Purpose of the “NASA Million Dollar Family Challenge”: A positive method of stimulating peaceful, innovative vegan solutions and ideas to current unjust and violent system infrastructure.
Build bridges to our community by inviting people or policy makers to take the “NASA Million Dollar Family Challenge” when they ask thoughtful genuine questions or especially when they make thoughtless, arcane, barbaric, or otherwise oppressive automated responses, or have been making violently, insane policy decisions (usually some sort or cull for “population control”, to common carnist culture behaviors/challenges. The objective of this challenge is ideally to cause people to shift from automated, thoughtless cultural programming, to actually using some innovative thinking strategies, to connect with those who are motivated by self-interest for the best nonviolent solutions, and for those who actually care about the oppressed and often violated earthlings of the world we share. (Marketing survey statistics have shown that only 20% of people are idealists who are inclined towards altruism, the other 80% are motivated by WIFM- what’s in it for me? 5% of the population are sociopathic and will never care about anyone human or nonhuman.)
What does this mean? Simply ask people to imagine 3 things:
1) They work for NASA (Houston-we have a problem that our most brilliant minds must urgently solve)
2) There is a million dollar pay off for the best vegan idea (nonviolent, socially just that is symbiotic to all earthlings)
3) The animals and nature are their human family members (that they actually care about, not entitled to oppress, dominate and destroy)
If looking at the problem with these guidelines, wouldn’t that change the way people will think about the “solutions”? I can just imagine and can’t wait to see how creative people can become with their ideas. If you engage someone in a debate and ask them these questions, please come back to this note and share the situation specifics by telling me how it was received and the solutions they offered. Please post them in the comments below as they will be captured and implemented on the Vegan Transition Plan website that will be coming soon. OR you could just copy and paste this note in the discussion thread and tag me so I can collect the information and maybe even share in the discussion.
A classic situation example of what I’m talking about:
People believe that a reasonable response to deer “overpopulation” must be solved with hunting. We know that this is not the case. That is the arcane behavior of “If something gets in your way, kill it.” The fact they are someone, not something. That is certainly not the actions of the problem solver our species considers the shining innovations in a civilized modern world, rather it is the throwback of the dark, brute, thuggery of the violent past we seek to leave behind as we strive towards a more peaceful and symbiotic world existence.
This challenge is also a method for discussing grand scale thinking such as:
How to transition exploitative industries into non-exploitative industries
Rapid ideas implementation in general – such as pressuring organizations that are aligned with vegan values and agenda but not talking about a vegan shift (presently deploying- here is a sample template: https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150429395173290, example of template letter in action Letter to Bill McKibben 350.org: https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150426079393290
We know there are better answers to our problems than where we are today. Although one does not have to be a NASA engineer to participate (just imagine they are to get creative neurons fired up instead of spewing the same tired, oppressive, mantras engrained in our culture). I hear there are in fact a few NASA engineers out of work these days, if you know any of them, or any other brilliant minds out there, let’s see what they have to offer and send this note to them too. One does not have to be vegan to participate; all are welcome to offer genuine ideas. Who knows, maybe someone with a lot of money can make the million dollar pledge to implementing the ideas represented here and actually provide a reward for the best idea. (If you know anyone who would like to fund my work, I’m all ears). These ideas will also be shared with our politicians and the industries we seek to transition.
Please share this note with other vegans to get the word out if you think this is an idea worth sharing. It may be a good topic for discussion at your next Vegan or Animal Rights Meetup event, or other like-minded event.
I appreciate your support.
In solidarity for a peaceful and healthy world vegan shift, Love life, live vegan 🙂
Eriyah
Founder, Vegan Shift