Journal – Proof of Poverty

There are basically two ways to make money, either by working or by owning assets. Working is what most people do yet you can work a lifetime for much less reward than what people have been known to receive for a couple weeks of work. This creates friction in any community.

Owning assets requires some degree of work yet one can really not have to do much if you have the right kind of wealth invested wisely.

The recent information by a Oxfam Report shows:

In 2015, just 62 individuals had the same wealth as 3.6 billion people – the bottom half of humanity. This figure is down from 388 individuals as recently as 2010.

The last I heard it was around 80 people and we don’t have the figures as yet for 2016 as far as I know.

It is kind of in the nature of systems like this to pool wealth into smaller and smaller hands. It is pretty easy to have a proof of owning assets or doing work but it is more difficult to have a proof of poverty and distribute funds to this population without making a large disincentive for doing work.

It is difficult to see where there is real need and many people love receiving gifts even if they don’t really need it.

This Years Uneasiness

Something very much needs to change; the situation is looking uneasy imho. I’ve been thinking that if you picture the entire population of the earth as one giant being it might look something like this:

Please excuse the resemblance to Buddha I’m not implying that any particular religion is any more special than any other and there is a non-religious Buddha nature in all of us. (Note that the large smiling monk some people think of as the Buddha is really not the Buddha)

The being sits poised on a planet smaller than them-self because we are using 1.6 planets worth of resources at the moment. The lower half of their body is almost invisible because we are not listening much to the voices and conditions that are present there.

An advanced yogi can sit still in concentration for many days yet at some point even a saint will have to move.

There are sixty two brain cells screaming loader than all the others sending commands and consuming the lions share of the sugar energy. “Maintain mudra!”, they command along with a bunch of stuff most of us don’t understand.

At some point the being might come to the realization that, “These thoughts are not my thoughts - this is not what I am. This body is not my body - this is not what I am…” Things could get very chaotic.

Perhaps this year.

Here’s another version that I liked – the rather old globe comes from my friend who passed away from cancer. The statue is not my work and I’m not sure who to credit for it – I believe the form is passed down from antiquity

Prepare

So if most of the cells in your body suddenly decide to swim off into the ocean and not play the game any more what do you do? I think most of us would panic if the lower half of their body was missing. I imagine there would be a lot of folks that would not be too happy about the situation.

Without the support of the system as a whole there are big issues with how we can make everything work well together. It takes many people working well together and cooperating to make our modern society function.

Many of us feel like we don’t have a voice or any control over what happens but really we do. Just like poking yourself in the foot with a pin, any cell in a body can be heard if it makes the right noise.

To me the very best preparation for this situation is to learn to do and value the emotional labor required to support each other well. (There’s more about emotional labor on the bottom of this referenced post under ‘economy’.) Doing emotional labor does not consume the worlds resources but rather helps conserve them. Make an effort to see that people need to be paid not only for the physical things that are just in the job description but the things that go above and beyond. Being the happy smiling person at work takes emotional labor that is at times more difficult than anything else.

To be truly happy - to spread the love is the best preparation in my mind for anything that may come. In this way you may best find the answer to what tangible physical things you feel are really needed.

Duck Update

The ducks were mobbing me for food saying, “Spread the love human”.

You can see their frozen home to the right but they seem to be doing alright.

I thought that, “Maybe I should grab some bird feed next time I leave the house”, but then I thought, “Aw, you can live at least three months without food, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps ducks.” There goes those 62 brain cells rationalizing things again, lol.

I pretended I didn’t understand ‘duck language’ and wandered away. My heart feels like the ducks are doing fine, though it might make me bring them an offering sometime. :)

Gentle rain was falling this afternoon and the birds were all singing and chirping away in the backyard - I think the ducks will have some water soon.

Photo taken on my Galaxy S7 and processed by Google Photos

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