It's cool by the Pool - right [COLUMN]

 It's Ayoba time - or is it? - by Nick van der Leek

It's an icy cold Youth Day today and I am literally sitting here with cold feet, a hot water bottle over my crotch, and an old blanket [that looks more like a threadbare doormat] slung over my shoulders.  Outside is a grey sea, and slightly less grey, but no less bleak sky.  It's a miserable day.

I made this comment to someone and her response was: "It's not a miserable day, no day is miserable."  You can see where she is coming from.  But let's face it, someone who goes for a suntan on a day like today is as deluded as the person who thinks it's so miserable it's worth jumping off a bridge.  It's very cold, and very wet - and since we're not penguins or Polar Bears, it's miserable.  It has nothing to do with a state of mind and everything to do with a state of reality.

Which brings us to a substantive gaze at this World Cup.  It's a good day, close to a week into the tournament, to look at what it means, and what the take out should be for individuals, locals and international.

Americans say the food here is great, that it's cheap.  On SABC news biltong and boerewors is selling like hotcakes.  I'm sure people from many quarters are surprised and happy at the quality of our sky - unpolluted blue, unless you're in Johannesburg.  The Dutch especially have made of this trip a great journey, travelling as a giant orange collective, taking in not just our country, but crossing the entire continent.  They're organised, seemingly more familiar with our public transport [if one can call the odd metrorail train a public transport system] and dapper.  This is a regular European ritual - to do the fancy dress, and party for a few weeks in a foreign country, drinking beer and revelling to the football tune.  It's a great European tradition which, unfortunately, very few South Africans are familiar with.  South Africa though, isn't the easiest country to get to, and once here, it's tough to depend on public transport to find your way around, which to some extent defeats the sort of easy-going revelry most people have in mind.  But if you have your own car, and a certain amount of moolah, it's going to be a feast of fun, and isn't that the bottom line.

Money, I mean.

Of course crime has been in the headlines; we knew it would be.  Around the corner from me a Korean lady left her handbag for a minute and returned to find it [and the R60 000 inside it] missing.  A South African complained that you shouldn't be carrying that much money around with you.  Actually, no, you shouldn't be stealing what doesn't belong to you.  Someone else we spoke to left a camera in a taxi and obviously the driver wasn't reachable on his cellphone after that. And then there's the news that I'm sure you're familiar with.

You're probably also familiar with the icon of this tournament, a plastic trumpet. The style of our tournament is different, as it should be.  In Korea we dressed in red shirts and hundreds of thousands of us took to the streets of Seoul, literally, and sang and cheered under giant electronic screens slung over tall skyscrapers.  The Korean soccer team did magnificantly well, so there was much to cheer about, plenty of after parties in Noribangs [singing rooms], plenty of Koreans taking us out to dinner, plenty of walking home, semi-sozzled, at 3am in the morning from the subway.

In South Africa, there's the Vuvuzela and FIFA's overpriced beer and overpriced junk food, and over-priced airfares and overpriced hotels, and sterile Fanfests where you can make sure everything you buy to eat you donate 66% to FIFA. But at least it's a break from the usual in South Africa.  Well we'd all like to think so.  Trouble is, it's only a welcome break for a few of us.  It's a KAK time for someone living in a shanty, when it is icy cold and your roof is leaking and your floor is mud, and the risk of your neighbour's candle burning his house down [and the rest of you] gives you sleepless nights.  When 43% of the population live like this, I'm not sure you can generalise.  It's AYOBA time. Really, is it?

Malema has been like a consistent stream of cold fronts, and South Africans may feel entitled to a break from that.  I know I do.  And as far as I'm concerned, if the big story of the World Cup turns out to be just the Vuvuzela, I will take that.  If that's going to be the theme song and the World Cup is remembered for this raucous instrument blown by a bunch "poking a finger in the eye of authority" because "it is part of the national DNA," as the New York Times called it, that's fine.  It's more than fine.  The alternative is that our fears, some stated and some not, manifest in the middle of this spectacle.

Incidentally as I am writing this the radio news reports Durban's ex-security staff have tried to burn down relevant buildings in the city.

It's for this reason that we have to rightly question the AYOBA-ness of the World Cup in our country.  There are reasons to support this mindset of ignorance is bliss [I can't think of any offhand but I'm sure there must be].  But there are also reasons for serious caution, and by serious I mean a bullet into your gut right now, head numbing bang serious, dark black blood oozing out of your guts and splashing onto your feet serious:

“They’re gonna chase the people from other countries out… like Zimbabweans, Nigerians, those who are living here… those who have shops here, they’re gonna break them down and take everything inside, because they belong to them… They say if maybe they start that fighting of xenophobia, killing the foreigners and stuff, the government will listen to them, to what they say.
“Zuma just said they should stop everything and wait until the World Cup is over and then he will help them. But they refuse to listen to the command.”

The above quote may not make much sense, but I suggest you take a timeout from my piece and give this one a little extra study:  The townships are burning – and foreigners may be next. Again.
The positive alternative to the above reality is the following mindset, well written by Gill Moodie: Let's give ourselves a break: South Africa's ok.
See, there's a world of difference because these are world's apart.  You want to know what justifies drunken merriment when the house is on fire?  Because seriously, the house that is South Africa is on fire.  It may be smouldering, but it is, as Tutu calls it right: “too many of our people live in gruelling, demeaning, dehumanising poverty. We are sitting on a powder keg.”  I believe all of us have this self evident knowledge internalised. 

You may have noticed some of that grinding poverty intruding onto your even-tempered view of the World Cup.  You mave have caught a slight whiff of teargas, you may have seen the odd South African protester talking about 'low wages'.  These are easily dismissed as killjoys, but I remember reading a comment by an American on twitter, saying, "Jeepers, no wonder, these guys are being paid less than $27."

There are two worlds in South Africa - the haves and the have-nots.  The haves do not like to think of the have-nots, and certainly don't like to spend too much time even considering their unpleasant plight.  The South African identity is schizophrenic exactly for this reason - no one can really speak for another because our cultural and economic differences are vast.

I'm a lowly freelance journalist and I can tell you that even strong friendships I have with pals who have gone on to acquire fantastic wealth take a beating.  When you go to a venue to ride a cycling race it becomes all too clear - de lux suites for some, budget accomodation for the others.  And let us not pretend that these ordinary economic differences don't matter.  People associate along them, people try to climb ladders to get into higher social strata - no one tries to get out or climb down.  Well, there are some, like myself, but no one takes them seriously, probably because we take ourselves seriously enough.

But if the less well heeled are ignored, the poor get shafted in their rectums.  They are the real victims of the horrible statistics you hear every day; the unspeakable levels of rape and violence is a daily and nightly terror. They get no state protection.  They see resources meant for them going to feather the nests of politicians.

>>>The National Health and Allied Workers' Union (Nehawu) on Tuesday demanded that state entities pay back nearly R11m spent on 2010 World Cup tickets in defiance of a government ban on purchasing match seats with public funds.


In the end they develop a hatred for all society, because the same society hates them.  Society recoils at the thought of such embarassingly bad human conditions.  It's an eyesore we wish we could amputate.  This breeds vengeance, the seeds of which are unconscionable levels of anger and frustration, rage at the world, at one's lot in life.  When 43% of your country's population live like this and feel like this you better fucking listen.  Or you can meander with your beer and enjoy your drunken stupor, but then expect your car to be stolen outside, and expect a more than decent chance of some opportunist poking a knife blade in your back on your way home, and grabbing your wallet and cellphone as you slide to the floor, gushing blood and gaping like a guppy.

If you never see or never think about the poor, then it may seem normal or even reasonable to want to par-tay, to blow a plastic trumpet and say this is us. It's escapism, but then escapism is a global thing.  It may seem normal when a cellphone company bleats about the World Cup being in our backyard, so it's AYOBA time, so go out and blow a trumpet.  The company is in the business of making money.  It doesn't care about you.  The hypnosis works because everyone does want to celebrate, everyone wants to enjoy themselves.  No one is arguing with that.

But there is a time and a place, there's a right way and an honest way of doing things, and we are actually beyond that not only in South Africa, but the global community.  Our attention span when it comes to ordinary imperatives just isn't there any more. 

Once upon a time man made fire and so was able to escape for a while the necessities of survival that up until then took up all of his time.  Oil has given us so much fire that our lives overflow with time, so much so that our entire lives have become overcome with distractions. 

I was going through a 20-something's pictures of Universal studios today, on Facebook, and it is one picture after another of plastic, empty, useless America.  Simpsons sets, movie sets set to cardboard and plastic and junk.  This is what happens when we have so much time to dream that that's all we do... and finally, we forget how to live, or to respond. 

We are now covering full circle, and moving back to a very austere place...which is where we have to learn how to survive again.  The enemies that have sneaked up on us during the raucous cacophony of our lives, is none other than our fellow human beings, whom we know as rapacious consumers.  And worst of all, and most of all, the enemy has become ourselves.  Unable to think for ourselves.

Programmed by commercials.  Narcissists on a massive scale, incapable of listening to others, or feeling the plight of those without a voice.

I do believe the Vuvuzela says more about our national psyche than we'd like to admit.  It's cheap, it's hollow, it's plastic, it's a deafening noise that drowns out all others.   It's a hollow democracy, it's hollow sentiments, it's useless - but those who sell it earn a fortune.  South Africans can't agree between themselves whether they love it or find it annoying.  Whether it is actually interfering the experience of the actual game doesn't seem to matter.  This collapse of common sense speaks volumes.

PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRP.  The sound has been compared to a massive swarm of angry bees.  And for good reason.  That's exactly what is brewing in the background.  Ignore it at your peril, and most of us have been.  The poor are like a giant oil slick - who is going to clean it up?  Who wants to spend the money?  But it has to be done.

Outside the sun has emerged, but only for a moment, before another front of cloud hangs heavy against the windows.  But alas it isn't a miserable day turned beautiful.  It is now raining hard and cold, whether you think the sun is shining or not.  All the complaining and finger-pointing can get one down, yes, but it is there for a reason.  Ignoring the reason is irrational. Turning your back on a signal is dangerous. Instead, listen. Act to solve the problem, or you're running in circles ignoring the goalposts, making loud ineffectual noises and fooling no-one into building a real and lasting happiness, not just for yourself, but for everyone.

It's cool by the Pool - right? [COLUMN]

Christine Brown: I beat you, you old bitch!

In the same way that our conventional beliefs in good are based on a template, a formula, a tradition, our ideas about evil and our beliefs in evil are also based on stereotypes. Drag Me To Hell is a scary flick - whether you believe in hell or not - simply because it touches all the 'fear' buttons.
Here they are:
- witches exist
- curses (like blessings) are plausible
- sudden loud noises frighten us along with
- the dark
- uncertainty
- a sense that bad things happen to bad people (or because you do something 'wrong' you deserve something wrong happening to you/conversely that good things happen to good people)
- that hell is beneath the earth
- that hell is associated with heat, and flames and fire
- that inexplicable sounds, like the wind, banging windows or doors, creaking, are the embodiment of evil
- graveyards are places where evil resides
- rain and soil and the weather can deliver us unto evil
- evil are in certain animals, like cats and goats
- insect pests embody evil
- objects can attain life and personality, like buttons and handkerchiefs
- we are controlled and at the mercy of invisible forces.

You might want to go through those and see them for what they are. Some - if not all - of these have biblical reinforcement. A noise can be just a noise. Laughter for example can be innocent laughter, but through a paranoid schizophrenic is could be demon-voices or a sign of madness. Night is no different to day minus light.

But here's where it gets interesting. In Drag Me To Hell we see the classic embodiment of evil, which is depicted in countless children's story tales. It's the wicked witch. It's an old woman who may or not be impaired in some way (a hunchback, a hooked nose etc). In fairy tales witches are almost always hideously ugly, and unkempt. But they are always powerful and poisonous. They tend to wear dark clothes, and often hats, and are associated with broomsticks, black cats, magic spells and of course, curses.

If you take all the mythology and distill it, and you want to render it in a story, you have to remember what the wicked witch actually symbolises, and where she comes from. The wicked witch tends to be the foil of a young princess, although she may ensnare the prince. Here lies an important clue. Because what the witch really represents is the subliminal hatred the princess feels towards her mother in law. The wicked witch then is actually a caricature for mother in laws everywhere. Throughout history, probably, mother in laws have attempted to sabotage the marriage or dalliances of their precious sons by various means - both foul and fair.

It is very interesting to note in DRAG ME TO HELL that there is the omnipotent witch, and after her death (because she's more imagined than real), Christine encounters her partners mother, a disapproving, snobbish woman. Christine yearns for her approval, and bakes a Harvest Cake as part of her effort to win her over. Naturally the mother in law is disdainful at this attempt at domesticity.

The other point to make about the wicked witch is that she is a foreigner. A gypsy. Dark skinned. In Drag Me To Hell she sounds Russian. Once again, the suspicion of foreigners is something most people feel. Drag Me To Hell portrays the witch as a vomiting (sick, contagious) and vengeful terroriser. We feel for Christine as she battles to overcome the growing malaise that her encounter with the 'witch' propels her into.

Drag Me To Hell is shocking and scary for other reasons besides. Sudden activities, unexpected sights, very loud (and it has to be said, unlikely) noises. Whilst some scenes are terrifying in and of themselves, others are highly unlikely, and even laughable. It was interesting to note that the audience, who were very vocal throughout, groaned when the fly entered her nostril, gasped at the horror scenes, but chuckled or guffawed at a particularly gross but nevertheless scary scene that overstepped the the subtle boundary between terror and absurdity.



Now, the stereotypes are not necessarily false. For example, a foreign person or foreign noise may well present the first clue to some impending disaster. And, let's face it, if you go around doing bad things to people, bad things will come to you simply as a matter of cause and effect. This is true but not necessarily so. Look at the longevity of present day dictators like Robert Mugabe and Kim Jong Il. Has doing evil had a telling impact on their lives? One imagines, also, if the reaction to all this evil would have encouraged these men not to persist in it, but Kim still fires his missiles every so often, and Mugabe oppresses and it appears they continue to reap the benefits. So a general rule may exist, but it is not infallible or absolutely true.

Towards the end of Drag Me To Hell Christine admits that she should have granted the old woman the loan extension. Here the question arises, does she have a good heart after all? Did she deserve to live happily ever after? The waiting train, the ring and the 'prince' all represented the 'happily ever after phase'. All of this is based on the the premise, again, that bad things happen to people who do bad things.

Well, Mugabe and Kim Jong Il are the exceptions. Look at what happened to Hitler. And in terms of the average of all our actions, I am afraid that we can summarise our actions on Earth as evil. Evil being defined as something that is 'not good'. It is not good that each person consumes as many resources as we do. It's not good that we occupy our minds and hearts with meaningless drivel. It's not good that we are unable to respond to or even recognise that our environment is deteriorating rapidly around us. And for this there is a consequence. There is a consequence to our collective actions.

I don't know how those consequences will manifest, but they are, so far, as increased food shortages, the loss of jobs, and increased fear and uncertainty. The positive message from Drag Me To Hell is that fear isn't real. If we can shrug off the stereotypes and deal with the real issues, we can save ourselves a lot of torment. If we can see the facts rather than be numbed and controlled by the implications we'll be able to respond effectively. Who governs the way we respond? You do. You make the choice. Guard your thoughts. Be alert. Don't take what others say at face value.

The bad news is pretty bad. Because there's another lesson that is horrifying in our context, but nevertheless a simple truth. Drag Me To Hell demonstrates that you can't foist your problems, your addictions, your greed and lusts, your responsibilities, your destiny, onto someone else. You have to account and face what's coming. If you've been greedy you have to pay up, or fess up, or serve your sentence. And we know we have all been greedy. Anyone who drives a car burns a huge amount of the proportionate resources there should be per person. I think we intuitively know that.

For me, the scary part is that very few of us can even begin to imagine the situation we are already in, let alone agree on where we're at. We're in denial. That means our response to reality when it catches up to us is likely to be filled with panic, despair and absolute uncertainty. This website aims to prepare people mentally, and to say, we knew this was coming and there is a better way to manage this process. Here's what we can do.

Our choices may have become fewer, but our response can always better, more practical and more sustainable. We can control our response, and the quality of our response. If we don't make these choices, nature will make them for us. If that happens, nature also gets to decide whether it needs us to be part of the system. If we're able to believe that we're connected to, and part of nature, nature may be persuaded to eventually go easier on us.

More on Drag Me To Hell: half the picture is spent sullying Lohman's soft, appealing features with phlegm, maggots or embalming fluid. As a parable of the unwise decisions money tempts us into, it's as pertinent to certain dealers and leaders as it might be to a director coming off the back of an increasingly fraught series of superhero movies. (The final twist, certainly, underlines the importance of keeping a close eye on the pennies.)

The Silver Shadow [COLUMN]

There is a circular window where I live, on the western elevation, that lets in a circle of moonlight on some evenings. The fingers of a massive Bluegum, were moving in the cold, restless air outside, making delicate confettied patterns over the dark, hollowy interior.

And while this dance of silvery light was playing off the wooden floor, the small black steel hearth downstairs glowed orange and sent invisible bulging bubbles of heat to the loft bedroom where I was reading.

I started off reading a newspaper article that described how one Jewish family had effectively declared war on another Jewish family. The American parents of a teenager paralysed in a car accident whilst on a trip to South Africa to attend a bar mitzvah were suing the head of Investec Bank, David Kuper, for $24 million.

I will tell you in a moment what I read next, but before I do, a disclaimer. I have tremendous respect and love for George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, I admire the beauty of Nicole Kidman and Natalie Portman, I think Ben Stiller and Larry King are excellent. All Jews. I'm going to share a thought I had. This doesn't mean I encourage you to 'believe' or 'buy-in' to the same thought. It also doesn't mean it reflects my beliefs. It is merely something that occurred to me that is possibly worth considering (and possibly not). It may be as wrong as waking up on a Thursday and saying, "Thank God it's Friday." But I am sharing this with you because you may find it illuminating. At worst, you might find it interesting. But I can guarantee you that what I am about to share is 'not nice'. It's disturbing. That said, please don't accuse me of being anti-Semitic or even attempting to be. That would be a shallow response to the many troubling issues that face all people right now.

The line of thought began constructing itself in bed, reading a book on 'How to read the Bible', and my girlfriend lying in bed beside me reading the Bible. Suddenly it occurred to me that these familiar characters, almost as familiar as movie stars, and carrying the fabled significance even beyond children's favorite bedtime stories (Pinocchio, The Three Little Pigs, Hansel and Gretel), David, Moses and Joseph are all Jewish characters. They're the ancestors of some of those funny dressed people who walk around on Fridays, whose men-folk have long gray beards, cowboy hats, and funny ropes swaying under their dark suits. Their real names wouldn't have been so different, David ben for David and so on. But let's be clear. My Afrikaans girlfriend and I am reading about a tribe of people who essentially have nothing to do with the etymology of our people. When the Jews were in Egypt, where were the Saxons? Why aren't we reading their stories?

The answer emerges if one takes this question quite seriously. In the very early era the Jews were enslaved by the Egyptians. Evidently the Egyptians found them - the Jews - too valuable to eradicate in the sort of xenophobic holocausts that are all too common throughout human history. So the Jews as a tribe managed a sort of sputtering existence, until they escaped from Egypt. They were then taken to the 'Promised Land' by Moses. Interestingly, this situation has inspired many struggling tribes ever since, including South Africa's blacks during Apartheid, and Martin Luther King spoke about the Promised Land (and not living to see it even though he believed others would) the day before his assassination.

The Jews went on to populate the land of Canaan and were somewhat successful in exterminating the local tribes. They were warned not to give themselves to idolatry, which is the worship of things as opposed to concepts. Some writers say that the gift God gave them, Jerusalem, became like an idol to the Jews. They could not tear their religion away from the thing that God had given them. And nor could others who claimed Jerusalem as their own. And then the Romans (the Saxons - our tribe) came along. By this time the Bible (Judaism - the Old testament) was well underway. It had been written for a people without their own country, without their own land. The word for a worldless group. And it is for this reason, because the Jews were never able to fully conquer their territory, that their religion has endured the way it has for as long as it has. Instead of land, sovereign territory, they needed to collectively belong to a book to be an identifiable, separate group, capable of withstanding the horror or horrors - assimilation with other, lesser mortals.

What followed was enslavement by the Romans, which wiped out any real prospect of a Jewish revolution or independent state (which their Bible prescribed/predicted/prophesied). Jesus came and died, and while some Jews claimed he was the long lost messiah, others, finding their prospects to a homeland diminishing by the hour, rejected the practical unreality of this claim. The Jews became scattered, forming disparate communities all over the world, but especially in Germany, Russia and the USA. It was only after World War II, that they were offered, by their allies, unfettered access back to Palestine/Israel. What is certain is that the entire Middle East region is dominated by Islam/Arab populations, and to this day surrounds the Jewish state on all sides.

On the one hand one can argue that the special treatment the Jews received shows the best of humanity. That even though a people are weak, they ought to be protected. If that's true, why were no special conditions or terms or land set aside for the Bushman of Botswana (now virtually extinct) and a host of endangered tribes all around the world. Well, the answer is probably that Jews in governments in these other powerful states engineered the rescue of their own people; the restoration of Israel as a sovereign state. Non-Jewish Christians obviously helped in this process too, seeing in the Jews some fielty as lost (perhaps misguided) sons and brothers, but sons and brothers nonetheless. Money, owned in abundance by Jewish interests, would have provided the military capability to defend their interests in a way never before possible.

And those same moneyed interests, overseen by the likes of Alan Greenspan, have allowed the Jewish tribe to perpetuate themselves. Money and religion.

My own experience of the Jews is of an intelligent, expressive people who are friendly towards outsiders but suspicious of non-Jews. On the one hand, their history may be the reason why they have maintained their sense of Apartheid, and their religion (we are God's chosen people, not you), or both. What's interesting is the Jewish history that so many Christians read about in the Bible is exactly that, Jewish history. A commandment such as 'Thy shalt not kill' actually meant 'Thy shalt not kill a Jew'. I found it somewhat amusing, somewhat ironic, that my girlfriend (and her clan have been accused of similar Apartheid slights against others) finding reassurance, and comfort, in stories about another 'Apartheid Bunch', the Jews.

Now there are all sorts of good reasons for people of a certain type to associate with one another. Language and culture for instance. Religion. It's simply easier to understand one another, and the chances of conflict and misunderstanding are less. The Koreans exemplify this, and the other extreme. They have the most homogeneous society in the world, and consequently, the most successful and busy online communities. These communities are quite insular in the sense that they don't need American software or search engines to run them. They run perfectly well on their own systems, and they don't have too much to tempt them away when it's in a different language and operated by a foreign (more individualistic) mindset.

But there are also the North Koreans, who exemplify the cautionary tale of insularity taken too far. Insularity that impoverishes an entire people.

I would argue that the high degree of insularity, the painful perfectionism that assures the health and financial success of the Jews may not be that useful in brokering good democracies. Jews have separate basins, sometimes separate refrigerators to wash their milk and meat. The Koreans also have specially adapted Kimchi refrigerators. Jewish families place scrolls (or facsimiles thereof) in their doorways. All of this sort of thing, in every detail, gets very expensive to actually implement, and is it absolutely necessary? Imagine if every household went to these lengths? And if there is one thing I have learnt since my girlfriend has moved in, is that perfectionism and a dogmatic approach to one's individual preferences is a recipe for disaster. It's a recipe for heated conflict. Practical versus personal wants and needs.

I want to go back again to my own experience of Jews. I had a wonderful kindergarten life at a Jewish nursery school, and many of my father's friends (then and now) are Jewish. They taught him how to work with money and he has done well for himself. I have found the Jews in my experience to populate the world of advertising, and finance and media and movies. It's possible that they may take care of you and listen to you if you're friends with them or there is some other vested interest. I don't know. What I do know is that they prefer to do business with their own kind. They prefer to form cliques and clubs with their own kind. And for the most part, the women certainly don't like to be seen fraternising with non-Jewish men. Jewish men on the other hand fraternise with both sides, but only marry Jewish women.

Here's where I begin to wonder... You have a group of people who were crushed by successive regimes. They remained separate and invented a religion to maintain both their sense of superiority over other human beings, and also to blame these other human beings for sabotaging their God-ordained success. Christians hijacked this faith, but went further. They imposed this faith not on single tribes, but on all tribes. Yes, you had to follow a few rituals, but they were able to grow it into the world's largest tradition - Christianity.
It occurred to me that the Jewish penchant for detail and slavish attention to rites is great for shackling a family to a tribe whose very existence was under threat (or construed to be) since time immemorial. But at the same time, this belief (exclusive rather than inclusive, superior rather than democratically equal) is guaranteed to isolate any group - for better or worse - from other communities. And worse, as I've said, by virtue of their arrogant boast (we're God's chosen people and you're not) the group makes itself a permanent target for persecution.

It occurs to me then that when we read about Jewish stories, we see them more as iconic tales about the human condition - the search for freedom from oppression, how small defeats big, how divine intervention is interpreted into our history, why we are special. I look at similar insular activities such as this:

Japan’s corporate insularity is a deep-seated trait—and one celebrated by its most successful firms. “I learned very early”, wrote Sony’s co-founder, Akio Morita, in his 1986 autobiography, “never to listen to ideas from outsiders.” Unfortunately, for all Japan’s strengths, such self-obsession stops it making the most of its considerable potential to create world-beating Sonys in a wider range of industries.

If the Jews and Japanese, Koreans and Afrikaners wished to maintain a degree of separation from other people, they achieved it. The Koreans have since shipped in English teachers in order for their schoolchildren to learn the language, to conduct commerce with the West. Korea has stepped forward and risen quickly to become the 13th largest economy in the world (behind India). Afrikaners - I see many of them talking English, and engaging with the world, either on their own terms or on terms that work. The Japanese have adapted their formulas to successful America models before - although it took a war and two atomic weapons to do it. The Jews are different in one crucial respect - if they're God's chosen people they certainly don't need to filthy themselves in the company of lesser heathens. They're content to do business with us, but no more.

I hope that communities will learn to embrace their common humanity going into the future. That does not necessarily mean that communities should merge, but that they should learn, at last, of their common heritage, their common humanity. The story of the Jews is a tragic one. Perhaps they were a people destined to lose, and they have been propped up in part by their faith (which has been a self-reinforcing reality - of faith causing self imposed asylum), in part by finance, in part by sheer stubbornness. It remains to be seen whether such traits can or ever will be rewarded in the grander scheme of things. What we know is that the most Jewish of traits (if one goes by the typification's we find in the average joke), greed, is behind the collapse of the world's financial systems. The perfectionistic counting of money and playing accounting games on and off balance sheets has, we're seeing now, wrecked the prospects for entire countries. It may have seemed incredibly clever to those who started playing these games on Wall Street. Hitler would say that the financial meltdown is the Jew's fault. It's not. Greed became a common cause. If you possess a credit card then you were one of an army of willing participants. Who decided to advertise these credit cards to us, and telling us it was a carefree, no hassle convenience is another question. I think our interest in Jewish interests and their self-obsession is overblown - the reason for this lies in their and (and us borrowing their) religion. Abandon the religion and you recover your common humanity.

Once we can let go of an arrogant belief, a sense of self-entitlement to prosperity and heaven, perhaps we can begin to learn to live like decent human beings, together. Although it is as simple as that, abandoning an arrogant belief about ourselves, the Jews have not done so for millenia, and I don't see the rest of mankind doing much better even in the face of terrible crisis. We may have been programmed to be stubborn, but the more chaotic an environment, the more stubborn inflexible programmes are programmed to fail.

And that night I dreamt I was walking in the rain through the streets of Seoul, South Korea. I entered a dark room and began to urinate. When I woke up, I found the bed wet. The silver circle on the floor was gone, and all I was left with was the unpleasant residue of a dream made manifest, by me. That is to say, our road takes us exactly to that real soggy-in-the-dark place where our dreams, our hearts, our beliefs, dwell. Be careful what you dream my friend, whoever you are. Be even more careful encouraging others to share in your dreams, because they may take you to a place which becomes a prison. A prison of your own desires and dreams, and that is a prison impossible to escape, unless of course you're able to wake yourself - and others - from it.

It's cool by the Pool - right [COLUMN]

I mentioned to my girlfriend that swine flu was expected by the WHO to infect 2 billion people. She responded saying, “Look, I’m going to say something very nasty, and I hope I’m not one of the people that disease kills, but the world will be better off with far fewer people.”

You can’t argue with this logic. But it is a terrifying place to be. Swine flu may not turn out to be a killer pandemic, but every successive wave is closer to the one that will be. The microbial specialists like Oxford and Bragg that I’ve spoken to believe we’re almost at the ‘city limits’ of a place called Pandemic. The signs beside the highway have shown a consistent pattern saying we are getting closer and closer. Look at AIDS, H5N1, SARS and other exotic illnesses like West Nile and Dengue [Black Water Fever] that are resurging.

Right now, as I right this, I have the flu. It’s seasonal. It’s normal. It feels pretty rotten to have a swollen head and irritated nose and airways. But it makes perfect sense that an annual sickness that hits us in a different form every year should be the vehicle for a killer flu. It is also fascinating to observe the media and other educated people being dismissive about swine flu. If swine flu does mutate into a virulent killer, or if some other hybrid (H5N1 + H1N1 for example) emerges, one day our children might ask how come so many people did so little when the writing was already on the wall. The answer is simply that we became too arrogant and to clever for own good.

Some might take that (arrogance and ‘thinking oneself to be clever’) as a compliment. A certain level of confidence is good, for example in sport, (think Lance Armstrong) and business (Richard Branson). But when that confidence disconnects from reality, expect that sports hero of yours to fail. Expects the business to slide into the gutter when the businessman thinks he deserves his success not based on hard work, or strategy, or providing a good service, but because the marketing (bullshitting) is good, because the emperor’s new clothes are all impressive.

We are most certainly a species primed for disaster. Overfed, overconfident, overeasy.

I’ll close the column today with a quote from Mahala.co.za writing about free to air South African Tv channel ETV and the writer is Brandon Edmonds. Brandon, tip of the cowboy hat to you for this. You’ve nailed the moral malaise in this country:
It’s as if the minds and the money behind ETV have picked up a newspaper and taken a look at the reality of the country, and they’ve seen the raw truth of this place, as it is (and was). The slayings, the rape, the carjackings, the forced entries, the Aids orphans, the single-parent families, the plummeting value of a life, the lack of service delivery, the graft and corruption, the indifference and the lies, the ever-widening chasm between those who have and those who don’t, those who can and those who can’t, and they’ve said:

“We’ll give them what they want. What they deserve! We’ll set up a channel that feeds them images and talks to them at a level they can understand! We’ll give them… shit!”
It’s inspired, really. Its almost revolutionary. Its bold as punk rock. It just might be, besides ‘Disgrace’ by JM Coetzee and a few paintings and a couple of protest songs here and there, the most significant cultural intervention of the post-apartheid era. A TV channel that (un)consciously mirrors the worst of a people.

And of course, recently, we see Zuma telling a fellow politician he can keep a bribe. After all that Zuma has been through, he endorses his colleagues’ receiving handouts that of course will influence what they do. I read a columnist though who was surprised and disappointed that Zuma did not object to the irregularities around the prevention of the Vodacom listing. It occurred to me that she is one of the majority of schmucks in this country, who, when someone says, “I swear I didn’t take any money” believes them, and thinks they ought to have a chance to prove themselves not in court, but as president. The costs of being wrong are paid by all of us, and we are about to pay a hefty sum as we slip further and deeper into a recession. {Yes, we are now ‘technically’ in a recession, although that reality has been with us for some time, hence the ‘shock’ drop of 6.4% in GDP.

With each passing day I can see people starting to care more about that back alley, that drain, that ladle filled with gravy – where our tax payers money disappears. I see that ‘caring’ manifesting in strikes the likes of which this country has never seen. The government has earned the right to see a populace they have lied to and stolen from (stolen funds allocated to housing, roads, education, service delivery etc) turn on them. This government will be known as After-Apartheid, and will probably be despised.

In the meantime, we can look forward, happily, and with stars twinkling in our eyes, to the 2010 soccer world cup. Yep, we can dream about the color and festivities [providing we’re able to blank out large proportions of our own brains]. Yep 2010 is going to be awesome, and we deserve it. Question is, can government muzzle the media and doctors to keep quiet that – ssssshh – swine flu is already in South Africa. Ssssh. Pass me that cheque from the stadium contractor so we can cash it. Sssh. If we just keep quiet until it’s here we can get rich and hopefully this swine business will just go away. It’s all over the world but it’s not here. Because it doesn’t have to be! We get what we deserve, right? Drinks anyone?

It's cool by the Pool - right [COLUMN]

When I was swimming in gym today I asked the girl in my lane if she was from Australia. "Yes, how'd you know." She was wearing a yellow cap with the letters AUS on it. An Ozzie, working in London, in South Africa for a few days on some banking assignment with ABSA. Interestingly enough, one of my pals who works for Standard Bank was in London a few days ago. And my spin instructor has just returned from New York and she's been feeling fluish of late...the last class she couldn't find a subsitute so she just pedalled slowly and told us what to do. The point of this paragraph is to show how global everything has become. It's no wonder swine flu is moving this fast. The global number of infected is approaching 10 000.

But I'm not going to talk about swine flu. I've already said it's a more serious threat than most people realise. And it's not going off the radar for a good while, even if newsrooms have temporarily forgotten about it.

I am going to talk about the future. Many of us I think are hoping things will get back to normal. Maybe the banks will sort themselvesout, maybe this, maybe GM will just rebound. Sorry, none of that is going to happen.

If you believe there is a recession (some still don't) then you may be holding out for signs of a recovery. The average economist believes that the market moves in cycles, like the change of seasons. Well, the change of seasons - climate change notwithstanding - is scheduled to keep up the basic pattern for a while. Sorry, market cycles are a thing of the past. What we are now experiencing is deleveraging, where the markets go into boom and bust. It's erratic, it's chaotic and for a lot of the participants out there once they go bust it's over. GM is about to go bust. In 5 years, the GM brand will be ancient history, even if FIAT do their damndest to rescue what they can. FIAT and other automakers will follow.

But what about us?

Jeff Rubin puts it perfectly, and quite simply:
[We will] work and vacation nearer to home, eat locally grown foods and buy locally produced goods, and suburban sprawl is replaced by revitalized cities.

"I think it will really restructure the economy in ways that people haven't even begun to imagine," he said. "But I think, ironically, it's going to be a return to the past ... in terms of the re-emergence of local economies."

Our lives are about to become a lot more modest; the scale of everything is going to contract - here's the good part - to something we knew when we were teenagers or kids. Grocer's will return (shops selling only produce). Butcher's, bakers and candlestick makers (cottage industries) will return, and those companies that destroyed them, WAL-MART, CARREFOUR and PICK 'N PAY will disappear as depleting energy supplies bite. I know this seems very unlikely now (shortages) but the next phase of energy backwardation and contango is going to create even more radical spikes in oil prices. Crashes will erode more and more industries that tended to take cheap energy endowments for granted.

And some of those industries are in transport. Airlines will contract again and this time, only a handful will stay behind to play pass the hot potato. Countries that manufacture cars will struggle. Japan, the USA, Britain. Countries that adapt quickly and use their savvy to invest wisely may do better - like South Korea. It's a tough call for these Asian countries. On the one hand they have the tech, on the other they are far more dependent on energy than the West, with the exception of the USA and possibly Australia. Right now though, countries like Korea have the option to use the low energy prices to stimulate other industries. Guess what - they are.

South Korea will be rewarded for this forward-thinking mentality. However, some poor countries will see the few choices they had evaporate. Including North Korea and Pakistan and Zimbabwe. They are likely to beg, or blame and will be surprised to find their usual patrons distracted by chronic problems of their own.

We'll see a surge of diseases and troubles. People are likely to militate against one another.
Whatever we do, this phase of contraction, of permanent decline, will go on. It will be bad for people, it will be good for nature. The climate will have a chance to go less out of whack than it already is.

The world will become a much bigger place again. And irony will go out the window. People will no longer be able to make self-deprecating or ironic jokes about how bad things are. They're unlikely to be funny. We may laugh at other things. How stupid we were once upon a time. The fact that we thought this notion of cars, that easy motoring was a lifestyle choice that would go on forever. That suburbia was something everyone with a job was entitled to... Sorry, no jobs, no house, no car. No more trips to the mall. No more franchised gyms or franchised anything. Local enterprises will come up. Bicycle shops, mechanics, fruit sellers, flower sellers, shoe merchants, small clothing boutiques.

The good news is this: when energy prices have increased enough there won't be so much trade going on. Less imports and exports. That means there will be more work for the man in the street, employed in ordinary things, factories for example, making toilet seats and fishing rods, cupboards and carpets.

What impact will the internet have on all this? It may help to smooth the transition,and build communities that the internet in the CONSUME CONSUME CONSUME era helped to destroy. The internet may really redeem itself not as a purveyor of porn, or a gossip shoveller, but as a truly useful enabler of communities.

More: Steer clear of 'things aren't so bad' stories

It's cool by the Pool - right [COLUMN]

Wow...where to start? Look, I voted for Helen Zille and she seems to be of sound mind and what not. I also can't fault her for calling Zuma an AIDS-risk to his wife. That's a bit like saying it is now winter in South Africa. You could debate it but it would just make you look a little, well...ja.

Zille seems to have the moral high ground but then she goes and appoints a nincompoop as MEC for education. Even Donald Grant himself was surprised by the appointment, conceding to Beeld that he did “a crash course in education on the Internet” to prepare for the role. Grant's experience is limited to the fishing industry. That's him immediately below. Does his mug inspire confidence?

Then there are the stock markets. The Dow Jones is already 30% from its March lows. The gloom in the financial markets is blowing over, recovery is on its way - right? Wrong. The Wall Street Journal is calling this slight uptick in stock markets a Sucker's Rally - I tend to agree:

I'm bullish when I see productivity driving wealth. For now, the market appears dependent on a hand cranking out dollars to help fund banks. I'd rather see rising expectations for corporate profits.

And as Memorial Day nears, gasoline prices in the US - as usual - are ticking upwards. Who in hell knows why? I mean, oil supplies are at 19 year highs, demand is at record lows, but oil prices still fantasise their way to $60?

I've been scouring the internet looking for something to be positive about. Inspiration is very thin out there. But there's always this.

Lance at the Start of Stage 4 Giro d'Italia -- powered by http://www.livestrong.com

I think Lance epitomises one thing that is sorely lacking in the world, pretty much everywhere. Hard-nosed discipline. And he's consistent. If we intend to thrive in the future we'll need to have what he's having in our porridge.

PANIC/DON'T PANIC

It's Cool by the Pool - Right? [COLUMN]

When I saw this headline - DON'T PANIC - on The Times' poster my spirits lifted. I thought they'd done an analysis, and were commenting insightfully on the conundrum we face in South Africa economically and otherwise.
Without having looked at the paper, my inner dialogue kicked in and I said to myself...Don't Panic? Perhaps we should be. Not apeshit all out craziness, but maybe we need to panic for a full five minutes and take down a few notes.

As a matter of fact earlier this week I watched a documentary downloaded about 5 years ago in South Korea titled The Impending Stock Market Crash. It was made in the early nineties and showed to what extent the USA was borrowing far beyond its means, hardly even able to make the interest payments on debt. USA's borrowing was also far more than any other country. And what was the scariest of all was that in a scenario of Economic Depression, the Middle Class essentially get wiped out through a mixture of taxes, pensions that evaporate along with jobs and all the rest. It becomes a scenario of the government versus the middle class. See, the resource base of the government is the middle class, and most of the time the government basically parasites off its host, but as long as the economy swims along, the host doesn't fuss too much. In a Depression scenario it becomes a case of the Government turning from parasite to cancer, becoming a terminal illness to the Middle Classes. The Government in the final analysis uses the tools at its disposal to crush (if it cannot control) the population - the police and the military.

Our prospects in South Africa seem okay on the face of it. We have our endowments of coal which allow us to run SASOL (climate change notwithstanding). Our banks are looking good. Our economy is in postitive territory - barely.

The World Economic Forum this week rated South Africa’s banks the 15th most secure out of 134 countries rated, beating even Switzerland (16th), Germany (39th), the US (40th) and Britain (44th).

“That is a very important accolade,” Manuel said, adding that strict bank regulation was among measures that had built confidence in South Africa’s financial system.

And we'll get a little more bounce around 2010 as the rest of the world slips. On the other hand, we have issues to worry about that might be worth panicking about. If you thought the Xenophobia in 2008 was bad, well, it was one little candle on a birthday cake compared to what is going to happen this year.

South Africans, especially the working class, are used to employing overthrow tactics for what they want. They're easy to incite. Give them something to gripe about and they'll take to the streets. There is also a large population of criminals already out there. And there is a large population of sick people.
Looting by ordinary civilians and criminal anarchy the likes of which we have never seen are likely to flare up as unemployment and economic hardship worsen. This will flare up as the perception of hopelessness sets in, as it surely must. I'd anticipate this happening in winter - in July or August this year. Unlike 2008, it will not blow over in a week, it will last a few dark months, perhaps the entire spring.

Sickness is likely to cut stressed populations down like wheat in the near future. Both ordinary influenzas and also exotic diseases riding on the back on new climate patterns, shifting into new areas. We will see cholera breaking out again and again along with more nasty virusses - Ebola, H5N1 and others. These opportunistic outbreaks will gain ground as we scramble for fewer and fewer resources.

Food shortages will be felt worldwide in 2009, probably around September/October/November when the US harvesting season kicks in (or would have).

The other aspect is ESKOM. We aren't out of the woods in terms of supply of sparks, we never were. Our population is growing, and the number of households going onto the grid is increasing every day. Will ESKOM get the financing it needs? The only positive is that some massive Aluminium smelters have gone offline as the auto industry has disappeared. Despite this, it is a matter of time before electricity shortages kick in, and before that, we'll see prices going up when most ordinary people can least afford it.

It was a big mistake to not pursue those pebble bed reactors, and one generations after this one are likely to rue.

Jon thinks that there's gonna be a nuclear war. - WATCHMEN

The tensions between countries has never been greater. There are flashpoints now in the Ukraine (between Russia and Europe), in Europe itself, especially the eastern Bloc, in Israel and Gaza with Iran next door, and North Korea finding themselves unused to the position of not being given handouts whenever they rattle their sabres. There's also Pakistan and Afghanistan.

We are fortunate to be where we are in relatively isolated South Africa when contemplating the probability of a nuclear missile strike. It is terrible to say, but we are likely to see this materialise soon. I discussed with a friend recently that I thought this is more likely to occur on American soil than anywhere else. The Bible, incidentally, makes no mention of the USA in any of its prophecies. It doesn't feature on the map at all.

In any event, here is a small list of do's and don'ts for the coming catastrophes:

1) Do eat healthy food. You are what you eat. Don't eat junk, don't be a junkie, be a healthy person. Eat plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables. Eating right also immediately addresses one of the primary problems each of us cause - aggregate demand.

2) Do exercise. A healthy body is a healthy mind, and a healthy mind is becoming a rare commodity today.

3) Make something or do something that is useful to your community. Start a blog, start a garden or a forum. Fix things. Contribute. Become a valued member of your neighborhood.

Don't:

1) Watch too much television, or movies. Think what you are doing each day...think how this adds up to the general malaise. Start helping. Stop watching Idols and other useless drivel.

2) Expect heroes or leaders to save you.

3) Make bad decisions...such as turning to alcohol, or antidepressants. Reality is unlikely to show you much mercy if you turn your back on it in the coming difficult period.

Rorschach's Journal: October 12th 1985. Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout 'Save us!'

clipped from www.thetimes.co.za South Africans face a tough two years [just 2?] in the wake of the global financial turmoil, but there is no need to panic, says finance minister Trevor Manuel. Prices will rise, exports will fall and the economic growth that creates jobs will be harder to maintain, Manuel told the Sunday Times from Washington, where he is attending the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Manuel issued this warning after a week of worldwide economic upheaval, in which the rand slumped against major currencies and the overall value of shares invested on the JSE plunged R300-billion in just one day — translating into a loss of national wealth of more than R6000 for every man, woman and child in the country. “Anticipate changes,” said Manuel, “but there is no cause to panic.”

It's cool by the pool - right? [COLUMN]

I read a forecast for 2009 prepared by researchers at Standard Bank. I felt it was quite optimistic. I emailed a few of the people involved and we're now in fairly frequent discussions via email. The critical question is this:

How bad is the current, global, financial malaise?
Well, it's bad. Is it really bad, or really really bad?
Really bad = a recession.
Really really bad = a depression.

So far, we've tended to err on the side of underestimating the crap that's going down. In terms of climate change, in terms of the credit crisis when it first manifested (a lot of economists and bankers fobbed it off or dismissed it as no big deal, and recession talk was also called 'doomsday'.)


Right now it looks like Japan has charged ahead into a Depression, with the UK, USA and Poland hot on the heels of their - Japans' - financial decrepitude.
Why is Japan having it so bad? Well, because Japans economy is based on making and exporting cars. The car market is dead. Because the housing market is dead. And thus financing is dead.

The implications of a Depression in the 21st century aren't great. We can anticipate, generally, an upsurge in crime around the world (the Somali pirates are one exponent of this, terrorism and looting is another). Disease - associated with stress and also associated with a changing environment - will probably flare up in a series of widening pandemics.

And Climate Change - severe weather - is likely to trouble us in our distress even more.
The temptation to go to far over water or some other excuse is likely to increase over the next phase.

It's not cool by the pool. It's getting less cool with each passing moment. Try to keep your head though, while those about you are losing theirs. If you can do that, tell me how.

It's cool by the pool - right [COLUMN]

I'd like to believe I am a realist, and a humanist. If you're realistic, you can then start operating with all the information you need and go further on your journey than you otherwise might.

In this sense it is tough for me to have to report that the credit crisis really has fundamentally altered our way of life permanently. 2008 was a crucial year. In the same way that the years 1918, 1930 and 1945 will be remembered, so will 2008. 2008 represents the turning point, a sharp decline after the most prosperous period in human history, and also the most prosperous time there will ever be.

It is hard to believe or even acknowledge the ruptures that have taken place. After all, many of us still have jobs, earn a salary, and life pretends to be virtually the same, a few months later, in 2009.

So it's cool by the pool right? I am sad to say that this is an illusion. In a few more months reality will catch up even more and entire countries (yes nations) will begin to backslide and convulse and suffer from itchy rashes and irritations. More and more people will begin to struggle more and more.


It is not difficult to apply logic to this scenario and say that the following scenarios then become increasingly likely -

1) as the human population becomes increasing stressed worldwide, more people will be susceptible to infectious disease, and less and less able to afford to contain these diseases
2) as wealth evaporates, nations will begin to rub against other nations. In Europe we are seeing the quarrels over Russian supplied gas in winter lead to friction...because the agency country - Ukraine - can't pay its bills. This sort of behaviour may lead to war. Another tinderbox is the Iran - Israel - Gaza Trifecta.
3) The prevalence of crime - and civil strife - is likely to be unprecedented. This is particularly worrisome in a country like South Africa, where crime is already at unconscionable levels.

Right now more, more and more communities are going to need someone like Batman, as anarchy (simply unemployment and then crime) and chaos begins to infest suburbia.

It's cool by the Pool - right? [COLUMN]

I'd like to believe that I am an actualist. And one example of me actualising myself in my own realistic 'scenario' was completing the 2005 Ironman. It's not what you think. It wasn't a great triumph in the sense of training the body to a point of super-fitness. That was a part of the equation until I became sick with a few weeks to go. Then 'being realistic' about one's chances meant seeking a minimum level of success. A 'minimum level of success' might sound like giving in, like a hopeless state. Well, that depends on the resources and one's objective chances to begin with, doesn't it?

I am sure we can all disagree on our propects and resources, and this lack of consensus provides an excuse for those who are too lazy or self indulgent to remain lazy and self-indulgent. The opposite of these of course is discipline, and it is not difficult to see how lacking in that we are. Go outside your front door and try to find a fat person. Let's not muck about. Someone who is excessively fat is not moving their body around as mkuch as they need to. They are a health risk even to themselves;and the primarily health risk starts in the way in which they think; in their emotional response to pain, to work, to discipline.

There are times when I believe our abundance and our brilliance may not exaggerate but ameliorate our problems. I wonder, at times, what effect the internet might have in reducing our dependence on systems that we may no longer easily afford - such as postal networks, telephones and ordinary entertainment.

Whatever the answer, tonight, while the first black American president in history was inaugurated, I went to watch a movie called Despereaux, about a small mouse who does not know how to cower in fear and as a result is thrown out of Mouseworld. Ironically enough, this sentiment was the main thrust of Obama's inauguration speech:
'choose hope/courage over fear'.

There will be much to fear, and much to concern ourselves with in 2009 and after. It will be a test of our private and collective discipline whether we can hold ourselves together as one nation after another is tested and tested again. We will see that it is not cool by the pool, not even close. Whether we can keep our cool while temperatures rise around us, is really the question.

It's cool by the Pool - right? [COLUMN]

This is the 9470th post on this blog. Will it make any difference? Is there a point to this internet jibber jabber, or do I take didactic pleasure in hearing my fingers do the typing.

I was watching Ster Trek recently. It's set in the far future. Around 4 centuries from now. In that construct there is no money. Star Fleet is the authority in this time, their mandate seems to be peaceful exploration in the search of sentient life. The people in this time are motivated by 'betterment', to 'better themselves'. This naturally involves exploring other world's, finding out more about ourselves and other technologies.

In our world our mandate is based on greed isn't it? And greed is good. Supposed to be? Well think about it. If everyone is greedy, what is the result?

Gordon Gekko: Ever wonder why fund managers can't beat the S&P 500? 'Cause they're sheep, and sheep get slaughtered.
Gordon Gekko: The most valuable commodity I know of is information.
Gordon Gekko: Greed captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
Carl Fox: "I came into Egypt a Pharoah who did not know."
Gordon Gekko: I beg your pardon, is that a proverb.
Carl Fox: No, a prophecy. The rich been doing it to the poor since the beginning of time. The only difference between the Pyramids and the Empire State Building is the Egyptians didn't allow unions. I know what this guy is all about, greed. He don't give a damn about Bluestar or the unions. He's in and out for the buck and he don't take prisoners.
Gordon Gekko: What's worth doing is worth doing for money.

Well, here's a reality check. Those fund managers have gotten slaughtered. So have everybody else. We've built an empire of money, and what is money? It is a perception of value. When you take out a loan, that costs you interest. That's a perception of a perception of value. And so the road becomes more and more muddled. Right now, the value of money is diminished. The reality is that without certain resources, industry based on money cannot be sustained.

Greed captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed or the life force. The instinct for survival. Competitive behaviour? Greed may be an element of this, but strictly speaking it is not the right term. Greed is self-interested. The evolutionary spirit is connected and also gives information to the universe. There is a shared response to everything that happens. All life benefits.

What's worth doing is worth doing for money. That is the mantra of this world. Who cares what the consequences are. If a burger is cheap and fills the spot, that's all that counts right? What if hamburgers and Coke, two of the world's top 10 brands are primarily responsible for the number 1 cause of death in human beings. That's right, heart disease. More people die from high cholesterol, high blood pressure - from what we eat - than from smoking cigarettes.
No, very little of what we have been doing for money is worth it. Not for ourselves, even less for others.

It is possible that in time we may agree to live in a cashless society. Where we will act for the benefit of ourselves and others, without the expectation of reward or return.
Think about Bushmen in the Kalahari. No possessions. No ownership of property. Animals are killed in order to allow the tribe to survive and remain. To the extent that animals are killed in excess, in the Thirstland conditions they risk depleting the natural stores immediately around them. They respect every life they take, they apologise to the creatures they kill. Do we?

We may not live to see a time when people are motivated not by money. Where great wealth, collecting things is restricted to 1% of the world, while the majority starve, cannot read, and are victims of their destitute lifestyles.
In a world where we do not fight to protect our phantom wealth, there is no need for military, or weapons.
We can begin, nevertheless, to operate out of that benign spirit. Do you feel the compulsion to be connected to an intelligent, conscious system - the same system that gave birth to you, that you recognised as a child as so vast and wonderful?

In our families, and with friends, we operate to some extent out of a shared experience. There is no reason why we cannot extend some of these privileges to the laity. Cyclists knows this. They share their energies, they trust one another. This trust is based on the most simple partnership philosophy: you are in the same situation as I. By helping you, not only do I benefit, but all benefit. In the group I find protection and safety, and many of us are smarter than the individual.

We have the option to escape the Money Mindset in each and every moment. Yes, we need to buy food to live. But to the extent that we begin to produce and provide our own food and goods, we can move out of this transaction-based form of living, into a higher existence, and a shared experience. In any event, we cannot realistically pursue growth strategies any longer. The future will be, in many respects, about trading favours. Carbon trading may be the beginning of this. Eventually, we will have to provide for ourselves. That was in the natural scheme of things, and we will revert in the fullness of time, to this balance again.