Charity & Profit-Seeking: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Throughout its investigations of the world system, one of the most interesting points I hadn't previously considered that Desteni exposed is the dark side of Charity. This is not to say that organizations working to alleviate the world's problems aren't meaning to do good work. Rather, within exploring the nature of polarity inherent in the money/ego-system of the world, it's to realize that charity as it exists today- where wealthy people give money to attempt to solve problems mostly affecting those without money- is part of a feedback loop that need not exist if only the world were set up to prevent diseases, war, and destruction caused by the pursuit of profit as survival.

In short, Charity exists only because of the unequal distribution of wealth: if everyone were provided with sufficient income to be empowered to choose a life path that didn't contribute to the destruction of nature and people, a lot of the problems charity seeks to fix would no longer be reproduced.

Recent media coverage of seeming collusion between the charitable Clinton Health Access Initiative and pharmaceutical companies that produce drugs used to treat AIDS is a prime example of how profit-seeking creates charities and vice-versa. In a leaked e-mail, an agent for the Clinton charity was speaking out against efforts to bring awareness to the need to lower US AIDS drugs prices. The implication here is that both the Clinton charity and the pharmaceutical companies stand to benefit from artificially high AIDS drugs prices in the United States. By looking the other way as pharmaceutical companies charge high prices for AIDS drugs in the US, the Clinton charity stands to benefit by securing continued access to cheap drugs for distribution in poor countries.

This is just one example. Another would be how charities that help people ravaged by war are necessitated by the actions of weapons corporations seeking to make a profit off of the exact type of violence the consequences of which such charities are ameliorating. Corporations that profit of environmental destruction breed charities that clean up that destruction. The list goes on.

This is why we must work towards implementing a new world order based upon the principle of providing equal access to necessary resources for everyone. It starts with guaranteeing a basic income for all.

Interesting links:

EQAFE
Living Income Guaranteed
Desteni 'I' Process
DIP Lite
Desteni forum

The Social Fabric Cannot Hold

Reports of unruly airplane passengers are up 17% from the previous year. The International Air Transport Association says "the majority of incidents involve verbal abuse, failure to follow crew instructions and other forms of antisocial behavior" while "only 11% involved physical altercations or aircraft damage." Anyone that's traveled on an airplane knows how stressful the experience can be, but this report nonetheless raises some serious questions about our ability to maintain civility in the face of tests to our preprogrammed existences.

So often, our behavior in social settings is geared towards "maintaining the peace." At least, that's how we justify avoiding confrontation, suppressing certain words/behaviors, and modifying our conduct when in the presence of other humans. Earth is a crowded place, we may argue, and learning to suppress our behavior around others may just make our go of it that much easier.

Nonetheless, to borrow a phrase I learned from Desteni, What we resist persists.

What this phrase means practically, is that just because we suppress certain words or behavior in front of others doesn't necessarily mean that the underlying patterns that caused these words to want to be expressed in the first place have been addressed. Yes, the person in front of you you wanted to call-out for what they were doing was only the temporary trigger of your OWN issue, but how can we be so sure there aren't negative consequences to suppressing these outbursts, even if doing so is seemingly in support of maintaining the social fabric?

As Earth spins round and millions of people continue to deny all the problems that is here on Earth, refusing to speak even to those closest to us about the basic issues facing ourselves and the world, it's only expected that this suppressive behavior will eventually result in outbursts on planes, buses, and highways the world over. 

Rather than wait until it's too late and you've done something that you'll regret forever, please, investigate DIP Lite, the free online course w/Buddy where you'll learn the nature and purpose of thoughts and emotions and how to direct yourself within self-honesty to be and become best for all.