Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.
- Denis Waitley, American inspirational speaker and author (b. 1924)
What the hell does that mean?
If that was your reaction to the quote, you might be a bit light on the happiness scale, and may not know it.
Think about things that can be owned, earned, worn or consumed. They all require spending money. Thanks to the rich and powerful West and its persistent propaganda telling us that we can't be happy unless we spend money, an unbelievably large number of people in the world equate happiness and spending.
That requires people to have money to be happy, going along that way of thinking. Everyone who is poor must be unhappy, as a corollary. Or at least lack the ability to be truly happy.
People with lots of money spend, spend, spend. And they are happy. Or they believe they are. They must be, they conclude, because they are living the lifestyle that says they must be happy. They believe they are happy because they have been taught to believe that.
Yet look at the divorce rate among these people. Look at the percentage of their kids who take drugs and alcohol and simply can't manage in school. Look at the number who grow up with a video game as a surrogate mother instead of a real one. By the time they are in their teens, they don't want their natural mother anyway, many of them, because their mothers don't know what to do with them. And they have no idea what to do with their mothers.
So they all spend as much as they can to be happier.
But they don't get happier. What they do get is embroiled in addictions and obsessions, causes to which they devote much of their lives--such as their religion of choice or a political party--in a vain effort to teach the rest of the world how to be happy.
Some cults in other parts of the world understand. They have no source of the money needed to spend the way the addicts do in the West. So, jealous of the West and their own inability to get money to spend on the luxuries they believe they need to be happy, they become suicide bombers or terrorists of other stripes. Some kill their own people out of spite.
Most people in poorer countries don't behave that way, of course. But they have gotten the message. They believe that only fate has prevented them from being happy by not giving them the ability to earn money they can spend to make them happy. "Poor me, fate has dealt me such a cruel blow."
However, others in poorer countries do not succumb to the consumerism propaganda. They believe that happiness is what you make for yourself. And what you make for others around you in the process. They become musicians and dancers, for example, and find happiness in their music. They cherish the "spiritual experience of living every minute" with their music. Others get involved with other forms of artistic endeavour.
They lose themselves in whatever they do. Musicians become one with their music. Painters one with their paintings. Actors one with their particular craft, and so on.
Are the arts, then, the secret to happiness? No, it's the giving of themselves to something beneficial or to someone else that is enjoyed and appreciated by others that brings the happiness.
I can't say whether they live each moment with "love, grace and gratitude." Those are Denis Waitley's words. What words would I use? I stumble over them myself now that I have found happiness I could never have understood until recently.
While I was growing up, I was taught repeatedly, at home, at school, at church, playing sports and doing just about every activity involving others my own age that I must come first in my life. I must be in charge. I must be in control. I must succeed at everything. "Pay yourself first" and buy what you can with it. Borrow to buy what you can't afford so that you can show it off to others so they can see your success. Only when I outgrew that infantile, selfish and consumerish way of thinking and began to share my life freely with others did I find happiness.
With happiness, the more you give to others, the more you get back in return. Business doesn't work that way, which is why business wants us to be selfish. And consumers. Business lives for money. A life built around a business model is pretty shallow.
Business, however, cannot be happy. It's emotionless, even sociopathic if you believe some studies. Shaping our lives on a business model not only doesn't bring much happiness in return, it tends to lose for us many of the opportunities for happiness that we could have enjoyed.
Make someone happy today. You'll be glad you did. Really.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to teach their children how to be more than consumers, who want them to live lives full of happiness.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Showing posts with label cruelty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cruelty. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Fear Affects Your Life
Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
- Bertrand Russell
Fear, superstition, cruelty: big subjects, requiring more thought than most people want to devote to subjects that won't put food on their table.
Fear is the most significant emotion we have. Many people construct their lives around fears they don't want to admit even to themselves that they have. Everything from remaining on unfulfilling or dangerous jobs to staying with a brutal or unloving mates to supporting children that refuse to work, who take drugs or alcohol or who break the law to committing to a religion about which they have doubts but are afraid to leave for fear of being denied access to heaven.
An element of fear exists in most stories on the front pages of daily newspapers. Fear is the source of war. Fear develops into hate in some people. Most democratic governments pass legislation for fear of being voted out of power if they don't respond to vocal interested parties and lobbyists. It's called a reactionary style of governance.
I can't say that I agree with Bertrand Russell that fear is the main source of superstition. Not fear on its own. People develop superstitions on their own to explain phenomena they don't understand. Such as the weather for March coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb, or vice versa, which has no valid basis in meteorological record other than the fact that March marks the transition from winter to spring in the northern hemisphere.
However, ignorance of the unknown and curiosity about it could be used by some people--such as politicians, religious and military leaders--to form superstition, which could easily slide into cruelty, either in the way the manipulative leaders treat their own people or others who are "different" in some way. Prejudice based on skin colour and cultural differences are the most obvious examples of this.
The ancients used differences in culture as reason to conquer others and to kill, rape or enslave them. More recently Europeans used difference in skin colour as a reason to capture dark skinned people from Africa and transport them to be slaves in the Americas. That slavery, as we know, was cruel in many cases, beginning with the trip across the ocean.
Can fear be conquered, as Russell recommended? Fear is a learned emotion. It may be learned through experience, such as falling down stairs as a child might develop into a fear of heights in an adult.
It also may be learned from others. US President George W. Bush's admonition after 9/11 that "either you are with us or you are with the terrorists" made enemies out of people who had little interest in the US before that. As planned, American citizens came to fear those enemies their own government had made, fearing that any one with olive coloured skin might poison, explode a bomb or otherwise kill any one or hundreds of them without notice.
Abu Graib prison, in Iraq, symbolizes as well as anything the cruelty that evolved the from superstition US military personnel had of "the enemy".
Fear dissolves when the cause of the fear is put into context with facts. The more comprehensive the education a person has, the less likely he or she is to have fears, at least fears within the subject areas they know well. AIDS researchers, for example, do not fear getting HIV/AIDS. They exercise due caution.
In a few select communities and tests, Jewish and Palestinian children who played together had no fear of each other because they knew each other as playmates, not as "others' that should be feared.
If we want to banish fear, we must teach the fairly simple lesson that most fears are unfounded, most fears are intended to manipulate us and we have little or no need to adopt fears of people or events that are less likely to happen than being struck dead by lightning.
Teach the children that fear is an emotion that is rarely based in or supported by fact. The children will grow to have the normal complement of caution that they will need as adults, without the fear that plagues many adults today.
Teach the children what they need to live, not just what they need to be employable.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a handbook for parents and teachers who want to grow children into healthy and well adjusted adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Bertrand Russell
Fear, superstition, cruelty: big subjects, requiring more thought than most people want to devote to subjects that won't put food on their table.
Fear is the most significant emotion we have. Many people construct their lives around fears they don't want to admit even to themselves that they have. Everything from remaining on unfulfilling or dangerous jobs to staying with a brutal or unloving mates to supporting children that refuse to work, who take drugs or alcohol or who break the law to committing to a religion about which they have doubts but are afraid to leave for fear of being denied access to heaven.
An element of fear exists in most stories on the front pages of daily newspapers. Fear is the source of war. Fear develops into hate in some people. Most democratic governments pass legislation for fear of being voted out of power if they don't respond to vocal interested parties and lobbyists. It's called a reactionary style of governance.
I can't say that I agree with Bertrand Russell that fear is the main source of superstition. Not fear on its own. People develop superstitions on their own to explain phenomena they don't understand. Such as the weather for March coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb, or vice versa, which has no valid basis in meteorological record other than the fact that March marks the transition from winter to spring in the northern hemisphere.
However, ignorance of the unknown and curiosity about it could be used by some people--such as politicians, religious and military leaders--to form superstition, which could easily slide into cruelty, either in the way the manipulative leaders treat their own people or others who are "different" in some way. Prejudice based on skin colour and cultural differences are the most obvious examples of this.
The ancients used differences in culture as reason to conquer others and to kill, rape or enslave them. More recently Europeans used difference in skin colour as a reason to capture dark skinned people from Africa and transport them to be slaves in the Americas. That slavery, as we know, was cruel in many cases, beginning with the trip across the ocean.
Can fear be conquered, as Russell recommended? Fear is a learned emotion. It may be learned through experience, such as falling down stairs as a child might develop into a fear of heights in an adult.
It also may be learned from others. US President George W. Bush's admonition after 9/11 that "either you are with us or you are with the terrorists" made enemies out of people who had little interest in the US before that. As planned, American citizens came to fear those enemies their own government had made, fearing that any one with olive coloured skin might poison, explode a bomb or otherwise kill any one or hundreds of them without notice.
Abu Graib prison, in Iraq, symbolizes as well as anything the cruelty that evolved the from superstition US military personnel had of "the enemy".
Fear dissolves when the cause of the fear is put into context with facts. The more comprehensive the education a person has, the less likely he or she is to have fears, at least fears within the subject areas they know well. AIDS researchers, for example, do not fear getting HIV/AIDS. They exercise due caution.
In a few select communities and tests, Jewish and Palestinian children who played together had no fear of each other because they knew each other as playmates, not as "others' that should be feared.
If we want to banish fear, we must teach the fairly simple lesson that most fears are unfounded, most fears are intended to manipulate us and we have little or no need to adopt fears of people or events that are less likely to happen than being struck dead by lightning.
Teach the children that fear is an emotion that is rarely based in or supported by fact. The children will grow to have the normal complement of caution that they will need as adults, without the fear that plagues many adults today.
Teach the children what they need to live, not just what they need to be employable.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a handbook for parents and teachers who want to grow children into healthy and well adjusted adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Friday, March 16, 2007
Is Media Reported Cruelty Realistic?
Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd US President (1882-1945)
Not only do some nations seem to believe that they must be cruel to be tough, many individuals have adopted this belief as if it will either assure them of success in business or at least protect them from those who want to take away their power.
The United States military is tough. Many American citizens have joined with millions of people elsewhere in the world to make everyone aware of the atrocities at Abu Graib prison, the murder of innocent Iraqis, the slaughter of several troops of their allies (four Canadians at one shot) in incidents of friendly fire and more events that suggest the US military is cruel. By association, people come to believe that the United States must be a cruel country.
This is not true. Seldom are the many good deeds that the US military does in Iraq or Afghanistan daily reported in mainstream media. They aren't as interesting as people dying. The humanitarian and rebuilding efforts, the assistance with setting up government systems and training security forces so that the people of these countries can tend to their own problems go almost unnoticed. To people who have come to believe that oppression and restrictions are how life should be, teaching them the concept of freedom is a big job.
Afghanistan, still the laregest producer of opium poppies in the world, all of it under the control of rogue warlords, receives a contant supply of aid from the US to convert its agriculture base to something the rest of the world will respect and appreciate. If the small poppy farmer sees little help from the US, it's because the US can't put its experts in the field on a one-to-one basis to help everyone. They need to trust someone and sometimes they trust the wrong people.
In Iraq, the US challenge is not to subdue the Sunnis or the Shi'ites, but to keep the two factions from trying to annihilate each other in their struggle for dominance. The "Iraq War" is a US led mission to prevent the entire Middle East from turning into a bloodbath as the two flavours of Islam defy the most fundamental rules of the Prophet Muhammed by killing other Muslims, including unarmed and non-aggressive women and children.
US troops who could face death from a sniper or suicide bomber at any moment of any day receive full press coverage when one of them goes berserk from fear or stress overload and kills someone who wasn't a threat after all. The offence is reported, the stress seldom receives any attention.
The patina of cruelty by the US in Iraq or Afghanistan consists of nothing more than Hollywood style trash reporting by the media with little or no attention given to balance or depth.
Television, especially the reality shows, are trending toward cruelty among individuals in their attempts to outdo each other in the ratings, which are all about advertising dollars. Does the world really want to know which contestant on The Apprentice will be hired by the Trump Empire, or does the audience want to see what creative ways The Donald can devise each show to lead up to "You're fired!"?
Soap opera style incidents enlivened the competition on programs such as Survivor in the easly series, but dirty tricks get the attention today. Someone has to suffer if the show is to retain its popularity. People eagerly watch on television behaviour they would be ashamed to have happen in their own families.
That's not real life. In real life, Americans are helping Americans every day. And they contribute to charities and NGOs that help people around the world, every day. These events seldom make the news. During and after the Katrina disaster, did we hear about the good work that was done by thousands of volunteers from many parts of the country and from other countries daily or did we hear about those who suffered because someone didn't get to them soon enough?
The media have a right to choose what they print and broadcast. We have no right to interfere unless they break a law. However, we have the right to boycott the advertisers who pay for programs that twist the truth until it sounds like lies. And we have the right to turn our favours to programs and publications that produce more balanced reporting.
We don't need to be concerned about people who know the difference between propaganda and truth, between slanted reporting and balance. We need to be concerned about people who can't tell the difference. That includes young people who are just beginning to take an interest in world affairs but have not been taught to recognize propaganda and editorials masquerading as news. They are vulnerable. They are potential victims, our sons and daughters.
We need to teach those who don't know so that they don't reproduce more people who don't know.
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
- Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd US President (1882-1945)
Not only do some nations seem to believe that they must be cruel to be tough, many individuals have adopted this belief as if it will either assure them of success in business or at least protect them from those who want to take away their power.
The United States military is tough. Many American citizens have joined with millions of people elsewhere in the world to make everyone aware of the atrocities at Abu Graib prison, the murder of innocent Iraqis, the slaughter of several troops of their allies (four Canadians at one shot) in incidents of friendly fire and more events that suggest the US military is cruel. By association, people come to believe that the United States must be a cruel country.
This is not true. Seldom are the many good deeds that the US military does in Iraq or Afghanistan daily reported in mainstream media. They aren't as interesting as people dying. The humanitarian and rebuilding efforts, the assistance with setting up government systems and training security forces so that the people of these countries can tend to their own problems go almost unnoticed. To people who have come to believe that oppression and restrictions are how life should be, teaching them the concept of freedom is a big job.
Afghanistan, still the laregest producer of opium poppies in the world, all of it under the control of rogue warlords, receives a contant supply of aid from the US to convert its agriculture base to something the rest of the world will respect and appreciate. If the small poppy farmer sees little help from the US, it's because the US can't put its experts in the field on a one-to-one basis to help everyone. They need to trust someone and sometimes they trust the wrong people.
In Iraq, the US challenge is not to subdue the Sunnis or the Shi'ites, but to keep the two factions from trying to annihilate each other in their struggle for dominance. The "Iraq War" is a US led mission to prevent the entire Middle East from turning into a bloodbath as the two flavours of Islam defy the most fundamental rules of the Prophet Muhammed by killing other Muslims, including unarmed and non-aggressive women and children.
US troops who could face death from a sniper or suicide bomber at any moment of any day receive full press coverage when one of them goes berserk from fear or stress overload and kills someone who wasn't a threat after all. The offence is reported, the stress seldom receives any attention.
The patina of cruelty by the US in Iraq or Afghanistan consists of nothing more than Hollywood style trash reporting by the media with little or no attention given to balance or depth.
Television, especially the reality shows, are trending toward cruelty among individuals in their attempts to outdo each other in the ratings, which are all about advertising dollars. Does the world really want to know which contestant on The Apprentice will be hired by the Trump Empire, or does the audience want to see what creative ways The Donald can devise each show to lead up to "You're fired!"?
Soap opera style incidents enlivened the competition on programs such as Survivor in the easly series, but dirty tricks get the attention today. Someone has to suffer if the show is to retain its popularity. People eagerly watch on television behaviour they would be ashamed to have happen in their own families.
That's not real life. In real life, Americans are helping Americans every day. And they contribute to charities and NGOs that help people around the world, every day. These events seldom make the news. During and after the Katrina disaster, did we hear about the good work that was done by thousands of volunteers from many parts of the country and from other countries daily or did we hear about those who suffered because someone didn't get to them soon enough?
The media have a right to choose what they print and broadcast. We have no right to interfere unless they break a law. However, we have the right to boycott the advertisers who pay for programs that twist the truth until it sounds like lies. And we have the right to turn our favours to programs and publications that produce more balanced reporting.
We don't need to be concerned about people who know the difference between propaganda and truth, between slanted reporting and balance. We need to be concerned about people who can't tell the difference. That includes young people who are just beginning to take an interest in world affairs but have not been taught to recognize propaganda and editorials masquerading as news. They are vulnerable. They are potential victims, our sons and daughters.
We need to teach those who don't know so that they don't reproduce more people who don't know.
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
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