2o. Taxation and Slavery
Our political systems have come to tax us for a percentage of the energy we spend in work-to-earn-money. The more successful we are in earning money, the more energy the government of the day can take. Added to this system are local taxes, invisible taxes, stealth taxes, property taxes, inheritance taxes, value added taxes and so on. If we are employed, more and more of our energy goes into feeding this system which is essentially flawed and responsible for the continued devastation of our planet – a side effect of this essentially flawed economy. If you don’t want to invest your earnings or pension in weapons, bombs, slavery and pharmacueticals – it’s actually quite hard to avoid doing so.
Have you considered in terms of a percentage how much the system itself takes from you? Not only everything we earn but everything we buy, our travel costs, food, clothes, homes, lives – all taxed. 50% would be a conservative guestimate probably more like 60% or sometimes 80%. That’s more than half the time at least that we spend in employment to feed a system we don’t like with our energy. No wonder people get ill.
The more our energy is involved with the economy, the more our energy is taxed – taking money for a whole host of things we may not approve. In the world of work we are tied into a system that takes our energy and does things that we don’t like with it. Our success in life is often defined as how well we prosper within this system. And to do that there are certain questions we have to stop asking, such as ‘Where is all this energy going’ or ‘What’s it actually doing’ – ‘What’s the point’?
“You know in the West we have built a large, beautiful ship. It has all the comforts in it. But one thing is missing: It has no compass and does not know where to go.”
Albert Einstein
We have a political and economic system that is decreasing personal liberty, lining its own pockets whilst bringing in new ‘austerity measures’ for the rest of us, increasing beaurocracy and taxation and overseeing the systematic destruction of the environment through industrialisation. What a timely opportunity Coronavirus has provided for parliament to lock us all down just as people were getting serious about opposing ‘extinction’. It seems to spend most of the time making up unworkable laws that have not been properly thought through. Endless ‘brinkmanship’ creates short-term, knee jerk reactions to fundamental changes in reality.
What if the system of government itself is the problem? It seems totally screwed up and we seem presently on a conveyor belt to planetary self-destruction. What if you want to get off? There seems to be no legal mechanism by which a representative parliament might be dissolved.
It is difficult because we are all investors by default in this system, just by having a bank account we are damned, tainted by Mammon. In order to feed ourselves physically we have invented money that used to hold an equivalent value somewhere. It doesn’t any more and it is just being printed. As soon as we enter this system of [empty] promissory notes and hold bank accounts we are investors by default in slavery, child prostitution, armaments, pharmaceutical industries, illegal drugs, terrorism, deforestation, all sorts of criminality, and so on – everything that money does. If you pay into a pension to secure your old-age then once again you are tied to investment in undesirable outcomes, the bombs dropped on Syria, the pollution of dirty energy, the human misery of sex slaves or drug addicts – everything that money does.
There are many hypocrisies in being a person with spiritual intent, manifesting at a physical level. I am interested in consciousness shifting / raising, finding an exciting paradigm of energy awareness and holistic health and happiness in my life. I see myself as primarily a spiritual being, manifesting at a physical level, rather than the other way round. I feel that ‘the system’ has always made this life choice as hard as can be. The system itself is a parasite on the human spirit.
The answer for me was quite straightforward. Take my energy out of ‘the system’ and invest it in things that work. Become energy independent, grow and make rather than buy food and consumables where I can. Invest time in local economies of exchange and barter. Need less, want less, – reduce, recycle, re-use, repair. ‘Simpling down’ is a great way to go and definitely improves the enjoyment of life that money, increasingly, can so rarely buy. In the balance between ‘standard of living’ and ‘quality of life’ – my dis-involvement with the system gives me a good quality of life. I still refuse to earn enough money to pay taxes to a government that would invest it in armaments that kill children in other countries.
It worries me how few people seem to question that it seems normal to get dressed for work in the mornings and drive through polluting traffic to work at a job you don’t really like to pay for the car and the clothes and the house you leave empty all day so you can afford to live in it.
The Government are very careful about who they target for the next stealth tax to hold up the Treasury. Rather than applying blanket taxes on us all, like the Poll Tax (now Council Tax) which created massive resistance, they target minority groups, outside the norm, with no internal cohesion – taking legal rights from absent fathers, benefits from single mothers, pensions from pensioners, human rights from travellers, taxing the poor with extra bedrooms and so on. Easy targets who are unlikely to collectively rebel due to no group identity or cohesion. Often they will work hand-in-hand with mass media to demonise a group before applying stealth taxation.
So if you are working all the hours you have to pay childcare costs, or if you are in energy poverty because it is so expensive to buy fuel, of you can’t afford to buy food or are forced to have a lodger – look around for people in the same situation – there are mutual solutions to these problems that take you outside of reliance on a system that is essentially broken beyond repair.
Parliament Must Die contains quotes from: A. Greenburg, M.D._Abraham Maslow_Albert Einstein _Alnoor Ladha_Andrew Gwynne _Anneke Lucas_Arthur Koestler _Arundhati Roy_Asgeir Jonsson _Barbara Max Paul Hubbard_Bertrand Russell _Bill Mollison _Buckminster Fuller_Calcida Jethá _Caroline Lucas_Charles the Great_Chief Arvol Looking Horse _Christopher Ryan_Copernicus_Daniel Christian Wahl_Daniel Pinchbeck_Darwin_David Edwards_David Holmgren _David Icke_Dieter Duhm_Donald Worster_Donnachadh McCarthy_Doreen Massey_Doris Lessing_Dr A Bartlett Giamatti _Dr Claire Wordley_Dr Jay Cullen_Dr Kathy Sykes _Dresden James_E C Lindeman_Eckhart Tolle_Edgar Cayce _Edward Snowden _Ethan C Roland _Ewen MacAskill_Galileo_Galtang and Ruge _George Monbiot_Gerald Heard _God in Genesis_Greta Thunberg_Gudrun Johnsen _Guido Dalla Casa _Gustave Le Bon_Guy Fawkes _Henry Cloud _Henryk Skolomowski_Isaac Cordal _J Eliot_Jack D Forbes_Jack Forbes_James Gordon M.D._James Lovelock _Jeremy Lent_Jeremy Rifkin_John Cleese _John Hammell_John Hilary_John Trudell_Jon Stone_Jonathan Bartley_Julian Assange_Karl Marx _Karlos Kukuburra_Ken Ward _Lee Williams _Leonard Higgins_Lierre Keith _Lord Strasburger_M Knowles_Maddy Harland _Marianne Williamson_Mark Boyle_Martin Kirk_Martin Winiecki_Masanobu Fukuoka _Matthieu Ricard_Mogens Herman Hansen _Nafeez Ahmed _Nanice Ellis_Neil Dawe_Nikola Tesla_Noam Chomsky_Olafur Hauksson _Osho_Paul Hawken_Paul Levy_Peter Joseph_Peter Macfadyen_Pope Francis_President Franklin Roosevelt _Rabindranath Tagore _Rene Descartes _Russell Brand_Safa Motesharrei _Seyyed Hossein Nasr_Sigmund Fraud_Silas Titus _Simon Mitchell_Sir David Attenborough_Sir Isaac Newton_Sir Joshua Stamp_Skip Sanders _Steve Kent _Sting_Terrence Mckenna_The Dalai Lama _Thomas Berry_Tom McKay_Tyler Durden_Walter Bradford Cannon_Wendell Berry_William Derham_Yaneer Bar-Yam
2o