Self Improvement
Things To Think About
- Education or Indoctrination,
- Which do we have?Has the education system in the US failed in its mission?
What's Up With Ming
"Did you ever feel like an alien who somehow became stranded on a planet called Earth where nothing seemed to make any sense?" A quote from "Ming The Merciless"
Civilization Rehab
Recovering from civilization can be brutal but neccessary if we are to become truly free from it's influence. Kick the civilization habit here!
Being Human
The Condition Of Our ConditionArticles on the Human condition and how we might improve it.
Has Big Business Become Too Big? By Bad Bob
Of the many lessons we can take away from recent economic events, one of the most outstanding is that we must now ask ourselves if some or all types of business entities can become too large and diverse?
A Clear And Present Danger?
The current financial meltdown makes me wonder about how expert the so called financial experts really are. And if they were shouting warnings, who wasn't listening? But even without the experts and the incompetence of politics, some dots are not that hard to connect.
Sometimes size alone has consequences, and when we are talking about large Human enterprises, size can depreciate the quality of management ability and effectiveness. A good example of this is the bureaucratic infrastructure of the United States.
We all stood by and watched when financial institutions were deregulated because 1) they suddenly found solid values and moral integrity, or 2) they had lots of money to influence political leaders. Is it too much to ask that a responsible government would realize that when any enterprise gets beyond a certain point of development, it can become a threat to social and or economic stability?
And since government is, or is supposed to be, responsive to 'we the people', why didn't we realize this potential danger as well? The truth is that any system, including capitalism, can become inappropriate, and even destructive, over time. Responsible citizenship requires that we regularly reexamine our systems for performance, effectiveness and appropriateness and responsiveness to the society that they are meant to serve.
Learning From Mistakes
We talk about learning from our mistakes but we never seem to actually do it. History has proven that the housing industry corrects itself on a irregular cyclic basis, and yet we never seem to learn about the nature of balloons and bubbles. This isn't rocket science, when a balloon or bubble expands beyond its ability to support itself, it collapses in on itself.
The truth seems to be that we don't want to accept some realities some of the time in certain situations, especially those situations that concern the acquisition of financial wealth. We have a special capability that we use for such occasions, it's called denial. We only want to learn those things that are convenient and or compatible with our fantasy versions of reality.
Is It Time?
When is it time for citizens to demand real change, not talk about change, real actual change?
When business and government become more important than the welfare of the people at whose pleasure those entities are allowed to exist, it is time to demand real and appropriate performance from our civil servants, or we will simply remove them.
Ideally we would demand that anyone running for public office have documented qualifications in management and organizational thinking skills, critical thinking skills, business and the Humanities among other qualifications. And then we the people would give them directions on how we want them to perform.
Of course, this is ridicules because we the people are clueless, and couldn't possibly monitor even qualified individuals. And just having faith in their good nature and moral integrity, like we do now with our politicians because they are good looking liars, proves we are clueless.
Solutions
The grim reality here is that there are no quick fixes. But there is a long term solution to not only this problem, but many other difficulties we face as a species. This is a difficult pill to swallow but the sooner we get it down the sooner we will realize its healing powers.
We need to dismantle the social indoctrination system that is masquerading as an educational system in the United States and replace it with a real education system. We do not need any more obedient drones, we need citizens capable of independent thinking who have learned critical thinking skills that enable them to acquire knowledge and translate that knowledge into solid Human understanding.
Real and enduring values, genuine character, moral integrity and wisdom need to become high value objectives in our society along with learning and growing. We need to snap out of our love affair with comfort and security and refocus on the challenges of exploring our vast potential as the most unique adaptation of life ever to appear, the most important frontier there ever was.
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