[Fmpro] cooperation vs competition

Wed Feb 13 02:58:19 GMT 2008

Kiki,

I'm sure your life hasn't necessarily been perfect, or certainly not the
yuppified perfection some of us may have inadvertently conjured in
criticizing the pop psyche elements in some of your posts.  But unless
you're well into your sixties you couldn't have lived in the Southeast
during the era of lynchings. I live in the Southeast now, in South Carolina,
and while there is certainly racism in some quarters it is nothing at all
like what it once was. If you lived in this part of the country in the last
twenty years it wouldn't have been too much different from many other areas
in the US that are largely rural and sparsely populated.  As a matter of
fact, if you were black and living in this area in the last twenty years
chances are your economic situation probably improved, especially if you
moved down from the Northeast in the late 1980's. There was a massive
migration of African Americans back South in that time period, back to
Virginia, Georgia and the Carolinas. The influx boosted the economy here and
gave black people solid footing and stability in an area where they had once
been slaves.  As for the large cities in this area, they are hard to
distinguish from any other large city in America. There are ghettos and
suburbs in the same proportions, and maybe less pronounced than say in
Chicago or Cleveland. So you can¹t really use this area as some kind of
validation for a rough life  or at least not any different than if you came
from say, Camden, New Jersey  which is by the way a REALLY rough town.

Where you are living now, by your account, there is a lot more obvious
injustice.  Destructive racism was dealt viciously on native Americans and
they have never recovered from it. An Indian reservation certainly DOES
qualify as a non-fru-fru locale.

I agree with you that we desperately need an alternative to the
unsustainable society we currently have but I don't think the solutions are
easy to come by.  The size of the problem is quite daunting and the number
of selfish profit-seeking individuals and entities is massive. We can
certainly choose as individuals whatever path may seem right but it is
impossible to navigate in the cluttered and stormy seas humanity has forced
upon itself and pretend that everything is sunshine and roses. It just
isn¹t. A more realistic and perhaps engaged set of principles may be
necessary to turn things around.

In the book The Secret a situation is touted as proof of the power of
Œvisualization¹. A woman passes by a store and sees a necklace in the shop
window, one she can¹t afford.  This book tells us that this woman goes home
every day and visualizes wearing the necklace and that eventually
circumstances yield and create a pathway to her seemingly impossible
attainment of the necklace.  Ditto for cancer victims, people who are told
they¹d never walk again etc.. While I am certainly a believer in the power
of positive energy it seems to be that this book can inspire many people to
Œvisualize¹ the truly impossible and unattainable.  A five hundred pound
woman thinking she will be a ballerina, a Mexican dish washer thinking he
will be the President of the US etc etc.. And what¹s worse, someone with an
operable cancer thinking they can cure themselves without medical
intervention.  There are clear limits to human endeavor and there are indeed
seemingly incredible leaps of faith and even sometimes miracles.  But
without a true sense of perspective all there is in the end is lunacy.

On 2/8/08 6:19 PM, "Sunblossom Records" <sunblossom at arvig.net> wrote:

> Hi Rick,
> 
> Wow! Sounds like I'm spending my days in silk pajamas eating Richard
> Donnelly Chocolates (while reading my books on quantum physics under down
> comforters and 500 thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets!)
> 
> The truth is I live on an Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota. The
> elders here recount a history of tyranny and suffering at the hands of the
> United States government. As recently as 1950 there have been boarding
> schools that were in the practice of Christianizing and forcing the
> assimilation of Indian children, beating them for speaking their native
> language or washing their mouths out with soap. Even today, in 21st century
> America, we witness the abject poverty of which you speak.
> 
> Most of my life was spent in the southeastern region of the United States
> where African Americans were enslaved and where white supremacists were
> taking part in lynchings and other violent atrocities. Billie Holiday's
> "Strange Fruit"  tells the story better than I ever could.
> 
> Had I the luxury to recreate my personal journey, maybe I  would have
> experienced the life of relative safety and affluence that you imagine for
> me.
> 
> Every day we read stories about the battles we have in our industry over
> just about everything that has to do with power or money. I'm merely
> offering an alternative path to a seemingly impossible situation. Our
> industry has enormous influence over our society at large. We have an
> opportunity to choose unity over separateness, love over fear, possibility
> over limitation, cooperation over competition and abundance over lack.
> 
> We can make new choices. And collectively these powerful choices can
> transform human experience.
> 
> Kiki
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> I would speculate that you have never experienced the kind of abject
>> poverty nor suffered under the kind of despotism and tyranny that has
>> characterized daily reality for most human beings throughout history, and
>> many still today.  Because of the sacrifice and hard work of many who have
>> come before you, you have the opportunity, the luxury, to enjoy your
>> existence your way, in relative safety and affluence.  That's great.  But
>> don't forget that people died on battlefields and sacraficed in countless
>> other ways to make that possibe.  And people in some areas of the world
>> today are enduring, trying to survive, extremely harsh circumstances.
>> Maybe they need to read one of your books?  Just a thought.
>> 
>> Rick
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> 
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