Here we go: Straight from the heart:
Since 2009, I haven’t been invested in the financial markets neither relying on them, nor investment in any business to create passive wealth, while I ‘just have fun’ on adventures. This over a period when those that just owned a house would have more than doubled their wealth. Those that have had investments tied up in the financial markets would have done even better.
My NAV has been in slow decline, but this was always the plan, when I set out in 2004. I vowed to not be part of a system I saw was flawed and I also conclude back in 2004, that I Really Did Have Enough, and trying to Have More would be fraught with cycles of fear and greed, and that neither were healthy. I actually help a lot of people, including young people and many wannabe cruiser sailors, with their financial planning, because back in 2004 I did mine and it has all worked out.
Since 2004 I have done a bit of public speaking, life coaching, and much mentoring, but never for ‘the buck’. Nor have I ever worked within ‘The System‘, nor anyway else, ‘for a buck’. I contribute financially to a few appropriate ‘Climate Change’ activists organisations.
I haven’t owned a car since 2004! My trusted touring bicycle that I use every day, and use for the supermarket and collect everything I need with panniers, is 10 years old. It serves me well, and I have no need to upgrade to the latest generation: I would been through at least 5 new bikes by now! Let alone how many flashy cars!
I haven’t been ‘invested’ in an ‘own house’, nor owned rental properties, since 1997! Since 2004, I haven’t owned a TV, multimedia entertainment systems, washing machines, dishwashers, all the traditional homeware gadgets, and all that stuff.
I haven’t had a mortgage, nor any other form of debt since 1997. This while Larry Ellision and most other wealthy people took out huge debt, because the wanted More and More! See here
Essentially, I have not been part of partaking / benefiting from The System’s destructive growth path since 2004.
Maybe more importantly, I have been a publicly declaring, opponent of The Ideology and The System behind it for more than 14 years now. I detest the system, and that is public, no secret. And this is where the rubber of the shoes of the ‘Walk the Talker’ hits the road.
Of course I go to the supermarket, and have taken flights and used ‘The System’s infrastructure, but I try to connect with it as little as possible, and from a wealth benefit context, I have not partaken in the last 16 years’, ‘Brown growth’, wealth creation. Wealth creation that has seen people with wealth increase their wealth at a significantly disproportionate amount to those that have lesser or minimal. That’s not illegal, or immoral, it is just how the ideology works, and the system behind it delivers the results.
I have not been part of any of that, and that frees me of guilt and titles of “privilege”, being pidgeon-holed as part of the elite, etc……..
This was one part of the huge liberation formula that enables me to apologise to young people today. Apologise for what “Me and my generation have done in screwing up the planet, and also their futures’” Over the past years I must have apologised to hundreds of young people…. I used to try and do at least two a day?
Apartheid taught me that you can only apologise if you mean it from the bottom of your heart, and secondly only if you have stopped the ‘ill’.
Being able to apologise is a huge step forward in this whole Ecological Crisis…. But this realisation hasn’t surfaced yet. Self-interest, Guilt and inability to be at one with one’s soul truths, are the barriers. But I sense the next decade and beyond will see an Apartheid type Truth and Reconciliation process appearing. Informally and then formally….
From my last big corporate oil industry transformation job, and driving Affirmative Action and culture change in South Africa, I saw how Capitalism and ‘Ubuntu’ were like Oil and Water: They would never sit together. Yet there I was teaching the ‘Ubuntu-ians’ how to become Capitalists!!
It wasn’t so clear to me then, because I was in the brainwash of the dominant ideology! I did feel a few tinges of deeper pain, knew something was / had been wrong, but wasn’t sure what the actual problem was?
All I wanted, was to be free of this thing I didn’t understand. I knew back then, that freedom and a different Better Life, would be about simplicity, and freedom from all material pursuits. I also was adamant that I would not be using the system I saw flawed to fund me on my freedom journey. I also vowed to never HAVE to work again, and accepted that I was turning my back on business and ever living in a big city again. As I saw it: Cities were the centre of the problem. Where the ideology is very concentrated, and the brainwashing so invasive, its numbing and then, deeply enslaving.
Yes, of course ‘The System’ helped me accumulate the relatively modest wealth that I had to enable me to do what have done, but for the 7 years I was in Australia when I did that, I approached it essentially as a traitor with the express goal to get free, but have fun doing that.
Any of my friends, business partners, and / or my ex-wife, will know that I wasn’t there to stay.
I detested what ‘it’ all stood for!! So even those years in Sydney I was exploring the truth of The System to try and help me solve what The (My??) Problem was?
From the business side, a lot of this exploring was deep inside the Financial Industry, and I saw the worst of the worst of The System at work. I wasn’t trying to defend it or smooth it over, I was looking to expose it and ridicule it.
Most people working in The System, have to belong with it, and be seen to be fully co-operative with its workings, because then it serves them good too…. This makes it hard to be honest, and authentic with one’s souls needs. So for me with a short term, adventurer / explorers hat on, this ‘traitor role’ was all fascinating and enlightening, invaluable for what was to be the unknown road ahead.
Another huge ‘disinterest factor‘ is that I don’t have any kids. Hence, I’m not worried about voting for, or promoting the continueing on ‘a system’ that will give my kids a preference path of continueing my ‘Success formula’ and be of legacy value to them.
By 2014, I had evolved to the point that I could confront any and ‘all’ African people from beggar to wealthy politician, of any age, race or creed, without guilt and even a view that said I could not see that I had a better life than ‘them’. This sounds crazy to someone who has a very clear picture of ‘Americanism’, and how it defines Success, and how ‘they’ only see “Better” is really, ‘The same ‘Better’ for everyone’.
I also saw that there are maybe 5+ different views on what The Purpose of Life is, and What Life Success really is? I have long got my Truths on that, and for years it has been totally different to that ‘Americanism Success’. The same ideology that is destroying our planet has replaced any religion as ‘The de facto religion’ of the world today.
Because of ME, and my pursuit of Life Mastery, that requires a continuous shaping of what makes up a ‘Good Life’, I’m only worried about Truth and then what is RIGHT! This is my Life Quest!
People say they agree that our problem is an ‘Ideology’ one, and I used to assume they mean that in the context of deep considered, honest exploration and reflection.
From my extensive exploring within and outside apartheid, and with many others over the years on the Ecological Crisis, I do wonder if those still fully connected to an ideology, can really see its pervasive and entangling evils? How brainwashed people really are, and how little freedom they really do have, as it cleverly forces them to follow quite a narrow set of society valued ‘hoops’ of increasing ‘Success’ and ‘Happiness’. Hoops that increasingly make them, larger and larger, ‘carbon’ footprint people, and desiring of ‘more and more’ wealth and material things. The competition behind the pecuniary struggle is real, and one of the big drivers behind all this.
I can see how having kids, makes it that much harder as the role of parents is almost to pass on a legacy of a Better Life, and a foundation for their offspring to catapult themselves off to climb higher up its rungs.
The, ‘in our face’, Ideology Truths, of the Ecological Crisis, means that for the first time in Humanity passing on that legacy and providing that springboard for more Better, is leading Humanity away from solving the Crisis: The biggest challenge ever faced by Humanity.
This is profound and the source of much anger / disconnect between the young and the older (our generation) Great Thunberg epitomises this and I deeply support her, “You guys messed it, so you guys must fix it” stance.
I have no doubt that the next decade will see youth anger become like the anger that fuelled the ANC violence path. The youth who can’t vote are the only ones who have legitimate recourse to using violence for overcoming the current resistance to action by the powers that be. As shocking as it may be to you, given the intransigence, and obvious electorate elite, and resistance by my peer group, I support this unravelling. My sense is that like the ANC, it will get to the point where there is no other way but through violent protest.
Around the world, and the elite are cloning their offspring on the same ‘More and More’, success model, rather than the parents changing their model, and encouraging the kids to be ‘Walk the Talk’, footprint examples for the new world unfolding. This isn’t about helping’ ‘Islanders’ whose nation’s islands are going to be flooded, or ‘Africans’ whose farmland will soon become desert:
This is about pointing fingers inwardly and asking what our own contribution is? It is just so easy to support some other, easier mission that is not only fun, but gets public accolade. That isn’t true skin in the game. The type of skin Gandhi or Mandela, or Greta has…. Do parents really want their kids to find the new Better Life, a life so far away from their parent’s Better Life? I’m free of that tough conflict.
Over the years my definition of My Better Life, has become so engrained that I honestly don’t see those who have the real Americanism, Better Life as being better. I see these people as trapped in a ‘happiness trap’ that has sucked their real liberty, and has their identity so linked to ‘things’ and ‘showing others how successful they are’, that they have lost who they real are… What I call being part of The Spiritual Void.
Being able to apologise and ‘Walk the Talk’, was to me the outer liberating proof that I’m not part of that, and at one with my soul’s truths…
I really hope this isn’t seen it as me blowing my trumpet.
It is rather ‘defending’ myself against what I believe are understandable, however, ill-conceived assumptions about me, and my positioning. I don’t say this in an accusationary way, because I get that all the time, and over the years, people don’t get the real transformation and the valuable humbling process I have been through…