Wisdom meanderings

Part of growing up, I was taught, was to be able to take it on the chin and still return quickly to normal mode; pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get going once again. And, could be again.

This did not have the option of going alpha-male-berzerk and trashing someplace out, including an effort to assault someone else targeted as cause of it all. No way permitted.

And the principle of cleaning up one's own messes, was also an important principle reinforcing responsibility for one's actions.

Although I never figured out how to cope with the situations where someone else took something which was my responsibility or owned item, and used it to make a mess of something, including trashing that which was mine, in the activity done outside of my awareness at the time. Still a puzzle to me. Maybe the use of someone else's stuff is a trick some have developed to get around the above-mentioned principles.

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Making a complex society of individual people function overall harmoniously and mutually supportively, including responsibility for the restoration and maintenance of the larger environs in which all live, is a major requirement for sustainable civilization. (Is anybody out there responsible for our civilization? Hmm....)

Making things simple for all those billions of individuals, such that it can be utilized by all people in all situations, makes it more likely that it will work. The use of money quantity comparison as a means of saying is something worth doing or not, has long been a useful part of that simplification; yet humanity has surely accumulated by now enough experience with this attitude to be able to go back and fix the rules of money use so as to enable the bypassing of the pitfalls. Such as the "money is the root of all evil" motto ought to be an alarm signal that something is seriously wrong with the money system. Yet surely it is fix-able. Also, what happens if it (money) is made the value criteria for everything, not just some things? It might be interesting to explore what happens in such a scenario, even try it in a controlled experiment or two. Can money be assigned to those relationship activities now called "done for love"? How about a mother nursing her baby, what price involved and to whom? Does one pay oneself for having breakfast, or a good night's sleep. But if such things are given a non-money value, where are the lines drawn? Do all people agree to the same demarkation lines ... are you sure they all do agree on exactly where they are? Are governmental staff, leaders, and authorities of all other kinds, also required to follow the money value to the letter?

The principle of "value added" being the over-arching guiding principle of price assignment, needs to be somehow brought to terms with the principles demanding the most that the market will bear for an item and of its corollary of hoarding to force a price increase. Imagine a stock market that was solely guided by the principle of investing only in that which will provide that which is needed by civilization per one's own desires, instead of that which will bring the highest dividends. For example, medicines then could be developed for optimum benefit to the users, not the maximum money made by makers; it is increasing clear that the two are no way the same. The same general principle ought to apply in all other fields of endeavor, such as transportation options. Education. Housing.

Somehow the "bottom line" needs to be the effect in the overall system in which all people and things live, instead of the quick money quantity received. The money needs to be perceived in an overall flow, like a processing system.

But that is more difficult to ascertain, that overall effect. And although we all suffer or gain from that effect, there seems no one who is currently taking it into consideration. Computers are good at remembering things, and even processing associations to some extent and providing intelligible output. If the optimum parameters can be ascertained (and ever refine-able based on experience with reality testing) computers, linked by the internet, seem likely able to help humanity get a leg up on the task of using the "overall system" up front for all to observe for feedback to life's decisions ... even if money is the liquidated symbolism of all those life processes.

How would the situation be dealt with, where there is multiple desire for ownership or utilization of a limited item, such as a particular parcel of real estate, or the affections of a specific pretty girl? Are all the principles set aside and so let the bully big boys have it out in an exciting spectacular all-out fist-fight show ... or one nation nuking another ... or is there some way that kind of response can be made truly not an option, in a self-responsible accounting balance flow system civilization?

And all people need to be experiencing worthwhile utilization of their life skills, in their continual awareness. All of us.

One thing is for sure: if humanity is to consistently long term make wiser decisions and sink into the capability of following them, then the stress levels need to come way down from what they are now. And major easing of stress levels for everybody, not just some.

Or is it truly acceptable that the world will continue to be full of the news of where things became so frayed they snapped, making a mess of more than just themselves?

Medical pharmaceuticals are not the answer, to make people unconscious of that which is toxic to them; although nutritional incorrectness probably often is part of it. The focus needs to be on increasing the fitness of the people, not the size of the quickest big profit dollar sign to the providers. And, remember that people do not work themselves out of a good job; don't expect them to do that. That includes "health care providers" as well as "car makers." Business is business ... or is it ...?

We all always do the best we can; it is a built-in life function. It is just our perception of what is the best, is where the interaction problems come in.

James E. D. Cline 20080221