Quality of Life

Some people like to say, "Eat well, do good, get exercise, and die anyway," as some sort of excuse for partying, being unhealthy and/or being inconsiderate. This logic has no place in a happy, fulfilling and successful life. Regardless of when you die, you want the life you live today, and tomorrow to be the best life you can possibly have. There is no excuse for not doing the best for yourself and the best you can for those you love. Even if I were going to die in six months, I still would continue my diet exactly as I do (if not do even better) because I want the highest quality for my life. The quantity is quite irrelevant.

~Raederle Phoenix Jacot

"Are you really sure that a floor can't also be a ceiling?" ~ M. C. Escher

Sunday, July 31, 2011

One Piece of a Giant Puzzle

There are a lot more factors at work than any one evil.

We can not point all our fingers at "capitalism" and make it go away, and expect everything to be fine and dandy. No more than we can blow up the credit card companies (like in the movie/book Fight Club), or like we can just burn all the places that chop down forests (like in the documentary If A Tree Falls -- one part of the true story of the Earth Liberation Movement).

Actions of violence, and destruction and "anti-_____" movements are overall, unsuccessful. Yes, sometimes they work. But it is when people fight for something that we see true progress.

There are motives behind motives behind motives when it comes to why catastrophes happen. Nobody wakes up one day and says "let's destroy an entire culture for the fun of it." They wake up one day with some brilliant plan to gain something in order to make up for what they feel they are lacking.

Today, people are all constantly suffering from feeling that they lack something in their life, and that feeling that there "isn't enough" is a big hurdle in accomplishing anything.

Regardless of what we feel we lack, and regardless of whether that lack is real, the feeling is highly detrimental. It promotes greed and desperation. It promotes illogical actions.

As soon as we go around saying, "X" is the source of all problems, they have caused a lack in this world... Then we are fear-mongering people to our cause, and at a high cost. Creating more paranoid individuals does not create a harmonious peaceful universe.

The feeling of lack is what causes people to do drugs, to rob others, to submit to jobs they hate, to waste their lives in relationships (either romantic, or as business partners, etc) that are toxic to them, and it is why we will eat toxic fast food but then buy an expensive large TV-screen.

If we can repair the hearts, bodies and minds of our fellow human beings, we can repair the world. All things negativity will fall away when we are loving and at peace in our own hearts.

A friend of mine at the potluck picnic today was saying, "I was really surprised by how much my attitude changed when I first entered a macrobiotic diet. I didn't experience many physical changes, but my attitude went from incredibly pessimistic to very optimistic in a short period of time. There was no other change in my life, just my diet. It was disconcerting. I didn't even recognize myself with my new outlook."

This is one piece of the puzzle. Our moods, motivations and outlook our affected dramatically by our pH. How many wars have started because one person had an acidic pH level in their bloodstream?

It's similar to the amount of suicide caused by vitamin-B deficiency. Instead of taking psychotropic drugs, just take a vitamin-B multi-vitamin complex. Watch your anxiety and depression just melt away. This is also effective treatment for schizophrenics in most cases.

If we fight for health, happiness, unity, clarity, sustainability, truth, accuracy, compassion, equality, and love... Then all the things we've been fighting against will fall away without resistance.

6 comments:

Tim said...

I agree with this in spirit, but disagree with it in fact. On the whole, campaigns and movements are more successful in opposing things than proposing them. I'm reminded of how many revolutions are successful in overthrowing the existing system but fail in putting into place the alternative they want.

Of course, the identification of a single factor as either the cause or solution to a very wide range of problems is usually problematic. (Though not always incorrect; sometimes complex problems do spring from simple causes - the importance of equality in societies may be one example.)

Incidentally, while pH screams quackery at me, I think it's fairly well documented that lack of sleep has been a factor in some very poor major decisions. IIRC, the decisions leading up to the Challenger disaster is an example of this. (The Cuban Missile Crisis may be as well.)

Tim said...

"I will never attend an anti-war rally; if you have a peace rally, invite me."

I think this quote from your previous quote helps highlight another problem that's relevant here.

Let's imagine it's 2003 and the US and UK are pushing for an invasion of Iraq. Two rallies are being organised, an anti-war rally and a pro-peace rally.

The first question that springs to mind is: are these rallies really just the same? "Peace campaigners" tend to attend "anti-war" demonstrations. Is the only difference between the two rallies whatever emotive difference there is between describing yourself as "pro" or "anti" something? Is peace identical to the absence of war?

In 2002 and early 2003, Iraq was being regularly bombed by foreign planes. The regime was violently repressing dissent. Was it in a state of peace or a state of war? Neither description seems quite right. Does "peace" have a broader meaning than "not at war"?

I'm not sure, but let's say that peace does have a broader meaning, or that is how it is often understood.

Surely being "pro-peace", then, is better than simply being "anti-war"? I'd say no. The advantage of being "anti-war" is its specificity. It identifies a specific course of action that is bad - starting a war. It is more clear who is responsible. This specificity means the anti-war rally is more likely to be successful.

I do suspect, from the tiny bit I know about Mother Teresa, that one of the reasons she took this position is precisely to avoid identifying people as responsible, to avoid becoming too "political" and to keep operating on a broader, vaguer (and less effective?) moral plane.

Raederle said...

Tim, as always you raise interesting points. I think part of the issue of this debate is personal vs. political.

Sometimes it's hard to rally people to something unless they are angry enough about the current situation to do something.

Whereas you can have a great idea that many people agree with but nobody really makes an effort to bring it about. So politically, often nothing gets done because it's easier to unite people with fear and anger.

There is the carrot and the stick approach. Carrots are often not as effective as sticks, especially when the carrot is hypothetical and the stick is very real.

Now, when we talk about personal issues, it's much more evident that pro-positive is much more effective than anti-negative. If you go around bitching and complaining all the time, people are less likely to want to be around you, so you often get little support from friends, and have less friends. If you are a happy positive person you tend to make lots of friends and are able to bring them together to accomplish common goals. That's just one example of how this works differently in your personal life, but I believe I could come up with ten or twenty reasons why this works differently in politics than it does in personal life.

However, that said, if we all changed our personal lives, then politics would become less and less relevant.

~ Raederle

Tim said...

That's an acute observation, that negativity works better on a political level than a personal level. I'm mulling it over and it seems correct to me. I can think of a couple of reasons why it might be the case, though they don't seem to fully explain it.

To me, one of the aims of politics is to encourage and facilitate people to live their lives in better ways. Sometimes politics can lead - for example in challenging racism - and sometimes it can facilitate - for example, a well-planned town can facilitate walking and cycling. I think Ghandi's exhortation "be the change you want to see in the world" is probably a good one. He was someone who tried to live the life he wanted people to live, while also acting vigorously in the political sphere.

Raederle said...

I certainly have much respect for Ghandi's beliefs. I've been quoting him on this one for years: An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

It's true that if we lived true to the changes we wanted to be implemented, that alone could work. However, many people have trouble fully implementing that concept because it's hard to connect our real impact on others with the impact we want to receive from others.

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