UNIVERSAL TRUTH

Addicted To Equality

Looking for a better community

“The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones.”

— J. M. Keynes —

Originally meant as a comment

I started to write a comment but seeing the inappropriate length of it, I used the feature “Turn your comment into a Story” instead. Be careful with this feature though, your story will appear only under Responses, not under your Stories. Lesson learned.

Below you’ll find thoughts on Truth, Trust, and Facts. Serving as a reply to another insightful article by Desiree Driesenaar which itself was a reply to Dr Mehmet Yildiz’s article, and a tribute to Rutger Bregman’s work.

Thank you all for sharing your insights on these important topics and shining light to the road ahead.

Universal Truth

In order to achieve the awareness of the universal truth, we, the people, need to organize better. Organize ourselves as a community, and more efficiently than the people who don’t want the universal truth to be available and understandable for all.

Nobody has figured out how to do it, yet. It is a highly complex and difficult task, but not impossible.

I think we are getting closer to the solution though.

“The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”

— Richard Buckminster Fuller —

Hooked on a Confirmation Bias

I’m a victim of constantly looking for new information that would lead having more equality in our society. Equality as every possible sense of this word. I admit my addiction and I am fully aware of it.

Is it a bad or good bias? Is it a bias anymore when I am aware of it and I am consciously using it to make the world a better place?

The Book of the Historian

When Desiree mentioned historian Rutger Bregman’s book, I immediately remembered Rutger’s bold performance in Davos 2019. As a bonus Mr. Ken Goldman makes a narrow-minded comment about the dignity of a job and how Winnie Byanyima from Oxfam literally zeros Goldman’s efforts.

Being utterly impressed by his courage, I ordered the book. I read it. Result?Even more impressed. Author delivered.

A Glimpse from “Utopia for Realists”

These are only some of my 157 notes from the book:

1. These days, there are more people suffering from obesity worldwide than from hunger (p.5)
2. By the year 2013, 6 billion people had a cell phone vs 4.5 billion a toilet (p.6)
3. Unconditional income correlates with reductions in crime, child mortality, malnutrition, teenage pregnancy, truancy, and with improved school performance, economic growth, gender equality (p.30)
4. Welfare system is a behemoth of control and humiliation, suspicion and shame, instead of fostering people’s sense of security and pride (p.44)
5. Key distinction between people with busy lives and those living in poverty: You can’t take a break from poverty (p.57)
6. We live in a world where the going rule seems to be, the more vital your occupation (nursing, teaching, cleaning), the lower you rate in the GDP (p.107)
7. United Nations GDP guidelines in 1953 were under 50 pages vs. most recent edition has 722 pages and there are only a few people who really understand how the GDP is determined, even some economists have no clue
8. The government isn’t the only one redistributing wealth. The financial sector does it, too, but without a democratic mandate (p.162)
9. In the U.S. the gap between rich and poor is already wider than it was in ancient Rome — an economy founded on slave labor (p.184)
10. Between 1975 and 2015, the annual odds of being killed in the U.S. in an attack by foreigners or immigrants was 1 in 3,609,709 (p.222)
11. The correlation between ethnic background and crime is zero. (p.223)

The author has done a huge favor to the society, by laying out all that “hidden data” before the reader. I sucked all the wisdom out of it. My sincere appreciation for all the research and effort, Rutger.

The universal truth exists, somebody has to shine light on it.

Final Quote

Dear reader, I will leave you with the quote from March 18, 1968 that sums up our sad growth-based economy.

“The gross national product (GNP)… measures everything… except that which makes life worthwhile.”

— Robert F. Kennedy —

A humble thank you for reading. Kind Greetings, Chowa.

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Please consider buying me a coffee :)

Sources: 1. My personal notes 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/ 3. https://www.youtube.com 4. https://www.weforum.org/ 5. https://www.oxfam.org/en

“Awareness is the key to a balanced life.”