Rethink: Part II

The Red Queen has challenged me to expound on my previous post...

Perhaps, tools was a poor word choice (though certainly the media we use here is a tool thingy). Resources may be a better word.

One resource is history. Another is common sense.

On so many issues we seem to be trying to solve today's problem's with yesterday's advice. The "American Dream" is still a goal for so many, when we live in a society of single moms/dads, unmarried, but happy couples, divorced extended families and people who either chose to be single or end up that way. In this light it seems counter-productive to extend toward the aforementioned 'Dream', which based on the available evidence is unattainable to a major degree. But since our culture uses this foundation as a base we end up trying to build round houses off of square blueprints--it can be done, but it makes the job much harder than it has to be.

The same can said of our economy. So many tie the argument for continuing to exploit our resources to death is that it will hurt our economy. Are we too shortsighted to see that once these resources are gone the economy will suffer more? The same is said on the immigration issue. We want cheap food! And the cheap food comes at the expense of illegal immigrants who strain other parts of the culture. We see the cheap food, but don't realize we pay for it somewhere else.

Keeping on this topic, since it helps me expand on my immigrant discussion, we need to trace the source of the illegals back to the source. People risk thier lives to come to our country because we have helped expolit their country to point where the incoming risk their lives. Would it not be better for all if we made the effort to improve their lot? This connection ties into the next logical topic: globalization. Corporations move jobs to places with cheap labor since labor movements (unions etc.,) have less power than companies. Thus, by ignoring their problems, we have created our own problem of not having enough well paying jobs here.

Now, trace the source of these expolitations. Western culture based on being at the right place at the right time were able and continue to use other areas to their (our) advantage. Leaders puposely used all the resources of other lands and more or less forced people in them to adhere to western market systems (see the decimation of Bengal cloth industry by the British). We are left with and continue the legacy. But the advantages we enjoy for a time must be paid for some time in the future. The circumstance is the same is for people as it is for the environment. Spend now, worry later.

This leads to nano-technolgy (and bio-engineering for that matter). Since western culture is only thinking about one side of the equation (progress, progress, progress) it ignores a basic tenet of life: what goes in, must come out. A recent article warns that nano-technology will produce waste with a half-life of hundreds of years. No one knows what the effect of nano-pollution will be, how it will affect organisms or how to get rid of it. Yet, the progress mantra pushes more and more investment in this direction.

So it comes down to one simple fact. We have become addicted to progress and by doing so we find ourselves on a treadmill to nowhere. The sooner we realize how we got here and where we are headed the sooner we can change our ways.

The history of progress leads back into history and information about the last Neptune-Pluto wave (1398-1892) in relation to this one (1893-2384). Are you ready for that story?...