I’m so excited! My daughter, Kristina, is in town until Sunday. I just picked her up at the airport early, early this morning, and while en route, I was reminded of another funny story showcasing the patheticness (new word) of my tiny brain. Above one of the highway signs, there’s a picture of a bear with the word, “zoo” on top of it. Did I put that together in a logical way? Nope. I thought it said, “200 bears” and wondered where the hell they’d keep that many and why they were advertising it. Sigh. Okay, check out this interesting concept, the basic income.

Me: Good morning, Kim. Hi, Erik. We just had a very interesting discussion about stuttering, and now we’re going to go on to the next topic. Are you ready to hit the ground running, Erik?

Kim: He’s wearing boxers and he went like ba bing ba on the drums.

Me: He’s wearing boxers?

Kim: Yeah, he’s just sitting in boxers, playing the drums.

Kim chuckles.

Me: Oh, my god. Well, he was a boxer, not a briefs man, so that makes sense.

Kim laughs.

Me: There are a couple of things I want to talk about, and I think the first thing I want to talk about is something somebody brought up about economic approaches for the world. There has been, at least in Finland, an experiment of doing something called basic income where everybody gets a basic living wage from the government. That does away with welfare because that pretty much replaces it. Here’s what this blog member says: “The model of ground basic income, getting a certain amount of money without doing anything, is being discussed in Europe more than ever before. There are many advantages but also many concerns about this model. Can it serve as an instrument to stop the ever increasing gap between the poor and the rich? Will it bring people back to their real needs like spirituality? Can it be financed? Can it be introduced to the world where states still work separately? Will it be the future? If not, what is the best economic approach?” You know, people are becoming more and more dispensable because everything is becoming more automated, and it’s going to be more and more like that. So what happens when there are not enough jobs for people? Anyway, basic income. What’s your take on it, Erik?

Erik: I have a soft spot in my heart for –

Kim: This is the part that caught him, that really hooked him, energetically: when you said things are becoming more automated. He even said, “convenient” and “over-convenient.”

Erik: But it’s in perfect balance, though. That’s the part we need to acknowledge, so we’ll get to that in a minute. Partially, we’re creating a world that adheres to our needs, basically making us lazier.

Me: I know!

Erik: The less work we have to do, the better, or so we think. But it’s in perfect balance. Don’t forget that part. There is a universal tug of war, a universal pull of energy that is a tug of war. So if we pull over here, someone experiences it over there. For every action , there’s a reaction.

Kim: He uses that word, “balance” with hesitancy almost because he really doesn’t like to use the word since balance is an illusion.

Me: Ah.

Erik: Everything is as it should be. Although it seems like we’re fostering a world that continues to wipe away jobs and the need for people to work, we’re still creating more work for ourselves. It may not be in the form of employment, though.

Me: What do you mean, “It may not be in the form of employment?” Will there be other work like personal spiritual work? Is that what you’re saying, for example? That doesn’t pay too well! (monetarily.)

Erik: Let’s say we create this huge factory that wipes out 10,000 jobs because now all of these machines can do it. We’re making it hard for ourselves in the long run because we’re going to have to work harder.

Kim: He’s talking more about maintaining our environment and our own health and well-being.

Me: Okay.

Erik: So, even though we think we’re being more productive, we’re actually making life, in the big picture, harder for ourselves.

I’m so confused.

Erik: I want to get into the financial aspect of it and the employment aspect of it. I don’t know if we’ll ever know true equality where everybody gets the same base income. There are a lot of reasons why, Mom. First, greed.

Me: Wait. They’re just talking about everybody getting the same—I’m just going to make up something–$13,000 a year, but there will be people who have a job who do get that $13,000 but also make more. But there are some people who only get $13,000 because they don’t work. I just want to make sure that Erik understands that.

Erik: That’s why we’ll never know a system like that because of greed. The man that does work will have this sense of entitlement. There’s too much polarity in that.

Kim: Oh, this is where he shows that a great war could break out because of entitlement. “I work, so I’m entitled to this and you’re not!” So then the men fight. He also talks about income being territory based so like if you live in this part of the world or this part of the U.S., income is different. It’s based on where you live and the cost of living there. He wipes that away, too.

Erik: That would be more likely but it’ll probably never fly.

Me: No.

Erik: It’ll never last.

Kim: He’s getting into the political side of this.

Erik: For us, in the U.S.—talk about the Canadians.

Kim: Okay, so maybe we’ll get into that later. Yeah, that was random.

She chuckles.

Kim: He’s showing me that the income is equal but equally earned.

Erik: Basically, you earn what you work for, and we’ll come back to a time where we all work hard, like physical labor, for what we earn. It’ll be more primitive.

Me: Why? Will there be some big disaster that will break everything down, and then, so—

Kim: That’s kind of what I was thinking, I as like, ‘We’ve got these great machines now that can build and create. Can’t we just keep replacing the parts or won’t they last?’

Erik: We will exhaust our resources. Here on Planet Earth, we’ll exhaust our resources so we’ll have to rely on ourselves.

Kim: Oh! That’s where it comes full circle.

Erik (flicking Kim in the head): Duh!

I laugh.

Kim: So that was what he was talking about earlier when he said that we’re actually making it harder for ourselves.

Erik: By creating all this machinery to do the job of mankind so that all is automated, in the long run we’re making it harder for ourselves because we have to relearn how to live off the land and how to live for ourselves to sustain life. When we exhaust our resources, which we will do, we’ll have to relearn how to rely on ourselves, our physical bodies and so on to sustain life.

Me: When will that happen?

Not next Wednesday, right? Because I have plans. Gulp.

Me: Will it happen in our lifetime, my lifetime?

Erik: No.

Me: Hundreds of years from now? Thousands?

Kim: I’ll have him come to that in just a second.

Me: Okay.

Erik: When that occurs, money is going to be different. Money, as we know it now, won’t even be important. It’ll be more about food and items that you can make a life with.

Kim: Can you give a timeline? When will this happen?

(Pause)

Kim: He pulls me out at least a hundred years.

Erik: You won’t know it in your time.

Me: That’s good! That makes sense. What is the best economic approach now? So the basic income you’re not a fan of? You don’t even think it’ll ever take root?

(Pause)

Me: Or maybe you don’t think it should?

Erik: Oh, I didn’t say I wasn’t a fan. I’m just saying it won’t fly because people carry such a sense of entitlement.

Me: Oh, I see.

Erik: People are so different and battles or wars will break out because of it. It’s just too much chaos. I wouldn’t last.

Me: Well, would it be good if it weren’t for greed and ego?

Erik: Of course.

Me: Okay.

Kim: He was saying something, but he’ll have to give it to me again because memory doesn’t work in this process. It was pretty cool, whatever it was!

Me: Give it to her again, babe.

(Pause)

Me: You’re going t make her fight for it!

Kim: Yeah. No, he’s giving it back.

Erik: Well, duh. If she would just listen!

Kim: You asked some question that triggered this response. It was just two seconds ago. I don’t know what you said, but…

Erik: I want to encourage you people (He knocks on the camera and goes, “Hello?” Tink, tink, tink.)—

Kim: I can hear him knocking!

Erik: You hear me? I want you to think about something. This is along the thread of exhausting our resources. We are such a wasteful people. Things are too automatic and convenient. When you buy something, whatever it is, first ask yourself if you’re going to still use it 6 months from now? Are you still going to be using it in a year? I’ll bet you 50%, probably 70% of you won’t. You’ll buy something now, and then 6 months from now you’ll be done with it.

Me: Yeah.

Guilty.

Erik: That’s what I’m talking about when I talk about exhausting our resources.

Me: We’re so wasteful. So what do you think the best economic approach is? And then that’s all I have for this subject.

(Long pause)

Kim: This is interesting and kind of difficult.

Erik: This is what would work the best.

Kim: He’s showing what he just described where ego and self-entitlement are wiped out and dissolved.

Erik: That’s because when one has to rely on themselves to sustain life, there is no ego or entitlement. Everyone has to come down to a level playing field. So the best economic approach is self-reliance, relying on yourself, not other people, other systems or other things because that creates a pigeonhole that you fall into and don’t get back out of. That’s because you create an attachment and you rely on it. That perpetuates the existence of it and so on. For example, welfare. At least for right now, these systems are going to change. Either the time you’re using the program is going to shorten or the amount of money you’re going to get is going to be capped.

Me: Are you talking about welfare?

Erik: Yes.

Me: Okay.

Erik: So like the time you use it is going to be capped like you can only use it for 6 months or the monies you can get from it is going to be capped out. There’s a lot of energy behind this, capping out these systems, and that will start the transition where people will have to slowly have to rely on themselves again.

Me: Instead of the government. Ah. That makes sense.

Erik: It’ll be a very slow process because there are a lot of people that just can’t. They don’t understand how to make things work. They don’t understand how to make things happen. It’s just not at their soul level yet. That’s why we have this thing called consciousness, and some people are down here (Kim puts her hand down low.) or way up here (She puts her hand up high.) But it’s all in perfect motion. The timing is perfect, too.

Me: Well, we’ll help them evolve. We have to help people who have been on welfare all of their lives and maybe from generation to generation. We’ll have to help them get off of it. We can’t just pull the rug from under their feet.

Kim (to Erik): Why did you bring up the Canadians? What does that have to do with anything?

Me: Oh, yeah!

Erik: They got it right.

Me: Okay.

Kim: Whatever their government or financial system is, it’s a smooth operation. There’s a balance.

(Pause)

Kim (laughing): When I said, “smooth operation,” he started playing that song.

I start singing “Smooth Operator.”

Kim chuckles.

Erik: There’s a lot more balance and less chaos.

Me: Okay.

Erik: We could learn a thing or two from them, but as far as us mimicking what they do, it’s like, ew, I don’t know. Things are really hairy right now!

Kim: He’s talking about our economic system. He’s showing us weeding through all this gross hair.

Me: I know. Oh, my god. All right. Anything else?

Erik: Just that I love you, Mom.

Me: I love you.

We close in our usual way.

If you missed last night’s radio show, here it is!

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