“Fear less, hope more, eat less, chew more, whine less, breathe more, talk less, say more, love more and all good things will be yours.”

Swedish proverb

I received this from a friend that also attended the Eisenstein retreat last September.

1. When you try to pay less for something, is that selfish since that would mean the seller gets less money? If you are a seller is it selfish if you always try to get the highest price since that would mean the buyer has less money after?
2. Is it imposing your will on someone when you tell them they cannot use an object because it is yours?
3. What types of ownership are there?
4. Does ownership come from an attachment to objects?
5. What are the pros and cons of being attached to objects?
6. What are the pros and cons of having your happiness dependent on whether you have certain objects?
7. If we did not have the concept of ownership would that mean there is no such thing as stealing?
8. If we did not have the concept of ownership would that mean there is no such thing as charity (because anything you give is never yours)
9. Does ownership lead to more freedom or less freedom?
10. How come friends do not usually share everything?
11. Does the concept of ownership create the idea of scarcity?
12. When is something terrorism and when is it activism or environmentalism or freedom fighting? Can it be both?
13. When is something government security and when is it human rights abuse? Can it be both? When is ‘clamping down on bad parts of society or bad countries’ with force government security, and when is it terrorism?
14. When is security a way of covering up our fears?
15. Can you conceive of a society living happily without car insurance? Without house insurance? Without medical insurance? Without social security?
16. Does the offering of insurance sometimes create fears?
17. Are pensions and insurance a form of not trusting in the universe?
18. Does insurance weaken our survival instinct?
19. Do our fears create the insurance system? What if we let go of our fears?
20. Does a welfare system weaken the ability of some people to survive by themselves?
21. Do our needs create the welfare system? What if we let go of our needs?
22. Does a police force weaken the ability of people to live without protection?
23. Do our boundaries, rights, expectations of how people can behave towards us, things we ‘own’ that we want to protect create the police system? What if we let go of our boundaries, rights, expectations and ownership ideas?
24. Does a government weaken the ability of people to cooperate and help each other out without being threatened with jail?
25. Does our need to have people behave in certain ways create government? What if we let go of our need for people to behave in certain ways?
26. Does the education system weaken the ability of people to learn for themselves?
27. Does our dependence on authority for learning create the education system? What if we let go of this dependence?
28. Does keeping things free of bacteria weaken our immune system?
29. Does our need for things to be free of bacteria create cleanliness morals and laws? What if we let go our need to be so clean?
30. Would sharing eating utensils expose our immune system to a wider amount of germs and so strengthen it?
31. Is keeping our places clean a form of species cleansing (the species being bacteria and bugs, etc.)?
32. Is imprisonment a human rights abuse? Can something be both a form of justice and a human rights abuse?
33. When is justice another name for revenge?
34. If we want more joy in the world, why would we sometimes discourage expressions of joy at work and at school?
35. If our environment is being destroyed, and the reason for the environment being destroyed is the amount of things being produced, and the force driving the production of things is our work, would our world be better off if people worked less?
36. Is it possible to have a society where people work, but there is no salary? If so, what kind of society would that look like?
37. How much of our society now does work for which there is no pay (e.g. housework, volunteering, etc.)?
38. If technology is doing more of our grunt work, does that mean there are less paying jobs for the less skilled? If so, what happens to those less skilled?
39. Does being unemployed lead to low self esteem in our society?
40. What is the point of work? To contribute to society? Who decides what a contribution is? What do you think a contribution is?
41. Is it possible to be in a job that makes a negative contribution to society? If so, what percentage of jobs make a negative contribution to society? And if so, is it preferable we have people not working rather than be in a negative contribution job?
42. Would it be healthier for our society to have more people working for pay or less?
43. Would it be healthier for our society if people played more and worked less?
44. Why did we create a society where it costs money to buy food? What would happen if a certain amount was made free?
45. What would happen if we said the fruit that grows on trees and the vegetables that grow out of the land were unownable?
46. Why did we create a society where it costs money to buy land (as opposed to cultures like American Indians which didn’t have land ownership)? What would happen if we made some land free and unownable?
47. Is a person free if they feel that they have to work to survive?
48. Is a person free if they feel that they have to have money to survive?
49. Is a person free if they feel that they have to own their land or else pay rent in order to survive?
50. How much do land ownership issues contribute to war?
51. How much are oil considerations contributing to tension in the Mideast?
52. How much does our individual usage of cars, planes, and products that are shipped by trucks and/or require oil in its production affect the government oil policy and actions related to oil?
53. Does living in houses lead to us being more out of tune with the environment?
54. If so, would encouraging people to live in simpler houses, tents or in the open lead to a world which does not destroy nature as much?
55. If the idea of technology is to allow us to survive without having to work much, how come it seems to a lot of people that they need to work to survive?
56. Which is more free, free trade or free sharing?
57. Does free trade require laws to work?
58. Does free trade lead to less freedom in other areas?
59. Does a person who gets money from collecting rent on land they own contribute more to society than a person who gets welfare money?
60. Why is it women and men are not treated equally in our society if the laws are usually equal for women and men?
61. Is the idea of a country racist and segregationist?
62. What is the difference between discipline and manipulation?
63. When you think of yourself as a victim of something, how much of that is due to your own expectations about how things should have been?
64. If a boss, or the government tells you to do something, and you do it, how responsible are you for the consequences?
65. How democratic is a voting system if it does not allow criminals, people under a certain age, ‘illegal’ immigrants and people outside the country(!) to vote?
66. How come people blame the government for behavior of people that are not in government?
67. What would be a difference between a government that governs with love, and one that governs by fear?
68. What institutions create more fear than love in our society? The media? Insurance companies? Stock market? Education system?
69. Would a government that governs by fear encourage other institutions to create fear?
70. How come a government leader is voted in by society, while a business CEO is not usually voted in by all the people in the company?
71. How come it is usually management that fires people in a company, as opposed to a decision made by all the people in a company?
72. How come many businesses have the goal of surviving? Is there something ‘wrong’ if a business closes?
73. Does ‘just doing your job’ mean that you are not aware of or responsible for the consequences of your actions?
74. When is it okay to commit acts of violence in our society (murder, capital punishment, police security, mugging, protest, traffic accident, cutting open someone for surgery, boxing, war)?
75. When does war prevent bigger problems?
76. When do laws help prevent the behavior they are trying to stop, and when do they not have an effect, and when do they encourage the behavior they are trying to stop?
77. Who decides in our society what behaviors are okay and what are not?
78. In order to prevent certain behaviors we sometimes make laws and sometimes don’t, which behaviors do you think need laws (murder, building houses, store pricing, etc.)?
79. Are laws basically the formalization of peoples’ opinions about how people should behave?
80. How free is a society that feels like it needs laws?
81. When does having certain laws lead to more freedom, and when does having certain laws lead to less freedom?
82. Are rights basically about what a person’s expectations of how others can behave towards them are?
83. If so, what happens when people let go of expectations?
84. How free is a society that has prisons?
85. Is a country at peace if there are people in jail?
86. Is it possible to be totally free even while in jail? Is freedom an internal thing that doesn’t depend on external circumstances?
87. What happens to an innocent person who spends time in jail for a year?
88. What’s your guess of the percentage of people in jail are innocent?
89. Do police sometimes create anger, hatred and distrust by being suspicious, by checking up on people who turn out to be innocent, by racial profiling?
90. If so, do these negative emotions lead to more crime?
91. If the livelihood of police was dependent on their being crime does this create an unconscious push in society for more crime? E.g. certain police need to fill a quota of traffic citations for their job?
92. Do police, the legal system and jails lead to more or less crime in this society?
93. If police were encouraged to love criminals, what form would that love take?
94. Which is a healthier way for police to approach their job, as helping people, or as stopping crime? Are these two things the same?
95. Do police lead to more freedom or less freedom?
96. Is a country at peace if there is no outward violence, but there is a lot of internal anger?
97. Why do people sometimes feel awkward about expressing love, when love is such a beautiful thing?
98. If people in business were encouraged to love other people in the same line of business, what form would that love take?
99. What would happen if we tried to love people in jails more?
100. Are scientists taught to not love what they study?
101. If so, what effect does this have on the whole body of science?
102. Is western education cold, in the sense things are ‘objectified’ for study?
103. If so, is this leading to the ‘objectifying’ of society?
104. Does trusting people create good will?
105. What would happen if police trusted people more?
106. What would happen if government trusted people more?
107. When is it better to exert more control in government and when is it better to loosen the reins more?
108. Does one’s desires keep one from being free?
109. Is freedom better than responsibility?
110. Is our idea of poverty based on what our desires are? If we let go of our desires would there be such a thing as poverty?
111. In a different culture is it possible that what we consider to be pitiable is actually what is strived for and respected?
112. Why is having less things usually considered pitiable in our culture?
113. If a country is in debt does that mean they have to produce for the economy even if they otherwise would not want to?
114. Does the interest on the US’s debt go to private bankers?
115. If so, how much of taxpayers money goes to the private bankers?
116. Does the ‘need’ for income taxes cause a ‘need’ in society for people to work at paying jobs?
117. Does the ‘need’ for sales taxes cause a ‘need’ in society for things to be sold?
118. Does the US government owe bankers a lot of money?
119. If so, how much control do private banks wield over the US government, if the US government owes them a lot of money? Do they have a say in government fiscal and business policy?
120. Are poorer countries in debt to richer ones? If so, how much power does this give the richer country over the poorer one? And if so, how much of this power is used to help, and how much of it is abused?
121. Do banks make money if more people in society are in debt because of interest payments?
122. Do bankers try to influence government policy which favors more people in debt?
123. How free is a person if they have home loans or car loans or student loans or credit card debt to pay off?
124. Do banks fund both sides of a war (by providing money)? Do they make a lot of money because of war? How does this affect whether wars happen?
125. When banks ask for more money back than was loaned out where does that extra money (the interest) come from? Does it mean the total amount of money in the world has to increase for the debt to be paid off?
126. How do our emotions affect the way we perceive events?
127. Different things happening are combined into one news story; is it the journalist who creates the connection between these different things happening? Is it possible the connection between these different things happening is quite distinct from how the journalist imagines them to be?
128. Does the media require a paradigm within which it reports news?
129. If so, does this paradigm have emotional overtones which may lead us to looking at events in a certain way?
130. Can focusing on certain events and people as opposed to other ones skew the news?
131. Is our news paradigm that of a bad news paradigm?
132. If so, what other ways could we report news?
133. What if poets were the reporters for newspapers?
134. Does a dependency on advertisers and paying subscribers/readers affect what news is in the media?
135. Do the people who own the media have an influence on what is broadcast/printed?
136. Why do some things get reported and others do not?
137. Do the media affect events themselves?
138. Does media create fear?
139. If so, does this fear lead to more need for things like insurance and government security?
140. Is there a way of knowing intuitively what is happening in the world without using the media? If so, is it possible that your intuition is more accurate than the media?
141. Does media lead to more freedom or less?
142. Does media lead to more caring or less?
143. Which forms of technology give us more freedom and which ones less?
144. Does technology lead us to be more or less humane? If so, which ones lead us to be more humane and which ones to be less?
145. Is science leading us to be more humane or is it leading us to be less humane?
146. Would it be advisable to slow down our technology development since some of it is being put to use in weapons of mass destruction?
147. Is disease a symptom of a psychological problem? A problem with the way a person is living their life? A symptom of something wrong with society?
148. Why are certain drugs (usually medical) legal and others (usually street) not?
149. What is your definition of a drug?
150. Is the usage of drugs in medicine weakening our immune system?
151. If so, is this making humans more susceptible to viruses? More susceptible to AIDS?
152. Are medical drugs leading us to be out of touch with our bodies?
153. Is medical technology leading us to be out of touch with body intuition?
154. Is medicine leading us to forget natural ways our bodies can heal themselves?
155. Is our society ‘addicted’ to medicine?
156. Is the killing of bacteria and germs with medicines and cleaning agents leading to the evolution of more powerful bacteria and germs?
157. Are germs ‘bad’? Why are many people scared of them?
158. Is western medicine leading to a healthier society or less healthy society?
159. Does the dependence of the medical community and pharmaceutical companies on the need for people to heal lead to a unconscious generation of diseases in our society?
160. Is cancer partially caused by toxins and radiation?
161. If so, would it be advisable to slow down the development of chemical engineering and electricity dependent technology?
162. If so, how is it possible to slow down development of technology and science?
163. If people lived in simpler houses, or tents, or in nature would the incidence of cancer be less?
164. How free is a society where you cannot touch or handle a significant amount of objects because they are privately owned?
165. How free is a society where you cannot walk on a lot of the land because it is privately owned?