Christmas is a busy time for the advertising and sales industry. After all, if 'goodness' can sell, why not?

 

It is like the well-worn Christmas stocking - you hang it up and hope somehow something gets in there that you like.

As we review the year we are still told that if ‘Greed is not so good’, then it's also not so bad. But somehow, most people seem to focus on what is good and heart-warming during the festive year end season. It is a time of giving, gratitude and Christmas sales, and a busy time for the advertising and marketing industry. After all, if ‘goodness’ can sell, why not? What isn't for sale anyway?

Many have asked why one needs to be ‘realistic’ and accept that what is spiritual is for the idealists who think what cannot be seen is real. These are the very same ‘realists’ who believe that there are such things as ‘market forces’ (invisible to the mind but can be seen through movement of stock indices and people being thrown out of work by the creation of a leaner and certainly meaner work force).

Christmas is a time of giving, gratitude and sales. It's also a busy time for the advertising and marketing industry. After all, if ‘goodness’ can sell, why not?"

Together with the commercially viable ‘magic’ of Christmas, you have the magical invocations of the ‘free market’, ‘structural unemployment’, and increasing ‘productivity’. Yet while the workers who create that 'productivity' are 'structurally' eliminated from the ‘work force’, fatcat CEOs and the like are busy planning their bonuses.

The 'productivity' of the top, lean, mean, ultra-competitive managers is shown by throwing out people from work thereby testifying to their everlasting adherence to the neo-occultist force of the 'market'. Their 'productivity' is measured through revenue 'turnover', share 'value' (through a laughably valueless US dollar), and one's golf handicap.

Someone I know who is a CEO of a company in a conglomerate tells me how the deputy to his Group CEO is busy politicking to help bring down the boss so that the deputy can take over. 'Productivity', old chap, 'productivity'.

At this point, it’s worth recalling the story of The Little Match Girl (beats saying, please read almost all of Dickens).

While some of us look out at the world and are grateful for what we have, there are many who would look in and wonder why there is an absence of charity to all.

For the Christians, especially those who claim to be true believers, it should be with great understanding that you read these well-known words:

"For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?" - Matthew 16:26

But many among those who claim religiosity would also say, well good ole Matt was speaking at the time when there were no stocks and mega corporations to run. Life was simpler then. There was no SUV to maintain nor high priced condominium to covet.

They say, with a straight face, that there was no real use for accountants to cook, well, 'balance', the books and so forth. Those were less complicated times; you could actually believe in God and miracles, this is the twenty first century and, the usual stuff... science and technology is the new spiritualism and economists the high priests of our way of life (or 'freedom, democracy, individual rights', and all that).

Then with some hesitation, let us re-read these also unoriginal lines (compared to the 'new' things the mainstream media bombards us with every day) -

"For I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’

“Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’" - Matthew 25:35-40

All well and good, but - later, man. I will ask for Help when I really need it. Right now... it's bonus time, shopping, a little relaxing. At the end of the day someone wins and someone has to lose. That's life.

Meanwhile, back in Gotham City... the United Corporations of America (read: USA) continues its military adventurism abroad, and we have the strange variation of the Monroe Doctrine coming back to bite itself in the hindmost. It increasingly seems apparent that what happens in America's own backyard, that is, within itself, should be of concern to Washington, D.C. (Detective Comics).

And there is that other old fashioned line that goes, 'Charity begins at home'.

So perhaps, like most people, you think all is well in the world as long as it's basically OK with you. Please take a closer look (especially those wanting to emulate the United Corporations of America) at what is really taking place in a country that still has the potential for greatness:

 

 

Incidentally, there is the interesting complementary tale to The Little Match Girl called the tale of The Star Money. In this tale, the little girl gives away whatever she has and is rewarded with money dropping from the stars/heaven. It is essentially the Law of Attraction embedded within the story in which those who give in all goodness only need open their arms to receive abundance (the rewards, however, are not always monetary).

Of course, to the smart science-technocrats of today, this is old hat. Even as they lie on their death beds one day they will be contemplating that if death is a constant in the third dimensional world of change and conditioning, and that if there are 11 dimensions to the universe and parallel realities and it is theoretically possible to do time-travel, then are there other dimensions of deathlessness and freedom?

Good question.

On a less sentimental note for the hard core realists out there, a message/song from the one and only. And, by the way, have a good Christmas, New Year, etc - you know the drill.

 

 

The writer is an admirer of Thoreau's ideas and also blogs at Lightnews.