Diagnosing TBA: The BUY Addiction

We buy stuff all the time. Some people have to buy something every single day, if not an item then at least a cup of coffee! They're not living if they're not entering into a store and spending some money.

Exercise: Count how many days a week go without buying anything, anywhere. If you buy something almost every day, or can't go out without buying something, then you know you're dealing with TBA!

Don't you think that I am immune to that! Hey, if I write about some problem, it's likely that I do or did experience it at some point!

Buying addiction is a serious problem in richer societies. It disturbs our inner balance as individuals as well as our global balance as a human community sharing one Earth.

We can see this global imbalance manifest in different ways:

1. Waste and surplus for some, starvation for many.

The rich societies that consume most of the resources contribute to a moral imbalance, which is a manifestation of injustice and selfishness. When food and cloths are thrown away in one part of the world, while hundreds of millions of humans can hardly eat, dress and find adequate shelter, something is grossly wrong.

Humans are meant to be one family with acceptable variations in wealth, but with a universal standard of dignity and availability of human needs for all, which our Earth naturally provides, if it wasn't for the shameful greed and selfishness of some.

2. In order to buy more and cheap, the poor have to accept labor slavery.

Because money seems to be the God of an overwhelming number of businesses, they don't see a problem meeting the needs of buyers for more and cheap by moving to poor countries where they can have labor camps. Humans who work most of their waking hours, in very poor conditions, for a pay that will barely help them survive. This imbalance is simply expressed in the fact that a worker could be paid in a week what we spend on a lunch for one!

All for the sake of us going into the store and buying a gadget that we might not use and didn't need in the first place, or for us to be able to buy 5 t-shirts instead of just one. Wow, what a progress, we can have all those t-shirts and shoes in all the different colors. Boy hadn't our life become much better with that!!!

3. More of the things that we don't need end up creating mountais of toxic trash, and heavily polluted Earth.

Because people buy things they don't need, they end up getting rid of them. In the worse manner possible: throwing them in the trash. Our addiction to keep buying stuff that we don't need lead to factories producing more unnecessary stuff. Because they want to make them cheap, they use toxic material that will keep the cost low. Then this satanic cycle end with landfills full of toxic waste that no one really knows why it was even created to start with.

We lost, the buyers. We lost money and inner peace. They lost, the workers. They lost their life and energy to the factories. It lost, our Earth, and our future. It became full of toxic waste. The only ones who gained are the businesses, only a minority. Are those guys worth all those losses and suffering?!!

Heavy possessions

A much needed simple living movement has been growing. People living in rich Western societies starting to realize that having more things didn't make them any happier. Not only it didn't make them happier, it actually decreased the quality of our life. The more stuff we have, the more stress we feel. Shopping became a new form of distraction drug. We buy stuff in a state of half awareness, and we wake up to find more things that clutter our life and we don't know why we bought them in the first place.

One saying of Prophet Muhammad keeps coming back to my mind, brief and to the point of this human misery. It's hard to render it in English and keep it's original brief power, but he simply said that having less stuff that gives us what we need is better than having much stuff that ends up distracting us.

The truth is, we feel more fulfilled with less, clear things. Once things increase in number, we start to loose control and loose track. We start actually loosing them. A place in our heart will keep worrying about those rarely used items. Our heart knows better. May be it worries how our world is going wrong, when we have things that we don't use, while other humans are in dire need of those same things. We fill our plate at this open buffet, but we never get to finish it all. The food goes to the trash. Trash full of food in one place; human stomachs empty of food in another. That's an insane paradox, totally unhuman.

If we really want to enjoy things, we actually need to have less of them. That's a proven fact. Some experiments found that children given too many toys to choose from lost interest and were lost and bored, while those given a fewer number were engaged and satisfied. I don't mean we don't have nice things. In fact, since we will buy less stuff, we can then invest in the ones that we really, really like and enjoy. We get less, higher quality stuff. Every piece will matter to us, and will have a place in our heart.

Growing in peace!

"Rush will bring about remorse; patience will bring about safety"

Arabic proverb

Change doesn't happen as quickly as we usually wish. I don't think we have a chance of introducing any remarkable improvements before we make peace with this fact. In nature, our best teacher, change happens gradually and surely. Every particular plant grows at its prescribed pace. The only immediate forces that introduce massive, major and quick changes are phenomenons like hurricanes and tornados; destructive forces! Growth happens softly, gradually, slowly, and takes its time. Destruction can transform, in one hour, what needed decades to be built!

We feel this peace when we are surrounded by plants and nature. These beings are in no rush for anything! But humans were not even happy with the pace of plants and animals in growing, they invented growth hormones! The cost of this rush and impatience is becoming increasingly obvious, and even scary at times!

In our individual as well as collective endeavors for improvement, we have no chance of survival without fully accepting that change takes time, and growth happens slowly. Otherwise we will either not make any positive and real changes, or end up with monstres coming back against us!

What's in Chicago's Trash!?

The problem is not only Chicago, so I hope my new city will take no offense at the title. Yes Chicago is now my new, or current city. I do like you, you’re big and lively. Yes you don’t have as much nature and greenery as my previous town of Ithaca, NY, but you can’t ask everything from everyone. However, in my heart I do know and feel that we humans can do things much better than how we’re doing them now, but that’s life. We make mistakes, then struggle to learn from, and correct them. It is all possible to have a big, lively and green city. And it is indeed possible to have a big, lively city that is also good friends with our biggest home, Planet Earth. But we are a little too far from this one.

I do like you Chicago, but you know what, my previous little, limited town of Ithaca had something superior. Something you’ll have to work a little harder to achieve. I don’t know if you’re even thinking about it, and that’s the scary part. We all know it, the ill who falls into the illusion of being healthy is blindly walking toward the edge... You know the rest!

Ok you need to know how little Ithaca is superior. Let’s forget about the lakes, waterfalls, and green hills. It’s none of your fault if you don’t have all that, really. I would be silly to blame you for it. I can only bring to your attention the things that you can control, because this is where your, and everyone’s responsibility begins and ends.

Ok, I am going to tell you now. Ithaca made it easier for its residents to, well, recycle! You will say but everyone can recycle in Chicago, just do your research. I won’t argue with that. Conscious citizens will take the effort to recycle. But here is the sad part, the world can’t afford to rely on aware and conscious citizens alone any more. Unless they lead and make THE decisions. But we all know it, decisions are not always in the hands of the selfless. Well, not even half of the time. May be less. Definitely less!

And most people are too busy with their daily lives. Many of them struggle to make money, then struggle to spend it! Where will they find the time to think about the air they breath! How can they have any time to worry about the far future of Planet Earth. You know, for us humans, even 10 years from now is “far future”! We work five days a week, after work we need to have dinner, go grocery shopping, may be watch some TV and hey, we need to sleep and have some rest. Then comes the weekend, we need some relief, may be the movies, dinner out or something. Remember also that our mental energy is used up already by our mortgage, new car loan, and credit card bills. How in the world can any one expect us to worry about luxuries like the environment!

See, Chicago, I won’t be any longer, but we just need recycling to be more easily accessible. You are like our mother, you have to force us to do what’s good for us. That’s what good parents do. If they suspect their kid is doing drug, destroying their mind and body, they wouldn’t just tell them drugs are bad for you, if you want I will take you to rehab. I am always ready to help you once you decide to! Oh what an open minded parent would that be! Truth is a good parent in such situation will take their kid to rehab BY FORCE. Then the kid will be grateful later on. Yes the kid will hate them at first, think they are arrogant and controlling.

We need big cities like you Chicago to be arrogant and controlling. Force us to do the right thing, because if you don’t, we will hurt our mind and body, our future, and the future of our kids. And even you, at the end, will not be far from great harm. Believe me, your very existence is at risk!

For those who are still blind, let them "see" The Corporation

This is a MUST-SEE documentary. And by MUST, I mean that it's not optional. It's not a luxury. We can't afford to waste too much time without this kind of information in the center of our interests. Every day interests. If we think and feel that we are free beings, and indeed we are, then we should be informed and aware of those who are trying to take away our freedom, for their own, exclusive, superficial, short-term and stupid benefit.

It's pretty long, two hours and 25 minutes. I didn't watch it at once, and may be you shouldn't neither. I felt that I needed some time between every 2 or three titles. I am already familiar with what is being said here, but still, I needed to watch it. This DVD is on my to-own-when-I-get-out-of-debt list!!! Rent the DVD, buy it, or watch it all on Google Video. Then go the web site created for the documentary: www.TheCorporation.com, I checked it out and it was great to see that the producers built this web site to follow up on the ideas. Because this is a watch-for-action kind of documentary. The actions can be small in the beginning, personal and limited. It's OK, that's how everything starts in life.

We have to build and expand our awareness. It is the only way to get our world out of blindness and darkness. The light needs those people who can see (informed, aware) in order for the light to spread and dominate. And I am confident that we will win. Just when we truly decide to.

Healthy discounts

In my last post I mentioned a brief personal experience with how businesses can be irresponsible as far as the health of our world (called environment). Just a few days after this experience I had another one, this time positive. I'd like to talk about it here as an example of how businesses can encourage their customers to make better, or cleaner shopping-style choices.

I was shopping at Vitamin World, now my favorite supplements store. They offer a member's discount for 2 days every month, it's free to become a member, and you get 50% off, which is a great deal (well, I wish I was paid for this advertisement now, but in case you are wondering, I am not!). I became a fan of natural healing, supplements and especially herbs. I might have inherited this passion from my mother, who is the family herb specialist, however I only realized my passion for this field in recent years. Anyway, while doing my shopping for herbs that I know, and some others that I wanted to experiment with, I found this nice offer, and I immediately grabbed it. It's the store cloth shopping bag, which you can now find in many stores as an alternative for the monstrous plastic bags. However in Vitamin World they did something different to promote the usage of this bag, a $1 off your purchase every time you use the bag. That's what I am talking about!

One dollar off is no big deal. But it can be an incentive for people to get it, since they will be saving on the long term. People already look for $1 off, or less, coupons, so purchasing a bag for $3 and saving $1 for the life of the bag is a good deal. I particularly wish that grocery stores would go for the same promotion. People go grocery shopping at least twice a month, if not more, and you can imagine how much of the plastic bags usage grocery shopping account for. Again, if I was a ruler, I'd probably start by forcing grocery stores to do just that. Well, I guess I might be lying here. I think I will force them to eliminate plastic bags altogether. People adapt, and they always use and live with what they have available. It's doing them, and their children, a great good by forcing them not to hurt... the air they are breathing, and much more!

I loved it, but hated it!

Yesterday I had lunch at Taco Bell with my dear niece, who is visiting from Egypt and staying with me for a few months. I decided to go for a new meal that looks beautiful in the big and colorful picture. My niece didn't really know what to chose, so she ordered the same. I waited for a few minutes, then saw a tray with two huge platters on the counter, with my order number on it.

The first thing that caught my attention, and actually shocked me, was how the meals were served. We took them "for here", so we didn't need to have them wrapped up. However, the meal was served in a big plastic platter, and, even worse and even more frightening, it had this HUGE, still plastic, cover. The cover looked nice, but I was just unable to understand why use it when it will be discarded right away. I thought that all it serves is to look nice for a few seconds, and it lasts only until we go to our table, take it off and eat the meal. Then, you know: throw it in the trash :( What an incredible and meaningless waste! Imagine how many of those are served every day all over the country, they will add up and make a nice hill of plastic covers, made only to last for a few seconds, then be discarded!

To say the least, that's irresponsible. But it's not only Taco Bell, fast food places insanely add tons of plastic, one-use containers to our trash. You know, when trash goes out of our sight, and we have a clean apartment or restaurant with a new and empty trash bag, it doesn't mean that all we have just discarded is eternally out of sight. No dear, it's going somewhere else, and it's going to accumulate there. It's adding to millions and millions of tons of disposable material that we use for one time then kill the earth with it. Sometimes I imagine when our grand-children, or, hopefully, our children read about these past (for them) practices, they will look at us and say that they are really unable to understand how stupid and irresponsible our civilization had been!

Now, if I was a ruler, I'd start by regulating all those fast food places. It might be difficult to start by individuals and change their lives and practices. But businesses make money, and we can ask them to implement some new procedures. They also contribute a great deal to the problem. I'd simply force them to eliminate unnecessary packaging, add recycling to their facilities and actually recycle all that can be recycled. When talking of packaging, all manufacturers must also be forced to stop using stupidly big and useless packaging. If they are not forced, by law, to do it, most businesses will never do it. It's as simple as that. However, the consequences are not simple or small. I am looking forward for a time when hurting our environment will be seen and treated for what it is, as a crime.

Gimme a better earth!

I live in Ithaca, and my favorite coffee is not found at the nationwide Starbucks, but I go get it from the local and nice Gimme! coffee. Gimme is really an example of success for me, it has the spirit of localism, yet the brand has the image and quality of the big chains. Anyway, I don't want to talk about coffee, but I want to mention another thing that I like about this place.

You know when you go into one of those fast food places, and you want to get some ketchup, or even some black pepper, how about some salt?! What do you do? You find those little packs, you open it and it will give you very little of any of the spice that you want. What is that? It is the CIVILIZATION OF DISPOSABLE. We live in the world of disposable today. Plastic plates, plastic utensils, plastic cups.... Can we really count how many plastic/disposables we use every day. We just don't see the rest of the picture. We use them, then throw 'em. Looks easy. Well, but it is not easy on our earth. It's suffering, it's been suffering for years, and we just add tons and tons of suffering to her lungs every day, 360 days a year.

With that in mind, we can now appreciate Gimme coffee stores when we go there, and find a little jar (or whatever it is called!!) with "clean spoons", and another for "dirty spoons". This is what they make available for customers to stir their drinks instead of a disposable piece of wood or piece of plastic! Does that sound primitive to anyone? Well, I see this little practice as highly civilised. The Civilization of Disposable is meant to fall, sooner or later, because it is working against Nature itself. When Man and Nature combat, the latter wins. And usually it is not a pretty war. Too many victims will fall, from both sides. What all conscious people should do is work for a new civilization, The Civilization of No-Waste. Or we might find a better name for it. What matters is that this new civilization will be "truly" smart and truly scientific, both in theory and in action. A civilization that knows a lot of scientific facts but acts in the best way to misuse or not use those facts at all is just tooooo stupid to survive!

The Bright Side of Spam

It is undoubtful that every email user now suffers from spam-unless there are new solutions that didn't come to my knowledge yet. You open your email inbox, or download your messages, and here you spend a few good minutes just deleting messages. Well, you might also get a little irritated when you see that you have to delete the SAME useless ads every day! And now the worse side, spammers aren't usually like those good advertisers who will put a small link at the very end of their email ad and give you the option to "opt out", and never have to delete their messages again. The most common solution so far is junk folders, but you still will have to spend some of your valuable time online there, because you never know, sometimes messages you do want to read get caught in this folder.

So as we see, email spam is a problem. It wastes our time. However it does have a good side to it. We lose time anyway, and at the end, we only lose minutes deleting spam emails, not hours (thanks God!). Now we are all familiar with a much worse sort of spam, which is useless paper ads and brochures that we receive in the mail. It's amazing how much paper we just shred or throw in the trash every day or every week here in the US. In my country, Egypt, we don't have this problem, so here is one more bright side for something not so bright: developing countries are very modest contributors to the destruction of our earth, and therefore our health, compared to the first world countries.

Waste is a serious problem. Email spam wastes a few minutes every day. Paper spam wastes millions of trees every year. Don't you wish with me that all paper spam just go to our email inboxes?