The Dance of Life
This first issue is about voting age, marketing strategy, and happiness.
In this issue we’re discovering how lowering the legal age to vote incentivizes manipulation, learning how Steve Jobs marketed one of the most successful brands in the world, and discovering what ecstatic dance is all about. And finally, in a new article we’re learning how to find and flip our happiness switch.
After all the hours, days and weeks I put into preparing the back end of this very publication, today, the day of the first issue, I felt hesitation, doubt and resistance.
This project is meant to be the starting point of sharing my truth with the world, creating tremendous value through insight for everyone who resonates with my values and beliefs. Something I currently envision as ultimately transforming into some kind of school. You know, not one of the infamous public ones which so many of us dread because they rather traumatize than educate. But a school of life we wish we had for ourselves when we grew up. A form of education we would like for our children.
Rather ambitious words. No wonder I felt hesitation and doubt. Feelings that quickly mixed up with fatigue, a slight headache and the discomfort of my sweating body carrying my backpack through the hot and humid midday sun of Indonesia. I felt unhappy. Time to flip the switch.
✨ Sparks
🤳🏻 Instagram Post: Right to vote from the age of 16
Initiative from German political party FDP to lower the right to vote from the age of 18 to 16. One of the reasons the right to vote is being granted only at the age of 18 or 21 is to protect children and teenagers from manipulation and instrumentalization for political goals from leading parties. Since the education system is being structured and supervised by the state through legal regulation, lowering the right to vote creates a strong incentive for the governing parties to inject political ideology into young people’s minds, for instance by changes in the curriculum, in order to strengthen their base of voters. Especially in the western world this dynamic is being factored with the dying process of large traditional families which used to provide a certain resilience against external manipulation.
This dynamic is being disguised by the argument today’s youth need real participation since it affects their future. Although the argument itself appears reasonable, the underlying intention is the opposite. The argument suggests liberation, but the intention is exploitation.
🎬 YouTube Video: Introduction of Think Different campaign by Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs introduces Apple’s new Think Different campaign to the audience in 1997. If you want a whole marketing degree condensed into seven minutes, check out this video. It is very worth revisiting once in a while. The idea in this marketing approach is to liberate yourself from the product you’re trying to sell and to assess the single most important core value that determines your or the company’s actions which eventually lead to the final product or service and communicate this message to the world.
📝 Article: What is Ecstatic Dance And 3 Reasons You Should Try It
Article from TheEventChronicle describing the benefits and liberating qualities of Ecstatic Dance.
Justin Haynes
🆕 New Content
📝 Article: Find And Flip Your Switch Of Happiness
Some people argue that happiness is simply a matter of choice. Learn how to practice choosing.
Ferdinand Kutschker
📷 Shoot: Mexican Cacao Ceremony
Amazingly colorful Cacao Ceremony with fire show in Quintana Roo, Mexico. From last year, finally processed. Indulge in the spectacle and consider a Mexico trip to explore that incredible cultural heritage.
📷 Shoot: Ecstatic Dance
In this type of dance the dancers “abandon themselves to the rhythm and move freely as the music takes them, leading to trance and a feeling of ecstasy” (Wikipedia). A practise that helps tremendously to reduce stress and relieve bodily tension. So if you feel your life lacks ecstasy, give this dance a go in 2023.
🙏🏻 Gratitude Journal
One of the most powerful daily practices to liberate yourself from mental downward spirals is to bring the things to your attention that you are grateful for.
- I am grateful for the fact that my headaches are temporary.
- I am grateful for the rain that nurtures the plants which grow my food.
- I am grateful for all the wishes I received for my birthday this week.
What are you grateful for?
💡 This Week’s Wisdom
You have mastered women and the world when no desire either to avoid or to attain sways your loving or limits your freedom.
From The Way of the Superior Man by DAVID DEIDA.
Captured and resurfaced using the phenomenal Kindle reader.
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