This Is Who Controls Your Life And The Lives Of Your Kids

Men are born to succeed, not fail.
- Henry David Thoreau, American author, poet and philosopher (1817-1862)

Well, heck, that sounds simple enough.

So why doesn't it work?

Because to succeed, a person must have the tools to succeed and the attitude that the goal is possible. In other words, a person needs a good work ethic, something to do and the means to do it.

Easy again.

But most people settle for less than what they are capable of, then either overwork to benefit their employer or underwork in the mistaken belief that only partial success at work does not equal only partial success in life.

If the original statement is correct, then why are most people not feeling successful, fulfilled and personally complete?

We don't teach to success of the individual. We teach success for the nation. We teach that success for corporations is good. We teach that our working to keep corporations successful is good. We teach that spending every bit of income we get is good, that it should make us happy and keep the economy rolling.

But we don't teach to individual success. That is, we don't teach to success of the individual on a massive, nationwide scale.

What we do teach individuals is that they should have the skills to satisfy employers sufficiently that they will keep us employed. We almost never teach entrepreneurial skills because that would be counter to the benefit of corporations.

Ask most teens why they will continue with their education past high school and you will hear "so I can get a good job" more than any other answer. In other words, "so that I can get a good paying job." Hopefully, one that will not disappear when the employer downsizes because it has not forecast future markets correctly and has lost money, so needs to cut staff to show more profit or minimize losses to satisfy its shareholders.

We don't even teach our children what it means to be successful, other than that they will be happy being constant consumers. Which few are, really. Again, ask a teen what it means for an adult to be successful and the answer will most likely be related to a secure job with good income (with which to buy lots of stuff).

It's not my purpose to teach you what success is. I know what it is for me. But it took me a few decades of searching to learn.

You need to learn what success is for you. What it really is. What it really means to lead a fulfilling life.

Then teach it to every kid you know.

Schools don't do this. Their purpose is to train employees to be good workers and consumers.
Corporations control the curriculum. If you doubt this, check the name brands on all kinds of products in today's high schools and even in grade schools. Including in text books.

First you must learn what success in life really is. Then teach it to others, both adults and children.

How many people, on their deathbeds, have claimed that they should have worked harder or that they should have spent more of their money in order to make their own lives and the lives of their family members better? Corporations want us to believe that we should follow that line of unthinking.

Learn, then teach. It's what we are supposed to do. Corporations took that responsibility from us because we walked away from it ourselves.

When you teach children what is meaningful in life, don't report it to your employer. The employer won't like that. Just do it in private.

A recent study (actually several of them) showed that large corporations were set up to be sociopathological (amoral, capable of violence or spreading fear without feeling guilty). It's part of their corporate ethic.

This is the power that will control the destiny of your children unless you change what your kids believe.

If you don't like it, do something about it. Talk it up. Social change happens only when enough people believe that children should be taught differently. Every socially acceptable norm of today was once a radical idea. Then people talked about it.

So talk. It's easy.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to have a time scale, content and methodology for teaching children what they need to know to lead successful lives.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Why Parents Need to Cruise the Streets at Night

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.- Henry David Thoreau, "Walden", 1854
New fashions, seeming to defy the passage of time, tend to reflect old fashions of three decades ago. The reasons for this are obvious. Designers don't have to think of anything creatively new because by the time the fad buyers of one generation have outgrown their gotta-have phase, the next generation has taken its place.
Fashion itself is a peculiar industry where predominantly gay designers create designs for anorexically-thin size zero heterosexual models, presumably to be copied by rip-off designers who "design" for massive chain store clothing outlets.
Teenaged girls, in their effort to look attractive to the opposite sex, wear clothing best suited for prostitutes who walk the streets in the evenings. Their fashions bear striking similarities.
The thinking of the girls--mass hysteria in full blast as they try to be up with or slightly ahead of the crowd--is that prostitutes know the kind of clothing that attracts men. That thought link is not direct, but filters through one or more layers of designers at clothing manufacturers who ensure that the clothing is just inside the line of acceptability for most parents who shell out the cash for their body-peddling kids.
Theoretically, parents should be able to cruise the streets where prostitutes hang out at night to see what teenage fashions will be popular in the coming months.
Especially if you're the parent of a teenage daughter. Either you will know what she will want to buy or you will know what she is desperately trying to avoid, but losing personal popularity by doing so.
Bill AllinTurning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to keep it real and up front.Learn more at http://billallin.com

What Did Thoreau Know About Happiness?

"The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run."
- Henry David Thoreau, American philosopher (1817–1862)

Thoreau was never a rich man. Rich people and those who aspire to be rich believe that any amount of sacrifice of life is worth the investment to gain wealth. That includes their time, their work, their families, their values, their relaxation.

As western society ages, more and more people believe that wealth is the measure of a person, worth any exchange of what Thoreau called life. Not wealth itself, exactly, but what wealth can buy so that the wealthy person can show it off to others and what influence wealth can exercise over others who admire it greatly.

Not everyone in the world subscribes to that way of thinking. As much as Americans want to believe that the people the US calls terrorists only envy the wealth that US citizens have, very few (if any) of them do. They and many of their people consider western obsession with wealth to be a perversion of the purpose of why we are on this planet.

We in the west live our lives to earn enough money to buy the products that advertisers brainwash us into believing that we need so that we can be satisfied and happy.

Look how happy we are. The manufacturers, our politicians and our social leaders tell us that we must be happy, that everyone who does not live in a rich country must be unhappy.

If those important people tell us that we are happy, then we must be happy. After all, we reward them well for telling us the purpose of life. If we pay them so much to tell us what life is all about, then we might as well believe them.

Thoreau was poor, what would he know about happiness?

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to put it all into perspective.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Listen, Hear, Make A Friend

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.
- Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)

Many people equate hearing with listening. They believe that if they are facing a speaker and not talking themselves, they are listening and hearing. Listening, more than anything, requires a person to point their face at the speaker. Hearing obliges the non-speaker to engage his brain with the purpose of making sense of what is spoken and replying to it.

Some people don't hear what another person is saying because they don't care what is being said. They are more interested in what they have to say themselves.

Many times two people appear to be carrying on a conversation, but it's not a dialogue. It's two adjacent and alternating monologues with each speaker smiling at the other and looking at him or her frequently. Everything in that conversation is out-going, with nothing coming in to be considered by the brain of either participant.

Actually taking the time to listen to someone, considering what they have said, then replying in such a way that they realize you have heard, understood and thought about it is one way (one social device) of making a new friend.

People get so used to being virtually ignored by others in a conversation that they treasure anyone who will take the time and effort to hear them and respond.

Of course, a friend is someone who will also listen, hear, consider and respond to what you have said. Not everyone will do that. But it's a good way to filter out those you don't want as friends if you are meeting new people with the objective of befriending some.

In any case, actually attending to what someone has said and repling accordingly is a form of respect. It's cheap and effective. It's a sign that you are a caring person, that you care about the speaker.

Bill Allin
Turning It Arounjd: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to clarify some social skills that every person should learn.
Learn more at http://billallin.com