Knowledge, love and action serve to overcome the impossible

An Appeal for a Revolution

Part Three:

The Business of Delusion

Our world is  vulnerable. We, the producers and consumers, have to change. We are witnessing the impact of our lifestyles on the Earth. We see more and more swings in climate and lasting for longer periods. Climate scientists tell us the Earth’s temperature is slowly rising with the potential to bring even greater swings in climate, unprecedented flooding and widespread loss of life.

In this critique, I will make reference to delusion in politics, surveillance, religion the media, advertising, entertainment and ourselves.

I will list some of the primary conditions for delusion in the mind.

I will give an outline for a revolution.

Our world is  vulnerable.

We need to examine our collective problematic attitudes in human behaviour. Our states of mind have become a dark shadow over the Earth. We must focus on our mind to address our global issues.

Delusion is a belief strongly held in spite of invalidating evidence

We see delusion in the mind of our major ideologies:

• politics
• surveillance
• religions
• media and advertising
• entertainment
• as well as in ourselves.

False hope

One example, there is a general widespread public disillusionment, for example, with our leaders. We live in the hope that the next leader, the next government, will be better than the last. Far too often, this hope functions as a denial of problems today leading to disappointment later.

In today’s democracies, there are only minor differences between the major political parties. We hear so many promises from our leaders that cannot be upheld. We delude ourselves in thinking the future will be better for us. Climate change makes a mockery of hope in the future.

False premises of capitalism and growth

As already discussed in Part One, corporations, politicians, bankers and economists share a fundamental intellectual belief in economic growth. They cling to the view that economic growth and corporate capitalism will bring prosperity, and therefore happiness for all. This is a delusion. The levels of prosperity of one section of humanity are at the direct expense of the majority of humanity. More than a billion people live on less than a dollar a day on this Earth.

Persistent economic growth contributes directly to climate change, affirmed by hundreds of scientists worldwide, but still denied and challenged to perpetuate the system of big business running the world.  The world is round not flat.

The notion of growth ignores the limited resources on this Earth. The notion of growth ignores the true cost to people and our fragile earth. The notion of  perpetual growth is a delusion.

Super wealth obviously does not trickle down to the world’s poor. Corporate capitalism and super wealth is a piss on the poor ideology.

We need to address some of the causes and conditions for delusion including

• an unexamined inner life and outer life
• a blind belief in the rightness of what one does
• an unwillingness to look at the consequences of  words and actions
• a submission to authority and the desire to please employers
• belief in perpetual growth
• dependency on success
• denial of changing circumstances
• desire for security
• distorted thinking
• fear of rejection
• feelings of superiority and inferiority
• lack of empathy for people, animals and environment
• lack of inquiry and investigation
• obsession with profit and competition
• projections,
• putting oneself  first or the corporation who one represents

There is extensive use of recreational drugs, especially cocaine, among the rich, powerful and influential. Cocaine is their recreational drug of choice. The financial centre of London is the cocaine capital of the world. Such recreational drugs solidify delusion.

Surveillance

The US government undertook mass surveillance of citizens around the world.

The US National Security Agency (NSA) and the British counterpart, GCHQ exchanged information on and had access to our emails, telephone calls, voice chat, videos, photos, Skype, file transfers, social networking exchanges and more.

While we, the consumers, benefit from the international application of computers, software and smart phones, we never agreed to government security agencies engaging in surveillance on us. We have been deceived for years. Governments and big business watch us and continue to gather information about us.

We need critiques. We need campaigns.  We need to protest. We need to change the global mind. We need to work on empowerment of ourselves. Respect, trust and co-operation form essentials for developing intelligent life on earth. We easily become cynical through years of lies, deceit and corruption.

Religion

Followers of religious sects, big or small, often think only they know the Truth and all other believers are misled. This is a delusion. All too often religious organisations prefer to either hold onto their past traditions and beliefs or destroy themselves from within by arguing or fighting over its dogma.

Religion harnesses the emotion of devotion to its God, its sacred book or founder or all three.  Religion offers genuine consolation in times of suffering

Let us appreciate people of faith who live their lives through love and service with no desire to convert others to their personal religious views.

A revolutionary change in religion would point the way to moderate lifestyle,  ethics, a sense of community, daily mindfulness and unconditional love. It would never condone or offer any blessings to greed, violence or delusion of the individual, the corporation or the nation state.

Media and Advertising

We appreciate investigative journalists, writers, researchers and academics who pursue ‘Truth’ with a view to end suffering. They are among our guardian angels. They reveal to us the manifestations of the pollution of the global mind.

Unfortunately the media often reflects the views of the owner and/or the views of a major political party. Corporate advertising dictates. The media rarely bites the hand that feeds.

Reports say we are exposed  from 200 to 2000 advertisements or more daily, indoors and outdoors, such as ads on walls on the streets, communication devices and the media, television, radio and so on. All of it tempts us to buy, to spend in order to increase profits and create growth for big business.  Far too many advertisers function as the agents for unhealthy states of mind.  Advertisers engage in an assault on our senses to get us to buy goods and services. Sex is the most common device to stimulate our desires to buy goods. It is a delusion that a life of consumerism will make us happy. Consumerism generates feelings of lack, excessive desire, envy and greed for more.

The media reports extensively on environmental disasters from unprecedented freezing temperatures in our countries to exceptional heat waves, melting glaciers, rising sea levels and ongoing rains while failing to point out that these events confirm climate change. Governments and the oligarchy that own much of the media rarely make the link between annual environmental disasters and climate change.

Some of us have watched documentaries detailing the corruption of governments, the military, big business and banks. We have read books analyzing the major global issues. We have read numerous important articles by investigative journalists. We have read scientific journals and reports of university research.

We need a revolution with knowledge, love and action working together. We delude ourselves if we become addicted to such information about world events without following it up with thoughtful action.

We must work together at home, with local citizens and in the offices of government, businesses and banks.

There are many intelligent and thoughtful people working in government, political parties, businesses, the media and entertainment. They have much to offer but they fear to dissent from the status quo. They have their careers to think of, families to support and a lifestyle to sustain.

Despite experiencing doubts about the ethics, the values and ruthless ambitions of their employers, these intelligent people compromise. They keep quiet. They submit to the powers from above. They find ways to rationalize their passivity. It is well educated people who are in most need of a psychological revolution.

Entertainment  and  Work

Large corporations feed to us our daily diet of entertainment.

For example: Are far too many Hollywood movies, from global disaster movies onwards, a form of American propaganda for the global market?  The good guys eventually win. And the good guys are Americans.

Is the multi-million dollar sports business and TV promotion of sports keeping the minds of numerous citizens occupied as a kind of opiate? Are we passively addicted? Is this another delusion?

Is the land of the free the land of the addicted? Around 70% of the US population on any day is on medication, mostly for addictions, depression, obesity, pain killers and sleeplessness.  There is much stress at work worldwide. Big business and the pharmaceutical industry encourage us to take medication to get us back to work as quickly as possible, rather than an inquiry into the pressures and demands in the working conditions.

We can develop creative ways to change our widespread delusions that impact on all of us,  the rich, middle classes and poor alike. We do not need medication for such an inquiry.

An Outline for a Revolution

• A break up of large corporations,  big banks and armies
• An end to corporate dictatorship and corporate media
• Board of Directors of major corporations to include workers, environmentalists, investigative journalists, managers .
• Co-operation – not competition between businesses
• Education for children and adults to develop the whole person – feelings, emotions, mind, body, spirit and community,
• Form armies of constructive engagement – not destructive
• Full participatory democracy to elect CEOs and board members with voting rights for all their workers worldwide.
• Politics and financial institutions for the common good – not for CEOs, directors and shareholders.
• Politics of sharing – not narrow self-interest
• Politics of responsibility –a corporation policy of ‘take back’ of worn out equipment and an end to exporting waste.
• Politics of sustainability – end to exploitation of limited resources,
• End of production of trivia, plus use of recyclable and safe materials.

After a revolution, there would be no more billionaires, no more Wall Street, no financial stock exchanges, no IMF and no World Bank. There would be no more bonuses for businesses executives and bankers. There would be a maximum wage differential of 20 times between the lowest paid workers, such as office cleaners, and the CEO – as once proposed in the Swedish Parliament. The current wage differential continues to rise. The salary of some CEO’s is sometimes 500 times more than their lowest paid workers.

Taxation used for armies and wars would switch to supporting local communities wordwide, production of useful goods, protection of our environment and eco-system.  We would share a different way of life together on this Earth.

The ideological conflicts of the left and the right, capitalism and communism, socialism and individualism, belong to a past era. They have little relevance in a world of seven billion people. Powerful institutions would no longer control life, nor plunder rapidly diminishing resources, nor contribute to  climate change, year by year.

It is our task, as citizens of the earth, to work on the global pollution of the mind of greed, violence and delusion, inwardly and outwardly.  We have to work together in cells, form networks, locally, nationally and at the international level. We need to support the important work of those in the non-profit sector worldwide.

We live under the most destructive ideology ever known in the history of our species.

A psychological revolution would offer real support to people, animals and the environment and future generations.

We need a revolution.

May all beings live in peace

May all beings live in harmony

May all beings live in peace and harmony.

 Part Three of Three

Filmed in Sarnath, India

To be available on YouTube in March 2014