It's not less, easy and simpler, dufus. It's more, a little more difficult and a tad more complicated if you want to set the world right.
In this up and coming, upwardly mobile, modern, 21st century world, 'more' is the keyword. I needn't reiterate. What that has translated into is easy, simple, less... basically more for us. Any way that we can walk in, squeeze something of its worth, claim dream/goal victory and move to the next thing. It's like a drug. You can never be satisfied. When you can only see so much juice potential in something, and it clearly doesn't meet the present self-upgraded definition of 'more', you squeeze something else - and leave the juice in that ilk to rot because it has lost its value. Even a waste disposal system for all of that is of no use to you. Why concern yourself with it?
There's just one problem - there is only so much you can squeeze. If that doesn't service your snort pipe 'more' enough, you're gonna be stuck, and the bad news is that you are going to be stuck. Positive thinking makes you think you can make your own world. Dream it and create it and that's the whole purpose of life and do it again and again. That's because the world has sold you dreams. But, dude, you only have that much clay to play with, only so much more wet mud to make clay with and so much more mud only to make wet mud to make clay to play with. There's that scene in The Lorax when the greedy Once-ler watches the last tree fall and then almost instantly (instantly, I'm sure, if just time and space contracted and allowed people to make their choices in quicker time frames with their already contracted small minds) everything also falls apart, just like that. Be thankful that the last tree hasn't fallen and you're not regretting those decisions while reading this blog post. Also be alert and keep a ear out to see that if it falls while you're reading it, just incase.
Instead of check mating yourself in pre-more-dangerously-innocent-than-you'll-ever-know pride, check mate yourself now. You only are as free as your resources. Wait, no. We are as free as our resources. We, not just the 'us' you can count on your fingers or in your head as you read this sentence. We, the human race. Every single, living, breathing, thinking, intelligent, college-educated cell-form that will be existent on the Planet, when that last tree falls, lest it should. This tree I'm talking about is both metaphorical and literal. I mean what I mean, by this blog post, environmentally and every other resource-wise.
We have proved one thing by our response to the world around us. We have a very short attention span, of course, along with tonnes of pride in our heads. The pride probably factors in more than we know. We cannot healthily boast of less, unless we mean so only terms in eventually used consumption (in the case of natural (and natural-based) resources. We cannot healthily mean easy and simple, unless only in terms of the non-commodification (non-cogification perhaps?) in terms of how we make use of the vast sea of all human resources (the people with the potential in them intact and used).
Any basic economics principle can be used to deduce that if you systematically squeeze the resource, the resource will go dry and, perhaps even cease to exist - or become a couch potato. It's sheer wonder how some people are used while being sold the idea of eventual couchpotatohood. We sometimes exalt in that, even the ones being used in this evil plan by their full consent, and claim success by it as if it is some sort of achievement. A lot of them will have a relative-to-the-recentish-past humungous bank balance to show, which has either bought them over or silenced them. As in all cases, in exceptions, there are ways to get that cash, incidentally or through means that I am not against as well. I address what I believe those means to be in the previous post, as linked.
When did selling yourself become a good thing? Do you externally define your value, or do you internally define them? Does it add up to a distinct, maybe seemingly selfish, individual contribution to the world that you know runs in your blood? One that mirrors a missing reflection when you see the world? If you do, it's not selling, but it could be self-entertaining. It can be either a celebration of sorts or an act of service of sorts - either this or that. Are you celebrating a privilege that few only have? You'll know if the celebration is with everybody, and everybody does not include the group you're cool with and you hang with. Check in circles way outside yours. It could very probable that your bubble's thick and sound proof.
If the voices you hear outside are the voices you hear inside, you're relevantly safe. If you don't understand a bit of the voices outside, you need to remove your shell and level up. To have the things we want, like, fancy or simply demand is a privilege barely many people have on this planet. Even the small little things starting at the availability of electricity at your nearest plug point whenever you want it, or that yummy, tasty, maybe expensive snack that you open your fridge to find inside everyday. Just because it's available, that doesn't mean you should have it. Just because it's there to take and fits your desire, it doesn't have to be yours to take - finders keepers, losers weepers.That's only a privilege you will have if you are privileged enough to have the space to think like that. More people (than not) have the time of their life just finding enough to live by each day.
Sometimes the privileges we celebrate are so inbuilt we don't really consider them so until we see that other half the world doesn't have them. Even if we can't give away some, being defined by them is a more worse state to live in. It's like living in a virtual dreamland. Irrelevancy like that should be criminal. Check its relevance to the world at larger levels, proportional to the size of the effort and the resources you plough into it. Can they be used to level out your world with the rest? Then, when you actually have that celebration and the roof comes down, it won't be so awkward from the outside of the party because there won't be any one languishing there.
Some further points to note. Each action done in the world had a consequent effect, and an effect that took place when a resource you have now became yours. No resource you use is yours, ever! It was always somebody else's before it came to you, and it should have been bought/got free, fair and humane on all possible counts as much as possible. Was there deprivation of any sort, even in the context of the accepted economic systems through which it came to you? Is it benefiting the many or the few? Is it riding on the principle of its affordability among the fewer who actually can pay? Or maybe the question is, more, who can actually access it in the first place, forget about affording it?
If that's the case, do you trump an elitist achievement conveniently to people who are taught that that's what makes dreams worth dreaming and a better reality than their other options, which is effectively based on stealing/half-stealing something that's not theirs? You'd go to that extent to endorse the survival of the fittest method? And, by the way, what exactly behind what was achieved is your genius? The conniving result of the exercise, or those really awesome marketing, consumer behavior or/and economics classes you took which, in conjunction with your genius, created a world where supply meets demands in a cycle that is just and fair? I know the world is complicated and it's near to impossible to achieve that - but you could be that guy who you are stamping on, while he is trumping the idea you are right now because of your decision not to look in to these things and go ahead with what the world sells you. Any dialogue on this topic is a better start to a free and fair acquisition system than just signing it off as well-camouflaged really sad economics.
We humans have certain few traits which we probably will never recognise, regardless of the amount of education, reasoning and free-thinking we may think we have/do. One of those is the one that seeks self-pleasure, and it overrides most other processes that have a say in decision making. We are in either side of it - like falling prey to ourselves - except that we will probably kill ourselves in the process. A very weird state of failed self-realisation. We fall prey to it when we, in the context of this post, market it as products and when we, as consumers, fall for it like some people fall for chocolate like we've never eaten it before - every single time. It manifests as the need to upgrade, grow, for better... when this translates as 'more', merely being augmentative, not a process that fills a real need anywhere at all - for you or for anybody else.
Here's a pointer as to how you can differentiate the two to start with. It's not necessarily perfect, but it starts you down the road to there at least. When you're doing or are engaged in something that you are unaware of, you have no time to check on what your soul's feeding on, or you have just enough time to make sure you get your dose. And the reason you're unaware of it is because it is necessary to you - either to your existence , or to your growth and development. The kind of things you would do anyway, either if you were left no choice (things you would do existentially) and if you were left all the choice (but only for wholesome, holistic indulgence, existential or not, in something that truly completes you and calls you). It's possible irrelevancy is something that you should cross-check even then.
Sometimes, even the most basic things that will pass by this method will be irrelevant because the world is that cruel. We can use precious resources, which the world has, for entertainment we demand for, when we have given the rest of the world what we have already, first - and we can all party together. Till then, the world will be out of place and just plain weird. Instead contribute to your world in a manner that does not merely serve profit margins and your self-interests. Any true sustained hope the world needs is not going to be corporate savvy because it is not going to be interest worthy because it is not going to give any returns. It will be hopeless given the circumstances the world is in. It must be hopeless and the only other option we are left with is the possibility of it being hopeful and the corporate bums won't budge otherwise. CSR just tips their moral balance right so that they can sleep well at night. It doesn't do more.
So, it's not less, easy, simpler and extremely hopeful, dufus. It's more, a little more difficult, a tad more complicated and tonnes of hopelessness we need to be hopeful about instead as the only hope that will set things right. Make your alternative steps, at least individually, towards that ideal. At least let's dialogue about this, honestly. The world is not going to turn on its side while we rape its resources, hoping that it will.
There's just one problem - there is only so much you can squeeze. If that doesn't service your snort pipe 'more' enough, you're gonna be stuck, and the bad news is that you are going to be stuck. Positive thinking makes you think you can make your own world. Dream it and create it and that's the whole purpose of life and do it again and again. That's because the world has sold you dreams. But, dude, you only have that much clay to play with, only so much more wet mud to make clay with and so much more mud only to make wet mud to make clay to play with. There's that scene in The Lorax when the greedy Once-ler watches the last tree fall and then almost instantly (instantly, I'm sure, if just time and space contracted and allowed people to make their choices in quicker time frames with their already contracted small minds) everything also falls apart, just like that. Be thankful that the last tree hasn't fallen and you're not regretting those decisions while reading this blog post. Also be alert and keep a ear out to see that if it falls while you're reading it, just incase.
Instead of check mating yourself in pre-more-dangerously-innocent-than-you'll-ever-know pride, check mate yourself now. You only are as free as your resources. Wait, no. We are as free as our resources. We, not just the 'us' you can count on your fingers or in your head as you read this sentence. We, the human race. Every single, living, breathing, thinking, intelligent, college-educated cell-form that will be existent on the Planet, when that last tree falls, lest it should. This tree I'm talking about is both metaphorical and literal. I mean what I mean, by this blog post, environmentally and every other resource-wise.
We have proved one thing by our response to the world around us. We have a very short attention span, of course, along with tonnes of pride in our heads. The pride probably factors in more than we know. We cannot healthily boast of less, unless we mean so only terms in eventually used consumption (in the case of natural (and natural-based) resources. We cannot healthily mean easy and simple, unless only in terms of the non-commodification (non-cogification perhaps?) in terms of how we make use of the vast sea of all human resources (the people with the potential in them intact and used).
Any basic economics principle can be used to deduce that if you systematically squeeze the resource, the resource will go dry and, perhaps even cease to exist - or become a couch potato. It's sheer wonder how some people are used while being sold the idea of eventual couchpotatohood. We sometimes exalt in that, even the ones being used in this evil plan by their full consent, and claim success by it as if it is some sort of achievement. A lot of them will have a relative-to-the-recentish-past humungous bank balance to show, which has either bought them over or silenced them. As in all cases, in exceptions, there are ways to get that cash, incidentally or through means that I am not against as well. I address what I believe those means to be in the previous post, as linked.
When did selling yourself become a good thing? Do you externally define your value, or do you internally define them? Does it add up to a distinct, maybe seemingly selfish, individual contribution to the world that you know runs in your blood? One that mirrors a missing reflection when you see the world? If you do, it's not selling, but it could be self-entertaining. It can be either a celebration of sorts or an act of service of sorts - either this or that. Are you celebrating a privilege that few only have? You'll know if the celebration is with everybody, and everybody does not include the group you're cool with and you hang with. Check in circles way outside yours. It could very probable that your bubble's thick and sound proof.
If the voices you hear outside are the voices you hear inside, you're relevantly safe. If you don't understand a bit of the voices outside, you need to remove your shell and level up. To have the things we want, like, fancy or simply demand is a privilege barely many people have on this planet. Even the small little things starting at the availability of electricity at your nearest plug point whenever you want it, or that yummy, tasty, maybe expensive snack that you open your fridge to find inside everyday. Just because it's available, that doesn't mean you should have it. Just because it's there to take and fits your desire, it doesn't have to be yours to take - finders keepers, losers weepers.That's only a privilege you will have if you are privileged enough to have the space to think like that. More people (than not) have the time of their life just finding enough to live by each day.
Sometimes the privileges we celebrate are so inbuilt we don't really consider them so until we see that other half the world doesn't have them. Even if we can't give away some, being defined by them is a more worse state to live in. It's like living in a virtual dreamland. Irrelevancy like that should be criminal. Check its relevance to the world at larger levels, proportional to the size of the effort and the resources you plough into it. Can they be used to level out your world with the rest? Then, when you actually have that celebration and the roof comes down, it won't be so awkward from the outside of the party because there won't be any one languishing there.
Some further points to note. Each action done in the world had a consequent effect, and an effect that took place when a resource you have now became yours. No resource you use is yours, ever! It was always somebody else's before it came to you, and it should have been bought/got free, fair and humane on all possible counts as much as possible. Was there deprivation of any sort, even in the context of the accepted economic systems through which it came to you? Is it benefiting the many or the few? Is it riding on the principle of its affordability among the fewer who actually can pay? Or maybe the question is, more, who can actually access it in the first place, forget about affording it?
If that's the case, do you trump an elitist achievement conveniently to people who are taught that that's what makes dreams worth dreaming and a better reality than their other options, which is effectively based on stealing/half-stealing something that's not theirs? You'd go to that extent to endorse the survival of the fittest method? And, by the way, what exactly behind what was achieved is your genius? The conniving result of the exercise, or those really awesome marketing, consumer behavior or/and economics classes you took which, in conjunction with your genius, created a world where supply meets demands in a cycle that is just and fair? I know the world is complicated and it's near to impossible to achieve that - but you could be that guy who you are stamping on, while he is trumping the idea you are right now because of your decision not to look in to these things and go ahead with what the world sells you. Any dialogue on this topic is a better start to a free and fair acquisition system than just signing it off as well-camouflaged really sad economics.
We humans have certain few traits which we probably will never recognise, regardless of the amount of education, reasoning and free-thinking we may think we have/do. One of those is the one that seeks self-pleasure, and it overrides most other processes that have a say in decision making. We are in either side of it - like falling prey to ourselves - except that we will probably kill ourselves in the process. A very weird state of failed self-realisation. We fall prey to it when we, in the context of this post, market it as products and when we, as consumers, fall for it like some people fall for chocolate like we've never eaten it before - every single time. It manifests as the need to upgrade, grow, for better... when this translates as 'more', merely being augmentative, not a process that fills a real need anywhere at all - for you or for anybody else.
Here's a pointer as to how you can differentiate the two to start with. It's not necessarily perfect, but it starts you down the road to there at least. When you're doing or are engaged in something that you are unaware of, you have no time to check on what your soul's feeding on, or you have just enough time to make sure you get your dose. And the reason you're unaware of it is because it is necessary to you - either to your existence , or to your growth and development. The kind of things you would do anyway, either if you were left no choice (things you would do existentially) and if you were left all the choice (but only for wholesome, holistic indulgence, existential or not, in something that truly completes you and calls you). It's possible irrelevancy is something that you should cross-check even then.
Sometimes, even the most basic things that will pass by this method will be irrelevant because the world is that cruel. We can use precious resources, which the world has, for entertainment we demand for, when we have given the rest of the world what we have already, first - and we can all party together. Till then, the world will be out of place and just plain weird. Instead contribute to your world in a manner that does not merely serve profit margins and your self-interests. Any true sustained hope the world needs is not going to be corporate savvy because it is not going to be interest worthy because it is not going to give any returns. It will be hopeless given the circumstances the world is in. It must be hopeless and the only other option we are left with is the possibility of it being hopeful and the corporate bums won't budge otherwise. CSR just tips their moral balance right so that they can sleep well at night. It doesn't do more.
So, it's not less, easy, simpler and extremely hopeful, dufus. It's more, a little more difficult, a tad more complicated and tonnes of hopelessness we need to be hopeful about instead as the only hope that will set things right. Make your alternative steps, at least individually, towards that ideal. At least let's dialogue about this, honestly. The world is not going to turn on its side while we rape its resources, hoping that it will.
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