09-02-2011, 02:58 AM
goodintentions Wrote:What is upsetting is that when I walk (when I feel really brave) the streets of my home town... I can't even understand the signs in the stores. What is upsetting is that my town in out of money. We don't have enough funding to teach all the kids in the school. My property taxes keep going up. The classrooms are over crowded. The streets are too busy. There is too much crime. Nothing is safe, nothing is sacred, nothing is revered any more. There is graffiti everywhere - (even on your garage?) They (the workers) can't get my order right when I drive thru for a cold drink at McD's. There are cars going down my street at midnight with music blasting and the bass so loud my windows rattle.You avoided answering my question... wouldn't you do the same if you were born in their place?
Why doesn't it upset you Danno? Why doesn't it upset everyone?
These all are valid issues but they trace back to root causes that are far removed from the immigrants that populate a large part of our town. Many of the problems you listed can be traced back to the side effects of an environment and culture that, intentionally or not, perpetuates materialism, greed, divisiveness, fighting, violence, social stratification, and corruption. They are the symptoms of the breakdown of a social structure that is unsustainable, a society that is destined to ultimately fail.
The solution to these problems is well understood by some but is pretty drastic... a complete reform of human society worldwide. But this will be very difficult largely due to a distracted, indoctrinated and closed minded population and a global elite that has an interest in maintaining the status quo. Things that worked 25, 50, 100 or 200 years ago are no longer valid and relevant. The world is different. Like it or not, we are in a global community for the rest of human existence here on planet Earth. It was as inevitable and unavoidable as the passage of time.
On one hand I am hopeful we will all, worldwide, get on board with the process of such a rational renaissance, hopefully soon. My hero Carl Sagan said it best in the last episode of the Cosmos series:
"Fundamental changes in society are sometimes labeled impractical or contrary to human nature: as if nuclear war were practical or as if there were only one human nature. But fundamental changes can clearly be made. We are surrounded by them. In the last two centuries abject slavery, which was with us for thousands of years, has almost entirely been eliminated in a stirring world wide revolution. Women, systematically mistreated for millennia, are gradually gaining the political and economic power traditionally denied to them. And some wars of aggression have recently been stopped or curtailed because of a revulsion felt by the people in the aggressor nations. The old appeals to racial, sexual and religious chauvinism and to rabid nationalism are beginning not to work. A new consciousness is developing which sees the earth as a single organism and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed. We are one planet. "
If we can only keep this in mind and not be distracted by the political polarization, immigrant scapegoating and all the other minutia crap that the robot zombie sheeple masses love to dwell on daily.
On the other hand I have doubts we will make it. For instance we have many people, in this age of modern science, who still believe the ages old mythologies that were created by man as a means to answer questions that science now provides valid answers to. There are still a huge amount of people worldwide who do not believe that we humans evolved from lower life forms. This in the face of hard scientific fact.
We definitely are coming into a crucial time for humankind. Our science and technology is due to grow exponentially very soon. Can we handle it... be more sane?
Here is the entire quote from Carl Sagan: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/sagan_cosmos_who_speaks_for_earth.html">http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org ... earth.html</a><!-- m -->