I remember reading a book, “The Weapon Shops of Isher”. the weapons could not be fired as an act of aggression, they could only be fired in self defense. They worked as a deterrent to war, and against violent crime. It upset the balance of power. I wonder what would help with equality among humans? I wonder what would bring balance to us all? I found some sites that discuss the different views of raising our awareness of Loving, Kind Beings. We are dealing with a shift in economics, a change in our natural environment, resource allocation, a large number of people with little resources, and all those and more are increasing in intensity. We have a fascination with the different inventions brought by technology. We have changed the lives of many using concepts developed out of economics. We have helped people with our understanding of biology and other sciences. A lot of this has happened because we have discovered how to use fossil fuel energy. What we have failed to do is learn, over and over, how to treat each other with respect and dignity. The Wisdom of ancient times is difficult to learn new by each individual as [...]
Looking in the mirror, he noticed the wrinkles around his eyes, reminding him of a river journey with a friend, laughing for days and seeing white wrinkles amid the tan lines. Today, my face is tan and rounded somewhat, perhaps from the beard, going gray around the edges. There is that combination of youth and age that defies our usual indication of time in a body. A smile is often present and there is something about brown eyes that can tighten into a focus when speaking directly to someone. My niece was at a family reunion that I did not attend and she told me my grandmother’s last name meant bent willow, which I find interesting. There is a northern European look about me, heavy set and I think short, or stout might fit. Am I pleasant to look at? Only when I am fun to be around. But my portrait is not that, it is in my song: I’m a child of the desert, hot burning sand And a friend to the buzzard circling the bleaching bones of a man I spent my contemplation under a pinyon tree And a nut fell down and hit me and that’s what [...]
It is night here. I had a dream that I was listening to music at a concert and the music finished. It had been instrumental music with drums and percussion and other sounds that I can’t remember. A musician spoke, saying the concert was over and that he had not said much with words because the music spoke for them. It has been over an hour since that experience and I am awake, still. My mind is overactive, running through a range of thoughts that I can usually avoid in daylight. i think about being unemployed until I can “officially” retire. I think about my part in what we have done to our environment and our world. I think of the worry and fear that permeates our existence, and how much of that is our own doing, our own actions, that we followed so easily. I think of the anger and rage that I see in so many places in the different media, and how easy it is to step into that state of mind. I think that Loving Kindness is a means to overcome all that I find to be negative in my world. In my dreams, I have [...]
Bluenose, a working fishin schooner and famous racer
When I was a kid, I never had trouble finding work. I was never without a job and worked many, from gardener to cook to dishwasher to mechanic and so on, sometimes quitting work on Friday and starting a new job on Monday.
When young, an income is as important as at any other time in a working life. Relationships between male and females often start in people’s younger years or used to. There was the first apartment, car and independence. In my youth, the car was used and inexpensive. I owned a Chevy that cost me $125 that took me to an airplane manufacturing facility 40 miles each way every day. It was unstoppable that old Chevy was, burning two quarts of 100 weight aircraft fuel and a quart of transmission fluid daily. I sold it for $175 to a young guy who used it in two or three demolition derbies until it finally caved in.
Today, it would be unthinkable to have a car like that as the authorities would remove it and $125 hardly buys you a wheel and tire.
For some reason there are not that many jobs around for young people as in the past. In Spain, youth unemployment is about 40 percent, in England, well over 20 percent.
It is difficult to start a business with no money or experience, although a very few have done so, but they are less than 1% of the population.
What does a young person do? Ask his parents for coin to go out on a date? Learn how not to be independent as a person?
Meanwhile the young and the old are looking at all the money spent on war toys and bailing out the rich and famous through their business activities? Business activities which should have been allowed to die a few years ago and which will eventually kill whatever economy we have now and the signs are sprouting all over.
Meanwhile we have to eat and provide shelter, buy clothes and transportation and if lucky, purchase an Ipad or pod to show everyone how fortunate we are. The latter portion was written with sarcasm in mind.
Meanwhile youth is getting squeezed, a segment of the population which by the very nature, biologically and psychologically will and can become restless, band together and become outright dangerous.
Why?
Because there is nothing to do and no hope for a better day tomorrow.
Meanwhile the young people and I read and see about multi million dollar salaries to college basketball coaches, financial types, athletes and all the others who hang around the wealth club, which is a small portion of the population usually fed by the masses.
In order for there to be peace anywhere for an extended period of time, people need to be able to work and receive compensation for their efforts. Not a miserly token, but enough to get a small apartment, a cheap form of transportation and to afford to take someone out on a cheap date once in a blue moon.
There is no reason why this can’t be possible. The youth know this too.
If we want peace, we best look after the needs of our young rather than the fat wallets of those who do not need youth employment.
Really well stated, Ichabod. I did not have enough money toafford to buy my daughter some of the things she wanted her jr and sr year in high school. I was able to come up with the neccessities for the two of us. She acquired a job at the drug store across the street and I think she grew up more in that two years time than the 16 previous years. She developed a sense of pride in herself and met people who she listened to and helped every opportunity she had. She didn’t worry about how much she made because I supplied the roof and the food, etc, so she just worked. Every once in awhile she would leave a CD or book on my pillow that she had heard me remark about…… Funny how they grow up. The job was a stepping stone.
Hi Leslie;
When I grew up my parents couldn’t afford everything either, but at least I could work. My children were taught to get part time work if they wanted the extras.
Sometimes you feel bad, knowing you could get them that new whatever it is, but they are all working right now when many young people are not.
I believe it is because they learned independence and self sufficiency early.
Like your daughter, who came to understand that the money in a checking account or a debit/credit card us not a never ending source of supply, but must be earned.
It makes a big difference in people as they grow up. Some feel entitled and some realize that nothing comes without effort in our society.
I am glad our children are in the latter group, for their sakes.
Firstly and pleasantly – The Bluenose! Few finer ships ever plied the Banks, or any sea. Both iterations of the Bluenose were and are respectively fine and gallant ladies, fierce queens of the Sea’s court.
I was fortunate enough in my younger years to stand the deck of Bluenose II and, by Lir and his son Manannan, I wept with the joy of her lines and life of her, and with sorrow over grace long lost to time and to the practicalities of “progress.” And I weep now again at the memory.
Here’s some rare archival footage of the original Bluenose before she was gutted on a Haitian reef in January of 1946: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWUD_r6E4U8
Secondly, sadly, and not greatly tangentally from above – While a lot of the employment and other economic problems are related to the utter failure of fiat currency and the mistaken thought that such monies are an actual measure of wealth, some of it is caused by the same degeneration that lost Man the Bluenose and her sister ships as living things and consigned them to the status of novelties.
We did not fall from grace nor did we lose it. Man cast it and the appreciation of it aside in favor of the mechanical practicalities that technology gave us and we used to subjugate the world we live upon instead of living with her.
There are just fewer opportunities for the young because both technology and the desire for- and perceived need of mechanical efficiency has replaced them.
It not just the youth either. I’m watching Paralegals, Legal Secretaries, and even Lawyers losing their jobs because databases from Lexis Nexis allow case research to be done at a small fraction of the labor costs.
I would say that it will be a bright, shiny, humanless future except that all my models show that it will collapse before then. I give it 50 years at the outside, 30 as mainline chance, and as soon as 2014 if certain events happen.
Then the youth that remain will have work…