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Declaration of Human Unity - Americ Azevedo My Real Name

2 comments

Applause from 8 readers

I have a friend who for over 30 years has traveled the world getting well known people to sign a "declaration of human unity".

Ways of Knowing - Americ Azevedo My Real Name

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Applause from 8 readers

To know is to bring light to a situation; to enlighten; to understand; to make visible. There are many ways to bring the light of knowledge to bear on something.

Computers Don't Teach -- People Teach - Americ Azevedo My Real Name

6 comments

Applause from 1 reader

Most distance education is training, not education.

Truth wealth realization is needed - now - Americ Azevedo My Real Name

4 comments

Applause from 1 reader

We are born with true wealth, but constantly forget to realize the wealth we already have.

Wind & Fire Dialogues - Getting Started - Americ Azevedo My Real Name

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being real / special experience / birth of the church / why institutions distort reality / judgements & spiritual ego / "the right way" / the beginning of dogma / and more...

Technology and the Meaning of Life - Americ Azevedo My Real Name

5 comments

Applause from 2 readers

Students at universities become mainly focused on "practical knowledge" that leads to high paid jobs. The values by which we guide our technological development and application become afterthoughts. We must wonder if technology now controls human life more than humans control technology.

Mystical Woodland Walks - Americ Azevedo My Real Name

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Sometimes I find life kind of overwhelming. On those days, I really like to go to the woods.

I've got to wonder - Americ Azevedo My Real Name

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Applause from 3 readers

With everything changing so fast - it's a challenge to have hope.

Building a Conversation with 500 Students - Americ Azevedo My Real Name

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Americ Azevedo had 500 students in his Introduction to Computers course at the University of California, Berkeley. Despite that, his teaching philosophy embodies the principles of the Socratic method.

All articles by Americ Azevedo

Paradox of Possessions

By Americ Azevedo My Real Name

Assistant Noozer
Published: 06 August 2008 01:43 pm

BERKELEY California U.S.A.

Money, time, and love are the three legs of true wealth’s stool. What is money? It is a symbol for value, it is information; it is abstract. Humans are driven by symbols to go to war and fight for abstract causes. Money, being utterly abstract, is often valued more for itself than for what it actually buys—it is the ultimate “field of dreams.” Individuals and societies measure self worth by financial net worth, but this devalues the deeper qualities of awareness and soul that are the true source of all value.

It’s been said, "He who dies with the most toys, wins!" This is both true and not true. Some say, “Money does not matter,” but quietly and privately we fear poverty. Fear of homelessness, hunger, and a drop in social status drives many to an insane focus on money—at any cost. If you are poor with a positive state of mind, you may still suffer a sense of emotional degradation just from the social stigma of poverty. Such fears are well-founded in societies that fail to attain true wealth, since the members of those societies know they can and do fall into poverty. A world based on fear cannot be wealthy in any real sense.

Many of the “richest” people in the world are always “hungry.” Much shopping is for useless trinkets to replace the lack of meaning and love in life. Many a parent, for example, who has no time for talking with their children, will just buy toys. Most people identify with the stuff that they own as an extension of their personal ego.

Our possessions can own us. Attach ourselves to our possessions and we immediately lose our sense of true wealth. The very desire for not-yet-owned possessions breeds greed and lust. We suffer endless rounds of grasping for the goods that will make us “happy and full.” We get “more” but immediately need to get “more” again. There is no end in sight.

Walking by a beautiful garden filled with iris flowers, someone might think, “I don’t own it, how unfortunate!” So they miss the simple of joy of the experience. You don’t need to own things in order to enjoy them. To really “have” something we must be present to it. Taking time to appreciate the existence of an object, a friend, or a place is really having that object before us.

(This text taken from an article of mine titled "Realizing True Wealth" that first appeared in Verna Allee & Dinesh Chandra (Eds.) What is True Wealth & How Do We Create it? Indigo Press, A Division of Print and Media Associates, New Delhi, India, 2004.)

Photo from "The Number of Species We Use" by Kevin Kelly.

This article from Philosopher-at-Large, Americ Azevedo

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Dave49000 - Aug 6, 2008 7:31 pm

Extend Maslow's hierarchy of needs beyond the individual and to the social organization of those individuals. Anyone can find themselves in survival mode. Poverty ensues. Poverty is a way of being, a way of thinking--a culture. It isn't a dollar number. The same can be said of the middle class, the pseudo-wealthy and the (real) wealthy. Their dollar figures matter less than their social supports. Franz Kafka lived a life of cards. How many of us have calling cards, not business cards? How many of us have even seen a calling card? You might run across them when you are getting wedding invitations printed. Or, you could read about them in Emily Posts "Ettiquite." They are emblimatic of what separates the professional classes from the wealthy. With a stack of calling cards, you will be an insider to the wholesale level of deal making that constitutes the way the wealthy make their money. With a stack of calling cards, every party amoung the wealthy is open to you. You will not starve. You will not go without. Only social disgrace will make your life tough. Kafka had it easy. Besides, where Kafka lived, you didn't become a writer unless you were blessed with social standing. Likewise, poverty works much the same way. It doesn't matter how much cash you have, if you do not have access to capital, or a bank account. Check cashing fees are high. Payday loans are expensive. Just getting by can be the most expensive thing. Poverty is a trap of geography and the habitual thinking of the poverty culture. It's not about effort or person. It's not something you escape in a single generation just as wealth cannot be achieved in a single generation. Most of those that escaped poverty, in it's thinking about money form, did so on top of their parent's efforts. The middle class forgets family. Social security eliminated the consciousness towards elder care. This loss of responsibility drives the right's desire to get rid of social security even though they cloak it as a tax reform. Sadly it is a banking program and not a social program at all. It has social effects, but its effects on the business cycle has been much bigger. It eliminated volatiltity. That reduced investors ability to make money. Forgetting family means that you cannot become wealthy, because for the wealthy it is family wealth that matters, not that of the individual, and likewise for the poor. Yes, you can see stories about individuals. The individual has mythic appeal, but as a goal it fractures society, cash, and capital. Oddly enough, capital emerges not from deregulation, but from regulation. Deregulation is really a cover for prioritizing who is effected, and ultimately the result has been corruption. The efforts to supress corruption has been the halmark of the USA. The last eight years, however, has turned us into a cleptocracy on the level of Mexico and Russian. A sizeable population here cannot startup. The talk of entreprenurship is largely backwards looking. The favored classes take all, and prevent others from reaping reward from their efforts. This is anything, but a class-less politic. If you want to move up, create family wealth, learn good money habits, connect to or maintain your access to capital. If your cash is in your mattress, inflation will rob you. Our desire for war robs us as well in its inflationary effects. We all pay. Once you get back to family wealth, put society back into your life. All things social are not socialist, and many things capitalist here in the USA amounts to nothing more than the hidden hand of socialism without state control. European socialists countries are smarter, they demand accountability for their graf. We do not. And, for this we are poorer. For the elimination of the social we are all poorer. We are being trained to accept the notion that our goverment can't do anything right, but look aound, much of what you see was done right once upon a time. Accepting this teaching is likewise making

Dave49000 - Aug 8, 2008 1:11 am

The paradox of possession is the symmetry between owning and being owned. My car owns me. My books own me. How as an owned entity, how do I set myself free from my ownership?

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