Tag: Cooperative Living

A Tale of Two Crises

by kendunning, posted in Building our future., Community, Economics, Environment, Mental Health, Personal Development, Politics, Unified Field

We, the people of the world, are facing two crises at this time. First, there are the cases of illness from the novel coronavirus. Secondly, there are the cases of extreme financial/material hardship taking place. If we just watch or listen to mainstream media one might think that in many cases the second is a direct result of the first. But it isn’t, not at all. Whether or not there was human involvement in the appearance of the novel coronavirus on the world stage is too big, and too obfuscated, an issue to get into in this article. However, the financial/material hardships that millions are facing around the world is entirely within the control of the human population of our planet. And it has been for some time.

The novel coronavirus has yet to touch one penny of anyone’s material security. Human kind has shown itself entirely capable of imposing hardships upon humans all by itself. There’s nothing obfuscated about this issue. And there isn’t anything obfuscated about how it can be solved. All it requires is for human culture to realize our interrelatedness, our interdependence. WE, who are whole and capable need to take responsibility for our lives and to do what we can (and if we’re working together, that is a lot) to assist those who are not whole and capable to develop greater capability. And to be housed, fed and cared for at all times.

We have the resources, we have the people, we have the knowledge, all we need is the will to make it so. It will require that everyone has the understanding that this is OUR world. WE decide what kind of culture we desire for humankind and WE are the only ones who can make it a reality. We must divest ourselves of competitive thinking and behavior, except in regard to recreational games. Cooperation is absolutely essential if humankind is to not only survive but fully realize the wondrous potential that is innate in every human being.

Competition results in stress and trauma and those things result in diminished human capability. Little by little those things do not nurture us, they cause us to gradually shut down and eventually kill us. Kindness, good nutrition, good information, exercise, work, play, art, contributing to a thriving human culture and enjoying the benefits of a thriving human culture, that is what elicits us to realize our fullest potential.

When we realize that the greater “profit” lies in a spiritually and physically healthy human culture (the two are interrelated) then we will be on the path to wholeness. Until then we’re just tripping over our own feet.

What has happened to the promise of science?

by kendunning, posted in Building our future., Community, Economics, Oppression, Personal Development, Politics, Psychology, Science, Spirituality, Trust and betrayal., Unified Field
We take the path of our own choosing. Although sometimes we can be led to believe our choices are limited to those another would choose for us.

I can remember growing at a time when there was a general understanding among people of what “science” is. It was known to be a method, a system, of approaching a problem, or a question, which will result in our having the most true and accurate perception of the thing. Then, using those results, we can make the best decisions, the decisions which will best serve humankind to not only survive, but have the best and brightest future possible. Of course, in our scientific explorations we also discover things which can be used for death and destruction, but good people have the wisdom to put those things aside unless possibly needed to defend ourselves, to defend our lives. We trusted those to whom we entrust the reins of leadership and our cultural wellbeing, to be people of honesty and integrity who will make wise decisions in our best interests and who will not lie to us about matters of consequence. That is the beautiful concept of a world I was introduced to in the mid-twentieth century.

So what happened? I think, in retrospect, a hazard of new fortune happened. Immediately prior to, during, and just after the second world war, humankind came into a wealth of knowledge about our world, our selves. Knowledge which could be made widely known and, while challenging some of our previously held beliefs, could help humankind have a collectively brighter future. Or, could be kept secretively in the hands of a relative few and the power of that knowledge used to manipulate everyone else, the general population, into becoming impotent, docile servants to a new version of “conqueror”. Conquerors who, for the most part, utilize the manipulation of ideas and our own perceptions to lead us into a willing enslavement which we perceive as the cost of defending our safety, even our freedom. Conquerors who use the tool of our own mind against us.

Unfortunately, if possibly predictably, those holding the reins of power at the time chose the latter path. I say predictably because I have learned it is normal for children to get it wrong before they get it right. And the plight of humankind is as children trying to make a life on a beautiful planet which we have somehow, miraculously, found ourselves upon. It seems that, in the process of finding our way, as in the book “Lord of the Flies”, humankind is quite capable of allowing our imaginations and intoxication with power, along with some bad assumptions, into leading us to taking cruel actions upon one another. Unlike the children in “Lord of the Flies”, I don’t think we can expect a military rescue. If we are going to be rescued it is upon us to rescue ourselves. We must get in touch with our better nature, turn to the values, the thinking and behavior, which will lead us to a recognition of our kinship, brothers and sisters bound, if by nothing else, by the mutuality of our plight. A plight which, if handled with loving care, can be realized as a blessing in which we can fulfill our best and brightest dreams.

So what has happened to the promise of science? That bright, shining, light on the hill which has so often wonderfully inspired our hopes and imaginations? Along with the reins of our economy and government, it has been captured by those driven by the profit motive. The goals of many occupying the most visual, authoritative positions within science have been turned from being concerned with the collection of knowledge for the wellbeing of all humankind, into, far too often, being concerned with maximizing profits for one corporation or another. It’s that simple. Science itself, as the public often interfaces with it, has morphed from a tool for the betterment of all into, again, far too often, a tool primarily for the enrichment of a few. As it turns out, science, as with any other tool humankind has ever developed, is only as good as the motives and methods of those wielding it.

Cults, Mind Control and Covid-19

by kendunning, posted in Building our future., Economics, Healthcare, Medicine, Politics, Psychology, Trust and betrayal.

Well before Covid-19 emerged on the world scene, in a series with a goal of freeing people who are in cults from oppressive mind control, cult expert and deprogrammer Steve Hassan had this to say about how cults gain control over peoples’ thinking and behavior: “Someone who’s skilled can figure out how to systematically and incrementally manipulate you into a vulnerable and isolated place, and start to control your behavior, control your information, control your thinking, and make you dependent and obedient.”

Bear in mind this is almost always, if not always, done with an expressed goal that involves loving yourself and others and the assurance that what you’re doing is for the greater good. There is also always a covert agenda of which the person being targeted has no idea. The covert agenda(s) are certainly never explained in any presentation by the cult. In this dominant/submissive scenario, any serious questions about the imposed ideas/rules are often unwelcome and may not be tolerated. If anyone who senses something isn’t right asks questions which threaten the leadership’s authority or in any way might address/expose the covert goals, that person may find themselves identified as someone who is suspect, possibly an enemy. They may be targeted with degrading and derogatory remarks. They may possibly experience harassments and threats to their wellbeing.

Particularly in regard to what those in positions of political power are proclaiming and demanding of the public in regard to Covid-19, I have to ask; is the scenario that Steve Hassan describes the scenario that is playing itself out in the U.S. and other places? Everything that Mr. Hassan describes in the above quote is most certainly taking place. What I think we need to be asking is: is there a covert agenda or, are everyone’s motives and agendas in the open? One logical subsequent question is: is there money and/or other worldly value at stake? In this case, concerning Covid-19, there are billions of dollars at stake in terms of sales diverted from one retail outlet to another. There will most likely also be many real properties being repossessed and they will become available to investors. And then there are the potential billions in profits from the sales of vaccine(s). So the answer is yes, in a very big way, money is on the table.

What about other worldly value? Is there economic and political power to be gained by the way things go during this period of time? There absolutely is. As we have seen, especially since the passage of “Citizens United”, in many ways, I would say too many, money controls politics. So yes, at this time it is an inescapable fact that economic and political power, along with great wealth, is in play with the dynamics around Covid-19.

The next logical question we should all be answering for ourselves, and maybe the most profound one, the one we really need to seriously be examining considering what is at stake is: are the people who are profiting, or who stand to reap future profits, people we can wholly trust? Are they people we trust with the level of control they have established and those they are working to establish over our lives? Over our childrens’ lives? Are they people who are being completely honest about their agendas and/or other Covid related factors which affect our lives and which may affect their current or future profits? It’s a very important question. After all, we’ve been rearranging, limiting, postponing our lives on the basis of their proclamations. In some cases people are being thrown into financial hardship, bankrupted, losing their businesses, losing their dwellings, losing educational opportunities, due to the demands being placed upon us.

So it comes down to: are we being lied to? Is the data around positive test results, “cases”, and even the deaths attributed to Covid-19 being covertly, manipulated? Is it being exaggerated? Are the authoritarian demands truly commensurate with the dangers in the situation? (Despite all the uproar and superlatives being thrown around by the media, the death rate, in the U.S. is less than 1/10th of 1% of the population.) Is the authoritarian response to Covid-19 grievously harming more people than the virus itself?

Are we being given half-truths and/or outright fabrications? Two differentiations I think we very much need involving the Covid-19 statistics are: 1. What is the number of people who are in the hospital for an unrelated medical condition, are subsequently tested, found positive, as opposed to those who actually check into the hospital for Covid-19 related issues? And, 2, What is the number of people who die with Covid-19 as opposed to those who die from Covid-19? Right now those two populations are apparently being lumped together. This is not a distinction without a difference, there is a very real difference in both the reality and implications involved.

We know there is certainly a very real motive, should the temptation be too great, for some to see the current situation play out a certain way. Are those controlling the data and the media reports, those making demands upon our lives; are those individuals above succumbing to the temptation of using their position of power to manipulate “reality” in order to funnel some of the substantial amount of wealth and power potentially available in this scenario into their own hands?

What do we have to base our perspective, our answer to this question upon? In fact, the only thing we have is what we can learn about their behaviors, not their words, but their behaviors in the past. Especially if looking at the “distant” past, say 20 years or more ago, those behaviors may or may not be any real indicator of present behavior. Despite the protestations of those who maintain otherwise, people can and do change with time and experience. Some more, some less. It often depends upon the nature of the experiences in a person’s life. With this in mind, what are the more recent indicators of a person’s ethics, honesty?

So, again: can we trust those amassing and distributing the information regarding Covid-19 and, on the basis of that information, making subsequent demands upon our lives?

What do you think?

We Can Heal Our World

by kendunning, posted in Building our future., Community, Economics, Environment, Fixing our Culture, Healthcare, Mental Health, Personal Development, Politics, Science, Spirituality, Unified Field

IMG_1010My life from early adulthood has been focused on learning what I can about mental, physical, and spiritual health.   I’ve managed to accumulate time in 5 colleges, earning 3 degrees.  I’ve accumulated countless hours in workshops, seminars, trainings, not to mention all the I’ve time spend reading studies and research reports.  I’ve traveled a good deal, seen a lot of different cultures both within and outside the U.S.  Also, I’ve spent time in 4 different jails and 2 maximum security prisons (one in the U.S., one not).  I’ve spent time with people from all walks of life:  doctors, shamans, people holding high governmental office, engineers, rocket scientists, writers, outlaw bikers, priests and ministers, drug dealers, prostitutes, psychologists, veterans and draft dodgers, bankers and bank robbers, persons inside the intelligence community and the mob.  Hippies (I’ve experimented with many psychoactive substances), wealthy “straights”, a lot of musicians, the homeless and some with multiple residences, murderers, artists, bartenders, hermits, socialites, social workers, nurses, people from every race, sexual orientation and religion.  At one time I have sat across the table from and had a conversation with a cannibal (we weren’t having dinner).  I could go on, but even I am getting weary of the list.

Where I am going with this is:  all of these people, all of them, are much more alike than dissimilar.  

This is our reality.  We are all so similar; it’s like we’re all from the same, very large, family.  This being true, how have human actions and interactions gotten so fucked up?  You would think after all those experiences I might have encountered some answers.  And I have.  Why do we so often mistreat each other and destroy what we need?  The reasons all come back to something one of the shaman I spent time with shared with me:  “All sickness is sickness of the mind.”  I know, what about germs:  bacteria, viruses, parasites, etc.?  Yes all those things exist and all of those things, and more, can and do affect us.  Yet, when we track it all down to the least common denominator, to the source that saints and prophets, spiritual leaders have been informing us about for centuries, and which quantum physics is now confirming, the instruction I was given by the shaman back in the early 1970’s is absolutely correct:  “All sickness is sickness of the mind.”  As a matter of fact, what is becoming increasingly clear, is that all that is, is of the mind.  But for now, for this post, I’m going to try to stick to sickness, and health.

It took me a surprisingly long time to realize that the inverse is also true:  All health is health of the mind.  Now, that is something to weigh into.

That includes your or my personal sickness or health, our families’ sickness or health, and up to and including the sickness or health of cities, nations, and the world.  Whatever the case may be, the origins of it are in our minds.  Does this mean that all the doctors should just send their patients home with prescription that says:  “Think Healthy”?  No, although positive, healthful thinking is never going to hurt the situation.  Our reality is a little more complex than that, our minds are more complex than that.  But on the most profound and inclusive level of our being, it is that simple.  We get to decide a lot about how things are going, both within our personal body and, collectively, within the body of humankind.

Let’s heal our world!  There are three criteria necessary for us to heal our world.  That’s all.  With these three criteria met, we can build a world which can be a nurturing, supportive, exciting, wondrous home for all of humankind.  And a much more hospitable world for all other living beings, and species, upon this planet we call home.

These three criteria are:

  1.  The Resources Needed to Create and Sustain It.  In spite of all the doomsaying about depleted and disappearing resources, we have enough to handle the population of the world, and then some.   Our problems have never been about insufficient resources, not on a planetary scale.  Our problems in this area have all stemmed from our management, or mismanagement, of what we have.  For one thing, we have allowed various resources to become like pieces on a game board for certain players to capture and hoard.  This is a horribly dysfunctional manner in which to manage the precious resources of our planet.  Another horrible aspect of our mismanagement to date is the quantity of resources we have allowed to become unusable due to our too often  cavalier regard of them.  This includes polluting our precious natural resources in the name of monetary profit.
  2.  The Knowledge to Engineer the Reality.  There also is no deficit in the knowledge needed to heal our world.  Again, not on a planetary scale.  Today, too often the most potentially beneficial innovations and inventions are often shoved into a closet.  Effective treatments and cures for illnesses, which aren’t the potential money makers for those who currently control and monopolize healthcare and pharmaceuticals, are either ignored, suppressed or somehow co-opted.  Realizations about better, more efficient, cleaner energy resources are ignored by those in power in deference to the money being applied by those controlling the archaic, dirty, systems which have managed to monopolize world industries.  If we were to measure the what, when, where, how and why of the resources and methods we employ in our day to day lives by the yardstick of human well-being, we would find we have all the knowledge we need to create and sustain a culture which provides for all of us, with food, housing, education, jobs, medical care, opportunities, and with abundant, exciting wonders to go around.
  3.  The Will to Make it So.  One might think this would be the most readily available of the three criteria.  Who, in their right mind, wouldn’t want a healthy, thriving, prosperous, exciting, wonderful world for themselves, their loved ones, friends and neighbors?  Especially as we’ve already seen centuries of what the alternatives are:  war, death, illness, suffering, hunger, homelessness, hopelessness, depression, stress, anxiety, loneliness, trauma, abusiveness, every plague; physical, mental and spiritual, known to human kind.  We get to take our pick.  The will to make it so is the only criteria which is the stumbling block right now.  Are we going to opt for the sickness or the health of it all?  

It is easy for anyone to look at these three brief descriptions of the criteria needed to heal the world and think:  but that’s not enough details.  We need more details!  The reality is that all the needed details are readily available.  All it takes is looking to find them.  Articles, videos, books, information detailing innovations which provide all the materials, engineering, health related and sociological knowledge needed to heal our world exists.  It is waiting for us:  online, or in the libraries and, most importantly; the minds of people around the world.  It’s all there, ready to be accessed.

Just to “prime the pump” of awareness a little, start looking at the possibilities available if only we would optimize all the uses of hemp.  Look at the health benefits we would reap if only we would clean up our environment, eat organic food, lower the toxic burden on our bodies.  Imagine the benefits of increased nutrition, education and health care, along with decreased stress.  I’m telling you, it’s all here, now.  All we have to do is want it enough to make achieving it, bringing it into reality, the organizing principle in our thoughts and actions.  If we do that and truly act it out, treat each other how we would genuinely like to be treated, we’re there.  We’re home.

Too idealistic, too utopian?  That’s the sickness which has crept in and set up housekeeping in your mind talking to you.  That kind of thinking has kept humankind involved in all manner of war and other inhumanities for centuries, millennia.  Negativity, egoism, jealousy, envy, greed, self-defeating thoughts, grudges, apathy, depression.  These are a few of the common psycho/emotional stumbling blocks we have to overcome to realize that which is actually our birthright:  a bright, incredible future.

We have a birthright!  The primary reality it is incumbent upon us to understand, to embrace, in order to realize our birthright is this:  we are, all of us, children of the Universal Creative Spirit, the Divine, God.  We are family; we are interrelated and interconnected.  When we learn to treat each other not only with equity, trust and civility but with love, then, as a global community, we will be opening ourselves to the full benefits of the divine and transcendental nature of our being.

I feel it’s important to interject here that a global community and a one-world-government, are not one and the same.  Throughout history diverse people have managed to more than just “get along”.  Very different cultures, races have prospered together.  Today, more than every before in history, people’s lives are made richer, more enjoyable through experiences of other culture’s food, art, music, dance, science, medicine and more.  We don’t need a one-world government, but we do need people from around to world to share a few basic values.  Such as mutual respect, honesty, fairness.

This moment in history, when the world is “smaller” due to advancements in communication and transportation, and when the world is more vulnerable than ever due to the destructive potential of modern weapons of war, learning how to co-exist, to live in harmony is more imperative than ever.  If all people would adopt a few basic, user-friendly values, we could all enjoy our diverse cultures, experiences, and do so in harmony, rather than in conflict.  It is so logical, so available:  all we have to do is desire it, will it, then act in our own best interests.