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Reflecting on the Choices we make
I have just come to the insight that when I am old and perhaps sitting in my rocking chair on my verandah … reflecting on my my life to that point … I will look at the life that my choices have created and I will be content that I have given everything I had … I will understand that I did the best I could have done given the beliefs and expectations I had at the time.
There is nothing creative that can come from regrets … they are only good for wallowing in … take the learning of those experiences, integrate them with your life, and move forward, allow those lessons to change the future.
Don’t get me wrong … I have screwed up sometimes publicly, many times personally with my loved ones and family … but at the time I led with my feelings, sometimes they were fraught and scattered .. too often they were about me and my needs … and not what they should have been … but like all of us … life is an inside job … we create the life we believe in … the one we should have, at any moment in our lives – this changes in every moment as we evolve.
That is why our past does not determine who we are now, or in anyway it has a relation to who we will become … give yourself a break … the future is yours to create in this moment … for me I don’t have goals as such (other than to help who I can) … I believe in a living my life, based on a few basic truths and with my values … they will get me where I need to be.
What each of is focus on may be different for each of us .. that is your personal preference, each one is valid for you 
For me these are my focus:
(1) each morning I get out of bed, looking forward to the day ahead and what it will bring to me .. what I will learn.
(2) I know there is much I cannot do, but I can live my life in the best way for me … as well what I can do within my sphere of influence is to help who I can … who hopefully will pass that feeling onwards to others … I also know that looking at the enormity of what does need doing to make this a more loving world .. I can only help who I can … even if that is just one person, who hopefully will help others.
(3) Now, I think before I speak … knowing that what I say affects others .. trying to make everything I say improve on the silence .. because silence itself can be incredibly powerful.
(4) I seek to understand .. be curious all the time at everything and anything
(5) I like to walk, to exercise, I suppose it is part of my meditation .. the pure zen of it, the one step in front of the other …
(6) I like to nurture … to create .. to me that manifests in my life in the building and investing in relationships … most times these are not deep .. but some can be … whether they end up being sustainable … is not really what is important … what is, is that every experience and every person that comes into your life, teaches you something about you … and what you need to understand and let your self push beyond your own boundaries .. to grow and evolve.
Love everyone … for they are part of us … all life is … my parting gift would be forgive yourself and look to, and trust your feelings for you know how you want to live your life … trust absolutely few people in your life … for trust is the ultimate gift one gives to another … it is the foundation of all real, long term “life” relationships. For me in that regard … I have been very fortunate.
Comments would be welcome … what aspects of life are important to you ?
xxxx
Content vs Technology
Whilst it is true in some aspects, we have come a long way from the original books of my school days … but I am wondering if our focus is on what really is of value, at the end of the day … the internet, all devices whether they be notebooks, tablets or Smart phones are a tool, a portal … a doorway only … these devices are not what should be valued … for in the case of education they just facilitate the access to what is really can be of value … the content… and of course there is much discussion as to what is the right content … Chomsky comments; The Purpose of Education – Is it creative or an Indoctrination (political, ideological ) a You Tube discussion is available here http://youtu.be/DdNAUJWJN08 … For me I feel it is an effort to produce cogs in a wheel with little thought given outside the strict guidelines of the chosen career path … for who they are as a person … those that do think outside the box are incredibly rare … and we find men and women in their 40’s … choosing a different life .. or perhaps the essence here is a different way of living life.
Teaching is a huge responsibility, and the actual pressures of teaching whilst at the same time being pressured for many sides concerning productivity … budgets – it is so clear that teaching is not what it used to be – so far as the huge amount and the breath of content there is to teach, is I am sure is part of the problem .. when I started with an Classical Arts education which talked about Art, History and the inherent transfer of values, principles and ethics, (before we decided on our career paths) admittedly it was a different world, however in the formative years of a child’s education I wonder if the intense focus on learning business or career applicable skills is the right course of action …. for things like true ethical behaviour cannot be taught in a classroom – it is something that is integrated into your personality over time from your primary caretakers … such values and principles must be part of the person themselves … my view is that on-going education just educates us in how to learn to prepare for the work force … unfortunately too many of the graduates I have employed are too focused on theory and have little or no ability to understand the human cost of their decisions …. there is little or no empathy for the people and the lives they live (away from work) and the responsibilities that necessarily come with it … so we have huge numbers of people who just fall through the cracks .. with little or no safety net … this goes further as Lewis Carroll might have said, down the rabbit hole … into another discussion all together, outside the scope of this post.
I am not a teacher … but my observation would be is I wonder if the focus is going away from the content we are teaching the next generation … to focus on the technology that delivers the content … it like focusing on making a book, rather than the content it delivers … we could go deep into this (perhaps I will on one of my blogs) – the philosophy of the internet … however my view is that we need to focus on the content, and more face to face collaboration, although in an Online Teaching Environment that may not be easy, but there are ways of fostering such a circumstance … otherwise we will end up with a generation, essentially of loners … whose world is the internet … and the fantasy world it represents … and hence have no interest or ability to interface with fellow members of humanity – what kind of society that creates can’t be sustainable.
If we want to positively change the future of humanity away from the senseless pursuit of more, we need to start by changing that which our children are taught to value … if they learn to value technology over people and the content itself, that is like having the cart before the horse … would it not be preferable to foster a collaborative and creative culture, perhaps we need to start by really engaging and communicating with each other, rather than talking at each other – after the essence of the internet is supposed to be social, and interactive, therefore engagement is a pre-requisite for a relationship .. we are no longer in the passive media days of Mass media … we should look at this further I feel. To me we seem to be without thought, running full speed into a abyss, just because everyone else is.
The State of our Paradigm – January 2013
I have the awareness that the paradigm we are all within is due for a reality check soon, if nothing changes, perhaps in the next few years … unless there is a planet wide epiphany which substantially changes the values that our current culture is based upon, other than that the outcome is inevitable … one can only speculate as the structure of the new paradigm, after the bumpy journey we will take to arrive there.
To me the world we are in is like watching the inevitability of a disaster in slow motion … while we run around looking busy, as if arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic (after it struck the iceberg) … strangely all this is known, predicted even, but no hard decisions are being taken … we are in denial … ineffective … we are in a continual state of stamping out “spot” fires that crop up, as with Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain plus, plus and possibly Italy and of course the European Union as a whole and the USA – and the worldwide spiralling deficit .… . Once we have done all this, it only takes us back to where we were before, we are still in crisis.
Without taking any hard decisions, the outcome is inevitable as deficits grow, we have in place the ideal setting for the death knell of the European Union, the USA and many other countries in the world as we know it.
Please see countries ranked by External Debt here – Worldwide, we are in a terminal situation …
For me … we are past the time to make those hard decisions – surely some of these decisions should include abolishing all debt that was directly caused by the meltdown and change the laws so that all people whose illegal behaviour caused it, confiscate their money and let Banks and other institutions that were and still are vulnerable fail, as even today, Big Banks have failed the OCC Risk Tests – their Corporate governance is terminally flawed, for their is no plan of what to do, and no one is in control anywhere … here is the link to that report concerning risk tests from an American Bank article … and those men and women whose greed caused this catastrophe, and so directly benefited from it, pay for their crimes. It won’t happen of course, but hard decisions are needed, that spread the load of cuts across all … not just focusing on social programs which always seem to be such a easy target – for a start lets look at Political and bureaucratic sizes, salaries and perks.
The only country that did see the light after the Global Financial meltdown was Iceland. Instead of bailing out the banks and the status quo, they bailed out the people, the citizens and put the bankers into prison … beautiful… the Short Video story of that event is here …
However when the system of money itself breaks down, say within the next 5–6 years, definitely within the decade – we will have no defense, we will be leaderless … as Governments which are at best ineffectual … although they would like us to believe otherwise, will not have the answers … because they are all paralysed with fear, whilst the people in Government are clever at manipulation, they are hardly intelligent nor have the taste or the backbones to make the decisions necessary … because the status quo will be chaos, they will ask what to do, because they won’t know, they will do nothing effective, and what they will do, will be to try and maintain the status quo – which of course is already in transition and so no longer exists – we may, I believe trend towards a state of anarchy, then at some point after the darkness and the inevitable gross hardships … we will hopefully see the dawn and Humanity will start again.
All those learning experiences we will go through – but will we learn, going on the past, we won’t, because in the future as now, we will say how could that happen to us ….. so because we have no backbone, no ability to see the situation as it really is … all of us are living in a kind of fantasy future … Now we look to a future, in “x” generations from now, we are told we will surface as we come out of the fiscal hole that greed and our leadership have dug for us … meanwhile the Politicians themselves don’t seem to be in any state of hardship …. however the costs of this head in the sand approach will lead to hardship on a untold scale as essential infrastructure breaks down – transport, food, communications …. the only upside is at the end of all this … those of humanity that survive will in effect have a clean slate.
Basically the cause of this tragedy is our own Arrogance, indifference, indecision, ineffectiveness and greed … what will they say of us … it was inevitable, why didn’t they see it coming … when it is so inevitable, why aren’t we doing something about it now ?
The only way we can stop this recurring Groundhog day cycle, so that it doesn’t happen again in the future is to change what we value, and that requires that we educate our children, now and for all time, so that in our arrogance and ignorance in the future, we might say “that was then, this is now, it won’t happen to us” –
But of course it will !
Let’s look soon at how we can minimize the effects of the transition from where we are now … to where we will end up !
~
There are Four types of men:
Not to be sexist, insert either sex where applicable
There are four types of men:
1. One who knows and knows that he knows… His horse of wisdom will reach the skies.
2. One who knows, but doesn’t know that he knows… He is fast asleep, so you should wake him up!
3. One who doesn’t know, but knows that he doesn’t know… His limping mule will eventually get him home.
4. One who doesn’t know and doesn’t know that he doesn’t know… He will be eternally lost in his hopeless oblivion!”
Ibn Yami, 13th-century Persian-Tajik poet (Born 1286 in Faryumad, near Sebzevar; died 1368)
There is a another version as below by Solomon Ibn Gabriol (He was born in Malaga about 1021; died about 1058 in Valencia)
There are four types of men in this world:
1. The man who knows, and knows that he knows; he is wise, so consult him.
2. The man who knows, but doesn’t know that he knows; help him not forget what he knows.
3. The man who knows not, and knows that he knows not; teach him.
4. Finally, there is the man who knows not but pretends that he knows; he is a fool, so avoid him.”
Take what you will from either .. you get the idea …
My only comment would be that nothing seems to have changed
The future is for us, to create together
Recently I commented on a blog … it was truly a refreshing wind blowing through the normally .. Sclerotic thought processes of the status quo … I liked the post, I think we can learn from it … I would like as many as possible to read it …
A comment I made on the post … I feel acts as a good introduction
I read many blogs each day, the majority offer criticism of what is .. with no developed alternative to suggest … here we see a way that normal people can break the current business as usual model … and create a real way forward at grass roots level, the writer of this blog post sees the problem clearly, for surely the essence of the failure of the current system is, Yes, competition is a good thing … but this focus of “killing” the competition leads to less competition, not more … and the Capitalist system only works when there is a lot of competition.
Instead, now we have ended up where power and control is increasingly being consolidated in few hands… and as history clearly shows consolidated power crushes liberty … there is no way for them to co-exist, and so democracy and freedoms are becoming a memory.
These same organizations where power is being consolidated have been driving us to “buy to consume” … Why ? … because they need us to, so they continue to exist … there is great wisdom and freedom in being free of debt … for when you are in debt, you are not only paying the debt with money, but also with your freedom.
Other aspects of this strategy, is that it supports like minded people and organisations. Also in the wider market, it gives Value driven support for small business, which allows them to grow and hence increase competition, and with the support of like minded organisations that are not driven just on price but on equity, relevancy and impact … it will succeed, this enhances choice.
At a community level, the exchange of produce to help each other is a great point to start with and perhaps over time, this may grow into community driven projects such as growing food, or (?), the great upside is that it gives purpose, and brings everyone together to help themselves and each other … this develops everyone involved, promotes community cohesion and purpose and lessens the likely hood that people will fall through the cracks.
This post makes sense as it is something that everyone can do today … to challenge and change the what is, to what it can be, for at the end of the day, if we all don’t do this who else will ?
The post is here … it offers a critical point … the need by business to kill the competition is flawed … the trouble with that it destroys not only the competition, but also competition itself and the capitalist model … think about it …
Here my friends the future really is in our hands … we must create our own way … governments have shown themselves incompetent and incapable … so lets do it ourselves … ???
Any thoughts or comments are welcome …. or perhaps some thoughts at other topics to look at further ….
Moving Forward ..
For some considerable time we have witnessed the destruction of our culture, to the point now that almost anything that does not involve consumption or the worship of money seems to be very much in second place … almost as a curiosity of “what is that” ?? … one only needs to look at the very young that know that milk comes from packets and are somewhat perplexed where meat comes from … the connection with where we came from in breaking .. breaking ….
Politicians talk, but do nothing … for their only priority is themselves, and being re-elected, after all we all know for most they can do little, after all they have one master already, so there is no place in their lives to represent the people they are supposed to work for.
How do we move forward as a culture … without involving the so called leadership … I saw a very good post today on a blog … here .. is the link …
I would suggest you go and read it … I put some comments there that some may find interesting … but basically if we want to change the future … we have to do it ourselves …. we have the power … we just start at home at the grass roots level, in the neighbourhoods, the local communities …
Perhaps Time will be the equaliser ?
Time is like a blind drawn on the past, shrouding what was … I sometimes wonder how many times Gaia has been through this same scenario … where civilizations have reached their use by date as ours has … with the passage of time, nothing left to remind us of what was …. perhaps Atlantis was one …. will what we have now, also become the stuff of fable and legends … perhaps … Gaia has been patient with this experiment called humanity … but now we have the capacity to do her irrevocable harm .. her patience is at an end … For even Manhattan was farmland once, and it will be again …I once worked out how long it would take for concrete and steel to be blowing in the wind … with little left to reveal what was … perhaps as little as 200-300 years, certainly less than a 1000 … for Gaia, but a blink in the eye …
Perhaps in the future .. the archaeologists of the time will look at the rubble and wonder what was this place ? … what were these giant penile structures to the sky, perhaps a religious center? In a way they will be right … for it is worshipping money … an idol of our own creation ….. to which everything that is spiritual and right had been sacrificed.
The Story of the two Wolves
One day an old Native American grandfather was talking with his grandson.
He said, “There are two wolves fighting inside all of us – the wolf of fear and hate, and the wolf of love and peace.”
The Grandson Listened, then looked up at his grandfather and asked,
“Which one will win?”
The Grandfather replied,
“The one we feed.”
The Leadership Vacuum and the human cost of Political rhetoric
I have been observing the way the Australian Government has been “communicating” if that is the word for it … about how their policies are affecting Australians. I have come to the conclusion that they truly are Politicians, and they have zero idea of how to run the country now, or in fact how to prepare the country for the future … without a mining bubble … I am sure that the Politicians will not even comprehend how this change will affect us … their motivations are flawed, and had little to do with anything but my their own agenda’s
It would be nice for once to hear an objective truth come out of the mouths of a Government member … lets face it political parties are only about one thing, and that is about staying in power … normally this would infer that they would listen to what the vast majority of Australian are saying … they are not … instead we have a flawed leadership, including Gillard , who has no personal honour or ethics and Swan, well Swan … I don’t know how bright he is but he has no integrity … as every time I hear either of them talk, I just wonder why they bother, because like the majority of other Australians, we stopped listening and caring for what they think years ago now … especially after they lied bare face, and just expect we are going to accept it … how can we ?
Now I have voted for the Australian Labor party in the past, as any strong government for Australia needs to have a viable opposition, to keep them accountable … at the moment, there is little to differentiate the two sides of Government …. both of them seems to be on the side of money … and that seems to be the only thing that is important to them, well that’s not to bad, but it is in that thinking where Governments of all nations tend to miss the point of why they are actually there …
In my view, all the people within the country, the citizens are in fact shareholders … they should be there to share in the good times, and the not so good times, but it would be great if the political parties actually took any of this into account … except of course when it get’s closer to election time – but this time the Labor party has almost no chance at survival … with a current 28% approval rating … they may disappear from the political landscape as a viable opposition, which although this is tough, it is justifiable payback for their incompetence and irrelevance – however all countries actually need a viable opposition – sadly Australia won’t have one for perhaps 10 years, if at all.
Going on from where we are now, the Lucky country is going to run out of luck quite soon, with the inevitable economic slow down world wide that is even now obvious, the demand for our minerals will decrease markedly, and then what will we have ? … aside from the mining sector, the Australian economy is in a mess …. it is a two speed economy … one speed, the mining sector seen as the saviour, but in essence it is anything but, what use will it be when there is no one to buy the product – because they have no one to sell their manufactured product to … of course long term, how are we going to transport the product … but let’s leave that for another time …
There is a huge loophole where much of the economy is driving through, where people are hired as contractors, for a fixed term, that way they treat them as a functionary, without having to pay them any of the normal employee benefits such as holiday pay or indeed Superannuation … this means because there is not certainty of a job next year leadership Vacuum and , none of these people can buy a house, indeed my son, said to me the other day, “Dad I’ll never be able to own my own home” – indeed a sad reflection of our times.
The true unemployment statistics are probably double what they show, because they don’t include the thousands who cannot get a job (and are not registered), those who have chosen to educated themselves, or of course those who have just given up ..
We have all this talk, no action within a strategic plan to prepare us for our soon to be ever changing reality, as such Australia, has no idea where it is going, we are in fact in a leadership vacuum – being “led” by flawed and failed personalities – who do not learnt from the past, and have no empathy or understanding of what “life” is for the average Australian …
Let’s look at Prime Minister Gillard’s salary … from the attached link, http://bit.ly/QdS2RC you will see she is paid more money than President Obama of the United States, and Angela Merkel Chancellor of Germany and indeed twice as much as Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom … how can this be justified ? I mean if she and in fact most politicians were paid for results, she would, and in fact almost all politicians would owe us money … I guess that is what I find really difficult to understand is how these political animals who know nothing about actually living life, in fact have never lived a life in the real world, have a career as a politician, with no down side, they have little to no idea about the life the average citizen has to live, this makes them arrogant, out of touch statements about how wonderful the country is doing, what they are saying is how wonderful they are doing … but in essence if the attitude of politicians is altruistic and service driven then they should be paid no more than the average citizen of the country ? Now that would then weed out those who are driven to contribute to the country, rather than to their own kudos and bank accounts …
Before the end of the decade … we will not recognize the lucky country … the mining economy will no longer be the magic bullet, but by the then what will we have replaced it with, even if we can feed ourselves … which I doubt … this is what happens when you value money and not your most precious asset, the people you have within your country … what we would be focuses on is ways to fully utilize all our people … for the benefit of all our people … a paradigm shift, that may not be even contemplative now, but then once the change comes …. then it will be reality, and not just a possibility – then we will have no choice …
The end of business as usual …
Life is good for many of us, so that it’s hard to confront the change that is here, and with that the inevitable end of the quality of life that we see around us.
So it strikes me as obvious that the world is going down a road, in some ways where civilizations have gone before, but not for the same reasons, we are in fact going down a one way road, to the destruction of what is, that we have come to consider as normal.
The reasons are self evident, they come back to greed and the need for ever more growth, leveraged growth, more .. more … all are unsustainable flawed strategies – I ask you how can one achieve continual growth in a finite world … this insatiable need for more … we have been all living in a fantasy land, especially the Politicians, who are convinced as they focus on statistics and spin, that they are doing a great job when all around, their citizens are paying the price for their inability to have a real original thought – their incompetence, their lack of leadership, their focus only on re-election, their terror at the inevitability of change – drives them to makes nice little touches around the edge of policy whilst the heart of the country decays and we lumber forward, down the wrong path.
This insatiable greed of a few, has brought us beyond the brink of a global financial meltdown, we are in fact toppling over the edge into oblivion as we speak … whole countries and regions are already suffering in the Euro zone, but the whole world will be within the inevitability of what is to come … our mindless pursuit of the status quo .. has indebted the majority of those in the present to virtual serfdom whilst those in control … known colloquially as the 1% .. but who are in reality probably more like just 10,000 people around the word, are so afraid of change that they have convinced our Politicians (who are only driven by the need to be re-elected) that they need to maintain the status quo, this flawed and failed financial structure – which has little benefit to the majority 99+%, except more of the same.
It is time we allowed the system to fail, we no longer have the ability to prop it up – we have to stop, mortgaging future generation to pay for our mistakes or steal their birthright … our beautiful home, this spaceship called earth.
When I walk around cities, I see the crumbling structures, both in stone and in systems that are struggling to maintain what we once were, I see lots of papering over the cracks, whilst the infrastructure rusts and crumbles away in silence.
Within the decade we are in, what is hidden now, will become visible to all, in the first instance with the failure of the Euro$, where whole governments are desperately trying to hang on by their finger nails … they will fail … the inevitable collapse will spark a world wide financial meltdown that has never been witnessed in history. In the United States, cities and states are even now technically bankrupt … what will happen when the Euro zone of some other key point in the chain fails .. the banks will fail … there can be no bailout .. change will be here – this global correction will affect everyone in every country, those who think they are immune are living in fantasy land – this new reality will inflict misery and unrelenting hardship on everyone.
It will not be fun … in fact I cannot see an upside in the short term … it may take a couple of decades perhaps a generation before we can get back on our knees … maybe as long as a 50 years to a century before we can stand up and face the future with any sort optimism … the only way we have any chance of a future, is by changing what we value.
The OWS … the Occupy movement is a symptom, and a necessary one …. in American the Constitution has been and is being continually walked into the mud, whilst those in power seek to silence those who would say … we have a problem .. sadly, the world economy is past the ability to be healed … change is here Ladies and Gentlemen, hang on, because we are in for the ride of our lives, the destination, the abyss – the outcome unknown … some of us will come out the other side … but very few … for us to survive, and have the capacity to we will have to have the ability to think outside of the box and really work together without agendas, and realise that economies are not about numbers … they are about fully utilizing all of us, for the benefit of all of us ….
I have spoken of this before back in between 2008 and now … then it was a warning .. now it is too late … money will be irrelevant to our future … the accumulation of wealth for its own sake, is now past its use by date … when it happens, from then on, and in the short to medium term, the only thing that will matter is being able to be sustainable in food, in shelter and energy …
Good Luck …
