An UnReasonable Man - Ralph Nader

I was watching a documentary just now called "An Unreasonable Man", about Ralph Nader.

The title comes from the George Bernard Shaw quote, "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

This is a very Western way to think. It is a harsh path to choose, but it does get things done. I have been against this philosophy all my life. It is a way of being where you fight nature, you change the world because you are Human. It is a force of nature in itself and I have always believed that we should try to work with nature, which is a very Asian way of thinking, far more than a Western, or European way of thinking.

Still, with that being said, when you are working within a broken paradigm, sometimes the only way to fight it, to fix it, is to use that form of thought. One could alter Shaw's quote to fit what I am saying, in that Siddhartha, later known as "The Buddha", was more an uncommon than unreasonable man. In slower, more local times, this was workable. But sometimes, you need to simply stand fast and be that immovable object against which the unstoppable force will have to become stoppable up against.

Absolutes tend to be just that, but only in one's mind and only if you allow it to be.

As Shaw said, "the reasonable man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable one adapts the world to himself", but the extraordinary man I would content, adapts himself to the world, thereby within the process, adapting the world to himself, using an Aikido form of momentum that has nature working with your desires as you work with what is already working just fine on its own.

This is a way of Being that Western culture uses to beat and beat down until what was natural appears ridiculous, dysfunctional, unreliable and just something to be scoffed at. Corporations are in a way, a natural outcome of Western attitudes. We see it in Western economics, medicine, psychology.

Like Gandhi, in a kind of East meets West way of doing things, Ralph Nader has stood his ground. Peacefully he has tried to work within the system legally until it was itself ridiculous. So he sought change through the Green Party in 1992. Then as an Independent in 2000 and 2004. He has been beaten down in the media until people now think he is foolish, or useless, or worse, against the good of society. But he knows all the good he has done, as still so do many of us.

Mr. Nader said something that I found interesting (aside from his history and many other things he said). He said that he was a twenty year veteran (this was many years ago), of the theory that you choose the lesser evil between the two parties (Democrat and Republican). And when you do that, after a while you have brought both parties down to a lesser level.

Hey I don't know but I had to use this image....

I always assumed you had to play along in that way too. Either vote for one or the other party, or you were just throwing away your vote. And maybe that is true in the end. I heard people say that Ralph Nader has ruined our country by running for President in 1992; he has stolen votes from the Democrats in 2000, allowing the Republicans (Bush) to win and begin a spiral downward we are still dealing with even though now Bush is enjoying his ranch in Texas thinking he's the bomb. Yeah, he's the bomb all right.

That may even be true, to a degree. But, don't we have to do something other than keep voting for the same damn fools, in the only two limited, damaged, broken parties that we have been. We keep supporting the same broken, corporate leaders. The Tea Party had an idea, but noooo not so much functional. This country is not very tolerant of a third party. But this is just more entrenched mentality, more corporate thinking, which this country sadly has been running on for a long time (since the 50s but started in the 30s).

We thought that was a good idea, why not, corporations make money, that is what they are designed for, why not run our country that way. Because corporations have thoughts like let's cut expenditures by firing thousands of employees.

I watched "An Unreasonable Man" about Nader's life. Very interesting. I really think he's gotten a bad rap.

The contention that he "ruined the chance for Gore" in the 2000 election  that even Michael Moore supported (then in the next election, turned on Nader), are ridiculous, although Gore's failure has screwed up this country, that is what the election process is about, allowing people to run, that is. There was hope in 1992 with the Green Party but big media, newspapers, magazines, etc., were as scared of him as are those on top in Government, and more so, in corporations.

Phil Donahue was also in the documentary. I only mention him because I've always had a lot of respect for him and at one time, was addicted to his show. It was the only sanity on TV, especially at the hour he was on, for many years. I tend to trust his opinion on things and I think he was one of the more rational ones as it related to Ralph Nader. He didn't think Nader was crazy, or misdirected. Misunderstood, maybe.

GM Corporation especially, for it was they who set the spies on him. But he fought back, in public, until GM apologized, and paid money to his organizations. What in the world would have made a huge company like GM act in such a way, unless they were terrified of him, and for good reason?

I understand that concept that functionally speaking he may have skewed the election. But that is like the school yard bully picking on you, so hey, it's safest to just let him and not provoke him. Screw that. Punch him in the face, show the other kids that you (and by association, they) can fight back. What if he's backed by the teachers? Then you have to show them too that you can fight back, and if you are not in a school full of cowards and pitiful individuals, if they fight back too, if it is all aired in public, eventually, something will get done, things will change. Will it be painful? Yes. Will it seem impossible? Yes. Will it look like you are the one causing all the problems? Oh, yes. But shouldn't someone do something, doesn't sacrifice have to be done, to evoke change, or simply exist beneath the power of the bully and those who back him?

Let's face it, the American two party system is broken, the government, is broken, the corporate paradigm of running the world, is broken. Of course Nader looks like a mad man in that environment. I agree that if everyone, everyday, saw his name on all the things that are safer in life now because of him, he would be held up as a Great American and not a thorn in the side of Democracy, a position I blame big business for, and their corporate, and government officers for: seat belts in cars, food label, air passenger's rights, labels on cigarettes, and on, and on, and on.... if he got a label on everything he and his organizations were responsible for in bettering our lives, we would be seeing his name many, many times, every single day of our lives. Because of him hundreds of thousands of people are still alive, and many much, much more.

I always thought this was nonsense, conspiracy theories, until I started to look at the facts, history, what is undisputed and it's all there. We are so entrenched in this form of government, so colored by big business, that we can't even see it. It's much like a group of people stuck in a closed room with foul odors wafting through the room consistently until finally, no on can smell that disgusting, crippling smell. All the while that that own the room and the cause of the odors sit idly by enjoying all the money they are making from the people's discomfort and illnesses.

Nader's War By "Lethal Autonomy" As the Drone Flies, on video game warfare, is yet another concern that needs to be dealt with, rethought and now that it is in common use, redefined and reformatted. Something we tend not to ever do as it costs money, although it is necessary and morally correct. Once you take your own people out of the loop of being in imminent danger, you make killing a game more than otherwise. We need to tread very carefully along this ground.

We are on a path to nowhere and we need to pull our heads out of the hole, notice the other ostrich's with their heads in their holes next to us. Ralph may have done some things that irritated the system, but change requires that, doesn't it? It's no fun indeed, but it needs to be done and someone's got to do it.

Someone, We actually, need to be the ones to look around and say,

"Hey! Something's wrong, it's got to change. What is it? How should it change? We need to figure that out. And, let's do something about it. Now."

The once defective Honda Rider's Club of America

Did you know that Honda Motorcycles has a club for its riders?

I was a charter member, one of the first year members of the Honda Rider's Club of America

I also received their Red Rider Magazine.

I really liked the idea of the HRCA. They had a web site, I got their magazine for that first year. Until I realized they really weren't for me and didn't seem to want to be. All because I had a classic Honda and it would seem, they only want people who buy new Hondas. Which makes no sense. They built and have brand loyalty and then they slap us in the face because our bike isn't new?

Someone needed to get a smack in the head, if you would have asked me.

I've owned three Hondas in my riding career. My first in 1980 was a Honda 400. Dependable is the word that comes to mind when I think about that bike and that year it got me through my first year of college, through all types of weather. I rode it every day of the year, through some very nasty kinds of winter weather, through ice and snow, slush and freezing rain, and all with no safety gear, no helmet, missing one rear view mirror, bald tires and yes, I was scared. I had just gotten out of the US Air Force in 1979. I tried to get jobs but nothing worked so I started college in 1980. I started with a friend, John, to whom I owe a lot for that first month.

We began together, I was a Psych Major, he was an Art Major. After two weeks, he got angry and quit. But he kept driving me every day. I felt bad that he had to get up early when he usually slept in and drove me all that distance and picked me up. I wasn't even paying him for gas at first because I had planned on going on his going, kicking in gas money when I could. I was living in my brother's shed where I fixed up a loft with a wood burning stove. Times were lean.

After I separated from the service, after years of supervising men and working on life saving equipment, being responsible for millions of dollars of equipment and people's lives, I couldn't get a job at McDonald's. What good was it to be the best parachute rigger on an air base, or have had a secret security clearance or having been cleared for nuclear weapons? There simply were no jobs for that kind of thing. So, college it was.

I felt more guilty every day John drove me from my brother Jon's house, and then brought be back in the afternoon. One day I found a bike at a friend's house, sitting in tall grass in his backyard and he was only too happy to sell it to me for more than it was worth in the condition it was in, $400, a dollar a CC. I rebuilt the engine three times, I bought a manual and took the engine out, took it apart and incorrectly put it back together. Finally it was right. And I hooked up the electrical backward and melted the electrical system. $350 later, a shop had fixed it and I had a working bike.

I had adventures on that bike, I can remember riding through extremely bad weather; various girls; police ("You're gonna die on that bike son, get some safety equipment."); but they let me go when I told them I had lost everything, was out of the service and doing anything I can to better my life. My helmet was a "bunny" hat the Air Force gave me, a soft nylon helmet of a kind that could fit under a hard helmet almost but no protection to banging your head along the ground at 50 MPH.

I eventually traded the bike straight across to a guy for his 65 beater multi primer colored Chevy Impala with no back seat but plywood boards and shag carpet and a leaky back window. It was hard owning that car as I had some nice cars between my first 67 Impala at 17 in High School. It was like going backwards in time, things weren't getting better but worse. But college was a blast and a lot of hard work and worth it in the end.

My second was a 1980 CB750 Custom that I bought for $900 with my wife at the time. Then I remarried but in between I remember going on a trip to Portland, Oregon to reclaim my estranged wife (a lost cause that was), then taking girlfriends riding on it and adventures with them, trips to Vancouver, BC, Canada to see my girlfriend who was an International Law Attorney (yes, she was crazy), and taking a trip specifically to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Good times. I sold it on it's last legs, with a sticking valve for less than a dollar a CC at $500 and gave the guy my Shoei helmets like an idiot.

Oddly enough my current is a 1980 CB900 Custom which I just stumbled into by accident and got for $600 (score! But he was being nice as it was a new ex wife's brother in law and I always got along with him and her sister). The 900 is amazing and fun and has two transmissions totaling ten gears. Great gas mileage. It was the fastest bike released that year and rides smooth and easy. It is a standard seated position and I would really prefer a cruiser, but not a cafe racer style where you are lying on your face all the time. Although I haven't ridden one of those, they look like a blast (crotch rocket as they call them) but I wouldn't want to be on one for five hours. Still, I got this bike because it's owner had bought a crotch rocket, so I have no complaints.

So, I've owned a few Hondas, just fell into them really but have been happy with them. When I started college and lived at my brother's, he had a Harley as did his friends. I parked in the front yard one day and sat down inside. They all got upity and made me move it into the back yard, no "Rice Burners" around their American made bikes, for them, how could I embarrass them like that? Okay, whatever, so I moved it. Then I came home one day and said, "where's the Sportster?" And he said, "In the shop." My Hondas almost never break down; but, to be fair, that was back during the time that AMC owned Harley and ran it into the ground.

Back then I knew someone who was so dissatisfied with his Harley, that he finally paid someone to run his bike off a cliff so he could collect the insurance money and buy something better. But after a few weeks, the cops showed up to tell him they found his bike at the bottom of a cliff, so he got his bike back and all the worse for the wear.

But honestly, I'd like a Harley now, after a life time of not wanting one. Go figure.

Still, I've been a Honda rider since 1980. I almost bought a Norton 800 before I got out of the service and almost another bike that I don't remember the make or model that same year. But what I've owned, several times, were Hondas.

So I was pretty sad when I realized that although I was almost a life long Honda owner, HRCA wasn't for me. I read their magazine that first year, but eventually I lost interest because it was always about dirt bikers or off road, ATVs or something I could really care less about.

Not to mention, nothing about classic bike owners. No help, no suggestions, no articles, basically a feeling: "Buy a new bike." Too commercial. The web site has a cool area where you can acquire a manual online for your bike, just not for a classic bike, no help there at all, none whatsoever. It's like an obvious message saying we don't love you, you don't exist, until you buy a new bike. Show us your money! One might hope that in these hard times, they would revamp that in the hopes of gaining some customers, even if they are the scummy classic bike owner.

So I quit. I have the good thoughts of having joined their first year, happy to support them, be a part of them, until I realized, I wasn't a part of them and they really didn't want a part of me. I figured, if they can't respect me for my respecting their product all these years, then to Hell with them.

I haven't been on the HRCA web site since 2008. I logged on there back then hoping that maybe it had gotten better, but no.

Then because of this article I re signed on to their website. I got this:

"Hello, your HRCA membership has expired and we have discontinued this program. However, you may continue to enjoy access to the HRCA Clubhouse free of charge by updating your account information. Please verify and complete your information below."

It was an easy process to log back in, restart a free membership to the site. It said it would send a verification email but that didn't work correctly. Still I figured my way around it by re-verifying my email and continuing into the site. THEN I received the verification email, it just took a while. Anyway, I have a free membership now. And now, I want to see if they have rectified the issues I've gone on about, above.

Well, it seems they have indeed changed their minds, maybe because of the global economy as I indicated. But whatever the reason, they had a section about online maintenance information with a note that although the information was lacking they would soon be adding to it. There is now an area to put in your maintenance records. This is on the separate ownerlink.com site, but that's fine.

So, maybe I'm not feeling so unwanted now after all. It's nice to feel like a part of the family. I had thought that all they needed to do was build a site for the classic owners if they wanted to segregate them from us. I didn't care. I just wanted some help, at least a minimal degree as the newer bike owners were getting. After all, brand loyalty is all about older product owners making new purchases. Isn't it?

I've run into this classic bike owner bias and prejudice from local shops too. We have a bike shop only a mile from me, but after I got my 1980, I took it in and was told that they had only recently stopped working on bikes older than 25 years old. I finally and recently found a full Honda shop up north who are happy to work on my bike and in the few times I've dropped in they have looked my bike over and talked with me about it, given me advice and once even filled up my drive shaft oil, all for no charge. I'm definitely taking my bike there beginning of next riding season to get it all in shape and spruced up.

Well, I do see more articles on the web site about classic bikes. I noticed today that I had previously put my "new" bike in back in 2008 on the Owner's Site. But it says 1981, and it's a 1980. So I tried putting in the VIN and it didn't recognize it, saying that rather than my eleven digit VIN it should be 15-17 digits. Then I tried to do it without the VIN and I realized why I had said it was a 1981. That is as far back as it goes in the drop down menu. So, there we are.

Another complaint about their site is that I see no where that you can email or contact them about any concerns you may have.

Another is in being an original member. I have a six digit member number and I'd like to keep that rather than a more current nine digit number. I saw a FAQ on their site that says you can use your six digit number by simply inputting it when requested when you first sign up. It says:


Q: I have a six-digit member number that I would like to keep. How do I register that number in the new Clubhouse? 

A: If you would like to use your original member number, you may enter it where prompted during the JOIN process. Just look for the image of the member card on the registration page and enter your member number.

Well, I would like to keep my original number. You also have to input your zip code, but my zip now is a number of times removed from my original zip and I have no idea what it was back then. So sadly, that not only didn't work for me, it didn't even tell me why, it simply acted like I didn't click to proceed. But that is a web programming issue, and not a Honda issue, per se. It could be that you have to have an active membership with the original number which I would understand, except that they sucked and I let my membership lapse and now that they have seemingly addressed some of my complaints all these years later, it would be nice if I could reclaim my old number.

In the end yes, I would like to be a member of HRCA. People who own other than newer bikes have them either because they have any bike they could get, probably as cheaply as possible; or, they are into classic bikes (and maybe classic cars or who knows what other no longer new items, appliances and collectibles). Those into classic collectibles tend to be pretty into them, whereas those who have picked up whatever they can have them for transportation and it's a different mindset.

I would argue, Honda should be trying to support classic owners at least to some point as they tend to have expendable cash. I mean, in college I had whatever bike I could get. Now, I'm very happy with this bike and the prestige it carries. I've been stopped many times on the street side when I was dismounting and someone would walk up and we'd enter into a 15 minute conversation about my bike and how cool they think it is.

So now I may have to reevaluate and give them a chance. Maybe....

But who taught the Nazis?

We have all heard about what the Nazis did to the Jews in Germany in the 1930s and 40s.

Nazis were the lowest form of Humanity. We all grew up with that thought. They believed in purity of blood. Which we now know is the weakest form of an organism, for without diversity you get blood diseases, weak genes and so on. They believed in Jews being a low form of life, beneath of that of themselves. A people who should be rounded up and packed into ghettos.

They needed Jews to be designated obviously so as Jews, to wear special clothing, to wear special badges, typically a Star of David, so that no non Jew could mistake them as other than Jewish and accidentally do business with them, or interact with them.

They saw Jews as ugly. Posters showed Jews as scary. Rumors were rampant. They pushed for an attitude of negativity toward all Jews. It was thought that they would kill children for their blood. Steal money from people, cheat, bring on all kinds of bad disasters to all the "good" non Jewish people. And we hate them for that kind of behavior and for their treatment of a group of people merely because of their blood and religion.

Bu then I found out that during the middle ages, in 1555, when the Grand Inquisitor became Pope, he did all this, thereby starting these behaviors and beliefs. Pope Paul IV, C.R. (28 June 1476 – 18 August 1559), né Giovanni Pietro Carafa, was Pope from 23 May 1555 until his death. n January 1536 he was made Cardinal-Priest of S. Pancrazio and then Archbishop of Naples. He reorganized the Inquisition in Italy.

Catharism, Levitov, and the Voynich Manuscript

I hadn't realized why the Inquisition was started. In the 12th century, to counter the spread of Catharism, prosecution of heretics by secular governments became more frequent. Catharism was a name given to a Christian religious sect with dualistic and gnostic elements that appeared in the Languedoc region of France and other parts of Europe in the 11th century and flourished in the 12th and 13th centuries. For these and other reasons, not once in history but several times, in the 12th, 13th and 16th centuries, the Inquisition started up again and was still active up until the 19th century.

Emblem of the Inquisition

Jews were forced to become Christian whenever possible. Even Christians were forced to believe in the most drastic of ways. The obvious evolution of this was that the Catholic authorities became paranoid which isn't so surprising when you are forcing people to do something against their will. And so the Inquisition was started again, not once in history but several times, in the 12th, 13th and 16th centuries, lasting decades. The handbook for Inquisitors says: "for punishment does not take place primarily and per se for the correction and good of the person punished, but for the public good in order that others may become terrified and weaned away from the evils they would commit."

Jews were band from using new materials or production, they were rounded up and forced to live in a Ghetto in Rome,

Via Rua in Ghetto, (rione Sant'Angelo), by Ettore Roesler Franz (ca 1880 ).

The Pope before Pope Paul IV had given Jews a place to live in safety when they fled Spain after being expelled from Spain by the Queen. They were later told they had to wear special clothing designating them as Jews, and they had to wear special badges. They were designated a place to live. But then when Pope Paul IV became pope, he pushed the limits and forced the Jews to wear the clothing they had been ordered to wear and had fallen away from wearing. He forced them to live in a confined area and to be locked in every night.

And so many attitudes toward the Jews was begun, exaggerated and enforced.

The Nazis didn't invent any of this. They got it from the Catholic church, from a history and precedent that was hundreds of years old and spread all over Europe and an attitude that was spread around the world through missionaries. I'm not saying that Nazis are any less despicable for their having only carried on an attitude started hundreds of years before them. But I am saying that the Catholic church has something to answer for.

As someone said, If the military was dropping condoms in Vietnam rather than Napalm and bombs, that war would have ended rather abruptly.

Culture shock

For many thousands of years, culture and information were transported and inseminated by way of word of mouth. Then the written word gave that a boost and eventually the printed word. With the advent of film, photographic and later, cinemagraphic information was passed along and it became the new literary form.

But what is next?

Aaron Koblin, in his TED piece, "Artfully visualizing our humanity" thinks this will be the "interface".

A commonality across the world is important, having something to relate to, some way to relate, to one another. We are all basically far more similar than different. But ways to breech that quickly is important. It's part of what concerned me about home schooling and the breakdown of traditional educational schema. It is both good and bad.

From the point of my being in High School and before that, literature was the big equalizer, the one thing that culture and cultures were using to standardize interpersonal and intercultural communications. For many decades, even hundreds of years, to get a college degree one had to study the "classics". People asked why. Mostly college students who were being bored to death. But what this gave us was a common thread.

I noticed it myself with my children, when they would tell me they had to read something like "Lord of the Flies", or "Brave New World", or "1984". We then had a common element we could discuss, learn from  and better get to know one another on an intellectual level.

I've heard this mentioned in the sports arena, too. One thing you can have in common with someone on the East coast, if you are from the West coast, was to discuss sports. Religion or politics can be somewhat too invigorating and lead too quickly to disputes and in social intercourse, especially in the business realm, you want to avoid dissociation and alienation. You want to find a common thread or better, bond.

On the other hand, Religion and politics tend to be too important to people as they tend to be too serious and too focused on your life. Sports however, is an entertainment. Surely some take it too seriously, but for the most part, you can agree to disagree and have a humorous discussion about it. At least, most adults can.

With the advent of moving films, people have not had a need to read so much for entertainment, or for education.

Auteur Swedish Film Director Ingmar Bergman

Cinema, the field of moving pictures, of story told through filmic techniques, of transliteration of text into "movies", moves us beyond mere words into something far more complex. If a "picture is worth a thousand words", the complexity is immediately obvious. Cinema can be taught much like the structure of literature can be taught, only with even more complexity (in the case of a well crafted film by an auteur director).

Angles of camera direction, movement of the lens, lighting and so on, can all lend an orientation of individual, information and philosophy. This does not mean that literature is no longer necessary, as it is dense in another way entirely and will always be necessary in a certain way. But as someone once put it, Cinema is the new literature.

So what is this talk about "interface"?

In the 1960s, Canadian Media Messiah (he didn't like that term) Marshall McLuhan, as you may know coined the expressions, "the Medium is the Massage" and "the global village".

"The main concept of McLuhan's argument (later elaborated upon in The Medium is the Massage) is that new technologies (like alphabets, printing presses, and even speech itself) exert a gravitational effect on cognition, which in turn affects social organization: print technology changes our perceptual habits ("visual homogenizing of experience"), which in turn affects social interactions ("fosters a mentality that gradually resists all but a... specialist outlook")." - Wikipedia

Aaron Koblin now contends that rather than the medium, "The Interface is the Message."

Text Messaging dynamics

Aaron took interfaces on Google and gave the internet public access to submit and create various elements for playback. In his closing interface, they took a song from the band Arcade Fire and you entered your address where you were and the ensuing music video would incorporate visual elements of your local area giving you a very specific experience that goes beyond literature or cinema.

My son has been saying for some years how movies are old technology and video games are leading the way to a new environment. He is now a software tester on video games (gee, didn't see that one coming). But his point was relevant. Rather than going to a theater and watching a movie, or watching one at home, you will be able to not only have a movie tailored to your specifically, but you will be able to guide the direction that the film goes, so that in the end, you will have an experience specifically designed to give you the kind of pleasure you want at that time. And then the next time you watch the "movie", it will be slightly, or entirely, different.

This enriches your environment exponentially.

I played this kind of video game years ago. Back then they were crude and not a great experience, but I could see that it had potential. However, much as I feel about "realty TV" (and I prefer "actuality TV that is totally not scripted unlike shows like Jersey Shore, or Big Brother, etc.), I do prefer scripted shows. But then, I am a writer and I like to see writer's getting paid. But not only that, a scripted show means it should have more depth and thought put into it. It can have echoic textures and meanings you do not get in interactive works.

Live type dynamic entertainment is experiential and motivated by randomness or your desires, teaching you less in some areas and yes, more in others. I suppose it depends upon what you are going into it for. But I don't see Casablanca having had the same impact on individuals or culture, if it had been interactive.

So perhaps there will just always be a place for scripted entertainment. The "Interface" may be the new wave of primary entertainment.

Still, it detracts exponentially from the original concept of everyone knowing the "classics" and having a common "language" in at least some areas. We are getting further and further away from commonality and while diversity is good, when you consider how it can lead to intolerance, it is concerning. If we can learn to be tolerant and celebrate diversity, then we may have something interesting going on here. Perhaps first we will need to bring a large chunk of Humanity up into the 20th, oh screw it, the 21st Century. Yes, I'm thinking of the Middle East, shoot me, am I wrong?

Still, these "new classics" may simply be discussed in a new way. You might discuss the experience of the interactive movie with a title, and everyone will have seen a different thing, but then will possibly be excited by having had a similar experience at some point, or how different your experience was from another's.

This may not mean we have lost that common bond, it will however mean that it is drastically altered in its form and the bond will come from the overall experience. Meaning that culturally we could be moving into a more visceral form of bonding, than knowledge based one. Rather than discussing the exact same elements and how you perceived them different, you may be discussing very different elements and how you perceived them somehow in very much the same way.

It is hard to tell but I've seen many things over these changing times where completely new and different things have lead into a very similar type of social intercourse. What will conversations be like if you listen in at a street side cafe?

The Medium may be the Massage, and the Massage may be the message, and that may very well now become, The Interface.

Only time will tell.

It is rushing up to let us know.

Weekend Wise Words

Be Smart! Be Brilliant!

Hey, I don't know how, that's your job.

I don't know about you, but my stock portfolio has taken a real beating this week. So my thoughts turned to finance....

A big part of financial freedom is having your heart and mind free from worry about the what-ifs of life. - Suze Orman

Our incomes are like our shoes; if too small, they gall and pinch us; but if too large, they cause us to stumble and to trip. - John Locke

Any informed borrower is simply less vulnerable to fraud and abuse. - Alan Greenspan

As a novelist, I tell stories and people give me money. Then financial planners tell me stories and I give them money. - Martin Cruz Smith

In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. - Alan Greenspan

It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money. - Albert Camus

Money is like manure. You have to spread it around or it smells. - J. Paul Getty

Part of your heritage in this society is the opportunity to become financially independent. - Jim Rohn

Infinite growth of material consumption in a finite world is an impossibility. - E. F. Schumacher

[His 1973 book "Small Is Beautiful: a study of economics as if people mattered" is among the 100 most influential books published since World War II. I bought his book one day in Hawaii in 1978 and found it a thoroughly fascinating read that affected me deeply. In 1955 Schumacher travelled to Burma as an economic consultant. While there, he developed the set of principles he called "Buddhist economics," based on the belief that individuals needed good work for proper human development. He also proclaimed that "production from local resources for local needs is the most rational way of economic life." Schumacher's experience led him to become a pioneer of what is now called appropriate technology: user-friendly and ecologically suitable technology applicable to the scale of the community. He founded the Intermediate Technology Development Group (now Practical Action) in 1966. His theories of development have been summed up for many in catch phrases like "intermediate size," and "intermediate technology."]

Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community. -  Andrew Carnegie

The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. - John Maynard Keynes

The poor don't know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity. - Jean-Paul Sartre

The way to make money is to buy when blood is running in the streets. -  John D. Rockefeller

As sure as the spring will follow the winter, prosperity and economic growth will follow recession. - Bo Bennett

I don't think about financial success as the measurement of my success. - Christie Hefner

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants. - Epictetus

Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones. - Benjamin Franklin