BIZ-BANANA.COM

This is undoubtedly true in the case of the church-going populace whose once regular attendance - according to statistics - has dwindled to a mere trickle.

Pundits a lot more qualified than I attribute this to many factors, not the least of which is the parallel, express-train advance of science since the end of the Second World War.

Belief systems and customs held sacred for millennia have been systematically and cynically disproved or dispelled by the scientists, leaving people confused and feeling helpless in a disposable society. Once, God had the monopoly on the creation of life. Now that we have successfully cloned sheep, among other things, how long can it be before a human copy is 'manufactured' in the laboratory?

It's not as far-fetched as it seems. Only in recent months, scientists have admitted that the technology is available right now. All that needs to be done is to win over public opinion and government support and the flood gates will open. And where does that leave religious belief? Who needs God anymore?

And yet, if there is one lesson we should have learned - as the progenitors of the ancient laws that became the Bible recognised - it is that people need something to believe in.

Then there are the what if... scenarios:

• What if there really is life on other planets?
• What if the myriad stories of alien visitations are based on fact?
• What if they landed publicly in London or New York or any other major city tomorrow, looking like something out of a John Carpenter movie? Whether they were benign or not, wouldn't that explode forever the myths of all the world's Heaven-and-Earth-based religions? Like, we're all created in God's image?

Two early discoveries ensured the survival and subsequent dominance of our species: firstly that things lying around in abundance, like sticks and rocks, could be used as weapons to fight off or even kill, larger, stronger creatures; secondly that there was safety in numbers.

Plainly put, if a number of you ganged together with lots of weapons, you were a match for anything. That was the key... and, magnified to the nth degree, still is today!

Of course, human nature being what it is, it was only a matter of time before splinter groups broke away from the main bunch and formed their own communities. Are you starting to detect a familiar pattern here?

Experience proved that rather than mill around with everybody doing their own thing, some sort of organisation was best. A dominant leader, for example, was strongly recommended; someone to speak on behalf of the group; give orders.

As the population grew, the leader found it necessary to recruit others to spread his policies, and with further expansion they in their turn recruited others who did the same.

These proven fundamentals have been distilled, refined and applied since the dawn of time until the present day, and have worked very well. Certainly they have been a great help in the development of our greatest singular talent: the systematic annihilation of our own kind!

If you've stuck with it this far, you're probably asking what the heck all this has to do with MLM. I'll come to the point... soon.

Another established fact is that no matter how aggressive you are, no matter how rich you are in resources - particularly in manpower - you can't fight forever. Sooner or later that stockpile diminishes to a point where to continue would almost certainly lead to the destruction of your gang, city-state, country, or whatever.

So, by capitulation or conquest, depending on which side was winning when the fighting stopped, a deal is made which leads to a period of peace. So what does the well-oiled fighting machine do then? Sit around waiting for the next war? Of course not. It demobilizes the majority of its conscripted, battle-weary veterans who then spend the rest of their lives trying to fit back into societies that no longer have any use for them.

You might think I'm talking about recent times; the two World Wars, for example, or Vietnam, but you'd be wrong. Throughout history, the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans all had a core nucleus of professional soldiery for peacetime, conscripting the populace - willing or not - in times of national need and discarding them after the crisis. At least those still alive, anyway!

In the aftermath of such conflicts and out from under the protective wing of an organisation which had fed, clothed them and otherwise dictated their every action for protracted periods, the demobbed ex-servicemen (and women) now had to look out for themselves.

Some would earn their daily bread by manual labour, toiling in the fields for some feudal landlord or other, enabling him to harvest his crop and get his produce to market, where it could be bartered for other goods. Some would pass on their accumulated knowledge by schooling other nation's armies in the warring arts - and still do.

Still others used their learned organisational skills to make their way in the world of commerce. By adapting their knowledge and developing new marketing techniques they found their niche as the entrepreneurs of their day. And please remember, I could be talking about twenty, a hundred, maybe even a thousand years ago!

'There's nothing new under the sun,' goes the old saying. And so it is with multi-level marketing. You didn't think it was a new concept, did you?

A long time ago there was this one guy who was so great at recruiting people, and convincing them that they should sponsor other people, who should sponsor still more people, who would sponsor even more people, that he built the biggest MLM organisation in history!

You might have heard of him. His name was Jesus, and even now, two thousand years later, in the middle of a recession, his downline still recruits new members daily somewhere in the world.

Contrary to what you may think, Jesus' success probably owed more to sound business principles than to the divine pedigree of his upline. Think about it; he had the basic ingredients that every successful MLMer needs:

• A truly great product (love), which he patently believed in. Didn't he make the ultimate sacrifice?

• A committed first level downline (eleven, after the last supper) who, after a quick refresher meeting, became some of the heaviest hitters ever!

• Unlimited expansion potential in a market which has never become saturated, even into a third millennium.

Statistics seem to support the contention of many that the majority of participants in MLM programmes earn little or no money from their activities. If this is true, there can only be a couple of possible benefits in belonging to such a scheme:

1. Quality products regularly purchased for self-consumption, at a discount.

   and / or

2. Actual membership of the group itself!

Numerous reports, even whole books have been produced about Amway, but in essence the facts are these: Worlwide they have nearly two million distributors and annual sales of over $5billion.

However, only a select few distributors - the heavy hitters - ever hit the heady heights in financial returns. This is evidenced by the fact that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, (FTC), requires Amway to declare on product labels that over 50% of their recruits make nothing and the rest earn, on average, only $65 a month.

Hardly a good reason to rush out and sign up, is it? Nevertheless, there seems to be no shortage of volunteers, particularly here in the U.K. where the company has held past rallies at venues like the Wembley Conference Centre.

Comparisons have even been made to the earlier crusades of Dr Billy Graham, where the emotions of the audience were controlled merely by the charismatic persona of the orator. Amway distributors experience similar feelings of euphoria, a re-charging of their enthusiasm and loyalty to the company. Now that's real power!

Which more or less brings us full circle and, finally, within touching distance of the author's message, which is this:

Take a long hard look at the MLM opportunity you are currently involved with and really examine your motives for being there. Are you in it for the money? If yes, does the reality of what you actually earn bear any comparison to your original vision? If it does, then you are one of a lucky minority. And if not, why are you still there? You don't have to answer, by now we all know why. It's because of the people in your group; the same people you have come to rely on - and they on you - for friendship, support, encouragement and, dare I say it, even love?

And isn't that acceptance, that sense of belonging, something we all strive for?