Unwanted Commentary

Where Did 'We' Go?

Our leaders, even the president, can no longer utter the word “we” with a straight face. There is no more “we” in American politics at a time when “we” have these huge problems — the deficit, the recession, health care, climate change and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — that “we” can only manage, let alone fix, if there is a collective “we” at work.

Like most prominent civilizations through out history the United States may have already hit its apex, and may be reaching the crux of its own history where it now begins to diminish. We as a nation seem to have splintered ourselves into so many camps and created so many voices that now nobody can really grasp all of the strands being dangled around, and we seem to have given up on the idea of listening to one another. I know that I have become much more timid about bringing up political views around strangers.

Are we now in a position where our government and society are stifled because the interest in bettering the country, the ideas of improving the lives of our citizens, and extolling the virtues of the old American Dream have been replaced with greed, and power mongering? Our government appears to be at a place where those in power are now only working to keep their power, while those out of power are only making decisions on the basis of what will bring them back into power, and both sides seem to not care about the consequences.

I found the article that I linked above to be well written and thought out, it was thought provoking. But it has left me feeling a little hopeless, because as much as I try to see an end to all of this, I just don't see it.

Posted by Jeff at 12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The mortgage company, Chase, sent us a notice at some point in August telling us that our new monthly bill was going to be X beginning Sept. 1, but then sent the actual statement for September saying that we owed Y. Forgetting about the previous statement telling us to pay X, we inadvertently paid Y. This all culminates in me getting a phone call at work, which by the way sounded very much like a phishing scam, telling me that my mortgage was past due. After checking into it we found that the payment of Y had gone through, and that money had been deducted, and at this point I'm thinking that there had simply been a burp in the system. When we get home we check into it a little more, and then I call the number to talk to someone about what's going on. Of course the CSR explains what's going on, that we had paid Y when we should have paid X, and that since we had paid less than we should have those funds hadn't been applied to the account, but had been put in 'suspense'.

Mitzy was pretty visibly upset about all of this, and I don't blame her. What it boils down to is that Chase had sent us conflicting statements, then when we sent them the wrong payment mistakenly they waited until three days before the lack of payment would impact our credit negatively before contacting us. They also charged us a late fee, so this all starts to look like a bit of scam on their part, and while I'm willing to admit to my own mistakes, I feel that the behavior of Chase was more than a little predatory. I voiced my displeasure too the CSR, telling her that it was very frustrating that their 'system', as she called it, was smart enough to take my payments and cash my checks, but not smart enough to flag a discrepancy as obvious as this one should have been. We've made every mortgage payment on time and in full, and instead of Chase contacting us as soon as, or a few days after, they received our payment to let us know that there had been a problem they waited until the last possible moment.

What this whole scenario tells me is that Chase isn't, on any level, at all interested in taking care of or looking out for their customers, but are more concerned about taking their money, and charging late fees. Again, I made a mistake in not paying close enough attention to the statements I was sent, and that won't happen again, but at the same time this scenario doesn't seem that outlandish and I can see this type of thing happening somewhat frequently. They did after all send us our monthly statement with the wrong amount due on it. Of course, I should hardly be surprised that a large multinational bank doesn't give a rat's fart about me, but it makes me wonder if this would be worth pursuing to higher levels.

Another aspect of this that bothers me is that I now have to guard myself against my own mortgage company. I take the concept of borrowing a vast amount of money from someone, even a bank, seriously and I want to make good on my debt. I wanted to think that Chase was on my side in this, that due to our record of payment they'd realize we've taken a vested interest in doing right by them, and as a result they'd happily point out in a timely manner that we'd made a mistake, a mistake they did help instigate. Now I feel as if I am forced to scrutinize everything they send me in the mail in order to make sure no mistakes are made on my part, because Chase has no qualms about taking my mistakes and turning them into a profit.

So way to go Chase, you've pretty much managed to tarnish whatever image I had of your company before, and I can pretty much assure you that I will conduct no more business with you, nor advise others to do so.

Posted by Jeff at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This has now been found on a couple of sites I regularly peruse, and let it never be hypothesized that I am a feared of jumping wagons, band or otherwise.

found via SEB and ToBS

God Bless the Internet, where all potentialities are eventually reached.

Posted by Jeff at 02:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The prophets of misery and robotism too often focus their sights on the cocktail party instead of the school. They describe the life of past generations in nostalgic terms, but do not really compare the lives of average housewives or factory workers today with the lives of their grandparents and with the drudgery, ignorance and poverty that characterized and blackened the past. -- Victor Cohn, 1956

The full story is in the link above.

I subscribe to a couple of RSS feeds that have to do with the recent path, Paleo-Future is one of them, and it typically offers up insights as to what our predecessors thought the future would be like. Shorpy's Photo archive is a manifestation of a pseudo-fetish of mine, that of looking at old photographs that show intimate, or day-to-day situations. There are several Flickr feeds and websites devoted to old, abandoned family photos and I had to quit them because I wasn't getting any work done. Shorpy's is nice because they don't update too often, so I can get a quick jolly and then go back to work. X-Planeskind of fits into this category as well, they post photos of aircraft which quite often include early 20th century photos, and sometimes even older representations of powered flight.

I like the insight that considering the visions of the past about our present provides. A lot of people, and I think all of us fall prey to this, have very idealistic memories of the past and by reviewing our collective past we can begin to enjoy our present more.

Posted by Jeff at 09:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In much more important news, Mitzy is now one of my people, a U.S. citizen. She had her indoctrination ceremony yesterday, where I theorize that she was injected with serums, and possibly concoctions. I feel bad that I wasn't able to go with her, but they had it on a Tuesday in the A.M. and most people have to earn a living during those hours. She received notice late last week of the scheduled time and she was upset, since she has classes at the same time, and the arrival of said notice didn't give much prep time. I suggested calling them and rescheduling it, but the only way to interface with them is through the mail, she's never had a phone number, and it seems like she's had to go to a different building every time she's met with what is quickly sounding like some sort of fraudulent, fly-by night operation...or, you know, the U.S. government.

She doesn't seem all that excited about it, but it seems like an event that should be celebrated. I'm happy for her though, and proud, but mostly glad that she doesn't have that hanging over her head anymore.

Posted by Jeff at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Like most things I get involved with, Facebook has become a platform for playing games, and I feel as though I've made the usual rounds. I have a farm, and I have a mafia, and I had brief stint as a knight, but that's over now. Mostly because my vassals kept getting stolen, and to be honest the game wasn't very interesting. Then I fell into The Fellowship, which is as bad as it may sound. Think RPG turn based combat with one of the Final Fantasy/Japanese RPG combat systems wherein you tell character1 to attack monster1, so on, and so forth. Like most of the games on FB it's more or less a clicky way to waste time. This one appeals to me though, probably because it's based on fantasy rpg genres we've all known and loved for a long time.

Like all of the other FB games you're supposed to pester your friends to get them to join you, and in the case of Fellowship they become one of your 5 party members. I don't like pestering my friends, at least very much, so I ended up with three party members, and that wasn't satisfying. So I made FB accounts for my cats, and that filled in the group nicely, and now I have a full fellowship of six. Burpee, a human hunter; Noggin, a dwarf fighter; Fizzle, an elf mage; Horatio, a fawn thief; Pale, an undead cleric; and Gumrot, a Troll knight. They're all level 9 now, and, I didn't know this when I started, but the Fellowship gains levels as you go, so my group is now level 9.

I keep thinking about expanding the characters out into some type of farcical fantasy story, but as with most of those aspirations I doubt this one will bear any fruit.

Posted by Jeff at 12:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been fiddling around with Empire: Total War recently, and for those of you disinterested in these types of things Empire is yet another installment of the long running Total War series. Wherein you control a faction/kingdom/country, you develop infrastructure and cities, build armies, and conquer the world. The first game was Shogun: Total War, and it was based solely in medieval Japan, since then the games have slowly expanded their scope to include Rome, and two stints in Medieval Europe. Now they've arrived in the 18th Century, and what has historically been a melee focused combat scheme now focuses on ranged gunpowder units. This means you no longer get the satisfaction of watching a horde of your peasants swam down a hill to butcher the enemy with axes, though melee units do still exist. Instead you get the satisfaction of watching lines of infantry advancing across a field while the smoke from their muskets curls into the air. And that is pretty freakin' cool. In fact it is so cool that I really don't give a rat's ass about how bad the game is, how slow, or how bad the AI is. It's just good fun, the battles have been a delight to play and the country management portion of it is similar enough to the old games to make it easy to adapt to. They have a technology research aspect too, which is a nice addition.

I've been playing as the Russian Empire, primarily because they're well situated on the far eastern side of the map, and I don't think I have to worry about getting attacked from that direction. Plus, I don't have to fiddle with the new sea combat portion of the game, until I'm ready to. You don't start with any capability to construct a navy, and the road to doing so is evidently a long one, so now that I do have access to the seas I still can't build ships. Previous Total War games had a very simple model for naval combat, but now they've expanded it to where you control the ships, and you can see the little men running around on deck. It sounds impressive, and I'll get to it eventually, but for the time being I'm going to content myself with exploring the land game a bit more.

There are a couple of fun little aspects I've found so far. I'm impressed with the ability for troops to enter houses, and fire from the windows. This is cool, but hasn't proven practical yet, for when I tried it with my own troops they were easily ousted by the enemy, and being that they were all in the house I couldn't watch them duke it out. The AI likes to utilize buildings when you attack non-walled cities, but I've found this to be favorable as I can then swarm the building with three or four infantry units set to melee. I discovered that pelting the buildings with volleys of musket fire wasn't the best way to go, and you end up taking a lot of casualties without making much progress, so swarming is easier and more cost-effective. Now, blowing up the buildings with artillery is quite satisfactory, but the opportunity hasn't manifested itself but one time, due to my artillery technology only allowing fixed guns so far.

Dragoons are fun, as you can ride them out to where ever you want them, dismount them and then treat them as infantry. Which is what they're supposed to do. I like that that they went to the extra effort to show the troopers dismounting, and a portion of them stay with the horses. So if you advance your dragoons too far on foot they have to run all the way back to get to their horses. I think if I learn to use them effectively they'll be a lot of fun to use. I've always struggled to use mounted units properly in every iteration of these games, and as a result I've always built infantry heavy units, using cavalry to run down routed enemy soldiers.

I've had a few large scale, pitched battles, and I've won and lost some. They were really quite satisfactory in that they do capture the spirit of the thing. The troops move realistically around the terrain, and the musket volleys look really nice, as do the cannons firing. I'm not to the point yet where I can do much with my armies other than line them up and blaze away at the other side, mostly because Russia is so technologically backwards, but I'm slowly acquiring new abilities and I'm eager to try them. I recently received the ability to form squares, and I now have canister shot for my artillery, now I just have to start some new wars and see how that works out.

Posted by Jeff at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It was a refreshing and replenishing weekend. I didn't got to Oktoberfest in Addison as I had previously planned. The group coordinator canceled the official meeting, and for some reason that inhibited my desire to pursue the activity. As Saturday wore on I found myself less and less inspired to go, and felt that time could be better spent. And I think that acting on that premonition bore rich fruit. We saw Inglorious Basterds after visiting Baby Coco, and we both enjoyed the movie, despite the fact that we didn't love it. We did love seeing Baby Coco. On Sunday we cleaned up the yard, which needed attention, and then we spent time with Mitzy's family celebrating her second oldest brother's birthday. That was enjoyable.

Posted by Jeff at 09:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Happy Days:

The problem is, we only get one chance at this, with no do-overs. Life is, in effect, a non-repeatable experiment with no control. In his novel about marriage, “Light Years,” James Salter writes: “For whatever we do, even whatever we do not do prevents us from doing its opposite. Acts demolish their alternatives, that is the paradox.” Watching our peers’ lives is the closest we can come to a glimpse of the parallel universes in which we didn’t ruin that relationship years ago, or got that job we applied for, or got on that plane after all. It’s tempting to read other people’s lives as cautionary fables or repudiations of our own.

This story resonated with me this morning. I sometimes wonder what the world would be like if we truly lived it as if there were no tomorrow. If we got rid of all of our concepts of immortality, or reincarnation, and fully embraced that, for all the evidence we have, this is the only life we will ever get, what would our world look like? For myself, would it compel me to achieve more, do more, see more, or would I continue to do what I'm doing the way I've always done it. Would it be more fulfilling at that point to actively engage the world with my life, or to quietly contemplate and enjoy the moments given, or taken, guarding them with cautious and measured effort.

Posted by Jeff at 09:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.” -Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, 1985

I had read 1984 some years ago, and a month or so ago I watched the movie version. There was always something about that universe that didn't quite jive with me, so after I had watched the movie I tried to cobble together my thoughts into something cohesive to post here. Since you've never read it, you can probably guess that I never finished it, and I didn't. I more or less ran out of steam on the thing, but reading this quote brought it back to me, and with the adding of Brave New World to this mix I see a little more clearly what was bothering me about 1984. I must note that I've never read Brave New World, and didn't know what its premise was, so until now it was a non-factor. What this quote brought home for me was, I think the crux of my problem with 1984, in that the whole scenario would take far too much investment to accomplish. The sheer amount of work going into an Orwellian type society ensures that it could never manifest, simply because the complex machinations would fall apart before very long. Too many cracks would open up and eventually things would start to slip through those cracks in large numbers. On top of that the people benefiting from the scenario would receive only very meager compensation, as can be attested to in the book. The Inner Party people seem to only have a marginally better life than that of the Outer Party members.

My unformulated thought while trying to previously come to the above conclusion concerning 1984's world had ended up leading me down a wandering path. I ended at the conclusion that it would be far easier to impose control over the populace by letting them think they were happy, indeed the upper levels of society could prosper a great deal more by this method, rather than keeping the lower-classes downtrodden. This then led me to some conclusions that we're already living in a very similar controlled environment, and where I really ran out of steam was trying to make some real-world comparisons, for which I have little memory or talent. The above quote summed it up for me, and it would appear that I was not the first person to arrive at the conclusion, though I held no illusions that I was.

So perhaps we are more controlled than we realize, but to what end, and is this necessarily a bad thing?

Posted by Jeff at 04:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I mentioned this comic back in August, and I wanted to wholeheartedly endorse it again. The story and art are superb, though the authors do not seem to follow a robust update schedule. Still, it is free to consume, so one shouldn't complain.

Anyway, there's a few more pages if you've been following along: Bayou

It's a wonderful amalgamation of Alice in Wonderland meets the Jim Crow south (and I'm certain someone else already described it thusly, but it is an apt summation).

Posted by Jeff at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I didn't watch Obama's propaganda speech, if he wants Death Panels, then I'm okay with that. There's really nothing else he can say that will make me more convinced.

I instead finally got the last of the water out of the easy setup pool I had bought, and easily setup back in June. That ended up being a warning against being overly enthusiastic when buying stuff. The packaging was true to life when it said that it was easy to setup, what it kind of failed to mention was the more difficult aspects of maintaining it and un-setting-it-up. As a result I'm pretty sure I've been in the mosquito husbandry business for about a month, despite my best efforts to cull their herd. If you're afflicted with West Nile in East Dallas, you can thank me. You could take some respite in how nasty I was after dumping the last of the water from the pool, and take some pleasure knowing that I still have laying before me the onerous task of cleaning mud and a substance best described as crud (or maybe primordial ooze) from the now flaccid pool corpse. I'm not totally beaten on the pool prospect, and next year I may take the plunge into a salt-water filtration method, though the concept of purchasing a $300 device to maintain my $70 ez-setup pool is a little galling. I am enchanted by the salt-water filtration concept though.

Posted by Jeff at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Warren

Oh yes.

Posted by Jeff at 04:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dad and I watched what I believe was the remake of Dawn of the Dead on hulu.com the other night, and it was a hoot. It was a great bit of zombie awesomeness, and it was really good for what it was. I didn't have a lot of expectations going into it, so I was able to just enjoy the ride, and that's really the way to experience a film like this. Good fun.

I then spent a good deal of time trying to come up with what I would have done to survive such a scenario, and I just couldn't do it. So when the zombie apocalypse comes, I'm doomed.

Posted by Jeff at 04:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

But the parents are the best. Between the weeping tools (watch the video and see if you can pinpoint the moment the husband realizes what a horrible mistake he's made) and the almost-open racists (like the woman on Fox "news" who admitted that she just "trusted" Ronald Reagan more and would have let her daughter hear him speak), it was a parade of ignorance expressed as reasonable discourse, like listening to a particularly talented chimp try to jabber a manifesto of shit throwing.

I say we neuter everyone at birth, then if you want to have children you later have to undergo some sort of licensing process, or at least fill out some paperwork. That would solve so many problems, create new ones yes, but I don't see how they could be any more aggravating.

Posted by Jeff at 04:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yeah, Debs had his dreams, man, and most of them failed. The point is that because Debs and so many others were there, much got transformed for workers because of the fear of those in power that there might actually be a socialist uprising. Now, the loudest "movement" is a group of people who may as well be an army of scabs and Pinkertons, so slaveringly do they do the bidding of the powerful. They have been completely co-opted by those who despise them. They are lambs willingly announcing that the wolves are their friends. God, how Debs would wonder when a real leader will rise to the occasion. God, how he would wonder if we could rise to it.

You know, I can never remember the differences between communism and socialism. It's one of those things I always have to look up.

Posted by Jeff at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

http://notalwaysright.com/

I've been getting a lot of amusement out of this site, and an added bonus is that it may make you very happy that you don't work with the public.

Posted by Jeff at 09:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Found via SEB

Finally, the President seems to have cut through the bull crap and laid down some law. He stops just short of calling out some motherfuckers what needs calling out, but I don't guess you can really do that when you're the President. It's been mentioned more than a few times that the Left and Democrats have lacked unity on healthcare, and what has hurt them is a lack of coordination in the message they've been putting out. For some reason the Dems seem to have no clue on how to focus a message the way the Republicans can, and I think this is in some part due to the nature of how liberal logic and conservative "logic" work. So hopefully this is a vanguard of a renewed and coordinated Democratic plan.

This was floating around Facebook, but it bears repeating:

No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, please consider posting this as your status for the rest of the day.

Posted by Jeff at 09:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been ignoring this whole President speaks to school children kerfuffle, and dear baby Jesus, the whole situation sounds even more idiotic after writing this sentence. I've only caught snippets here and there, but caught a big snippet this morning on the morning snippet show. I feel like I do a lot of sighing these days, and I'm really not sure what exactly conservatives/Republicans/rightest can do at this point to make themselves less appealing to me. I don't think I'll ever be able to take them serious again.

Posted by Jeff at 08:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been playing Civilization IV a lot lately. When I first acquired it I didn't really get into it too much, after all I've played the series from its inception, so you could chalk it up to having been there and done that too much. What led me back, I'm guessing, is that Civilization is a kind of comfort food in a way. It's safe and comforting in many familiar ways, because as much as the game has changed it has stayed the same, and I like that. I've slowly moved up in the difficulty levels, and I can already see that in order to keep progressing I'll have to start paying attention to some of the nuances that you can safely ignore on the easier levels.

I've always loved the early exploration part of the game, sending your units out to uncover the land and push back the big black blanket. You never know what you might find out there, and there's something to that that has always been appealing, even though, to some degree, I now what I'll find. The other aspect I've always enjoyed is crushing other civilizations with my vastly superior technology. The computer AI is always so arrogant, so there's some sort of sadistic pleasure that comes with ruthlessly crushing their long-bowmen with tanks and helicopter gunships. But one downside of increasing the game's difficulties levels is that the AI tends to keep up with you in tech for a lot longer.

I've been thinking it over for awhile now, and I think it would be great if someone were to create a Civ type game that more closely follows human development over the years. You could start of leading a small tribe around, then eventually found small settlements, begin to construct cities and structures, develop technologies, etc. You'd have to fend of other tribes and city-states, but if your society is conquered you can continue to control your culture as a group somehow. Only once you're conquered you can't make government decisions, unless your group manages to achieve some sort of status that allows it to do so. You could really go kind of crazy with the options at that point, so they assimilate, do they form a kind of insurgency, or do they simply go about their business focusing on maintaining a cultural identity.

I guess I'm thinking of a kind of larger model that would allow for nuance in the simulation. Your cultural group could develop a kingdom, empire or realm of influence and then dictate polices on trade, immigration, conquest or exploration. But with a more cause and effect thing going one, for instance, you can send out explorers and dictate to them to explore such and such area, but after you dispatch them you really don't know what will happen. Same with fighting wars, you can build bigger and bigger armies, but along with having to support and supply them you would have to take into consideration the manpower hit. Even during the Civil War men would desert to go home and bring in a crop, if you put all your men in the army, then the populace could starve.

And this is where I trail off...

Posted by Jeff at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Public support for ban on texting while driving? Seriously? I really pisses me off that this is even an issue, because why people can't realize that texting while driving is a bad idea just fucking blows me away. I can't comprehend the line of reasoning that goes through someones head when they do this, it's just beyond idiotic to me. The fact that they're now considering legislation to prohibit texting while driving is absurd in the most ridiculous way, because common sense should would dictate that this should have never come up.

The worst part of this is that I'm now worried to some degree about getting plowed into by one of these schmucks. I've almost been hit by people talking on their cell phones enough times, but it's so nice to know that there's now an even more distracting activity that people can regularly engage in while driving. The statistics I've seen on this are pretty scary, and I've seen interviews with these slack-jawed droolers where they're asked if they've texted while driving before, "Yeah, I've done it" they'll say smiling, then when asked if the stats scare them at all, or do they think it's a bad idea, "Yeah, that's scary". Then the golden moment is when they're asked if they're going to stop they look all sheepish, and with this goofy fucking smile they drool out, "Nah, I doubt I'll stop". Such idiotic nonsense.

There's really going to have to be a day where cars get taken away. People really aren't capable of operating a motor vehicle properly, and for every individual jackass in a car you add a new distinct variable to a very complicated equation. That's why we'll never solve traffic problems, there are just too many variables, and you can't depend on people to drive properly, hell you can't even depend on them to fucking pay attention to the road.

Posted by Jeff at 03:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Under the Rebel Flag: Life in Texas During the Civil War

I don't remember how I stumbled across this site, but found it to be a very fun read. If you like this type of thing the you should this.

Posted by Jeff at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been thinking lately that the world feels like it's moving towards some sort of fundamental paradigm shift. Not willingly, at least not by everyone, but I sort of feel that we're getting to a point where our hand will be forced. We will have to move into a new way of thinking and operating in order move forward. The legacies of our long history, going back to the birth of Christ, are starting to fray at the edges, and it feels as if that tapestry is starting to come undone.

I have an old Time-Life book from their Civil War series that I received as a Christmas present many years ago. I've never actually read the book, so on a whim I've been doing so. I've been able to draw some parallels to that time period, the run up to the American Civil War, and this notion I have that we're building towards some sort of change. The first half of the 19th Century in America was marked by a steadily increasing tension between the North and South, and only by some severe determination of a few individuals did the Union hold together. But I'm struck as I read the passages at how delicate the whole situation was, and how close to disunion the country came prior to 1861. Compromises were made, laws were passed and emotions and tempers were soothed in the hopes that in the end the U.S. would work through the rough patch. Unfortunately the real issue of the time was slavery, and no matter what stop gaps they put in place, the issue of slavery wasn't resolved. I saw this as a naive hope that the problem would take care of itself, and no drastic action would need to take place. Of course, that didn't happen and it took the bloodiest, most disastrous war in U.S. history to alter the the collective reality of the situation.

I think we're in for the same situation, at least metaphorically speaking, in that I see our collective world culture is quickly nearing a point where it is no longer possible to continue forward as we always have. I think those legacies of economic, political and religious philosophies are near their end, and people are starting to question the reasoning for continuing to adhere to those old concepts. Will it take something as drastic as the U.S. Civil War was for America to cause a global paradigm shift in think? I don't think so, I think it will be more subtle process, but one can never tell, for as things begin to change there are those that will always cling to the old ways and traditions, especially when it effects their livelihoods and finances.

Posted by Jeff at 08:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)