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Tony Sandy

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It is not a financial crisis we're facing but a moral and morale one

We have reached a stage in our social evolution, where people feel they have arrived, compared to earlier generations, who struggled to create the industrial infrastructure we now enjoy the refined version of. The unstated question is what now? Where do we go from here?

This societal lack of confidence isn't a monetary depression but a spiritual one. Like Buddha in his palace, we have questions niggling at our conscience about the rest of the world and suffering but we are resisting its draw of our attention and it is killing us. We can only remain selfish and conceited for only a certain amount of time before the situation implodes and society collapses, instead of explodes into the next stage of growth or planetary evolution.

Topics: conscience decadence decay depression finances growth material addiction
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    Orlando Hawkins 20+

    • +1
    Mar 22 2012: I agree, money does not equal to happiness. It may lead to a sense of well-being because one needs money for food, shelter, clothing etc but this by no means, mean that we have to base our lives around it...

    in the pursuit of profit, we have lost touch with just about everything else that matter and sadly I'm not so sure of what's next. I mean the economic issues that we are facing is only evidence that money isn't the gateway to happiness

  • Tony Sandy

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    Mar 2 2012: You're right, it isn't a religious question but a spiritual one. Spirit means we are in charge. Religion means a God out there that is (abdicating our responsibility for the reality we create by putting it down to fate / karma. The former means we are adults, the latter children in the hands of a God / parent, that can be benevolent or sadistic at its whim.

  • Sharon McCann 10+

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    Mar 1 2012: Societies swing over time. Sanity is found in the balance of human nature and human potential. We have the potential to be amazing spiritually ascendant peoples, but we also have the potential to be creatures of horror, a mean spirited lack of empathy that always hurts us as individuals and as societies.

    What matters if we recognize the dominant ideologies as pushing us in one direction or the other and choose, open mindedly choose, to push our own societies and our own lives in one direction or the other. Sadly, right now, we have had 30+ years of "enlightened self interest" that has taken hold on a grand scale and has wreaked havoc on us. It is time for a major shift in ideology.

    You are correct that it is a moral problem, but many are mistaking the spiritual nature of it for a religious issue and the two are not the same at all. We are at crisis point. As a species humans must soon decide: Which are we?

  • Tony Sandy

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    Feb 29 2012: True, they are both true simultaneously and are related. What I'm trying to say is that money is objectively just paper and metal we exchange in trust, which is a spiritual / emotional response. When we no longer trust the outside world, we cut off from it (No longer believe in it). If we think we have no future, we have none because we don't progress forward anymore. Love is trust. Taking a leap of faith is trust. Fear of the future sends us back into ourselves as we clutch greedily the certain past. It is this movement into the unknown that fills us with dread but if we don't do it, we slide down the mountain into the pit of despair, rather than reach for the stars with our last breath. The dead fear mongers is right. They want to hold onto power, position, wealth - in other words, if they can't take it with them, they don't want to go (Bill Gates seems to be different). It's about addiction (fear of death) and avoiding the truth. Behind greed is fear - how much is too much? How little is not enough? (The addicts dilemma).

    I have ideas that haven't taken off and why? Because of the above - fear of movement, fear of the future. Abandon the past and you only have the future to look forward to. Hold onto the past and you have nothing to look forward to, only back upon (The future has no identity - the past is nothing but that i.e. prejudice on an individual or social scale).

  • Rhona Pavis 50+

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    Feb 28 2012: Tony, I think both can be true simultaneously. Maybe they are related. Let's free ourselves of the part of our ancestral brainwashing that limits our individuality, creativity, self-love and other positive qualities and potentials. We must reprogram ourselves to free ourselves of the negative brainwashing received from the dead fear-mongers and power and control freaks. Instead of selfish, think self-respect, self-love. Instead of conceited, think self-confident. SEEKPOSITIVE/FINDPOSITIVE. We have powerfully positive potential. Let's use it. Let's work to elevate the joy level of humanity. Happy Today.
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