Paulo Freire’s argument that education systems keep people from thinking about how they are oppressed and the opportunities available to them to change their circumstances, has peculiar relevance to the majority of non-thinking affluent Western individuals who assume that they are ‘winners’. Their own consumption may lead to the diminishing of life opportunities, perhaps not for themselves, but for the future generations that they produce. An old fashioned term used by Freire called ‘conscientisation’ was really yet another way to try and empower people to think critically – even to think beyond the next 48 centimetre flat screen TV, or the size of their SUV. We all need to keep thinking!

If we continue to follow the western way, the ‘good life’, is achievable only momentarily because this process focuses on pleasing our desires, our senses. Our sense of the ‘good life’ is represented in everything around us; it’s the external stuff – cars, family, partner, career….shoes ?
When will enough be enough? The day we choose to look within ourselves and truly believe “I am content with life just because I am alive…”
Another interesting reference – Buddhist female monk, Ven. Bodhicitta, provides a really good understanding of how we can move away from following dominate values.