Chapter One: Our Needs

The Need for an Exponential Increase in Human Activities


Is there a causal connection between consumer debt crisis and global warming? What happened to the resonating principle of corporate responsibility? Before I answer these two questions, let me tell you a story.

In 1993, I came across a TV program entitled “Beyond 2000”. In one of its episodes, a documentary film featured a story of a government agency’s space program (it probably started in the Reagan administration) – the ambitious plan to colonize the space, set up a permanent settlement complete with establishments such as banks, agriculture, engineering infrastructure, restaurants, villages, and many others, and designed a blueprint on how to harvest hydrogen gas and other minerals from Mars and create an artificial orbit that would transport those minerals to the planet Earth.

The impressive blueprint of tomorrow’s hope may indeed solve our problem of over-dependence on limited fossil fuels from the Earth’s crust. At the tail end of the show, it laments that the project needs funding and resources the cost of which is currently beyond our imagination. Combine all money in the banks all over the world and money will still not be enough.

To my mind, what I saw was a need. A need to increase the wealth of the first world nations sufficient to build up the confidence in financing the ambitious plan to acquire ownership of the space or part thereof.

Indeed, to increase the wealth of nations we need an exponential increase in human activities – production, distribution, consumption, and labor.

Every corporate entity should endeavor to push the productive levers of its organization harder and harder, like they are in a crisis situation, to generate more wealth. Along with the exponential growth in the production of goods and services is the corresponding need for exponential growth in the distribution and consumption of goods and services as well.

Consumers are encouraged to consume by increasing their purchasing power using plastic cards if they don’t have money in their savings accounts. The commercial establishments need to promote and advertise their financial services (credit cards and other personal loans) and generate insatiable consumer appetite to buy more and more, and more, compulsively.

Fulfilling the need to achieve exponential growth in human activities through increased production, distribution and consumption of goods and services, the wealth of nations increases - measured in terms of Gross Domestic Product or GDP- and of course everything that goes with it including exponential increase in carbon dioxide emissions coming substantially from burning fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal as energy consumption raises the bar to produce electricity that heats up or cools down our homes, ignite our factory engines, transport millions of commuters to and from their offices and homes, and maintain a vibrant energy-heavily-dependent city.

But many of us are probably less interested to know that, driven by uncontrollable consumer spending, consumer debts have become a global concern incurred mostly by middle class workers in major cities drowning in huge debts just to fund consumption beyond their means beyond their needs. Economic growth spurred by the middle class and at the expense of the middle class until this same middle class shrinks and settles down to the bottom of the pyramid.

The ambitious plan to put up a space colony and exploit the unlimited resources from other planets is a dream and a hope for mankind. There is no question about the need to increase human activities provided that all the outcomes lead to a sustainable, environment-friendly, and socially beneficial end results.

We dream of dreams there no one dares to dream. Should I rather say it is more realistic (than space colony) if the indebted population of the middle class, the knowledge workers of the world would now re-direct part of their time and effort on activities that would help speed up the search and development of alternative sources of energy, generate global warming awareness and openly campaign and help reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and other activities aimed at reversing the effects of global warming.


The Urgent Need for Global Action to Reverse the Trends of Global Warming

According to the U.N. Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change, if the global community today especially US, India, and China, will not make a significant move to reduce the emission of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, as early as 2020, 75 million people in Africa will suffer water shortages, residents of Asia’s larger cities, Singapore included, will be at great risk of river and coastal flooding. Europeans can expect extensive species loss, and North Americans will experience longer and hotter heat waves and greater competition for water.

Here I quote in part an article from Arthur Max from Associated Press in an article published November 17, 2007 at Yahoo News:

The panel portrays the Earth hurtling toward a warmer climate at a quickening pace and warns of inevitable human suffering. It says emissions of carbon, mainly from fossil fuels, must stabilize by 2015 and go down after that.

In the best-case scenario, temperatures will keep rising from carbon already in the atmosphere, the report said. Even if factories were shut down today and cars taken off the roads, the average sea level will reach as high as 4.6 feet above that in the preindustrial period, or about 1850.

"We have already committed the world to sea level rise," the panel's chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, said. But if the Greenland ice sheet melts, the scientists said, they could not predict by how many feet the seas will rise, drowning coastal cities.
Climate change is here, they said, as witnessed by melting snow and glaciers, higher average temperatures and rising sea levels. If unchecked, global warming will spread hunger and disease, put further stress on water resources, cause fiercer storms and more frequent droughts, and could drive up to 70 percent of plant and animal species to extinction, according to the panel's report.

The report was adopted after five days of sometimes tense negotiations among 140 national delegations. It lays out blueprints for avoiding the worst catastrophes — and various possible outcomes, depending on how quickly and decisively action is taken.

"The world's scientists have spoken clearly and with one voice," Ban said, looking ahead to an important climate conference in Bali, Indonesia, next month. "I expect the world's policy makers to do the same."

The report is intended to both set the stage and serve as a guide for the conference, at which world leaders will begin discussing a global climate change treaty to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

That treaty, which expires in 2012, required industrial nations to reduce greenhouse gases and a smooth transition to a new treaty is needed to avoid upsetting the fledgling carbon markets.

"This report will have an incredible political impact," Yvo de Boer, the U.N.'s top climate change official, told The Associated Press. "It's a signal that politicians cannot afford to ignore."

The United States opted out of Kyoto in 2001, arguing that the science was unproven and that the burden of mandatory emission cuts was unfair since it excluded fast-growing China and India.

Chief U.S. delegate Sharon Hays said doubts have been dispelled. "What's changed since 2001 is the scientific certainty that this is happening," she said in a conference call late Friday. She did not indicate that Washington would abandon its policy of voluntary emission cuts.

China and India have said any measures impinging on their development and efforts to lift their people from poverty were unacceptable — a point likely to be heeded at the Bali talks.

The report offered dozens of measures for avoiding the worst catastrophes if taken together — at a cost of less than 0.12 percent of the global economy annually until 2050. They ranged from switching to nuclear and gas-fired power stations, developing hybrid cars, using more efficient electrical appliances and managing cropland to store more carbon.

Ban said a new agreement should provide funding to help poor countries develop clean energy resources, adapt to climate conditions and give them the technology to help themselves.

He said he witnessed the devastation of climate change in disappearing glaciers of Antarctica, the deforested Amazon and under the ozone hole in Chile.”

The need to find as soon as possible alternative sources of energy is no longer just an option. It is the only choice that we are morally bound to make.

Let us know your thoughts and lets build on it...



The Need for the Middle Class to Generate Streams of Residual Income

We are all drowning in huge debt and nobody is going to be there to help us except ourselves. Nobody owes us a living.

Failures and frustrations, no matter how many times we experience them in life, they shouldn’t stop us from chasing our dreams. Never ever give up!

Let me share with you these inspiring stories of ordinary men and women who failed miserably in their lives, and later made a difference to the world they lived, their names carved in granite stones and enshrined in the annals of human history:

President Abraham Lincoln, in his youth, went to war a captain and returned a private. Afterwards, he was a failure as a businessman. As a lawyer in Springfield, he was too impractical and temperamental to be a success. He turned to politics and was defeated in his first try for the legislature, again defeated in his first attempt to be nominated for congress, defeated in his application to be commissioner of the General Land Office, defeated in the senatorial election of 1854, defeated in his efforts for vice-presidency in 1856, and defeated in the senatorial election of 1858. At about that time, he wrote in a letter to a friend, “I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel where equally distributed to the whole of human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth.”

Winston Churchill failed sixth grade. He was subsequently defeated in every election for public office until he became Prime Minister at the age of 62. He later wrote “Never give in, never, never, never, never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never, Never, Never, Never, Never give up.”

Sigmund Freud was booed from the podium when he first presented his ideas to the scientific community of Europe. He returned to his office and kept on writing.

Robert Sternberg received C in his first college introductory-psychology class. His teacher commented that “there was a famous Sternberg in psychology and it was obvious there would not be another.” Three years later Sternberg graduated with honors from Stanford University with exceptional distinction in psychology, summa cum laude, and Phi Beta Kappa. In 2002, he became President of the American Psychological Association.

Charles Darwin gave up a medical career and was told by his father, “You care for nothing but shooting dogs and rat catching.” In his autobiography, Darwin wrote, “I was considered by all my masters and my father, a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard of intellect.” Clearly, he evolved.

Thomas Edison’s teachers said he was “too stupid to learn anything. “He was fired from his first two jobs for being “non-productive.” As an inventor, Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. When a reporter asked, “How did it feel to fail, 1,000 times? Edison replied, “I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”

Albert Einstein did not speak until he was 4-years-old and did not read until he was 7. His parents thought he was “sub-normal”, and one of his teachers described him as “mentally slow, unsociable, and adrift forever in foolish dreams.” He was expelled from school and was refused admittance to the Zurich Polytechnic School. He did eventually learn to speak and read. Even to do a little math.

Louis Pasteur was only a mediocre pupil in undergraduate studies and ranked 15th out of 22 students in chemistry.

Henry Ford failed and went broke five times before he succeeded.

R.H. Macy failed seven times before his store in New York City caught on.

When Bell telephone was struggling to get started, its owners offered all their rights to Western Union for $100,000. The offer was disdainfully rejected with the pronouncement, “What use could this company make of an electric toy.”

Rocket scientist Robert Goddard found his ideas bitterly rejected by his scientific peers on the ground that rocket propulsion would not work in the rarefied atmosphere of outer space.

Michael Jordan and Bob Cousy were each cut from their high school basketball teams. Jordan once observed, “I’ve failed over and over again in my life. That is why I succeeded.”

There are countless stories told, foretold, and untold about people who never gave up hope and became triumphant in the end.

By the way, I did not fabricate those stories. I lifted them word for word from the digital corridor. Follow this url: http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/OnFailing.html, surf inside and pay tribute to the website owners who has intellectual property right to the contents.

No matter how big or gigantic your problems are, most likely you will survive. You will thrive. There are millions of people on earth who are in worst situation than you. You just have to put yourself in a situation of real serious crisis, have a strong faith in yourself, and start doing something different.

This reminds me of the famous Chinese scholar Confucius, who once said, “Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail.”

Broaching the idea of generating multiple streams of income, the best and most effective way to reduce debt is to increase your capacity to pay. The banks, when you applied for loans and approved, it only means something, you have the capacity to pay your debts by increasing your sources of income. If you owe 5 banks money, you need to have at least 5 different sources of residual income. Residual income means you do a one time effort or activity and money will keep on flowing exponentially.

The most exciting human activity that is becoming hit among today’s knowledge workers who are capitalizing on the sea of opportunities available on the internet is infopreneurship which refers to entrepreneurs who makes money by selling/sharing information or knowledge on the World Wide Web.

As an Infopreneur, you can both be someone who sells information you created yourself or you compound existing information derived from different authoritative sources, build on it, and sell it. Information in the Internet most of the time is free to be read by anyone. Hence, revenues are earned through advertisements.

Infopreneurship will become the next big thing. Millions of people from all over the world are using mobile phones. Once majority of mobile phone addicts are connected around the world, people can start connecting their computer devices and applications to share real-time data and knowledge enabling you to enjoy the benefits of increased residual income derived from the acts of information sharing. You can sell information products in variety of formats as well including books, e-books, special reports, audio and video formats, workbooks, booklets or pamphlets and any virtual modes of delivering contents to the world and for the world.

Curtis R. Carlson, et all, wrote elegantly about the convergence of information and entertainment:

The fragmentation and decline of major television news media, national newspapers, and movie studios will continue. The current hierarchical media industry is literally being turned upside down as computer and interactive games, blogs, websites, and millions of individuals around the world produce new form of info-entertainment content.”

“The internet is used by less than 20% of the world’s population. Within just a few years, more than 2 billion people from all over the world will use cellphones. Once we have connected the majority of the people around the world, we will then begin to connect our computer devices and applications to automatically share data and knowledge. This is referred to as the “age of ubiquitous computing.”

The most interesting event that is happening in the world today is that information and entertainment is converging which reduces to a large extent the stickiness of knowledge where people can easily visualize complex ideas represented in simple images and metaphors of multimedia formats; hence, problem-based experiential learning becomes effortless. This is also one of the primary motivations why ZendUse is conceived around the framework of active problem solving. I will discuss this extensively in the next chapters.

Middle class trapped in huge debt need to demonstrate infopreneurial behavior where the outcome is measured in terms of significant increase in their source of income, multiple streams of income. This is a “must” to survive in today's high cost of living.


The Urgent Need to Adjust Our Lifestyle and Spending Habit


Recognizing early on and being aware that you are in a crisis situation is the first step in the process of change. You will never be successful in enabling change if you don’t change twice, change the reality of your situation and change the perception of that reality. Being in that state of believing that you are in crisis situation will make it easier to move to the next level of change – demonstrating certain behavior that addresses the root cause of consumer debt. I know this is easier said than done.

I know of families who consistently spend their time over the weekends in shopping malls. There is nothing wrong spending your leisure time and relaxation in those places but mind you the temptation to buy compulsively things you really don’t need but dictated by your wants is undeniably strong.

Due to intense business competition, commercial marketing has perfected the art of manipulating our minds to be in that state of an irresistible urge to throw away your money on something that you don’t really need in life. Then a moment later when you are back in your senses and take a second look at your purchases, in your mind you begin to rationalize and ask yourself why did you buy it, and start to feel remorseful. This is called compulsive shopping.

The bad news is you need to adjust your lifestyle and spending habit. You need to communicate to your spouse and to your children that you don’t have enough money to spend. Stop using your credit card or personal line of credit now.

One of the root causes of consumer debt is the absence of “no money communication skills”. Spouses have differences in the way they spend their money. Most of the time spouses are hiding from each other their expenditures.

Another cause of consumer debt is addiction to entertainment including but not limited to watching in cinemas every weekend, playing computer games, video-karaoke, night clubbing, and spending too much time on the Internet for entertainment of some sorts.

Since the invention and commercialization of mobile phone devices, people have considered the device as fads and craze rather than a necessity. I for one, I upgrade my hand phone almost twice a year, and its not cheap. Because you saw a friend with a new gadget with cool features and accessories, you are also tempted to upgrade your hand phone as well. This is another unnecessary expense that drains your wallet.

Other behavioral characteristics that you need to be aware of, if you happened to exhibit this behavior, is financial phobia where some people keep on denying their indebtedness, and the other one is always banking on windfall which simply means believing that next month or two there is money coming such as bonus, annual wage supplement, or even inheritance. The moral lesson here is don’t depend on those future income. Spend money that is already posted in your bank account, otherwise you continue to be in cycle of indebtedness.

People who are living in the city really find it extremely inconvenient to adjust especially when you know that your friends and associates are living according to the lifestyle of the rich and famous. Unfortunately, in today’s period of global warming and dwindling fossil fuel reserve we are morally and ethically obliged to reduce our consumption of goods, services, and energy use. There is no distinction between rich and poor. The signs of our time are painted all over the walls. The climate change, the extreme weather conditions such as Katrina, Tsunami, the burning of rainforest and melting of the glaciers in the polar region causing the rise in sea level. Not the richest man on earth will be spared when the acts of nature strikes. The natural calamities that happened in the recent years will be followed by more destructive trends and climate crisis of catastrophic proportion, and we cannot wait another 100 more months to reverse this trend. It will be irreversible.

Your indebtedness including those millions of consumers all over the world who are equally drowning in huge debt (credit card as well as personal loans and car and home mortgage loans) is no longer a personal problem. It has become a socio-economic as well as political problem of global proportion and the first step towards the solution is stop using your credit card, start looking at your very basic needs such as food, clothing, shelter, health and education, and exhibit positive outlook in life. You are not alone in this crisis; everyone in the middle of the pyramid in one way or another is in the same boat with you – we are all onboard the “Titanic”.

In the chapter that will follow we will take a cursory look at the problem - the twin problems of consumer debt and global warming. Are the two problems linked together by correlation? Will solving the "personal" problem ease out the pain in the other more global problem? Find out in the next chapter….