Norway setup the Government Pension Fund Global(GPFG) with $1.4tn in assets.
"The Government Pension Fund Global, also known as the Oil Fund, was established in 1990 to invest the surplus revenues of the Norwegian petroleum sector. As of September 2023, it had over US$1,477 billion in assets, and held on average 1.5% of all of the world's listed companies, making it the world's largest single sovereign wealth fund in terms of total assets under management. This translates to roughly US$270,000 per Norwegian citizen."
The previous generation Norwegians left "roughly US$270,000 per Norwegian citizen".
"Someone several decades ago was really smart to deal with the income from the oil industry to generate the welfare of this country as a whole" - Kristin Alne, Norwegian engineer.
"It is nice to have the fund behind us, because without it we would have been a very worried nation" - Farouk al Kasim, geologist.
$1.4 trillion worth of waste, incompetence, greed by our governors, managers, care-takers.
That is the truth we don't tell ourselves.
The $100bn fund
"Every year, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints collected an estimated $7bn from its 17 million members through a practice known as tithing, in which members give about 10% of their income to the religious organization.
About $1bn of the collected money was placed into a reserve fund at Ensign Peak – which is registered as a non-profit – and invested, with profits growing tax-free.
Created in 1997, the reserve fund has ballooned to more than $100bn, which is nearly twice the size of Harvard’s endowment..."
The Mormons collected $7bn/year, saved and invested $1bn/year out of that for 30 years. The $1bn/year grew over 30 years to $100bn.
Lies led to collapse of Soviet Union
Soviet Union was not defeated in battle. It collapsed from accumulation of all the lies they told themselves and from the self deception of Socialism.
"The fall of the Soviet Union would be grossly incomplete without the Chernobyl story".
- Serhii Plokhy.
Lies about the safety of the Chernobyl reactor led to:
4000 people dead from radiation exposure
"five million people currently live in areas of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine that are contaminated with radionuclides"
"4000 cases of thyroid cancer"
"600,000 people being involved in cleanup"
"784,320 hectares taken from production"
"A variety of estimates from the 1990s placed the costs over two decades at hundreds of billions of dollars. "
Publicly avaialble CIA report of the Chernobyl incident said: "The long-term impact of the Chernobyl disaster on the USSRs ambitious nuclear power program is likely to be significant."
"The accident is likely to have significant political repercussions inside the USSR. At the least, It will break Gorbachev's momentum and disrupt his efforts to inspire optimism among the public. The regime badly bungled public relations in the first days--reacting in traditional Soviet fashion of trying to conceal from its own population and the world the fact that there was an accident."
The Cost of Lies contributed to the breakup of Soviet Union.
Why the self-deception?
It is human nature to self-deceive and tell lies to oneself in a way to build a belief system to cope with reality we cannot understand or change.
We self-deceive into believing governments work for us and care about us. They don't.
We self-deceive into believing conventional education is good for us. It is not.
We self-deceive into believing we will be poor and powerless. We won't.
We self-deceive into believing things won't change. They are changing.
We self-deceive into believing there is no way out. There is.
Our belief system(narrative, story) is what we feed ourselves to make sense of the world around us, and continue our daily life.
Our belief system does not have to be based on lies and self-deception.
The quack-science of Positive Psychology
They say, be positive. Things are not that bad.
In the book "Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle", the author Chris Hedges talks about how psychological techniques and medicines are used to promote a quick fix for deeper social problems; and to destroy alternate viewpoints to prepare people to become compliant corporate slave drones.
"Positive psychology... is a quack science".
"Psychologists, in and out of the government, have learned how to manipulate social behavior. The promotion of collective harmony, under the guise of achieving happiness, is simply another carefully designed mechanism for conformity. Positive psychology is about banishing criticism and molding a group into a weak and malleable unit that will take orders."
"Corporatism, aided by positive psychology, relies on several effective coercive persuasion techniques, similar to those often employed by cults, to meld workers into a “happy” collective."
"There is a dark, insidious quality to the ideology promoted by the positive psychologists."
"It's false promise of harmony and happiness only increases internal anxiety and feelings of inadequacy."
"Here, in the land of happy thoughts, there are no gross injustices, no abuses of authority, no economic and political systems to challenge, and no reason to complain. Here, we are all happy."
The privileged elite
Noam Chomsky in his book How the World Works says "a very striking difference between talks I give to more or less elite audiences, and meetings and discussions I have with less privileged people."
Less privileged people: "They say, Here’s what I’m doing. What do you think about it? Maybe they’d like reactions or suggestions, but they’re already dealing with the problem. They’re not sitting around waiting for a magic answer, which doesn’t exist."
Less privileged people accept the truth and are doing something about it.
Elite privileged people: "They want some sort of magic key that will solve everything quickly, overwhelmingly and effectively. There are no such solutions."
"privileged audiences often don’t want to hear that. They want a quick answer that will get the job done fast."
Elite privileged people either don't care about the truth, or just want a quick fix that is not inconvenient to them.
What to do
99% of people cannot think for themselves.
Thinking is hard. It requires several traits: deep knowledge, ability to read, focus, intelligence, hard work, discipline, a certain mindset, and more.
Most people would do anything to avoid thinking. "In 11 studies, we found that participants typically did not enjoy spending 6 to 15 minutes in a room by themselves with nothing to do but think, that they enjoyed doing mundane external activities much more, and that many preferred to administer electric shocks to themselves instead of being left alone with their thoughts. Most people seem to prefer to be doing something rather than nothing, even if that something is negative".
People would rather give themselves electric shock than think.
People don’t think, they don’t want to think, and they can’t think even if they want to.
How will we make sense of this changing world? How will we know how to thrive in this changing world?
99.999% cannot think at the level required to understand global problems and suggest way out.
Consider yourself lucky if there are 3 people in your extended community or country who have the ability to think at the level to make sense of the world around us.
Just as 99.999% of us can't run the 1 mile under 4 minutes, or entertain 1 million people, there are only a handful of people in the world who can think at the level to make sense of the world around us.
Rally to your King
The answer is to find the wisest, most well-informed person you know, and ask him to introduce you in turn to the wisest most well-informed person he knows, and so on.
Rally to your King. Support him, protect him, and take care of his needs so he can support you, protect you, and care for you.
Don't fight alone, join the army. Rally to your King.
* * *
This Cost of Lies contributed to the breakup of Soviet Union; left Canadian province Alberta with no money compared to the $1.4 trillion fund Norway setup; left Sikhs with no money compared to $100bn fund Mormons have.
Our cost of lies is increasing, while we get poorer and unable to pay. Ask yourself if your future will be better or worse. This is the cost of lies, apathy, distractions, emotionalism, spiritual entertainment, moral self-indulgence and catharsis(ਭਡਾਸ). Others can, but we can’t afford self-deception.
We provide original analysis, provoke thought, and enlighten on issues relevant to all of us.
We are here to make sense of this changing world.
What makes us right
We are right because we base our words and actions on history, humanity, and our shared common values. That is enough to help us navigate through the information minefield and noise. We are uncorrupted by favor or influence, and have vested interest in being right.
We live by what we say. We thrive and flourish in the world we live in. We have no safety net. If we are wrong, we see the effect in our daily life immediately.
Our ideas are battle tested in the real world everyday by us. You should too.
What to do
What to do, what can be done, is a common predicament people have.
Articles with the 'What to do' and 'Better life' tags give simple practical advice on what you can do today.
