Flea Circus

"If you put fleas in a shallow container they jump out.  But if you put a lid on the container for just a short time, they hit the lid trying to escape and learn quickly not to jump so high.  They give up their quest for freedom.  After the lid is removed, the fleas remain imprisoned by their own self-policing.  So it is with life.  Most of us let our own fears or the impositions of others imprison us in a world of low expectation."

At that point, the fleas would be fit subjects to be trained; unable to function as sovereign spirits.  We should not do the same; never give up on jumping high.

John Taylor Gatto; Weapons of Mass Instruction.

Facts And Conclusion

Facts:

- "Every day 340,000 people are born on Earth.  The human population is expected to increase to nine billion by 2042, most living in dense urban areas." (1)

-"In 2007, for the first time in history, a majority of human beings live in vast urban areas, according to the United Nations." (1)

- "The UN estimates that of the nearly 3.5 billion people living in urban areas, one out of three live in slum conditions, plagued by air pollution, contaminated drinking water, and open sewage.  The health impacts are staggering.  Malaria, diarrheal diseases, bronchitis, pneumonia, and other respiratory illnesses, and exposure to chemical and toxic waste kill millions or urban slum dwellers each year.  The outlook is grim." (1)  

- In most of the world, governments of rich and poor countries have allowed the stimulation of massive migration of people from rural zones into urban areas.  As a result, this has provided the needed labour force required  for the growing cities' industries and services.

- "Climate change is impacting the Earth, and to worst the situation, the effects of human- climate change are most pronounced in the southern hemisphere, where the poorest people of the world live.  Climate change is already having an impact on agricultural across the poorest regions of the southern hemisphere.  Climate change induced droughts, floods, and other forms of extreme weather have crippled food production in many parts of the world." (1)

- "For the 2.6 billion people who have incomes of two dollars a day or less, price hikes can tip the scale from survival to starvation and even death.  The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the UN says there are now between 800 million and one billion people on the planet who lack adequate food." (1)

- "There are millions of destitute people." (1)

Conclusion

We should return to the county fields to stop the spread of over dimensioned cities.  It is a must if we want to survive.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I am leaving my house in the city to get back to a nice little orchard. I am a lucky one. I hope you can do it as well.

(1) Jeremy Rifkin; The Empathic Civilization

HEALTH: Strategy and Tactics

To prevent illness, or wait till a disease presents itself and then take care of it. Two different tactics that do not exclude each other, and should be complementary.

Louis Pasteur, is considered the father of modern medicine for his valuable discovery of penicillin:  a magic curative substance to which many of us owe a great deal of gratitude for having been saved from potentially fatal infections. Although there is much merit in the honour extended for his great contribution to medical science; that fact in itself is evidence of how much priority is given to CURE, which so called traditional medicine relies so heavily on, over PREVENTION.

Yet, there is growing conscious awareness of the need to rescue such tactics:  PREVENTION being the first and most efficacious way to care for one's health. The mistake of waiting for the illness to occur is an error that must be avoided. More so, it's fundamentally obvious that health not be considered as another business to exploit, and instead welcome the strategy of maintaining a healthy body by guarding it from unwanted ailments.

PREVENTION is a tree with many branches, all producing beneficial fruits. Vital among them is nutrition, considered by many to be our best medicine.

There is historical evidence that various cultures discovered and developed knowledge of the inherent nutritional and medicinal power of foods, spices and herbs. Knowledge that must be assimilated into the fundamental base of medical science, in order to move effectively forward in the fight against ailments that our world suffers from.

In maintaining health, either through prevention or cure, it is primordially necessary to maintain and individual's peace and tranquility. Tranquility so that one's organism may by itself absorb the good and eliminate the harmful.  This our bodies are able to accomplish naturally. It is the imbalances in our bodies that in most cases causes disease. The balance between the body and mind is vitally important in this natural protection. Our systems will respond to whatever level we allow it. Each cell in our body is able to act on its own. Let us not withhold any conscious support. As soon as our conscience alerts us, our system enters into action.

Let us prevent more, so that we may lament less.

Lessons From The Year

2011 was indeed an interesting year: it brought to bear the fact that the world's economic crisis has its roots in the detrimental distribution of the benefits derived from the world's productivity.

We live in a globalized world: whatever happens in a particular place also occurs in the rest of the globe.

In Canada, the top 100 earners brought home 189 times more income than the average earned by the rest of the population. 189 times !!!

The top earner was able to bring in 3,122 times the country's established minimum yearly salary.

The top 100 CEO's received an average of 27% increase in their income from the year before.  This goes to show that they are benefiting from OUR crisis.

On the other hand, the average salary increase experienced by the rest of the working population was a pitiful 1.1%. This in fact means that, according to official figures, they earned less than the previous year, due to an annualized inflation rate of 2.9 at the end of November.  In reality, things are worse seeing that real inflation was higher than what the government claimed.

The richer are getting richer at the expense of the not so fortunate.  Why ??  You tell me !!

That same year, the Canadian political party that has been feverishly, and successfully, in making the income gap between the have's and have not's larger, received the largest percentage of the popular vote in the elections.  It now holds a Parliamentary majority.

Does it make sense ?  It does !!!

2011 showed an incremental degree of concern over social issues.  Beyond the fact that the crisis is an issue of "distribution", there is no doubt that the "weapons of mass instruction" were successful in achieving their ultimate objective.  Much of Canada's population, as is also the case with the rest of the world, have lost their ability to conduct any introspective analysis, their imagination, and their freedom of thought.  Together, us Canadians are supporting not only a system that is imposed on us, but also the leadership behind such effort.  We behave as puppets. We are being manipulated.

The good  news is that in 2011 some of us woke up.  More people are searching for that internal guiding light that for years, those in power, have attempted to extricate from our minds. 

The solution to our crisis is at hand, and shows signs of becoming a more visible reality. It is up to each one of us to conduct our own introspective search and fight for what we find and believe in.

Edited by Renato Riva-Vercellotti

ENERGY, a good parameter when assessing DEVELOPMENT

Among the ways to measure a country’s development, (if not the best, at least one of the better ones) is it to determine the average amount of energy that each one of its inhabitants consumes.

Anthropologist George Grant tells us: “The degree to which a society has become civilized, regardless of era, peoples, or group thereof, is measured by the amount of energy required to cover its developmental needs.  In furthering that concept, Leslie White, also an anthropologist, adds that a culture’s primary responsibility is to “provide and control energy for the benefit of all women and men in a given society.”

Biologist Howard Odum, one of the pioneers of natural energy systems, affirms that the greatest restriction in the development of a society is the lack of adequate amount of energy. Human creativity inevitably depends on the energy necessary to realize that which had been imagined.

From what these North American scientists have stated, one is able to deduce that countries that do not prioritize their energy potential for their own progress are hindering their integral development.

Energy abundant nations that may be in need of these resources for their own development, but instead elect to export it, are in fact betraying their own people while propelling the economies of the countries they serve.

This posture, to prioritize the development of foreign economies before your own, is characteristic of nations created by a foreign power, who, even after their independence, continue to exhibit permanent colonial traits. To eradicate such mentality requires an extraordinary effort of conscience.

The structural and organizational efforts required to maintain the flow of energy in a nation is the base of a permanent and integral development.  Alleged progress born of the commercialization of abundant natural resources, their inherent potential, and low cost of manual labour, are evidence of temporary development that only serve to relive dramas caused by wasted opportunities.

This ‘colonial trait’ keeps alive the thought, which with an aristocratic gesture, yields to the patron saint of only one faith: MONEY. A faith that scares away the chances for genuine development.
Spanish - English Translation by Renato Riva-Vercellotti

Possibility

The possibility to live in harmony exists, yet we continue to attack each other in such a manner that it would seem to have become a chronic ailment.

Analyzing the reasons that foster polarization will help reconsider arguments bogged down in mutual lack of understanding. Biased positions that further understanding and consensus, shine with their absence.

Archeologists suggest that the Neolithic Period (Stone Age Era starting in 9500 BC) was the most pacifist in human history. Evidence shows that few arms were utilzed. It was an era of matriarchy.  Women discovered agriculture.  For the most part, men were shepherds. There were found pots, basquets and trays that served to store left-over grains, these generating the holy surplus that propelled the economy. It is then that history returns to the mallet and the bludgeon thus giving peace a clubbing. 

The first societies with hydraulic agriculture (4000 BC) began to flourish.  Social structures were set up in a hierarchical fashion, with an autonomous leader. This resulted in the evolution of rich urban centres.  Smaller "hydraulic" societies strewned through the valleys were amalgamated by armed forces and conquered, giving birth to the first kingdoms. The predominant interest of manking changed.

Writer and economist Jeremy Rifkin, sustains that changes in the form of communication restructure the way in which the mind understands and organizes reality.

Rifkin tells us that "oral" cultures where the telling of stories was the sole way of propagating and affirming, heaped with mythological conciousness. "Written" cultures gave way to theological conciousness.  Cultures that surge with the printed word are accompanied by an ideological concience.  The first generation of the electronic era constitutes a new culture that opens the door to a sociological concience.  Each with its own forms and "enemies". He adds that to the mythological man, the "other" is either a non-human, or the devil, or a monster.  To him, it is the pagan or the infidel.  The cyber era is still unidentified and unnamed.

The fact that humanity does not march to the same drummer has resulted in the clash among the remnants of various cultures still in existence.  A collision of these was aided by the advances in communication: the satellite and Internet.  The inhuman, the devil, the pagan and infidel, the stupid, the crazy, and the "antagonist", whatever we opt to call the present "stranger", they are all present in our present cultural melting pot.

What's more, while this encounter of cultures should provide for a chance to exchange interesting and fruitful ideas, that simply is not happening repeating grave past errors, as is the sad and palpalable experience of the conquest of America by Europeans. The inscrupulous massive and educational misinformation, with which powerful economic groups and politicians convert the less fortunate in still "oral" environments, and I express it as such because the information they receive, systematically based on cliches, are sent back in time to reconnect with the predominant characteristics of that "oral" culture where there did not exist the possibility of introspective analysis (nothing come from within, it all comes from outside) that deprives them of spark, idea, and internal light. On the other hand those who are immune to this mental deterioration, product of the bombardment of hidden propaganda, develop their intellect availing themselves of abundant information and bibliography, which is common today, and are therefore able to maintain  introspective abilities.

This is what I believe is at the root of such incomprehension between peoples.

To take the power of massive imformation away from groups that waste opportunity to develop humankind for simple and misguided financial gain, is practically imposible because they have taken over all recourses with which men and women depend on;  still there is always a way out when one observes ingenious reality.

We have the ability of a collective re-encounter among ourselves regardless of the distance or isolation in which we are.  Let us make use of this our only arm at our disposal to join our efforts to change the course of history towards a bigger and greater renaissance.

The possibility exists, let's not waste it particularly for fear that we may displease the greedy.


Spanish - English Translation by Renato Riva-Vercellotti