I wonder if I am answered
The other day, I was ruminating over Corporate Welfare in its current manifestation as The Bailout.
I was trying for some sort of index; something recent in our lives, something that has affected the entire planet's human population; something to which I could compare its devastation and discomfiture.
And for some reason, it began to look to me like a hole: a ginormous hole in our economy rivaled by another hole in lower Manhattan. I wondered, then, and for the last few days, if the cost of the devastation in lower Manhattan exceeds The Bailout? Something along the lines of trying to decide if it is a fair, valid, reasonable, perhaps tenable comparison. I'm not completely sure if it is. But what the hell....
I seem to recall Osama bin Laden, or perhaps it was the collective we know as The Base, saying something along the lines of "Here we see America suffering a wound to its economy" shortly after 9/11. Clearly, they did not wish for simple physical destruction.
Yet here we are, and it is starting to look like we've been done by dirty, ugly, Americans in a manner nearly the equal of that employed by a whackjob fundamentalist.
Note to the reader: the first link is to a book at Google; it was published in 2000...roughly nine years ago.
If only...if only the author's ideas had not been maligned; and those in certain positions had listened then....where might we be today? I guess the author is not overly radical now. But now, it's too damn late.
People in a position to measure the winds of change (that's you, gentle reader; along with Obama and everyone in between), interpret them, and adjust behavior (personal and institutional) should bear the lesson from that book in mind; and realize that sooner or later, you will run out of chances and opportunities...and that ignoring the last chance can extend to entire species.
I wonder (perhaps even suspect) if there will be a test having nothing to do with higher powers nor some hoped for Deus ex Machina cum geek rapture singularity scenario; but having something to do solely with evolution. I look around and see a suicidal species...in microcosm, it's the Titans of Corporate Welfare with their coffee cup out for The Bailout; in macrocosm, it's Global Warming.
Parasitism, while it may work for some organisms, is an evolutionary dead end for species at the top of the food chain. Like Homo Sapiens Sapiens. No wonder it did not work for an economy. Let's hope we don't turn out to be, by nature, Parasitoid.
And there is, on the other hand, hope.
I was trying for some sort of index; something recent in our lives, something that has affected the entire planet's human population; something to which I could compare its devastation and discomfiture.
And for some reason, it began to look to me like a hole: a ginormous hole in our economy rivaled by another hole in lower Manhattan. I wondered, then, and for the last few days, if the cost of the devastation in lower Manhattan exceeds The Bailout? Something along the lines of trying to decide if it is a fair, valid, reasonable, perhaps tenable comparison. I'm not completely sure if it is. But what the hell....
I seem to recall Osama bin Laden, or perhaps it was the collective we know as The Base, saying something along the lines of "Here we see America suffering a wound to its economy" shortly after 9/11. Clearly, they did not wish for simple physical destruction.
Yet here we are, and it is starting to look like we've been done by dirty, ugly, Americans in a manner nearly the equal of that employed by a whackjob fundamentalist.
Note to the reader: the first link is to a book at Google; it was published in 2000...roughly nine years ago.
If only...if only the author's ideas had not been maligned; and those in certain positions had listened then....where might we be today? I guess the author is not overly radical now. But now, it's too damn late.
People in a position to measure the winds of change (that's you, gentle reader; along with Obama and everyone in between), interpret them, and adjust behavior (personal and institutional) should bear the lesson from that book in mind; and realize that sooner or later, you will run out of chances and opportunities...and that ignoring the last chance can extend to entire species.
I wonder (perhaps even suspect) if there will be a test having nothing to do with higher powers nor some hoped for Deus ex Machina cum geek rapture singularity scenario; but having something to do solely with evolution. I look around and see a suicidal species...in microcosm, it's the Titans of Corporate Welfare with their coffee cup out for The Bailout; in macrocosm, it's Global Warming.
Parasitism, while it may work for some organisms, is an evolutionary dead end for species at the top of the food chain. Like Homo Sapiens Sapiens. No wonder it did not work for an economy. Let's hope we don't turn out to be, by nature, Parasitoid.
And there is, on the other hand, hope.
