john.sundog
New
In this thread there has been a certain amount of complaining about having to pay someone for their time and effort in assisting a given person in achieving what may well be her/his most cherished goal. The same thing occurs in other threads such as when healing services are offered on a fee basis. Yet I've never seen anyone assert that personal trainers, life coaches, doctors, plumbers, or hookers, to name a few, should be offering their services for free. If you think this is different, could that simply reflect a worldview bias?
Anyway, I trust that the complainers are all living in stick huts along with their spouse and children and aging parents, subsisting on roots and grubs, working twelve hour days at their vocation with no income. You are? You're amazing! :)
But really, the complaining seems somewhat premature in this case because:
Jeffery's initial goal was to find a tech solution. If his team developed an electronic enlightenment maker and offered it for sale for $100, would the complainers demand that it be free? (Don't bother answering that.)
Perhaps we're just in the painful birthing process wherein the mind state sometimes called 'enlightenment' is transformed from being a strange thing that occasionally just happens and therefore seems mysterious or even holy, into something most people can achieve with a few months training, a normal human ability (just speculating here). At that time, should it ever come, perhaps our culture will move beyond predatory capitalism into a love-based system where everyone lives well and it is practical for such services to be freely available - after all, money no longer exists. I don't really believe that but it's worth hoping for, in which case perhaps Jeffery is helping bring that date closer, even though he's not doing it for free. To me that seems like something worth supporting.
Anyway, I trust that the complainers are all living in stick huts along with their spouse and children and aging parents, subsisting on roots and grubs, working twelve hour days at their vocation with no income. You are? You're amazing! :)
But really, the complaining seems somewhat premature in this case because:
- Universities rely on grants to fund their research. If someone like the NIH won't pay for these experiments, the funding has to come from somewhere.
- As of a couple of months ago Jeffery Martin stated he hasn't even been reimbursed for expenses let alone receive any income, and the people helping him are unpaid as well, so he is not profiting from the fees.
- Jeffery claims history shows that if people have a little monetary skin in the game, it focuses their attention on carrying out the mission. This seems plausible.
- He says that when these courses are running he has little time for anything else, and he has lots of things he's interested in pursuing other than the PNSE project. Therefore, since he isn't interested in doing the training himself forever, he's looking for ways to get it done without his having a major involvement. In our society that usually means some kind of monetary exchange to get other people to do it.
Jeffery's initial goal was to find a tech solution. If his team developed an electronic enlightenment maker and offered it for sale for $100, would the complainers demand that it be free? (Don't bother answering that.)
Perhaps we're just in the painful birthing process wherein the mind state sometimes called 'enlightenment' is transformed from being a strange thing that occasionally just happens and therefore seems mysterious or even holy, into something most people can achieve with a few months training, a normal human ability (just speculating here). At that time, should it ever come, perhaps our culture will move beyond predatory capitalism into a love-based system where everyone lives well and it is practical for such services to be freely available - after all, money no longer exists. I don't really believe that but it's worth hoping for, in which case perhaps Jeffery is helping bring that date closer, even though he's not doing it for free. To me that seems like something worth supporting.