The financial perils of world’s ageing populations

This is the headline on an article by Charlie Fell that appeared in Fridays Irish Times. In the article he refers to the Thomas Malthus prediction in 1798 that population who soon outstrip the food supply. He also refers to Paul Ehrlich’s book The Population Bomb (1968) which predicted that 65 million Americans would starve by the 1980’s. He goes on to say that “the world faces an altogether different challenge – the ageing of the developed world”. He goes on to convince his readers of how big a problem this is all going to be. His final line betraying his self-interest:”The long term outlook for continental European property is poor.” This even though he describes himself as an independent consultant who lectures to the Institute of Bankers of Ireland.

My issue is this. How come commentators have come to the conclusion that ageing populations are such a bad thing. I believe that this assumption is based on the belief that age is bad. The belief, universally accepted, it seems, in financial circles, that people will have nothing to contribute beyond age 55. Since when did it become the ideal that we should all retire at 55?Since financial institutions started selling financial products to 30 somethings that’s when. Since when did people start to believe the financial institutions? Since the financial institutions helped to create employment conditions for many people that made productivity based on high stress environments the only game in town.

There exists a business model today that considers people as a resource: hence the Resource Manager who used to be the Personnel Manager. The creation of this work world of stress gave rise to the concept of creating even more stressful conditions for ourselves in order to earn enough money to pay to big business so that we can stop working sooner. It’s big business that is having a shit-fit over lack of pensions. Why? Well, they need pensioners to have money tospend so that they can continue to make profits from the rampant gravy train of consumerism. The leaders of big business will have no problem continuing the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. They already have seen to that with the wage levels they pay to themselves.

What if society were to create working conditions that supported people working all their lives. They could move from job to job doing always that which suited them best. Young people would all start their working lives doing physical jobs. A first career in construction or sports or in the police as beat cops. Then later career number two would be some kind of office factory job, less demanding but more regimented and suited to a family lifestyle. With company outings and family days but without any travel away from home. career number three sees an opportunity for retraining or teaching and the information/knowledge industry takes people on board with more working from home over the Internet. Next career, the travel can start again but longer trips away from home because of more use of public transport. The kids are grown and both partners can synchronise their scedules and meet in Paris or New York and whatever…

You can see where I am going with this idea. A life time of working and learning with lots of place for sustainable consumerism, supporting increases in productivity based on technological advances. This way gives meaning to peoples lives from birth to death and beyond.

Integral Spirituality – The criticism

As already mentioned I was a little uneasy about signing up to Wilbers Integral website (at $10 a month). It may be an oxymoron but I am now more comfortable with my uneasiness having read some criticism of Wilber (http://www.integralworld.net/visser16.html). Having now read articles from intergralworld.net and from Wilber’s own blog I will not be signing up to Wilbers site in the foreseeable future. I have enjoyed and learned loads from Wilber’s book but he really is getting into guru mode and that makes me nervous. There is another article on integralworld.net that classes the Integral Institute in the same class as The Course in Miracles , Conversations with God and Reiki which is interesting for me in that I have passed through all these expressions of New Age thinking (for want of a better expression). So the jury is maybe out on that one. Ultimately, my advice is if you are going to read the book, read the critics as well. Visser has long been a supporter of Wilber’s ideas so could well be considered as a well meaning friend.

The issues raised here are exactly the type of issue that has drawn me to the Arcane School (part of the Lucis trust) and the books of Alice Bailey. I have been a student for nearly seven years now and I cannot yet say I have actually met another student. I suspect I have because of some conversations I’ve had but cannot be sure. The writings specifically warn against the following of the teachings of any particular individual. The method of learning is always to put certain ideas before the student and ask the student what he or she thinks. There is no official, approved or authorised response. All contributions are considered to add to the common understanding of the issues being considered. What feedback you do receive is general in nature and always seeks to be supportive of the efforts been made to understand the nature of existence by the student. It is also absolutely free. If you wish to contribute and have the means, you are asked to but I was several years receiving materials by post before I made any contribution. The teachings of the Tibetan are clear: to check out the information being given in the daily round of your own life. If it’s true it’ll prove itself to you. This has been my own personal experience up to now.

I really hate when I arrive at this place: thinking I have the guy who has it sussed and will answer all my questions,  only to find that I gotta start out on the journey all over again. As another big hero of mine one said “life is difficult” and that was M. Scott Peck in A Road Less Travelled and he was no guru, let me tell you.

On Being Useful

I have spent nearly forty years becoming a useful member of society with all the neurotic behaviour that such a term implies. While I may have had some strange ideas from time to time, they were just that, ideas that others could quickly flush from their minds as if one were disposing of a tissue for which you no longer had any use. My usefulness in my work and leisure time activities was still recognisable and the object of much praise and suitable comment.

Then one day I decided to no longer be useful. To cast aside my definitions of myself and see what happens to useless people. I have discovered that useless people are not treated very well: nobody knows what to do with them. Not being very pretty I was not very useful to look at. Being rather large and vociferous on occasions, it was hard to ignore me. I still had to be fed and to a degree cared for, much as one would care for a pet that had been around a long time and was a part of the family. Having entertained the children when young, they were now off doing their thing, it falling to the parents to take care of, what was more of a nuisance than anything else.

Mind you, when all this started it was with the intention of becoming more useful. Intent on discovering who I truly was, I cast aside the old me convinced that a new improved version was waiting just below the surface to be discovered and made visible to all. To my dismay I discovered I was even more useless then I had even imagined. In using the term ‘useless’ I am, of course, describing the use that others can make of me. I consider myself right up there with the saints: a perfect being but then again utterly useless to those of us who remain earth bound. If I were an arty type or a writer, even if I wasn’t any good , I would at least be recognisable as such, much as a statue or a piece of Waterford Crystal that sits in a glass cabinet back lit by tiny lights for better effect.You can see the way useless people are treated when you visit the Social Welfare office. The forms you must fill out have been photocopied a million times, badly. They are full of threats about what will happen to useful people who give false declarations, pretending to be useless. The well meaning lady on the other side of the hatch rattles off instructions at high speed convinced that she has seen it all before and having no idea that she has an honest to God trainee saint standing there in front of her. I have to make a false declaration or they won’t give me any money. I have to tell them I am available for work when in fact I’m up to my armpits with work becoming a Saint.

In my time as a useful person I had know two Personnel Managers and one Human Resource Director. The term Human Resource arrived in Ireland via the UK just a few years ago. They were wonderful people but only one treated me as an equal. He, knowing full well that people participate in the world of work because they need to eat, called a spade a spade and me a prick when he felt it justified. He retired when he realised that job interviews had become a cattle mart and he was the milk cow been assessed for its career satisfying potential. Mind you that came to an end after the dot com collapse and young college graduates were informed in no uncertain terms that they were once again and always had been, useless without experience.

As personnel, which implied that you were a person, you might deserve a job even if its function was to keep you occupied. But once you became a resource the question centred around whether you were of any use in much the same way as the famous IBM386 was questioned once Bill Gates made his memory sapping appearance. Many the Pentium IV machine twiddles its thumbs with humble tasks that would have offered challenge and meaning to the existence of the humble 386. The aforementioned Bill provides software 60% of which is never used by 90% of the connected generation. Lets be clear about this, a browser is just a TV with an infinite number of channels. It doesn’t need much in the way of processing power: its all in the humble copper wire that snakes its way around the globe and feeds the mind with chewing gum, distracting it from its purpose.  Getting information and knowing what to do with it are two horses of very different colours. I suspect that one of these horses is really an elephant whose ability to remember stuff is renowned but try asking it a question.

As a resource the person could now be treated as an elephant. The resource was questioned to discover if it knew anything useful. Yes, you stay: no, you’re out. Oh and here’s a leaflet on where to find out useful stuff that we need you to know. I was once a part of the resource that knew useful stuff. I worked with a guy who got his degree and H.Dip but left education behind because of the risk of throttling the little brats he had to face every day. He did a one year course on stuff that every body considered useful and entered the useful world of people who knew about digital communications. Lot’s of people were employed doing useful stuff in telecommunications until they became useless. The new useful was computer programming and parents boasted about how their little Niamh or Kyle was doing computers. Niamh and Kyle got a bit of a shock when they started working in the real world and discovered that doing computers means endless hours of testing software and documenting the work of the small group that actually write the stuff. In reality none of these activities are too far removed from the assembly lines of 40’s Detroit and its car plants.

The new place to be is the call centre which seem to have a big problem keeping staff. Little wonder when the advertisements stress how motivated you need to be to work in a high pressure environment. I mean would you want to, if you really had a choice. Most don’t and such places are used as they always were, as holding patterns until something better comes along. Unfortunately it seldom does. The Celtic Tiger regurgitates jobs of a minimum wage character that government ministers use to pretend that heaven has come to earth in the Emerald Isle.

The battle has already been engaged between quantity and quality

Love shadows (2)

Flat like a shadow.

Sits there, waiting to take form.

Look at the person, look at the depth,

of feeling.

Given to another, it casts a shadow,

Where it’s absorbed.

Reflected back and forth between two people

Rebounding from all the many surfaces

of personality to fill

the shadow spaces with light

 

 

How sad are those who cast

love shadows,

Sending nothing back.

Taking, taking, never giving.

Then you turn to look at it.

The shadow.

See only black

No love

In the end you never see the

Love light.

Only it’s shadow

with a shape you know too well

A poem for someone else

To take responsibility for life.

The totality of it, the enormity of it.

The sadness of it, the loneliness of it. 

It feels like a void opening in the mind.

A vast space of fear, I can’t breath properly.

I gasp for air, I drown in my own possibilities. 

No God, no parents, no past.

Good luck vanishes along with bad.

All that is I have caused to be. 

Outside and inside merge to one.

There is no room for blame here.

Judgement becomes a pointless exercise.

Before

Before I was busy

                                                Now I am not

Before I was stressed

                                                Now distress replaces

Before I had a job

                                                Now I feel abused

Before I was self-employed

                                                Now I earn a living

Before there was a future

                                                Now the future sucks

Before I was successful

                                                Now I am. That’s all

Nothing is what it seems

Nothing I am scared of

Nothing I do want

On this turn of the spiral

Nothing outside choosing

Nothing not responding

On any turn of the spiral

Nothing beyond senses

Nothing found rejection

On a higher turn of the spiral

No thing and thing co-existing

Nothing from whence creation

On every turn of the spiral

Silence

Pauses can get pregnant it seems.

Silence can be deafening.

Loneliness can grow on you.

Even absence can make

the heart grow fonder.

Funny how nothing can

Make such a difference.

A poem for me

I want so badly to pray for me.

To wish and hope the lucky break.

For which I accept the glory,

in all that has gone right.

 

A moments hesitation, a forgotten act,

a little mistake and all this life is wasted.

I’ve got to get it right.

Tension, stress and craziness. 

This is how I live each day.

I judge events and people.

I pretend to take responsibility.

to avoid the fear unbounded.

Dusk

The sound of wood burning.

The light fades, double glazed.

My desire is to turn off lights,

And let the day drift away by itself.

Yet there is an urgency to it.

A feeling in the depth of my being.

A need to be a part of something.

A channel for the rhythm of life.

Peace with joy inside.

An invitation to be.