DAnneMarc, so from your response, the solution is to grow hemp. Over time the industrialized world will revert to agricultural, the tipping point will never be reached and all the ills of the world will disappear. Really?

As far as your statement about exploring the issue enough. I'm not sure what issue you are referring to - problem solving? symptom solving in general? or the specific symptom of melting permafrost? As I said earlier, I have no interest in symptom solving. If you are referring to problem solving we have only scratched the surface, at best.

It appears to me that as far as problem solving goes, you and I have not connected at all so far.

DAnneMarc: Thanks for the German lessons...I always wondered what Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft meant...now I know! G1 and G2...cool!

Kend: I have nothing against people who actually do work hard and take risks and even get rich from their labors. They really do deserve what they have earned. But I believe that even you would agree that there are some people who have become very wealthy by screwing other people...and I'm not talking about bordellos here. Many of those people may have inherited much of what they now have and they, and other opportunists, have just schemed and rigged the system to cheat others out of their money. They are not all as magnanimous as you are because they have consistently worked to squeeze workers out of benefits and wages. I'm glad that you are setting the example for being a good employer. But these other selfish parasites have frequently committed illegal acts just to get a slap-on-the-wrist fine that they consider the cost-of-doing-business and end up making the consumers pay those fines by increasing prices. The top execs make out like bandits...because they are bandits.

DAnne there is a difference between greed and motivation. Yet you look at them the same. Culture is created by desire. Desire do to the best for your family. Whatever you believe that is.

Because I worked endless hours and took massive risks to accumulate the lifestyle I have you call me selfish, greedy, foolish, ignorant, and short sided.

Are you suggesting I should have just took a government just and been content with that. That if I did that I would be a better person.

DAnne I agree, I think your right. Just think of all the nights I could of slept all night because I didn't have to worry how I could bring in enough business to keep those great Employiees I have in a job when the economy went to crap. All of Saturdays I was in the shop racking my brain to come up with new ways to compete. What was I thinking. Why was I so greedy. I could of worked for the post office and been done work a 1:00 every day with my 6 weeks holidays and my 12 sick days a Year. The best benifits in the world. Thanks for the advice I think I am going to go into work Tuesday (because Monday is Canadian thanksgiving" and shut the company down and go golfing in Scottsdale all winter. I will feel so much better knowing i am not a "selfish, greedy, foolish, ignorant, short sided person" Thanks buddy I can feel the wait lifting right off my shoulders Already. What the hell was I thinking.

Quote Aliceinwonderland:Ohmygosh Marc, it sounds like Louise has had a relapse! No wonder they've let the blog slide. That's got to be the reason, because it seems so unusual. Anyway I'm bummed. I'll hold a secular prayer in my heart for those two. -AIW

Aliceinwonderland ~ Please don't be bummed, at least yet. I've just learned that Louise had breast cancer last year. It is news to me. I vaguely remember her being treated for something; and, when I Googled it, her breast cancer popped up. I have no idea how she is doing today. I was merely speculating as to the answer to our questions as to why Thom has only posted two topics in the last two weeks; and why Louise hasn't posted any topics for some while. I don't know her condition and I certainly hope she is at least stable if not fully recovered.

Remember, that is mere speculation. There are other sound reasons for the lingering topics--first and foremost, that they are probably the most important topics Thom has posted all year and he want us to think long and hard about them. If so, it's working.

Kend said something interesting

Quote Kend:What I don't understand is why do we care if immigrants don't keep their culture, isn't that why they moved here in the first place.

Kend goes on to answer part of his own question

Quote Kend:What makes our countries great is we have a choice. If you work hard you can have what ever you want. You don't see middle class Europeans with boats, RV's, summer and winter homes etc like we do. Why would we want to bring that culture here?

Kend ~ Well then you just answered your own question. By and large immigrants here are motivated by pure greed. Greed blinds people and makes them stupid. That is why they readily sacrifice the most important thing they have--their culture. Culture is priceless and must be preserved at all other costs. This is why you see people who chose to remain in the home country perfectly happy and content to live more frugal lifestyles. They have everything they need. In fact, they are a little bit smarter then their brethren who fled. Immigrants who foolishly abandoned their culture will never be happy. They will experience the void of culture and that central unifying identity culture provides and unsuccessfully try to fill that gap with all manner of material junk for the rest of their lives--never knowing true inner peace. Never being really happy. The truth hurts doesn't it?

In a way Kend you put your finger on one of the key issues that is wrong with this country--by and large we are a nation of the offspring of selfish, greedy, foolish, ignorant, and short sided immigrants.

DAnne, I find it interesting how people are always trying to change people. It happens on this blog all the time. I am just as guilty. Your conversation with Bob are great. What I don't understand is why do we care if immigrants don't keep their culture, isn't that why they moved here in the first place. I hear all the time how we should be more like Europeans. Most of my suppliers are in Italy, and Germany and all they talk about is how great it is here. yes they get tons of time off but they live in their parents home until they are 40. Then if they have a great job they finally save enough for a down payment on a 800 sq/ft flat. No back yard, no garage, maybe one car. What makes our countries great is we have a choice. If you work hard you can have what ever you want. You don't see middle class Europeans with boats, RV's, summer and winter homes etc like we do. Why would we want to bring that culture here?

N Z Sarah, what I am about to say is not intended to disparage women as I do think that women and men are equal in general. I'm not sure what you are agreeing with when you say that you agree with me. But when it comes to problem solving, as I have been talking about it here, women are no better than men, as a group, at addressing it. Women lack critical thinking skills, just as much as men do. It's not just men who are doing symptom solving on our critical issues, environmental and otherwise. Women by the millions, as well, are heavily engaged in these 'not significantly going anywhere' activities. I don't think that gender makes anyone more or less capable of exploring and investigating the problems that we are not facing, that we are not working on resolving. There is nothing exclusive in my invitation that we explore, inquire and investigate, right here and right now.

dialindicator, the intellectual understanding of greed is one thing. If it does not move the person to end the action of greed in themselves, then intellectual understanding is no understanding at all. Exploring and investigating what is actually happening, internally and externally, before the action of greed occurs will give you the understanding, which is beyond the merely intellectual, to see greed and end it. Similarly, you will see how envy occurs, how jealousy occurs, anger, sadness and so on, the whole of self generated feelings and emotions. And when these come to an end in oneself, what happens then?

debt ceiling:

a ceiling that continues to rise in proportion to the public debt required to produce greater private profits from more costly wars waged

debt ceiling increase:

something regularly required for the the most militarized nation to become even more militarized

raising the people's debt to pay for the corporate-state's aggressor wars, to continue its aggression against people here at home, while it wages its endless war of terror over there

non-negotiable:

what corporatists and their corporate media say raising the people's debt ceiling is... without ever explaining why what they claim is "non-negotiable" requires a legislative vote before government does it to the people

what corporate persons call their offers that people can't refuse
______________________________
The APT: American Political Terms
www.chenangogreens.org

What I miss the very most about the S.F. Bay Area is the demographic & cultural diversity. Even Santa Cruz (where we lived our last ten years in California) wasn't as diverse as the Bay Area. The small rural town in Oregon we now call home is the most lilly-white, culturally homogenous, conservative area either of us has ever lived in. Took a good while to find our social niche here. Now that we have, I'm content enough to stay. It's been over 20 years already. But I'll always miss that cultural & ethnic diversity unique to the S.F. Bay Area.

I think one of the keys to humans learning how to co-exist happily as well as peacefully is embracing diversity. This isn't to say I'm okay with every aspect of every culture; for example, Chinese culture. While I am awed by the brilliance and innovation Chinese culture has produced through the millenia, I'm just as repulsed by that culture's treatment of my gender: foot binding, infanticide ad nauseam. But that goes back to the issue of spirituality, at least for me.

What we are grappling with goes back before recorded history, to the earliest manifestations of "civilization", and it runs deep. What we're up against are defense mechanisms that may have served us well eons ago, long before we evolved to become the dominant species on this planet. Xenophobia might have had its place in prehistoric times. Ditto rigid gender roles, to cite another example. But what may have been useful back then is no longer serving us and must be modified, or eliminated, before we can move forward.

Early European settlers believed they were more advanced, more "civilized", than the natives. But as Thom has pointed out, native Americans were more spiritually evolved than our European ancestors, in many ways. Greed was viewed as a mental illness. Psychopaths were banished, not rewarded; left to the elements to fend for themselves. When the tribe went hungry, so did the chief.

I don't want to paint an overly rosy picture here; indigenous Americans were not saints. They had their conflicts, their territorial disputes, even their wars. But members of a clan at least knew how to care for one another, in lean times as well as in times of abundance. The more inequality exists in any society, the more violence there is, and mental illness, and distrust and resentment among members of that society, along with a host of other problems that can be identified as "symptoms". I don't know about the rest of you, but from my vantage point it seems an awful lot of what ails us could be resolved by a universal sense of shared destiny, of us all "being in this together" regardless of language, religion, gender, class, skin color... whatever...

If a fetus's brain development is determined in large part by messages it gets from the mother's stress hormones (or lack thereof), and if the difference between "liberals" and "conservatives" can be detected by brain scans, it seems there are biological factors also at work here, that could help explain why some humans have more compassion than others, more capacity for empathy, and less need to hoard, dominate and control. - Aliceinwonderland

Bob Hearns ~ It is worth exploring and I have spent some time doing so. The problem is you are right, you cannot impose a culture on people. People have to develop it on their own. People are funny that way. One potential solution I have explored is the assimilation of other cultures into our own. Most notably I have explored Chinese culture. Right now we have had an influx of Chinese immigrants settling all over the Bay Area. They are battling the first hurtle of cultural assimilation--language. They, like all other immigrants, are unaware of the tragic future gradual loss of culture that will befall their children. The Chinese culture is of one of the oldest and most advanced cultures on Earth. They have no idea the sacrifice they are making to live in this country.

One day, several years ago, I was walking through a Chinese New Years festival in Chinatown. While standing at a crosswalk and watching a Chinese family cross the street on the opposite side it suddenly occurred to me that it should be we who assimilate the culture of the immigrants rather then the other way around. Imagine, it would take our country thousands of years to develop a culture as evolved as the Chinese culture. The Chinese culture is priceless. You can't buy that kind of a culture. Then I thought, maybe you can.

There are many aspects of the Chinese culture that are healthy, spiritual, and productive. You would never succeed at forcing any culture on the American people. However, the American people are so brainwashed by the commercial media that you might just be able to sell it to them. I have discussed with friends a possible way to sell the Chinese culture to the American people. The American people love novelties, such as cooking recipes, fad diets, exotic foods, foreign traditions, alternate religions and new belief systems, exercise programs, hobbies, etc. What if we were to break up the fundamental aspects of the Chinese culture, bottle it, market it and sell it with the intent on spoon feeding it to the American masses? Americans value things that have a price attached to it, don't they? What might be impossible to give them for free, they might readily buy for a price. For example, bottled water. Examples of such commercial cultural integration are all around us in restaurants, Buddhist temples, and acupuncture. What if we expanded on that?

The best salesmen for this idea are indigenous Chinese themselves for no one knows the Chinese culture better than the Chinese themselves. If such idea is feasible, than other functional cultures may be marketed in the same fashion. What at first appears to be the latest market fad, might just lead to a real new, functional American culture in record time. Unfortunately, that is the only solution I have been able to come up with. I think it's worth a shot--if only to preserve those priceless, precious cultures before they disappear forever.

Another critical issue in society that has a pronounced effect on thought is social structure. As described above the two ideal types of social structure Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft also play a critical role on thought hand in hand with culture. Basically big cities, the nuclear family, and the industrial economy lifestyle also tend to generate dysfunctional personality disorders and thought. If we are successful at somehow manufacturing a functional potpourri culture we will still have to contend with the substantial negative effects of the Gesellschaft social order. A strong culture is the only defense against the ravages of the Gesellschaft social order. Our industrial revolution has a price. In a Gesellschaft social order--as opposed to a Gemeinschaft social order--the interests of the larger group never takes precedence over the individual's self-interest. That is the major problem with Gesellschaft social orders and there is little that can be done about it.