Poverty Is a Matter of Perception

I have seen many programs, organizations, non-profits, and companies trying to eradicate poverty. I find this to be very troubling. Being poor by definition, is lack of money, or the lowest amount of money. Since there is no balance in the global or local economies, then by definition there MUST be rich people and poor people, regardless of how much money they have. Like for instance, the poor people in the United States are far richer than the poor people of the rest of the world. They are only poor because they are at the lowest income scale and cannot keep up with the country’s economy. Therefore, there will always be poor people no matter how much we try to help them “get out of poverty.” All we are doing, is either helping a select few and usually replacing those with other people, or slowing the process of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.
Now some programs do try to elevate the number of impoverished people, but rarely do they keep up with the current societal influx of making the rich richer and the poor poorer. The only ways to eradicate poverty is one, to teach the poor how to become self-sufficient and able to unite together to protect their resources, or two, remove the monetary system. They can become self-sufficient if they practice sustainable methods like permaculture, and learn to work as a community along side their neighboring community. Networks can be formed with activists around the world, to make sure smaller communities are not threatened by any country or corporation. Having an outside source to spread information about an attack, can help the little guys stay protected from the big guys. Removing the monetary system does not seem to be an option, nor would most people want to. There are many alternatives being produced, such as local currencies and alternative currencies, which can help alleviate the problem of the world population always playing “catch up.” There are also alternative ways of thinking such as the “gift economy” and a needs based economy, which I believe are the only real solutions to anything beyond money. These will be discussed in detail in a following post.

There are many ways to solve the problem of poverty, but throwing money at the problem can only help build infrastructure to create self-sufficiency, education, tools, and equipment, so make sure your money is going to the right cause if you are a supporter of eradicating poverty, otherwise you’ll probably be throwing your money to the rich.  I’m sure I will have lots more to say about poverty, so stay tuned.

Barriers Block More Than Just Bad: Part I

People don’t operate well when they are forced, controlled, pressured, pushed, frightened, or manipulated. Instead, they operate best when they are given the openness to be themselves, be real, be honest, express themselves, have support, and face the world with confidence in their own reality. So what is it that we can do to help create this space? Easy, we work on ourselves to become open minded, non-judgmental, capable of listening, be there for support, be there for guidance, and give them unconditional love. In return, they will give you the same as you give to them. This is exactly how trust is formed. When the trust is diminished, the walls go up, but if the walls are already up, then there will be a barrier to create tension. Just like anything in life, when you draw a line or put up a barrier, you keep out the good and bad together. You keep out the bad, but you also create a barrier and tension which the good must get around. There are far more good people in this world (at least people who try and want to be good) than there are bad, so you end up keeping out far more good than you will bad. Yes, the bad can create equal harm as many doing good, but if you let the good in, they will be there to help and support you in recognizing, preparing for, or supporting you when the bad comes. It is inevitable to have bad things happen because the world itself is full of dangers, so it is best to prepare yourself with support, awareness, and information to protect you from the world instead of trying to block it out. This comes from community, which is created by working together, which requires connection and support. So by dropping your barriers, you get double the benefit, unlike what most people believe when they create their barriers. The double benefits are creating natural security and even more opportunity and connection.

So to create a positive approach, we need to understand how and why our current ideals of controlling people does not work. Humans are very curious, just like any other animal, they want the space and opportunity to learn and explore the world for themselves, but with the support and guidance of others. If they are given their space, they will produce the best that they can because they want to be a part of the community through their need for connection. They will also want to seek out help instead of feeling forced to learn something they do not know if they want to learn. They take anything forced as an outside threat, just like anything else that is attacking what they currently know.

If people are ostracized and blocked out, they will go against the community. Being open minded to differences and teaching people why it is something that they need or to correct an unhealthy aspect of themselves, may warrant them openness to learn what others have experience with. People want to learn for themselves, so they will be open to learning a better way if it will benefit them, instead of being looked at as wrong or different. If they are accepted and given the open space by society, they will naturally want to learn and adapt to their environment, as well as be accepted. They understand the many benefits and security a community can provide them (this will be explained deeper in a completely different post later on).

This post will be followed up with at least one other post, explaining how we create opportunity when we drop our barriers, and how our society develops barriers to progress with the exact same principle.

Your Reality Versus Entropy

Live the life you know is true to yourself and do not let anyone tell you otherwise. You should learn from others and adapt yourself to new information, but not change yourself for others. Your reality is your reality and no one else’s. It is not wrong to you, because that is the reality you wish to live within.

When someone else’s reality takes precedence over yours, controls yours, or decides to interfere with yours, you have the right to stand up for your rights as an individual within your reality. Just because it is different from the mainstream community, does not make it wrong. They could very easily be the wrong ones, but we have no way of knowing for sure who is right or wrong from the perspective of each of our realities. Many people could be swayed by mass media or social norms into believing their reality must be the correct reality to pursue, but throughout history, many people have been lead astray, often to their own graves. So do not follow others, but simply learn from others and experiment in your own mind. Be flexible and open to trying something you normally wouldn’t, so see your own reality from a different perspective. Evolve your own reality using the knowledge and insight which is around you every way, including the simple laws of physics and nature, which have a wealth of knowledge to teach you. This is evolution of your own reality, re-evaluating yourself and your knowledge to improve yourself and your surrounds. You will improve the world by simply working on yourself. We project many of our problems upon the world, without ever working on the problems ourselves. So if we choose to work our on our problems, we will make the world a better place without ever really doing anything except not projecting our problems onto others and the world.

With that said, we should all pay more attention to the box we have created and put ourselves in. Many times our “space” is simply our “box.” Meaning that our homes, or our workspaces, or even the comfortable bubble we make around ourselves, is our comfort zone, specific to only ourselves. When we hold onto connection to this space, we often times project our own fears and impairments onto other people’s spaces. We need to learn how to be open to other people’s spaces interfering with our own. Just because we may think another person is less of a person than us (created by our own self-centered and ego ridden selves), does not give us the right to trample on their realities. I have noticed that people like to make their home and property their own personal space, attaching themselves to the property as if it was manifested into the world for their purposes only. They work hard to control their space from others, to horde it for their selfish use. When this is performed, you have already declared that you are more important then something else and are hording what is free for all life to use as your own. Fortunately nature comes with its own cleansing in the form of entropy and death, do relieve all energy and materials from their captors in due time.

So the point I am trying to make, is to open your mind and your heart to share your world with others, rather than close it off to others to deal with your fear of your space becoming disorganized. It is inevitable within the law of entropy and you should learn to adapt and utilize the inevitable disorder to be beneficial to yourselves and others, rather than creating a barrier between you and the rest of the world.

How to Save the World

To start out with the new format of this blog, I’ve decided to point out some very good information over at a blog called “How to Save the World” by Dave Pollard.  He has put together a lot of extremely useful information over a very long time.  He is a good writer and able to produce very good explanations of life’s most important topics.  I definitely recommend checking his blog out, as it is very much like what I intended this blog to be like in the first place. But I would rather give credit to where credit is due, and direct others to a source of information which is better than I can produce at this time.  I don’t agree with everything he has written, but I would say a majority of it is right on the money.

Make sure to check out this week’s article on “Consensus and Decision Making,” I thought it was very well written and full of great information.

Restarting the blog

So I’ve started and restarted this blog twice now. The first time, Wordpress crashed and I hadn’t backed up my posts yet. There weren’t very many of them to start with. The second time, is now, and I’ve realized how time consuming it is to write these posts like a true journalist, because I’m an Engineer by trade, not a writer. I’ve been wasting my time trying to put together information into a well written article

After reading many other books and blogs, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not ready to become a writer because it’s very different from the textbook-like technical writing I have done in Engineering, therefore I would have to unlearn that method of writing, and learn creative writing. Writing was one of my worst subjects in High School and College, but I’m a firm believer in being able to accomplish anything you want to if you put your mind to it. Some things just take longer than others.

With that said, bear with me as I attempt to write a blog. I hope it will be more of just a conversation rather than a matter of fact statement or document to be taken literally word for word. My attempt at writing will be minimal, so please pay more attention to the content. Please do nto try to correct my grammar or style or profanity, I really don’t give a shit. If it makes me look bad, so be it.

From reading many books and blogs, I’ve also seen that there are just too many of them. There are too many people talking and not enough action. Sure knowledge will get us to where we want to go, but without practical implementation, nothing will ever get done. I think this world is chalk full of useful and practical information, but is often lost in the clutter of ramblings and research to make much sense of anything. All of the information is already out there amongst us, but we constantly try to put the information into our own writings so that we may become experts and therefore secure a spot in the marketplace for sustainable income. So this blog, will then be about putting the pieces together. Sewing a path to be followed through the clutter. A short cut to the information I have painstakingly sifted through to bring to you the best. I search far and wide, through many social circles. From rich to poor, from haves and have nots, through all races, from intellectual to ignorant, I refuse to focus on a specific niche. When you do so, you become the environment in which you immerse yourself within. Even in High School I was known to be a “click jumper,” which is someone who jumps from click to click (a click is a group of friends with like interests who usually try to associate themselves with only those within their click). So, I have become the bridge between all worlds. The information gatherer, the translator, the messenger. This blog will be about my journey and the information I have gathered, so that people who follow may get a short cut to knowledge which took me years to uncover.  That is all we can hope to offer the future generation, to pass down information to allow them a short cut to evolution.

I have decided to leave the previous posts within this blog, because I am feeling particularly unconventional at the moment, and would rather be completely transparent as to where this blog has gone. The other posts were posted some time ago, but I don’t care. I don’t even believe they were well written by any means. So take it for what it is and that is all I can say.

Our Bizarre Universe

Here is a great presentation given by Richard Dawkins at the annual TED Awards. I highly recommend watching it the entire way through. It may even change your entire perception of your own life. Maybe.

He does an excellent job at explaining the infinite universe and all of it’s wealth, left to be discovered. It really goes to show you how little we know and how narrowly focussed our lives really are. How we only think and act within an atomic sized percentage of the vast spectrum of the Universe. If we learned to think outside of our box of our own created reality, maybe we would see how meaningless our forced projections on others, or developing egos about topics we think we know everything about. Or how little it matters to create order within our narrow scope of reality. And how our psyche has developed rules and beliefs which only fit within our narrow frame of mind and not others, therefore we should be open to all possibilities and actions. To live and let live. And lastly, how we are completely in control of our own realities and existence, without being in control of them at all. Our possibilities are only as limitless as our own psyche believes them to be. Our own mind is what holds us back the most.

Life is a Rainbow, and Equality is the Pot of Gold

To start off this blog, let’s talk about a general misconception throughout the minds of many people all over the world. No matter how much we believe we are not, we currently still live in a black and white world.  Just about everything in our cultures has kept up a common misconception about equality. People have always believed that they are superior to something else, simply due to how we view the world, from within our own heads, never being able to leave our own thoughts. For this, we become selfish for our own existence. This is not wrong, as it is inevitable, but people fail to recognize that there are other life forms in the universe which have their rights as well. And what we learn for ourselves over time, should never be places above or below another.

Maybe people are simply afraid of our own existence being less significant, therefore need to justify our existence. In doing so, people will judge others as less or more superior, which creates an artificial barrier between them. For about everything, humans judge the quality of the person, animal, plant, or object, as good or bad, right or wrong, black or white. The problem, is that the universe cannot exist inside a finite spectrum, because everything how . It is completely relative. For example, if we lived in a world where everything was purely good, how would we know it was good? What is there to compare it to? Our judgements of what are good or bad would merely be on a different spectrum. Maybe we would believe that people who do not smile more than 100 times per day are bad people. Point being, our judgements of right and wrong are merely figments of our imagination, because all things are equal, and deserve a place in the world to exist in their own harmony. A future article will be created about how this can actual exist.

To illustrate the meaning of the above text, think about the propositions to ban gay marriage. History is repeating itself once again. The civil rights movement is a very similar story, but simply different people being discriminated against. Just like any other discrimination throughout history, is about freedom and equality, to live and let live.

Just like anyone throughout history in this position, they have discovered that the key to their freedom lies in education. To inform people about the simple idea that their existence means something too. Throughout history we have been fighting a battle to create equality for just about everything in existence. Why can’t we just see the inevitable conclusion to this obviously simple puzzle, that everything in life actually is equal, because everything is created by the same energy.

The inevitable evolution of human kind is to think grey, to see equality of all parts of the spectrum, as an unlimited amount of possibilities, all equal in quality. It is merely what we have learned over time, which constricts us to our current beliefs, which were not present before we were on this planet. If you want a refresher course, just look around you, the children all around you do not see black and white until they are taught to by you.