© jritch for a robot, i am not, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: truth, united states, video

I was drawn to Where Am I Wearing? (2008, Wiley) by the growing counter-globalism movement composed of many Americans that desire to connect producers and consumers. We’ve been treated to revolutionary writing in that vein through now-classic works like Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma. After Friedman and other globalization advocates have toured the advantages of labor re-allocation to the cheapest labor force (it helps them develop and helps us buy stuff right?) Food is easy though, I can grow food if I need to. I can’t make my Eddie Bauer goose down vest.

I jumped at Kelsey Timmerman’s Where Am I Wearing because I thought it might put a face on globalization. The book exceeds in that regard brilliantly, revealing the lives, wishes and desires of the people that make our clothes. Perhaps most importantly, Timmerman discovers that the corporate machine simply doesn’t want us to think about this dimension of our purchasing. Now that 97% of our clothes are made overseas it is easy to forget that ‘Made in Cambodia’ means made by people living with hopes and dreams in Cambodia. Kelsey reveals that an argument can be made for factories employing children, primarily because these children will likely be relegated to scavenging landfills or attempting to falsify papers to simply gain employment in a garment factory. Americans are filled with guilt when thinking about child labor but the children of developing countries want to work as clothing manufacturers. Banning child labor removes our guilt and clears our consciences but does little else than assisting in placing the issue outside the reach of memory. However this “progress” comes at a cost, the jobs and exports of the developing countries of Bangladesh, Cambodia and China may lead to larger GDPs but families are separated as a younger generation migrates to cities.

Many of the garment workers live a dual existence, earning more than enough money to get ahead in life, to pay for an education, but send more than half of it home to an impoverished family, unable to survive in a modern farming environment. Is it really progress to doom millions to long hours (sometimes 100 hour weeks and 15 minute lunch breaks) just for development? Just to develop a middle class, a middle class better suited to the nomenclature of consumer class?

The alternative is grim, many of the Cambodian farmers unable to produce a living are forced to live in the Phenom Penh municipal waste dump. Seeking recyclables amongst the trash mountains, more than two thousand fight to earn less than $1 a day. But they choose to do this, it is a better alternative than the quickly disappearing village lifestyle of abundant fresh air and limited food.

Some of the most touching moments in Kelsey’s journey to the factories that made his clothes come when treating the workers to great meals at restaurants, taking them to an amusement park or witnessing poverty and its ability to magnify the audacity of the human spirit. The true problem is not the garment industry and its harsh working conditions. The problem is that in a world economy where poor farmers are now part of a lower class, the brutal factory lifestyles are their best option.

If the producer’s job is to make, then what is the American’s job in the current societal fabric? Simply to consume, Timmerman ponders as he tries to eat on a Chinese worker’s salary, $3/day. Could not buying when I want tear the world apart? We see that now as US consumption decreases and the global economy collapses. People aren’t buying and the world is suffering. When laws against child labor have placed restrictions on US imports, children in these nations protested the decision. Once again, they want to work. Interestingly, the author’s allusions to the advantages of a “stone age” lifestyle are in line with the exact same observations made by Charles Eisenstein in The Ascent of Humanity (which I just finished).

The truth behind the garment situation is far more complex than I ever could imagine. Its not just: sweatshops bad, made in USA good. Take the time to read this book and gain some perspective on where the globalized economy is taking the world. From the most dedicated social activist to the deepest entrenched economic globalist, this is a refreshing take on the guilt many of us wear.

© jritch for a robot, i am not, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: child labor, clothing manufacturers, employing children, garment factory, garment workers, globalism, producers and consumers, truth

This book blew my mind. It was the first truly scientific approach to the issue, free of pseudoscience and physics vocabulary masquerading as intellect. Originally published in 1979, Messengers of Deception describes the social impacts of the UFO movement and reveals a serious issue with the common belief in UFOs that will have serious implications for global policy.

Vallee became interested in UFOs primarily during 1961 as he witnessed French astronomers destroying tape which included UFO footage because the scientists didn’t want their credentials questioned. What true scientist destroys evidence that doesn’t fit into the overarching paradigm? (Presumably many) Observing this feat led Dr. Vallee to America in search of the people associated with the strange objects commonly becoming associated with abduction experiences and alien intelligences.

The turning point in Vallee’s research was when he met a retired intelligence agent who wanted to be known as “Major Murphy”. Murphy stated from his intelligence days that 95% of the information for any story is free but mostly unimportant, what is needed is the “other 5 percent… but will [you] have to pay a much higher price to get it”. Essentially saying that the commonly viewed phenomena are what “it” (people or intelligences) wants you to see. The real way to get to the truth was by examining what didn’t fit in. The bizarre pieces. The cults and the “contactees”.

95% of the information for any story is free but mostly unimportant, what is needed is the “other 5 percent… but [you] will have to pay a much higher price to get it”.

So why question that UFOs aren’t alien spacecraft in the first place? The first reason to challenge common assumptions is due to the landings themselves. Vallee states that the sheer number of landings are quantitatively impossible. In his files, Dr. Vallee has 2,000 cases of reported landings over 20 years. Since most sightings are between 6pm and 6am, with a peak at 10:30pm, there must many objects that aren’t witnessed. The frequency of sightings drastically decrease after midnight because people go to bed. If the rate at which saucers were spotted was extrapolated out to include those additional hours that’s 30,000 landings. Most independent studies have said that only 1 out of every 10 cases gets reported, giving us 300,000 landings in 20 years! But once again, most of the landings are in remote areas. If humans were evenly distributed about the planet there could easily be as many 3 million landings over a 20 year period. Absolutely preposterous. Why is this important? Firstly, it would seem that we would begin to notice something that happened 3 million times over 20 years but even less obvious is the fact that the UFOs can not be merely random visitors; they must stage their appearance, they must select their witnesses. This is only one piece of evidence in the case made within Messengers of Deception.

Eventually after Vallee reviews the method by which the cults form, spread and disseminate information it becomes apparent that the US federal government and other covert groups are involved if not responsible. Maybe they are searching for answers as well?

In summary, it becomes clear that someone or some group is manipulating social beliefs in UFOs internationally. The pieces of the UFO experience should be dissected into physical, psychological and social. But most importantly, it is the social beliefs of the UFO contactees which could potentially be tapped to quickly bring about social change in a global economic catastrophe. The human wish to be saved from above has always been prevalent and perhaps even more pertinent now than in 1979! The six consequences of the UFO phenomena determined by Vallee are that it widens the gap between scientists and the public, undermines the belief that humans are masters of their own destiny, promotes political unification of the planet, can easily become a new global religion, extraterrestrial intervention is an attractive faith, UFO cults believe in totalitarian systems.

Essentially sociologists poorly understand how new religions form and this could be the start of a new religion unlike any other… with sinister (or benevolent but mostly sinister) consequences. As stated by Dr. Vallee, the scientific proof for UFOs does not matter once enough people believe in them. Perhaps we have already reached that point.

This book was particularly resonant for me because I just read Dr. Rick Strassman’s DMT: The Spirit Molecule which detailed Dr. Strassman’s clinical trials where he injected the DMT compound into humans causing participants to undergo UFO abduction like experiences. But oddly enough, DMT is present within all of us and in all of our tissue. Perhaps the physical portion of the UFO triggers this chemical?

Quite interestingly in an aside, one theory Dr. Vallee proposes for the nature of reality is more like a computer. Where events occurr often because they are mentally referenced, like using the keyword for a google search. I’ve always been plagued by synchronicities and this is the most practical explanation I’ve ever heard for these occasionalisms. And as a direct example, I read about Dr. Vallee’s improbably moment when he arrived at this theory in downtown LA, the very place it happened to him. Even stranger, I started reading Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy the next day on the plane back to Charlotte and when I read a paragraph about the unnecessary excess in American society, McKibben referenced SkyMall… at the precise moment when the flight attendant was on the PA! She even said SkyMall at the moment I read the word! Crazy… perhaps like Vallee states, we are just becoming superstitious.

I’ve witnessed three UFOs myself, all quite convincing and with other people alongside to see the same odd phenomena. UFOs exist but Dr. Vallee provides a compelling case that the commonly accepted public myth of extraterrestrial benefactors may result from a leap of faith encouraged by agents within our own society.

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Post tags: abduction experiences, alien spacecraft, cults, global policy, intellect, jacques vallee, messengers of deception, sightings, social impacts, truth, ufo phenomena

From part one of his reuniting the self series Charles summarizes the problems of the modern psyche,

“Better than reading a description of the modern self is to actually experience it. Close your eyes for half a minute and picture a human being doing nothing but existing. Just existing. Do it now before reading on.

When I offer this experiment in my seminars, I ask people, “Was the image of somebody alone?” Most people admit that it was: often they picture a person just kind of floating in space, or in a nondescript setting. That reveals our basic experience of being: to be is to be alone. To exist is to be separate. Relationship is necessary, perhaps, for an organism to survive, but it is not intrinsic to its basic existence. We perceive ourselves as separate beings having relationships. But this is not the truth. We are not separate beings having relationships. In fact, we are relationship.”

But how can this be? That we consist of relationship? This notion was easy for me to accept because of my readings of Krishnamurti where the great thinker says,

If you observe yourself in relationship with others, do you not find that relationship is a process of self-revelation? – J. Krishnamurti

Essentially Krishnamurti is saying that by having a true relationship with someone else, we are revealing the intimate and true nature of our inner being to ourselves. That by seeing others as inconsiderate and uninteresting we reveal our own outlook on life. The perception become reality. Our reality drives that perception. From my experience, the humans that know who they are are truly rare. To begin that path of self-discovery you must build a relationship with your community and your world.

But the rate at which we build those relationships is at an all-time low argues Eisenstein. Because we have replaced the methods for which we fulfill our biological needs with commodities and disconnection in sharp contrast with the ways our ancestors existed,

“It is not surprising that the lonely, diminished self of modern civilization should crave to restore something of its lost being. We have been shorn of the connections that make us whole. Your ancestors in a hunter-gatherer tribe or agrarian village lived in a matrix of connections that we can barely imagine today. At least I can barely imagine it, and not without weeping. In those times, every face you saw day-to-day was a familiar face. The relationships that sustained life were personal relationships. You knew the person who grew your food and cooked your food, you knew the person who built your house and made your clothes, you knew the person who sang your songs and performed your entertainment. Most likely, you knew them intimately, as they knew you. You knew each other’s histories, who your first love was, your narrow escape from death at age four, that embarrassing incident at age 12, your pranks and your personality; you knew the stories of each other’s parents and grandparents as well. You were woven together in a rich social tapestry that defined who you were. Being intimately known by others, you knew yourself as well. Furthermore, any action reverberated in a very tangible way out into the community, and back again to you. It was obvious that what you do to others, you in fact do to yourself. The Golden Rule was not originally a rule at all, but a description.”

And many could take a view like this as an antiquated view of reality, romanticism for the past but in my view it is the next evolution of science. To embrace the modern ecology and human psyche in a holistic system approach. An approach also advocated by Charles,

“A paradise on earth is available right now, easily, closer than close. It is a shift of perception away. The epidemics of our time show us that, too. A prodigious energy will be freed when we end the War against the Self encoded in autoimmunity. A magnificent abundance will become available when we stop consuming things we don’t need in compensation for the things we do. And these shifts together come as a result of the pain of the diseases themselves, and of the other ills of our age. The illness is the medicine. The true nature of the connected self, love, is beckoning in every realm. It is your true nature and it is mine. Let us relax into it.”

A refreshing message for our society. A society which must soon reckon with the consequences of unchecked and irresponsible consumerism. The consequences of which are only just now manifesting in national economic trouble.

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Post tags: psyche, reality sandwich, revelation, self discovery, true nature, truth