Category Archives: Opinion

Elon Musk Represents Everything That’s Wrong with Capitalism

The insanity that is capitalism has become so shocking, so outrageous that everyone by now must surely see that the whole concept is a lie that needs to be overhauled like, yesterday. I mean, here is a system that enables 1% of the population to siphon 50 Trillion from the income of the bottom 90% of the population. And this, in the most powerful nation on the planet. How did we get here? Why is nothing being done about this even though we started hearing about these kinds of statistics almost twenty years ago? It’s absolutely insane that nothing has been done about it all this time. We still continue to stand by, helplessly wringing our hands, while the elites continue to plunder all the resources of the planet. Instead of urgently getting to the bottom of this, using our collective energy and resources to find out how this could urgently be reversed, we continue reading the damning reports and then quickly moving on to the next thing. It’s almost as if we have accepted that nothing can be done about it. During the Covid pandemic, we were again shocked to hear how much the elites were making while everyone else sank deeper into despair. It seems the rich will always get richer, and this is just the way life is. Secretly, we wish we were them. We study them, we want to know what their secrets are, how they became so wealthy, what we need to do to be like them (should we all drop out of college like them, for example), etc. We obsessively keep track of who the richest people are and how much they are worth, instead of seeing the utter insanity of a system that creates this kind of inequality. Please note that I am not trying to blame anyone or to shame anyone for admiring the rich and wanting to be like them. We’ve all been there. All I’m saying is, why can’t we imagine a system that allows all of us to be wealthy, because surely there is enough wealth in this planet to go round, and then we wouldn’t have to spend the rest of our lives wishing for something that will never happen as long as the system remains as it is?

We obsessively keep track of who the richest people are and how much they are worth, instead of seeing the utter insanity of a system that creates this kind of inequality.

Take Elon Musk for example. To me, he embodies everything that is wrong with the system. Recently I read an article about how Elon Musk makes a fortune whenever Tesla meets some set targets. And herein lies the problem. You see, Musk did not personally do the work that led to the achievement of these goals. He’s no doubt a great manager, a great CEO who somehow manages to inspire and motivate and strategize and do whatever else he needs to do in order to meet these targets. But, at the end of the day, the fact still remains he did not do the work himself. The work was done by the many employees of Tesla. So, the question is, why is it that Elon Musk, just one guy in a company of thousands of employees gets to be the only one who is rewarded for the attainment of these objectives? Is it a lack of imagination on the part of the board or what exactly does this mean? Does it mean that the board could not see that Musk did not do the work himself, or is it that it never occurred to them that anyone apart from the CEO deserves to be rewarded for the exceptional performance of the company? Does it mean that the board could not stretch their minds just a little bit and see that all employees of Tesla should have shared equally in the rewards that came from the achievement of the goals?

The problem here, which really is the problem with capitalism itself, is a complete lack of imagination. I mean, it’s stunning that no one even sees anything wrong with this scenario, that it’s reported in the media almost as if it’s the most natural thing in the world that the CEO should enjoy virtually all the fruits of the labour of thousands of people by himself. As far as I’m concerned, all the employees of Tesla should have shared in the rewards. Instead of one billionaire, there should be thousands of millionaires. All the employees, and I mean all of them, from the lowest ranked person in the company to the top ranked person should be able to experience that they work for one of the richest companies in the world. This should reflect in all their paychecks. If a company is doing as well as Tesla is doing, then all the good things that come out of this should be enjoyed by everyone not just the top people in the company. This idea that only the top people deserve to be rewarded handsomely is what has resulted in the 1% phenomenon, pure and simple. It’s because at some point, obviously because of greed, the top people started keeping more and more for themselves, and the more they got away with it, the more ravenous they became. No one questioned why the top people were getting millions while everyone else was getting an annual increment of 3% to their already meager incomes. This was normalized, it was not questioned, we went along with the lie. Because someone is the CEO, because someone came up with an idea, they should forever more be rewarded for this. The people who help bring this idea to life are not partners who should share in the rewards but mere employees who should be thankful just for the fact that they have a job.

Now, I am not in any way saying that Elon Musk is not a smart guy, maybe even a genius for creating successful companies such as Tesla or spaceX or whatever else he has created. All I’m saying is that he may have had the initial idea, but he could never have done it without the people who work for him. Without these people, he could never have achieved what he has achieved. An idea is good, but in itself, it is useless without the people who actually work to make it a reality. So why should the person who came up with the idea continue to be rewarded over and over again ad infinitum for an idea he came up with years ago? Why shouldn’t the people who are collectively putting their energy into the company also equally share in the rewards?

There is an underlying lie that is the foundation of capitalism, and this is what has led to the insane situation we now find ourselves in. The lie is that we are not all created equal, that some of us are more equal than others. Some of us are more deserving than others of the good things that life has to offer. As I said before, capitalism suffers from a serious lack of imagination. We seem to be unable to imagine a situation whereby everyone who puts their energy into the achievement of a goal is considered an integral part of the collective effort and is considered worthy to be rewarded just as much as the person at the top. We are unable to imagine a situation whereby the billions that are earned from these shared efforts are spread out among all the people who put in an effort. We somehow think, or have been taught to think that there is something wrong with equitably sharing the earnings of a company. We have been taught to consider some people’s contribution as lowly, therefore not worthy of being rewarded generously, while it’s okay to be generous with others who are considered more worthy, more deserving of generosity.

There is an underlying lie that is the foundation of capitalism, and this is what has led to the insane situation we now find ourselves in. The lie is that we are not all created equal, that some of us are more equal than others. Some of us are more deserving than others of the good things that life has to offer.

And this is exactly how capitalism has deceived us all, by telling us that only a few people should enjoy the rewards of success, that everyone else should just be grateful to be earning a salary. So, let me ask you this, if the company were to share out the billions equitably among the employees, what would be so wrong with that? Oh, maybe you think that if the cleaner was paid a million dollars a year, they would not know what to do with it, is that it? Or maybe you think the administrator would not be able to spend a million dollars because it is too much for them? Or perhaps the accountant wouldn’t find things to do with a million dollars? Does it make you feel uncomfortable when I talk about the lowest-ranking members of a company being paid handsomely? Do you automatically dismiss it as impossible or unrealistic? If so, then you are the victim of programming. We all are. We have been programmed to think that not everyone is worthy of being paid well, that generosity cannot extend all the way to the bottom of the company and should only remain at the top levels of the company. The idea that some people’s effort is more important than others is a construct we have all come to accept, and maybe it’s time we started questioning it. If you sense this type of programming in yourself, I invite you to pause for a moment and read my article here to learn more about this mindset. Suffice it to say that each and every person deserves to be treated generously by the company they work for, exactly the way the top people are treated generously by the company.

I know I have used Elon Musk as an example, but I hope you can see that this same principle applies to all the elites who enjoy all the fruits of the successes of their companies by themselves. Take Jeff Bezos as another example. During Covid, Amazon made billions which made Bezos the richest person on the planet. Now, I’m pretty sure that Jeff was not personally packing and shipping all those packages to every corner of the planet in the middle of a pandemic. It was the hard-working employees of Amazon who did this. So, why is it that he gets to enjoy the rewards all by himself? Granted, Jeff came up with a great idea in creating Amazon, but does that mean he has to continue enjoying the fruits of the company’s success all alone forever? No! There are thousands of people who are everyday giving their energy to the company, turning Jeff’s idea into reality and they too should get to enjoy the fruits of working for such a successful company.

We need to rethink the whole idea of employee compensation. How do companies come up with their compensation schemes? Well, it’s simple. Most companies use bench-marking, which is whereby they do a comparative analysis of what other companies are paying their staff and from there, decide what they want to pay their own staff. This is one of the factors that has allowed the highest earning companies to get away with paying their staff only a fraction of what they are actually capable of paying. If a company that’s making billions pays the same or a comparable amount as a company that makes much less, then this allows the billion-dollar company to keep much more for themselves, which is exactly what allows the CEOs to pay themselves whatever they want. This whole system needs to be overhauled. Companies should be made to pay a percentage of the company turnover to their employees in recognition of the fact that it is the employees who enabled the company to make that money in the first place. The current practice of bench-marking should not be used to shortchange employees. The more successful a company is, the more the employees should be paid, whether this is a hundred times above the market rate or whatever. This is what has been missing, and this is why inequality is getting worse and worse. No one is looking closely at what portion of a company’s turnover is used on compensation; we are being hoodwinked by being told that the company is the best payer in the market, forgetting that we are comparing billion-dollar companies with companies that are earning much less.

The biggest problem with capitalism is our collective impotence when it comes to dealing with the problem of the 1%. It’s almost as if this problem has no solution, it’s a problem that defies solutions. We talk about taxing the mega-rich more, knowing full well that higher taxes will only benefit the government not the people. In my opinion, it’s not taxing the mega-rich that will lift everyone up, it is forcing the mega-rich to compensate their employees according to how much the company makes. It’s about regulating these companies and not waiting for ‘trickle down economics’ which will never happen. It’s about not paying lip service by telling employees that ‘this could not have been achieved without you’ while actually not rewarding them for their efforts.

We need to stop being over-awed by the Elon Musks and Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerbergs of this world. What we need to realize is that they are ordinary people who came up with extra-ordinary ideas, and who did not bring these ideas into life on their own but utilized the energy and time and attention of the people who work for them. It’s time they stopped enjoying all the benefits by themselves. It’s time for a different approach, a new approach to employee compensation that recognizes and rewards them generously for the role they play in the success of the company.

The Objectification of Human Beings by the War Industry

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If there’s one thing human beings have been programmed to believe, it’s that we are not capable of analyzing issues and coming to our own conclusions. Everything has to be broken down for us by experts. Human beings have been taught to believe that we should always wait to be told by authoritative figures how to think about certain issues, be it politics, economics, unfolding events, even what we should eat and how we should live our lives. That’s why whenever we read news articles, we always find references to what the experts have to say about the issue at hand. The idea is basically to tell us how we should think about the issue, thereby eliminating the need for us to think critically and come to our own conclusions. Whenever a newsworthy event happens, we get the panel of experts to chew the facts for us and feed us with the proper way of thinking about the issue. This programming is so deep within us that many of us automatically shy away from thinking deeply about ideas or events that are happening around us and prefer to take at face value whatever the experts are saying.

It is in this context that I originally shied away from writing this article because I thought to myself, well what do I know about war? What do I know apart from what I see in the media about wars breaking out here and there and soldiers being sent to battle in various parts of the world and bombs being dropped in faraway places? I assumed as many people do that military decisions are made by war generals and political leaders who surely know better than any of us what needs to be done. How many times have we seen decorated war generals solemnly and authoritatively declaring that this and that war is being fought for this and that reason and it never even occurs to us to question why this is so and whether this person actually knows what they are talking about? How could anyone question such an authority figure? He is the expert on such issues after all.

Or are they? Maybe that’s just what we’ve been led to believe? If the people who make decisions about whether or not a country should go to war are the experts on such things, then why is the world in such a mess with endless wars being fought everywhere and nothing much ever coming out of these wars? How comes these so-called experts always say that the war will achieve this and that goal, but this is never the case? Doesn’t that surely tell us that these people have no clue what they are talking about? If they did, why do we have situations such as the ones in Afghanistan or Iraq in which wars are fought for decades and end up making the situation even worse than it was before? What about the current wars going on in the world such as in Yemen or Syria or in some African regions? If the decision to fight or intervene in these wars were made by experts, people who supposedly know better than all of us, then why are things so much worse than they were to begin with?

If the people who make decisions about whether or not a country should go to war are the experts on such things, then why is the world in such a mess with endless wars being fought everywhere and nothing much ever coming out of these wars?

Let’s talk about why these wars are even possible in the first place. Where do the weapons come from? Where does the ammunition come from? It is common knowledge today that both sides of a war are usually supplied by governments or corporations that stand to make huge profits from the sale of these war supplies. Sometimes even both sides of a war could be supplied by the same people. The most shocking thing of all is that the developed world that is always quick to condemn countries that go to war are the same ones that supply nearly all the weapons being used in wars around the globe. It doesn’t take an expert to see that war is a huge calamity for humanity as a whole and that anyone who makes the decision to send people to war whether a president or a parliament or an army general is essentially condemning a lot of human beings to death without caring too much about the individual human lives that are going to be lost.

Let’s be clear about one thing: war is the extreme objectification of human beings, because human beings stop being seen as individuals but as objects to be used to achieve whatever objective the decision makers want to achieve. The end thus becomes more important than the human lives that are going to be destroyed by the war. Soldiers are seen as resources to be used in fighting wars, no different from the weapons and the fighter jets and the bombs that are used in war. The humanity of these people is denied and deemed to be secondary to whatever objective the war is supposed to achieve. The people who are killed in wars become nothing more than statistics for us to briefly reflect on during news reports before quickly moving on to other news. The people who are displaced by war, the millions who are forced to emigrate to foreign lands where they are greeted with hostility and hatred are seen not as the human beings they are, but as destabilizing elements that need to be kept out of the clean and civilized societies into which they attempt to enter. We refuse to see their humanity and choose to see them as different from us and as threats to our way of life.

It’s no big secret that the reason war exists is because war is an industry and a very profitable one at that. Profit is the only reason wars are fought. This is pretty much an open secret today. Of course, those who benefit from war will always try to hide this from the population and they will always find ways to justify why this and that war must be fought. What about the massive expenditure by governments on their military? How could this be justified if no wars were being fought, if there were no enemies to fight and protect ourselves from? These huge budgets could be used for the welfare of the people, but instead they are used to prepare for and fight against real and imagined enemies. Why is this still going on? Why do we, the people who are hurt by wars, who don’t benefit in any way, who have everything to lose from war allow this to continue?

It’s because we have been programmed to see the world in this way. We have been programmed to believe that war is a natural part of being human and the idea of a world without war is never even presented as an option, leave alone debated as a serious possibility. But if human beings can envision a world without poverty, if people can envision a world without disease, why can’t we envision a world without war? We’ve also been made to believe that every country must have an army for the sake of self-defense because supposedly we are surrounded by enemies who are just waiting for an opportunity to attack. But did you know there are countries that have no standing armies such as Costa Rica, Mauritius and Panama? How comes no one is attacking them?

A journalist by the name Hannah Arendt who reported on the trial of war criminal Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the final solution during the holocaust wrote a book about what she called the ‘banality of evil’. The banality of evil basically means that the reason people commit acts of evil is because they refuse to think for themselves. They mindlessly take on ideologies and follow orders and commit acts that are evil because they do not take time to analyze and think about what they are doing and question what they are told. We are so accustomed to being told how to think about everything that we do not actually take time to think for ourselves. As an example, consider the idea that is aggressively pushed by Hollywood that soldiers who go to fight wars are heroes. We all know the atrocities that are committed during war, so how are these people heroes? Why do we accept this idea? Are these people heroes or are they pawns in a game that is so masterfully played that we have all been fooled by it for far too long? If only every soldier who thinks about joining the military could pause and think for themselves and ask themselves whether it is justified to kill another human being and whether this is something they personally want to do, then maybe we would start seeing a change in terms of people becoming unwilling to subject themselves to this objectification.

We are so accustomed to being told how to think about everything that we do not actually take time to think for ourselves.

Wars are not a necessary or inevitable part of life on this planet. There are people who would prefer that we continue to think about war in this way, that we continue to view war as an integral part of being human, something that can never be eradicated because it is human nature. But we know that it is not in human nature to kill other people, in fact it is so contrary to human nature that even those who are trained to do so end up being severely traumatized by it.

The worst part about war, despite all the propaganda, is that war never achieves the goals that it sets out to achieve. No war ever goes the way it was supposed to go. People who were thought to be weak turn out to be not so weak after all. Armies that were seen as invincible turn out to be not so invincible after all. The one thing that is certain about war is that it results in casualties and death. So essentially, the value of a human life is made secondary to some obscure goals that will in all probability not be achieved. If we viewed the soldiers who go to fight wars and the people who are affected by wars as human beings who have a right to live long and meaningful lives, we would never allow our governments to send anyone to war. It’s time we said no to this objectification of human beings by the war industry.

What is the Fallen Consciousness?

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Recently I watched two documentaries that got me thinking about something that many of us never consciously consider and yet is a major part of the world we live in. One of the documentaries was called ‘Coded Bias’ in which some clever people discover that artificial intelligence which uses data that is gathered from our collective use of the internet has some inbuilt biases for example biases against women and biases against people of colour. The interesting thing about this is that the artificial intelligence uses raw data that is fed into it and it produces a result which is an accurate reflection of the world we live in. The problem of course comes in when we try to use artificial intelligence to carry out tasks such as recruitment or facial recognition or performance evaluations. Then we run into problems because the system naturally perpetuates the biases we already have and makes them even worse. The biases in our society such as the ones mentioned above naturally find their way into the system because the system can only work with the information it is fed. In layman’s terms, this is what is known as garbage in, garbage out. Unfortunately, this is taking place in the world of technology which these days is affecting our lives more and more in ways that we don’t even know yet. The worst part about it is that it took people who are really smart in I.T. and mathematics to notice this problem. In other words, this is something that the average person would never actually be able to notice.

The biases in our society such as the ones mentioned above naturally find their way into the system because the system can only work with the information it is fed. In layman’s terms, this is what is known as garbage in, garbage out.

Which brings me to the title of this article. What is the fallen consciousness? The fallen consciousness is something like the bias that is hidden inside all the raw data that is difficult to perceive, but becomes very clear once the data runs through the system because of the result it produces. Basically, the fallen consciousness is a way of thinking that is very hard to notice or perceive in yourself or in others, but it becomes very clear from the results it produces. How many times have we looked at the world we live in and wondered why is the world is in such a mess? Well, it is because of the garbage in, garbage out phenomenon. We are constantly feeding garbage into the system and then we wonder why the system produces garbage. But what exactly do I mean when I say we are feeding garbage into the system?

Well, this now brings me to the second documentary I watched which is a prime example of how we feed garbage into the system. The documentary is called ‘Inside Job’ and it talks about a topic that many of us are familiar with. The financial collapse of 2008. How did this collapse happen? It happened because of greed. Greed is an example of the fallen consciousness because it is a way of thinking that says I am the most important person; I should be able to have everything I want and everyone else can pretty much go to hell; I am more deserving than anyone else of all the good things life has to offer. Now, if you meet a person with this way of thinking, you would probable not be able to see it in them immediately. They probably don’t even see it in themselves. This way of thinking only becomes clear once it is taken through the system and then it produces a result, which in this case was the global financial collapse. Many of us of course suffer from various degrees of greed, but in this case, it was greed that was taken to the very extreme and it produced an extreme result which then became obvious to everyone.

Another good example of this same way of thinking is clearly emerging from the ongoing covid-19 pandemic and specifically on the issue of vaccines. What is clearly emerging is what is starting to be known as vaccine apartheid, which is whereby the rich countries are grabbing for themselves most of the vaccine supplies in the planet, in many cases much more than they even need, while the rest of the world goes without. One of the features of the fallen consciousness is that it thinks that you can hurt others without actually hurting yourself. What we are seeing with the vaccine apartheid is that as the rich nations grab for themselves all the vaccines, we are giving the virus time to mutate and form other variants that are then going to prolong the pandemic and maybe even eventually render the vaccines we currently have useless. If only we could distribute the vaccines more equitably around the globe, we could significantly slow down the spread of the virus and its ability to mutate.

I hope you are now starting to see what the fallen consciousness is. Its not just one thing, its many things. It’s a way of thinking that says some people are better than others, some people are more deserving than others, there is not enough for everyone, I can hurt others without hurting myself, etc. If you feed enough of this way of thinking into the system, then you end up with the world we live in today. The world we live in is a reflection of the fallen consciousness, it is a reflection of what we have been feeding into the system, knowingly or unknowingly.

The world we live in is a reflection of the fallen consciousness, it is a reflection of what we have been feeding into the system, knowingly or unknowingly.

I want to give a small analogy of how the fallen consciousness basically makes the world hell for everyone who lives in it. Imagine there’s a giant wall and on the other side of the wall is paradise. All humanity needs to do is come together and find a way that will enable everyone to climb over the wall into paradise. Sounds easy enough, right? But as everyone is busy thinking of how we could find a way for everyone to enter into paradise, a rumor begins circulating among the people. The rumor says that actually, there’s not enough room for everyone in paradise. Only some people will be able to go to paradise, not everyone. Now, no one has actually been to paradise, so no one actually knows whether this is true or not. But sooner or later, everyone starts believing that there is not enough room in paradise for everyone. What starts happening is that some people give up on the idea of ever making it to paradise and decide to just make do with what is here on this side. Some people even completely forget that they were trying to get to paradise and they just find other things to do and other ways of distracting themselves. Soon, only half of the population is even trying to get into paradise. This is the first level of the fallen consciousness.

Of the people that are now actively trying to get into paradise, suddenly another rumor starts circulating. It seems that actually not everyone deserves to enter into paradise. This becomes very confusing for many as its not clear exactly what this means. Soon, many criteria start emerging as people try to determine who is worthy of entering into paradise and who is not. Some say only a certain race deserves to enter, some say only a certain religion deserves to enter, some say only a certain gender, only a certain skin color, only a certain profession, only a certain sexual orientation, etc. The criteria is really arbitrary and everyone tries to come up with their own version. This causes a lot of tension as most people believe their criteria to be correct and reject everyone else’s criteria. People start discreetly supporting the criteria they agree with while opposing the criteria they don’t agree with. Soon enough, laws have to be created which subtly and not so subtly support one criterion and then it becomes necessary to brutally enforce these laws because many people violently oppose the laws. The curious thing about this particular level of the fallen consciousness is that many people can clearly see that this is unfair when the criteria works against them, but they are not able to see the unfairness when it works for them. This is the second level of the fallen consciousness and as you can see it is a very chaotic system that keeps everyone very busy fighting and arguing about who is deserving and who is not and everyone tries to prove that they are deserving while at the same time trying to keep out those they consider not deserving to enter paradise.

While everyone is busy trying to sort out the mess, about one percent of the population comes together and says look, it would be nice if all these people could get into paradise, but imagine how much nicer it would be if only we were in paradise. We could basically have it all! We would have so much that we would never again have to lack. So, while everyone is busy fighting each other, why don’t we come up with a system that will allow only us to enter into paradise and leave out all these other dummies that are fighting amongst themselves? The next level of the fallen consciousness is thus created. Of course, this has to be well hidden from everyone else so that no one would know what is happening. The one percent called this level capitalism, which is a clever way of disguising the fallen consciousness of greed (Boris Johnson the PM of the UK very eloquently confirmed this recently). The one percent then got everyone to accept that indeed this is the best system, maybe even the only true system, it is based on meritocracy therefore guarantees that only the truly deserving can actually make it into paradise. Capitalism therefore becomes the dominant way of thinking and everyone is fooled into agreeing that anything else is dangerous and false.

As you can imagine, what was initially a simple task has now been transformed into the most impossible task imaginable. Everyone apart from the one percent is now living in hell on earth and some start blaming god for creating such a messy situation. If god was all powerful and all good they say, then he would never have allowed this to happen. Therefore, the only conclusion is that either god doesn’t exist or he is not all powerful or he is not all good. Of course, what they fail to realize is that god did not create the fallen consciousness that produced the mess. The people themselves created the fallen consciousness and they fed it into the system and the system produced a result. The only way out of the mess is to stop using the fallen consciousness and simply come up with a system that allows everyone to cross over into paradise. Simple enough task, wouldn’t you say?

I hope this article helps you understand what the fallen consciousness is and enables you to see it in yourself and in others. Obviously, the fallen consciousness comes in many shapes and forms but I hope you can now see how it runs through and affects everything in the world we live in. My sincere hope is that we start realizing that the only way out of this mess is to create a just world in which the fallen consciousness has no place.

Harry and Meghan: An Opportunity to Choose Love