How to Lose Weight

Weight Loss

How to lose weight: the essential focus is on the simple fact that humans are animals who require food and water for nourishment and survival. We do get hungry, and there is a feeling in our stomach when we get very hungry.

The other part of the approach is that we all have a natural weight, and this may mean that we are like a stick-insect or a circus tent.

Food is an obsession in the mind that covers up the basic truths that we are not all ‘thin’, and that food is a natural and healthy biological function.

Firstly, take time throughout the day to take general notice of how much you worry about food – how much you think that you are eating too much, and how guilty emotional and thought patterns repeat themselves afterwards.

When you have a sense of this pattern, also bring awareness to how your stomach feels at different times throughout the day. Along with this, are there any basic patterns that emerge: when is it for example that you are really hungry; what is it like to feel hungry; and what is it like to feel that you are very low on energy because of a lack of food?

Are there times throughout the day when you feel so hungry that this hunger would fit nicely with a main meal. How many times throughout the day does this occur (two or three for example)? How many times throughout the day do you feel that a snack will be the natural order? Please note that this process of identifying your natural rhythm will refine as you bring awareness and (possibly) changes to the way you eat. Also perhaps your rhythm changes throughout the years and with the seasons. In other words the emphasis is on a balance of flexibility and regime, couple with increased awareness.

The idea of bringing awareness to the process is a natural one. If you spend a lot of time worrying about food, your weight, and your image, then would it be worthwhile making a decision to have a good objective look at what is going on – if you are the type, maybe keep a log throughout the day, and over a period of some days, detailing your different emotional states, level of cravings for food, and what you eat (perhaps just one of these elements is your key). You may like to give a particular factor a rating (say from 1 to 10).

With a more objective look at food in your life, you can than make conscious decisions about what changes you would like to make, if any, to the way you approach food. Be prepared throughout the process for general ideas and fresh insights to flow. If you make any startling findings, see how they can become a practical force. Experiment with what you eat and when you eat, and find out what works for you. If you think you have found your golden key to conquering obsessions with food and weight, be prepared for this to change (even if subtly).

In the end you may find that you simply eat when you eat because you are hungry, and that you simply eat what you eat because you like it. This leads you to being the shape you are and this is your natural shape. It is part of your nature and it is the outward expression of your natural beauty. So even if nothing changes physically, to drop all the worry and to accept your natural body shape can bring about tremendous change in you well being.

If you lose weight that may well be great. However the key is to realize that we eat because we are hungry. Also, our body naturally knows the right things to eat and in what quantities if we develop the sensitivity. Ultimately, becoming more aware of the process can give us the distance to see our patterns, even if we feel they are wrong and for now we are not capable of changing these entrenched patterns. This keen observation can also in time create the understanding to slowly bring about change in our physical habits, and send our emotional patterns on a healthy turn towards healing.

Sri Lankan Crisis

If there was ever a clear indication that the future of the new world risks either a world war or destruction of the planet, it was in the majority vote handed down by the United Nations human rights council.

We have emerging and emerged powers and super-powers coming out of the developing world that will create a new global landscape in the 21st century. A combination of these new players secured a majority vote to not only reject a call for an independent investigation into the final stages of the Sri Lankan civil war, but also to endorse a resolution praising the Sri Lankan government.

I am not here taking a position against the Sri Lankan government. The simple fact of the matter is that the truth of the situation is not known, and further that there is a reasonable possibility of civilian deaths on a massive scale, and of serious crimes by both the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tiger rebels.

The United Nations was the only independent authority to have collected information (not only anecdotal, but also satellite imagery of craters emerging in civilian safe zones) to get closest to the truth. The United Nations accepts that it does not have sufficient evidence to draw conclusions, but has made it clear that there are sufficient grounds for an investigation. In fact the news accounts that have managed to flow out from the war-zone makes a prima facie case for investigation obvious to any rational person.

How is it then that delegates from a majority of countries managed to conclude that there was no case to answer to (from either side), and that situation was an internal matter? As I said previously, the United Nations had much more information than any other independent organisation. On what grounds did delegates reach their conclusions? Where did they get there factual information as a basis for their decisions?

Adolf Hitler, perhaps the world’s worst known tyrant, was elected into power by the people. The UN Human Rights Council operates under basic democratic principals, and concluded against the evidence. To be sure, the evidence was not sufficient to draw concrete conclusions, but it was certainly sufficient to necessarily warrant investigation into the possibility of serious humanitarian and war crimes.

Conceive if you will a scenario where planet Earth has a democratically elected global government. The democratic vote of the UN HRC is testimony to the logical possibility of this planet being headed by an oppressive and criminal government. If you think I am crazy, consider a super-power like China. China has of course its own internal matter of Tibet, not to mention the Tiananmen Square atrocity, its allies in Burma and Sudan - and the list goes on. The negative influence throughout the world of China’s totalitarian political party is significant, and may therefore continue to do so. If China continues to grow as a super-power, and continues to be run as a dictatorship, it is not very difficult to imagine very grave scenarios some decades down the road - whereby a majority of oppressive states create a scary new world.

A little note here on torture. Sure some of the so-called enhanced interrogation methods used by the United States have occupied the grey area between right and wrong. However even the slightest reading into the torture methods used by the Chinese against the Tibetans leaves no shades of grey for quandary. The level of interrogation used by the United States against indeed the shadiest of characters cannot be compared with state sponsored torture that has occurred in recent times in innumerable countries.

The majority ruling of the UN HRC was indeed a watershed moment in the divining of future global possibilities. It is the clearest warning yet to Western powers such as the United States and various countries in the European Union that they indeed need to take defence and national security as a fundamental necessity for the foreseeable long-term future. A few decades from now, the idea of lending a hand to oppressed minorities in other parts of the world may give way to national defence and national allegiances.

That there is a reasonable possibility of civilian Tamil deaths in Sri Lanka to the level of not just thousands, but tens of thousands in the last weeks and months of battle, and that that goes unquestioned by the international community leaves me with a feeling of utter disgust. I am sure that many countries that voted in accord with the head of the United Nations and the chief of the UN HRC, will indeed take very serious note of the very grave outcome.

The outcome, just like democratically elected Hitler, Hamas, and the new Israeli government, is democracy at its worst. Democracy is a principal that offers hope for a humanity that has since the dawn of time fought against the will to power of tyrants. Democracy is however a principal conditioned by the principal that the majority of civilians are in fact civil: are in fact sane. The barbarian in man has yet to emerge fully from the jungle. The tiger may well be in the Tamil militant group. However it is lurking live and well in other places as well. May this planet prosper and not be consumed by darkness.

Crime and Punishment

That which you do unto others shall be done unto you.

Are you sure who you are, where you have been, and where you are onwards journeying? Who is? Indeed what is onwards, what is now, and what is backwards? Are you sure that your memories are indeed yours? Are you sure that you have even lived this life, let alone a past one?

What if you had dreams or nightmares or visions or intuitions about past lives, and they turned out to be the unlived energetic memories of other people who are living now or have lived in the recent past?

Often people who experience deep trauma go through a period of being in shock, and then have significant gaps in their recollection of the trauma. Just maybe the experience is stored somewhere in the universe, as a compressed energetic experience.

It would be reasonable to assume that initially the trauma is stored in the persons unconscious. However what if the traumatic event never gets recalled, and the person eventually recovers from the trauma (a happy war veteran for example). A believer in past-lives is a believer in future lives. Hence the happy war veteran has some karma to process through a future life in a higher state of penetrating consciousness. However what if there is a collective unconscious – a kind of storehouse for all of humanities nasty stuff. Now in this case when a major life event is buried deep enough, it may (probably at the time of death) merge into a collective quagmire of humanities negative energies.

Conceive if you so choose an event say of someone being raped, tortured, or murdered. Although such a person may in some way attract a negative event - let’s say a person with deep hidden rage attracts a murderer - I would argue that the victim is still not necessarily receiving karmic justice. Further, there are many instances of deep tragedies in this world where innocent victims are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Now imagine that a person recovers as best they can from a traumatic event, but still their memory of the incident did not get retrieved. The energetic experience is one of peak human potential. What I mean by this is that during momentous life-changing events people often tap into enormous energy reserves: for example in fighting off or running away from an attacker. This compressed, stored energy one day has to see the light of day.

How is it that mystics say that karma is inescapable? Every negative action will attract a negative consequence; conveniently the reverse is also true. One theory is that when a tyrant of a being is available for learning, and has sufficient consciousness to not in general act on the tyrannical desires, the following occurs.

A stored event in the collective unconsciousness becomes tuned with the tyrant, at the very instant that the tyrant has the negative desire revealed. The stored event (a victim’s painful experience) becomes implanted in the tyrants psyche. It is a perfect meeting of polarised energies; a perfect magnetic fatal attraction.

Karma seems to carry itself out in a vague way in this world, with seemingly innocent victims meeting misfortune in an unfair world. However at a deeper level it just might be that karma is entirely perfect, and entirely inescapable. Also, in this way, if an innocent person can grow from a horrific event, then this journey can in some way be said to be immensely beneficial. Whatever part of the horrific event cannot be consciously witnessed, consciously relived, and ultimately let go of (or dropped), will one day be attracted to either its creator, or a person who has committed a criminal and unethical act of the same type and magnitude.

In this way, at a deeper level, the workings of the universe are perfect. The sentence always fits the crime because the perpetrator one day inescapably adopts the worst part of a victim’s experience, and then has to relive this experience. In this way the tyrant finds out exactly what it is like to be the victim, and in this way those of thick skin learn, and also in this way burn down the storehouse of collective ‘live’ latent energetic memories.

How to act in a complicated world? The wise say that right conduct is not an exploit of intellectual analysis; rather it is conduct that grows in the womb of an accelerating awareness.

The wise say that there are not just two levels of unconsciousness, but three. The third level may be referred to as cosmic unconsciousness. In Christianity it is known as Hell!

That which you do unto others shall be done unto you.

From my experience I firmly believe the above to be true, though not for sure.

China and The Taliban

It is often difficult to discern the truth when the concerned parties hold opposing points of view. Who is right and who is wrong on the latest conflict in the Israeli versus Palestine saga? Israel had reason to take action against the increasing threat of rocket attacks from Gaza. The civilian toll in Gaza seems to be excessive, even after discounting the acknowledged unfortunate (but apparently inevitable: due to Hamas militant operational protocols) errors.

Personally after viewing the situation from afar for a couple of years my opinion is that Israel is in general guilty of aggression. Democracy elected Hamas a couple of years back. Politics pressured them (and rightfully so I would argue) into boiling over and taking over Gaza (at the expense of the West Bank). Now democracy has elected a right-wing government in Israel, and the new foreign minister shows signs of rhetoric leaning towards the current Iranian president Armadinejad’s warped nuances.

Admittedly here it should be pointed out that Armedinejad was condemned without trial for his latest outburst at a United Nations convention against racism. This lack of trial is itself the essential hidden quality of a racist.

In my interpretation of what Armadinejad said, the key launching pad for his tirade against Israel was the military aggression of the newly formed post World War II Israeli state. My reading of the historical situation is clear and uncomplicated. The colonial powers in the region (primarily Britain) gave a growing movement of Jews a sovereign state. Shortly afterwards Israel launched a military campaign that took by force more land from the Palestinian people. Invasion of another country to appropriate its lands is many things, not least of all racist.

However personally I think Armadinejad shows significant aberration of thought processes, and is therefore not just a little neurotic, but actually quiet clearly insane. Though this is perhaps not the most preferential quality of an Iranian president, the final factor in the equation is something very little discussed. Israel has a significant stockpile of nuclear weapons. This issue needs to be dealt with if there is any hope of achieving peace in the Middle-East.

I congratulate George Bush (junior) for at least one thing – being the expounder of the phrase Axis of Evil. (Oh and also for being the first Western power to take a stand on Tibet…really this is a remarkable feat and should never be forgotten.) North Korea and Iran represent serious present and future concern. However I take aim at this focus, and the sidewards focus on Russia. The situation with Chinese spying and financial investments in key strategic foreign interests has been disputed as being the ancient mythological yellow-peril syndrome. However what about the fact that the key financial backer for the Burmese military junta and the Sudanese government is China. Ask the millions of people that have either been raped, tortured, or slaughtered at the hands of brutal state actors propped up by the Chinese Communist Party.

Since we are looking at brutal military regimes what about the situation in Fiji? Fiji’s military leader took control of the country in a bloodless coup in 2006. The situation in Fiji has been declining ever since. The military leader appoints a president who appoints the military leader as the prime-minister. The media is controlled like a vice and all court documents relating the coup have been shredded. As foreign powers are trying to assert pressure to bring back democracy and the rule of law, the upper echelons of the Chinese Communist Party have been cultivating closer financial and personal ties with the self-appointed leaders of a military dictatorship. The Chinese government forges ties with the oppressive evil of this world.

To call the Dalai Lama evil is an absurdity that is evident to all the major powers of the world. The French president Sarkozy knew this when he went against Chinese pressure and met the Dalai Lama. Unfortunately at the latest G-20 meeting the Western powers needed some of China’s plundered wealth, and hence an intimate encounter between the French and Chinese heads of state finished with Nicolas Sarkozy stating that very clearly Tibet was a part of China. The proposition that the invasion of Tibet, the slaughter of its people and its culture and religion, was an act of surf liberation is in the realms of the seriously delusional. A reading of the Tibetan society shows that it had harshness and beauty that paralleled its natural rugged surrounds. However as a society it was not one that oppressed and tortured its people to maintain power. A look at the democratic changes in a near neighbour (Bhutan, not to mention India) shows that Tibet also was a country that could also change for the better through internal reform, not Chinese annihilation.

So to those who say that the yellow-peril is an ancient myth I say to them just for a day step in the place of a person from Darfur, Burma, or Tibet. Why not spend tomorrow in fear of the Junjaweed; or how about hanging out getting tortured in a Burmese or Tibetan jail? Tomorrow there will be thousands of people languishing in severe torment through outrageous acts of violence against innocent victims at the hands of those who have life through the Chinese government.

While I am on the subject of brutality, what about the Taliban? All those great moral processions of protestors that oppose action against the Taliban are uninformed of the roots of their mis-virtue. To act in the name of good out of emotion rather than understanding is the very crime of the Taliban. The situation in the north-west of Pakistan makes this evident. Many people view this war (as with the war in Iraq) as a war of America versus Islam, or the West versus Allah. Aside from the virtue of toppling Saddam Hussein, the war in Iraq was primarily one between radical elements of different Islamic religious factions – even today it is the case (car bombs still killing people by the hundreds).

The north-west of Pakistan is home to semi-autonomous regions. In small pockets of mountainous terrain tribes, tribal chiefs, and socio-cultural traditions are the foundation of a unique way of life. The Taliban move into these tribal regions, kill or abduct the tribal chiefs, slaughter any adhoc tribal army that tries to prevent their presence, and then introduces a brutal rule of law that is somehow in tune with God. After the government of Pakistan gave the Taliban and its affiliates the Swat Valley as there playground – in exchange for peace – shortly afterwards groups of militants with high-powered weapons started taking over a region immediately to the south (a region home to many hundreds of thousands of people). They have come to within 100 kilometres of the Pakistan capital Islamabad. The key point here is that in their movements they simply take over by force an already existing functioning civil society. They do this via abduction, murder, and essentially, fear. The Taliban oppress its own people through military force. As with Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, and the warring in Pakistan, is internal in nature. It is Islam versus Allah, or Allah versus Islam. Actually it is the creative against the destructive, good versus evil, God or Allah versus all that is ugly in humanity.

I note here that the Taliban refers to the umbrella of violent, radical elements, and so does not refer to authentic religious people who call themselves Taliban. The same to is for the term China. China’s general population lives at the whim and oftentimes mercy of its one-party political machine. It is not just the Burmese dissidents, the Tibetan people, or Darfurians that suffer; it is also all the Chinese human rights activists, the deceased Tiananment Square visionaries, the Chinese children that died in poorly built schools, the hundreds of thousands of Chinese babies sickened (and worse) by tainted milk, and the world over that consumes poor quality fast-food and other fast-products.

In my opinion China needs a new religiousness. Buddhism is a religion with deep roots in China, not Christianity. Its people need a new flowering of the ancient buddhist religion to feed its starving soul.

News Story 26 Feb 09

News is often bad so may as well start with the bad news for the day. If luck has its way there will then be room for some good news.

The bad news is that the current Chinese presidents greatest achievement to date (other than for his efforts being promoted to president) is that he was governor of the Tibetan region during the brutal crushing of the second Tibetan uprising.

The good news – see I had a feeling there would be some good news forthcoming – is that Australia will soon no longer manufacture any clothing, and hence if Australia goes to war with China they will have to fight naked. No problem in that I should think, at least we can drive our cars around until they run out of fuel from the Middle East.
Interesting news is that the most pressure applied to a bridge comes not from a convoy of fully laden trucks driving over them, but from a tightly packed bunch of marathon fun-runners pounding their way across it.

Of relevant news – you may well be wondering – applies to the (osho) International Meditation Resort in Pune, India – a resort that claims to have over 100, 000 visitors annually. In particular I refer here to its new almighty, award winning, towering, monolithic, pyramid-like meditation auditorium.

The news is that this building has had cement failure, and a neighbouring building (constructed as part of the same project) has had failings due to mixing down of cement (not using enough cement in the concrete mixture).

The interesting question is what happens to the brickwork, structural steel, cement, welds, and bolts, when the devoted Osho sannyassins pound the floor of the Auditorium during their controversially active morning Dynamic meditation?

Of course it hardly seems worth mentioning that for years people drank contaminated drinking water at this so-called spiritual oasis.

To tie things up neatly, I wonder how many Chinese children died in schools that collapsed during last years horrific earthquake disaster due to atrocious and incomprehensible workmanship?

For the second string on the wrapping, the parallel between Chinese food contamination scandals and contamination of drinking water at the resort is also interesting.

You probably would not be surprised to learn that for my efforts to expose the truth I have been banned from this (osho) resort; I have been threatened in writing; I have been verbally threatened; I have been threatened with being punched, have been pushed, and have been punched; I have been threatened with metal rods and sticks; and I have (probably) been threatened with a knife.

I almost forgot about a sweet little anecdote. A brick-layer came to the resort to do some work-as-meditation. He was put to work supervising labours doing construction projects. The summary of the scenario was that the workers thought that he would obviously not know anything about construction work, and so they could pull the wool over his eyes (so to speak). He was of the opinion that they were trying to steal cement. What they did was overstate the amount of cement needed and used for any particular job. Now a supervisor who has no idea of construction would not have a clue how much cement is needed for a job. However this person happened to be a brick-layer by trade.

I don't recall the exact details: whether they were stock-piling cement on the side or whether at the end of the job it appeared that all the cement was used, yet could not possibly have been: someone who knows about such things would be able to look at the colour of the concrete to see how much cement is used in the concrete mixture. The likely scenario put forward to me was that over-quoting and supposedly using this excessive amount meant that the labourers were free to steal a certain amount of valuable cement.

Now if someone wanted to investigate the quality of cement work on a project they could easily look at the amount of cement used, and draw conclusions accordingly. However in this case the conclusions would be wrong.

So what about the mixing down of cement that I identified on the project that included the grand meditation pyramid? One possibility is that the correct amount of cement was quoted, with lesser cement used, and some of the valuable product strangely disappearing – perhaps into nirvanna?

While I am on the subject, one last little twig. Trees and branches have historically been neglected, and a high-tension cabling system winds trees up into a dangerous state of tension.
It has been some time since my last un-meditative visit to the resort, and I assume that deep meditation in the still-standing auditorium has channelled wisdom and compassion into the supposedly spiritual management.

As far as the Chinese communist party is concerned, the latest US state department survey has noted last years brutal crushing of Tibetans for the third time, and also an increase in the level of human rights abuses generally.

The contents of this article reflect the opinion of the author only. Some of the contents may appear factual, but are conclusions. The author shall not be held liable for any of the articles contents.

Also, the author is not a civil engineer, but is an engineer with practical civil experience.

Finally, it should be noted that the author worked with engineers and consulting microbiologist at the resort, and is a qualified engineer.

Modern Mysteries

Two contemporary puzzles: Trade and Democracy

Barack Obama, the President-elect of the United States has been labelled by some as a protectionist. The Doha round of the World Trade Organisation has been a knockout defeat. The Nobel prize for economics was awarded to Paul Krugman for his efforts in understanding modern trade. Am I just making random comments?

The benefits of trade is not very difficult to understand. People in the West love coffee and coffee grows well in the tropical East. People in the West have (or had) a lot of money, and people in the East like investment funds. Mutual benefit from products or services most efficiently produced and most appreciatively consumed lead to a better outcome for all.

Paul Krugman’s not insignificant award sought to explain a deficiency in this basic system. The anomaly was that at times patterns of trade did not follow this logic. The explanatory framework devised by Krugman sought to take into account the benefits of specialisation and market leadership, rather than simple comparative advantage. Simply by making a start, a person or organisation can develop skills and economies of scale that allow them to be and remain competitive. Hence a smart coffee farmer from the West may be able to keep out Vietnamese competitors if this person started out and grew in size before the Asian became dominant.

Another aspect that complicates the trade situation is based on size and diversity. The more diverse a region the less is the need to rely on products or services from another region. Also, the larger the region (for example the European Union) the greater the possibility for diversity - generally speaking. The more a country or group of countries can meet its wants and needs from within, the less the advantage of trade imports. Most countries or regions throughout the world can meet not only the basic needs of life, but also most of the subtle and nuanced desires of even the most fickle consumers without sourcing externally.

Due to diversity, whether from nature or human endeavour, the law of diminishing returns comes into play with trade. International trade can be immensely stimulating when diversity is restricted – say at the end of World War II. However if a country has reasonable basic resources, and is reasonably engaged in use of resources and human capital, the advantages can soon become disadvantages.

The failure of the Doha round of the WTO is precisely because the leaders of countries have seen that what was a blessing has now become a curse. In a way this is self-fulfilling. The benefits of trade lead to an abundance that created sufficient diversity within countries. With this newfound diversity the country is therefore more adept at meeting its peoples needs, and hence is less reliant on trade.

The United States and other Western nations promulgated trade. They are however now the victims of trade – from China for example. To be of worth trade needs to be mutually beneficial. For a long time this has not been the case in the US’s relationship with China. The fact that the US has been one of the blockers for the Doha round shows some intelligence. The fact the Barack Obama is a protectionist shows a little more intelligence.

The word protectionist has some sort of false derogatory theme attached to it by the benefits of free trade. If the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages in certain trades, then to take a protectionist stand is literally to protect – sounds pretty sensible to me.

Broken and shattered Western countries, as well as international organisations, increasingly look to countries like China (with its trillions of dollars in foreign exchange reserves). Some countries need to realize that the advantages of trade are not intrinsic - just like the advantages of an unregulated financial system are not inherent.

Finally on trade, from Paul Krugman we have that just because one country efficiently produces a product or service, there is not necessarily any reason to label that product or service as a necessary import by any other country. Car manufacturing in countries like Australia and the US is in a moribund state. However better performing Japanese manufacturers do not have intrinsic competitive advantage. From this it can be seen that increasing protection and decreasing trade keeps alive the inherent creative urge that drives a country. At the right time, protectionism actually encourages optimism and keeps alive the possibility of prosperity. Prosperity is what free trade is supposed to be all about. It is also what protectionism is about.

Another key concept of the contemporary world is that of democracy. Like trade, democracy is not intrinsically good.

When the majority of a population has ill-will in mind they then vote into power a leader that will fulfil their negative intentions. An example of this mechanism is found in your average failed marriage. Happiness finds the happy and misery attracts the miserable. If I am just managing to keep a lid on a sea of negative emotions I might like to avoid them by getting married. Like attracts like. My partner will be of the same ilk, and we will spray each other joyously with our wounds.

Hitler was democratically elected by a Germany full of little Hitler’s. Ah yes we elect a leader to fulfil our dreams. Just look at the last democratic election in the Palestinian Territories. Hamas was branded by the West as a veil for violence. Hamas shortly afterwards showed their true colours in a wave of violence and brutality. Hence they now run the Gaza Strip.

Admittedly the situation is not so simple. An obvious issue that is raised is based on innocence. For example some people repeatedly marry and divorce only for money. Is not the victim innocent? Hamas ran a very sophisticated mainstream political campaign. Was not the electorate deceived by the violent gang that Hamas afterwards revealed itself to be?

A partial answer to deception is truth by transparency. If a person or organisation has unethical, illegal, or violent intentions, then a system that reveals that this is the case is paramount; hence the importance of a free press and open access to information about the workings of any governing body.

If a couple are fighting before they get married and then they fight after they get married and then they get divorced, they may (like many) be surprised at the outcome. We so often hide from the obvious out of emotionally based blindness and compulsion. However at least the divorced couple can see that there was nothing sinister or criminal about the failed marriage. No deception took place. The truth was not hidden, rather people were hiding from the truth.

In order to avoid the harming of innocents, whether they be romantics looking for love or a country looking for a leader, it is important that fact be separated from fiction.

The healthy functioning of the concept of democracy is predicated by two factors. Firstly, the general population needs to be sane. Secondly, people with vast power are vulnerable to going insane. Hence the average sane person can see when a politician is a megalomaniac (for example Robert Mugabe of shattered Zimbabwe). Democracy would have been a great institution in the time of Stalin in the Soviet Union, or Mao in China, or the Khmere Rouge in Cambodia. It was not however helpful in the time of Hitler’s Germany. This theme points to the importance of multi-lateral relations between countries to keep in check any rogue country (or countries) – whether it (they) be democratic or not.

Overall Well-Being

Overall Well-Being (ODB versus GDP)

It seems that the world is falling in. Is it really? Grand and fear striking similes and metaphors abound: an economic national security emergency; a financial tsunami; the Great Depression 2.0.

Firstly lets take a look at personal psychology. The term recession seems to not have the same psychological association as depression does, however they are of the same nature. If you take a look at what is driving stock-markets and investors helter skelter, experts repeatedly say that the behaviour does not fit with fundamentals. Also, a little bit of good or bad news tends to go a long way. People are literally in a manic emotional state.

Take a look at the behaviour pattern of financial executives. Essentially they have for years been prepared to take on increased (even absurd) risk for the sake of additional profits. The downside possibility would know doubt have been in the back of their minds, but ignored. Some of these financial executives decided to hedge their bets by taking out insurance: credit default swaps. However the contagion consumed this cautiousness because the people giving out insurance ignored the possibility that they might have to pay out an insurance claim. It is like giving out fire insurance with the idea that money can be made because fires never happen. Insurance brokers however argue that they were covering financial products that will never get burnt, let alone destroyed, by fire. To this there is a very simple response. Why on earth would companies actually pay out millions and billions and trillions of dollars for insurance cover if there was no credible underlying risk? The very fact of the existence of a voluminous credit default swap market is proof that financial executives knew, but in general ignored, the underlying risk that mortgage-related debt products would go bad.

What is the psychological pattern operating in any gambler (or addict for that matter)? The gambler focuses their mind more and more on winning, and ignores the common-sense knowing that the odds are stacked against them. In the back of their minds they know they can’t win, but they have to ignore this. They ignore this because they need to focus on winning. They need to focus on winning because there is an underlying emotional issue that they cannot face. When the gambler inevitably loses, they get a little taste (or wave) of the overwhelming emotional sea that they dare not jump into. In time the addict or gambler can develop the skills, understanding, and most importantly awareness, to tackle what lies hidden in the basement of their mind.

When people in the developed countries the world over accumulate massive levels of debt they do so out of compulsion - this refers to consumer (credit card) debt and household debt, business debt, and government debt. If when I am sitting in my little granny-flat staring at a furniture-less wall, I go crazy. Hence what I do is pick up one of the credit-card brochures lying around, I go out, and I buy a plasma television. Now on those lonely nights I simply stare at the blaring screen in order to both occupy and numb my mind. A zen monk on retreat simply stares open-eyed at a wall. In time (and in fact in a very short time) the wall becomes the mirror to see what lies just beneath your usual waking mental state. A zen master may well watch television, but has seen all the shows on their inner-tv.

No doubt up to a certain level the basic stuff of modern life contributes to wellness of being. However the golf tripping, spa resort frolicking financial executives that are the pillars of financial deconstruction are addicted to indulgence. I recall one such executive saying that he recently had the worst week of his life. Now he was not talking about the state of his bank account. He was talking about his emotional state; he was talking about his very own personal depression.

Am I getting you lost here?

Economic growth is the very foundation of modern society, so it seems anyway. If the world goes into a global recession, or perhaps a global depression, why is this occurring? Here it might help by recalling that strategic tipsters backed the African continent (and not Asia) to become the great emerging economic giant of the 20th century. Rather than prospering, Africa however slipped into decades of violence, destruction, and genocide. Asian countries on the other hand became the developing potential superpowers.

Why were the tipsters wrong? Africa had the potential to prosper. It had the natural resources, the people, and the technology (especially if it harnessed the technology gains from other parts of the world) to create a prosperous society. At both an individual and collective level, the ability to create a vibrant and harmonious social web gave way to violence and destruction. At both the individual and collective level, a vast body of emotional discontent (rage) that was lurking in the unconscious, came to the surface. In a domino effect one persons rage can infect a village, a village can affect a region, a region a country, a country a continent.

The theme of a spreading emotional darkness is juxtaposed historically by the moral fabric of society. The minds of people have the intellectual understand of what is essentially right and wrong ingrained in them. What can make a moral code deeper is the understanding, rather than just the repetition, of what is right and wrong. What can foster this understanding is the nurturing of human consciousness. A meditator instrinsically develops the capacity to distinguish between right and wrong, between good and bad.

An individual that cultivates their own consciousness does two things. Firstly, as mentioned, an understanding develops about morals, about ethics, about values. Secondly the more a person becomes conscious (aware) the more they create a separation from what they are observing. And when a person can detach themselves from the emotion that is going on inside them, they are less involved or caught up in this emotion. They can see that for example the anger, although remarkably unpleasant, is a passing emotional state. Society can provide the tools to help people express this emotion in a safe and perhaps even creative (rather than destructive) way. Traditional meditation already provides the tools to observe the emotions if they are not excessively strong for any particular person at that time.

America is considered a modern superpower. It is also projected to slide into recession, and is fighting to stave off a repeat of the Great Depression. However if I were to travel to America, I would still see all the basic stuff that creates a galloping economic growth rate. All the basic stuff is still there! There are all the raw materials are still there. All the people are still there. All the technology that explains how to put the raw material together to create a great society is still there.

While all the people are there, what is their individual and collective mental capacity? Some of the intellectual geniuses of Wall Street no doubt had high IQ’s. However some of their decisions showed profound lack of intelligence and foresight. Also, now that they can not preoccupy their mind with financial work, some of them will be hitting the drink to stave of their personal depression. If I were to test the IQ of an unemployment Wall Street financial wizard the morning after a binge, I think the results would be pitiful. In order to ignore his or her own personal issues, this person has gone down the road of financial destruction that reverberates around the country and the world - at financial, economic, and social levels.

If any group of people go down the path of collective greed, then when they finally see the possibility that this may end, fear strikes. Ultimately the fear is that they have to face what they have been avoiding: themselves. Deep down, every single person has a sense of what is in their unconscious. When a magnetic and collective wave of fear occurs, the end result is a collective depression: for example the Great Depression.

Whether or not the current global recession turns out to be global Great Depression 2.0 is primarily based what is in the collective unconscious: the sum total of all the stuff we carry around inside us that we are not able, or are not willing, to see.

On a brighter note, it does not have to turn out this way. As mentioned there are tools that can be employed. Also, society is currently geared in a way that puts the preeminent focus on gross domestic product (GDP) and economic growth. A counterpart needs to be developed that acknowledges the deeper aspects of what it is to be human. Sure life would be (and is) tough without the basics of life that many people take for granted: hygienic food, sanitized water, adequate shelter, sewerage removal systems, and education and health care facilities. However beyond this an increase in material well-being does not necessarily equate with an increase in overall well-being - and often leads to an inverse relationship: obesity for example.

The indicator of GDP should have a counterpart called OWB (Overall Well-Being). OWB essentially explores the subtleties of what it is to be human: what it is to be civilized, and what it is to be spiritual or religious. When for example an economic recession or depression is looming, GDP may well spike. However OWB will take a serious nosedive. After a little while people dust themselves off after the crash, forget about their share losses, and thank themselves that they are still alive. OWB starts to improve. People start developing the urge to reconnect with friends who are also hiding in their own personal depression. The urge to create a little bit out of the mess around them rekindles the spirit, and GDP starts its long steady move towards the next precipice. However this time, if society places more focus on factors other than just material or economic well-being, the fall won’t be so bad. Also, there are skills that people can develop that emphasise and contribute to overall well-being. People can learn how to express and even watch the emotional stuff that stunts their creativity, their intelligence, and their spirit.

The focus on economic growth and consumerism becomes a self-fulfilling tragedy. Emphasise the material, and people focus more on the material to avoid the immaterial emptiness. Filling peoples hearts and nourishing their souls cannot be without the values and freedoms that are the cornerstone of any modern and democratic society. However this is just the foundation. A great tower is not built simply by putting foundations on top of the foundation. Such a construction simply collapses under its own weight. The modern social structure will become a highrise as the emphasis moves towards empathy and compassion towards fellow humans and the world at large. Examples of this are the focus on workplace and occupational health and safety; acknowledging and addressing mental health needs; and confronting the degradation of the planet from pollution. The upper floors of the grand towers of post-modern society are not burdened with concrete and steel. They are filled with flowers and mirrors and singing and dancing.