Tragedy of the Commons | Oskar Eustis | George Monbiot | Invest in our CommonWealth

I’m from Pennsylvania, one of four States of the 52, which is a Commonwealth. I never really knew how that distinguished PA from any other state. I learned of the concept of the Commons through the writings of George Monbiot. He wrote this article published in the Guardian September 27th, 2017. Don’t let the rich get even richer on the assets we all share – It’s time for communities to seize back control of resources upon which their prosperity depends

Monbiot states that the commons has three main elements. “First a resource, such as land, water, minerals, scientific research, hardware or software. Second a community of people who have shared and equal rights to this resource, and organise themselves to manage it. Third the rules, systems and negotiations they develop to sustain it and allocate the benefits.” He goes on to state:

The commons have been attacked by both state power and capitalism for centuries. Resources that no one invented or created, or that a large number of people created together, are stolen by those who sniff an opportunity for profit…those who capture essential resources force everyone else to pay for access.”

What comes to my mind immediately is companies that for example take (extract/steal)  a region’s water, and then force the local people to pay for what they bottle. Or the fact that various individuals and companies throughout history who tried to buy, destroy or steal the plans of various individuals who designed medical or energy devices that could have provided a product to the public for almost no cost. Instead, they were hidden from public knowledge so that the perpetrators could make a profit through their own devices. By obscuring the competitor’s inventions, they were able to bank on their own goods or services.

Monbiot subsequently published essentially the same themed article in his blog Common Wealth on the 2nd of October, 2018. Entitled Common Wealth – Hope lies with a great, neglected sector of the economy, through which we can create a system that is neither capitalist nor state communist.”

Commons is managed for wellbeing.

Tragedy of the Commons video by Nicholas Amendolare

The Tragedy of the Commons is eloquently described in this video. Basically if a community consumes a common resource too fast for regeneration to occur, people must choose between restricting their own consumption for the good of the community, for if they continue to consume at a rate that satisfies their immediate “self-interest”, there may be dire consequences later. That seems to be what is occurring on the earth presently. However, in terms of consuming and/or spoiling resources, the fact is that it isn’t really the individuals who make up communities who are necessarily at fault. In the last several generations, the resources and supply has for the most part been in the control of a very few. This has upset the balance and tweaked the demand curve.

We’ve gotten into a weird state of affairs in the USA, which is being replicated all over the globe. It used to be the land of effulgent possibilities. Labeled the Land of Opportunity, the American Dream. The land of entrepreneurship. The place where people could be assured that their ideas and efforts could be strengthened and developed. But the dream has been taken hostage by just a small percentage of individuals and groups, who have been able to use their money to buy their passage, gobble up competitors, purchase the media and think tanks to hurl out propaganda and crush anyone in their way.

In the last decades, as a friend says the last 70 years, the emphasis in the States has become top-heavy towards enriching the industrial interests, which has coincided with buttressing the military. A handful of people have been controlling these interests. The process has downright gutted many of the small businesses. Anyone who has been alive long enough in the United States of Amnesia, has seen their local hardware stores, five & dime stores, pharmacies, grocery stores, local boutiques etc, in which you knew the families of the people who owned and operated them, disappear. Now Big Box Stores like Walmart have replaced them. They can’t compete. I mention this in my other blog. https://digesthis.wordpress.com/2018/12/06/the-photo-ark-half-earth-project-plastic-ocean-dolphin-deaths-sonar-seismic-tests-patriotism-to-finance-the-military-industrial-gdp-ecocide/

Robert Reich explains in this video THE MONOPOLIZATION OF AMERICA: The Biggest Economic Problem You’re Hearing Almost Nothing About about how this phenomenon evolved. He says that a century ago there were anti-trust laws preventing any company from getting too large, but that these protections disappeared during the Reagan years. Reich points out that the less businesses there are in competition, the more the few who are in control can create their own prices as well as the wages. No competitor, no problem, for those making the rules.

Robert Reich Monopolization of America Health Care Monopolies 2016

Robert Reich Monopolization of America Walmart Drives Down Workers Wages

The USA according to what businesses ‘control’ each state. Walmart Nation, Health Care Boeing

 

What we need to do is to step by step, reinvest in our own communities, and take the tools to work side by side. Forming relationships with people and seeing our own work and voices mirrored, empowering people to be intimately tied to their own land. I’m living in a town next to the birthplace of the industrial revolution. A number of people told me how toxic the river was that flowed through this town. The townspeople and any other life that had been here certainly suffered, while the industries reaped financial rewards. The trend in the USA has been for cities to clean up their waterfronts and create common spaces that people can enjoy. That is their heritage, to walk and commune freely with others in public spaces. That’s what I’m talking about here. Except not just riverfront property. I’m talking about fields and woods surrounding towns, forests on the periphery, about national parks, about creating once again and maintaining spaces that are naturally the habitat of other life forms. About taking picks to break up parking lots and creating community gardens instead. About people engaging in these public spaces, with love of the land, connectedness among the people and the desire to protect and allow the land and all the other life forms to flourish.

What I understand in the idea of ‘taking back’ the commons – is for community members, you and I, to have joint ownership of the land; for community members to be entitled to make decisions on how best to use this resource and to together create community works, community theatre, community stores, community gardens, community farms. Because when something is shared and invested in physically and monetarily, one will put effort, love and pride into maintaining it. We have had this tremendous land grab by companies, private sectors, who own vast stretches of land which, one would think, should rightfully be a heritage of the people who walk on the earth. So if the people collectively owned these swaths of land, fields, forests, grasslands, natural parks and so forth, then we the people would be engaged in participating in protecting it. It would be something that belonged to the people, and therefore, instead of being neglected or some other owner reaping vast rewards while the local populations received little, the people could benefit from either choosing to create fields, community gardens, parks with fruit and nut trees. In other words, this would deliver the ownership to the people and the wealth of the land would be valued by the people and recirculated among the people, not trickled off to enrich an owner far away.

Oskar Eustis TED Talk
Why theater is essential to democracy

I had the pleasure of listening to Oskar Eustis, the director of Hamilton, speak at a salon coordinated by the Athenaeum in Providence, Rhode Island. His words echoed the same concepts, of the need to bring back community theatre and arts and take back the country from all who have been dispossessed and cheated. The idea of power coming from below, from the community. He launched the audience with his humor and great storytelling into the past, to the first theatre and the fist actors of ancient Greek history. He mentioned Thespis, the first person ever to appear on stage and Aeschylus, the father of tragedy. He mentioned that it was the Persians who brought to the stage for the first time – not just one actor donning various masks – but two actors to stand side by side on the stage. This new perspective, with dialogue revealing that there could be more than one isolated truth, but a dialectic in which a discourse between two or more people holding different points of view could establish a truth through reasoned arguments, happened to coincide with the beginnings of Democracy at about this same time period.

Eustis stated that the Truth is dialectical. Precedent to Hegel’s dialectic, dialogue asks the audience to listen to two points of view, recognizing that each lead to the truth. Thus theatre, storytelling in its beginnings, came with this perception of each person having a voice. And this recognition through theatre, precipitated Democracy.

Oskar spoke at length about how bringing the theatre to the public, to allow actors and non actors to participate, empowers people. Project Discovery, which Trinity created is theatre of, for and by the people. He mentioned that creativity is inherent in all people, and that it is human to have the desire to create. Some people have had more practice. Creativity simply needs to be nourished.

Oskar Eustis spoke of the fate of the marketplace. That the economy and technology of the last decades has turned its back on the people. Wall Street and corporations operating in this global economy have robbed people of jobs. As the jobs disappeared – outsourced to other countries for cheaper labor – it has pulled communities apart. He talked of revitalizing communities through investing in projects such as theatre. When people can see their own story and speak their own story, they are empowered to share their stories.

Oskar states that “It is our job to knit this country back together, not to be right.”

Oskar Eustis’ TED Talk weaves together the idea of a public theatre, common voice and a democratic government.

The Work That Reconnects Pat van Boeckel

 

 

One of the practices within The Work that Reconnects is an exercise called the Riddle of the Commons Game. It brings to awareness the fact that people need to balance between their own self-interest and collective self-interest. Each is necessary for the common good.

Greta’s powerful speech to Swedish people before the Parliament

 

 

 

 

‘We Have Not Come Here to Beg World Leaders to Care,’ 15-Year-Old Greta Thunberg Tells COP24. “We Have Come to Let Them Know Change Is Coming. We can no longer save the world by playing by the rules,” says Greta Thunberg, “because the rules have to be changed.”

There’s nothing more important than recognizing that change can happen. Coming through education and arts and activities within your own communities. We can drive that change. If one young girl has already sparked and inspired students in Australia, in another continent, this can ripple. We need to look very, very hard, at what we are choosing, so that we don’t lose what is most precious. You may think your own immediate children are the most precious, but what if there are no trees, woods, grasses, available food, no clean oceans or rivers or lakes, or air, and no other life? It is an astoundingly clear choice to me. We’ve got to make some changes, and we’re going to do this together. And plenty of people are pointing the way, and your own ideas will be as valuable as anyones, collaboratively we will create this change.

My friend Loren Booda states, “Start with hope, funding of positive efforts to return nature and, with native education, make everyone responsible for and aware of their use of resources. The major problem? Almost all of us usually put other needs or wants before the environment.” Full-circle back to The Tragedy of the Commons.

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December 10th, 2018 Carol Keiter

WHAT CAN WE DO? | LET’S DO SOMETHING! | How can we Organize the Human Community?

Democracy is Dying and it’s Startling How Few are Worried Paul Mason

I have been in France just under a month. I found out not even two hours ago through a conversation on skype with my sister who lives in England and France, that during the time we were back in the United States of Apathy, that ICE (i hadn’t know what this was, i thought ICE was simply In Case of Emergency) However I learned from my sister today about the other version. (ICE) Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

I hadn’t known what ICE meant, I had to google it. http://www.newsweek.com/immigration-immigration-and-customs-enforcement-ice-donald-trump-628896

ICE had come into the town of Lebanon, PA into a catholic church on a Sunday, and rounded up dozens of people, probably mostly men, of darker skin, and packed them into a van to take to another town to sit in jail, awaiting trial, perhaps a 1 or 2 year wait.

Newsweek ICE raid Who Is At Risk Deportation.

While visiting the USA just a month ago, my sister befriended a guy from El Salvador who stayed in the motel room next to her. He’s been in the USA for 25 years, has a green card and has several kids and a wife in Virginia. Presently he’s been in central Pennsylvania working in construction to support his family. He was one of the people rounded up and loaded into this van. My sister attempted to stay with him, holding his hand, went into the van, and the police officer warned her with a tone of reproach that she better get the hell out of there if she knows what’s good for her.

The El Salvadoran gave my sister his phone and the number of his wife to call in VA. My sister said that his wife was screaming when she heard the news. Her life support money-earner for herself and her kids, disposed of.

War Zone Desperate and Dead Mondediplio

I knew nothing of this. I was just reading headlines last night about 500 people in Turkey under questioning or worse, for attempting to overthrow a dictator. I know nothing of this Turkey official and hadn’t read the story yet.

Nearly 500 in court Turkey Coup Attempt 2016 CNN

Yet I thought to myself, can not the world step in and change this situation? That was before I knew what was happening in the neighboring town while I was sleeping on a Sunday morning. WTF.

 

 

What can we do? Sit back, crack open a beer and hang out with friends, watch a TV show, get ready to arrange the schedule of picking up the kids from their practice…..when before our eyes a military dictatorship fascist embarrassment of a President is enforcing this sweep of people across the country who have been living and working here, taking jobs that Americans haven’t wanted, and who were brought here to do the dirty jobs that help our system to run efficiently, are suddenly afraid to leave their homes to go to the grocery store?

Stop Swooning over Justin Trudeau Climate Disaster Bill McKibben

McKibben writes for the Guardian, “Yes, 173bn barrels is indeed the estimate for recoverable oil in the tar sands. So let’s do some math. If Canada digs up that oil and sells it to people to burn, it will produce, according to the math whizzes at Oil Change International, 30% of the carbon necessary to take us past the 1.5C target that Canada helped set in Paris.

That is to say, Canada, which represents one half of 1% of the planet’s population, is claiming the right to sell the oil that will use up a third of the earth’s remaining carbon budget. Trump is a creep and a danger and unpleasant to look at, but at least he’s not a stunning hypocrite.”

Out of the Wreckage A New Politics for an Age of Crisis George Monbiot

Monbiot writes, “A toxic ideology rules the world – of extreme competition and individualism. It misrepresents human nature, destroying hope and common purpose. Only a positive vision can replace it, a new story that re-engages people in politics and lights a path to a better world.”

What are we going to do?

Immigrants from Syria and other parts of the world, war/climate immigrants are escaping deplorable situations to come to the West, which has been living amply, to be treated with hostility and turned away with barbwire. Black market money to stuff people on rickety over-loaded boats, taking peoples’ life savings, to flee situations, only to find that the rest of the world is not helping to organize their safe transport.

This is very, very wrong. We can use the money from the enormous profits from banks, international corporations who make millions and billions in profit, to set up communities, and renewable energy enterprises to re-esatablish safe havens.

This is not right. We can’t read news and do nothing like it isn’t our problem. In some countries people are having 12 to 16 babies. A large part of the problem of GLOBAL WARMING/CLIMATE CHANGE IS due to over-population. We are sucking up the soil, destroying habitats of other animals who have a right to life.

Humans need to be accountable.

We need to be accountable for what is happening ALL OVER THE WORLD.

We Are Humanity Film Jarawa documentary

We need to intercept. I’m sorry, but we need to educate and infiltrate, not remain passive, saying it’s not my problem. Not my problem if some people are cruel to other humans or animals or their actions are knowingly or unknowingly destroying the habitat and polluting some creatures’ environment.

I don’t think any living being can just sit back and let all this happen without having a conscience and wanting to help.

I don’t know where to begin, except for expressing this. I think the world needs leaders who will actually step in and shut Trump and other dictators down. People can divest – take their money out of banks and institutions that support dirty energy and dirty politics. There are numerous ways that people working together could SHUT DOWN OPERATIONS AS THEY ARE through organized actions like; those working in public transportation or truck drivers to not work for a day, or three…We can all work together, educate one another, demand new structures and create them together, IMMEDIATELY.

There are plenty of people with the wisdom and insights and contacts to know how to lead and guide a worldwide REVOLUTION. Not a violent one, a movement with people stepping out of their routines and giving a little time and effort and action to make their voice heard. We can’t let more dictators destroy peoples lives. We can’t let peoples religious beliefs just allow people to pop out 13 babies and pretend that it’s okay. We live in one world, one with limited resources. I refuse to just take on business as usual, and pretend that it’s okay for Mr. Orangehead Chump to push his grey suits around and whimsical notions of what he thinks needs to happen. It’s time for the fucking world intelligence, artists, teachers, scientists and leaders to step in. I still have to read about what’s happening in Turkey, or Venezuela, because I can’t keep up with all of it, but it just IS NOT OKAY ANYMORE, to think that “It’s not here next to me in my community, so it’s not my problem.” IT IS ALL OF OUR PROBLEM. WE NEED LEADERS WHO CAN STEP IN AND INTERCEPT, AGENCIES TO EDUCATE, GUIDE.

I thank all of the environmental, social, ecological groups who serve as watch dogs and educate the rest of us, but somehow, i think something much more brilliant has to take place to begin lighting up the whole world to working together. If we are the people – in a Democracy – choosing our leaders, then we should have the military industrial complex working with us, not in militarized suits, against us.

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

Carol Keiter the blogger on return hitch from Taos to Santa Fe, New Mexico

carol keiter blogger card

Perspective from Afar | Small Wonder by Barbara Kingsolver | Millennium: Winners and Losers In The Coming World Order by Attali

I am basically quoting passages in Barbara Kingsolver’s article, “Small Wonder” and including the link of a review of Jaques Attali’s book which she mentions, “Millennium: Winners And Losers In The Coming World Order”

Barbar Kingsolver Small Wonder

At a time when the modern imagination seems fully engaged in discussion of swords of every length and breadth, there’s little room for other kinds of talk. But I’m emboldened by Medea to speak up on behalf of psychological strategy. It’s not a simpleminded suggestion; her elixir of contentment is exactly as symbolic as Jason’s all-conquering sword, and the latter has by no means translated well into reality. The strategic difference is the capacity to understand this one thing: Some forms of enemy are made more deadly by killing. It would require the deepest possible shift of our hearts to live in this world of fundamental animosity and devote ourselves not to the escalating exertion to kill, but rather, to lulling animosity to sleep. Modern humanity may not be up to the challenge. Modern humanity may not have a choice…. The easiest thing is to think of returning the blows. But there are other things we must think about as well, other dangers we face. A careless way of sauntering across the earth and breaking open its treasures, a terrible dependency on sucking out the world’s best juices for ourselves — these may also be our enemies.

The easiest thing is to think of returning the blows. But there are other things we must think about as well, other dangers we face. A careless way of sauntering across the earth and breaking open its treasures, a terrible dependency on sucking out the world’s best juices for ourselves — these may also be our enemies.

The laws governing international trade render it more difficult each year to inject moral considerations into the marketplace, frustrating the many nations and individuals who still wish to balance economic motives with compassionate ones. Indeed, international trade laws increasingly restrict access to the very information that makes any such concession possible — witness, for example, the endless battle for accurate labeling waged by U.S. consumers who prefer their food organically grown and not genetically modified. The profiteering drive of commerce owns no malice or mercy, is incapable of regret, and takes no prisoners; it is simply an engine with no objective but to feed itself. And it is a Goliath: A decade ago, the combined sales of the world’s ten largest corporations exceeded the gross national product of the world’s hundred smallest countries put together, and the gap is growing.
Inevitably, hungry souls and angry hands rise up against that amoral giant, and ever-higher walls of armaments are required to keep them at bay. These walls create among us a huge class that the French author Jacques Attali has named the “millennial losers,” for whom the fantasy of prosperity promoted by the media is both a continuous allure and an endless slapdown. The siren’s song calls them toward Paris and New York, glittering Emerald Cities walled off by inaccessibility. In his 1991 book, “Millennium: Winners And Losers In The Coming World Order”

Millennium: Winners And Losers In The Coming World Order

Jaques Attali observed with a chilling prescience

that particularly among those in the Middle East who’d suffered repeated humiliations by the West, the fiercely absent presence of worldly affluence tended to inspire fervent cults of frustration and outrage.

We who are alive in this moment didn’t build these walls, nor did we ignite the fury that has smoldered for eons and hurls itself at us now as a burning question. But we have inherited the urgent necessity of answering it. And possibly we will succeed.”

George Monbiot continues to articulate the problem of the environment in terms of constraints created by the global political elite – in the pockets of the corporate oil oligarchy and such, with his recent post “The Problem With Freedom“. “Propaganda works by sanctifying a single value, such as faith, or patriotism. Anyone who questions it puts themselves outside the circle of respectable opinion. The sacred value is used to obscure the intentions of those who champion it… When thinktanks and the billionaire press call for freedom, they are careful not to specify whose freedoms they mean…one person’s freedom is another’s captivity.”

Funny, attended a group circle of mostly ex pastors in a parish in Santa Fe of mostly the over-80 crowd. All agreed without question in human induced climate change, which they mentioned was the new word after ‘global warming’ became politically incorrect. One of them offered this information, that ideology is the major blocking point. As soon as ideologies become the subject, peoples’ comprehension or ability to even see or discuss an issue, goes out the window.

Each of the above are worth reading.

What can we do? Here are 10 things you can do to impact the environment in a positive way, according to Defenders of Wildlife.

Defenders of Wildlife 10 Things yYou Can Do to Help

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

Carol Keiter the blogger with a selfie prior to getting the ride on return hitch from skiing in Taos

the War on Terror is a malignant outgrowth of the Terror of War | Chilcot report: War on Iraq

Much is in the news about the recently released Chilcot report by Sir John Chilcot, chairman of the United Kingdom’s Iraq war inquiry. He was one of the bureaucrats in office during the time the United States and subsequently Great Britain governments’ decided to go to war on Iraq in 2003. The Chilcot report exposes the fact that there were no grounds to go to war on Iraq. There were lies, confounded by more lies that lead to this grave decision, which has subsequently ignited ISIS (whatever acronym you wish to call it), unleashing an insurmountable backlash of violence by groups coping with their own destabilization and horrors. Violence fueled by hatred in ever swirling spirals.

Carne Ross wrote for the New York Times July 6, 2016 Chilcot Report: How Tony Blair Sold the War

“Thus the invasion that was justified by an imaginary threat in Iraq helped create a crisis of global insecurity that will endure for a generation, at least.

The ministers and officials who enabled Mr. Blair to perpetrate this catastrophe must also bear blame. Brave after the event, many testified before Mr. Chilcot that they knew the war was a mistake — yet they went along with it. But without them, it could not have happened. The “threat” of weapons of mass destruction was repeated by many diplomats and officials even when they, like me, were well aware that the scant intelligence we had could not substantiate the claim.”

Matthew Schweitzer on the 8th of July 2016 writes in Mondediplio – the English version of Le Monde Diplomatique, Iraq’s trauma: the Chilcot inquiry

Schweitzer describes the history leading up to this, which has already been destabilizing the area years before. He mentions,

“In 1991, over 10 years before the events described by the Chilcot inquiry occurred, a United Nations report concluded that ‘the children of Iraq up to the ages of puberty are the most traumatized children of war ever described.’ The report arrived at the end of the first Gulf war, in which 20,000-35,000 Iraqi soldiers perished along with nearly 3,700 civilians.”

On July 7th, George Monbiot published on the Guardian’s website The Judgement of History: The Chilcot report is utterly damning; but it’s still not justice

“Mr Blair, the co-author of these crimes, whose lethal combination of appalling judgement and tremendous powers of persuasion made the Iraq war possible, saunters the world, picking up prizes and massive fees, regally granting interviews, cloaked in a force field of denial and legal impunity.

The crucial issue – the legality of the war – was, of course, beyond Sir John Chilcot’s remit…Justice is inseparable from democracy. If a prime minister can avoid indictment for waging aggressive war, the entire body politic is corrupted. In the Chilcot report, there is a reckoning, firm and tough and long overdue. But it’s still not justice.”

George W. Bush and Tony Blair the Guardian The US needs its own Chilcot report Trevor Timm

As a United States citizen born and raised in this country, who protested going to war in the streets back then, it occurred to me that I had read an indictment a few years ago from someone within the United States government exposing the US government’s ill conceived decision to go to war in Iraq. I googled, and came up with this article The US needs its own Chilcot report, written by Trevor Timm

“The former US president most responsible for the foreign policy catastrophe has led a peaceful existence since he left office. Not only has he avoided any post-administration inquiries into his conduct, he has inexplicably seen his approval ratings rise (despite the carnage left in his wake only getting worse).”

And in the politics of injustice, in which corpocrisy rules, it is really up to all of us to actually make a difference.

I beckon comments and suggestions regarding answers on ways to deal with the conundrum of hatred and violence. Perhaps if a large part of the citizens of the United States and Great Britain – for starters – would have the will and courage to make our voices heard and actually demand prosecution for the Crime of War, the consequences could be felt worldwide. That is, rather than passively watching this, actively making clear that you are behind persecuting these criminals – behind which are a bunch of corporations whose goal certainly was to invade Iraq for their own profit motives.

If the message sent to the rest of the world is that we care about other peoples lives who are embroiled in war and the injustice of it – rising above the political veil of democracy – to actually send clear messages of humanitarian love and peace, this in itself could begin wakening quite different responses from people who have only felt desperation and experienced hopelessness and horror.

I will promptly write in my digesthis blog about the concept of ‘othering’ (distancing oneself); a concept of Edward Said, mentioned by Naomi Klein in a larger context, together with the inspiring words of Akala regarding status quo racism built into Empire.

Another means of extracting ourselves from the rather undemocratic government we are in which is ensconced in the politics of money, as politicians are placed by corporate powers to parlay their wishes, is to have a GREEN SUSTAINABILITY REVOLUTION.

Perhaps as one person recently commented, the more that we involve ourselves in our own communities in DIY Doing it Ourselves: to grow our own food, actively engage in community building, build inexpensive systems to collect your own rain water, collect energy from the sun with solar, build community projects such as community gardens and windmills or whatever renewable technology is available and adaptable to the climate and geography of place…the more we will be energizing ourselves without paying into a corrupt system that is bent on continually receiving fees. And the more that people grow their own food and acquire energy from their own self sustaining systems, the healthier and happier and more independent they will be, so that they won’t need to support industries which are reaping huge monetary gains while delivering little. As people take responsibility for their own health and happiness, they will less and less need to buy into a system that keeps them locked into it: i.e. pharmaceutical industry.

Here I go again. Moved to create a blog, pulling together content from a variety of sources by established journalists who have done their rigorous investigative journalism, scrutinizing information to put it out there. I float these out to consecrate their points and add some of my own. I considered researching which print or online publication I could send a query to, to submit an article for which I’m paid, and I guess two factors are dissuading me.

The first, that I want to immediately get this information out there. Secondly, I realize that I am for the most part reading and re-circulating other peoples’ dredging labor involved in investigative journalism. Nevertheless, the more the information is circulated, the better.

Carol Keiter in Tucson, AZ

Carol Keiter aka nomadbeatz welcomes donations for her writing, photography, illustrations, eBook & music composition

Greed & Profit-driven Aims to Protect Wealth & Power = Path of Destruction

This blog was incited by having read a comment on someone’s Facebook page, regarding a man’s decision to NOT give a TED Talk, because he wouldn’t be paid.

The idea of some kind of monetary compensation for presenting a TED talk never occurred to me. Of the many excellent presentations I’ve seen, shouldn’t the fact that one’s ideas are considered worthy enough to present them to an audience of potentially hundreds of millions of people, suffice? I was under the impression that the point of TED Talks is to spread ideas, for the good of humanity and all of the other species that cohabit this planet. Through the education and perspective I personally received through my family heritage and genetics, I have been granted a great deal of wealth; health, intelligence, analytical skills and an abundance of creativity. On top of that, I am physically fit, allowing me to move through this world unencumbered. I have education and knowledge, and the resourcefulness and curiosity to obtain more. Yet, I am teetering on the edge of financial poverty. Not because of poor planning, but because of my adventurous spirit combined with idealism, which leads to risk-taking. The wisdom I follow is from those who genuinely care about humanity and all of the other species with whom we share this planet. People like Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr., Carl Gustav Jung, Deepak Chopra among others, including the wisdom coming from Native American Indians and literary and spiritual guides from the Middle East and Asia. I wish to continually create possibilities to learn and develop my skills, to be the best that I can be in order to give something back to the world. Reading about a person complaining because the TED talk doesn’t pay the presenter, irked me. It made me stop everything else, to comment. It ignited the fuse of my annoyance regarding the injustices I see presently in the world today.

Our world is corrupted by money, and the greed and drive of people to make a profit and protect their power, no matter the consequences. It is the large, incorporated manufacturers of the world, those who have invested in the extraction and transport of non-renewable energy, telecommunications, technology, pharmaceutical industries and those who control information, that often are responsible for the careless and myopic profit-making, resulting in the path of destruction of the environment and eradication of many of the species. The imbalance of wealth, lack of education and instability of the planet (human industry-induced global warming) are all a result of this misplaced greed of a small percentile. The vast majority of people and species, are all suffering from overpopulation and economic misfortune, driven by sustained ignorance.

Many of the scientists, teachers, artists and people with creative insights and ideas who genuinely help to guide people and make the world a better place, are NOT the movers and shakers. Presently, the “leaders” of the United States government are not elected for their insight and desire to do good and justly represent the people, they are corporate sponsored actors who tug the line, speak the voice of those who place them in these positions, for an inflationary cost that is disproportionate to what democratically chosen elections should cost. In the world today, those who have more wealth, are more easily able to carve paths that slide around the rules that everyone else must follow, making deductions, avoiding taxes through all sorts of loopholes, while the vast majority are just getting by. I am absolutely disgusted with the idea of people protecting their wealth and power, at the cost of others.

Malala Yousafzai

Do you think that Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl who passionately wants to improve the condition of women in Pakistan, by voicing the right of girls to receive an education (which will ripple to affect many other parts of the world) who was shot by the Taliban because of her courage and honesty, is driven by profit? I could go on, but I’ll share this in another forum – my own blog, for which incidentally, I earn absolutely no money, but am driven by my own passion to recirculate ideas and events, purely because of their value and the wish to share. Thank fucking DOG, because even the concept of GOD, by most religions, has been distorted and compelled by those wishing to sustain their wealth and power.