Pete’s blog

It seems that including my own life story in this week’s email made it a bit too personal and took away from the points I was trying to make. I do think context is important, but maybe next time there will be less about me and more about my ideas.

As a follow on from the mail, in order to highlight what I was trying to say about society, here are some questions to ask yourself (and your friends and colleagues):

What percentage of your income do you save?
If you could retire today, what would you do? (continue working is an option)
Do you have a plan for when you do actually retire? What are you going to do with your time?
If you were forced not to work, what would you do with your time? How much time do you spend at the moment doing whatever your answer was?
How much time do you spend on improving your self? Your environment? Your family? Your community?
How often do you think about your future and your goals? Do you know where you want to be in 5 years/10 years/50 years/100 years?
If you think of someone who does not work, what stereotypes come to mind? How many of those stereotype are negative? (as a prompt, think of people who cannot work; who cannot find work; who have another form of occupation (eg. housewife); and who do not need to work)

In an era of unprecedented wealth, how do we as a society choose to spend our time and money?
Why in most developed countries (in particular the US and UK) are people so heavily indebted? Why are people not saving?
Why, in an increasing number of families, are both parents choosing to work? Why are we not spending our extra time and money on raising our children?
Why are we willing to pay an extra R100 purely because it has a brand name, and even more importantly why do we charge it to a store credit card? Why do we borrow money in order to buy something intangible?
What is humanity’s purpose? Where will we be in 5 years/10 years/50 years/100 years/1000 years?