Dreamworld 101

Hello, is there anybody out there, can you hear me, is there anybody home? (Pink Floyd – Comfortably Numb)

So what is the “dreamworld” and how do you know if you’re in it? Dreamworld looks like something like this:

• There are no limits to how many people the Earth can support. More people helps economic growth.

• Economic growth is the answer (what was the question again?)

• The financial crash was just a temporary, unavoidable blip on the road back to economic growth and prosperity for everyone.

• The executives who (a) received $billions in bonuses from companies that lost $billions and (b) the taxpayers who bailed out these companies were (a) lucky and (b) unlucky.

• Your religion is the one true religion. Your God sometimes wants people from other religions to be killed.

• Your particular religion’s God has a set of strict conditions you must follow (which are different to other God’s). If you don’t you won’t go to heaven (unless you confess/repent your sins every Saturday, or Sunday, or thereabouts).

• As part of this process, you must learn all the lessons this apparently infinite universe offers in one life of about 70 years or so. Otherwise or you will be condemned to hell forever (even though your God is described as wise and loving).

• Success in life is measured by how much money and possessions you die with. Your worth as a person is defined by what you own, the brands that you wear and the rate of consumption your ‘lifestyle’ demands. More is always better.

• 50% of people in the world live on less than $2 per day, but that’s the luck of the draw I guess.  It has nothing to do with the systematic destruction of their countries’ social and economic infrastructure, so their resources can be acquired cheaply.

• The mainstream, corporate  media can be relied upon to give an open, fair and balanced report on and analysis of events.

• Your way of life is “non-negotiable”. For example, you have the right to drive whatever you like, wherever you like and whenever you like. Again, more is better. Anyway, whatever you do has no impact on the world and if anybody tells you otherwise, they must  be a greenie, communist tree-hugger.

• Just be patient and the trickle down effect from globalization and tax cuts for the wealthy will make everyone else better off too.

• Oil will never run out. The price rise is just the oil companies / speculators / Arabs screwing us. If it does run out, the hydrogen car / compressed air car / fuel cell car / hybrid car / water fueled car / solar car / yak dung-powered car will take over. Anyway, it’ s way too far to walk to the pizza shop from here dude.

• “Healthcare” means you eat heavily promoted, toxic rubbish masquerading as food and then load up with pharmaceuticals to correct the resulting problems.

• Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, wars on drugs and terror, government surveillance, harsh laws, constraints on civil rights are all necessary to “protect our freedom” and “protect us from evil” and “support democracy”.

• The cause of cancer is a complete mystery. It can’t have anything to do with an environment full of toxic chemicals and a diet of chemical-laden foods, topped up with stress and pharmaceuticals.

On the other hand, you might sense that the popular “stories” about our world just don’t add up.

Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• How can unlimited economic and population growth work out on a finite planet?

• What happens when damage from economic growth causes the soil, forests, fisheries and ecosystems that support us to hit their final tipping point?

• Why do different politicians and governments always generate more-or-less the same end result? i.e. short term profits for major corporations almost always win
  

• What happens when oil starts to run out?
  • We’ve already used half the oil available in the world and that was the easiest half to get.
  • Given the IEA (International Energy Authority) has forecast that global oil production will fall 6.7% in 2009, has peak oil already happened?
  • What will replace oil in transport, agriculture, raw materials, power generation  etc ? (The answer is there is nothing that will scale up to do what oil does today)
  • Why are there no real plans for reducing oil dependency?
  • Why is the issue not openly discussed in the media and ignored by most government bodies?

• You might look at the surface causes of the financial crash and wonder:
  • How could banks sell mortgages to people who have no income, no assets and no chance of ever paying a loan back and then say they didn’t realize it would cause a problem?
  • How could the ratings agencies rate these sliced ‘n diced and repackaged mortgages as AAA securities?
  • Why did the Bush administration act to stop the States from introducing stricter financial controls?
  • Why did the Federal Government repeal financial laws in 1999 that were implemented after the last big crash to stop it happening again?
  • Who profited from the crash – before, during and after?

• You can look at globalization and ask who really profits?
  • The so-called “trickle down” effect said everybody was supposed to get richer, yet the richest 1% of Americans now own more of the US than ever before.
  • Why are the ordinary citizens in countries that have been globalized worse off now than before they were globalized?
  • Understand how globalization really works
    

• You might ponder on the toxic brew of pharmaceuticals that are claimed to provide health care and wonder:
  • How can that keep anybodywell?
  • Who profits if I stay sick and need more drugs?
  • Who profits if I eat unhealthy or toxic foods and so need more pharmaceuticals?
  • Why aren’t the well known, simple, techniques for staying healthy as heavily promoted as the latest drugs? (Answer hint: there isn’t much profit in them)
    

• You might look at the multi-trillion dollar air defence system and the billions spent on global espionage networks every year by the US and other Governments and wonder:
  • How did a few Arabs from caves in Afghanistan manage to surprise everybody by crashing those 9/11 planes?
  • Given Al Quaeda was working with the CIA through the 1980s and 1990s and the CIA knew exactly who they were and what they were doing, how did they lose track of them?
  • Given the espionage agencies from several overseas Government warned the US of the impending attacks, why were these warnings ignored?
  • Why hasn’t anybody been tried yet?
  • Who really gained from 911?

• You might be surrised to learn that the opium production in Afghanistan has gone up 10 times since the US army invaded and took control from the Taliban
  • You might wonder how spy cameras that can read an auto’s  number plate from space can’t find thousands of acres of poppy fields in Afghanistan?
  • You may start to ask who profits from a drug trade that has increased 10 times?
  • You may wonder if the Taliban clampdown on poppy growing and opium production the year before had anything to do with the invasion?