It makes me so angry. Just the sound of that generic mass produced tripe makes my blood boil.

But why? How come I let this snotty nosed teenager wind me up so much? He’s just crap, there’s lots of it out there, it doesn’t need to ruin my day.

Well, the thing is, it offends me. This corporate pop crap – is an insult to my intelligence and values. It should insult you too – it should insult anyone who has half a brain and a shred of dignity.

If you care about this society, about creativity, about making the most of your life, then you should care that this audible feces is allowed to permeate our ears.

You should be offended that the radio station you’re listening to thinks you’re stupid, and won’t mind manufactured, disposable dribble.

You should be enranged that our creative industries have been hijacked in the name of profit.

You should be devastated that we live in a world where so much potential is going to waste.

It seems to me that there hasn’t been a truly legendary band for some time. What was the last really good movie you saw? (I’m talking Fight Club quality, not “Transformers”). Creativity seems to have dropped off significantly of late and that, is just not acceptable.

If we don’t get angry about it, our kids are going to grow up in a world where real art is just history.

People tend to avoid eye contact, and especially talking to others, for the most part. Some people get annoyed that someone else is taking up too much of their personal space. Some people take up too much space and don’t care, believing themselves to be more important than anyone else.

The trip was delayed and patience was being tested, people pushing and shoving with passive aggression. Announcements about the delays were met with audible tuts and sighes which I’m sure the driver could probably have heard through his door.

We finally reach my stop, the end of the line. The masses went their separate ways and I began my 15 minute walk home in the pouring rain, with no umbrella.

I loved every minute of it.

Every day is similar. I’m surrounded by people who are so caught up in their own journey they don’t look around them, and they don’t appreciate the here and now.

We are all guilty of it, some more than others. We absorb ourselves in our lives and forget to look outwards, to the world that is happening all around us.

Most people complain about the rain. They do their best to avoid it. It’s the same for all of life’s little “inconveniences”. We look upon them negatively, never stopping to simply enjoy the experience, to appreciate the richness that these “inconveniences” bring to our lives, to live in the “now”.

And that is a shame.

What a sad state of affairs we find ourselves in, a world where anyone might be a terrorist, even though most people aren’t.

Our governments seem obsessed with scaring us, telling us that our neighbour who is buying pool supplies is probably going to blow up a hospital full of orphans , and that it is your obligation as a good citizen of this fine country to report them to the relevant authorities. They want us to be self appointed guardians of an increasingly paranoid society, slave drones to an obsessive compulsive king.

Some of us are old enough to remember when it wasn’t like this, and we look back fondly on a time of innocence, when one could board a plane without being molested, when meeting a police officer didn’t involve being psychologically abused. Sometimes we wonder if we might be better off taking our chances with the terrorists.

It helps to put things in perspective. In the “western world”, there have been so few terrorists attacks in the past 10 years that we could count them on one hand, but still we have declared a “war” on it and turned our society upside down in its name. Yet we allow thousands of car accidents to kill people every day, so why do the authorities not hound the car companies to make their cars safer? Where is the “war” on irresponsible corporations?

The problem is that attacking corporations is bad for the economy. Attacking individuals and their civil rights is much easier, and allows authority to acquire more power.

Only if we all refuse to buy into this fear can we stop this never ending cycle of paranoia and eroding liberties.

Or as Steve Hughes says:  “The war on terror. When’s this going to end? When we’ve got the terror?”

There are the phone bills. The internet bills. The club fees. The bus fares.

Then comes the credit card, which begins as free money but soon becomes yet another bill – usually a big one that never goes away.

Then comes the car – the ultimate money pit. Unless you’ve managed to be a good saver,  you now have loan payments. And even if you bought it outright, you have road fees, insurance, and ever increasing fuel costs.

Then the car breaks down, and you have to pay for repairs. You figure you might as well get breakdown cover now too.

But it’s when you move out from “home” that the outgoings really start to pick up.

Rent or buy, a large proportion of your wages is gone just so that you have a roof over your head.

You want warmth? That’ll be a gas bill. You want light? Electricity bill. Want to wash? Have a water bill. Need to eat? You’d better put a bit of money aside for food too.

Oh – you’re living in a house? We’ll have some money for that, thank you very much, say your local council. We need it for police, schools, and waste disposal.

Now you have a whole load of people demanding money – and this is all just so that you can exist – without having to sleep on the streets.

Want to enjoy life? Sure, but it will cost you. Gym fees. TV fees. Cinema tickets. Sports games. Alcohol costs. Restaurant bills.

And unless you’re very lucky, your government probably adds a tax to all these things.

So what can you do? You need to get a job, and a good one too. Work hard and you’ll just about have enough.

Yet no matter how much you earn, there always seems to be something else, someone trying to get more money out of you with another fee. Someone selling something that you probably don’t need. But who can blame them; they are in the same boat as you and just trying to make a living.

Supposedly we have to pay if we want to enjoy this quality of life. But what quality of life is it where we are forced to work 40 hours a week just to survive?

Couldn’t we just bypass money?

Why live in a world that we have to pay for, when we can just live?

Human Rights Abuses

Around the world, Coke has inflicted great hardship and despair upon many people and communities. There have been reports of everything from murder and torture of union representitives, to worker abuse, violations of labour laws, and hazardous child labour. Coke have fought any attempts to have independent investigations into these allegations.

Environmental Destruction

In India, Coca Cola has caused severe water shortages, polluted groundwater and soil around its bottling plant, distributed its toxic waste as ‘fertiliser’ to local farmers and sold drinks with extremely high levels of pesticides.

Promotion of Bottled Water

Corporations like Coke, Pepsi and Nestlé have manufactured demand for bottled water – building a market by eroding confidence in public tap water. Americans now buy more than half a billion bottles of water every week.

Coca-Cola was forced to take a product called Dasani off the UK shelves after a public outcry because it contained nothing more than tap water. But sales of Dansani are still rising in the US and it is being strongly promoted in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Mexico and several other Latin American countries.

Acid Upsets the Body’s pH Balance, Makes You Sick

Coke is highly acidic, with a pH of around 2.75 it is not only devastating for your teeth, but it has a detrimental effect on the pH of your body. Our health depends on alkalinity so we should strive to avoid acidic food wherever possible.

You Are Supporting the 1%

Coca Cola’s revenue was $12.2 Billion in the third quarter of 2011.  This continues to climb. While some of this goes back into the community, these are token gestures when considering the numbers involved. Where is the rest of that money going to?

Not the workers, that’s for sure.

More info

http://www.ethical.org.au/company/?company=183
http://killercoke.org/

This was surprising because as people who are “awake” and aware of the corrupt elite, I wouldn’t expect any of us to have any trust for the establishment.

Russia Today is a fantastic news source. It has stories which would never be published in the mainstream news or even talked about in mainstream media. It explores controversial stories that many news outlets don’t want to go near, and it seems to have a strong left wing perspective. However, we must remember that they have their own agenda.

I made a comment that RT still has a Russian bias. But then someone else made a very good point – RT has more that – it has sensationalism bias. Like all other news outlets, it has to sell its own brand, and therefore uses sensationalism to appeal to more readers.

Lots of what it says is true. Yet truth itself is not a black and white concept. Facts might be facts but how those facts affect people can often be interpreted in numerous ways. How facts are interpreted is often a matter of perspective.

Everyone has an agenda. Everyone has their own perspective which is based on their own very specific ideals and this affects their motivation. As a result,  perspective will always lead to manipulation.

How to avoid being manipulated?  Never take your facts from one source, always look at how they are being reported from different perspectives. Use your own mind to come to informed decisions based on extensive research.  Always, always, look at the motivation behind those reporting the information.

The mainstream media’s motivation is to sway the public’s opinion in directions that serve the needs of the rich elite. This is evident by their actions if you look closely at the consequences. RT’s motivation is sensationalism, which is far less sinister, but is motivation nevertheless.

It’s up to us to put all the pieces together and get the real story.

Using our iphones.

I’m sure we can be honest about who is really to blame, though. Ethical Consumption is something we all preach but find it hard to truly achieve. When there is benefit to us, the ethical dilemma is lightened for some reason.

Activist groups could lobby the companies to stop, but why would any company sacrifice its own profits just because it was asked?

Creating laws to limit business activities would be bad for the economy and have all sorts of other implications so is unlikely to happen.

Refusing to patronise companies with these business practices is unlikely to attract the kind of numbers needed to make a dent in any large company’s profit – so long as they keep making stuff we want.

Yet, until the labour-based economy collapses, this is the only way it’s going to stop.

Adverts are a distraction, and quite often an insult to our intelligence. They prey on our insecurities for money.

Wouldn’t the world would be so much quieter without them? Well, you can eliminate ads from your web  browsing experience.

First of all, you need to be using Firefox. You should be using this anyway. Internet Explorer has never been a good browser. Google Chrome, although fast, sleek and minimalist, is owned by Google, a large American corporation. This is a problem because of the Patriot Act – American companies have to hand over their data to the government if asked for any reason, without a warrant.

Firefox is open source, which means how it works is open to the public. There is no chance of any sneaky code tracking your every move or doing anything unethical. It is also at least as good as Chrome. The latest version is faster if not as fast, and uses the same amount of screen space (not a lot). So really I can see no reason to choose Chrome over Firefox now anyway.

Once you have Firefox, download Ad Block Plus.

Voila. You no longer have Google ads all over web pages. It also blocks ads on Facebook. It’s just one more place you’re not being sold to, and this is a good thing.

Now, if someone can just make a version for the high street…

Now you probably realise that a lot of what you learnt growing up wasn’t exactly right.

Your parents only wanted what was best for you, and to get that, you had to do what they said. Most of the time, they were probably right. They were wiser than you, so their instructions had purpose. It was for your own good.

However, because you accepted this dynamic from your parents, it made it easier for others, such as school teachers, religious leaders, and other “authority figures” to impose control over you. In all their wisdom, our parents conditioned us to be obedient, and all authority has taken advantage.

Of course the blame shouldn’t be put completely on parents. Many people grow up without being instilled with obedience. But these people are still surrounded by it anyway, in school, and in everyday life, so they too grow accustomed to doing as they’re told. If you do as you’re told enough, eventually you lose the power to think for yourself. And that’s what has happened to a large percentage of the population.

Throughout history, authority has held power over the people. This is a problem because it causes us to be unwitting puppets in dangerous games played by those in power.

• If people were more disobedient, they wouldn’t be able to get anyone to go to war.
• They wouldn’t be able to sneak in corrupt laws that go against all of our rights.
• They wouldn’t get away with incremental, crippling taxes and austerity measures that steal from the poor to give to the rich.
• They wouldn’t be able to destroy spirituality with fabrications concocted to control society with guilt.
• They wouldn’t be able to sell to us with advertisements that make us feel inferior.
• They wouldn’t be able to intimidate or manipulate us with egos and emotions.  We would only respond to reason.

We need more disobedience in society if we are to live in a world of reason. We need disobedience against political leaders. Disobedience against religious leaders. Disobedience against all authority figures. Disobedience against the abstract concept of money.

They only hold their power because we give it to them. Individually and collectively – we have to stop complying – stop believing in their power.

The emperor is naked. And you are as free as you believe you are.

What if you could turn this interest into inspiration?

Instead of posting a controversial story on your facebook feed, think really long and hard about what this story means.

How does it affect your life?

How does it affect other people’s lives?

If it’s bad news, how can you help protect people from it? If it’s good news, how can you help people benefit from it?

How will it change the world? Will it change anything?

What could it lead to? What opportunities will this present?

Instead of sharing the news,  imagine how you can make it.