The Rise and Fall of Conglomerate Society

The way things "work" today has been bothering me for years. It wasn't until yesterday when a piece of metal on the exhaust system of my car broke, that I came to an understanding of how big corporations, like Walmart for example, have emerged and succeeded.

What I realized can, in fact, sort most things out - towards having a simple and basic conceptual framework for why North American cultures in particular work the way they do. It was a simple, yet somehow markedly karmic event which triggered this personal insight.

I set out in my vehicle for a 40 km drive to another town for some personal, altogether unimportant reason. On the main road in my little sub-town there was a police barricade set up which blocked both lanes of traffic. Perhaps an accident, I thought. Yet all there was inside this blocked off portion of the street was a 18 wheel semi. So I just assumed it was some weird drug bust and went along with the rest of traffic into the off streets to go around the blockade.

Then this part on my exhaust manifold broke loose. I heard my engine revving like it was some kind of sports car. I pulled over, checked it out and assumed that the engine was about to go.

Hence, my meaningless plans to travel 40 K were done with. I brought the potentially destroyed vehicle to a local conglomerate, all purposes vehicle repair and home repair shop. It was a very slow drive which reminded me how much I take for granted the speeds at which cars can travel, and in correlation - the great distances as well.

Why the need for such great distances, such speeds, such vehicles, and such destinations.

Now inside the Giant Box were many friendly people. I listened to an older couple banter back and forth with the head Repair guy in a way that only the elderly can appreciate I suppose. To a younger person it's the dropping of all those precious sayings that will never survive my generation like "that's right down you're alley" and "we'll get to the bottom of this" or what have you.

The man at the store was considerate enough to listen to my problem, give it a basic diagnosis and send me to a brake and muffler repair shop down the road. So once again I got into "that f****ing clunker" which we're my exact thoughts as I limped embarrassingly down the highway, periodically flashing my emergency signal so the people behind me wouldn't go road raging on me.

In the muffler shop the mechanic hoisted my car onto the levy and pointed out the problem. A "flex joint" had gone. As I was back in his office waiting for the estimate, a younger man walked in with some parts that the previously mentioned mechanic had ordered.

The young man said as we all conversed politely:

"Did you hear about the accident?"

"The one on coast meridian drive?" I said.

"Yeah."

"What happened?"

"A pedestrian was run over by a semi-truck."

I got the chills and felt sick all over. And here is why that person died.

In North America people prefer to live in rather large houses that are removed from the city and happen to come in the form of Suburban developments. The size of these developments and the distance of their removal from anything else makes the need for a car to travel absolutely mandatory. Otherwise, these same people who live in their rather nice and secluded houses, albeit surrounded by other similar nice and secluded houses, would have to walk for over an hour just to get to a grocery store.

Now, since the people in the Burbs don't see the logic in going into the town just to get a pound of beef, or a head of lettuce, they like to do all of their shopping - for all of their needs, all at once. And all of the people in the suburbs like to do all of their shopping for all of their needs all at once on the same day. Hence to accommodate what is a virtual exodus from the Burbs into the "City" on the weekends, the giant warehouse like stores emerged and have been successful ever since.

The concentration of dwelling spaces creates a distance to commodities which is best traveled by in cars and is better utilized by large Box Stores. Hence the landscapes get divided into large plantations of houses, and large landscapes of Box Warehouses for good. The only way to comfortably connect the two is the automobile which, like the ignorance that exemplifies the existence of suburbs and shopping sprawls, only adds to the pollution and loss of culture in our modern society.

Now, as per the agreement between the wealthy and the lowly, housing developments are often sought after on the tops of hills. Now I live in an apartment in a little mini-town where there are two streets with a few local small business surrounding each of the four corners, and there's a Starbucks of course with a little grocery store that has a name which subfies the actual large manufacturer it serves. The North-South street heads north up a hill, where a major housing project is. Every day, so said the bearer of bad news, semi trucks come barreling down this tight street, through the intersection of my little sub-town and up the hill to drop off whatever is in their load at the housing development.

Yesterday, unfortunately a pedestrian was effectively dragged under the wheels of a semi going to fast. Even as the truck driver stepped on his air brakes the body was dragged as the momentous vehicle skidded to a halt. So, this is why a large portion of that street was blocked off by many police for what looked like only a semi truck (though underneath the truck was a dead person).

So, as it is finally clear to me, and this comes as no revelation to others I'm sure, the large housing developments lead to the emergence of big one-stop-shop Walmart type places to far to travel by foot. Hence the problem of ongoing air pollution by cars and a total loss of small business success is simply fueled by the richer member's of society wanting to live in big secluded houses surrounded by the same kind of big secluded houses.

Is there a simple solution to the problem of too many cars and not enough jobs? I think it might be to strike at the very domicile desires of the rich. This would cripple the foundations of Walmart Conglomerates and, if the housing strategies that are designed to replace the Burbs succeed in forming new small businesses in self contained villages, there might no longer be such an overwhelming amount of cars on the road.

Speaking of cars on the road; mine is scheduled for a repair in about half an hour.

So long.

Discards.

-- Updated January 14th, 2012, 2:22 pm to add the following --

Ah yes. The other part, which was somehow left out, was the question about why that person died.

That person died because he or she made the mistake of walking in an environment where driving is the primary mode of transport. That person was killed by his or her own practicality. That person was randomly selected by "human" nature to die.

That person might still be alive today if he or she had been in a car, rather than a pair of shoes, which incidentally predate the existence of cars and are required by law for the operation of motor vehicles.

The other quintessential element missing from this story is food. Where is the food grown!?

Large portions of land exist for the sake of housing development. Large portions of land exist for the sake of Warehouse, Consumer Item Pricing and Consumption, and large portions of land exist for the exodus of vehicles out of the Suburbs into the Consumer Zones for Pricing and Consumption.

Where are the large portions of land existing and set out for the sake of what actually allows us to live (i.e. corn, &c.)?

Coincidentally (or not), most of us live within a closer proximity to the place where we purchase what we eat, than the place where what we eat is physically grown. This is yet another consequence of the wealthy people's desire to live in nice, large, housing developments excluded from the filth, crime, and lowliness of commoners.

Who is the ruling class? We should be asking our selves this question so that we can identify the ruling class and apply the principle of "over-throwing-the-ruling-class". Over throwing the ruling class is anceptual to the destruction of everything they do and/or stand for.

Who then is the ruling class? It is harder to identify these days. But, for the sake of argument, the simple assumption is that it is the people living in the suburbs. The fancy suburbs on the top of the hills, where the houses go for millions.

How do we overthrow the ruling class? The answer to this lies in what it is that allows them to rule. However the rule of the ruling class is exactly what has just been mentioned; nice, big, houses; fancy automobiles; conglomerate consumer item bin discount privies and privations.

It is not possible to overthrow the ruling class by overturning the use of automobiles or racketeering and black-listing of Walmart Box houses. And certainly no ruling class is going to allow the lower classes to simply throw them out of their homes.

Nor is it possible to set up a different rule within the pre-existing ruling class. It won't be allowed.

Why should we want to overthrow the ruling class? Because their rule is a ghastly one. The minority of people who own the largest houses on the most desirable plots of land dictate the rule and way in which necessary consumer commodities are bought and sold. Everything must be adjusted to simply accommodate one thing: the big house.

Is it fair to say that the ends justify the means? And does it ever follow that the ends point towards the means? If it does, then we can consider the ends of an over-thrown ruling class to work backwards so as to find the means towards the end.

In an overthrown ruling class like today's, five to seven things will have occurred sequentially:

1. The need for oil will have disappeared.
2. The richest people will have become the weakest.
3. The end of the conglomerate is the beginning of a self sufficient consumer Locale.
4. The places where our things are manufactured and where our foods are grown come nearer and nearer to the dwelling places of the new rulers.
5. The end of over consumption sees the regrowth of forests and the rehabilitation of natural animal habitats.
6. A new era dawns in which local labor and farm agriculture suffice for the existence of all man-kind.
7. The war between the oligarchy leaves hundreds of thousands dead.

In the words of my good friend Paul Atreides:

"We must totally destroy all spice production on Arrakis.
The Guild and the entire universe depends on spice.
He who can destroy a thing controls a thing.
I will take 100 of your warriors and train them.
This 100 will train the thousands that remain.
When the spice flow stops, all eyes will turn to Arrakis."

-- Updated January 14th, 2012, 2:35 pm to add the following --

America has long been in the Persian Peninsula to take control over the production of oil, without ever wielding the moral fiber to destroy it.

They went to the right place, but executed the wrong action. In the words of my good friends Elrond and Gimli:

Elrond: You have only one choice. The Ring must be destroyed.
Gimli: Then what are we waiting for?

Ash Nazg Durbatuluk, Ash Nazg Gimbatul, Ash Nazg Thrakatuluk, Agh Burzum-ishi Krimpatul

I love your story telling but the ending was a bit of let down. I wanted the dead guy to be the director of some great super market chain. Evolution of man from corner shop smelling of paraffin, whats paraffin in yank, to the devils cathedrals. We yearn for the past yet we pay the giant who feeds our weakness. Fortunately my community has not sunk to such depths ,yet, due to the fact we are mostly comparatively poor.

I love your story telling but the ending was a bit of let down. I wanted the dead guy to be the director of some great super market chain. Evolution of man from corner shop smelling of paraffin, whats paraffin in yank, to the devils cathedrals. We yearn for the past yet we pay the giant who feeds our weakness. Fortunately my community has not sunk to such depths ,yet, due to the fact we are mostly comparatively poor.

Oh. We're poor as ****. We can't afford anything beyond basic cable.

Which isn't all that poor. But if we had a little more money I could have watched the local news and found out that the guy really was a rich supermarket mogul.

But true, every good story has some unique element of irony to it. And that would have been perfect.

This was a tragedy, though, in a true sense of the word.

A pedestrian minding his own business gets mauled down and smeared across the face of a road by a massive 18 wheeler loading its way too fast towards the hill where the fancy housing developments are going up.

We're poor as **** down on the flats, aye? It's the y'ole up on the hill who have all the money.

I expect they we're watching the news last night, smoking their fancy cigars on their tiger skin rugs; pit-putting "What a shame. What a shame. This is going to set back the project for months."

- or (something funnier)... that wasn't all that witty.

"What a shame. What a shame." would have sufficed. I'll will leave it like that.

ha! Where the hell is my phone call? I want my freaking car fixed already?

-- Updated January 14th, 2012, 3:40 pm to add the following --

duh - question mark...

Since when are question marks apostrophes!?

Ha! That was witty.

Whats cable? So death has occurred and an exhaust has expired, whats new in the great metropolis? I observe the flowers laid by the road and ponder on their gentle decay as memories of that day I recall. It is a story to you and to me played out a thousand times a day. Whats cable by the way?

Hello Xris.

Your cable question if you were not joking around is exactly that, a cable coming into the house which carries TV channels, internet services and is also used for telephone services.
Is this not something used in your area?


The root of the problem the OP is talking about, is the right in the US constitution which places the rights of the individual above all, so it creates an imbalance between the rights of the one compared to the many.
If the people of a community choose to have a different model for their town or city, they should put pressure on their elected officials.
The car problem is a red herring that only shows the car was not well maintained.
People also get killed when they do not respect mass transit systems.
Retailers build were people want their services, nothing more.

Regards, John.

Hello Xris.

Your cable question if you were not joking around is exactly that, a cable coming into the house which carries TV channels, internet services and is also used for telephone services.
Is this not something used in your area?


The root of the problem the OP is talking about, is the right in the US constitution which places the rights of the individual above all, so it creates an imbalance between the rights of the one compared to the many.
If the people of a community choose to have a different model for their town or city, they should put pressure on their elected officials.
The car problem is a red herring that only shows the car was not well maintained.
People also get killed when they do not respect mass transit systems.
Retailers build were people want their services, nothing more.

Regards, John.

Sorry John , I have heard of cable but it is not used anywhere in Cornwall. We are not that rich.

Retailers build where we fools are stupid enough to go. The individual destroys his own image of what society should be. This idea that we are led is foolish and naive. We still have high streets with shops to service our needs but I hardly ever go there.

The root of the problem the OP is talking about, is the right in the US constitution which places the rights of the individual above all, so it creates an imbalance between the rights of the one compared to the many.
If the people of a community choose to have a different model for their town or city, they should put pressure on their elected officials.

The root of the problem, as I see it, is in our modern day approach to habitation. It's obvious that the cause for Walmart begins in the suburbs.

The car problem is a red herring that only shows the car was not well maintained.

Actually, regardless of how well I maintain my car, this particular part of the car's exhaust system is under a great deal of constant stress from the engine itself. After ten years, this part of the car's exhaust system is bound to and expected to fall apart. It is a part which allows for flexibility in the exhaust pipes. It breaks under stress. It is a part that needs replacement, much like saying spark plugs would never have to be replaced if only they were taken care of.

So, the fact that this part went and the fact that it went near the site of the accident were mere coincidences.

People also get killed when they do not respect mass transit systems.

In this case the driver of the Semi was also breaking speed limits, which is incredibly more stupid for the driver of a two tonne truck compared to the driver of a regular sized vehicle. No doubt, the person died because he was negligent to the nature of his surroundings, however if you consider the nature of the Semi trucks existence you will easily see that this person died as an indirect consequence of housing development in the suburbs. Which leads me to the final point.

Retailers build were people want their services, nothing more.

Retail Outlets are Big Business. If the structure of Home Living differed from what it is today, as your point says quite correctly, retailers would build where people would want their services. However my problem with the way the world works is the need for automobiles to transit us for the least needed of things.

I would be happier personally, and I know the world and the environment and the people in it would all benefit, if commercial retail and domicile living were not so separate. If you could walk to your local grocery store rather than drive, and this was true for every little community across the wide planes of the United States, imagine how many tonnes of pollution per year would be saved from being spread into our atmospheres.

Retailers, go ahead and build where their services are needed. Home owners, stop pretending like you're entitled to your own castle nestled up high on a hill.

Retail today is quite interested in making money...and not just enough money to survive. They enjoy co-existing on the pretentious life styles of the rich.

Small retailers cannot survive in a world where the people who consume goods and services are all centralized in one area. The only type of retailers who do well under such circumstances are Walmart and Giagantico Mart.

There is a blithe of wealth in the pockets of the wrong people. The problem of job loss, the utter decay of people's morale in the face of an uncompromising oligarchy ends when the blithe of wealth in the pockets of the most entrepreneurial is distributed at the same time that the concentrations of homes, farms, and markets are equally distributed through and through one and another.

This solves most of the problems.

Hello Discards.

Your ideas have not been thought through in my opinion.
For what you are talking about we would eliminate all small towns and start living in high rise structures, with stores on the bottom floors, no cars allowed and massive public transportation.
This way food production could be close by.
But of course that does not solve all problems because there is a great part of N-America that does not produce fruit or vegetables for many months of the year. In addition not all manufacturing will be close by.
We purchase at the big stores because they give us a bigger bang for our buck, so don't blame them for being successful.
You may like to do a search for "model city UAE" and see what is being done there.


Hello Xris.
Our cable, or in my case satellite is simply because of our distances. I am halfway between the two cities which have TV stations. these two cities are just a little less distance apart then the two most distant points in the UK.
All of Great Britain land mass is just 2.5 times the area of Lake Superior.
Tomorrow I am going to travel about 650 km to take a cat to a vet and back, because we have had poor results with our local ones.
So here you will not see TV arials on top of houses.

Regards, John.

John I have to travel 40 miles to pick my son up from the airport tomorrow, damned inconvenient. The local shop is a mile away much to far to walk. You do have that wondeful feeling of emptiness, something we hardly ever experience.

Hi Xris.

Yes I could walk about a mile and be in thick forest and if I walked straight north I might have to cross a few dirt roads but most likely not see a car, house or human.
But when troubles occur it can be dangerous, so we can not relax and ever take this huge country for granted.
For about 75 miles there will be no cell phone connection.
But seeing that I was born in Holland, yes I like the wildness and being so close to raw nature where I live.

Regards, John.

Hello Discards.

Your ideas have not been thought through in my opinion.

In deed, my ideas have been brought into an understandable media which outlines the details of the completely attainable ideal that 80 people could survive off of a plot of land no bigger than a Walmart, through each of the four seasons.

You have me nailed to the wall in one respect. I can't account for the preexisting number of all ready living human beings on the earth, for there are just not enough rivers to accommodate everyone according to the blueprints I have.

In other words, if there are 78 men and women reading this who would like to start their own plantation, let's say, in Manitoba, -with me of course, and my better-half, I have a great idea that could work for all of us.

For what you are talking about we would eliminate all small towns and start living in high rise structures, with stores on the bottom floors, no cars allowed and massive public transportation.

Why you assume that my poorly thought out plans involve the destruction of small towns and the creation of large high rises, I don't know. My plans are very well thought out and also very much ahead of their time in the sense that they might only have worked in a previous century (...the 19th century. I don't believe these times deserve any title pertaining to the notion of age. The history of the world ended with the closing of the 20th century. What remains is a forged glossary of useless terms which once pointed towards a world with essence).

The population crises is another issue. The high rise solution comes to mind immediately for you and indicates that you are apparently in no way disturbed by the trends of home owners, property owners, the wealthy, the powerful, the law makers and the corrupt business conglomerates who have managed to turn all of generation-Y into a group of unwitting slaves.

As I mentioned, the first thing to go in the overthrow of this present political oligarchy is the need for oil. The total dissolution of oil use will dictate a certain outcome towards how people stay warm at night, or in other terms - what they call home, if it can be called that.

If civilians do this; if they function without petroleum; if they can extend that result across all lines of people supporting the cause - perhaps the oil refineries will close and as I mentioned the richest will become the weakest.

The inevitable thing to happen first, is the deployment of soldiers by the rich against their own people. If the military can see into its own governments corrupt nature, they too will see how obviously the comforts and luxuries of the rich fuel decadence, over-consumption, pollution, the destruction of wild-life habitat, and the inconceivably lawless manipulation of food crops, to name only a few injustices. Perhaps the military will help bring about their right to forcefully dismantle its own corrupt government.

This way food production could be close by.
But of course that does not solve all problems because there is a great part of N-America that does not produce fruit or vegetables for many months of the year. In addition not all manufacturing will be close by.

Are we already so far removed from the nature of agriculture that even a presumably well educated person as your self forgets that in the past we stock piled the silo at the end of summer in order to survive the coming winter? It wasn't so long ago that people started assuming having vegetables and exotic fruits in the Fall and Winter was a natural and easy solution to the impudent disregard of cold weather for our comfortable eating habits. How soon does everyone forget that at one time it wasn't granted for anyone to survive a winter? If you and your family survived the winter it used to mean you worked hard for the harvest.

But yet again, another modern day miracle is born out of the petroleum industry and we should thank God for creating all of those long since petrified dinosaurs for the avocados which sit, rrrrotting on our dining tables. Enough of this banter. When the oil stops, the crops able to grow in the climate of each region becomes the sole source of survival. And the regular market place of the past replaces the modern sky-scraper of today -so full, with its useless desk-top computers and cubicles acting like children begging for bread at the feet of their father and mother; the hammer and the sickle!!! Wrrrrrongfully so!!! I might add!!!

We purchase at the big stores because they give us a bigger bang for our buck, so don't blame them for being successful.
You may like to do a search for "model city UAE" and see what is being done there.

You have put forth two reasons for why we shop at big stores and I don't blame the stores for being successful; I blame people with large pay checks, large front lawns, and large SUV's who shop at these stores. Those people are the cause for the success of these big stores. Do they deserve censure? Oh yes. Oh very yes. Oh quite yes.

Hello Discards.

If you wish to go back to the 18th or 19th century You have my blessing.
But if you are trying to convince me of its benefits, you are fighting a losing cause, and I would suggest you study that period much more before you decide.
Average lifespans for women about 40 years and for men 50. Infant mortality close to 50%, years of barely making it through the winter, and years of dying from lack of food, while through a large part of the year not having the right kind of nutrients for a healthy life.
Poor people today have a far better life than the middle class of the past.

Walmart is the first big box store, aimed at the low income group, and has been made the largest retailer in the world by that group, which seems to speak against you placing the blame on the higher income group.
Take a look in any of the box store parking lots and count the new Mercedes, Cadilacs, Jaguars and BMW cars there. You might find the odd one but not many.
So please drop this blaming game, it does not show you in a good light.

There is no sense in blame-gaming oil either, the other energy sources available a century ago were no better to the environment, and we have all been willing to go along with its low cost.
Even today without oil we would not be able to change to better energy suplies.

Regards, John.

I read recently that one of New York's most serious problem, in it's history, was the amount of horse crap. It was an almost impossible task clearing it from the streets.

As a teenager I believed we might all end up in gigantic tower block towns surrounded by pristine countryside. Centralisation has always been an attractive concept for humanity.We do need to plan more proactively rather than wandering into the future.

Wooden Shoe:

It is not my intention to play a game of blame. I assume by 'blame-game" what you mean is the fun-filled, finger pointing, rant of misguided frustration. You have me clued on one point though. I am frustrated. This world has lifted me into a state of existential nausea, if you will.

There are men and women in the world who own, trade stock, and profit off the investments they have on the outcome of certain businesses. You can pretend to believe that the motives of these people - in their lives...belongs to a category of benevolence if you like. The truth remains that money directs the actions and supportive efforts of the rich and well-off.

You can also pretend that the weakest of society deliberately make such corporations as Walmart what they are because of an inner need to make the most out of their dollar. I would offer you the suggestion that the reality of Walmart - if you look in depth at its history and its making in the world, is and always has been one of opportunistic wealth accumulation.

- one can refer to studies done by Universities or other researchers who conclude that Walmart and similar "box-stores" effectively crush the existence of small businesses in any and all regions they decide to set up base. Or, if you've lived in your own small town, gone to school with others who've witnessed the same thing, you may have noticed the same thing.

The ironic thing about the walmart-shopping-mall-parking-lots is that people eventually spend more time walking from their parked cars to the store entrance and through its giant aisles than they would have otherwise, going to a simple "mom and pop" grocery store if not for the economic destruction of those same small businesses by the very appearance of walmart in the first place!

Indicting the people who shop at walmart does not factually line up with reality of why and how those box-stores came to be. Neither do the best interests of people in small towns factually line up with the effect that walmarts have on small businesses in small towns. The walmart phenomenon is a business strategy that makes certain already-well-to-do people even better-off.

Take the fact, for example, that walmart is an exclusively north American phenomenon. What differentiates the north American social structure from the European one? Decentralization.

Homes, jobs, livelihoods, and necessities were categorized geographically by north America starting - for the sake of description, after the end of the second world war. Since then the American approach to existence has seen that country become a consumer of 20% of the world's good's with only 5% of the world's population. It was an experiment which only went to prove that decentralization doesn't work. Once a hypothesis has been shown to be false, it should be abandoned. In the case of America it remains, though it should not.

When the automotive industry was dying, it received revitalization. 70 years of automobile use efficiently polluting the geography and lives of people was about to fall in one economic full-swoop on the inherited heads of the wealthy over-lords who pressed and insisted on its very existence. The death of the automotive industry would have been a precursor to some kind of anarchical uprising; yet the government bailed them out, and complacency was left to rule again.

If you might recall, after GM's bail-out the Owner appeared on television to brag about the rebound of the company on the business market. After the recession scare was over, the advertisements on TV which showed the price of cars to be around 9,000 dollars suddenly, but not too suddenly, began to find a replacement with the regular kind of ads.

My point is that, around year 2008 the automotive industry was so desperate to survive, they offered to sell you their product at a cost of half of what it normally went for. During that time one had to think, "If this is the price they put on their cars now, how much of a markup was it before?"

Then, a short two-years later the whole crises has all but been forgotten, and swept under the proverbial rug. The mainstream delusion about cars is exactly where the stock holders, owners, and investors in oil and transport want it to be - solidified in the mind's of the majority as a real need that demands their dollars.

In reality that unsustainable market did not have a chance of surviving. It was dying precisely because it was not a reasonably acceptable thing in the lives of most people. Cars do not belong in the world. They're like cigarettes. They're bad for our health. Everyone is addicted to them. Everyone's craves them and they're destroying us from the outside-in.

Hello Discards.

Let me clear up something. I am not in love with anything except a few people!
I also have no illusions about the motives of business,which are self serving.
What you are exhibiting are very common frustrations, but it is very easy to find writings from i,2 and three hundred years ago which would mirror yours with minor differences.
I have no idea of your circumstance, but assume that it is not rosy. whether that is due to things not done or things totally beyond your control, I do not know, but I also sense self pity.
That the world is a far from perfect place I would never argue, but we can only travel one way in life, and that is ahead.
The road can be rough at times, but there is no return.
No matter what you or I may wish, we can not turn back time, once the genie is out of the bottle, well you know the rest.
I was born in the Netherlands three years before the second world war, so if you think life is tough, You ain't seen nothing yet.
I wish you could spend about three months in a third world country, you might end up with a better perspective.
I remember an old saying "Improve the world, start with yourself".

Regards, John.