WHY WE NEED TO SHIFT
Our Eroding “Well-Being”
Society is changing quickly. The old systems of finance, commerce, transaction, logistics (distribution), retailing, and even social engagement with one another, are crumbling. With such rapid changes come upheaval and uncertainty. Society, and we as individuals divisively segmented by media and endless propaganda into more and more boxes, sowing division between us, are desperately in need of a shift and elevation in human consciousness and awareness, promoting not only our “inner well-being,” both physically and mentally, but the well-being and sustainability of our communities, the economy, and the ecology (the living systems) of this beautiful planet we leave as an inheritance for future generations.
In an age where Artificial Intelligence is evolving at logarithmic speed a new economy is emerging, the rules of which are changing just as quickly.
Automation now has the potential to eliminate 73 million US jobs by 2030, which would equate to a staggering 46% of the current jobs.1
It’s unfortunate, but most of us understand far more about our iPhones than we understand about ourselves, our anatomy & physiology, the much deeper aspect of ourselves, our consciousness, and the world around us. Viewing the world through such a narrow keyhole creates consequences that can be devastating to our health, our connection to one another, and erode at our profoundly intimate connection and dependence on the planet that provides for us. There’s definitely a price we each pay for living in today’s fast-paced society. We prioritize just about everything over taking time to explore our health, the inner dimension of ourselves (mind), and our intimate ties to Mother Earth. Our focus is completely outbound; paying very little attention to our actual “well-being.”
Coming into the world as a blank slate, everything we believe is a product of indoctrination. We’ve been taught how to see the world and our perceived place in it.
Because we have not been encouraged to invest time and energy, nor given the tools or the resources to explore the inner, intangible aspects of the much deeper dimension of ourselves, it can be a difficult undertaking to shed the ideological and prescribed beliefs we’ve been proselytized with since childhood and see reality for what it really is and ourselves for who and what we REALLY ARE. I can promise you; it is something far more wondrous than most realize.
Humanity, especially in first world countries, lives in a commercialized, largely illusory reality of endless propaganda, whether it’s world news that can’t be vetted without considerable personal investigation, religion, gender rights, politics, and of course the marketplace. Our society has become by every account one that can only appeal to and meet our needs at the most superficial level of the egoic mind, preventing us from finding answers to our deepest questions and preventing us from ever connecting with a much deeper and far more relevant aspect of ourselves.
Today, immersed in an overwhelming sea of technology, conveniences, and endless avenues of entertainment, we live in a state of extreme physical contentment and yet suffer from tremendous distress and discontentment within. This is because society works against the individual by programming the individual out of the individual, keeping us centered around our careers and perpetually running from one obligation to the next. Living our lives at this frenzied pace reduces us down to mere functionality as a member of society. As a result, peace of mind and having a sense of relevancy is something that is very elusive for most of us. We see ourselves as separate, isolated, and often lost.
The fact that food, pharmaceuticals, and alcohol are the three largest industries on Earth, reveals the current status of human consciousness and how its continued evolution is being subverted and undermined.
This is the rather predictable and sobering result of having neglected perhaps the most relevant part of who we are. The observer.
We are not the body we temporarily reside in, nor are we the thoughts that endlessly plague us. We’re the awareness behind our thoughts and something far greater, with infinitely more depth and complexity than most of us are aware of.
The Yogic Sciences, practices, and teachings served as a tremendous guidepost and prescription for discord and the disconnection that society so inherently breeds in people. Those disciplined enough to pursue it can pierce the veil of reality and peer into a much deeper dimension of ourselves; the part of us that is “connected” to everything. One understanding this connection doesn’t need to be encouraged to be a mother to the Earth, nor do they require morals or ethics to guide their choices. The desire flows forth from us naturally.
Spirituality (an internal pursuit), not to be conflated with religion (an external projection), is a term typically ascribed to that which lies beyond our five senses, or the hereafter. In reality, it’s really an exploration of what lies beyond our mind. Sadly, it has been marginalized by science, and because of religious charlatans who have turned the spiritual sciences into a ridiculous commercial enterprise, we’ve severed our connection to the only “real” reality that exists, our inner-essence.
Perhaps one of the greatest explorations of the human mind involved the undertakings of Gautama the Buddha who looked at what lies beyond the conscious mind in a more clinical, more scientific, more logical way than just about anyone else in human history. What he discovered was nothing short of profound. The implications for the individual seeking an understanding of oneself, is the attainment and blossoming of one’s true inner wisdom, allowing them to navigate life with peace of mind. Sadly, many of these teachings have been kept from the masses as our focus has moved away from an inner focus and understanding to an outward pursuit of happiness.
Because we live in a society that reveres science, spirituality really needs to be talked about as a science. It’s something that today can only be introduced to us at the level of our logic. But, science is a very limited way to try and understand life because science only observes the circumference – the outer aspect or dimension – of everything it investigates, never getting to the essence of anything. This is why most “spiritual” writings of the past have always been presented as poetry.
To bring relevancy to this pursuit, Patanjali and Gautama the Buddha, expressed their investigations of the mind in the form of sutras, which means “detailed formulas.” So their teachings were basically a bunch of well-defined instructions. They made their explorations of the spiritual dimension into a science just like the physical sciences. They said, “if you quiet the mind, use it like this, you breathe like this, you do this, this, and this, this is what will happen to you.”
In applying the wealth of knowledge and yogic practices they left us with, we see life in a much different capacity, accessing higher and higher levels of consciousness. Life experienced only at the level of our 5 senses is like viewing it through a keyhole….We are surrounded by countless frequencies and energies that lie beyond our five senses. Learning to sense them requires a discipline of learning the practice of tuning our dormant senses to them. When we do so, we see that Life is about involvement and inclusion, not exclusion, not us vs them, not us against nature. Only unity, only oneness with all of existence, which is what the word yoga actually translates to. Lulu Lemon has nothing to do with YOGA or the yogic sciences.
Unfortunately, because of our conditioning, that has taught us that life is always acting upon us in fairly unpredictable ways, most of us are more engaged in an endless dialogue taking place in our heads, trying to make sense of everything, than we are with LIFE itself. As a result, we’ve created a very ego-centric, human-centric society, one that not only is destroying our own internal well-being but the well-being of the planet itself.
Today, the wealthiest, largest, most powerful, and most influential institution on Earth is business and industry. Our current worldwide economic model is one that is predicated on our cannibalizing the very planet that provides for us, in the race to constantly bring new and innovative products to market and gain market share. The ecological footprint or ecological deficit created by industry failing to manufacture and recycle in ways that would sustain the environment and the Earth’s life support systems is rarely considered. As a result, corporations and industry have become an instrument of destruction to the natural world, eventually impoverishing all of us with this methodology of doing business, since manufacturing and industrial practices are not only depleting resources like ocean fisheries, rainforests, and soil health, but what is taken from the natural world is not replaced or easily replenished.
Today, sadly, we are seeing the largest species die off in 65 million years. Every day approximately 20 more species go extinct as a result of our destruction of their habitats. In the last 150 years, since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, mankind has brought about the extinction of 54% of the world’s animal species and has removed 67% of the world’s forests. In a world where we are adding 217,000 people (363,000 births – 146,000 deaths) to the planet every single day, one does not need to be a mathematician to figure out the way we are living on the planet is not sustainable.
It’s fascinating when one considers the juxtaposed and incongruent beliefs we hold as a society that becomes very evident when one realizes that we simultaneously live in two completely different and very dichotomous worlds that are currently completely at odds with one another.
One, is the natural world that provides for us at the biological level of our physiological needs by providing us with oxygen to breathe, food to eat, and water to drink. The other world is the world of commerce and economics, which involves utilizing the planet’s resources to bring products to market for consumption by consumers.
Driving commerce is the exchange of currency which demands that each individual participating in the system, earns money in exchange for their time . . . their life. And therein lies the issue. TIME. Who has time to worry about environmental issues or even our health? With respect to our health?
SOME SOBERING FACTS:
88% of Americans (9 out of 10 of us) have a metabolic disorder and yet, though their body is screaming at them with countless issues and symptoms, they never connect the dots or begin to understand what’s causing it. Metabolic Dysfunction (caused ENTIRELY by poor diet and the consumption of processed foods) is now tied to 8 out of 10 sub-cellular pathologies (lethal diseases) killing Americans. That’s just the beginning:
75% of all Health Care dollars are spent on noncommunicable diseases (NCD’s) such as diabetes, cancer, and dementia, which kill more people at earlier ages, and in the most debilitating ways (think amputation, dialysis, blindness) – all created by diet3
Add to this, nearly 30% of American adolescents are pre-diabetic4
Over 80% of Adult Americans are obese with 33.7% of Adult being morbidly obese5
50% of adults and 20% of teens have fatty liver disease . . . a condition previously only seen in elderly alcoholics just a generation ago.
The list goes on and on . . .
This singular focus on “earning a living,” and it’s completely understandable, has caused our focus to move away from a sense of personal well-being and a sense of community, where cooperation was revered, to becoming very a competitive, egocentric, self-serving society made up of individuals looking to protect their own self-interests, with very little time to concern ourselves with others that lie outside of our immediate family or group of friends. Children today can’t fathom the world those of us 50+ grew up in. A childhood where neighbors interacted, spoke, never locked the doors to their house or car. Unimaginable in today’s world. As a result, we develop a very myopic and limited perspective of the world around us and sadly, our impact on it.
Society’s concern with respect to our mental health, our physical health, and the destruction of the natural world is negligible at best primarily because it’s hidden from us. It’s not spoken about, nor does it receive media coverage, because there’s no profitability in a health society, or sustainability, only consumption which necessitates the continual need for more “production.”
In a world of social media, where we are provided with a never-ending stream of distractions to divert our attention and awareness away from our impact on ourselves and the natural world, we’re immersed in a reality that only dimly reflects the “real” state of the world we’re living in. We’ve learned to accept the “status quo” while continuing to conduct “business as usual.” Retail therapy, sports, and media entertainment have become the opiates of our time, anesthetizing us from the harsh reality of how much we as people and the Earth is in decline.
Despite the fact that environmental concepts such as “sustainability” are slowly starting to filter into the mainstream vernacular, society’s current level of understanding, regarding our impact on the ecosystems that we draw from to feed our economy, is lacking tremendously. Our current economic model, driven by the pressures of a global marketplace, perpetuate the well documented and stupefying decline and destruction of the natural world along with the disappearance of those species inhabiting the various ecosystems that are being destroyed.
Understanding the “ecology of commerce” and our role in preserving the planet, as opposed to an unaccountable, narrow focus on our personal advancement and the gains on Wall Street, is paramount in preserving the planet for future generations to inherit. Our current business model is not sustainable, ecologically, or economically.
SHIFT ETHOS represents a movement advocating, a deeper understanding of ourselves, our bodies, our connection to the Earth, better individual, better business, and better industrial practices that promote the sustainability of the Earth’s life support systems, the protection of all species that we share the planet with, and abandoning industry’s pervasive destruction of the planet.
In addition, it’s my sincere hope to dissolve the identification with labels that serve only to separate us, and shift from individualism and self-aggrandizing interests, back to those traits that made us the most successful species on the planet . . . cooperation, love, and empathy for one another. Despite popular belief, where we on a very superficial level associate ourselves with labels of religion, politics, nationalities, race, color, etc., there’s only one race, the Human Race, and “we’re all in it together.”
I would love to hear from you and hear your thoughts on this article and how society is rapidly changing in the comment section below. I value your thoughts and feedback and look forward to hearing from you.
David
SOURCES:
“Automation Could Eliminate 73 Million US Jobs By 2030 [Infographic]’’. Accessed on 8/4/2021
Only 12 percent of American adults are metabolically healthy, study finds | ScienceDaily
sciencedaily.com› releases › 2018 › 11 › 181128115045.htmRobert Lustig, MD (2023). METABOLICAL: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine. Harper Wave: An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
IHME: Prediabetes has more than doubled among American children https://www.healthdata.org/news-events/newsroom/news-releases/vast-majority-american-adults-are-overweight-or-obese-and-weight
The Guardian: Experts Warn of Fatty Liver Disease ‘Epidemic’ in Young People https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/apr/12/experts-warn-of-fatty-liver-disease-epidemic-in-young-people
