Today someone said to me: "I am so sorry you live in Kali Yuga, this age of darkness."

Evils of this age.....
Hunger, sweatshops with suicide nets in china, sex slaves in syria with isis, child slaves peeling prawns, 

Making Money off the poor
Monsato farmers in India, 

Answer
​Social Entrepeneurs.

With the global warming, I think many of us are impelled to think and are trying to change our ways of living to produce less CO2. Being able to see the bigger picture, in an effort to try and make a change in the bigger global picture, helps.

​Cities are looking at ways of becoming more educated on becoming sustainable, while first world countries are making HUGE leaps at developing infrastructures for renewable energy!

With our shop small trend, we have proven that we can educate consumers with purchase power. ​Advertising and clever marketing does cloud our judgement while prying on our needs. 

While it is proven to be difficult to make better purchases, even when the consumer is educated, it's one strong vote to put your money where it will make a difference in the world, in the long term. Your purchase can be your strongest vote. This is just one way to be the change we need to see here on Earth.

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." -Mahatma Gandhi

So, as this year ends, will you to be the change that you would like to see in the world? Will you claim it, change it, and make it reality? Making the change an actual part of our world?

Have you heard of HANDY yet?  Indeed, a very handy study conducted by Safa Motesharrei. 

It pretty much comes down to the collapse of western civilization and why. In this paper the goal was to propose a mathematical model that would explain why societies collapse. With so many variables this does seem like an attempt grasping at air but using the variables of population, nature and wealth they reached HANDY short for Human and Nature Dynamics. 

It says, for example, that if there are many rabbits but only a few wolves in an area, the wolf population will rise because food is plentiful, and the rabbit population will fall because they are being eaten. Eventually there will be too many wolves and too few rabbits, so most of the wolves will starve to death. With fewer predators remaining, the rabbit population will increase, and the cycle repeats – lots of rabbits, then lots of wolves, then ….

They then looked at the interactions of human-nature in three distinct types of societies: Egalitarian, Equitable and Unequal with the non-working elites consuming 10-100 times as much as the commoners who do all the work. They did fail to show any other past civilizations who collapsed due to the gap between the overpopulated poor masses and the needy elite consumptionists. ​

So as the wealth of Corporate giants accumulates wealth with production and decreases with the buying power of consumption from the elites and commoners. There should be enough wealth to pay the working population but since the elites pay themselves high salaries the wealth becomes so small that the payment of the working gets reduced resulting in famine and death. This tipped balance in the scale of class power cripples the means and infrastructure of the poor working class leaving them helpless.  

A full collapse happens when wealth cannot grow any further. This could be because of the poor working class dieing, depletion of natural resources. The commoners and the elites fall with the working class who cannot sustain them anymore. 

I am an average USA consumer and commoner.  I cannot afford to NOT shop at the corporate giants and bigbox retailer who grows wealthy on the backs of these poor workers. Growing up with very little in South Africa I am well adverse with making my own clothes. Comparing the price of fabric, the time spent and the low asking price of fashionable clothing, making my own clothes makes absolutely no sense.

​Getting out of this evil cycle of consuming and repeating the cycle seems hopeless. So am I part of the problem? Absolutely and it makes me sick to my stomach. ​

In my limited understanding I would say: we need restrictions on the salaries of the elite, standardized sales prices on products, restrictions on misleading advertising, extended lifespan of products, perception campaigns to represent the working-class, corporate funding for infrastructures and resources of the poor,  legal limitations on corporate giants extorting the poor, weak and uninformed. 

Following the rabbit down the hole from #UN to #GlobalGoals I stumbled upon #SDGs... NO IT IS NOT #STD and that is why I hate acronym #tags....

​If you however take to twitter and search #susdev you will get a great resource about sustainable development with big and many many small companies all in conversation. 

So getting back to #SDGs the Sustainable Development Goals as set out by the United Nations on sustainabledevelopment.un.org. 

In my ignorance Transforming our World: The 2013 Agenda for Sustainable Development reads like a novel by Sir Thomas More. Is it's Utopia even a realistic goal? I am all for big goals but how about starting with small ones? In the opening paragraph this sentence however stands out:

"...extreme poverty, is the greatest global challenge and an indispensable requirement for sustainable development." 

​We cannot progress or put an end to poverty when people are not feeling safe. Maslow  already proved this. To start the process to a more humane future we need to "re-humanize politics and economics based on the solidarity of ordinary citizens" (Ikeda's Peace Proposal) RIGHT NOW, and figure out the basics for peace, TODAY.  

I think a good small goal to start with would be to eradicate weapons of mass destruction. An International Survey by SGI Youth Shows 91% Consider Nuclear Weapons Inhumane. Nuclear weapons are only the tip of the iceberg of what is wrong but as a human race we cannot develop or prosper with the threat of weapons of mass destruction hanging over our heads. 

For Work for Africa to ever become a reality we would need certain resources to make it happen. 

1) Electricity. ​
​As you can see this is not a given in most of the world. Elon Musk is working on sustainable power with the Tesla Powerwall.

2) The Internet.
Connecting the world in equility requires having access to the internet which Mark Zuckenberg is making a reality with Internet.org.

4) Easy tools to explain SEO and Marketing to the average joe on the street. Almost there with the grace of God who gives me strength. 

​Frederick Willen de Klerk was the South African president who put an end to apartheid.

He facilitated the transition of 'white -ruled' South Africa over to the black oppressed majority lead by Nelson Mandela in 1994. This happened a small 30 years after all segregation was abolished by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the USA.  

President de Klerk was finally able to do this only because he understood that: "Peace does not far well where poverty and deprivation reign. It does not flourish where there is ignorance and a lack of education and information. 

We still do not have peace in South Africa. 

South Africa is the only county in the world where affirmative action is in the favor of the majority who has complete political control. The fact the the political majority requires affirmative action to protect them against a 9% minority group is testament to a complete failure on the part to build their own wealth making structures, such that their only solution is to take it from others. - London Times

This also make South Africa the PERFECT test subject to help pave the road to peace....