Bet you didn’t know that:
- Brazilians get big tax cuts for beautifying their gardens or giving a home to a stray dog……
- a Dutch company is now producing healthy, chemical free, calorie free sugarfrom apple and pear cores…..
- last year hundreds of farmers in Nebraska stood in silence during an auction so that a young man could buy back his family’s farm.
- last month a 5 year old, Noah Woods woke up to find his bedroom on fire. He jumped out of bed, grabbed his 2-year-old sister, then went back in to get the family dog. He saved 7 family members in total.
Dr Rice in the US picks random-acts-of-kindness days during which he surprises his clients by paying their out-of-pocket clinic charges.
It costs him around $4000 for the day and he loves doing it
An 84 year old recently won a car by sinking an 94 foot golf putt at a Miss Basketball competition.
A Ohio church last month raised enough money to abolish $42.8 million in medical debts across 41,233 households.
In South Africa Refilwe Ledwaba, South Africa’s first black woman to fly a helicopter for the police service is starting a teaching course for women in robotics and computer coding.
In Nigeria Oscar Ekponimo has created an app called Chowberry which records retailer information about products that are about to expire. Local charities can then purchase the food at a discounted price and distribute it to the community — and save the food from being tossed into a landfill.
Many thanks to all those readers who have replied to my previous article.
Many focussed on the Coronavirus, rather than the core of my message which was that one of the greatest epidemics in the world today is FEAR.
Fear abounds and is enthusiastically promoted by the media.
News bulletins delight in “Breaking News” & “Alerts” which highlight negative stories.
Floods, famines and fires naturally receive prominence because of their effects.
This is to be expected.
Business closures, food poisonings, product recalls, court matters, break-ins, street violence, racial vilification receive more than ample coverage.
The possibility of food shortages, empty supermarket shelves, an imminent recession, global meltdown, economic collapse, environmental Armageddon, fuel price rises and viral decimation capture all available transmission and print time continuously.
Even minor tragedies such as a footie player spraining his ankle gets prime time.
Negative conjecture and far-fetched possibilities are equally treated as factual news.
But tragically there is no balance in reporting positive news.
We need a groundswell of public demand for uplifting and inspiring and healing news.
The news, as it is fed to us today, feeds negativity, pessimism and helplessness.
Change is urgently required if we are to embrace a positive attitude toward the future, toward society and toward one another.
And that change won’t come from the government or any other institution that is mired (purposely or unknowingly) in retaining control mechanisms through fear.
The media is hell-bent on promoting death, dying, tragedy, pain, loss, grief, emergencies, disasters of every kind.
In a world where the media are so closely followed it’s a case of baa baa bad-to-worse.
And that psychologically affects the average person very greatly.
Fear is both profitable for business (example: Dettol handwash kills 99.9% of germs), for the investment industry (example, today’s headline: GroupM has issued an alert for marketers….. flagging the possibility of a recession) and also valuable as a social control mechanism.
But it’s not profitable or helpful for people.
The ultimate answer is to find the Power Within and to embrace it and make it the Source of our behaviour and our beliefs.
Then we’ll look for the good news.
We’ll embrace it.
We’ll feel better about ourselves.
We’ll still hear the bad news….the silting up of the Darling River, the failure of government to come to the aid of many bushfire victims, etc…..
But we’ll also have the enthusiasm to help make a difference.
And when you and I and the majority come together to INSIST on change, then change will come.
Yes, there is STILL time for the Garden of Eden to re-emerge from the Jungle of Manipulated Lies, Violence, Selfishness and Subjugation.
Only then will we find effective responses to this barrage of lies, manipulation and control which pervades so many aspects of society today – and makes life less than the loving, invigorating, inclusive experience it was always meant to be……
Many blessings,
Les