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Plant Spirit Healing: A Guide to Working with Plant Consciousness Pam Montgomery See book keywords and concepts

This spiritual crisis is the root of environmental degradation, deteriorating health, massive consumerism, social injustice, and wanton war. It is the imperative of our time to evolve in consciousness to a level of spiritual understanding that recognizes the spirit in all life and engages in a reciprocal nurturance. RELIGIOUS OVERLAY Various religions refer to spirit as God or an aspect thereof, so many people's immediate reaction to the word "spirit" is one of religious connotation.

Safe Trip to Eden: Ten Steps to Save Planet Earth from the Global Warming Meltdown David Steinman See book keywords and concepts

My Lord, what do you want youths to do when their city is being choked off and they blame it on stupid, mindless American consumerism, buying cheap wood for what? Their McMansions? If profiteering continues and wages and earning power remain low, disillusioned youths are sure to turn to charismatic leaders like Osama bin Laden who offer hope, however false and misleading it might be, as a deadly way out of their despair. Good jobs with meaning and decent wages, the idea of hope—these are antidotes to terrorism, not more missiles and guns.

Financial Armageddon: Protecting Your Future from Four Impending Catastrophes Michael J. Panzner See book keywords and concepts

This was pardy because consumerism had become an end in itself. It was a new religion—a new American dream supported by an endless stream of advertiser-supported media. Almost everyone was imbued with a get-it-now, live-for-today perspective, a kind of financial hedonism enabled and repeatedly overstimulated by an aggressively competitive, rapidly innovating, but ultimately self-serving financial services sector. To that end, lenders and borrowers joined hands and helped create a massive real estate and mortgage market bubble, allowing consumers to "extract," as the euphemism went, $2.

Many re-embraced the mantra of consumerism and the American dream, and the economy began to recover anew. The tradeoff was that by early 2006, the United States was "more dependent on housing than it [had] been in a half-century," the Washington Post reported, with activity in the real estate sector accounting for "nearly three-quarters of the nation's job growth" since the 2001 recession. During that five-year period, consumers had borrowed an estimated $2.

Even those who seemingly have plenty to spend will hold back, as a contagious wait-to-buy mind-set, one wholly at odds with the hedonistic consumerism of earlier years, begins to spread. Companies and individuals will also be hit with rising taxes and "user fees" of all kinds, because in the early stages, before hard-pressed citizens begin to aggressively fight back, state and local governments will look to fill the gaps caused by falling property values, softening retail sales, and unfunded retirement liabilities.

But with the cult of consumerism crumbling, the economy in a tailspin, the nation's financial system being consumed from within, public finances in tatters, and military resources stretched to the breaking point, outsiders will no longer have an incentive to ignore the new reality: the end of American hegemony. Economic and financial shocks will reverberate back and forth between rich and poor, allies and adversaries, producers and consumers, and mature and developing nations.

Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet Mark Lynas See book keywords and concepts

Currently, economic and social pressure works in the other direction: young children, for example, rather than eschewing consumerism, have to display the latest consumer fashion gear so as not to be humiliated in the playground. Their parents save up to buy the latest jeep or SUV in order to demonstrate their status and earning power to the neighbours. Television programmes like the BBC's Top Gear equate speed with virility and driving with freedom, cultural messages which are relentlessly reinforced by screen and billboard advertising.

In constraining carbon through rationing, we might soon find that we were building a different sort of society, one emphasising quality of life before the raw statistics of economic growth and relentless consumerism. I have no grand plan for how this society might look, nor do I pretend that it would be some kind of Utopia. Life would go on, with all its trials and tribulations - and that, after all, is precisely the point. Unless we do constrain carbon, life will very largely not go on at all.

The True History of Chocolate Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe See book keywords and concepts

For reasons that are still not well understood, European and North American populations were growing at an unprecedented rate; and while many of these "new people" were poor, many of them were not, so that the century saw a rapid rise in consumerism, with ever-burgeoning numbers of small manufacturers turning out vast quantities of goods, especially textiles, for home consumption. Technological advances and a spirit of entrepreneurship led some countries, above all England, into the Industrial Revolution by the latter half of the century.

The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine Anne Harrington See book keywords and concepts

There is an established historiography that sees self-help as one expression of a secular and psychologically minded "therapeutic culture" in general that first arose at the turn of the twentieth century as part of a new American culture of narcissism, consumerism, and consumption—a culture that valorized "feeling good."8 At the same time, a new generation of scholars also increasingly appreciates the extent to which many practices of modern self-help, particularly as a print culture, owe a significant debt to the religious mind-cure movements of the late nineteenth century.

Movie review: Idiocracy starring Luke Wilson, directed by Mike Judge Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

And the zombie-like consumerism depicted in Idiocracy is only a slight exaggeration of the behavior of consumers today who actually guzzle down gallons of Gatorade, thinking it's good for them because it contains "electrolytes." (Gatorade is mostly just salt water with artificial coloring additives). Sports drink? Guess again.

The greenwashing of toxic consumer products Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

It's the Big Lie of consumerism, and the American economy depends so much on the continued purchasing of throwaway products that it simply cannot survive unless people keep buying -- and tossing -- products that are mostly harmful to the environment. We've already sent the climate into a tailspin with carbon dioxide emissions and global warming, but that's only the beginning of this story.

The Detox Strategy: Vibrant Health in 5 Easy Steps Brenda Watson and Leonard Smith See book keywords and concepts

These lifestyle choices, encompassing diet, exercise, consumerism, and stress management, perpetuate a vicious cycle of blows to our health. It also leaves us looking older, feeling more tired, and unable to do the things we want to do in life. Which is why I'm redefining "lifestyle" with easy, practical solutions that won't require radical change. I want you to beat the odds and live the best life.

Big Pharma: Exposing the Global Healthcare Agenda Jacky Law See book keywords and concepts

The forces of consumerism, information management, technology and science, facilitated by the e-environment, all focus on one thing, the individual,' consultant Patricia Pesanello told a pharma conference in 2000. We suggest that these forces also point to a new healthcare vision, one that focuses on individualised health management, which in an e-environment is informed, interactive, immediate, and integrated.

Over the past couple of decades, pharma has been the major beneficiary of social change towards consumerism in healthcare. It is no coincidence that the rising pharmaceutical spend on the big broad-spectrum conditions has been in parallel with an obsession about health. And, of course, it has been helped enormously by the revolutionary new dimension to health made possible by the Internet. The quest for good health could suddenly find expression in infinitely more ways as the commercialization of the prize you can be sure everyone wants, longevity and health, gathered momentum.

Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should Be Good, Clean, And Fair Carlo Petrini See book keywords and concepts

The models of traditional cooking, which once had to contend or harmonize with the physical limitations of territories and with the relationships that formed between different societies, are now on the verge of disappearing because of the emergence of a model where what prevails, after intense industrialization and the globalization of trade, is consumerism and detachment from the agricultural world. The history of man can be reconstructed through a geohis-tory of taste, where general models of cuisine become dominant and come to characterize the various areas of the planet.

Big Pharma: Exposing the Global Healthcare Agenda Jacky Law See book keywords and concepts

As author Madeline Bunting observed, 'The central tenet of consumerism is choice; when you're ill, you don't have the strength to make complicated choices. You want a relationship of trust and mutual respect in which someone very experienced and knowledgeable helps to make you better.'15 Nevertheless, the idea of having a greater say in health decisions is compelling. The Internet has made this possible. By enabling medical knowledge to be distributed in a more egalitarian manner, it instantly transformed the relationship one could have with one's doctor.

Spiritual Nutrition: Six Foundations for Spiritual Life and the Awakening of Kundalini Gabriel Cousens, M.D. See book keywords and concepts

It is also the basis for the consumerism in nutrition we see today. People tend to consume excessive vitamins, minerals, and amino acids in the hope of making their bodies live longer, perform better, endure more, and be healthier. The implied motto is "more is better." It is the underlying assumption behind calorie counting, nutritional computer printouts, and fad dieting. The focus on gathering nutritional capital is based on the inaccurate belief that nutrition is additive - that is, to be safe, extras of everything should be taken.

What's In Your Milk?: An Exposé of Industry and Government Cover-Up on the Dangers of the Genetically Engineered (rBGH) Milk You're Drinking Samuel S. Epstein, M.D. See book keywords and concepts

NOTE This article provided strong support for the scientific basis of the 1990 European moratorium on the uses and marketing of rBGH/BST, previously dismissed by the FDA as "consumerism versus science." The article also was the key initiative for the International Milkday Convention in Bonn, Germany on May 15, 1990 demanding a ban on rBGH/BST (Int. J. Hlth. Services 20:573-582, 1990).

Toxic Childhood: How the Modern World is Damaging Our Children and What We Can Do About it Sue Palmer See book keywords and concepts

Some put the change in children's behaviour down to diet or lack of exercise; others chose working mothers, marriage breakdown, defects in the education system, excessive consumerism or other effects of technological or social change. The world is full of experts on children's behaviour, and most of them seem completely oblivious of all the others.

During research for this chapter I've been shocked by the extent to which children's play and culture has been invaded by consumerism. Peer pressure, subtly directed by the forces of mass marketing, has even begun to undermine the relationship between children and the adults who care for them. Playgrounds have become places where creativity means re-enacting last night's TV show and 'cool', in the form of branded products and clothes, is the accepted route to social success. Yet we know - and psychologists continually reaffirm - that this is not the route to happiness.

The influential British economist Richard Layard puts this down to a combination of consumerism and constant economic growth luring people in highly successful nations into over-competitiveness: 'Our fundamental problem today is a lack of common feeling between people - the notion that life is essentially a competitive struggle. With such a philosophy the losers become alienated and a threat to the rest of us, and even the winners can't relax in peace.

Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should Be Good, Clean, And Fair Carlo Petrini See book keywords and concepts

Near and far The distance that has opened up between producers and consumers is not just an abstract distance, represented by the total lack of communication—and often near antagonism—between them, but also by the fact that they live in different worlds, both clouded by the philosophy of profit and unbridled consumerism. The distance is physical, perceptible, and difficult to transcend.

Big Pharma: Exposing the Global Healthcare Agenda Jacky Law See book keywords and concepts

Healthcare consumerism broadens the boundaries, however. And while Pfizer's trials failed, much development has been stimulated by this large and apparently unmet need. When Procter & Gamble (P&G) was in the final stages of testing its testosterone patch for women in May 2004, Mary Johnson, a P&G spokeswoman, told the Wall Street Journal, 'This isn't about oversexing women. This is about restoring something they have lost.

Reinheriting the Earth: Awakening to Sustainable Solutions and Greater Truths Brian O'Leary See book keywords and concepts

Instead of addressing that question in the depth that it deserves, we have made consumerism our god as it spreads its addictive candy throughout the world. The next chapters will give us hope that we do have the technologies to restore the Earth with sustainable development in energy, agriculture, water, forestry, crops, fisheries, mineral resources, while conserving the wilderness and diversity of species.

Therefore, they (we) cover up the truth with self- and Earth-destroying addictions such as runaway consumerism, which can only deepen the despair. In vivid contrast, those in the cultural mainstream who don't seem to care, are unaware there is any problem at all. They appear to be spared of the shame we sensitives feel. "Widespread ecological illiteracy", said Roszac, "is one of the roots of our environmental crisis. Many people simply do not understand the biological foundations of their own survival." 3.

In the context of contemporary American culture, such people are an anomaly, for they have no interest in the world of business success and mass consumerism." (pp. 135-6) These individuals, he writes, are "disaffected Americans who feel increasingly unable to fit into this society and who also feel that the culture has to change if it is to survive." (p. 132) "Points are reached, only to be left behind. The road to truth is always under construction; the going is the goal...An NMI doesn't participate in anything that can be labeled as an 'ism'.

While we are led to believe that consumerism and a strong military are at the core of our culture, nothing could be further from the truth. Our new success will be measured by implementing the principles of the manifesto; nothing less will do. As for the structure of the global republic, I have little to add to the positive ideas expressed by Ferencz, Keyes, Laszlo and others. The American model of a legislative, executive and judicial branches with checks and balances is a good place to start. But I am concerned about the recent excessive executive power in the U.S.

Technology, instead of being used to feed a runaway cycle of exploitation and consumerism ("more and more for more and more"), will need to be redirected toward the protection and restoration of damaged ecosystems." Theologian-ecologist Thomas Berry has pointed out that while we have moral teachings for homicide and suicide, they are lacking for biocide and geocide.

Natural Cures They Don't Want You to Know About Kevin Trudeau See book keywords and concepts

The phony consumerism movement, which started in the early '60s, had everybody conditioned that this was truly the worst sin you could commit, mainly because it was the one most prosecuted by the "consumer protection system." Why? Because it is the easiest to prosecute. The advertising laws are nebulous and with documented advertising you have your proof before you in black and white. But is it the worst sin? There are others that are much worse, but are bought and paid for and much more difficult to prosecute.

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ABOUT THE CREATOR OF NATURALPEDIA: Mike Adams, the creator of this NaturalNews Naturalpedia, is the editor of NaturalNews.com, the internet's top natural health news site, creator of the Honest Food Guide (www.HonestFoodGuide.org), a free downloadable consumer food guide based on natural health principles, author of Grocery Warning, The 7 Laws of Nutrition, Natural Health Solutions, and many other books available at www.TruthPublishing.com, creator of the earth-friendly EcoLEDs company (www.EcoLEDs.com) that manufactures energy-efficient LED lighting products, founder of Arial Software (www.ArialSoftware.com), a permission e-mail technology company, creator of the CounterThink Cartoon series (www.NaturalNews.com/index-cartoons.html) and author of over 1,500 articles, interviews, special reports and reference guides available at www.NaturalNews.com. Adams' personal philosophy and health statistics are available at www.HealthRanger.org.