Solari Action Network

[CEngelbart]

Understanding the "Popsicle Index"

To help people understand how the global financial system affects their neighborhood, I came up with a very simple quality of life index based on one question:

“What percentage of the people in your place believes that a child can go to the nearest place to buy a popsicle or other treat, and return home alone safely?”

Your answer gives you the Popsicle Index or Solari Index of your place. The Popsicle Index is the % of people who believe a child can leave their home, go to the nearest place to buy a popsicle or snack, and come home alone safely. For example, if you feel that 50% of your neighbors believe a child in your neighborhood would be safe, then your Popsice Index is 50%. The Solari Index is based on gut level feelings of the people who have intimate knowledge of a place, rather than facts and figures.

The real purpose of the Popsicle Index is to start a conversation in every neighborhood and village on earth about what it means to feel safe and secure where you live and work and the people and things that contribute or drain that feeling.

Maybe passersby can be trusted to leave the child alone, but they drive like maniacs through your neighborhood. Maybe the child would be safe, but the parents are concerned about about their child being adversely affected by all the junk food marketed to young kids, or by the older kids hanging around the store. Maybe the family is too poor for the child to have the freedom to go buy a treat. Maybe the child will be perfectly safe going to the market alone, but die of a preventable disease for lack of basic healthcare. Or maybe there is no market nearby, or any jobs either, so everyone commutes to someone else’s neighborhood to work and shop and bank.

This leads to discussion about the job market, job security, unemployment, and how quickly all the money is leaving your neighborhood, the drain of credit card debt as well as what the national debt and state budget cuts are costing, along with dwindling healthcare benefits and retirement security, the fate of local family farms and businesses, natural resources and the local water supply, and generally how hard everyone is working just to make ends meet while expenses are rising faster than income.

As the conversation unfolds, it is clear that the drain we are experiencing is both spiritual and financial -- how we experience a negative return on investment economy that is out of alignment with the well-being of our families, communities, and planet; an economy that is organized around the Dow Jones going up from our Popsicle Index going down.

As the conversation unfolds, friends and neighbors begin to understand what is important to each other and to sense opportunities to help each other feel safer.

Now I ask:

“If the Popsicle Index in your place is less than 100%, what will it take to raise it to 100%? And who is responsible to make that happen?”

This leads to a discussion of the Solari Opportunity, which is an invitation to create wealth from our Popsicle Index going up to 100%.

Catherine Austin Fitts

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For more on the Solari Index see the article:
"A Conversation About The Popsicle Index"
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0301/S00117.htm

[Magmak1]

I was just reviewing this (the Popsicle index and its message is what got me here) in light of today's news about air travel warnings in the UK. I think it's a delightful metaphor and, as you've noted, really extends into other ways of being. I was wondering how it extended into our current world of fear/propaganda, the drumbeat in the news that it was an 'insurgency' -- the "Taliban Democrats", and the traitorous terrorist appeasers -- who helped defeat Joe Lieberman, and ya da yada yada ad nauseum.

My purpose here is not to drag Ms. Fitts, the Popsicle index, or the Solari world into the cesspool of politics and foreign/military debate; I think of the Popsicle index as an expression of thinking globally but acting locally.

If the Popsicle Index is the way to jump start a discussion about feeling safe and secure, then one of the sub-messages that might arise is the need to turn off the propaganda machine (the TV, for openers), to invest in and build a whole new way of disseminating news and information (as it is clear that the current MSM system is part of the "tapeworm"), and to invest in and build a whole new way of educating for and creating a personal and inter-personal approach to psychological and spiritual awareness and well-being. ( I don't proselytize for anything or any belief, and what I get so far out of my brief time at Solari is that no one here does either.) This neither takes priority over nor subsumes the essential Solari theme and approach, but becomes a part of it.

Last night, I watched this: http://www.peterussell.com/What/index.html

It seems that we create our world with our minds.

So the first thing we have to do to change the world is to change our mind.
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If we are not interested in having a meaningful conversation in order to produce a better future, then we don't deserve it.

The intersection of our own deep gladness and the world's deep hunger is our new frontier.

[CEngelbart]

Great observations.

Re: television and imagining your world see Kickstarting Coming Clean
and our most recent audio seminar Introducing Jon Rappoport

Christina
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Christina Engelbart
Solari Team Member