This article is by our guest contributor Patrick Cooper:
We as individuals give too much. Children have no understanding of value. They go through mobile phones like candy, many parents pander to it and keep buying with state benefits because they know more will arrive so they have no sense of value any more.
“Family Guy” shows us that adults have become children and children have become adults and now parents fear their own children and can’t say no.
Our responsibilities as parents have been progressively undermined by the “you can and will have” mentality created by society and thrown back at us by our own children in statements like “But everyone has one/does that” …and so on, you can add your own well heard version in to suit.
Then we have decisions to make, fast, often we make the wrong choice borne from untold pressure and the desire to appease and keep our children “happy” – advertisers know this well of course which makes them as morally corrupt as our banking system.
At least banks don’t yet prey on our children as advertising does, all in good time I suppose.
I have long since said that once my children step outside the house they are at the mercy of a boundary less society that sees almost anything as acceptable with no consequences.
Children openly smoke, drink, have sex, commit crime and publish this through social media, what can we do about this great dilemma?
We could take away their mobile phones, laptops and keep them at home? Or we could educate them in ways that sit more comfortably with them and us so helping them to become children again and us to become parents again, something we will all be surprisingly comfortable with. Expect the tantrums first though.
Marketing and advertising is too powerful and has created a want society and the overwhelming desire to have leads to a desperation that causes us to act irrationally.
Advertising and marketing is not needed if you look at the simple needs of life; food, water, warmth and shelter.
So why would we need advertising? It is all about consume, consume, consume and so feeding the money dragon and we are trapped by it. Humans do not cope well with this and the “end of the world” feeling that is out there created by the human psyche from “fact” allows us to “just do it” (get it?) and this will only get worse as less people earn less and rely more heavily on a state system that will collapse; when that happens the fun really begins.
When people don’t earn what they have, they learn that they have “rights”. These “rights” are born from fear and they can lead to taking and stealing.
Alternatively it can lead to waking up to real reality, individual reality and that I firmly believe will be the separation of society and create the “haves” and the “have nots.”
From the very top of businesses, or should I say banking, theft has filtered through our society so that it is acceptable to steal and now many employees take because others are, justifying it by saying “well everyone else does it” and “it won’t hurt, it’s only one.”
This wholesale taking is everywhere and everything from fraudulent insurance claims to stealing bikes or cars to get home from the pub on the basis it is not stealing but just borrowing. If you couple that with the deep seated over possession of belongings which is apparent everywhere especially with cars it becomes easier to see.
Ever bumped into someone’s car in a car park, seen how they often react? Road rage is a mobile version of the same problem – come near my shiny, beautiful, very powerful ego extension and I will kill you because you are inferior!
Of course money and debt are why and the misery growing right now will explode when the takers suddenly realise that they actually have to look after themselves.
Ask yourself a question and then observe your friends, family and those you don’t know too; are they all 100% honest all the time? Do they live by their integrity at all times?
Being 100% honest all the time and only speaking the truth is much harder that living dishonestly but only because the level of dishonesty around us is so great.
Interestingly I suspect a very high proportion of people do not live by 100% integrity and whilst that is the case people will not learn until they hit their near death experience.
That of course could happen to a very large number of people all at once. Then you have the great conscious awakening albeit by a very unspiritual event or events.
The bottom line is that dishonesty does not sit comfortably with the human psyche and anger follows when honesty and truth surround them.
If everyone around them lies, cheats and steals then it easier for the mob to do the same. Rioting and the diversity of the socio-economic backgrounds of the rioters here in the UK last year is a perfect example of what I mean.
Of course it is complex but it is about balance, deceit will disappear if everyone would be trustworthy.
Society in the UK in large areas is based on theft, dishonesty, fraud, duplicity and greed.
Not very nice but money and debt has created this and we as a race are so detached from humanity by it we have forgotten who we are as individuals. Money makes you vulnerable and vulnerability means fear, fear means anger, anger on a wholesale basis means society breakdown.
Then the “problems” will be solved and the people will be “rescued” and the great detachment of the 99% from the troubles caused by the 1% which will be apparently amongst the 99% will be complete.
This will be apparently created amongst ourselves so detaching us from them – Greece being a perfect example. Distraction, blame, intervention and finally control.
The human race is frustrated on every level, it simply can’t cope with what is going on and this has been created over a long period of time.
Children especially will be unable to deal with the fallout of debt when it truly strikes home and knocks on everyone’s front door. That will be a rare treat to witness.
My view is that we are already and will rely on who we know and can trust fully to network each others’ skills etc. Frankly I can’t see any other way, whichever way I look.
Then we begin to go back to how we lived since time began and up until around 1850 but with the learning of wisdom and experience of how we can’t live. Then of course it begins all over again, thankfully not in my lifetime or my children’s I hope!
Patrick Cooper is an independent financial adviser.