The French parliament passed a new law obliging the food retail giants to
give any excess to charities or for other use.
For example when I was in school and the teacher gave me homework. Throughout the day I would be like totally not looking forward to doing the homework. The more I would think about just how unpleasant it would be the more I would not want to do it and the more I postpone. Some days I would even simply not do it, and the next day I would cram it in quickly before class starts. Other days when I finally push through the resistance and just get to it I found it was actually not that bad. It was not as unpleasant as I thought it would be. So what made me think that it would be bad?
The problem comes with the thinking part. When you have something do to for the day we often start thinking about how it would be doing it – this is mostly based on past experiences. We think about times we did a similar thing before and where it was unpleasant or the bad experiences we had with particular task. For example homework – I would think about all the times I had to sit and struggle with homework and how time consuming it was and how it kept me from things I liked – I would take all of that and project it onto the homework that I need to do later that day.
Also thinking about it we already create the disdain and resistance towards the task ahead by linking it to past experiences. We already create the experience before we even get to the task. So looking at it it’s not the task that makes you not want to do it – you created the “bad” experience even before you started.
This is actually a very unnecessary experience, because we cannot know exactly what we will experience when doing the task that lies ahead of us. It will always be based on past events and assumptions formed from beliefs and ideas, but the fact remains – I will not know unless I actually do it.
Next time when there is something that you need to do, but don’t want to or feel like doing know this – by thinking about how bad it will be you actually create more resistance towards the task and create the bad experience you will have. This can be applied to anything you do. In the end the best thing to do is to stop the thoughts about how crappy it will be – stop creating the experience. Stop the thoughts and when the time comes to do this task simply do it. Stay out of your head be here and get it done and move on. Wouldn’t live be much simpler when we realize that we create how we experience ourselves…
I was in a reaction at that point, because all I could see was problems. Then she said to me” Be solution orientated – not problem orientated”. And that stuck with me and I could see what I was doing. I was purely focusing on all the problems without actually looking at solutions. At that moment I was problem orientated and thus it is all I could see – problems. I took her advice started looking at solutions and then found something that worked.
It’s so easy to list the problems in our lives and continuously point them out and complain about them, but it’s a very different story to stop the whining and complaining and actually look for solutions to the problems. And in some cases there is not an Ideal solution which makes it easy to get stuck with all the problems, but being Solution Orientated will assist and support you to stop being blinded and consumed with the problems in your life and to find solutions.
Next time you find yourself in a situation where all you see is problems then you know “ I am being problem orientated”. In this state all you will see is problems and no solution will come out of this. Instead be Solution Orientated – this way you don’t allow the problems to keep you from getting to a solution.
Its shows that nearly 1 in 5 of Adult Americans experienced mental illness in 2013. The main purpose of this study was to show just how many people are not currently being treated for mental illness – however it does not give actual solutions to the cause of the mental illness in the first place.
What we are dealing with here is a typical Band-Aid solution. By giving people who are depressed drugs is not a permanent solution. What we need to do here is stop the problem at the source – and from the study one of the main causes of why so many people struggle with mental illness is because of the lack of money.
And it makes perfect sense – We need money to survive in this world. When you are unemployed and living in poverty not being able to provide for yourself or your family can result in you becoming depressed. Its horrid to live in such conditions – and to give these people drugs to take away the depression will not solve the problem at hand. So what will?
By taking these people out of poverty will drastically improve their current living condition. If you do not have to worry about going hungry or not finding a place to sleep you can actually start living and stop just surviving. With the Implementation of the Living Income Guaranteed we can remove poverty and homelessness and with it drastically decrease mental illness. That would be stopping the problem at its source – by providing a permanent solution.
Below are some points explaining parts of the study :
In November of 2014, the U.S. government’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) issued a press release titled “Nearly One in Five Adult Americans Experienced Mental Illness in 2013.” This brief press release provides a snapshot of the number of Americans who are suicidal, depressed, and mentally ill, and it bemoans how many Americans are not in treatment. However, excluded from SAMHSA’s press release—yet included in the lengthy results of SAMHSA’s national survey—are economic, age, gender, and other demographic correlates of serious mental illness, depression, and suicidality (serious suicidal thoughts, plans, or attempts). It is these demographic correlates that have political implications.
Also, the survey results provide extensive evidence that unemployment and poverty are highly associated with suicidality, depression, and serious mental illness.
These lengthy results, for example, include extensive evidence that involvement in the criminal justice system (such as being on parole or probation) is highly correlated with suicidality, depression, and serious mental illness. Yet Americans are not told that preventing unnecessary involvement with the criminal justice system—for example, marijuana legalization and drug use decriminalization—could well prove to be a more powerful antidote to suicidality, depression, and serious mental illness than medical treatment. -http://www.salon.com/2015/02/19/what_were_not_being_told_about_suicide_and_depression/
· 1020 Rhino Poached in 2014, compared to 333 in 2010. Despite Millions thus far spent on charity organizations the number of rhinos poached tripled in 4 years. Not a Happy New Year ahead for them.
· Half the world still lives in poverty.
· Nearly 1 Billion people suffer from “chronic undernourishment “ aka hunger.
· 80% of the world population lives on less than $10 a day.
· An average of 3.5million people experienced homelessness in the U.S., despite the fact that there are enough empty housing for them all.
The tradition of wishing somebody a happy new year has many complications, sure we can want for other to have a good year, or maybe you are glad that you made it through another year, but for me a happy new year will be finding ways make the statistics above less.
How great would it be if humanity was able to completely eradicate poverty? Bring the amount of hungry people down to zero? Or even have the rhino poaching at a big round zero for a whole year? We certainly have the capacity and resources to do so. For example to put every child in the world through education all we need is 1% of the military budget of the U.S. We have the means to do so.
The Living Income Guaranteed will also be a solution for all the problems above. If it’s implemented it will bring the number of people in poverty down to zero. Money will no longer be a factor for whether or not a child gets an education . People will also have enough to actually live and buy the food they need. There will also be no more homeless people, because they would be able to afford a home.
That would make a truly Happy New Year.
Problem:
A Times reporter and photographer find that thousands of laborers at Mexico's mega-farms endure harsh conditions and exploitation while supplying produce for American consumers.
The Times found:
http://graphics.latimes.com/product-of-mexico-camps/
The company utilizes advance growing techniques and very carefully employ sanitary measures to make sure their produce is safe and good quality, but at the same time they absolutely neglect the workforce. The produce has a higher value than the actual humans working there. One of these Companies actually recently took out full-page newspaper ads promoting its commitment to social responsibility.
The company these laborers work for use devious ways to keep profits high. It is law to pay workers their wages on a weekly base. To ensure that the people do not leave before their 3 month work contract the company often withholds their wages and only pays them at the end of their contract. In that time the workers get their food from the company store with its inflated prices. They often go deep in debt and at the end of their contract some go home without any money.
The conditions are so bad, yet people still go there to work knowing that they might not make money – some go just to stay fed. They go because they simply have no alternative and that is what the companies are exploiting. Is there any way to stop this Madness? Yes
Solution:
The main reason why people will work for a company like this and live with the miserable living conditions is because they need the money – no matter how little it is. So let’s see how the Living Income Guaranteed will drastically improve the situation:
With the Living Income guaranteed the workforce will no longer be able to be exploited, because that desperation to find a job no matter where it is or how terrible the work conditions are will no longer exist. When the people who cannot find work receive a Living Income they will no longer accept bad working conditions. The company will have to improve the working conditions otherwise they are going to have a hard time hiring the workforce needed to get the job done.
This Involves granting them good quality foods that they are used to eating, to create proper housing with full services for them - water, toilets - and proper working gear. Also what would need to be done is abolish all abuse – this means no threats and not deliberately creating debt for the workforce. These companies will need to apply and live by their corporate social responsibility measures, currently it’s only a front to make the companies look good.
With the basic Income Double the Living income the laborers will be able to make a guaranteed decent living that will be paid on a weekly basis, no excuses allowed.
A living Income Guaranteed will provide effective and practical solutions to all the current problems these laborers are facing and it is something this world needs – a Solution.
Let’s look at that figure a little closer: 204 million pounds of turkey is allot. It’s worth over $270 million. Imagine how many hungry families can be fed with all that wasted meat – it’s enough to give every food-insecure household in America 5kg of meat. And what about the water used to produce all that wasted turkey? A staggering 105 billion gallons. And all that meat ends up in landfills.
This is very contradictory .The tradition of thanksgiving when we look at what actually happens it seems what is being celebrated is being ungrateful and gluttony. So much food is simply being wasted. Sure, tiss’ the season of profits. The turkey factories cash it in this time of year – where the meat ends up does not matter as long as it’s being sold.
And then we have Black Friday afterwards. Nothing says thank you like reenacting the Zombie apocalypse every year after thanksgiving. I was very relieved when South Africans did not take part in these traditions, but unfortunately companies here in SA started with the Black Friday tradition as well.
What we should actually do is redefine thanksgiving. To stop buying and preparing too much food and only make enough. Or to take the leftovers and use it were it will not be wasted – you won’t have to look hard to find a hungry person to give the food to. And then to thank the turkey and every other part that was involved with getting that food on your plate. That would be an actual thanksgiving Dinner. And then we should do that with every meal we eat – practice real gratefulness through the understanding of how that food got in your plate.
Here are some of the GEOengereeing options that scientist are currently investigating:
1. Afforestation: This technique would irrigate deserts, such as those in Australia and North Africa, to plant millions of trees that could absorb carbon dioxide, but This vegetation would also draw in sunlight that the deserts currently reflect back into space, and so contribute to global warming.
2. Artificial ocean upwelling: Engineers would use long pipes to pump cold, nutrient-rich water upward to cool ocean-surface waters. If this process ever stopped it could cause oceans to rebalance their heat levels and rapidly change the climate.
3. Ocean alkalinisation: This involves heaping lime into the ocean to chemically increase the absorption of carbon dioxide.
4. Ocean iron fertilisation: The method involves dumping iron into the oceans to improve the growth of photosynthetic organisms that can absorb carbon dioxide.
5. Solar radiation management: This would reduce the amount of sunlight Earth receives, by shooting reflective sulphate-based aerosols into the atmosphere.
As I read through this list I get kind of worried, because they are trying to stop the earth from heating up through wanting to do things like dumping iron into the oceans or spraying the air with sulphate. Won’t that simply cause more problems in the future? You don’t solve a problem with another problem.
Here is an analogy: You see a spider trapped in your bathtub. So you take a few sheets of tissue paper and very carefully burn your house down…
In a similar way that is how we deal with issues we face on this earth. With the above mentioned solutions we are simply going to create more problems.
Eco friendly solutions cost allot of money so that is why it is not ever really implemented on global scale – it’s not cost effective. Also there is the factor that there is a massive profit being made by current use of available technologies – like oil and coal - and thus coming up with other solutions are discouraged.
So then what is the reason for all this pollution currently created? Money. And what would be the solution to clean up and stop pollution? Money. The planet has over 7 billion people on it. And I have read and seen solutions to control and get rid of pollution many times, but it never gets implemented, because the people coming up with these ideas do not have the necessary funds to implement these ideas or do more research. And in allot of these cases the people who come up with these ideas are those directly affected by the pollution.
With the implementation of Living Income Guaranteed we could ensure that all options are considered and see what will be the best solution. Not to say that LIG would be bad news to businesses around the world and force them to cut carbon emissions – no – rather more about focusing on ways to prevent this with the use of new technologies that are available and that are currently not being used because profit is placed over sustainability, which is how through Corporate Social Responsibility measures, corporations will also have to consider their own sustainability and assurance of production by stopping degrading measures that will cause more consequences for them and the community.
Also what is happening is that consumers are becoming aware of the consequences that factories have on the environment and are favoring eco –friendly production methods. So the company will have to start introduce environmentally friendly solutions and stick to the new trend to meet the customer demand in order to still make money.
Another point is that when an individual doesn’t have to worry about surviving and can start focusing on actual living – it opens doors and with it great potential. For example there are so many people who find passion in doing humanitarian work, or finding solutions to make factories more efficient and less polluting – but cannot focus on doing any of that, because they need money to survive. Who knows what potential we can unlock and ideas we can come up with and implement to reduce or even reverse the negative consequences we have created on this earth. The Living Income Guaranteed would bring us closer to finding the solutions we require.
Here are Videos that further explain how with the Implementation of the Living Income Guaranteed will promote Environmental Sustainability:
I’m sure many are feeling this or have felt like this in some point in their lives. There comes moments where you look at your life or the world and inside yourself scream for somebody or something to get you out of here – to take you away from your current situation to somewhere better. Where you hope and wish you could spread wings and just fly away – far away to a place where the grass is greener. 
We all live in our own safety bubbles. Unfortunately not everybody has a bubble that is safe. I am now 27 years old and have not yet seen any improvement with the state of world, despite the fact that Christianity is the top religion in the world. And I'm tired of waiting for it. time to break free from that bubble. The main problem is the bubble – we will only act if it affects us directly. Once we all realize that the earth is actually one big bubble and we are all in it – then we will see great change. Let’s make sure that solution comes sooner rather than later.