An Apple a Day

Keeping you well

It's not all that long ago, perhaps about 40 or 50 years, that it was common knowledge that doctors were all about keeping you well and if by chance or misdeed, you were ill the doctors were there to get you back into good condition. How well I remember the old adage of "An apple a day keeps the doctor away".

Somewhere along the way the captalist, consumerism mentality invaded the global mindset and everything changed for the worse. The "powers that be" decided that there was to be a "classless" society with two classes (or tiers if you like). The owners of capital and the workers. The owners made lots of money, huge amounts of money, the workers did lots of work (but they earned a little money, enough to join the capitalist revolution and purchase lots of stuff).

Please be aware that the western hemisphere governments decided this situation. Public schools were "invented" to train obedient children into becoming obedient adults who's purpose was to exist as factory fodder and front line fodder.

Make no mistake. This capitalist consumer society is a society of "free" slaves (and I'm not even remotely interested in politics, I'm simply relating historical events). Even social welfare is there to encourage consumerism. Welfare recipients spend all of their income so money is not tied up, plus it minimises crime, begging and revolution.

The owners of capital own factories, department stores, advertising firms, mining rights, television stations and broadcasting licenses, trucking firms, etc and provided all manner of goods and services for the community of capitalistic consumers. People are encouraged via advertising to purchase things. Advertising is designed to give the impression that happiness and consuming go hand in hand, and to a small degree, it does.

People get "happy" when they buy new things. Driving down the miracle mile in a new car can do wonders for one's ego and sex life, as well as for comfort and reliability. A new pair of jeans, a shirt, jacket and shoes and one can look great for the weekend. A certain amount of, shall we say ... pleasure or enjoyment, does go hand in hand with consumerism.

On top of enjoying the use of one's purchases, there exists a certain "snob value" above and beyond the monetary value of certain purchases. Rolls Royces, Ferraris, exclusive addresses for both business and home, caviar and champagne at expensive clubs and restaurants, holidays at St Moritz and the Riviera would fall within this category.

What's that brown stain on the fan?

But doctors are people too and thus via the process of economic advancement, they were encouraged to make more and spend more, even if it was spent on a new surgery and new radiological equpment. In this way, in times of yore, the economy thrived and people all had jobs, money and lots of "goodies".

However, to make more money, meant that doctors were not working in their own best interest if they were to keep their patients healthy. Not that the doctors could let their patients die, no, dead patients mean less income. But, if they could up the ante and earn more per patient capita, capitalist economic theory told them, they'd be better off. And being wealthy as well as wise, they'd be well respected. Healthy, wealthy, wise. Two out of three ain't bad.

If it looks too good to be true ...

Nowadays we see so many people of various ages who've been going to the doctor's surgery to be made well again, except that they aren't getting well, they have all sorts of reactions to pills and problems with paying for specialst treatment, whatever.

It seem that doctors, like motor vehicle mechanics, have a vested interest in keeping their patients slightly unwell. Not sick as dogs, but unwell enough to need constant medical treatment, prescriptions, tablets, referrals, proceedures, maybe occasionally, an operation. Whatever seems appropriate at the time to keep the industry buoyant and income streams flowing into one's pocket. in time, the pharmaceuticals industry displaced God as the number one need.

Whatever happened to the humble apple?

Apples, unfortunately, these days, are sprayed with all sorts of terrible toxic chemicals, not easily washed from the apple, so if you do eat apples that aren't the organic apple kind, chances are ... yep, you're gonna need a doctor.

Now, I'm not blaming the doctors. It's the "leaders" of society that decided that all this was better than living "lower on the hog" and working less and having less, although after the cycle turning full circle, it's come to that (more on that later).

... it probably is too good to be true.

The problems we have been creating for ourselves via rampant, competitive capitalism are not simply pollution and ill health, we now have an abundance of things to occupy our leisure time, but little leisure time. We own a plethora of things that don't get used. In short, we've become a mere cog in the capitalist machine with little to no benefit for ourselves. We go to work to make money not because we love what we do but to keep up appearances. And when we get home there's lots of work to do as well. Like squirrels running in squirrel cages we are merely cogs in a machine that makes us unhappy.

I work therefore I am

Work is fine, no problem with work, beats doing nothing. We even do it for fun, there's more effort goes into a good game of hockey than into an afternoon at the office.

And as for being a cog in a machine. There's nothing new there, I didn't make that up, people have been talking about that topic for the last fourty years. The difference now is that capitalism no longer works. Taxes are out of control, prices are out of control, food is no longer sustaining, medicine makes us sick, we're running out of salable resources and need to cut back on production, divorce rates "exceed marriages", and worse, we've all become so competitive that we can no longer trust each other.

We simply can't go on living like kings when we don't have the qualification to be kings. Kings are supposed to serve their people not exploit them. We are trying to be cheats and at the same time enjoy the pleasures of a heavenly life. It won't work that way. It's just too good to be true. Get back to reality. We neither need nor deserve a gigantic impersonal megapolis. We need a very personal, loving, garden of eden. Now we have both the opportunity and the need to build one, let's go for it.

Conservative

The text books say that those born in the year of the buffalo (ox, for those that can't understand the difference) are conservative.

Let me ask you "Do I look CONSERVATIVE???"

Text books don't take into account being born Libra with Aries rising and being born into the "disfunctionalest" of dysfunctional families, plus growing up in the sixties. Jimi, Janis, free love, LSD, MaryJohanna, trusting in a bright economic future, Snoopy, Garfield, Eastern religions, the Dick Van Dyke show, Huckleberry Hound, the Vietnam disaster, Richard Nixon, Mad magazines, main-frame computers, protest marches etc, et-pukin-cetera.

No! NOT conservative. All that stuff tends to make one THINK about the way things are.

Which brings us to the new economic paradigm. Bhaktinomics.

Say that again and a little bit louder please ...

"Bhaktinomics!"

What's bhaktinomics?

Well, since the capitalist society has turned over in it's grave and most of its ardent followers are not yet even aware that it's long dead, we find ourselves perfectly poised to enter the new economic paradigm at the RIGHT time. As leaders, not as sheep following the "good" shepherd.

Bhakti is LOVE.

Give something away. Not a free offer, not a favour, not an extra 200 grams included with your product, not a buy one get one free offer. Give something away. Love is your NATURAL inclination, people that can't trust you can't love you. Make yourself so lovable that people can love you. So lovable that people want to give gifts to you. Not artificially, actually open your heart. Then happiness can come to you and everyone around you.

Bhaktinomics isn't too good to be true, bhaktinomics is about being true, true to yourself and to those around you. If you want it to work, it will work, simple as that.

Of course, there'd be no market for Valium, alcohol, crystal methylamphetamine, body piercing, poker machines, credit card applications, AK47s, rocket launchers, military uniforms, naval dockyards, da da da, but surely we can live with that.

Oh, and we didn't make this up, we simply saw the benefit of persuing Seth Godin's ideas to a more logical limit. By the way, Seth is Vice Chairman of Yahoo and possibly one of the most innovative thinkers on the planet today.

How does it work?

Whatever it is that you do, do it for free, give it to people. If they give you something, all the better. When I get to the point that I can no longer give away my services to all the people that want them, then I might have to train someone to help me. Someone might even ask "How much do I need to pay to make you willing to provide this service or product?"

Obviously, I might say "One pumpkin" or I might specify an amount of money.

Fine, I don't like pumpkins but I know someone that does and I'll give it to them.

By this method, we can generate a situation where people who need it seek your assistance, you can choose to assist or not, depends on the situation at hand. Anyone who cheats gets to be excluded and loses the benefits.

All those who still wish to retain their interruption advertising (those who interrupt your television programme or your magazine reading) may still do so, as they wish. Nothing is compulsory. Those people who find that Bhaktinomics works for them will soon abandon other systems.

Money is not evil, greed is evil

Money has it's uses. One economics professor told us that "Money is a convenient medium of exchange and also useful as a store of wealth."

It's not money that's a problem. The problem is the work and exploit consumeristic economic paradigm. It's a wasteful system, so much so that there'll be very little left in the way of certain renewable resourses for your children and grandchildren (due to renew cycle length exceeding generation duration), what to speak of non-renewable resources.

Our current consumer mentality encourages us to cheat others, it's a situation wherein one's image is more important than the truth. A society based upon cheats telling lies and scrambling to be top dog will limp forward at best, it is tantamount to the failure of the proverbial ship of fools. Time to stop holding yourself back.

Now that we're outside the box, we can really think out here.

Sooner or later we realise that we are living quite well without much in the way of money because we are being given everything that we need ... eventually we won't need money at all. And things that we don't need like bumper stickers on our car, Hello Kitty slippers, a swimming pool and patio to entertain business associates and to show off that we are "successful" go-getters, et-pukin-cetra. Well ... we don't need them, do we?

In fact, one's entire advertising budget is ZERO! And think about how many other costs no longer exist. If the doctor needs a new surgery people will build one and be extremely happy to do so. No more "What's up Doc?" just tolerance and cooperation.

You'll still need to work, but you won't need to work to provide useless things. Work hard to make people happy and spend your leisure time in the company of people you love and respect. If you find that you'll need a prison, then we'll build one, but I think that criminals are made not born. Happiness is the most valuable commodity there is, give some to somebody today.

Who knows, if our society is really nice, even God may come to join us.

Competition is for sportsmen, who said life is a sport?

During the interim stage it may be difficult at first to find enjoyable things to do with all our spare time but once we work it out there'll be no end of conversations with dear friends, gardening, neighbourhood cello concerts, bushwalking, till we get over the hump and things start happening super-spontaneously. But, at least we'll be able to breathe the air, eat the food produced, love each other, even strangers, without having to compete, and we won't have to put up with all those silly knick knacks and fads that nobody ever actually wanted in the first place.


What no ducks?

Wow! Can you imagine your parent's house without the plaster ducks on the wall?


Joy to all beings