[wolfgang]

Originally Posted by John Freestone

If someone is poor or oppressed and they use positive thinking to empower themselves and start moving up the scale, I'm in favour of it. If the richest people on the planet use it for their further gain, I'm a little uncomfortable about it. I don't buy the simple reply that there is abundance everywhere and I've got a deficit mindset. That's just an insult to the poorest people on the planet, e.g. those having their homes and way of life wiped off the planet by rich logging companies manifesting more abundance.

I do wonder about that proposed abundance mind set. It is tossed around a lot as that we are believing wrong to think of lack or not enough. Now, factually we could consume the earth in a way. But I try to think there is enough. It just isn't distributed and is horded a lot. Then also I think the idea needs to go further that just saying believe in an abundant universe. It needs to contain renewal and keeping the golden goose alive.

All populations of life forms have always competed for resources, and we are no different, except that we consume far more and have run out of frontiers to expand into (unless we count whizzing off to space - cue another link to Michio's lovely fluffy world of wonderous human futures).

I have stretched my thoughts over this in the past too. It seems that human kind is supposed to be able to realize competing is more difficult than cooperation. We don't get it yet. Sometimes I look at nature and wonder, that lion taking that zebra - is that plunder or a cooperation between species?

Indeed, with global warming and the enormous economic upheavals we seem to be on the brink of - one superpower losing its position, another on the rise - the finiteness of our global resources should be becoming very clear. In this climate, I believe we should be trying to find ways to overcome our unbridled acquisitiveness. Maybe a little Christian charity wouldn't go amiss. Maybe we won't even survive unless we get the hang of communism.

it's only finite in keeping the same old mode going. if we can take but also allow and participate in replenishment, maybe we can keep mother earth alive for us. it may be a hard lesson for humanity to be able to work this out.

communism - I'm in usa and watched Sicko - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia recently and thought what happened to the health system here? made me think of moving to England or somewhere that if you get sick, you don't get a jacked up bill - no bill at all! Maybe not communism but socialist at least. (that's off topic of this thread, sorry poor thread)