There are the phone bills. The internet bills. The club fees. The bus fares.

Then comes the credit card, which begins as free money but soon becomes yet another bill – usually a big one that never goes away.

Then comes the car – the ultimate money pit. Unless you’ve managed to be a good saver,  you now have loan payments. And even if you bought it outright, you have road fees, insurance, and ever increasing fuel costs.

Then the car breaks down, and you have to pay for repairs. You figure you might as well get breakdown cover now too.

But when you move out it really starts.

Rent or buy, a large proportion of your wages is gone just so that you have a roof over your head.

You want warmth? That’ll be a gas bill. You want light? Electricity bill. Want to wash? Have a water bill. Need to eat? You’d better put a bit of money aside for food too.

Oh – you’re living in a house? We’ll have some money for that, thank you very much, say your local council. We need it for police, schools, and waste disposal.

Now you have a whole load of people demanding money – and this is all just so that you can exist – without having to sleep on the streets.

Want to enjoy life? Sure, but it will cost you. Gym fees. TV fees. Cinema tickets. Sports games. Alcohol costs. Restaurant bills.

And unless you’re very lucky, your government probably adds a tax to all these things.

So what can you do? You need to get a job, and a good one too. Work hard and you’ll just about have enough.

Yet no matter how much you earn, there always seems to be something else, someone trying to get more money out of you with another fee. Someone selling something that you probably don’t need. But who can blame them; they are in the same boat as you and just trying to make a living.

The only way we can break out of this “taking” culture? We have to break the chain. We have to create  a new culture, a culture of giving.

If we want to live in an advanced society with fire services and waste disposal and electricity and delicious food , and not have to work our entire lives for it, we have to start giving without expecting anything in return.

For if we give without expecting anything back, we break the system of exchange.  Suddenly, exchanging loses its credibility, and money loses its value.

Supposedly we have to pay if we want to enjoy this quality of life. But what quality of life is it where we are forced to work 40 hours a week just to survive?

We can choose to live in a world that we have to pay for, or we can bypass money, and come together to build society, for the benefit of everyone.

Human Rights Abuses

Around the world, Coke has inflicted great hardship and despair upon many people and communities. There have been reports of everything from murder and torture of union representitives, to worker abuse, violations of labour laws, and hazardous child labour. Coke have fought any attempts to have independent investigations into these allegations.

Environmental Destruction

In India, Coca Cola has caused severe water shortages, polluted groundwater and soil around its bottling plant, distributed its toxic waste as ‘fertiliser’ to local farmers and sold drinks with extremely high levels of pesticides.

Promotion of Bottled Water

Corporations like Coke, Pepsi and Nestlé have manufactured demand for bottled water – building a market by eroding confidence in public tap water. Americans now buy more than half a billion bottles of water every week.

Coca-Cola was forced to take a product called Dasani off the UK shelves after a public outcry because it contained nothing more than tap water. But sales of Dansani are still rising in the US and it is being strongly promoted in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Mexico and several other Latin American countries.

Acid Upsets the Body’s pH Balance, Makes You Sick

Coke is highly acidic, with a pH of around 2.75 it is not only devastating for your teeth, but it has a detrimental effect on the pH of your body. Our health depends on alkalinity so we should strive to avoid acidic food wherever possible.

You Are Supporting the 1%

Coca Cola’s revenue was $12.2 Billion in the third quarter of 2011.  This continues to climb. While some of this goes back into the community, these are token gestures when considering the numbers involved. Where is the rest of that money going to?

Not the workers, that’s for sure.

More info

http://www.ethical.org.au/company/?company=183
http://killercoke.org/

This was surprising because as people who are “awake” and aware of the corrupt elite, I wouldn’t expect any of us to have any trust for the establishment.

Russia Today is a fantastic news source. It has stories that would never been published in the mainstream news or even talked about in mainstream media. It explores controversial stories that many news outlets don’t want to go near, and it seems to have a strong left wing perspective. However, we must remember that they have their own agenda.

I made a comment that RT still has a Russian bias. But then someone else made a very good point – RT has more that – it has sensationalism bias. Like all other news outlets, it has to sell its own brand, and therefore uses sensationalism to appeal to more readers.

Lots of what it says is true. Yet truth itself is not a black and white concept. Facts might be facts but how those facts affect people can often be interpreted in numerous ways. How facts are interpreted is often a matter of perspective.

Everyone has an agenda. Everyone has their own perspective which is based on their own very specific ideals and this affects their motivation. As a result,  perspective will always lead to manipulation.

How to avoid being manipulated?  Never take your facts from one source, always look at how they are being reported from different perspectives. Use your own mind to come to informed decisions based on extensive research.  Always, always, look at the motivation behind those reporting the information.

The mainstream media’s motivation is to sway the public’s opinion in directions that serve the needs of the rich elite. This is evident by their actions if you look closely at the consequences. RT’s motivation is sensationalism, which is far less sinister, but is motivation nevertheless.

It’s up to us to put all the pieces together and get the real story.

Using our iphones.

I’m sure we can be honest about who is really to blame, though. Ethical Consumption is something we all preach but find it hard to truly achieve. When there is benefit to us, the ethical dilemma is lightened for some reason.

Activist groups could lobby the companies to stop, but why would any company sacrifice its own profits just because it was asked?

Creating laws to limit business activities would be bad for the economy and have all sorts of other implications so is unlikely to happen.

Refusing to patronise companies with these business practices is unlikely to attract the kind of numbers needed to make a dent in any large company’s profit – so long as they keep making stuff we want.

Yet, until the labour-based economy collapses, this is the only way it’s going to stop.

Adverts are a distraction, and quite often an insult to our intelligence. They prey on our insecurities for money.

Wouldn’t the world would be so much quieter without them? Well, you can eliminate ads from your web  browsing experience.

First of all, you need to be using Firefox. You should be using this anyway. Internet Explorer has never been a good browser. Google Chrome, although fast, sleek and minimalist, is owned by Google, a large American corporation. This is a problem because of the Patriot Act – American companies have to hand over their data to the government if asked for any reason, without a warrant.

Firefox is open source, which means how it works is open to the public. There is no chance of any sneaky code tracking your every move or doing anything unethical. It is also at least as good as Chrome. The latest version is faster if not as fast, and uses the same amount of screen space (not a lot). So really I can see no reason to choose Chrome over Firefox now anyway.

Once you have Firefox, download Ad Block Plus.

Voila. You no longer have Google ads all over web pages. It also blocks ads on Facebook. It’s just one more place you’re not being sold to, and this is a good thing.

Now, if someone can just make a version for the high street…

Now you probably realise that a lot of what you learnt growing up wasn’t exactly right.

Your parents only wanted what was best for you, and to get that, you had to do what they said. Most of the time, they were probably right. They were wiser than you, so their instructions had purpose. It was for your own good.

However, because you accepted this dynamic from your parents, it made it easier for others, such as school teachers, religious leaders, and other “authority figures” to impose control over you. In all their wisdom, our parents conditioned us to be obedient, and all authority has taken advantage.

Of course the blame shouldn’t be put completely on parents. Many people grow up without being instilled with obedience. But these people are still surrounded by it anyway, in school, and in everyday life, so they too grow accustomed to doing as they’re told. If you do as you’re told enough, eventually you lose the power to think for yourself. And that’s what has happened to a large percentage of the population.

Throughout history, authority has held power over the people. This is a problem because it causes us to be unwitting puppets in dangerous games played by those in power.

• If people were more disobedient, they wouldn’t be able to get anyone to go to war.
• They wouldn’t be able to sneak in corrupt laws that go against all of our rights.
• They wouldn’t get away with incremental, crippling taxes and austerity measures that steal from the poor to give to the rich.
• They wouldn’t be able to destroy spirituality with fabrications concocted to control society with guilt.
• They wouldn’t be able to sell to us with advertisements that make us feel inferior.
• They wouldn’t be able to intimidate or manipulate us with egos and emotions.  We would only respond to reason.

We need more disobedience in society if we are to live in a world of reason. We need disobedience against political leaders. Disobedience against religious leaders. Disobedience against all authority figures. Disobedience against the abstract concept of money.

They only hold their power because we give it to them. Individually and collectively – we have to stop complying – stop believing in their power.

The emperor is naked. And you are as free as you believe you are.

What if you could turn this interest into inspiration?

Instead of posting a controversial story on your facebook feed, think really long and hard about what this story means.

How does it affect your life?

How does it affect other people’s lives?

If it’s bad news, how can you help protect people from it? If it’s good news, how can you help people benefit from it?

How will it change the world? Will it change anything?

What could it lead to? What opportunities will this present?

Instead of sharing the news,  imagine how you can make it.

Surely that’s no way to sell a brand?

Sadly, the inferiority complex is a powerful marketing tool and one that keeps companies like Gillette, as well as those companies who make ridiculously over-indulgent toothbrushes, in business.

Chances are, what you are currently using is perfectly fine.

How can we make people’s lives better? That is the question we each should be asking ourselves every day.

The potential for creation is immense. Capitalism’s inevitable collapse is going to have such significant implications that it will open the door to an untold number of possibilities, new solutions, and innovations to make our lives better.

So rather than trying to change people’s attitudes by telling them about this grand new world, true visionaries need to show it.

Many minimalists have taken the 100 Things Challenge, with the number of items varying between people.

But I think you can do better.

I reckon you can take it all the way down to zero.

But how, you ask? What about clothes? I have to wear something. What about my laptop, my driving licence, my keys?

Well, the idea is that you don’t physically get rid of your last 100 (or however many) items. You just detach from them. You remove your dependence on them. While you still own them, they no longer matter to you.

What if there was a fire, flood or some other disaster, and everything you own disappeared? The idea is to be in a position where this wouldn’t matter.

How you do this is up to you and what you feel is important. Perhaps you could take any important documents and store them securely online. This would be up to you if you felt comfortable with it. But the idea is to let go of these things. Let go of your dependency on them.

This allows you to accumulate some stuff – useful stuff – such as a tent, or a new pair of walking shoes – even a boat – because these things will add value to your life – but they don’t define your life. It wouldn’t matter if you didn’t have them tomorrow.

You don’t need to own nothing. But only when you are holding onto nothing can you really appreciate living without stuff. And when you do, anything new that you might happen to accumulate doesn’t attach itself to you. You have a different attitude towards those few things you own.

They no longer own you.