Encourage One Another

Yeah, it's right from Paul's first letter to the Christians in Thessaloniaka, Greece: "Therefore encourage one another and build each other up" But I think it applies to us all. Encourage each other, don't cut folks down. We need a society that builds on the positive and does not dwell on the negative. I'm not talking about the tee-ball mentality where everyone gets a participant ribbon and always gets told 'good job!' - bleccch. Look for ways to build people up. Sounds good but how? By actively looking for ways to encourage each other. Recognize when people do good things - and tell them. Be looking for ways to help, empathize with others and look for ways to help. Here's a tiny example: when traffic is backed up and people are merging or changing lanes, make a space behind the car ahead of you so cars can easily get into your lane. Yep, let someone get ahead of you. I do this and 80% of the time the car gets into another lane or doesn't cost me any time. I think it actually speeds traffic up, especially if we all did that. How about saying thank-you to people who otherwise might be invisible to you? Thank the waiter for refilling your water or soda - you'll probably get a little better service too. Say thanks to the receptionist when you leave a meeting or a doctor's office. Try it. A little smiling can go a long way.

Earth - a new wild

I don't usually plug products but this is a PBS TV show:

http://www.pbs.org/earth-a-new-wild/home/

I think this show is worth watching since it isn't about cute pictures of wild animals.  The premise is that humans and wild animals can co-exist and actually do better than you'd think. 

There are a lot of counter-intuitive  examples like the guy who figured out that the over-grazing done by elephants doesn't mean there are too many elephants (which would lead to culling the heard).  Instead he advocated MORE elephants! The trick is to ... aw, just watch the show.

This is the kind of thinking we need to do more of in the 21st century. 

I view this kind of thinking as another small indication of us moving from Civilization 0 to Civilization 1

Old God New God

It hit me that the God of the Old Testament is like Darwin's evolution: you know, survival of the fittest.  Maybe it's not a great fit but go with me here.

I see competition as the common theme.  Evolution is competition among individuals and even species. As humans, we express it in war, victory, riches, success, luxury, winning.  The Old Testament is full of battles and heroes. Sometimes Israel wins, sometimes, Israel loses. It is a zero-sum game - I need, and what I need, I take from you.

Now the New Testament comes along and, changes things. Jesus talks about a kingdom where the weak are strong, the last are first, and people feed the hungry, clothe the poor, and visit the sick and imprisoned.  This is survival of the fittest turned upside-down!

Maybe it is time to take this message seriously.  I think that other faiths also have this truth and are also ways God trys to reach people wherever they are.

Here is the point:  We humans have now arrived.  We have arrived at one of those turning points. We don't need to be competitive with each other. We have arrived at a point where we can feed and care for every human life on our little planet.

Do we feed and nurture every life?  Think how well we have done with 3 billion, well fed, educated brains. Think about our current big problems (climate change, overpopulation, poverty, for example). We can't waste any brainpower!  We must solve these together or we will slip back and evolution will overtake us again.

We now need to shift from competition to cooperation. All the effort and money and death and injury we spend - WASTE - in war, needs to be redirected to helping our brothers and sisters achieve their dreams. Economics will change, and it has started to change with global communication and the Internet - ideas and information flow freely. Where they are restricted, there are problems that will be worked out. These are growing pains but are very real to real people in the situation.

Yeah, I know.  Idealist dreams. But you know what?  In my old age, I've realized that changes don't happen overnight and patience really is a virtue.  But if the ideas don't start being thought of and talked of, then the same old shit just drags on.

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I'm interested in your comments.  I'm going to expand on these ideas, probably with a whole other blog.  Stay tuned.

We are missing the big picture

Watch your kids - and their kids

They don't care about race or religion or party or much else.  They are respecting the individual person.  This is a big step in civilization.  Really.  Don't miss this one.

Why do young folks not care about homosexuality?  Why don't some of em care about earning big incomes?  Why will religions become less forceful in the world but be more important?  We are growing up as a world civilization. 

We are experiencing a shift that will make the industrial revolution look tiny.  We are becoming one world.  This will not be easy and there will  be horrible consequences for many.  I'm not saying this will be pretty.  I am saying this will be a very different world in 100 years - a better world.

I can say this because I see our children.  They take our progress in this world and will fix our mistakes, make their own mistakes, and carry on beautifully.

My son told me about a computer gaming competition between South Korea and China tonight.  The two teams will compete and be watched worldwide on the Internet and some cable channels.  I pray that this will be the only form of aggression and nationalism we see in the future as sports replaces war.  It is interesting that some of the players on the Chinese team are Korean.

Watch for these shifts of civilization as they happen.  People sending aid to other people in far flung parts that have a disaster. Teams of people with common interests - like curing cancer, or ebola, working together for the common good. 

Watch for boundaries being torn down and made less important.  These are signs of advancing our civilization.  Go for it!

Why Do I Have to Do All the Thinking?

It really gets me that cops can turn off a stolen car remotely yet some rebels in Syria and Iraq can steal US tanks and other equipment and use them against folks we support.  Huh?  Is it that hard?  With all the money we spend you'd think our tanks might have locks and keys. 

I can't start my car without a little fod that I carry around.  My car cost $17,000.  What do you think a US tank costs?  I mean there is existing technology that will prevent a pistol or rifle from firing unless it recognizes the owner's finger. 

My son has a hi-tech keyfob that keeps hackers out of his online gaming account.  It cost five dollars.  Yup a whopping 500 pennys.

So here is my first solution to keep our tanks from being used by our enemies:

Just glue a Nissan Leaf on the tank and hook up the ignition.  Yeah it is silly but you get the point.

Then I thought of a simple solution of using a lojack. Yeah it would have to be military grade and all that and it would not be 100% but it could be made so much better than nothing.

How about a keypad on that tank that has to have a new string of numbers entered every so often?  Updating the tank's number would be easy for a tank under normal maintenance and even war.  Couple it with the mil-spec lojack and do that for every weapon and our stuff would quickly be useless for our enemies.

Do I have to think of everything?

President Obama's speech about ISIL last night

I wrote the stuff at the bottom soon after President Obama's speech on ISIL.  I was too hasty in my thinking so I want to revise it a bit.  I want to emphasize that I feel this will only work if powers in the region work together to figure this out.  We can't bomb a solution from the air and US boots in the mideast only cause trouble.  It is an extremely complex situation and there is no simple, fast, cheap solution.  The old product joke about picking any two from quality,  cost, and timeliness doesn't apply here.  We stepped in it in 2003 by allowing idiots to run our policy and we have to be really really careful (really!) in whatever we do.  This is not just a military problem and we need to look for much larger solutions. 

Bottom:
Thank you Mr. President!

I am 100% behind your strategy as I heard it last night:
    We provide supplies, intelligence, training.  No Americans in combat.
    The nations and groups that are directly affected in the area need to stand up and do the fighting.

You wisely ignore the people who got us into the Iraq mess and would dig us deeper.  It is an incredibly complex situation that they have shown they have no clue about. When the US is directly involved, we make it worse.

The people in the area need to decide their fate. We can influence them and help the side we want to win but it will ultimately be determined by the people in the Levant. 

 I pray that peace and respect are the result but it won't be easy or fast

What is wrong with corporations?

OK, that topic would take several books to answer. Here is what is bugging me today.

Bank of America just settled the largest government suit for 16.5 Billion dollars
(http://online.wsj.com/articles/bank-of-america-reaches-16-65-billion-settlement-1408626544).  How could that be bad news?

It is bad news because of who pays the fine.

Here's the theory:
A corporation is supposed to shield the stockholders from being personally liable.  The corporate officers have fiduciary responsibility which means they are supposed to be liable for the actions of the corporation.  The idea is that the shareholders don't have control of what the corporation does while the officers certainly do.  They are in charge like the captain of a ship is responsible and should prevent the corporation from doing illegal things.

Here's the practice:
When the government finds illegal activity at a corporation, it negotiates with those officers.  The officers make sure any agreement makes them 'innocent' as part of the deal.  They can pay any fines with corporate money - not any money they have as salaries, bonuses, stock deals.  And they rarely have to step down[1] as part of the deal.  Any fines paid, of course, affect the profits so it is the stockholders who lose[2].

How to fix this:
A) remove money from politics.  Support and campaign for government paid elections.
B) eliminate the swinging door where people move from corporations to the agencies regulating those corporations to lobbyists and round and round.
C) enforce fiduciary responsibilities and put violators in prison and make them pay fines.
 D) there are many more things to fix than I have thought of.   Let me know what you think.

Check out the documentary "The Corporation" - it is chilling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Corporation_(film)

Notes:
[1] During the financial melt-down of 2008-9 we were told financial people needed huge salaries so they would stay at their jobs.  I always wondered why people that caused the largest depression since the Great Depression should have any job at all.
[2] These are the same people who claim to do everything "for the shareholders". Yet you can see in this case it is a lie.

Thanks to my son for his great ideas and discussions.
TFIA