Saturday, 18 June 2016

Family accounts for the International Day of Yoga…(21 June - 3 days to go)

On a typical day – in this century, not the 19th, as depicted – if you’re one of the 391,000 being born, some 163,800 people are dying, making a net daily population growth of some 227,000. Of the deceased, 25,000 have died of hunger today, despite the fact that there are more than double the number of overweight in the world (1.6bn) than there are undernourished (770m).

You may be among the 2,500 people who have realised this today and just committed suicide. Or you may be among the 3,000 dying in road accidents. No! Sorry, you wouldn’t be reading this if you were…. But those are the statistics. We don’t know how many have been killed in wars, terrorism and other forms of violence…

If you survive, you get publicly educated to the tune of US$1.30 a day. You get public healthcare at the rate of US$1.50 a day. So far so good... But watch out, we also spend US$0.65 per day on military pursuits, which is half of what is spent on education, so when you get out of school and remember only half of what you’ve learnt, the cost is exactly the same as what has been spent on means of mutual destruction. And we thought we were smart…. and innocent, right?

Well, don’t worry, the sun shines on all alike at the rate of some 3 trillion MWh today, which apart from a few clouds and the fact that only half the world gets the biggest blast of this at any one time, is more than enough to keep the whole planet going, with or without us crazy, unaccountable human beings who really don’t seem to know what to spend money on in a cost-effective way.

If there is some kind of next step in evolution, it will have to be like this:

·    Long term planning for effective spending and use of resources… “Long-term” means for the next 2500 years. Not for one 4-year election period.
·    Proper education of human wants, needs and desires to account for the above, including:
ü  Immediate preparations for global Television Channel supporting “yoga”, “meditation” and “self-awareness” and “world citizenship” as a means for real human education. 2016 is the 2nd year that the UN celebrates the International Day of Yoga on 21 June. See Background here. And it is now 63 years since the first World Government of WorldCitizens was declared.  These initiatives, together with available social media and large-scale funding contributions, will bring more calmness and peace to the human mind. And from there, we can work towards:
o  Commencement of an ongoing ban on violence of all kinds, especially in the younger generation. No more hammer-bashing heroes, no more military honours, no more soldiers, no more children’s and teenage and adult “entertainment” lauding violence of any kind. No more vengeance and revenge, no more good guys and bad guys, no more fighting, no more terror, no more scary movies. Things are scary enough without them. Sorry, entertainment industry – you’re simply 19th-century and you have to adapt or be phased out.
o    Immediate ban on negative emotions of all kinds. No more self-justification or justification for others that they “couldn’t help it”. Diminish wishy-washy soap operas full of neurotic examples, and plan for obsolescence over the short term – one generation.
o   Initial curtailment and cessation within one generation of arms and weapons production. 5-year slowdown and 10 year ban on the manufacture of bullets and rockets and explosives and nuclear weapons. There are enough nuclear weapons (total approx. inventory 15,850 “warheads”, Source: SIPRI) already to kill everyone on the planet dozens of times over.
o   Thiis would require current-day politicians from all over the world to actually meet, sit down together, decide to work and actually earn their income for the benefit of humanity – not for the benefit of their homeland political parties or personal interests. This would phase out many and we would be left with a handful of good-hearted, straight-thinking politicians. And if we change, they change, for sure.
·    With this, everything else will fit into place over the medium term – say within 3-4 generations. Without this, a miracle will have to happen if humanity wants to survive the next 50 to 150 years without large-scale die-out from famine, disease or warfare. Either we accept the New Age, or we go out with the Old One. The New World is capable of doing the accounts for the entire planet. What are we waiting for?

We can’t use Forbes’ Wealthiest Countries list 2015 and choose the top 80. We have to go for Wikipedia, because they provide easy access to the population data from each country. The first 80 are all above Int$15,000 a year as measured in GDP data per capita: from Qatar at No. 1 with some Int$132,099 per capita, down to Palau at Int$15,182. The population of these 80 countries is around 2.1 billion, or 28% of the world total. These countries, capable of giving their populations income levels above a bare minimum of 15,000, will have to help the remaining 72%, which are in worse condition, often through no real fault of their own, as they were colonised and pushed around by the bigger powers of old.

The figures are in what are called Geary–Khamis dollars, more commonly known as international dollars (Int$). Let’s say we could encourage these 80 countries to request an annual contribution of Int$0.50 per capita for New Era educational affairs. That’s Int$1,053,556,795. Umm… yes, 1 billion 53 and a half million dollars for a Global TV channel promoting the spiritual process, aka yoga, aka self-awareness, aka virtues, or enhanced human consciousness, or call it “global welfare”… Not bad for a start, compared to CNN's $856 million budget, and about half of the BBC’s 2.2 billion (of which about  £255.2 million comes from a UK government grant)!

It definitely can be done. Why wait until it’s too late? Why do I have to wait for the world to improve slowly, if it ever does! Let’s just talk to Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and others like Saudi Prince Al-Waheed bin Talal, recently pledging to donate his £32 billion fortune to charity, Warren Buffet, GeorgeSoros, technology pioneer and Intel founder Gordon Moore, Laura and John Arnold Foundation, and many more. With a little legwork, we can even top the BBC’s 2.2 billion.

I am ready to give my 50 cents to the foundation of this TV channel. In fact, instead of 50 cents a year, I’ll give 50 cents a month! It’ll be worth it.

In five years time, we can even rake some savings off the public military expenditure for educational purposes, at, say 10 cents a day per capita from the US$0.68 per day per capita currently being spent. That’s an annual budget of Int$270 billion, right? 

How about that for a business plan to support human life and all life on this planet, instead of wasting money on violence, weaponry and killing?

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