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But now, thanks to organisations such as Cop Block, and most importantly, camera phones, it’s becoming increasingly obvious how bad police are, how they attack, sexually abuse and even kill people over some minor infraction, or even for apparently no reason at all.
For many gang members around the world, they see the police as nothing more than a gang, and even some police share this view, evidenced by this quote from Chief Inspector Kibblewhite of the London Metropolitan police: “You might have 100 people in your gang – we have 32,000 people in our gang. It’s called the Metropolitan Police.” The police are a gang, watching out for each other, never snitching, and with the court system behind them, they become a particularly dangerous gang, willing to push boundaries in ways that other gang members wouldn’t be willing to.
In this episode, we explore the issue, telling some personal stories of when we’ve encountered corrupt cops, and even in (relatively) quiet regional towns in Australia, getting mixed up with a police officer can be a violent and dangerous scenario. What are the causes of this type of behaviour? What are the alternatives? When are these fucking pigs going to leave us alone? We dance with the devil in the next exciting installment of … The Paradise Paradox!
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The Cash:
We really appreciate all of your contributions! Every cent and satoshi we receive lets us know that we’re doing something worthwhile, that you are entertained by our program, and that you’re starting to question what you know more and more. Please be generous. Donate to The Paradise Paradox. Or buy some stuff on Amazon using this link.
The Story:
Many people are content to cruise through life without thinking too deeply about things, without questioning their own motivations, focusing on personal development, formulating a long-term plan, developing a strategy and being as honest as they possibly can with the man in the mirror. Without introspection, self-analysis and self-knowledge, one can be lead down the wrong path, mislead by their culture, mass media, friends and family, dictated to about what is important without ever extending the glance beyond the veil, beyond the superficial.
As I once wrote:
“You better be really sure of who you are and what you want from yourself,
Because there’s a lot of people who’d prefer you be someone else.”
It’s no surprise that years later many people can wake up to a mid-life crisis, or worse, a death-bed crisis, realising that they’ve wasted their lives and being so far off-target, that they don’t even know how to get back to shore. The stereotype of a middle-aged man buying a sports car and dating a much younger, attractive and vapid woman is a tragic manifestation of this, the man trying to recapture his youth, while at the same time not really remembering what it means to be young, to be full of hope about making a better world, open to possibilities and having the audacity to confront established norms. A new Ferrari and a set of fake tits in your face doesn’t even qualify as a consolation prize.
What does it take to be successful? What does it mean to be successful? Who can help you be successful, and what is the real meaning of the phrase “self-reliance”? We explore these questions and more with our friend Charlie “Carlos” Selman, discussing an essay by Exosphere founder Skinner Layne, “The Critical Point”. Join us as we embark on a journey of self-exploration in the next exciting chapter of … The Paradise Paradox!
A lot of people assume that without a minimum wage law, businesses will give their employees pennies, because they’re looking to increase their profits. I’m going to present a case using a slightly different scenario, involving a character we all know and love: pizza. This is Pizzanomics.
Are there price controls on pizza in your town? A maximum pizza price mandate? No? The last time you bought a pizza, did it cost one million dollars? Two million, three million? Even if you didn’t pay a million, you must have seen an ad for a pizzeria charging that much – right? The business owner has a profit motive. Why doesn’t he charge a cool milly for a pizza?
Instead of paying a milly, you probably paid a price that was more or less consistent with the quality and convenience of the pizza. You probably paid a little more if you got it after 10pm, and you probably paid a little more if it was a gourmet pizza.
Let’s say you find a pizza place, and it’s the only one open. They have a pizza for $30 delivered. If you really want a pizza, maybe you buy it. What if the price is $50? You know an Indian place where you can get two curries and coconut rice delivered for $25, so you call them up instead. Maybe the price of the pizza is so high that everyone ordering in decides they will opt for Indian or Thai instead. In the coming weeks or months, will the pizzeria change their prices? What will happen to them if they don’t change their prices?
The next weekend it’s 2 a.m. and you’re feeling in the mood for a pineapple eggplant supreme. You call up the pizzeria and they say their price is still $50. Then you check your mail and realise there is a place that will deliver a supreme for $20. Assuming the quality of the pizza is similar, how do you think the first pizzeria will react when they find out their prices are being undercut? Maybe they will match the price if you mention it. Maybe they will beat it. Maybe they will bring their advertised price down to $25, considering they still have an established name. One thing they will most likely not do, is keep their prices the same and refuse to negotiate.
Why is this important? Are there price controls on labour where you live? A mandatory minimum wage statute, or a union agreement which is backed up by the force of law? The last time you started a job, or in your current employment, did you or do you get paid minimum wage? Most likely you get paid more than minimum wage. Only 2.5% of workers in the USA earn the minimum wage or less. Why do businesses pay more, even though they’re not forced to? The same reason a pizzeria won’t charge a million dollars for a pizza.
Instead of being paid a dollar a day, or being paid the minimum wage, you’re probably paid something that’s consistent with your skill level and convenience of your job. If you do something that requires little training, you probably get paid minimum wage. If you have more experience at it, you probably get paid more than minimum wage. If you do something that requires a lot of training or many years of practice, or if you do shift work, if your work is dangerous or you work away from home, you probably get paid significantly more.
There are less people who are willing to work a dangerous job, willing to do shift work, less people who have certain specialised skills. The decreased supply means the price must increase to match it. All of the employers are competing for the labour, just as the pizzeria is competing for your custom.
If you enjoyed the episode, don’t keep it a secret! Feel free to share it on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Reddit, or your office bathroom wall.
The Cash:
We really appreciate all of your contributions! Every cent and satoshi we receive lets us know that we’re doing something worthwhile, that you are entertained by our program, and that you’re starting to question what you know more and more. Please be generous. Donate to The Paradise Paradox. Or buy some stuff on Amazon using this link.
The Story:
There’s a lot of talk floating around about September, with the Hebrew calendar culminating in the Shemitah, astrology leading us to believe that the divine masculine and feminine are moving in harmony, asteroids crashing into the earth, the Pope addressing the US congress, the Freemasons’ “Year of the Light”, the Federal Reserve expounding their interest rate policy going forward, and CERN powering up the Large Hadron Collider to full-bore.
Are all these potentially influential events just a coincidence? With so much going on in this world every month, maybe we should hesitate to draw any conclusions. Of course, where one human sees a coincidence, another sees a synchronicity – and that’s where we start going down the rabbit hole. Don’t fall too deep as we move into another earth-shattering episode of … The Paradise Paradox!
If you enjoyed the episode, don’t keep it a secret! Feel free to share it on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Reddit, or your office bathroom wall.
The Cash:
We really appreciate all of your contributions! Every cent and satoshi we receive lets us know that we’re doing something worthwhile, that you are entertained by our program, and that you’re starting to question what you know more and more. Please be generous. Donate to The Paradise Paradox. Or buy some stuff on Amazon using this link.
The Story:
‘Marijuana is the gateway drug’, they say. Maybe and perhaps in some unique cases. Let’s briefly review why this may be believed. In most epidemiological marijuana studies the findings show that early use of marijuana leads to increased vulnerability for drug abuse and addiction to other substances later in life. However, these findings are generalised, which decreases scientific merit, so it has never been proven conclusively.
Personally, I doubt very much that marijuana consumption would lead someone to want or to need to use a more addictive and dangerous drug, such as cocaine or heroin. Firstly, there is no proof and secondly, it’s known amongst marijuana connoisseurs to be false. One may ask, where did this idea originate? Let me remind you of that old and long running propaganda campaign for the prohibition of drugs, formally know as ‘The War on Drugs’. This was the name given by the mass media and initiated by United States President Richard Nixon in June of 1971.
Propaganda fuelled by fear and scare tactics was their weapon of choice. The public never had a chance. Marijuana is a drug and drugs are bad, drugs kill and ruin lives. Your loved ones are in danger. The Global Commission on Drug Policy in 2011 released a critical report on the War on Drugs, declaring:
“The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world”.
The effects and devastation continue today, U.S. jails are overflowing with victims, communities are being strangled by the trafficking of cartels, corruption has only been on the rise – infiltrating all levels of government and all in the grace of the parallel economies which prohibition creates.
Alternative studies were conducted illustrating that most people who use marijuana do not go on to use other harder substances. Furthermore, the critical priming for vulnerability to addictions and abuse of other substances is not unique just to marijuana. Alcohol and nicotine also prime the brain for a heightened response to other drugs. However alcohol and nicotine were not being targeted in the war of freedoms and choice. Actually, we witness the bias of substances, as alcohol and nicotine were publicly promoted during the Nixon era and the marketing for alcohol still stands active today. We can see how the alcohol prohibition of the 1920’s was an attempt of control and a display of the force of government.
Short story time, I remember returning home from school terrified. I would have been 10 years old. From class, I gathered that your brain is a bag of brain cells and when you run of out, it’s game over. Mr. Teacher covered many aspects of brain health, how we can not repair cells, we can not create or grow more and that we are born with all that we need. Brain cells are important for smarts, memory, motor skills and basically quality of life. We were exposed to examples of brain damage and the after affects as well as an array of causes. The following loud words were printed into my mind, ‘drinking alcohol kills brain cells’. Being 10 years old I didn’t need to be contemplating my own death due to lack of brain cells. That night I did do my homework: what do people consume that contains alcohol?
The scars of that class had tattooed my being, throughout my 20’s knowing that if “harmless” old alcohol causes so much brain damage, there is no way I am going partake in drugs. Now I see that the joke was on me, most of what I had learnt in school wasn’t entirely correct. Carrying out light research online I find that perhaps marijuana is not as harmful as alcohol and that it may actually have benefits (depending on application). Marijuana, cannabis is good for your brain, it promotes new brain cell growth, it prevents Alzheimer’s, it cannabis prevents brain damage after strokes and trauma and cannabis extracts have been used to treat brain cancer.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) has published ‘evidence from one animal study suggests that extracts from whole-plant marijuana can shrink one of the most serious types of brain tumors’. Marijuana and its extracts can be prescribed to treat numerous diseases and conditions, such as; autoimmune diseases (HIV/AIDS), life boredom, multiple sclerosis (MS – which causes gradual loss of muscle control), Alzheimer’s disease (which causes loss of brain function, affecting memory, thinking, and behaviour), inflammation, pain, seizures, substance use disorders and mental disorders.
In this episode we discuss a real world perspective of marijuana being the gateway drug, as well as many other fun topics, please enjoy another crazy adventure we call, The Paradise Paradox.
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The Cash:
We really appreciate all of your contributions! Every cent and satoshi we receive lets us know that we’re doing something worthwhile, that you are entertained by our program, and that you’re starting to question what you know more and more. Please be generous. Donate to The Paradise Paradox. Or buy some stuff on Amazon using this link.
The Story:
Cuba is Cuba! There is no other! A real human life time capsule.
Today, Cuba is known for its cigars, old cars, beautiful women, sandwiches and suppressed economic state. For most travellers and for the weekend visitor that is all that they are going to see. What you may not see is how fast Cuba is changing, very soon it will be returning to what it once was, a buzzing, popping, trading hub of activity.
With a mega rich history, connected to the Spanish Empire, this colony up until early in the 20th century continued to benefit from foreign investments, hence industry development, and of course high immigration. All this positive movement was drawn to a halt once its relationship status with the United States became complicated.
On the dark side of Cuban history we find pirates, the Cuban revolution, the cold war and the trade embargo. This US government imposed trade barrier was the seal that closed Cuba off to the world. Totally effecting trade, production income and the country’s economic health, a travel ban was also imposed on U.S. citizens visiting Cuba, a bullet in the head for the tourism industry.
Cuba has shown its resilience, sustainability and creativity, naturally taking on a hacker culture, where everything becomes repairable. Most household objects might find themselves a second or third life. This changes the way the communities view experiments, science and innovation. Harsh limitations on materials, open the peoples minds and changs what they are willing to experiment with. This completely new perspective of innovation can be seen impacting other areas of the society. In particular we can see how this collective mentality has impacted the medical establishment, where research is less bound by status quo judgements and predispositions. Within this culture we can see homeopathy taken seriously, where these medications are now being mass-produced.
This is an example of how Cuba is in a time of change. As this blockage is lifted the Cuban industries will begin to pick up the pace. Tourism will find the next gear and continue to boom, manufacturing will increase, consequently exports will rise and their will be employment for the people. This integration of economies will be beneficial to all parties, except for perhaps the local tourism in Miami. We are only weeks away from seeing commercial ferries opening routes from Miami ports. We already see Cuba welcoming three million visitors per year, new waves of tourists should bump that up. Who knows, Cuba may be the new spot for spring-breakers!
In this episode, we are again joined by Niki and Rav for part two of their Latin travels. They share more travel stories such as: taxi adventures, how they dealt with the two Cuban currencies, struggles with the local Spanish language and tips for all the future travellers to Cuba. We also discuss communism from a tourist’s perspective and from other sources – what we do know about the system, in particular regarding the education system and research in the field of medical science. These were just a few topics amongst many more. Please enjoy another episode of The Paradise Paradox.
It’s never my intention to initiate a violent revolution, a coup d’état, to take up arms to dominate people, in the hopes of freeing people. The reason being, you can never free people who don’t want to be free – who don’t even know what it means to be free. Like a brainwashed prisoner when his cage’s door is opened, he will cramp himself in the corner, and cower. A free man is a free man even when inside a cage. A true slave will find a master, even when he is released. For truly meaningful change, the mind must be freed first.
That means, people must learn philosophy, and they must know themselves. Why do the powerful try so hard to censor; why have they always tried so hard? With war propaganda, peacetime propaganda, lies, covert manipulation and overt force? Because they know intuitively: ideas are dangerous to them, because ideas can liberate us.
The real war can’t be fought with guns, because the real war is fought with ideas. Ideas will not be stopped by bullets or by bulletproof glass. No manmade law applies to ideas, nor the laws of economics or even the law of gravity. Their immortal, impermeable qualities demonstrate to us that they are a manifestation of Spirit, moving through the world like God’s fingers, unbound, divine, and relentless. Our ideas will outlive us, but more importantly, our ideas will outlive Them.
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The Cash:
We really appreciate all of your contributions! Every cent and satoshi we receive lets us know that we’re doing something worthwhile, that you are entertained by our program, and that you’re starting to question what you know more and more. Please be generous. Donate to The Paradise Paradox. Or buy some stuff on Amazon using this link.
The Story:
Trippa? Taking a Trip can blow your mind! Nothing to do with hallucinations, mushrooms, ancient rituals, or drinking goats blood under a full moon while rotating your arse on a ouija board.
We are talking about going old school, boots, bag packed and exploring the real world. Travelling is a mind expanding experience because it gives life a chance to question itself. Perhaps decades of routine and familiar rhythms have created a comfortable lifestyle, yet many of us find ourselves numb and occasionally find ourselves slipping into a feeling of emptiness. Travelling is often a natural calling, something spiritual which the soul begs for. Gaining new perspectives and changing the lens in which we see the world is healthy. The mind and character needs it for personal growth and development. The best part is that, it’s always the subtle things that take one by surprise. Keeping it simple lets you soak it all in, new smells, new foods, new clothes, mix it up and live a little.
What about the language change? Have you ever thought about a language as the tool for creating new realities? Okay, so even if you are not interested in becoming or pretending to be a wizard, a new language is the way to upskill: increasing your own self worth and something to be proud of. Learning a new language is not an easy task, it may leave you struggling for years but once it clicks, it can be one of the most rewarding challenges and an adventure in itself.
For those who have already conquered a second language, why not go for the third? Language has been said to be a primary factor in the evolution of man, this was because language has the capability to re-wire the human mind by creating new connections and associations.
In this episode we were lucky enough to enjoy the company of Nikita and Ravinesh, great Aussie mates visiting Mexico and bringing a homegrown perspective. As they were travelling through the Americas, specifically Latin America, we had the chance to catch up and share a little paradise. In between commentary of a trip of a life time (which now become a lifetime of trips) we discus cultural awareness of australians (or lack of), how language affects thought and how swearing in multiple languages can open your eyes to many beautifully obscene ways to express yourself. These were just a few of the side topics amongst many more, please enjoy another episode of The Paradise Paradox.
If you enjoyed the episode, don’t keep it a secret! Feel free to share it on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Reddit, or your office bathroom wall.
The Cash:
We really appreciate all of your contributions! Every cent and satoshi we receive lets us know that we’re doing something worthwhile, that you are entertained by our program, and that you’re starting to question what you know more and more. Please be generous. Donate to The Paradise Paradox. Or buy some stuff on Amazon using this link.
The Story:
In 1959 two men had a dream to create a business that would provide useful services and a way for many people to engage in the glory of free enterprise in owning their very own business. Those two men were Jay Van Andel and Richard DeVos, and that business was Amway – short for “American Way”. Today, many people all over the world are intrigued, angered and puzzled by calls from their friends asking them to have a look at a mysteriously vague business plan, many more are approached by strangers, of varying levels of charm, asking if they want to know how to make money by approaching strangers and asking if they want to make money. Many other companies have popped up using a similar business model of network or multi-level marketing. Some call them pyramid schemes, and others swear that they are a great step on the path to true financial freedom.
What are the factors you should consider when looking at a network marketing business? What are the benefits, and what are the risks? Will you end up with nothing more than empty pockets and a garage full of concentrated dishwashing fluid? Who knows! But we ask these questions and more in the next exciting episode of … The Paradise Paradox!
If you enjoyed the episode, don’t keep it a secret! Feel free to share it on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Reddit, or your office bathroom wall.
The Cash:
We really appreciate all of your contributions! Every cent and satoshi we receive lets us know that we’re doing something worthwhile, that you are entertained by our program, and that you’re starting to question what you know more and more. Please be generous. Donate to The Paradise Paradox. Or buy some stuff on Amazon using this link.
The Story:
In 2007, two graphic designers were having troubles making ends meet in their San Francisco apartment. They had some space that they could free up in the loft which they thought they could use to accommodate travellers, and thought about putting it on Craigslist, but they thought it was too impersonal. Instead, they decided to create a website, offering people passing through a chance to stay cheaply on some air mattresses and eat a home-cooked breakfast. Pretty soon they were receiving emails asking when the service would be available in Buenos Aires, London and Tokyo, and they began to formulate a vision.
They contacted their old roommate, an engineer, to join the team. In a clever move to raise funding for the project, they designed custom boxes for cereal to appeal to voters in the upcoming election, selling 500 boxes of both Obama O’s and Cap’n McCains for $40 each, raising $30,000.
Inviting the hosts to share their listings on Craigslist helped build their guest numbers and traffic considerably, as did spamming existing listings on Craigslist for similar properties. Then by developing their philosophy of offering personalised service, hospitality and something that guests just couldn’t find in a traditional hotel, they solidified their place as a key player in the accommodation industry.
Today, millions of people use AirBNB to travel cheaply, and to make money, subverting the conventional model of tourism and helping people to enjoy cities in a friendlier way. How has this business opened up the world to travellers, making it more affordable and interesting? What is the value of travel in general? Why do some people resist travelling adamantly? We explore these questions and more, in the next breathtaking chapter of … The Paradise Paradox!
– psychical and bizarre research in the US military
