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Saturday, January 27, 2007

What’s new, and what’s the same?

There is very little new. Mostly things are the same.

What is the same: child rearing, marriage, sex out of marriage (at many ages), war, politicians, maternal instinct, self preservation, ego’s applied, family love and respect, cultural rules, religion, and security of home and family.

What is new: communications interconnectivity, the impact of increasing human numbers, more universal education, better technology for the first and third worlds, western concepts of standards, to include ethics.

What is transitory: Mostly politics as in Nation states, tribes, world government, and religious causes.

This can be fun for the reader to expand on this. In the same vein it is very serious in some of the implications.

We have choices. And the choices will impact what really happens at the local, national, regional, and world levels.

From the assumptions comes the decisions. One can choose the western assumptions, or one can choose the more third world assumptions. And just because one may make a choice does not necessarily change the momentum of humans in our world. But this is not an academic choice from an ivory tower, this is real life, and most choose the western assumptions to guide our decisions for our future.

Those that think otherwise often choose war to advance their cause. Time is against them, in the end. People are people.

And so we humans go forward. To many it seems simple, we reinforce success and abandon failure.

All that is the same has worked, and we should keep it up. Sounds simple enough. All that is new, primarily advancing the western approach to things, must be continued and even advanced. Again, sounds simple enough. Patience for the transitory politics takes time, as in generations. At 30 years per generation, this means things like 200 years at least. Again, from an ivory tower, this sounds simple enough.

To the real world. The academic idea from decades ago about globalization is a failed idea, though the withdrawal from the policies up to today will take a long time to recede. We are not a world village that sings kumbaya together, nor should we be. We have not changed that much, if any. We are mostly the same. Anything that is new and transitory will affect us many decades away from today, if even then.

More on the real world from a USA point of view. What is the same must be preserved, even fought for. We know we have a way of life worth defending, even after homogenizing with all our do gooder instincts and listening to other points of view. And like Rodney King’s line about “can we all get along”, one can ask for initiative and ideas about the same in the future.

Last on the real world. Asking for and even expecting alternative courses of action is like pulling eye teeth, so far. Is this new, or the same?

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