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I am happy to see anoher New Year. I appreciate being on
our planet for a long time. I vividly remember WW l.
I should not call it OUR PLANET. All the other living
creatures could call it theirs. We are here so briefly,
that we should call ourselves visitors.
The late Albert Schweitzer, Nobel Prize winner, spoke of
himself as being a visitor. Many others feel that way.
For most of our history, bumans lived in small groups. The
groups that survived learned to be good visitors. There
must have been plenty of groups who were poor visitors.
However , they did not have chain saws, bulldozers, gun
powder, motor cars or airplanes etc.
Presently, we as humans have the knowledge and power to
preserve our planet in such a way as to make a good life
possible for most of us. This is not happening.
Collectively we are bad visitors. Television often tells
us that the good life is a career with expensive toys and
lots of people waiting on us.
My idea is to be able to walk the streets without fear.
Have some control of our food supplies, less smog, better
water and less danger on the roads. Freedom to mix with
people of similar values
I am working on a book which offers solutions to most of our
problems. Most solutions clash with vested interests.
The news media avoid suggesting solutions. I am a coward
too but when one gets old, things like that do not bother
them so much.
If I picked one problem above all others, it would be the
loss of community. People are small group mammals. They
are designed to live in villages. Mahatma Gandhi used to
say, INDIA IS A NATION OF VILLAGES, IF THE VILLAGES ARE
DESTROYED, INDIA IS DESTROYED. But this is true of all
peoples. Gandhi wanted to get rid of the English so he
advised civil disobedience wihout violen-ce. He wanted life
in India to be simple with less industrial development
Hard work and honesty and cooperation . He demonstrated the
use of the spinning wheel as opposed to large noisy factories
The people took readily to the civil disobedience idea but
not the hard work in the village.
Most creatures are governed by instinct, which is seldom
flexible. By imprinting the young with the cultural values
of the village or group, it may be possible to greatly
improve on instinct.
A group with a highly developed culture may reach a point
where the whole village thinks and acts like a separate
organism. As in some sports teams or the crew of a P3
bomber out of Moffett Field.
Most children are now imprinted by television. All of us
affected to some extent. Even if one avoids watching
T.V. it is difficult to escape for so many of the people
around us are kept ignorant. We are not learning enough
from each other. Is it mass ignorance?
The big danger is chaos. So many people appear like a
collection of conditioned reflexes without purpose.
Simulated people eating simulated food.
The good news is that one can enjoy the great comforts of our
present world and protect our minds from the painted words
put out by the news media. Finding good food, clean air
and water and some quietness may be difficult. It is a good
challenge.
At the time of Jesus, Rome, with all its grandure, was a
miserable place for most of the people. Slavery,
immorality and much sickness. They appear to have some
nasty viruses. They did not call it AIDS but it was quite
possible. Viruses are not a new invention .
Jesus said. (Do not waste you energy fighting the Roman
bureaucrats, just be better people and better citizens.)
So the Christians did just that. Each little church
became like a living body. In Corinthians, Paul the
apostle, talks about this. As a living body the right hand
dose not fight the left hand. They tried to walk together
with Jesus.
They believed in honest work to create a social surplus.
I call it the Jesus Plan. I try to follow it and
hopefully create a social surplus. I have already written
in detail about this.
This discussion was to be short and simple but all I have
done is present some glimpses into a murky world.
