To 'Consume' or Produce? It Shouldn't be a Question

While I have written two of the greatest books rarely to be read (I Am My Body, NOT! is one), the following quotation is as relevant today as it was when I first wrote it over 12 years ago.

The People of the United States are creativity and innovation standard setters of the world because freedoms of speech and trade have been the institutional underpinnings of our nation. The “system” works for all who choose to use it. Yet, we are faced with challenges, because while some people do exploit or abuse the system, the larger problem is that not enough people use it at all, except as “consumers.” While we are all consumers to some degree, we need to become producers in order to truly be freed. — from A Freed Man: An Emancipation Proclamation by Adam Abraham

Consumerism is not a bad thing, but it is oftentimes inherently passive. In matters where personal trust, reliance, and action is critical, “the consumer” waits for someone else to act, to come up with the solution for our problems or challenges. Consumers look to “experts” to take the risks, shoulder the responsibility of they take, ostensibly on our behalf, and also to reap the rewards (or the blame) for their apparent success or failure. Consumers do this without realizing the tremendous power that they are not only failing to use on their own behalf, but are giving to others who, by their actions, are not necessarily looking out for them.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is a great example of an organization thought to have great power, actually conferred by the People of the United States, but is being used to protect the financial interests of pharmaceutical manufacturers more so than the health of the People. They are not alone, and I’m not suggesting that this is intentional. They may believe that they are looking out for our interests. However, many of their policies promote practices that build drug dependencies that continue to have adverse on human health. Look at a typical oncologist’s tool box, and the success rate for cancer, versus the results of natural treatment approaches, to see what I mean.

The problem with consumerism is when we think that it’s all that we are, and that we don’t possess what it takes to produce the results that we seek. On the other hand, we’ve got to ask ourselves whether the strategy is working to our satisfaction, for if not, the creative and innovative producer must emerge from within.

Americans are standard setters only to the extent that the freedoms alluded to above, outlined in the Constitution, and elucidated in the Bill of Rights, are maintained. While we’re deployed in various spots around the world under the guise of “protecting freedom,” they are being siphoned away from within, and from our own. This is nothing new, but in the times that are currently before us, a reminder is more than timely. It is necessary.

No country on earth has demonstrated as much per capita productivity, wealth, and as high a standard of living as the United States, given the degree of its diversity.

American consumerism has evolved into its own self-obsession. We seldom have faith in our ability to stand tall on the strength and efficacy of our own intelligent vision, and instead, cling desperately to any ship that hasn’t sunk, even when its demise is inevitable.

Like the financial system that sustains it, the health care system’s demise is inevitable, simply because it has long been out of integrity with its own stated goals. If health is the goal of health care, then it should be the effect of interacting with it. Too often, this is no longer the case. For millions who have developed chronic life conditions, interacting with the health care industry and its predominant treatment modalities, has become a slow and painful fleecing of finances and life itself; a denial and insult to our true nature and potential.

I find it ironic that the American Dream is on life support among Americans and we’re still trying to treat it with, figuratively speaking, what amounts to radiation and chemotherapy.

Throwing dollars of decreasing value at a problem is very “old school,” and gets us more of what we say we don’t want. It happened with the War on Poverty and the War on Cancer. It’s happening with the War on Terror. The president has demonstrated wisdom not to declare “war” on uninsured health insurance coverage, but his strategy for addressing it is the same.

Truly addressing our health care concerns would mean providing support for, and giving preference to, methods and modalities that produce the intended results, especially when such approaches exist and are available.

Traditional allopathic medical practices that “attack” the invaders that have come to proliferate in the human body, are not producing the results that patients want. They don’t even ensure the economic viability of the system. Cost inflammation is just as rampant as inflammation, and balance is the solution for both.

You could say that president Obama’s initiative to get the 46 million uninsured Americans health care coverage is a “stimulus” for the health care industry. $634 billion over 10 years hasn’t yet become insignificant as the value of the U.S. dollar continues to plummet. It would mean new billings, new prescriptions, new tests, and procedures, all “paid for” by dollars created from thin air by the Federal Reserve (that would have to be repaid), and by the health that never gets adequately restored, as the health care system’s track record clearly shows.

So it’s not really a stretch to say Washington is trying to treat the American Dream with radiation and chemotherapy, because these two poisons are still considered legitimate “go to” options by the medical profession, even when death — more often of the patient, and not the disease — is the result. For too long, that has been an acceptable tradeoff, but no longer.

News commentators report that unemployment rates of 8 and 9 percent, and cast a heart numbing pall of despair into the airwaves. I see that same information and note a 91 or 92 percent rate of employment. Same information, but very different feeling when you look at it. Even in the state of Michigan, the employment rate is over 90%. This speaks well for the strength of the economy in spite of the challenges that the American people face. And for those that are unemployed? This time signals a time of opportunity, to take a fresh look at what you’ve done with your life, and what experiences you want to produce from here on out. This take on the current situation rarely comes from the talking heads. Yet, if it were presented this way, more people might not feel like things are going to hell in a hand basket.

It would also help to let people know that each is a producer, already. Some are active, but most are not. We produce ideas, thoughts, dreams, and beliefs. We use energy to bring life to these immeasurable underpinnings of reality, then we place ourselves within them.

If we’re seeing life as stressful, rife with difficulty, then that is how things will play out for us. Yet, we will be producing the stress, as well as the “drama” that surrounds it.

Presently, relatively few people have embraced the idea that we create our reality. Yet, this concept is at the fundament
al core and center of quantum mechanics, which presents that reality literally forms and organizes itself according to the observer. In other words, the particles that we recognize as constituting our reality, organize and behave according to our sense of possibility (or impossibility).

This notion is supported by the groundbreaking work of Dr. Bruce Lipton, author of The Biology of Belief (you can listen to my interview with him by visiting his site and click the Talk For Food link). It appears that, whether we believe it or not, we are creating our reality. It also appears that reality forms and emerges according where we focus our attention, and how we interpret what we see (not knowing that what we see is our creation).

It is also evident that after getting over the initial shock that we have created our own mess (and even “the mess” is an interpretation and judgment), not “they,” we can actually have some fun creating life anew, but with awareness and intention.

Many Americans have succumb to “glass is half empty” syndrome. They focus on lack, often gently and “innocently” led there by advertisements and news stories that hint of ever-present vulnerability, and by toxins and chemicals that block and distort our sense of connection to each other, to the planet, and to our Source. Nonetheless, we remain connected to all of the above, and remain creators of our realities.

The question now before us is whether we’ll continue to blindly consume, and fearfully struggle for scarce resources, our expand our awareness, forgive ourselves and those we thought were our nemeses, and begin producing a new reality from a bountiful place of power that rests within the heart of each of us?

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One Thought to “To 'Consume' or Produce? It Shouldn't be a Question”

  1. Cecilia

    Thank you for writing this. As long as the capitalist paradigm rules, stockholders will be more important than patients. Our health is secondary to corporate profits.

    Getting debt-free and TV-free was the most positive thing I’ve ever done for myself.

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