Peaceful 'Ohana
Posts tagged Politics
"The Crisis of Credit Visualized" Video
Feb 23rd
Here’s a really nicely produced video explaining the current credit crisis the US is going through and how we got there, including sub-prime mortgages. Worth your 11 minutes to watch:
The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.
[via CreditMattersBlog]
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Taking our country back
Jan 12th
I’ve seen a lot of slogans and stickers about “Take our country back to God” or “God will come back to America, when America comes back to God”. I often wonder which of the many gods that exist for the different religions and nationalities that make up this country is THE God. I know which one they THINK is THE God, because it seems that there is a very vocal Christian community. One that helped elect, and then re-elect, President Bush…
No, what I’m talking about is taking our country back to the principles that founded this nation, back to the reasons for this country, to the Founding Fathers. Listening to Carolyn Myss talk about what the spiritual ideals were for this country as a “sacred contract”; ideas such as FREEDOM for all, the archetypes of the Mystic, the Rebel, and the Slave/Master, and how (as so many others have pointed out) that there was definitely a SEPARATION of church and state, for good reasons.
Watching Bill Maher’s Religulous (though definitely designed for laughs) also highlights some of the absurdities of some of the religions followed without question by followers. Without the ability to question, and also laugh at, your own thoughts, you become as rigid and dogmatic as the institutions of religion.
Perhaps the time has come for those who don’t represent ONE particular, historical religion to start voicing their desire for mental and physical liberation. Liberation from old, outmoded beliefs along with freedom from fear (often caused by the economic inequalities that capitalism helps perpetuate). And, perhaps, we can all find our voice with a new, more compassionate presidential administration…
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Start a new country up
Jan 9th
R.E.M. has a song, Cuyahoga, with the lines about start a new country up. It’s a song that’s stuck in my head for some time. The idea that we could rebuild things, make them better, make them WORK for us…
That’s the same idea behind the latest Zeitgeist movie, called “Zeitgeist: Addendum” . The two-hour long video goes through our current economic system, including the Federal Reserve, and tries to come up with a better solution. Their solution is based off the Venus Project‘s Jacque Fresco’s work. (You might have seen another move about Fresco called “Future by Design“.)
Instead of our current monetary-based system, which invites competition, greed, and corruption, the proposed new system is an “Resource Based Economy“. In this new vision, resources are precious and must be conserved, while we must invest in technology to help improve our lives.
“if all the money in the world were destroyed, as long as topsoil, factories, and other resources were left intact, we could build anything we choose to build and fulfill any human need. It is not money that people need; rather, it is free access to the necessities of life. In a Resource Based Economy , money would be irrelevant.”
Will this Resource Based Economy system work? What would it take to implement such a system? What would the rules of this system be?
If those questions sound interesting to you, I encourage to watch “Zeitgeist: Addendum” and learn more. You can watch it on Google Video for free.
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