Well, I guess I do qualify for at least three of these and I am not going to share with you which three 🙂

Finding a voice on WordPress or any other form of social media is somewhat difficult, you may have or may feel you have a strong message or inspiring information to share with your fellow bloggers and the world, but unless you are noticed then, your message/s stay close to home.

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In my case, home is Shanghai China, I am not Chinese but I have lived and worked here for many years, I do love China, it’s people, its customs and it’s long history, sadly it is changing, some say for the better and some say for the worse, China is a land of great diversity and its history and culture has led to some of the greatest inventions in the world, the creativity of its people is amazing…but…of course there has to be a BUT…it’s going crazy…everyone is driven 24 x 7 to change, to work every hour of the day 7 days a week in order to earn more, buy more STUFF….the Stuff that is purchased each and every day in every country within our beautiful world….This Stuff, portrayed to us as life changing, a must have, you cannot survive without it etc…Hype, Marketing, sales promotions etc…..but to what end?

If i travel to more remote parts of China and the same in other countries in Asia,, the Americas or Europe I see with my own eyes communities that do not have much ‘Stuff’, they live  on a very small income, often farming their own small plots of land, living off what they grow and living happy lives, they ‘SMILE’ and they ‘GIVE’, these people we may say ‘do not have anything’ (No cars, no flat screem TV’s, no iPhones, no laptops, no LV, Gucci or Prada bags’, their children have hand made clothes or hand-me-downs, they use old tools to work their land with no modern machinery and they don’t every eat ‘Fast Food’, but these people are happy, they have smiles on their faces and they are mostly healthy, and if you were to visit them, they will hold out their hands and greet you warmly, they will share their food and give you shelter….

Now, don’t get me wrong, this is not utopia, some of these people do struggle, often their family is broken up when a son or daughter goes off to the city in search of fame and fortune, or when the father goes off to the growing coastal cities to work in construction and send back the majority of his monthly salary to help keep his family….but when you see these family’s together, there is happiness 🙂 There are true smiles of joy, you can hear the laughter but you can also sometimes see ‘greed’ in a glint of an eye…This greed is brought on by the media, through advertising, through the messages sent to mobile phone and tablets every second of every day…..Who are you if you don’t have this?…If you want a girlfriend or boyfriend you must wear this or do that?…If you want to be seen you must go here?……The latest iphone is here..Oh Joy..give me your hard earned cash even though the one you have is only 3 months old?……..Oh your laptop is slow and wont run this program….Buy another, it’s easy and I will help you buy it with an easy payment plan?….

And on and on it goes…..

Media madness driving us crazy, pushing us to by more STUFF each and every day, our hard earned money being wasted time and time again, our cupboard full with clothes that we never wear, our homes full of technology that is still perfect but never used, our cars filled with more gadgets and gizmos that we don’t need or understand…..but we continue to buy without a thought!

The fat cats of industry get fatter, their yacht’s get bigger, their private jets faster and more luxurious and their office ivory towers more grand, all driven by the media, by hype and the fear factor….unless you have IT…You are a nobody!

My dear friends, I generalise and I am not against profit, or against the media or industry because we do need these things in our world, but at the same time we need some sanity, some realisation of what goes on in our neighbourhood, our cities, our country and in other countries around the world, we need to be aware of the hardships our brothers and sisters in other countries have to live with each and every day in order to help manufacture these things you are buying, often for less that a $ per day to put some simple food on their table and put a roof over their head for the night. The filthy polluted and undrinkable water they give their children to drink everyday because they have no other option, the diseases they have to endure and suffer from because they cannot afford the vaccines to protect them, and the wars raging in their countries which are most often fuelled by greed, greed for control of the land which is ‘Our’s and not your’s’ or for the commodities like oil and precious metals that lay beneath these lands.

Where is our world heading?

Why is it spinning out of control?

Why are our politicians and governments not listening?

Where will it all end?

We…my friends can make change…but we need to come together as ONE VOICE!

Namaste with Love

Always

Mark