The forest inside my belly (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awtmTJW9ic8) is an amazing thing to comprehend. The researcher (Ruairi Robertson) points out that the bacteria in your gut not only weighs the same as your brain, but is as diverse as the amazon rainforest! Insanity! He also mentions that we have been depleting it, much like actual forests, through not eating enough variety. This blows my mind the parallel between inside our guts and the actual earth. So many feelings.
How much is the world a reflection of how we feel about ourselves? Do we recreate our family dynamics wherever we go? I know we treat others like we treat ourselves. The more harsh of a voice you speak to yourself with, the same will happen when you're confronting another.
These types of parallel lend to my concept of spirituality. God (or whatever you refer to spiritual energy as) is in everyone and everything. We are a tiny planet, in a vast universe. What we foster in ourselves is reflected in everything we do.
I've been researching Universal Basic Income for a discussion group that I am a part of and I'm left wondering, if every human truly loved themselves deeply, would they ever let other humans suffer? Because, for me, that's what it feels like this comes down to. It's about providing everyone with their basic needs. One of the arguments against it is around the strength of the economy, which I don't have a great knowledge of. If we asked those that are suffering due to a lack of basic needs, how much of a shit do they give around the strength of our economy? Who is the strength of the economy benefitting?
Next argument might be, well it's benefitting most of us and why should most of us sacrifice for a minority that are suffering? Because no one should be suffering to be fed and sheltered in a wealthy and prolific country that has so much food waste. That is just blasphemy. Literal blasphemy.
I'm sure there are arguments that I have not considered in my hour of research on the topic, and I welcome oppositional viewpoints because they interest me deeply. One more such viewpoint is that though the research done was successful and had positive results, that it was time-limited and there are likely impacts that we cannot predict. Most feared by this argument is that people will not want to work and the workforce will dwindle.
What is work? What draws us to working? Is it only survival? It's hard for me personally to comprehend not having to work for a lifetime. I'm definitely enjoying it now, mostly because I am studying for work that I am really passionate about and I want that extra time to dig in to the topics I"m being exposed to. But I like to be engaged and busy. Perhaps to a fault where I take on too much, but part of it is a fear of surviving, which I addressed in my last post.
What would my motivation to work look like if I were not afraid of surviving?
We ask a miracle question in Solution Focused Therapy that goes like this: 'if I woke up tomorrow and my fear of surviving was no longer in my life, then what would life feel like, how would I behave, what would other people notice about me, what would be different?'
I'd feel lighter. When I woke up in the morning, I wouldn't be racking my brain for the day or what I'm 'supposed' to be doing, I'd be in the moment. I wouldn't have this judgement of myself and heaviness of feeling like I need to be productive in some way. Other people would notice because I'd be more cheerful and less preoccupied. I'd enjoy how I spent my time without being concerned that it was good or bad. I'd feel ownership over my time.
I don't know about the rest of humanity, but I have felt like a slave to my job. I've felt like I"m not allow to speak up for myself, that I'm supposed to just do what I'm told and keep my mouth shut. There isn't a lot of agency in most work. Perhaps some of that is in my head and I'm recreating the dynamic of my authoritarian parent, but would their voice go away if I felt like my job was grateful to have me?
It's not that I haven't had any jobs where I didn't feel they were grateful to have me, but sometimes I didn't like the job and the gratitude might be that it was hard to find people for the job because it wasn't very enjoyable. How would UBI impact jobs that people don't want to do? What jobs would those be?
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