An Interview Video on the Problems and Solutions

This is an interview with Jacque Fresco, who came out with the Venus Project. He is very intelligent and has a lot of great ideas. Listen to him and learn more about the current system and how it is impeding the progress that we can all enjoy.


This is another video, demonstrating the difference between a world with trade and without trade.

We Deserve Paradise!

Since I was a little kid, I kept telling myself, "this isn't the way the world is supposed to be!" I've always believed that this version of reality I am living in is an inferior one. It was like I have seen or been to paradise before, and hence I have a comparison.

I could never understand how people accept the inferior reality as it is. In fact, some found ways to exploit the inferiority to their own advantages! I still cannot understand.

People tell me that it was my lack of ability to cope, to adapt to the surrounding. I can't help it but to see the adaptation as the assassination of empathy, sense of guilt and morality.

Why do we need to perpetuate a situation whereby one or the other has to suffer? Why can't we create a situation without suffering?

I refuse all the advice given to me. I refuse to listen to the "experienced", "learned" or "wise". All of them stemmed from the acceptance of status quo, the inferior reality.

We deserve Paradise! I will not settle for anything less. Until all suffering is gone, until we have brought Paradise down to Earth, I cannot rest.

I will not bow down to the selfish or ignorant humans who have no idea what greatness we are all missing out on!

I don't want to wait for my death to find out if there is a Paradise, if there is a world to come. I want to change this world into the world to come!

Look around you, if you say to yourself, "this isn't the way the world is supposed to be!", then come and let us join hands. Together, we can create Paradise and make Paradise exist here on Earth.

To the people who say it is impossible, I will ask, "Have you tried? Have you tried all the available methods?"

We deserve Paradise! Let us create Paradise!

-- by Fun, Initiator of AVOFT

Intelligence - by Nature or by Nurture?

It does seem like the general perception is that intelligence is by nature, i.e. one is either born with the "intelligent genes" or not. However, things can hardly be further from the truth. This perception is actually quite a self-fulfilling prophecy. People who believe they have the "intelligent genes" will go on learning more, expanding their brains and become better while those who don't, will tend to stay stagnated, unwilling to make a move since nothing seem to be able to change their predicament.

Apart from that, education has gotten quite formalised in many places, whereby students rarely read topics outside of the syllabus given in school. Adults also do not read as much as they should to expand their horizon. This general lack of reading means that the brain lacks stimulation to continue growing and hence limit the development of intelligence.

At this point, it should be obvious that we believe nurture plays a greater role in deciding people's intelligence. There are scientific evidences suggesting that children growing up in a more stimulating environments develop better mental ability. These children can do better in tests and are more creative in finding solutions.

In addition to that, the mind is very much malleable. So, by feeding the mind with information and questions to process, the mind will then develop accordingly to cope with the work load. This is like how we build our muscles in gyms. When we exercise our brain cells, they develop further, allowing for more complicated thinking and information storage.

These are some of the activities that we can adopt to increase our intelligence:

• Reading, especially read from different fields
• Exercise, allowing for better blood circulation, bringing oxygen, water and nutrient up to your brain
• Engage in enriching discussions, stimulating your brain cells
• Get enough and proper sleep to allow your brain to repair the "damages" done during waking hours
• Avoid brain cell killing activities such as smoking and binge drinking

As a conclusion, intelligence is strongly influenced by nurture and hence one should maintain a healthy lifestyle to avoid becoming less gifted.

Energy in Change and Progress

Whenever change or improvement is mentioned, some people seem to have a default expectation. To make it easy, let us take a look at this graph:

This expectation is that change is direct and easy. If it is not easy, it is not a progress. However, this cannot be further from the truth. If you have studied chemistry before, the following graph may be very familiar:

Change and progress will always come with an increase in energy exertion, before a "chemical reaction" can happen and change the fundamental structure necessary for true progress to happen.

We believe it will be the same of AVOFT System. There will be various challenges and problems along the way. People may not believe that AVOFT System is a solution to the world's problems, which is a good thing to us if they are thinking of other alternatives. Whether AVOFT System is a solution or not, we need to change our course before the damage is too deep and too bad for any reparation.

The Solutions - An Illustration on Food

In order for AVOFT system to be implemented, abundance is a very important aspect. So, this is an illustration of how we can create abundance and bring forth the transition into the AVOFT system.

We will want to see leaderships in the opening of the floodgates of knowledge. There are many farming and gardening methods, suitable for different situation and temperaments of the growers. So, there will be groups working on creating wiki pages on these techniques, outlining their details as well as their pros and cons. This will allow for the general public to easily gain access to this pool of knowledge and making their farm/garden productive.

There will also be pages on the uses of the plants, common and less known ones. By listing out these plants, we will be able to popularise some less popular plants and hence creating more options to grow and eat.

Alongside with these, there will be people working on the hands on of growing food. We have people who are truly into farming to get a plot of land in the country and do larger scale farming. People can then, either travel to the farm to obtain the produce, or to have the farmers ship out to distribution centres in town.

Then there will be a category of people who loves to grow things but are unwilling to travel too far out of the urban setting. These people can work with urban farming, growing larger scale production in the city. Aeroponic, hydroponic and various techniques can be used to make use of space, especially vertical space of high rise buildings.

In addition to that, individuals who are not interested in large scale farming can have their own private home gardens, growing food they like and want, at their own pace and rate. These are more like hobby growers.

Then there will also be people who are more people oriented, working into community farming, bringing people together, doing various farming tasks together. There can be various activities like weed blitzing, whereby the people congregate at an agreed time and day to do weeding in a particular plot. This will make weeding fun and social, instead of mundane and hard.

Before the implementation of AVOFT system in a full sense, most likely these groups will have to operate commercially, as social enterprise or as vehicles for charity bodies. All these groups will be totally autonomy groups, operating with their own leaderships. They can, of course, be affiliate with AVOFT System by holding our values and goals in mind. But AVOFT will not dictate how they choose to operate.

With the springing up of more food growers around us, we will get more reassurance that we don't really have food crisis and we don't have to put a price tag to our food anymore.

Imagine if the same effort is done in various areas. This is a possibility. There will be areas we have overlooked here but we are sure if we all keep on working on it, we will realise the flaws and work our way to solve them.

We hope this provide a clearer illustration of how AVOFT system is a possibility. Remember that AVOFT system is not a utopian system. People are still expected to "work", albeit in their passion and based to a certain degree on necessity.

Ethical Studies

“There are two wolves fighting in everyone of us, one is Good and the other Evil. The one who will win, is the one you feed.” - Editted version of a Cherokee Legend

There is always a need to remind us of the goodness in each and everyone of us. It is said in many psychological studies that whatever we put our focus on, it is that which will influence us. The mind is very malleable and hence a constant feed of healthy thoughts and actions is a very necessary ingredient for each and everyone of us to shine brightly.

There is a Chinese idiom, a man who doesn't read for three days will have a face that is hated/hateful (三日不讀書，面目可憎). This is to say that, when one is no longer receiving positive feed from the classic texts, it is easy for one to be tempted by the various evils of the world.

This is a very important factor to counteract the lack of empathy in the current society, whereby many people focus only for the benefits and well being of themselves. Also, it is worthy of note that this is the negative feed the society is giving to us as we speak.

The columnist who tells you how you need to defend yourself against the politics of your office. The drama series that show how people are greedy and would do all sorts of evil to attain wealth. The news that speak of mindless massacres happening here and there, by random mad people. The friends who tell you to go have some fun with that pretty girl you've just met. Business partners who no longer believe in creating values for the society but rather creating demands and sales for your products.

We see negative examples in the society everyday. Negative feed to our emotions and mental well being. It is paramount to realise this, as well as to realise that we can counteract this effect by ethical studies.

However, we have an awkward situation with ethical studies here. Ethics is almost always linked with religion, as it seems, to many, that human are unable to be ethical without the interference of religion. Even systems of ethics like Confucianism & Taoism have been religionised, for the lack of ability to relate with ethics without involving religion.

This is not a very healthy thing, as it will cause two major problems.
#1, people who are religious will see secular people as immoral and unethical. Such a view cannot be accepted, because people who don't have a religion can still be very ethical. Just like the criticism given by the secularists that religious people can be unethical. Ethics and religions do not correlate as much as people have made themselves to believe.

#2, people who are secular and do not wish to be labelled as religious may do immoral or unethical things just to state their stance. This is a sad effect of several possibilities, such as religious extremism, confusion between relationship of relgious devotion and ethics.

The opposition here is the automatic assumption that a person is considered moral and ethical only if the person is religious, i.e without being religious, a person is taken automatically as immoral and unethical. So, it is hoped that the readers will realise that despite ethics is a major part of most religions, ethics need not necessarily be linked with religion.

In order for a more universal participation, it is preferable to have non-religious ethical studies. However, this will greatly limit the available sources for study. So, a simple model is proposed to overcome this problem: take theology off the topic and focus on morality and ethics.

An example:
In the book of Genesis of the Jewish and Christian bible, was recorded of two generations that will be discussed here, namely the generation of Noah and the generation of the Tower of Babel.

In the generation of Noah, it was described that "the earth was filled with violence" (Gen 6:11) and the whole generation except for the family of Noah was wiped out.

In the generation of Tower of Babel, it was described that "the whole earth was of one language and of one speech" (Gen 11:1) and "they said: 'Come, let us build us a city, and a tower, with its top in heaven, and let us make us a name; lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.'" (Gen 11:4). It was being implied that the people were rebelling against God and their language was confused into many languages.

From a human standpoint, which of the generations made a worse mistake? Some will be inclined to say that it is the generation of the Tower of Babel, as these people were rebelling against God which created them.

However, from a human standpoint, which of the generations got the worse punishment? Now, most people will start to be puzzled. Why was the generation of Noah wiped out while the generation of Tower of Babel were merely confounded?

From the two stories, it can be deduced that there is the possibility that treating humans with love and kindness is much more important than trying to “please” God with what we now know as religions. So, the ethical point made here is that it is more important to treat humans with respect than to “treat” God with “respect”, as what we deem as respecting God may not be the right way at all, as seen in some religious extremists that ended up with suicide bombing in the name of God.

Following this simple story and deduction, the focus of the audience can be put into how we can treat each other with love and respect without being in direct contradiction to one's beliefs, instead of trying to convince each other to their own beliefs.

Notice also that, in the story, nothing is said about who God is and the ways God execute His actions. The focus is on the fact that we are told two stories and what we can possibly learn from the stories. One can find similar examples in other sources.

A non-religious source with similar message to treat humans with respect is that of Emmanuel Kant's 3 Maxims. The first maxim is universality. If something is acceptable if done by the whole wide world, then likely it is not unethical. For example, is it acceptable to cut queues? Imagine if everyone cuts any queues they get into. This will end up with disaster, hence it is considered unethical.

Consider a different scenario, if someone approaches the queue from the tail end, asking each of the person in front for permission to swap location because of a valid reason. Now, if everyone with valid reasons ask for permission to swap position with the person in front, is this an acceptable scenario? Given that the right of the person in front is retained, i.e. the person can decide to swap or maintain as the person deem fit, then this is acceptable and hence this act of asking for permission to swap position is an acceptable act. No one else in the queue lose or gain anything, except for the two parties who decided to swap position. This maxim puts a strong focus on respecting each other, as we will automatically reject behaviours that are unacceptable for us to be adopted by ourselves.

The second maxim is that humans should be considered as the ends and not the means to some ends. This means that we are to treat people as people, not tools to achieve our own agenda. This maxim directly puts the emphasise on humans.

The third maxim is that of duty. Each and every person should take the responsibility on the actions taken by themselves. We have to be our own ethical police and guard ourselves against unethical acts as we have the ability to think and draw conclusions. If we were to act as we wish, then we will be of no difference from any animals you can find, acting on instinct and urges.

As demonstrated above, simple lessons can come in many forms in many context. It pays for us to study and gain affinity to these lessons and examples, so that they can inculcate in us a natural positive and ethical response to challenges we face in life.

Let's reiterate the major points:

• Ethical studies keep us reminded and influence us toward positive actions
• Equating ethics with religion or religion with ethics can be disastrous
• We can make use of ethical examples from both religious and non-religious sources
• We can make the world a better place

With this, it is hoped that we have provided enough information for you all to have enough information on the importance of ethical studies and be able to focus on ethical studies without being sucked into deep religious debates.

Important Areas to Work On

Having done some thinking, this is a sketch of the important areas necessary in the creation of abundance, as well as for the AVOFT system to be implemented.

We will need various leaders to work on various areas. If you have any ideas or passions in working in any of these areas, we welcome you to join us in this effort.