Tonight I listened to a webinar with John Perkins who used to be a Chief Economist for a major consulting company years ago and has spent the last few decades working with indigenous people (from many parts of the world) and teaching all kinds of people about what he has learned to help rectify the contribution he made (in his work as an economist) to the damage done to their economies and cultures.

John is the author of several books including, “Confessions of an Economic Hitman” and more recently, “Hoodwinked” http://www.johnperkins.org/?p=937#respond.

In listening to him talk I could hear a fellow seeker who has done a lot of work on himself mentally, emotionally and spiritually.  He has a lot of respect for many kinds of beings.  John covered a lot of ground tonight but if there was one piece that caught my brain more than another I would have to say it was his suggestion (and I’m paraphrasing quite liberally here) that what runs our country is business. That when everything is said and done it is not the people who we voted into office because they will, hopefully, vote and pass laws that we want but rather it is the businesses who put forth the money to get things done (that run our country).  What this means is that where our power as individuals and groups can be exercised most effectively is in how and what we purchase–and that goes for everything we purchase.  The businesses are there because we have created them by what we have said and shown that we wanted.

Now it is time for us to pay attention to the effect/affect that we are having by where we put our money and how we use it.  Oh, yes, it is a lot more complex than how I am writing it right here, but this is me distilling the idea down to the chunk that I want to focus on in this blog.   As one of the greatest nations in the world, we have the opportunity right now to mature into the beings that I believe the Divine, the force, whatever you want to call it for yourself, had in “mind” our evolution.  We are responsible for the world that we have created and our dealing with now.  It is our privilege to wake up now so that we can look at how our actions and see our effect on those who live half way across the globe from us, much less down the street or in the next room.

John Perkins says over and over again that we have much we can learn from the indigenous peoples of our world.  I believe that is true.  As Albert Einstein said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”  Perhaps visiting with peoples from other cultures and communities can show us the way out of the box that we have created for ourselves.

As far as purchasing goes, John gave the example of Nike and how they use sweatshops in other parts of the world to create their products. He said that Tiger Woods missed a golden opportunity to make a statement by going with Nike’s brand instead of saying, “no, I can’t get behind your brand because you utilize sweatshops”.  John also gave the example of the golden opportunity missed by the media to explore the working conditions of the Chilean miners trapped underneath the earth for so long and instead focused on their crying families and the drama of it all.  Focusing on their crying families was not a bad thing, but day after day after day was overkill when deeper journalistic investigation could have been done to unearth a depth of understanding about communities and working conditions in other countries.

I’ll never forget when I worked for Communities in Schools years ago how the Social Workers employed their questioned what companies and products their 401Ks were invested in.  I had never stopped to think about what a 401K was much less that I had no idea what my money was supporting.  Once that door of understanding was opened, I began to inquire about insurance and how that worked, where did that money go?  It is quite a sobering exploration I can tell you that.  I haven’t quite found peace with it yet either.

How and what you purchase can make a difference in the effect we have on all kinds of economies, not just our own.  What will you purchase tomorrow?