Tomorrowland – Would you get a Pin?

Just saw the Disney movie ‘Tomorrowland’. The following passage is quite interesting and worth looking at:

“Let’s imagine… if you’d glimpse the future, you are frightened by what you saw, what would you do with that information? You’d go to who? Politicians? Captains of industry? And how would you convince them? With data? With Facts? Good luck. The only facts they won’t challenge are the ones that keep the wheels greased and the dollars rolling in. But what if there was a way of skipping the middle man and putting the critical news directly into everyone’s head? The probability of wide-spread annihilation kept going up. The only way to stop it, was to show it. To scare people straight, because what reasonable human being wouldn’t be galvanized by the potential destruction of everything they’ve ever known or loved? To save civilization, I would show its collapse.

But how do you think this vision was received? How do you think people responded to the prospect of imminent doom? They gobbled it up like a chocolate éclair. They didn’t fear their demise, they repackaged it. It could be enjoyed as video-games as TV-shows, books, movies, the entire world whole-heartedly embraced the apocalypse and sprinted towards it with gleeful abandon.

Meanwhile, your Earth was crumbling all around you. You’ve got simultaneous epidemics of obesity and starvation – explain that one. Bees and butterflies start to disappear the glaciers melt, algae blooms all around you, the coalmine canaries are dropping dead and you won’t take the hint.

In every moment, there is the possibility of a better future, but you people won’t believe it. And because you won’t believe it, you won’t do what is necessary to make it a reality. So, you dwell on this so terrible future, you resign yourselves to it for one reason: Because that future doesn’t ask anything of you today.

So, yes, we saw the iceberg, we warned the Titanic, but you all just steered for it anyway, full steam ahead. Why? Because you want to sink. You gave up. And that’s not the monitor’s fault – that’s yours.”

It still puzzles me why the character speaking these words was portrayed as the villain – wasn’t he right on the money? Isn’t that exactly what is happening today? Some say the movie is about imagination, about feeding positive thoughts rather than negative thoughts – but it’s not really. The movie has one simple message: Are we giving up when seeing the world we’ve created with all its unintended ‘ooopsy’ consequences – or are we going to realize that if we want a different future, we have to actually create it. Positive thoughts or feelings won’t do. It is actions that are needed, our behavior that needs to change, our demands that need to change – from destruction to construction.

So ask yourself: what do I DO each day to create a different world?

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Transcending False Dilemmas with Living Income Guaranteed – Part 2 - Sustainability vs Full employment

In my previous blog, I discussed what false dilemmas are, how they are used in our everyday life, how easily we get swayed by false dilemmas and what the consequences are of their use. I also discussed how one is able to broaden one’s view of a situation, taking a step back so one has a more accurate view of the whole picture when faced with false dilemmas.  I gave 4 examples of false dilemmas dominating discussions on very real problems that require direction and solutions. Within this blog I’ll take each example and show how the Living Income proposal steps outside of these false dilemmas and offers real win-win solutions.

Example 1

‘If we want to reduce the use of fossil fuels for a better environment, we will lose thousands of jobs in the energy-sector. So – which do we choose: preventing unemployment or fighting climate change?’

At Naomi Klein’s launch for her new book ‘This changes everything’, Naomi presented the same dilemma to Estela Vasquez, Executive VP at SEIU (United Healthcare Workers East), asking her to comment on the tension that has been existing between climate change and labor union activists – her reply was as follows: “We actually can fight for good jobs, for jobs that deal with the question of having clean energy, renewable energy, to have transportation that is accessible to all, (…) jobs can be created in retro-feeding buildings, in creating new forms of energy, in creating transportation that is clean, in creating a new society, where the determining factor is not profit, but the determining factor is the well-being of every living thing on Earth, not just human beings.”

She further mentioned that the interests at stake with climate change and pollution are heartfelt by the same people whose jobs may be insecure – what does it matter, for instance, if one secures a good job with good working conditions, if one’s child develops asthma from playing in the garden, breathing compromised air? There shouldn’t be a choice between one or the other – because both factors are, in different ways, affecting individuals’ well-being.

With a Living Income Guaranteed in place, one will always have a security net available when it comes to job losses or threat of losing one’s job – where it can be recognized that loss of employment is not an infringement on basic human rights, because one’s rights are fundamentally guaranteed through the receiving of a Living Income. When fear of unemployment is removed – flexibility is created in making a transition towards creating different jobs, jobs that are more beneficial to the community at large. The most common excuse from corporations that have not been mitigating the social costs they have helped to create, has been that: ‘we provide employment, and if you don’t want us here, we will find cheaper employment elsewhere’. Such threats become void when jobs no longer stand equal to lifelines. Such threats have created a burden on society at large in having to compromise the future for the present – but now we are walking into that compromised future. When we are faced with points such as climate change – creativity and innovation play a key-role – it is a time that calls for human potential to freely move – a potential that remains shackled as long as human rights are linked to jobs, where eventually the employer and the availability of alternative employment, determine what one can and cannot do in life, what forms of society we can and cannot aspire to, what solutions we can or a cannot bring into manifestation. A Living Income Guaranteed allows us to stop the cycles of the past and allows us to, instead, start addressing the problems we’ve created as well as ensuring that we do not make the same mistakes again.

Of course, it’s not sufficient for human creativity and inspiration to move freely – ideas must be able to become a reality and businesses concerned with sustainable and renewable energy sources, for instance, must be given a chance to establish themselves in the market. Here we’re looking at economic power-plays where companies engaged with power-production from fossil fuels have established themselves as pillars within an economy around which everything else turns. Having considerable economic influence, the practice of compromising the opportunity for firms based on renewable energy to establish themselves in that same market is common practice. Within the Living Income Guaranteed proposal, we suggest that the citizens of a country become the owners of companies within that country that produce power – hence – allowing the activities of these companies to be directly accountable to every citizen – and as such – having to keep all citizens’ interests at heart. This changes the economic dynamic in such a way that the entire power producing industry and the role established companies play within it – can be considered within the context of what would be best for all the citizens involved.





http://livingincome.me/ 

http://livingincomeguaranteed.wordpress.com/the-proposal/

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Day 206: Bring your Own Cup and Help Save the Planet!

The other day we went to a shop to get some take-away coffee. Right next to where you get your coffee is a big stand with the prices and types of coffee, and at the bottom in a big font and size it says ‘Bring your own cup and help save the planet!’ and ‘The Earth says: thank you!”.

I’ve seen such statements many times before, but seeing it that day it really dawned to me just how ridiculous a statement like that is. I mean seriously, bring your own cup and help save the planet?

We live in a world where the economic system that runs the world is in direct violation of the Earth’s well-being – where the capacity of the Earth has been stretched to its ultimate for the sake of indefinite growth and profit. And yet somehow the corporations and politicians have to arrogance and audacity to ask people to ‘bring their own cup’ or ‘bring their own bag’ in order to ‘Help Save the Planet’?!

Surely, the waste of take-away cups and plastic-bags is just a SPEC in the face of the actual problem, which is the entirety and totality of both our individual lifestyles and the global lifestyle we have adopted as consumerism and greed. Bringing your own cup and bringing your own bag is not going to Save the Planet. It’s like trying to conserve water by catching a raindrop a day whilst letting all the taps in your house gush out water non-stop. It’s just ridiculous and kind of offending to tell people to ‘bring their own cup’ and make it look like you’re a ‘Responsible Company’ that ‘Cares about the Environment’ while everything a company that runs by the principle of Capitalism represents is the very Disregard an Destruction it is now apparently trying to abate.

Let’s have a look at for instance the whole ‘bring you own bag and save the planet’ motto.

In Britain a study was done where the results showed that on average a Brit uses 134 plastic bags in a year. This equals to 2kgs of carbon dioxide emission – while a typical person is responsible for 11 000 kgs of carbon dioxide emission in a year. That is like 0.018% that you’ve just reduced of your total emission as one person – and the Earth is supposed to say ‘Thank You’ to that? Are we now also assuming that the Planet is a complete idiot?

All those ‘little things’ that are asked of people to ‘Save the Planet’ like bringing your own cup, bringing your own bag, turning off your electronics that are on stand-by, boiling no more water in the kettle than what you need, turning off the tap while you brush your teeth, etc. – all make only a marginal difference of maximum 1% in terms of per capita emissions and mostly less than that.

The UK Government has spent £22m in the past on a ‘Do Your Bit’ Campaign promoting these type of ‘easy’ ‘quick fix’ solutions and then had to admit that the campaign produced no measurable change in people’s behaviour.

In fact, promoting these ineffectual little actions perpetuates the problem even more, where ‘bring your own cup’, ‘bringing your own bag’ and doing some recycling:

“Mori concluded that it was becoming an act of "totem behaviour" and that "individuals use recycling as a means of discharging their responsibility to undertake wider changes in lifestyle". In other words, people can adopt the simplest solutions as a part of a deliberate denial strategy that enables them to feel virtuous without changing their real behaviour.

Governments and businesses are, if anything, even more prone to tokenistic behaviour than individuals. Encouraging small voluntary actions by the public, customers or staff looks good and is much safer than passing restrictive legislation or rethinking your entire business model”.

As long as we don’t start re-evaluating our socioeconomic and political system that we live in and by, it does not matter what little token behaviour we participate in because it’s not going to make a damn difference. We need to strip the system down and rebuilt in from the foundation up – create a system that takes into account the environment and what it takes to reach and remain in equilibrium and harmony.

Within Equal Money Capitalism, points like emission and pollution will no longer just be ‘externalities’ that one does not have to account for and that are ‘conveniently’ here to be used at one’s whims. Just as someone gets something in return for their labour in a company, so will nature/the planet/earth receive something in return for what was given. If you for instance use water in the production process of your product and this water gets polluted/contaminated in anyway whatsoever: then it is your responsibility to also handle to process of purification. Only when we give as we like to receive, can we live in a sustainable, harmonious and equilibrated way with and within our environment.

Save Planet Earth? Support Equal Money Capitalism.

[info and numbers come from this article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/sep/13/ethicalliving.climatechange]

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Day 200: Collapse of Global Civilization Inevitable?

Below are excerpts of the Article ‘Experts Fear Collapse of Global Civilization’ by Stephen Leahy - For the full article please visit: http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/01/experts-fear-collapse-of-global-civilisation/

“Experts on the health of our planet are terrified of the future. They can clearly see the coming collapse of global civilisation from an array of interconnected environmental problems.”

“Our reality is that current overconsumption of natural resources and the resulting damage to life-sustaining services nature provides means we need another half of a planet to keeping going. And that’s if all seven billion remain at their current living standards, the Ehrlichs write.

If everyone lived like a U.S. citizen, another four or five planets would be needed.”

“We’re facing a future where billions will likely die, and yet little is being done to avoid certain disaster, he said.

“Policy makers and the public aren’t terrified about this because they don’t have the information or the knowledge about how our planet functions,” he said.”

“Solutions exist and are briefly outlined in the Ehrlich paper. However, these require sweeping changes. All nations need to do everything they can to reduce their emissions of fossil fuels regardless of actions or lack of them by any other country, he said.

Protection of the Earth’s biodiversity must take centre stage in all policy and economic decisions. Water and energy systems must be re-engineered. Agriculture must shift from fossil-fuel intensive industrial monocultures to ecologically-based systems of food production. Resilience and flexibility will be essential for civilisation to survive.

A key element in meeting this unprecedented challenge is “…to see ourselves as utterly embedded in Nature and not somehow separate from those precious systems that sustain all life”, writes England’s Prince Charles commenting on the Ehrlich’s paper.

“To continue with ‘business as usual’ is an act of suicide on a gargantuan scale,” Prince Charles concluded.”

Surprise, Surprise

We all know we’ve been living high and mighty – but the party’s about to end and we have to deal with all the garbage that came along with it.

We’ve been living on borrowed time (or should we rather say ‘stolen time’, after all so many of our fellow humans are suffering and only have a very short life span at the expense of our decadent lifestyles) and it’s time to face the music. We’ve been living very, very, very irresponsible and we really made a fuck up of our Home, Earth.

Interesting how some of the solutions mentioned in the above article, is exactly what Equal Money intends as part of its central goals:

“All nations need to do everything they can to reduce their emissions of fossil fuels regardless of actions or lack of them by any other country, he said."

From the Equal Money Goal Page:

Energy

The Equal Money System will reduce the use of non-renewable energy resources by 95% through removing the profit motive and replacing it with the production of effective products of the best quality available equally to all, supplementing energy needs with renewable energy sources.

“Protection of the Earth’s biodiversity must take centre stage in all policy and economic decisions.

A key element in meeting this unprecedented challenge is “…to see ourselves as utterly embedded in Nature and not somehow separate from those precious systems that sustain all life”, writes England’s Prince Charles commenting on the Ehrlich’s paper. 

Stewardship

Within an Equal Money system it will be recognized that Humans are a part of the Ecosystem they live in. The word 'eco' stands for 'home' - and thus, each human will be responsible for maintaining the Balance and Harmony within their home, within their Ecosystem. This involves the Monitoring of the Well-Being of the Plants and Animals within one's Environment and to Intervene when Disharmony occurs as a result of Human Impact, so that a new Equilibrium can be established.

How much longer do we want to wait and keep our eyes closed? We know what to do and we know that any amount of time that we wait longer will create unrecoverable damage.

Like Prince Charles said: To continue with ‘business as usual’ is an act of suicide on a gargantuan scale,”. We have an opportunity to change this before it is out of our hands. The only rational thing to do, is to prepare the way and implement an Equal Money System -- where we can once and for all assume responsibility for ourselves and the world we live in .

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