by-association’, simply because one of their relatives has been arrested. Here the prisoners work from 4 in the morning to 8 at night, after which they are ‘educated’ in the North Korean military ideology.  But even ‘normal’ North Koreans who are not sentenced to live in the camps, share stories of brutality and abuse and are exposed to starvation and horrible living conditions. It is clear to see that the regime itself wants no one to leave and spends massive resources on keeping the population oppressed and indoctrinated.

Testimonials from with the secret regime

The following are testimonials from North Koreans that clearly describe the horrendous regime and expose the abuse that is accepted as every day living for millions of people.

A 70 year old woman who escaped last year says to BBC that:

“We don’t ask to wear good clothes, to dance or play. We only want full stomachs. But every day we wake up and our first thought is ‘How are we going to get some food for breakfast?’ Then ‘How are we going to get something for dinner?’,” she says.

“Living like that makes people go crazy. Just brush against someone in the street and they will start fighting you. In their hearts everyone knows we live like dogs. But no-one can say it out loud.”

The quote above shows a mentality that might be prominent in North Korea, because of the extreme conditions of fear for survival that people are living under, but it is actually something that most humans will recognize – the belief that we must fight others to exist and how we live accordingly in fear of not surviving.

The following is a letter written by Choi Hyok, a 12 year old boy, who escaped to China with his two siblings, a younger brother and an older sister. In bringing the point back to self, realizing that both sides of the abuse – the oppressor and the oppressed is existing within us, it is clear how we enslave ourselves within the abuse.  What is being revealed here is even further a clear exposure of the world society as a whole and where the bottom line is drawn, when it comes to survival. Money is only point standing between the three siblings and even the slightest notion of freedom, which in this case, is simply seen as surviving and not going to prison.

 “Dear Uncle, How are you? North Korea knows about us. North Koreans came to us for questioning and they made reports about us as they wished and took away all the reports with them. If you don’t help us, we will kill ourselves because we don’t want to go to North Korea. Because, if we go to North Korea, we will be imprisoned for the rest of our lives…Please rescue us. If you rescue us, I will repay it later. Really, really, I want to be free. Please help us. I pray for freedom, to Lord. I want to be free to study, freedom, freedom, freedom

In the evening, 6 April, 07
From Choi Hyok”

Realizing the North Korea within Self – A Personal Story. 

Below is a post I wrote on the Desteni forum, the first time I realized that there is a North Korea in me. It is almost two years ago and the realization still stands clear as day, yet unresolved in the world as a whole or in us as individuals – as states of secrecy still exists within and as the world and within human beings as secret mental realities, where we oppress and abuse ourselves as parts that dominate and subordinate, as autocratic delusions of grandeur, where a single desire, fantasy or fear is controlling our every move – and doing so, with the permission of us as a whole.

“In a video about North Korea I watched today, one of the North Koreans being interviewed said that they believed that the whole world was a prison, because they had never learned about or seen anything else than the prisons of North Korea. This guy had been born into the prison and they did not know they were in North Korea, who had put them there or why.
Just that they were the ones “making mistakes” while the guards were the ones “not making mistakes”.

They are being tortured, starved, isolated and working as slaves within the North Korean regime. No one can get in and no one besides this guy escaping has seen these “camps”.

After escaping the guy went to china or South Korea, and he describes how he is not very impressed. All he cares about is food.

It got me wondering about the North Korea inside me, because in a way this utterly extreme country is actually showing me something about myself that I had not seen before. When the guy said; “We thought the whole world was a prison” he was in fact correct – it is. But they are the one´s experiencing it in it´s true brutality. Of course these people have no chance of getting out or realizing anything.

What I found within looking at myself within this, what happens in North Korea, can only happen because no one sees it. They make sure to keep everyone out, and no one probably really wants to deal with them anyway. In the video it is said that the government or the leaders are terrified to be invaded which is also why they have kept everyone out.

This is the same way suppression’s work. What ever is suppressed can only control and direct as long as I do not see them or know that I am actually allowing and creating them. In secret I have actually submitted to them from fear of realizing how I am actually allowing myself to exist.

They know what they are doing is fucked up – why else would they hide it?

I have started to look at the personality designs of other countries as well, and it is pretty clear that they are all based on fear of loosing themselves.”

Oppressive regimes within

Another Destonian, Garbrielle Goodrow, wrote a reply to my post and shared a different perspective on the North Korea of humanity

“I studied these brutality suppressive nations this semester, and for me i came to the conclusion that they are based in fear of loss. Fear of losing power, wealth, domination, control, themselves, ect. it is a real tragedy that so many people are driven and ruled by fear, and creating the misery with self here in this reality. I see this in me as well, as one and equal with theses oppressive regimes fear and abuse, and it will not change until i stop the abuse of accepting and allowing this to continue through honestly accepting responsibility for the abuse i participate in and the fear i allow. On a grander scale, the dominant countries, such as the US and Britain for example, let this continue through fear as well, fear of loss of wealth, power, and dominance, not having the slightest care of the human suffering, but only caring for the things they fear losing. It will stop when we/i, the Self, stops.”-

So what does this make us?

When looking at North Korea as an example of a manifested symbol of the mind, it is a dictatorship that is existent upon all members of the group submitting themselves to the belief that one man is god and that it is their duty to subordinate themselves to him – they do so, either brainwashed to submission or out of fear. In a single human, this could be how we exist with an addiction or a personality trait, believing that if we do not follow this ‘rule of living’, something bad will happen to us, exactly how the addiction or belief becomes the king of all our actions or the god we submit ourselves to.

Another aspect is how the rest of the world acts towards North Korea, which is by largely not doing anything at all. Several  sanctions has been made to send a signal to the North Koreans, with the result that the same people that were poor before, are starving now. In a human being’s mind, this could be when we decide to go on a diet and literally starve ourselves to stop an addiction to sugar or food, but where all that happens, is that we’re abusing our bodies, because the real problem was within the structure of ‘who’ we are and not what we do.

The World will not change until we each change who we are

As Garbrielle said: “It will stop when we/i, the Self, stops”

This is the pinnacle of all points of abuse and inequality in the world as well as within each of us  – that it only stops when self stops. And in doing so we stand self-responsible for what is here as ourselves and as this world in its entirety. We do, as all parts, make up the whole that is this world, just as we within ourselves as a whole, accept who and what we allow ourselves to exist as. If one part is allowed to dominate from a separate mind-reality of delusion, and we as a whole, abdicate self-responsibility and submit ourselves to this part or even ignore and suppress this part, we are accepting and allowing the abuse to continue. This is how the world in which we exist, creates such a manifestation as the secret regime of North Korea. It can only exist by our permission and acceptance of it, however that is made – through deliberate ignorance and abdication of self-responsibility of the world society as a whole, as each of us allow our own North Korea – be that fear, greed, submission or self-delusion, to dominate and control us.

The Secret of North Korea is within us

North Korea exists within us, as us, through our permission and therefore North Korea exists as an actual manifested regime. We’ve accepted and allowed parts, which we’ve separated ourselves into and as, to dominate, direct and control us, while we as a whole, in one way or another have accepted this – by turning our backs on ourselves, by suppressing parts of ourselves into secrecy and by living incognito in abdication of self-responsibility.

There is only one solution and that is to bring it back to self. To realize how we’ve been accepting inner North Korea’s, to admit this to ourselves as a first step that will enable us to eventually stand together, as whole to stop the abuse that we’ve allowed in humanity as a whole.

We require to expose, investigate and understand our inner mental realities, where we exist in separation from the actual real world that we all share and where addictions, fears and delusions are what directs us in our daily participation. We require to work within ourselves to stop and take self-responsibility so that we actually become able and capable of changing and directing ourselves, to stop existing in and as separation so that we may start living in self-dignity.

The purpose of an Equal Money System is equally to stop all abuse and separation so that we may live in equality and self-dignity – yet with the EMS, we are actually changing the whole as who we are, at a global scale.

Because just as we require to expose and stop the inner abuse as North Korean realities in our minds, we require to stop the actual manifestation of North Korea and all other regimes and institutions of abuse and inequality that exist in the world, because of who we are, as who and what we’ve accepted and allowed ourselves to be and become, as individuals and as a whole.  Furthermore, instead of money being the symbol of the acceptance of inequality as it currently exists, in the EMS the nature of money, just as the nature of man, will be changed into being the value of life – where all is considered and cared for equally.

 Sources: 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13272198

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/asia-pacific/n-korea-holding-200000-political-prisoners-amnesty-international/article2008725/?utm_medium=Feeds%3A%20RSS%2FAtom&utm_source=Asia-Pacific&utm_content=2008725

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13268857

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea

http://desteni.co.za/forum/viewtopic.php?f=119&t=13912&hilit=North+Korea

The Dynamics of Capitalism Revealed

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One World in 60 Seconds

October 27th, 2011

The other day, I was standing in the local supermarket, here in Copenhagen, Denmark, ready to buy a watermelon as a Nigerian woman asked me about the coloring of the melon in question, as mine was striped where the one she had found was full colored dark green. She shared with me, there in the line, how there in her country, was a different melon growing, similar to a watermelon, yet with an entirely different taste and that she thus wanted to check that our two melons were in deed the same kind. She had her little son with her, mulatto as his father was of Danish heritage.

Standing there in line, I also met another baby boy with his two Polish parents, who were out shopping for baby products and diapers for the little one. As I went out of the supermarket, carrying my big watermelon, two Romanian workers who deliver advertisements in the early morning hours to the neighborhood, went in. I walked down the street, watermelon in hand, enjoying the heat of the sun and as I turned the corner of the street, I was greeted with a wave and a shout by the Turkish pizza bakers who were sitting on their milk boxes, smoking cigarettes and taking a break from the heat in their busy restaurant kitchen.

Further down the street by the Korean restaurant, an old Korean man was standing on the steps leading up to the restaurant entrance. He smiled at me as I walked by, never having set foot in this or any other Korean restaurant. There is also an Indian restaurant further down the street that I have also never visited. I suppose it is a mixture of sticking to what I know when I do eat out and only eating out on rare occasions because of the money it costs. Interestingly enough a pizza costs the same as a fine Korean or Indian cuisine dinner, yet I have never considered frequenting those restaurants. As I walked past the Korean restaurant I almost bumped into a van that was leaving a driveway.

The woman driving the car laughed as I came up to the car and signaled apologetic to me to go around the car as she was backing out. As I walked around, I saw two other women silently swooping into the car, one of them only wearing a blanket and high stiletto heals. They were coming out from the bordello called “Hungarian Studio”. I actually did not know if the girls were Hungarian or not, but they did speak an East European language. The bordello has a sign that says “Open” with blinking neon lights and I have only seen it being turned off once. As I had passed the van, I looked across the street where a group of Lithuanian workers had been busy restoring a couple of houses and after waving to them, I crossed paths with a young Afghan boy that I often meet in the area who was walking his dog.

Shortly thereafter I walked into my house, carrying the watermelon to my kitchen and as I cut, sliced and ate this juicy piece of the earth, I looked out, through the window, at ‘my world’. In approximately 60 seconds and as long as it has taken you to read this, I met people from at least 10 different nationalities, in a tiny radius around the area where I live. Most of them are here because of money and most are working jobs that they do not enjoy or make much money from. Most of the ones that have been coming during the last 5 – 10 years, the eastern Europeans, live in crappy apartments rented to them by their work-providers for expensive rent in small spaces where they’re crammed together with 6 other guys sharing one bathroom. Others have managed to create a business or have perhaps married a Danish person. Currently Copenhagen is even voted the most expensive city in Europe and even for the Danes themselves, rent, food and transportation is extremely expensive and work is hard to come by.

So here we are: ‘the world’ gathered together in a tiny area, where all the world’s inequality and injustice exists directly visible and immanently obvious, yet incorporated into a day-to-day living where even the most basic questions asked in regards to this apparent exploitation of human life, is considered too naïve or too idealistic to be taken seriously in terms of taking action to change the situation. I want to live in a world, where everyone can travel everywhere and live as equals.

In such a world, an entirely different way of living together might emerge, where for example work environments can be established or cities can be designed with specific purposes that supports the local environment or draws direct inspiration from it, such as water-themed living near the great lakes of Finland or building clocks in small cities of Switzerland. Perhaps as all the people of the various countries on Earth will mix in the melding pot, people will eventually travel to and live in India specifically to live a specific lifestyle of tranquility and playing music or people interested in making movies and working with cinema will gather in California.

When looking at it, in some ways this already is this way – except for the inequality through money that makes all the difference in the world, when it comes to making a living — anywhere. Consider countries in Africa, where the world’s best climate is for growing coffee, yet where people are being exploited and exploiting each other and where the infra structure is non-existent in terms of providing public service and supporting the citizens’ with basic necessities such as clean drinking water, schools or transportation. Who knows how those countries will flourish and bloom, once a system is in place that is created on the basic premise of Life supporting Life to be lived dignified for all?

There are basically endless opportunities to live differently as the way we are currently living is not only extremely restricted and unpractical, but even more so, unfair and unjust. When taking the walk from the supermarket to my house, the people I met were by large people providing a service, working hard and working long hours for the bare minimum wage, while the majority of those they serve are the local population of which many work few hours, with excellent conditions, benefits, unions, pension and decent pay.

So basically we have created a new working-class that might not be women, children, slaves or our local brothers, but in return are people either trafficked here by ruthless people of power or who has migrated themselves out of desperation towards the situation in their home countries. And as we did this, one person crossing the border after another, we also create new elite –ourselves – and we are now living side by side with the poor; equally shopping in the supermarket, yet with unequal access to the kind food we can buy and the quantities in which we can buy it.

We may live on the same street, but where one family of 5 live in a huge town house with a furnished cellar and a garden, the other might live in a single room in an apartment with 5 other people with only fungus as insulation for the winter cold. It is as a constant ‘age of inequality’ we’re all in, all the time, and even though nothing may have changed and people are still as unequal as when the slaves were trafficked overseas or when women were not allowed to vote or get divorced, we live together in this tiny space that is this world. We can no longer deny that inequality is a living fact.

What is required is that we realize that it IS possible to live differently and that what we’ve believed to be creating new opportunities and ways of living was in fact recreation of the same inequality in new and more sophisticated ways that offered nothing more than the same way of living in working to survive. The Whole World is here and here is the Whole World. Borders are not meant to be permanent or to surpass our self-direction, because Life does not have borders and thus the borders that are here, may exist for a moment and be gone the next.

What is important is that we – as a whole – decide upon the borders and fences that we place for ourselves, because they’re practical and supportive – not because we fear the invasion of a foreign nation or wish to uphold a justification of inequality between people. The World in 60 seconds is the World we all live in, all 360 degrees of it – and that is the same as we live Here, in Nigeria where a melon grows that looks like a watermelon but tastes differently than the ones from Spain that can be purchased in the supermarket right around the corner from where I live in Copenhagen.

I Vote for an Equal World for All – because we’re all Equally in it and therefore: by living Inequality, we are living something that is not who we really are and that simply doesn’t make any sense.

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Modern Misogyny – A personal review

October 23rd, 2011

These writings are not those of a typical feminist – because I am writing not only from a critical view, but also as a form of catharsis, as a self-awakening from a heavy nightmare, into which I have ridden myself in the acceptance and condolence of abuse towards women and are now slowly opening my eyes while adjusting the brightness of seeing what is Here. So this is me rising myself – not rising against men or in defense of women.

I am simply Here to speak that which has remained unspoken within and as myself and within and as this world. Within this article I am thus drawing from own observations and experiences as well as analyzing specific cultural and sociological traits relevant to gain an understanding of why women submit themselves willingly to the abuse and degradation by men and why we accept ourselves as societies and culture that does not honor or dignify ourselves as life. Let’s begin:

The other night a couple of girls were having a party at house next to mine. They were preparing themselves to go out clubbing and from my window, I could see how they were dressing themselves, putting on make-up and getting drunk, meanwhile music was playing with a thumbing bass out the window. I noticed that most of the songs they were listening to were these techno/house tracks with male singers and with lyrics sounding like “eat my ass bitch” in a monotone and generic fashion or it was female singers with lyrics such as “I wanna give it up to you”. I then embarked on researching this point a little further as I found it to be interesting and fascinating how these women were listening to music that was clearly degrading and misogynistic as though it was actually empowering.

Here were these girls, partying as ‘single women’, with ‘their own money’, ‘beautiful and free’ – for example compared to their great grandmothers, who were slave bound to kitchens, not allowed to vote, considered dumb and irrational simply for being a women or if we compare them to women in other cultures that do not have their own money, education or the cultural freedom to express themselves, for example sexually.

And still they were listening to degrading abusive music with male voices singing to them to get ‘get on your knees’ or the infamous “eat my ass bitch” as though it were a celebration of life. When I placed myself in their shoes, their immediate and conscious experience of themselves were as ‘power-women’ – I mean, that was the game they were playing. “We’re players” “Women can be players as well” – and even though that is true, I can say from personal experience that this is also a matter of joining them, because you can’t beat them – and in this case it is the male dominant culture, where women are valuable and valuing themselves as objects for the attraction of men and where men are supposed to be tough and brutal, seen, defined and perceived as the ominous “Cool”.

“…see whore you’re the kinda girl that I’da 
Assault and rape and figure why not try to make your pussy wider 
Fuck you with an umbrella then open it up while that shits inside ya”

Eminem in the song “Stay Wide Awake“

Jackson Katz, an anti-sexism activist writer describes it in these words:

“Is it truly possible that women’s lives have been so thoroughly devalued that {Eminem}  a multi-platinum musical artist with nine Grammy awards to his name can sing multiple songs about raping and mutilating women and hip sophisticates can’t even bring themselves to utter the words “woman-hating?”[1]

Yes – it is most certainly possible, which the story above clearly exemplifies. Because when not only men degrade women, but when women also degrade themselves and when children are brought up to an implicitly immanent misogynistic culture – how can we expect ourselves to live any differently? There is this collective delusion in the wealthiest countries, that women have become liberated (hell that men have become liberated as well) – all conjured up in a comparison to cultures of past times, which apparently makes us liberated because we’re no longer stuck slaving in kitchens, carrying children on our arms and now instead can slave for cash at McDonalds or Wendy’s. And obviously women can get abortions and divorces, but how exactly that’s ‘liberating’, remains the question.

So back to the story of the girls next door. As I placed myself in their shoes, I saw that they were, behind the roles of ‘liberated power women’ who are ‘playing the game’, insecure, self-conscious human beings who were doing what they were doing specifically with the purpose of getting a man, either to have sex with or to love and hold – in both cases, for reproductive intentions.

How do I know this? I have been there and have done it myself. As a woman going out clubbing, your primary asset and value is your looks which has to meet specific standards or preferences. So these girls were constantly going from the living room where they were partying to the bedroom, both of which I could see from my window – to put make-up on and check their reflection. Some of the girls did this many times, many 10 or 20 times during the night of 4-5 hours before they were going out. And these girls were normal, standard, good-looking girls as one would imagine such. There was nothing out of the ordinary about them – and they would check their reflection in a certain way – with critical, sharp eyes of either approval or disapproval. And in the back-ground of the mind, the image of a man accepting them, loving them, feeding them with attention (or money and drinks) were constantly running like a movie in their head. They were drinking heavily as well, which people do to ‘uplift their spirits’ – basically to push beyond their own boundaries so that they become able to speak, dance, flirt and have sex.

As a girl and woman listening to this music, the ‘eat my ass bitch’ from before, the experience is that of being empowered, of being strong, invincible and specifically that of being a part of the male (superior) environment, showing the males that we can ‘match them’ and that we’re not whiny little sissies that can’t keep our liqueur sort of thing – is the psychology behind this point. I realized something fascinating a while back in relation to this point: that men do not specifically want woman to ‘match them’, meaning to be tough or strong – many men has a fantasy about a feminine, fragile virgin-like girl to whom they can either ravage or cherish or both, quite like many women has a fantasy about a beast of a man who fittingly ravages her or cherishes her like a delicate flower or both.

So this specific point is about women matching and attempting to empower themselves through matching the degrading nature of a male-dominant society – it is a quite strange application of self-empowerment. Yet – if we as women have seen men and what men represent and present themselves as, as free, empowered and self-authoritative, then that becomes our aim for empowering ourselves – because in a male dominated society, there are no alternatives.

I am not speaking here about strictly of male-dominant as being run by males – more that it is specific characteristics connected with being male that are predominant and valued as such amongst all members of society, whether it degrades and enslaves them or not. So in terms of the discussion about the male-dominant society, it might as well be a man that is degraded and enslaved by, to fulfill a role by putting on a suit or pumping iron or suppressing himself and his self-expression.

So the topic here is not physical men vs. physical woman. That is exactly seen in how women, when attempting to empower themselves, will end up doing exactly the opposite. That is because our entire society and the systems within which we manage our lives, our bodies and our minds – are male-dominant. In this specific case, it is women who have actively taken upon themselves to enslave themselves and degrade themselves through participating in the degrading of women through music, fashion and social behavior – as though it was in fact empowering.

Women (or men) don’t have an alternative to empower themselves –and power in this current system is equivalent with brutality, abuse cynicism, ego and self-interest. Thus we’re Impulsed to shape and form ourselves as personalities in relation to this definition of power, which is why many relationships will exist within a reversed constellation where the woman dominates the man in exactly the same way as a man would have dominated a woman.

Therefore – it is time to give ourselves an alternative. Obviously in order to do so, we first of all have to understand how we’ve defined power, worth and value as it is – so that we can start redefining what power, worth and value is and should be, when it is no longer abusive and unequal.

You can read more about this in the article, where I wrote about the enslavement of reproduction, and I will return to this in coming articles. I will also continue with investigating the male perspective in this, where males become equally enslaved to and within the point of degrading and abusing women and thus degrading and abusing themselves. For now I will remain with this point of how woman are trapped in a self-degrading and inverted chauvinism that is expressed through the example of music.

We shall here take a look at and analyze a brand this Katy Perry song. Katy Perry did most likely not write this song, yet I am deliberately referring to it as such, because 1) there is a communal pretense that money-making-mainstream-music –performers DO write their own material and 2) because Katy Perry does let this song represent her – she is singing it  – it is “a Katy Perry song”. I shall not analyze the entire song here, merely highlight some fascinating expressions that show how the acceptance of abuse towards women, is Impulsed and groomed into us via mainstream music that pretends to be innocent and harmless via it’s glossy exterior and it’s Disney- meets-Demon-like front-figures.

The song from Perry’s most recent album appropriately called “Teenage Dreams” is called E.T and  it circles around the theme of Katy falling in love with an alien man. (Katy Perry, who got married to another celebrity, notorious playboy Russel Brand in an spiritual ceremony in India last year)

The song starts with a rap intro by the infamous Kayne West that lays the foundation for the perspective of the song presented as a ‘boyish’ tease, like the constant chase on the playground where the boys pull the girls pigtails and the girls scream. Yet – this is not children or teenagers who are presenting this – they are adult, successful artists with large audiences specifically in the segment of children and teenagers. And behind the boyish teasing, is a far more cynical and brutal truth about this and these types of songs and artists.

The topic of why adult artists are making music targeted towards children within creating an entire ‘world’ around them as a fairytale, is another story for another time. Take a look at the lyrics here. This is the fantasy man that Katy Perry in these lyric’s dream universe is feverishly submitting herself to:

K[Kanye West]
“I got a dirty mind
I got filthy ways
I’m tryna Bath my Ape in your Milky Way
I’m a legend, I’m irreverent
I be reverand
I be so fa-a-ar up, we don’t give a f-f-f-f-ck
Welcome to the danger zone
Step into the fantasy
You are now invited to the other side of sanity
They calling me an alien
A big headed astronaut
Maybe it’s because your boy Yeezy get ass a lot”

So first Kayne calls himself a ‘reverend’ meaning the man who speaks the word of god to the clergy or the following of a specific church and later goes on to complimenting Katy for making him ‘the big man he is’ by him having anal sex with her. To that Katy Perry answers:

[Katy Perry]
“You’re so hypnotizing
Could you be the devil
Could you be an angel

Your touch magnetizing
Feels like I am floating
Leaves my body glowing.”

Here Katy are referring to the energetic reactions attached and played out – to which many people are addicted – between man and woman. The “electric” spark that is experienced. Here Katy has associated this to a specific man, a special man – that thus makes it even more intense. The man is thus placed on a pedestal sending the signal that such a man could exist, but also within polarizing and idealizing him to such a degree, she herself becomes implicitly inferior and irrelevant.

“They say be afraid
You’re not like the others
Futuristic lover
Different DNA
They don’t understand you”

There is here an entire topic on it’s own with the references to aliens and spirituality, which I will not discuss in this article, but merely mention as a point to consider critically.

“Your from a whole other world
A different dimension
You open my eyes
And I’m ready to go
Lead me into the light”

This is a clear reference to the biblical “god” and the man is in this fantasy now uplifted to the status of a god.

Kiss me, ki-ki-kiss me
Infect me with your love and
Fill me with your poison”

Love is referred to as an infection and sperm as a poison which is from a certain perspective quite accurate, but the point that follows through her is the point of submitting oneself to abuse, to the desire and want to be abused, which clearly can be seen in the lyrics below:

“Take me, ta-ta-take me
Wanna be a victim
Ready for abduction”

The rest of the song goes on repeatedly in the same fashion and upon investigating more of the current music listened to specifically by teenagers and adolescents, these type of lyrics are not uncommon – quite the contrary. So the question is then if this is merely harmless wordplay or mating-games within a fantasy that is not supposed to be lived out into reality and if the average adolescent is so desensitized from seeing and hearing about rough sex that they do not take something like this seriously. Or if the desensitization is actually something that this music is indicative of, where we as human beings abdicate self-dignity and the ability to see others as equals and thus come to believe that we either have the right to treat others as objects or that we are no more worth than the objects we use without care.

I have as a woman – but even more so relevant, as a human being in this world, desensitized myself to abuse and suffering, to the abuse and suffering inflicted upon my own human physical body as well as the abuse and suffering within and as this world. I have found it easier to submit myself, because I believed and accepted that standing up was impossible – my world left me no alternatives. Yet when everybody says this, does this, creates this – we end up with a world of self-abdicated beings who are abusing each other and all claiming their freedom from responsibility.

I have realized for myself that the extend to which I have desensitized myself from what is here, specifically as suffering and abuse, is what has allowed it to escalate – because if it is not me, I cannot feel it, if it is not happening to me, I am not responsible, If I do not see it, I am not here as it.

I have realized that the extend to which I have desensitized myself is so vast that I require a total re-education of myself to actually re-learn how to care – not only about the world, about other life-forms and people, but equally about myself. Because self-abdication in all its various compromises is the self-degradation of separation that I have willingly submitted myself to.

Separation = Self-Abdication

When we return to the girls across the street in the house who were partying and getting ready to go out, they are themselves responsible for what they are doing – – they might even experience that nagging feeling of “why am I doing this, why am I compromising myself like this?” and then they look around and there is no alternative and everyone is doing the same and if they don’t do this they wont get a man and if they don’t get a man they stand no chance at getting that perfect life or at least surviving so that their genes can be transferred and they may live forever through the generations to come … WTF?

Is that the kind of human beings we want to bring into this world, continuously without end? Is surviving more important than being able to exist in self-dignity without being abused or abusing others? Unfortunately we have been programmed and have programmed ourselves to believe and accept this to be true to the extend where the this is infused into and as our bodies so that the mind sends an energetic surge or shock through the body a signal that it is time to get to work, to get that ass on the dance floor and mate at all costs and at any price – because the survival of the human species is our sole purpose in this world.

And within that single point of self-abdication, we have collectively as men and women – as human beings – submitted ourselves to exist within and as the honoring of abuse instead of life, of being entertained by the suffering of others and in believing that the continuous enslavement of ourselves, is what freedom looks, feels and smells like – there at the bottom of the human physical body that has become the object of our blind devotion. We have truly become assholes of our own demise.

I realize that I first must re-learn myself to take self-responsibility, to live dignified and principled, to not compromise or abuse myself, mentally or physically – to not submit myself to ideas or preprogrammed definitions about who I should be or what I should enjoy or desire or dislike. I realize that I have never really cared and even if I did, the world does not even facilitate human begins that do care.

grew up surrounded by women who hated men. Perhaps they did not all hate men, all of them, all the time, but a lot of them did. They also loved them… a lot – sometimes too much. It was an ironic dichotomy that I did not quite understand as a child. These women that I grew up with, had been part of “the movement” in the 70s and had experienced the restraint and limits of growing up in the shadow of fathers, brothers and male teachers.

They often had experienced and how they were taught to be ashamed of their sexuality, sit with their legs crossed and not send out the wrong signals. By the time they’ve reached their twenties, they were pissed off angry. So they became pissed off angry at the men and either directed their anger that way or towards the symbol of “the man” – the capitalistic system of inequality. The women had sex and relationships once in a while. Some of them became lesbians, out of shear spite of males.

In the relationships they did have with men, often the men was cheating as much as possible, drinking too much, wining too much or becoming violent, so most of the time, the women were alone. They hated their jobs as well ironically, many of them worked as some form of child-caretakers, in a daycare center or at a school – and I guess they felt pretty pissed on by life. I remember how they came home, tired, with creasy hair and long heavy breasts under their sweaty shirts, as the last sad remaining symbol of their victorious bra-burning that had marked the beginning of the end of their oppression.

Their rebellion against the system, the authorities and against men had not paid off and they were now in exactly the same position they fought to get out of: underpaid and unappreciated housewives and mothers, often without a man as support, with full time jobs being single parents, bitter and broken.

When they sat around the table at night, drinking red wine, the woman often talked about their youth, about feminism, and how women should stand up for themselves with pride in their voices. What I saw, as a little girl sitting there, with dangling feet at the edge of the chair, was people that were angry, tired and desperate and that was not the life I wanted.

It was not because the men around me, had more happy lives, but they did seem freer. They could come and go as they wanted, they laughed more often, they did not look as burdened as the women did. Often the men also moved on and created new families with younger women and had new children and they seemed to be able to simply brush off the past as were it a flick of dust and walk on as though nothing had happened. They looked invincible from that perspective, or at the very least; not as miserable as the women did.

Lately as I’ve been taking my daily walks around the neighborhood, I walk by these houses, these expensive houses with fancy cars in the driveway. I’ve looked in through the windows and seen beautiful women and men with beautiful children eating dinner and I’ve caught myself desiring to be them because in the mind’s eye, these people have the perfect life. They are happy, they don’t sweat.

One day as I walked by one of these houses, I started realizing for myself that what I was seeing was not happiness, but money. Everything that I saw, all the happiness that were “shinning through” the windows of these perfect houses, was bought and sold for money. Some had bought a rustic happiness that gave associations with childhood visits to the countryside; others had bought New Yorker chic happiness with steel and raw concrete as their portrait designed happiness. I realized that I had not the faintest idea what went on in those houses, as all I saw was an illusion of happiness, created and facilitated through glossy magazines and commercials on TV as the contrast to what I saw as a child, where the adults did not have any money and were miserable because of it.

The problems of this world are not at the fault of men or women. That is too easy. It is however a system of inequality, of abuse, ego and deception that we’ve allowed to be the directive principle that manages all our lives – from politics to economy and relationships. And as it is, to a large extend, males have been the ones in the frontline of the business of inequality. There is however no doubt that we’ve all contributed, participated and played along in this tragic masquerade, where some have power so that others have not and where some have money so that others have not.

What I saw growing up, was not an unfair and uneven relationship between men and women – or it was that as well – however the point is that all and everything is facilitated and dictated by our submission to money. Money is the remedy with which we abuse and control each other. And everyone accepts it or has no choice but to accept it, within the belief that happiness and fulfillment can only be achieved through money – that money does in fact make one happy, successful and achieved.

I had never thought that I would ever declare myself a feminist, exactly because of my upbringing of seeing these women as everything I certainly did NOT want to be anything like. The stories here has now interwoven, from where I started with sharing why I am slowly becoming a feminist, but not a feminist as in a woman that despises men, but as a human being realizing that the current capitalist and patriarchal system is only in support of more of itself in a complete irrational frenzy of greed, power and self-delusion and that to stop it – we require an entire new way of managing our lives and ourselves, a way where women are standing up – and men – to not accept or allow ourselves to continue existing this way without any regard for life whatsoever.

Therefore – I am here to re-educate myself to become a trustworthy and dignified Human Being, with whatever means and measures it takes. Then it doesn’t matter who is woman or man or what is the cause – as long as we dedicate ourselves to changing what is Here, one step at a time.

I do not wish to live the life of the women I grew up around, hating their lives and the men they blamed for their position. I do not wish my children to live the life of me as I have – therefore – to change the future for our children, there is only one way possible: to change what is Here as ourselves, in each breath of self-compromise or self-judgment – to Stop and Stand up. In each breath, where we make excuses or justify why we only care about ourselves – to Stop and Stand up. In each breath of lying to ourselves or each other about what is here or how we really experience ourselves – to Stop and Stand up.

A veil is being ripped from my eyes – it is an astounding experience, as something I have always taken for granted as real and valuable, is suddenly revealing itself as fake through and through. It is even more astounding to see now how obvious it is that it was fake and that I have been existing for all this time on a complete lie.

I have been living a lie, together with everyone else in this world and the lie that I am talking about is: The Lie of Giving Life – The Lie of Reproduction – The Lie of Family – Relationships – Beauty – Love – and Sex.

As I am slowly ripping the veil from my eyes, I walk in my daily participation and see everything as had I gotten brand new eyes and trying them on for size or as am I seeing everything for the first time, yet still too bright and blurry. I am aware that even still what I am seeing now – is but another layer, another veil and that it requires a total unveiling – a brutal, self-honest unveiling of all delusions and illusions about what Life is.

Basically how it works is that I participate in my reality, read the news or listen to someone speak on the street or experience something within and as me and it shows me yet another point where what I believed were real, true and valuable turns out to be yet another point of deception.

What I have realized is this:

The entire world of fashion, healthcare, dating, drinking, having children, buying houses, Hollywood –  is set up like one big giant fertility clinique where everyone is groomed to become producers of “life” like flesh-machines or flesh-factories that are here to serve one basic function: re-produce and clone more flesh-machines.

We are “brought to life” to clone the system that is infused everywhere, Impulsing everything and everyone to only serve it, as a god almost that requires absolute obedience and devotion – and what is even worse: we are not even aware of it – or ourselves as it.

Because the deception has been so carefully designed and orchestrated that everyone believes that they’re in fact “living life” – that they are each living in something called “my life” which is almost like a game-sequence or a level in a computer game, where one must collect the most amount of points and scores – and the most important aspect of this is the game of reproduction.

For some it is mostly about the act itself – which entire industries, such as the porn- and clubbing industry are build upon. For others it is about the goal of producing the best possible offspring – for others again it is about “making the best out of” “the journey” – again with entire industries build upon these programs and impulses, which humans follow and call “family values” and “family first” or “I am a bachelor for life” and nod with this warm feeling of purpose and worth.

I have myself been 100 % controlled by this specific point of enslavement to the point where it is in deed shocking to realize even this singular point as an example of the extend of self-deception and enslavement I have submitted myself to – completely oblivious. I believed that my yearning desire for a little house on the beach with a loving husband, a dog and three children was a pure, honest wish for a happy life.  I was willing to go through hoops to maintain relationships, get sex or even flirt. I never questioned the sexual arousal I felt when I saw a man on the street that fit the profile of someone who is “powerful”.  And what is amazing is that this is a complete collective delirium that everyone is participating in maintaining – lovesongs, Tv-shows, romantic movies, hardcore porn, family-discount, bridal showers, baby showers, bachelor parties, beach parties, date rape drugs, you name it: we’re hooked on it. And this is why it is so hard to see and realize the self-delusion as the spell that we’ve placed ourselves under.

Because even if you were to see it – the entire world around you would live this as reality and thus eventually you would end up believing yourself to be insane or dysfunctional. It is like in the story about the emperor’s new clothes where everyone believes the emperor has clothes on; even though they can see that he does not – simply because they fear losing public appearance. Only when a child who has no concept of keeping up appearances, speaks up, the spell is broken.

It is time to break the spell, people – there is no such thing as love, as relationships, as “the one”, as “the perfect life”. The “perfect life” is – look around – only facilitated and made possible by money. When looking at the various representations of this scenario and those we’ve believed to have such a life, what we see is the facade, the make-up placed on top of the face of reality, stuck in a stiff smile – – what we are seeing is the emperor’s new clothes and we believe it to be real because otherwise we would have to face the lies we’ve been telling ourselves.

Sex is not some magnificent, sacred, spiritual or exhilarating event that will blow the boundaries of reality if only it is performed correctly with the right partner – the experiences of sexual energy charging around in the body is like the sweetener they put in cough syrup to make sure it gets down and stays down.

The entire purpose of this, us existing as flesh-factories in various grooming, fertility and nesting systems — is to replicate and reproduce more clones, more systems like ourselves – cloning what is here as this system of self-enslavement and propelling energy that we’ve accepted and allowed ourselves to become – and thus fear letting go of, because we’ve diluted ourselves to the extend where we now believe that this is all we are and will ever be – which unfortunately is true as long as we allow it to be. As long as we praise and submit ourselves to these systems – in their honor and in spite of life – we will remain self-enslaved and self-inflated, giving value to the act of enslavement itself.

The expression “bred in captivity” is fitting here – because only a race as stupid and arrogant, as we humans have allowed ourselves to be and become, would speak proudly of enslavement as though it was a sign of their evolved intelligence and power over nature – when in fact, all it reveals is the extend of our own self-enslavement.

The point here is not that sex is bad or that relationships are bad and that we should all now go into celibacy. Quite the contrary – the point is for us to realize how we’ve enslaved ourselves to reproduce ourselves as clones of our own enslavement and to break that cycle by willing ourselves to change.

We do this by changing the very nature of our relationships – – from pre-programmed and automated fertility-programs to living agreements where we come together in the purpose of supporting ourselves and each other as Life to stand up. We do this by changing the way we have sex and the starting-point within which we have sex, from mentally and energetically charged reproduction maneuvers to physical self-expression and amalgamation of and as ourselves in the touch of equality. We do this by stopping participation in thoughts, emotions and feelings – within the realization that all of these are pre-programmed for us to follow the pattern of survival through reproduction. We bring ourselves back Here – – in and as the Physical, as Life, Equal and One.

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More God in America – Or More Money in God?

March 30th, 2011

This article discusses the relationship between God and Money with America as an example of how Money and God influences our daily lives.

From Australia to Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland, there is an increasing number of people who identify themselves as “non-affiliated” with religion. However this is not the case for America. Richard Wiener[1] from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona, explains that it is a result of a simply psychological condition that propels individuals to follow the group and the majority.

According to Weiner, religion, both as a belief and a practice is soon to go extinct in basically all countries of the world – except for in America. He has with a team of scientists, conducted a research study based on a mathematical model of the complex social motives behind joining religious groups.

People Follow the Flock

The study is based on the theory that the more people that are in a group, the more likely others will be to follow. The study has shown that on a mathematical level, each person is simply equally influenced by every other person. The study thus concludes that mere social utility is the driving reason behind people’s religious affiliations.[2]

“… social groups that have more members are going to be more attractive to join, and it posits that social groups have a social status or utility. For example in languages, there can be greater utility or status in speaking Spanish instead of [the dying language] Quechuan in Peru, and similarly there’s some kind of status or utility in being a member of a religion or not.”

Programmed Identities

According to the theory of Social Construction of Reality by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, the development of national identity is specifically developed dependent on emotional connections with what they call ”significant others” (usually parents) – this is what they call the process of “internalization” wherein the child will accept and identify themselves as specifically belonging to and being a part of a certain group and thus internalize the behaviors and patterns of the significant others as its own:

“…the child becomes capable of identifying himself, or acquiring a subjectively coherent and plausible identity. In other words, the self is a reflected entity, reflecting the attitudes first taken by significant others towards it, the individual becomes what he is addressed as by his significant others”. [3]

This self-identification is developed within the emotional connections and is developed specifically through the passing on of cultural values and language. It makes sense that the passing on of cultural values, with rituals such as pledging allegiance to the flag,  is something that is highly developed in America  due to the historic background of the country as conglomerate of languages and cultures, that can suggest why religious rituals build into the culture has emerged within the need for a strong national identity.

Why religion as the basis of national identity?

Within an entirely different theory, one of the founding fathers of sociology, Emile Durkheim, in the 1880′s proclaimed that if France were to survive untying its ties to the church, religious symbols and rituals had to be applied transferred into the class room and the work place by a strong state, placed as representatives for the civic society.

According to Durkheim, a new social moral had to take the place from the role religion had up until then had played, to ensure a social cohesion within society – because he saw within the developing complexity of the industrialized and urbanized world, an danger people disassociating with and being divided within society. The blooming scientific and rationalist dogmas, did simply not have the same unifying effect on people, as religion did.

He admitted that even though he did not support the metaphysical rationale of religion, its rituals and emotional associations had a specificaunifying effect on people. [4] For Durkheim, religious rituals thus became a matter of practicality – as a force that bound people together and ensured a form of cohesion.

Religion is thus, together within and as emotional association through culture, used to keep a society “coherent” within preventing people from rebelling or disassociating themselves with national identity. The same takes place in the family, as show by Berger and Luckmann, wherein the parents represent the culture and through the emotional connections to the child, make sure that the child integrates and accepts the dominant culture as its own, which again ensures that the dominant culture prevails and maintains it dominance.

The question is now if this is still the issue – that religion is so overly dominating the American culture and Society because of the effect religious practices have on people – or if other aspects are playing in on why people remain religious and why religion is so closely tied to the maintenance of a nation’s social coherence and prosperity?

Are Americans closer to God?

According to Elizabeth Lemons, a Professor of religion Religion, there is in America a sort of  “marketing” of religion going on, that has close ties to moral values.  However she also says that: “Some people say they go to church but they don’t, or they say they believe in God, but what does that mean in their lives?”

In another study[5], the scientists rather than asking people how often they attend church, investigated through observation and through neutral questionnaires – and what they found, was that there was a clear discordance between what people say and what they actually do, which led the scientists to conclude that Americans are not more religious than others, but that they are simply more like to claim that they are.

The study also found, that for Americans, religion is closely related to a general assumption that being religious is the same as being a good person and a good patriot and that is in itself a specific cultural and moral value that is being shared between a majority of the American people.

Religious to Survive?

The previous mentioned theories and empiric studies suggest thus that the base motive for participating in religious activities is caused by other factors than faith – as it is closely related to the individual’s inclusion into and acceptance within – and thus survival in –  the society.

According to Associate Professor of Sociology Paula Aymer, there is a definite link between religious beliefs in America and the development of capitalism:

“At the very beginning, capitalism and religion managed to form very strong bonds,… Socioeconomic success is often treated as a mark of specialness — that your religious faith, your prayer life and your God marked you for that success.”[6]

As a common belief, this suggests that people with money and financial success are considered favored by God, and that they are thus better and more Superior people. The question is if it was God that gave them the success – or if they became successful because of their affiliation with religion?

Participating in religious activities can affect whether or not you get a job, become president or are able to establish a network of support that can ensure that you get food on the table. Thus whether or not a person is practicing religion from a starting-point of following the flock or within presenting oneself with a religious personality – it is about surviving and thus about being able to support oneself financially in this world. God follows the Money.

More-Money with Mormonism?

One of the most successful religious groups in America is the Mormon church and the official LDS church is one of the wealthiest in America.

The popular TV-Show “Big Love” portrays a modern polygamist-Mormon family of a man with three wives. The show is interesting because it brings up issues that are common in all relationships, but here magnified and intensified because of the polyamorous design of the relationships.  However the show also reveals and magnifies the foundation of religious beliefs and their connection to survival.

Life with God

The Mormons believe that if a man and wife are “sealed” in a special Mormon ceremony, that there marriage is sealed in eternity as well – and so marrying is not only for life, but for the rest of eternity. This is why they in the TV-Series are so obsessed with getting as many wives and children as possible:  to have a big family of “superior souls” to spend the rest of eternity with.

The belief is furthermore that the time spent on Earth is like an interim Hell that is not really relevant in the big scheme of things. What is relevant is the pre- and after-life as “the real life” only begins after death, when the family is “reunited” with god in heaven – as they’ve voluntarily accepted to come to Earth, be tested, measured and judged by god, for to, if they’re found worthy: reserve a seat next to god in the after-party of Heaven. [7] So basically as a Mormon, you do not have to take Responsibility for what is Here, because what is Here is “not real”. This is so not only for the Mormon church but a basic Deceptive strategy of all religious and spiritual practices.

An Ex-Mormon gives a morbid overview over the role of money within Mormonism:

“It’s the World’s Perfect Business Scheme and you can do it too. Just start your own “Afterlife Insurance Company” then make the greatest promise humanly imaginable — promise your clients that if they totally obey you and pay their premiums, after death they’ll become Gods! In fact, polygamous Gods who’ll have eternal sex with innumerable partners! Until then, they’ll enjoy moral supremacy over all humanity. You do need to claim that you’re a prophet of God however, but this is the easiest claim on earth to make and no one can prove you’re lying.”[8]

One of the reasons for religion being so important in America, can be that the country has created its economic system based on the deception within religion as shown clearly within this example above. As each person is born, they are forced into accepting the dominant culture in order to survive. Religious beliefs and practices allow people to compromise actually Living, in the name of “god” and the “eternal afterlife”.

Common Sense Perspectives

So – At a mathematical level, it is more practical for a person to follow the majority. Identities are formed within the cultures as emotional attachments, to those that nurture us in those critical first years, where we’re unable to support ourselves to survive. Religious practices and rituals are being used in societies to maintain social cohesion, thus survival as the group. Religious identities are being deliberately used in groups as a moral statement of superiority in order to reach success and make money. We learned that religious beliefs allow people to make justifications for not Care for or take Self-Responsibility for what is Here.

Everyone is Participating

America is just an example – religion is in a way also just an example. Because this shows that our entire behavior, identity, morals and faith are based on survival as the main motivator for everything we do and participate within and as. Our identities are shaped and formed so that we will survive. We form our identities to fit the dominant culture (represented to us by our parents) to survive. Our cultures survive, through the continuous indoctrination into us as children. Everything and all we do – even that which we cherish and experience as personal and emotional values are created from and within survival.

Thus – all of this can equally be said about other countries and other practices that we participate within and as in our world and reality, from sex, drinking and doing drugs, to spirituality and political activism. We are slaves of our own programmed “nature” to survive.

The Programmed Nature of Life is Survival

In poor countries were people actually starve from birth to death, it is about physical survival, about making it through the day without dying. In rich countries it is no different, except we have shifted our level of survival from biological to social and spiritual – and that is what we call “human evolution”.

If we want to stop existing within this programmed existence – both within our societal and cultural systems, but equally within ourselves as our personalities and identities are shaped and created according to the exact same purpose.

we must come up with Solutions that is based on taken the point of Survival out of the equation. In Common Sense,  it does not matter to the universe or even the planet, the plants or the animals if we as Humans survive – in fact, they would probably stand a better chance of Living a satisfying and Dignified Life, if Humans do Not survive.

Are YOU satisfied with Living to Survive?

There is not a single Being in this World that is satisfied with merely surviving – surviving means avoiding death at all costs – literally at ALL COSTS – as we pay with everything we’ve got to survive.

As the World currently is functioning, survival is dependent on the Money System – a Money-System, that we all participate within and accepts as a fully functioning system of Governance and maintenance – that is based on humans having to fight each other and compete in order to exist. It is based on the base acceptance that some win and some lose – even though it is always the same people that win and always the same people that lose. Thus the game has been fixed from the beginning and religion is one of the ways that we’ve justified our acceptance of this system, in abdication of Self-Responsibility.

The Solution is Here

It is Common Sense to follow the majority as it is the most Practical for our own Survival. But when the majority Supports a System that is Destructive and Abusive in its very foundation, it is time to change course.

It is time to stop fighting for our survival – and to come up with Solutions that Considers and Cares for Life. Life is for the Living – We are the Living, but we are not Living Life. We are Living programs of fear of not surviving that will do anything, fight anyone, become anyone – to survive.

An Equal Money System – where everyone is given, and give each other, Equal Money from Birth to Death is a Solution that is based on the Mathematical Equal of What is Best for All. When we say Best for All, we mean All Life – so not only the Humans, but also the Plants, the Animals and the Planet itself. It is Common Sense – each can do the math for themselves. When All Life is Supported and Supporting All Life Equally, no one is required to fight for their own Survival. We are collectively Responsible for Creating and Accepting the World to Continue Existing as it does – and we are Equally Responsible for Changing it into a World that we would Actually want our children to be born into.

How can I Participate:

We have seen within this article, how all we are programmed to survive. This means that none of us exists as “original” Beings – in fact we are entirely conditioned into and as supporting the current Money-System’s dominating direction. Therefore a re-education of each of us is required – where we re-program the programs we’ve become – to systems that honor Life. And within doing so, we remove all programmed, conditioned and automated behavior and identity, as we Stand up to Live according to the Basic Principle of What is Best for All.

We do so within the Realization that what is Best for All, is Best for each of us – and that when we Stand up for – and become the Living Principle of what is Best for All, we can Actually Create a World that is not conditioned in any way.

What will Change with The Equal Money System?

• Children are not forced or indoctrinated to replicate the culture of their parents or society or to rebel against it in desperation of the enslavement that we have submitted ourselves to.
• No one has to compromise themselves and create fake personalities and persona’s in order to be accepted by the society they’re conditioned into.
• We support the plants, the animals and the planet as they are Equally and Unconditionally Supporting us to Live.
• We can Allow ourselves to – for the first time – Live without Fear.
• From the Equal Money System a Self-Honest, Self-Dignified Self-Expression may Emerge as the Living Word of Equality and mutual Support.

To Participate – is to Take Self-Responsibility for Who and What we have Accepted and Allowed Ourselves to become – in the Realization that we’re Equally Responsible for All that is Here. And so we Walk – step by step, to correct and purify that which we have become, in Self-Support and Self-Honesty.

The Desteni I Process

At Desteni we Support each other and ourselves through a re-education to Self-Honesty, Self-Forgiveness and Self-Responsibility. We provide a platform of Support where each Stands Transparent and Equally Accountable in Self-Responsibility – so that each of us may Stand up and Support Life, as what is Best for All. This is called the Desteni I Process and consists of a course that is available through Desteni. The Participants with Desteni also write blogs – wherein we write ourselves to Freedom and Self-Honesty, within Standing up as Self-Responsible for and as the Systems of programming that we each have Allowed ourselves to become.

The Equal Money Movement

We are in the Process of Creating a Global Equal Money System, that will be both political as well as financial – and as such, we Stand Equal with the Governing Systems that we have Accepted as the Directive Principle in this World to correct them to become Systems of Life-Support instead of Systems that Support Inequality, Deception and Abuse. In this each is an Equal Participant. There are No Masters, No Slaves, No ideology – Because the System is based on Practical Equations of Equality – as What is Best for All. Thus the only requirement for Participating is to Participate as an Equal – Equally Responsible for what is Here and for Ourselves within and as this World.

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The Game of Survival – Inequality Equations and Miss-Calculations

January 17th, 2011

Most of the ‘great thinkers’ throughout history have seen parts of this, hinted and circled these points like vultures for truth and reason. But it has become the norm to either avoid setting Principles before preference, to allow ‘free-will’ to ‘run it’s course’ – or to set norms that are constructed with flaws of abdication of Self-Responsibility, placing faith in ‘higher powers’. But if we start a calculation by making one plus one three, suddenly three plus three becomes eight and so whatever we do, will be miss-calculated – every single calculation from then on out, will be flawed.

Thus Nietzsche had a point, when he called for a re-evaluation of all values – of the courage to Face ourselves within the Self-Delusion that we have Allowed to become the very ‘foundation’ of ourselves. Only then can we be able to begin making decisions that are based on Principles before preference, where we Dare to Will ourselves to Stand by these Principles no matter what. All morals that have existed so far, has been inherently immoral, therein lays the flaw and the miss-calculation. We have not Considered Life and from there seen what is required to be done, but have placed ‘more’ value and ‘less’ value, making ourselves the judges of Life, yet abdicating the Responsibility for the decisions we have made within that process – and more specifically, not Daring to Face the fact, that we might have made a mistake within the course of the ‘progress’ that we call ‘evolution’.

Ulrich Beck also has a point when he calls for a Cosmopolitical Global community that dares making local politics Global, which does not only mean for the System of governments, but for the governing of ourselves as well. Within the current system, we are existing in separate well-defined boxes as nation-states and personalities bound to these nation-states, in separate projects that we call ‘a life of our own’. But around us already exists a Global system with the ability to get in anywhere, to move anywhere, to move anyone and to direct the course we collectively take without any foundation in political decisions based on Common Sense Principles and Considerations of What is Best for the Whole of Earth. They seem to be having ‘a life of their own’, yet behind every move made, are Human Beings.

This system functions only within the Acceptance of all of us in it, through the belief that no matter who you are, you have a fair chance. But when you are born chained to the debt of your parents, your country or your continent, the prospects of ‘a fair chance’, equal to someone else in a prosperous situation, is virtually non-existing. Yet we have used this belief to justify the Suffering that we have Allowed and to hide within ourselves the deep dissatisfaction that we too are living only to survive.

From Canada to Cameroon, for each of us finance is about our private lives, earning a living, feeding our children, buying a home. But for some, finance is a game – a game that only they know how to play, a game where it is other people’s money that is at stake. It is a game of speculation, of digits jumping off screens and into the pockets of those fortunate enough to know the rules of the game.

The problem is that each of us, the one’s that worry about our mortgage, about college tuition for our kids, about providing bread on the table the next day, and the next, are not aware that we are part of the game, that we are game pieces, the pawns and ducks and that it is our personal finance that makes up the game board, from which the lucky few have their laugh.

We do not see that we are connected, that we together without knowing it, provide the bolts that make the wheels of the game of finance keep turning. We are all a part of it, from New York to Nigeria – but for some the stakes are higher than for others – some play the parts of the constant losers, generation after generation depleted and exploited: natural resources, education, health-care, clean drinking water and the ability to make a living. Others play the part of the middle-class, the masses of endless consumption, who more willingly take their part in the game, because they might, they might get a shot of getting ahead, of securing their future, of being the one’s that get to play – and win. The secret that no one has told us and that we couldn’t figure out for ourselves because we didn’t know the rules of the game, is that we are playing whether we like it or not, whether we are aware of it or not. And it is within each of us, playing for ourselves, for our own lives that this secret lays. Because we believe that we are not connected, that we are not playing a game – because it is our lives, our childrens lives that are at stake. Yet that is exactly what keeps the game playing itself – the investment of our lives, the fear of not surviving and the desperate comfort when we do.

So essentially there are two games being played on one chess board:  One is the earth with its cities and its cornfields and its oil rigs and its slave labor. The other takes place in the clouds of speculation, making up the rules as it’s goes along for the other game to provide the necessary fuel and finance to ensure that a few, a lucky few, remain the winners. These gamers take media, banking, wars and governments and shape them to fit their need. Everything that we see, everything we eat, every cent we give to charity is carefully calculated to ensure that the game keeps going. It is essential to the game that only a few knows how to play it. So the rules are made complex, requires special education that one can only achieve by investing oneself in the game – a network of gamers, that has been compiled through generation after generation , shell-company upon shell-company that seems endless and off the map. Brands with family names that project loyalty and sincerity, yet are transnational and not bound by any Principles or laws. But behind them are people, behind it all is always people. It is not an evil conspiracy, but it is the Human Nature of greed. And who of us can say that we would not ever have done the same, were we in their golden slippers or golf shoes today?

The point to get across is not the revolutionary notion of the proletariat fighting the evil bourgeoisie – but to understand that the game is kept going by all of us investing ourselves in the game, whether we like it or not, whether we know it or not. The nature of the game is to keep depleting the Earth, its animals and people, through a carefully orchestrated centrifugation of land, crops and oil. How it ends up being real money in the hands of real people, lies within the structure of our systems: our faith that banks are institutions of the people, that governments are institutions of the people, that corporations simply supply the demand of the people, that media serves the interests of the people. And so – we support, we participate; we live our lives, with pensions and debt and cravings for new merchandise to give us the feeling that we are getting somewhere, that we are moving up in the world. The farmer or factory worker in Nigeria or Cameroon has no chance of breaking the chain. The guys on top of the food chain have no interest in stopping the game. They are just as scared of loosing what they have as the rest. And in between are the rest of us. The middle-class that do no harm, the ones that are not responsible. We each live our lives, privately, separately, only meeting in banks, shops, churches, on game shows on TV or even on Facebook. Many of us see that something needs to change. Some place their fate in spirituality, in positive thinking and in the belief that everything happens for a reason. Cleaning the body, the soul, the earth has become a business of its own. Others want to fight the system, the rich, and the governments and unite in small groups of resistance, going ‘off the grid’ often based on feeling powerless and angry. A vast amount of people play computer games, smoke weed, drink or eat because they don’t know what else to do – and then there are those that embrace the system, exercise, build careers and families, believing in the progress of the Human race.

We all know that a change is required, yet we do not believe that we are the ones required to make it happen for whatever reason we make up for ourselves. It is the governments, the corporations, our parents, God’s, the system’s Responsibility – yet it is clear that none of these are capable of taking Responsibility within their current condition. What we do not see, and yet do see without admitting it to ourselves in full awareness of what that implies, is that our World is the Whole World and that these private lives and ‘worlds’ that we experience on a day to day basis, are based on this illusion of Separation and within this the fear of not surviving and the justification of competition with All other ‘parts’ of life as something ‘natural’ and unchangeable. It is supported by the delusion of ‘free-will’, which is really just a fancy word for self-enslavement – the master becoming his own slave and throwing away the key.  If we take a good, long, hard Self-Honest look at the World and ourselves within it, we will clearly see that the ‘free-will’ that we worship is determined by one thing only: Money. Thus we become our own slaves in the belief of ‘free-will’ as something real – willing to give up everything, to sell ourselves, to become workers pretending to work towards ‘self-realization’ within a career as the main purpose of our lives, most of us secretively desiring to be somewhere else, to be someone else, yet not even able to admit that to ourselves having accepted this basic self-deception of ‘free-will’, determined by the silent taboo of money.

When do you ever hear people talking about money? Really talking about money? We would say; “everyday, all the time” – but that is not so. People talk about survival, about the game of survival, either in frustration or relief or brag about their ability to survive. We do not talk about what is behind money, what we, through the symbol of money, and what money to re-present, have done to ourselves. Some will see it and they will see that what is required is to stop the money-system entirely. But what they are not seeing is that the blame and thus the Responsibility for this condition is placed outside Self – trying to fix the illness by making the symptoms go away – be that money, the system, the government or god. We have allowed money to be the re-presentation of ourselves as individuals and as a whole – dis-playing before our very eyes on an everyday basis, the cruelty and the absurdity of the game we play. It is obvious that if we are playing a game without knowing the rules, we never had a chance of winning in the first place. But if the game cannot continue without us playing, knowing the rules or not – we cannot stand by say that we are not Equally Responsible. The question is thus if we dare changing the rules of the game and even more so: what will happen when we do?

Within the Equality Equation of One plus One being two, it is clear to see that it is possible to change the course of the World through a simple Application of Common Sense. This is not about ideological or life-style politics, it is not about debating between a socialist or capitalist society – It is the Basic Common Sense Realization that we All Participate Equally in this World, though through a System based on Inequality and Separation, a flaw in the Equation that can be solved through the Application of Principle above preference, but where some are in a position currently to make a difference, while others are not. It is those of us who are in a position to make a difference that has the first Responsibility to do so – but that also means the Responsibility to sort out our own miss-calculations and Inequality equations within whatever we Participate within and as, inside ourselves as well as in our daily life experiences, as the One plus One plus One plus One – that can Change the game of Survival to a Life in Equality of All Beings – a Life where we can finally start having fun and play together instead of fighting each other in the delusion of separation and survival that was never more Real than what we have Allowed it to be. Support The Equal Money System to End All Inequality Equations through Self-Responsibility For All as One as Equal as Life.

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Why it is Impossible to be “A Good Person”

January 16th, 2011

Choices, choices, choices

Morality – Has it ever occurred to you how difficult it is to be a good person? In fact it seems that even the best people amongst us, cannot be good all the time – how many times have we not heard of priests, ministers, politicians or soccer moms, whom everyone around them, saw as the best people of their community; giving, loyal, honest, selfless and hardworking – who turned out to be sexual predators, tax evaders or drug abusers? Who were leading their perfect life, with perfect marks, perfect children, degrees, gardens and characters and in secret living a shady life of porn, abuse or addiction? I have realized something for myself: It is not possible to be good all the time. It is not possible to be the model citizen, the perfect mom, a good person. Why? Because ‘good’ is a polarity – the polarity of ‘bad’ and as such the balance will always tip from one end to the other. It might take years or months, we might be living both the good and the bad at the same time, exerting the good to the public, shamefully or spitefully keeping the bad hidden – but it is there.

I Realized that it is not possible to be good, without also being bad – and that no matter how good deeds I would do, how much I would try to redeem and clean myself from the bad, it was not possible – because inevitably the balance would tip and I would find myself doing or saying exactly that I had been fighting and trying to keep away. This explains why these seemingly good people, after years of being law abiding citizens, suddenly go on a killing spree or leave their family: because the good requires an equal bad to balance itself – and we, we are caught in the middle constantly having to keep the bad away, doing our duties, while thinking about the teenage daughter next door or just another glass of red wine. So if bad follows good in an infinite balance that seems to be as accurate as a law of physics, can we actually say that there is such a thing as being a good person?

I discovered for myself that being a good person, that doing the right thing, made me feel good and that this was the primary reason for why I tried to be a good person – because it made me feel good, it made me feel better about myself – When the balanced tipped and I then did what I considered bad, I felt bad, or even reversed, felt constrained by the good and liberated by embracing the bad.

This world as we collectively participate in it and portray it, through our movies, news and public life, confirms for ourselves that the world is good, that we are good – that there is something inherently or at least possibly good underneath it all. To this we give our hope, our faith, our donations to churches and charity organizations, to show and prove to ourselves that we are capable of treating each other with dignity and respect. I discovered for myself that I would do anything to feel good, to feel like a good person – I would follow any leader that told me that what they were promoting was in the name of the good – I dreaded the feeling of being a bad person. But no matter what I did, what I sacrificed or desperately wanted to be true, the bad kept luring in the shadows as a monster that I could not rid myself of. I tried everything, from meditation and anti-materialism, to positive affirmations and vegetarianism. I was deeply committed and truly believed that this time, each time, I would succeed. And in these states of ‘purity’ and cleansing myself of the blood of humanity’s humanity, I felt better than those who did not participate; the meat eaters, the shoppers, the unfaithful – I felt that I was finally raised above these savages, above the savage in myself, and I would feel surged with energy and motivation to do the right thing. Not long would pass and I would get bored, my motivation would drop and soon I would find myself in secret stealing bacon from the kitchen or buying a gossip magazine. For a while, I could block these misbehavings out and pretend like it was not me or say to myself that it was only a moment of weakness and that I would re-commit myself even more firmly to my vows. I remember as a child, praying to God for something to occur, to be saved from a situation and promising that if God would hear my prayer and give me what I wanted, I would stop being bad, I would commit myself to his work. There is no doubt that there are many monks and missionaries out there, who are in this exact position, because they have done the same. But if it is impossible to be good, because good and bad exists in a balance, what are we actually doing? And can this explain why the world exists as it does, of haves and have-nots, of people speaking good, while acting bad, of people who after years of faithful service to gods, wife’s, husband’s or governments, suddenly in a surge of energy, turn bad?

The next question is then what happens is we stop trying to be good? Many would say that the world would run amok, that Suffering would increase, that not having moral standards would legitimize people to do what they wanted; to shoot each other or steal from each other, without remorse. But if we look at the world as it exists in its figures and numbers and digits – is this not already what we are doing? Is this not what we have always done? And if the truth behind why we so desperately want to do the right thing, is that it makes us feel better, how can morality be legit? What if we take both good and bad, right and wrong, out of the equation? Then we are left with the World as it is – no reason, no meaning, no purpose – simply they way we have Accepted Ourselves to Exist and the question of if we are going to keep Accepting Ourselves to Exist like this?

Right and wrong, good and bad are implied through there already being a moral standard, already being a source – whether that is Adam and Eve, God and Satan or The Evolution of Human Consciousness and the ability to make rational and altruistic decisions. But if we look at the World as it exists in its digits and numbers of money spent on war, child deaths and financial inequality, it is evident that it cannot simply be explained through the belief in right and wrong or good and bad. Our laws are not protecting us, our faith and beliefs is not making us compassionate or loving towards our neighbors. Our prisons are not rehabilitating its convicts and the news does not show what is really going on. In our public lives on the streets, supermarkets and at our jobs, we are bullying each other, fighting to get ahead in the line, being consumed by road rage or thinking about having sex with every woman we see. Still we pretend like there is order and civility, while underneath, in our Secret Minds, we only Care about Ourselves. Many people will say that this is not so – That they Care. But if we look at the state of the World, and what we, as citizens, parents, corporations and governments are doing about it, the answer is evident.

Therefore we require of ourselves to bring about new Solutions that does not depend on hope or on a seemingly inherent dormant ability to do the right thing or to be a good person – By holding onto this, in ourselves, towards each other and our children, we are Deceiving ourselves. Therefore we require to Face ourselves, Self-Honestly, Directly, Straight Forward, even though we know that we are not gonna like what we See. And then we require of ourselves to reconsider what we are doing and what the Actual Starting-Point is, for our Participation within and as this World – not the Starting-Point that we’d like to believe we are coming from – and in this, we require to Consider the possible Solutions for Sorting our this Mess that we have Accepted and Allowed Ourselves to be and become. In this, there is no pointing fingers, blaming or pushing the Responsibility away – because each of us, even though that might require some Self-Honest Self-Investigation, are Equally a part of the Creation and Acceptance of this World as it Exists.

Then we can Finally Decide to Live according to Principles of Common Sense, wherein We Realize, that What is Best for All, at a mathematical, physical and practical level, is Best for us to. And finally rational decisions can be made, sustainable Solutions can be developed and Politics and legislation can be used to implement these Solutions. This is what we are doing at Desteni and with the Equal Money System – Because we have Realized that morality is not inherent, that good is an equivalent of bad and that the purpose of doing the right thing and being a good person, is about the energetical surge of feeling good and avoiding Facing Ourselves in taking Self-Responsibility for and as this World. Thus we require to literally Change Ourselves, the nature of ourselves that we have taken for granted and to, both within and without re-educate ourselves and Change the Principles upon which we Govern this World and Ourselves in and as it. It is simplistic to Participate – all it requires is for us to Push Ourselves to be Self-Honest, even when we do not like what we See and to, within that, make the Decision to Live differently, to Live according to What is Best for All.

Lets Sort Out this mess that we have become and Live in a way where Life is Actually Valued and where we do not have to Fear each other or what is inside us, because we have taken Self-Responsibility and re-educated Ourselves to Live according to Principles that can Stand the Test of Time and not energy, beliefs or emotions that waver and fall and in which we are Separated and Distanced from Ourselves and Each other.

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Academic Education – A Waste of Space, Mind, Money and Time?

November 11th, 2010

Your Brain

Academic communities and higher learning facilities like universities are the places where great knowledge is born and passed on with the purpose of ‘enlightening’ our societies for the better.It is where the great thinkers of our world has been shaped and formed into the greatness, making the world prosper and develop through science, philosophy and all fields of knowledge and technology. It is the world where great men, since the days of Plato have sought and thought the solutions that would create the best world, the best societies and the best Man.

The academic world is a special world; the world of Academia – the world of reason and objectivity, where freedom of thought transcends the shackles of survival and the bounds of religion and politics. Galileo was one of its martyrs, the great thinking, and in all but different ways, so was Oppenheimer. In the days of Plato, the man who could think the best was the man that could take civilization to a new level. The legacy lives on today with universities being the hatching ground for all great men, be they  politicians, scientists or doctors. These are the experts of our world; the one’s we look to for answers about the Universe, about today’s economy, about avoiding cancer and even about the meaning of life. We educate ourselves to BA’s, MA’s and doctoral degrees with the purpose of getting a head (pun intended) and we go through years of writing papers and reports with our eyes fixed on the microscopic detail, with our heads in the books, in classes, attending seminars and lectures until we become something more than we were when we started: The Academic scholar, the intellectual’s – The Elite.

When I was working my way through the years towards the time of deciding upon a future career, I deliberately chose not to go to university. At the time I was rebelling against the shackles of The System and I believed that were I to venture towards a university degree, I would be soiled and spoiled by the academic world and by the knowledge that I feared would make me stuck up and arrogant, because that was what I was seeing in people who had been through the limbo of college and university – they came out as different people, believing they were more than the rest, speaking in a secret code that only they could understand. In the end, I ended up exactly where I was pre-programmed to be: At university – that was what my parents had done, what my sister had done and what they had all wanted me to do; become smart, become something, making something of myself.

[ad#article]Thus as a participant rather than a critical observer, what I am seeing is that the world of Academia does exactly what I had feared it would: It indoctrinates and socializes its students through the academic language and culture and through the seductive nature of knowledge being power in this world. We learn that the point of gaining power through knowledge is so that we can make the world a better place. The actuality is that most knowledge simply produces more knowledge, useless for anything than itself, and that the reasons for why we obtain university degrees in the first place, is for self-interest only. When we stop having to worry about physical survival, we can begin worrying about social, mental and spiritual survival.

Recently I attended a seminar where an esteemed German theorist claimed that it was through thinking more and better that we would be able to rip the veil of delusion that is the cause of inequality in this world (Marx would have turned in his grave). He had a romantic notion about universities being the places where peace and respect is born, where knowledge makes the student become self-reflected and thus able to empathize with others. He claimed that it was through the enlightenment of consciousness (he was a sociologist, not a new-age guru), that we could stop social inequality. I asked him if he really thought that thinking was the solution to stopping social inequality and suggested that it might be problematic to simply think and not act. He responded in a way I can only describe as unable to compute, so effectively designed as a great thinker, that he could not even fathom the concept of action being required in stopping social inequality.

I hear professors talk about ‘society’ and never once have I heard any of them state that what is tacitly implied in this word is ‘The Western society’. When I have asked about it, they agree that it is problematic and go on to saying that globalization sure is a hot topic these days. They say that there is no more hard labor, no class division, that we live in a knowledge society of freedom and innovation, but fail to mention that the rest of the world is doing the dirty work, while we wash our hands with Eco-friendly products. I see academic and intellectual people using long and complicated words as synonyms, instead of common words that everyone can understand, for no apparent reason. It is the language of the scientific method I am told, the language of objectivity and empiric proof and therefore it is the language through which all conclusions made about this world becomes valid and true.

As I am studying the classics of sociology and philosophy, I often find myself surprised that someone three hundred or eighty years ago was able to state the obvious and that we now haven’t gotten further than to re-produce the same words in new books and that we seemingly not have learned a single lesson. I often find myself asking: what if all of these great thinkers are all right in their theories and conclusions about the world? Often when I read I can agree with all the theorists, even if they are conflicting, because each of them has a point, but from a specific view or corner of the world. If that is so, is truth or Reality then not multidimensional and thus made up by every single being in this world, all the time changing as we change, and therefore irrelevant as a philosophical project or discussion?  Bernard Poolman once said that ‘There is no truth, only denial of what is Here’ – so while we philosophize about concepts like peace or love, war is as real as it has ever been and it is lived whether people like it or not – not only thought.

When something is invented and created for the purpose of practicality, it holds no status or value besides how much someone can make off it on the market, while academic knowledge is valued and honored in itself, as though it was the holy grail of man’s accomplishments in this world.  It seems that the head is the master and the hands, feet and body, the slave. Knowledge is seductively and endlessly spinning in on itself, like the magic of a kaleidoscope. But we forget that it is our hands that turn it, that it is our eyes that look through it – that it is merely pieces of glass reflected by light and that the magic we put into it – is a mental projection.

Universities are where What is Best for All is supposed to be thought and developed. It is where we are supposed to come up with Solutions to stop social and economic inequality, to unite people, to create awareness and reflection – But the academic world is the Elite’s world, excluding everyone that does not understand the academic language, including only those fortunate enough to have money. It is where we are seduced by the value and authority we have placed in knowledge.

Higher education holds no validity if it is not producing results that makes the world a better place. This is after all the whole point, isn’t it? Or is the point to reproduce the Elite, to make sure that the Have’s still get, that the intellectuals are stocked, inbred and isolated on an island of good intentions, but without a grip on the Reality, where for many, every day is a living hell?

We could claim that the difference between an educated person in the developed world and an uneducated person in the developing world is that the first is smarter and thus more civilized. But if We were to spend every moment of every day trying to stay alive, we would have little time or reason to consider ‘enlightening’ our consciousness. The severe exploitation of animals and humans is also a result of the educated western world, where the smarter we get, the crueler our methods of turning life into profit become. All brought to you, the live studio audience, the masses whose human rights have been reduced to consumer rights, whose democratic influence is as powerful as getting to choose between organic or regular eggs. And the academics are the one’s developing the justification that we need to keep our moral balance in check, feeding us expert opinions on the lack of sentinel awareness in animals or that an Indian does not require a higher living standard because he is used to less.

The academic world is not a place of education and development – it is a place that reproduces inequality, justified as the place where these problems can be solved – producing theory upon theory by people who have never had their fingers in the dirt. Academic Education is a waste of space, mind, money and time – if it is not applied towards making the world a better place for everyone. From the days of Plato this was the whole point with educating ourselves – to make ourselves the best we can be.

It is not through big thinking and big words that a difference is made in this world – it is through practical, sustainable Solutions that are most often simplistic and straight forward. Small children are great examples, saying that war is stupid and not understanding why mom has to work for money and not play all day. We require solutions that does not exclude some for the benefit of others, solutions that benefit everyone and makes no one special or more or less than another, simply because; we’re not.

And it is not because we are not capable of actually coming up with these solutions, just look at the development in sustainable energy, in water purification and medicine to name a few. We simply do not prioritize the knowledge and actions that places what is best for Everyone, at a physical, practical level, first – because knowledge in itself have become the grand prize and the token of greatness; we think therefore we are – Really?

Imagine if all education was focused upon working together towards making this world a better place for everyone. Imagine if we were able to focus on creating the best solutions in any given field or subject, without the competition between egos over who knows the biggest words or has the best memory. Imagine a world with Equal Money for All – where Everyone had an Equal Right to a Dignified Life, where Everyone had an Equal right to Equal education and that knowledge was merely a tool used to create what is Best for All.

Is that too much to ask for?  I think not.

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Corporations, Governments and Consumers – The Unholy Trinity of Inequality

October 6th, 2010

How much money do you need?

One of the most important aspects of politics today, is the merging of governments with companies and corporations. We can no longer see the line between public and private business – where one ends and the other begins. It seems that where governments are falling and failing, corporations are standing, ready to take over.

In looking at this development, it is not so odd that corporations are taking the lead, as they are build on the principle of profit and financial growth, only abiding the laws of the free market, which gives them power to act in ways that seem unlimited – This is clearly seen when it comes to protecting human rights of workers and in environmental issues, as well as with regards to marketing and public relations – everything and anything goes. In democracies, the governments are bound as the voice of the people and thus answer to the people, elected to provide  answers to ideological questions of how to attain and develop harmony and prosperity within our nations. It is a subject that has kept scholars busy for thousands of years. So where governments are bound by bureaucracy and borders, corporations has the freedom to move and act globally, to change at will and to follow the money, rather than the people. Where democratic governments live off votes, the corporations live off profit and these two worlds have now merged, with the introduction of the consumer-citizen as the clue that binds it all together – It is advanced survival 101.

Politics as an executive philosophy of governing reaches back in history to Plato with Socrates and the vision of ‘The Good’ and ‘The State’. The Socratic ideal of rational ruling by those who sees what’s best, is still in play in the modern democracy, however it may have been modified and modernized throughout the years – Market thinking however is commonly sourced to before the industrial revolution as ‘the new boy on the block’, where some clever men found ways to privatize land and labor and thus created the foundation for property and endless prosperity (for the few). Market thinking as an economic strategy has by those who made it a political ideology, been seen as a direct opposite to government thinking. Yet simultaneously it has been ‘The State’ that has guarded and ‘save kept’ our lives and with it various models of democracy and governments, while the market has been the playground for the private entrepreneur, the kid with the lemonade stand. The two seem to have now found a common ground where governments provides the structure for the consumption provided by the corporations – for your pleasure and entertainment.

It does however seem like market thinking is the smarter of the two, as it is coming up with solutions that are far more advanced and far more flexible than the governments, in how to maintain and develop our societies. It is in the industries of privately owned companies that bio-fuel is invented, where windmills is created, and where water purification is taken seriously, as an area of research and development (obviously as an investment opportunity towards maximum profit). It has even been said by economic thinkers of today, that when the crash really hits, the corporations will be there to pick up the pieces (that is us), from the governments that has failed to protect it’s people and thus our countries will be run by corporations, which sole purpose is to create more wealth to those already wealthy, while enslaving the rest to produce, buy and consume, justified by the idea that ‘The good life’ comes with a persistent effort to get the wheels of the economy to turn.

One could ask whether this is not already the politics that is being promulgated by our governments, and if so, do the governments not already exist as corporations or even within the corporations, only existing with the sole purpose of growing and generating profit for a select few? How is it then even relevant to talk about governments anymore from the perspective of knowing and feeling safe that: ‘it’s been taken care off’ – whether we are talking climate changes, Iraq or immigration? Who is it really that is responsible for the mess we are in?

We can see it crumbling as each government is required to take care of its own citizens, while the Global community is being neglected and overlooked, as each country is solely responsible for itself, as each man is for himself, even though the suffering of some is directly due to the exploitation by others – most often done shielded behind of corporations with no political or legal obligations and therefore with the means to do whatever is necessary to squeeze the last drop out of any oil rig or diamond mine in the world. Apparently no one is responsible – and the movement of profit is carefully orchestrated so that no one is held accountable, as each hold their piece of the puzzle and have no control over what anyone else does. This sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it is not,  because there is no ‘One’ behind it, which is exactly the point – We are all participating through having our cake and eating the other’s too, and then there are those having no cake at all.

The most fascinating aspect of all of this is that obviously behind governments and corporations are people – but because the corporations have been given a life of their own, as symbols and brands, whatever is done within them is justified because it is not personal – it is business. An example where governments do the same, is with the American government’s handling of the prisoners in Guantanamo bay. The symbol of the company brand called ‘America’, allows the CEO’s to bend their own rules and laws as far as they can, to get what they want – in this case either power or oil, but certainly not justice. In the last century it was the Commies that were the villains, portrayed by 007 heroically taking them on one by one (British by all means, but none the less – it is all ‘Common Wealth’ is it not?). Now we have Ironman battling the Arabs and so the scene is set in primetime to protect our ‘assets’.

Can Governments survive without Corporations? Can we?

Some experts say that governments are only necessary as long as the fear of the people rebelling is relevant. Once the people are pacified sufficiently, they too will become expendable. Politics is no longer about creating the best possible society for everyone on Earth (which it should be), but about protecting the prosperity of the few, while keeping the masses pacified. In a country with civil war and corruption, it is easier to get away with pollution, with exploitation of children and women, with paying unacceptable wages and keeping people from forming unions. In wealthier countries the scam is more sophisticated, as people like to think they are free, that they are doing good – which is why the bubble is created through television and media to create the illusion that we know what is going on in the world, that it is being taken care of by our governments and by a united Global community (that in reality does not exist) so that the people don’t feel guilty that they have more than the rest and thus can continue consuming, while still being encouraged to fear for their survival just to make sure that everyone keeps producing and that no one bites the hand that feed them, even though that hand is not the loving parent in the form of a caring government, but in fact the people that are being exploited and abused in the name of profit in countries where ‘we are not responsible’, because our governments are not responsible, essentially because the corporations are not responsible and so the cycle is complete. No one is Here. Man is not on Earth – he I lost in space somewhere, looking for his marbles.

Can Politicians be de-corrupted – can we?

The challenge with the idea of the governments removing power from corporations is that corporations operate globally, exploiting the land, resources, animals and people of one country, while the profit is being relocated to individuals in other countries – therefore political sanctions cannot work, without a global initiative that specifically deals with the money system as well as with supporting the countries that are being exploited. God is dead and so is politics, but money is not. The consumer-citizen has only two options, to buy or not to buy – But we would be fools to call that ‘political choice’. And because the corporations are basically running the world, a change in the political systems and thus in how we are currently managing our world, cannot happen without changing the way we deal with property, value, stocks, exchange and basically with money – as money is only thing that corporations respect and abide.

Consumption and money and resources and greed and suffering – all mixed up in a mess that seems too complicated to untangle. Yet it is excruciatingly simplistic: Consumption by definition is to use something up until there is nothing left of it. That is what we are doing to this Earth, to the animals and to each other. For some reason this self-evident fact is being completely ignored by everyone that is not directly experiencing the consequences – And those that do experience it directly, have no power to change their situation.

The conclusion is that governments and corporations and consumers are equally responsible for the conditions in the World, as we each make up a piece of the puzzle that is this mess we call Earth – We are the corporations and the governments. The point is to come up with Real Solutions to the Real Problems in this world – which is right now: ourselves. It is thus the people in the top of the (self-cannibalistic) food chain that has to Stand up – because we are the ones that directly allow it to continue, feeling powerless, even though we have the power to change – through abdicating responsibility to corporations and governments as ‘The man’ or ‘The System’ – Ignoring the fact that 1 billon people are starving, that over 60 million are living as refugees and that in the end, it is up to us who that Man or that System is.

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