Free to speak!

Free to ...  TWEET !?!

Shared ideas, shared thinking,

... shared vision! 
Jump in?

A few days ago, a student in India posted a mildly critical comment about a public figure who had died. Within hours, he was arrested along with a friend who had 'liked' the comment. Keep in mind, India is one of the stronger democracies.

In China, a mother was sentenced to 'reeducation through labor' for protesting her daughter's mistreatment by local police. The social media uproar by millions brought worldwide attention and her release. And vindication in the public and national forum.

The 2500 year old battle for free speech continues. Today, more than NATO or the UN, tyrants now fear the social media. :)


Exercise and enjoy the freedom you have to speak, to tweet, to blog what's on your mind! What an extraordinary benefit; what a powerful lever in a changing world!

 

Digital Weaponry, part 2 

Bloggers now out-produce all the world's publishing houses combined.

Commuters use mobile devices.
Can China’s Social Media Break
the Chains of Censorship?

In China, it's Weibo.com, among others.  Today it’s the top platform for social discourse and a big driver for consumer activity. It’s also a celebrity hub. Just as American celebrities communicate with their fans via Twitter, Chinese celebrities depend on Weibo as a way to connect with their fans and drive popularity. Interestingly enough, Bill Gates easily has twice as many followers as Tom Cruise on Twitter (Gates with 7,215,994 and Cruise with 3,077,444), but Cruise has 4,231,919 followers on Weibo, one million more than Gates.

China's Weibo.com, the social media of current note, has badly

shaken the status quo of corrupt community governments ...

Bloggers now out-produce all the world's publishing houses combined, and Pew data suggests that 80 percent of bloggers have started publishing only in the last few years; it's still a new and growing crowd of writers.  While most writers are lighthearted about their blogs, many are thoughtfully hoping to ... well, to change the way people think.

So thanks to bloggers (and tweeters), welcome to Egypt and the Arab Spring, welcome to murderous Syria, to Wall Street's back rooms, to Mombasa from inside the government circles, to Nigerian oil-sodden wastelands, to China's corrupt local governments, to the mass media as seen through the eyes of someone whose vision is larger.

Slammed by the overwhelming will of the people
expressed worldwide and instantly!

 Regarding bloggers and social media publishers, "... be prepared to see the world around you change more rapidly than usual, thanks to their influence, story telling, discoveries, and open sharing of ideas.  Nothing beats the potential that sharing information can have on humans: this is the real digital weapon of our future."  John Blossom

We can change the world after all!  

 

Lies about life

There actually isn't enough to go around.

The great fantasy of the 20th century ...

There will always be enough!

... and enough for everybody to have more.   

The expectation of limitless growth was born with the Industrial Revolution, from sudden increases in productivity and wealth, resources converted into investor and consumer benefit.  The 21st century has uncovered the error in our economic plan.  There isn't enough to go around.

 

There isn't enough energy for everyone to use as they please.  There isn't enough fresh water to irrigate freely or enough fossil fuel reserves to use without restraint.  There aren't enough places to dump our garbage if the whole world were to consume the way the developed nations do.  Not enough junk yards, not enough capacity for our chemical waste products ...

 

... neither the land, nor the oceans nor the sky can absorb our excesses like they used to.  We've begun to disturb the balance, and our world is starting to resemble a run-down neighborhood.


Time for change?  It's already happening, and accelerating.  Will we find a way through?  Probably, since our survival depends on our doing so.

The climatologists and environmentalists may have understated the immediate prospects.  Today's green initiatives offer some options for micro-survival, but civilization today is macro and moving more rapidly than the proposed solutions.  


A large measure of the cause seems perhaps to be philosophical. To Have or To BE?  The question, posed by Eric Fromm, leaves the auditorium echoing with the silence of an unprovided answer.  Failing to engage the question, the world's nations now struggle with the first half alone.

Just a couple of interesting notes:

An increasing number of countries are leasing land abroad to sustain and secure their food production.

Improved agricultural productivity is necessary to achieve food security and reduce poverty and hunger. For every $100 of agricultural output, developed countries spend $2.16 on research and development (R&D); developing countries spend $0.55 (IFPRI, 2008). 

(2013: Water consumption ranges from 20 liters per person per day in developing countries to 600 liters per person per day in the U.S.)

Water Scarcity Index

Overuse is damaging the major basins. High overuse occurs with irrigated agriculture, such as the Indo-Gangetic Plain in south Asia, the North China Plain and the High Plains of North America, and in areas of urbanization and industrial development.

About 1.4 billion people live in river basin areas that are ‘closed’ (water use exceeds recharge levels) or near closure. The unsustainable water debts are extensive. Farmers near Sana’a in Yemen have deepened their wells by 50 meters over the past 12 years, while the amount of water they can extract has dropped by two-thirds. A few people have the skills and resources to leave their water problem for another place. Many millions, such as small farmers, agricultural laborers and pastoralists in poor countries, do not. (Human Development Report 2006)

It's here, and now we have to deal with it.  

Here's our chance to rethink what's important and change the way we and our children live. We get to choose.

Our hope is in more than the things the world holds dear, of course.

All quiet on the western front

<![endif]-->

Quiet? Not likely.  Things are changing, constantly!

Our world has changed and is changing now.  Things that make up our culture, our world, seem more liquid than fixed.  We'd perhaps like our world to be predictable, but it isn't, and it isn't going to be.

Causes?  Among many, war is just one.

What would happen if war suddenly removed half of the marriage-eligible men from a generation?  

 BANG! SHOCKED CULTURE!!

If a country of millions lost half of the marriage-eligible men, then millions of women (and their parents and communities) are in turmoil. It means the country will struggle for a generation, trying to understand the place of women in society. It means the economy will have to shift to make a place for women in the workforce formerly occupied by men.

One of 300 million search hits

for "emerging woman"

In American civilization, that kind of thing has happened three times with the Civil War, WWI, and WWII. Europe was hit much harder. Three generations, tilted over the edge of 'normal'. One result; beginning (yet again) in the 1950's, an emerging women's culture, a changing woman's philosophy, a reconsidered woman's theology, and a newly formed woman's identity!


Half a century later and throughout the world, the question of a woman's place and its resolution are still taking shape with conflict, violence, and rhetoric; and we are living in the continuing upheaval. We understand the issues, perhaps, but often misunderstand the cause of its prominence. This one is only one of many changes emerging from the wars.

This article's title is taken from the novel of the same name; written by a German veteran of WWI describing the inhuman conditions of the war, the changes and the impossibility of returning to a normal civilian life. Published in 1929, the book was among the books banned and burned in Nazi Germany.

Are there impact points besides war (and the horrors we won't cover here) that might force the reshaping of a culture? Even bigger causes?

Of course there are.  Shifting demographics from immigration, international economic shifts, technology and communication innovations, globalization, polarization; all are nation changers, and many are world changers.

Teacher Li's take on
leftover women...
and leftover men.

For a recent example affecting tens of millions, what would happen if a nation's economy went wild with a rapidly growing gap between haves and have-nots, and I mean explosive growth! Welcome to the China you've never imagined! Just a half-century ago, Chinese society was mostly poor, tightly constrained, and neither men nor women had difficulty in finding a mate. Then education became a priority along with population control and other pressures. Today, with the country's colossal economic upheaval - and a yawning chasm between China's winners and losers - your spouse may be the largest single factor determining whether you ride home on the back of a bicycle or in a BMW.
China's educated women increasingly know what they want in a husband, but it's getting harder to find him. They're calling themselves the 'leftover ladies'. Millions of them. By 2020, we're told, the balance will shift rather suddenly due to the 'one child per couple policy' with 24 million more men than women in the marriage window. Major impact.

Every nation is changing. Every nation.

Now the question surfaces long before we're ready to consider it in a calm and rational manner ... what does all this mean to our worldview? To our theology? And to our digestive system, for pity's sake.

Truth is unchangeable, but everything, everything else is soft and pliable. Plenty of opportunity to learn and grow and help things along.

Welcome to the 21st Century.  

Perfect path, paved and pretty ...

Africa, of course.

NOT.

We live in an imperfect world, and there's no comfortable path laid out for us. We might find ourselves distracted by the difficulties sometimes. I know I do.

It is so worth it to not give up! (Joyce Meyer this morning, not surprisingly.)

A difficult day or a difficult decade can wear us down. It can keep us from seeing the greater good. It can be difficult to come up with an adequate reason for continuing.

What if these difficulties with which we deal today are tools on the assembly line down which we must pass? Could it be that these days shape us, add to us, adjust us, polish us, so that we will perform well when we're needed?

Burkina Faso

Perhaps it's worth remembering that having family, food, and shelter is the best for which most of the world can ever hope. Contentment, then; is it maybe just a choice rather than an accumulation of things?  Yes, it's a choice.

(1Tim 6:8)

Smiling while running ...
requires a happy heart!

Can't we just get along?

Some days, we are thoroughly persuaded that the deck is stacked against us, the folks we have to deal with are our enemies, and the chance of a good result is remote.
  Then we're reminded, there are friends in our lives, there by the grace of a loving Father; good folks who wish us well and lend a hand when it's needed.
  Funny how we can forget that sometimes.

None are expendable.

These are our sons and daughters, Mr. President.  These are the magnificent among us.  They serve by choice and at great personal cost.  Let the weight of their sacrifice and ours settle upon your heart and mind, sir, as we remember who owes allegiance to whom.

ACCS USN(Ret)

Everybody knows ...

Disaster!  National collapse!  Hardly.  These are the common
social fluctuations occasioned by economic variations. 
We adapt to the opportunities available.

Everybody knows that when your kids are 18, out they go!  Everybody knows that if your kid goes to college and then comes back home, it's a disaster.  You must have failed as a parent! 

Or maybe it's the end of the world!

Nonsense.

Welcome to the 21st century.  The phenomenon is called the 'accordion family' and 'boomerang children'. It has happened before and will likely happen again.  As the economy loosens or tightens, folks in transition may or may not find an adequate place in the workforce right away.  They may or may not be hired into a viable career path right out of school.  They may launch in the classic (1950's) sense, or they may emerge more slowly like youngsters did in the 1930's. Let's not struggle with social contextual issues as though they were a simple choice.  Stuff like that happens.

Going a bit further, it's worth noting that the economically tight times will first affect young folks, single-income homes, recent immigrants, and perhaps non-technical folks.  If extended, the economic impact will envelope the entire population.  It's done to us, not by us.  

Stay connected.
Stay informed.
Stay involved.

Family is the safe place, the shelter, the base camp from which each foray originates and to which one can always return to be refreshed, encouraged, and helped.  A healthy church serves similarly in our lives.

    Take a breath, get a grip, adjust.

Fuss, pray, fight, pray, work, push, pray, change, vote :), be thankful for the opportunity you have.

     Did I mention 'vote'? And pray too.  Of course.

Of note, our unemployment in the U.S. hovers around 8%.
In Spain today, unemployment is 25%, and in Djibouti, it's around 80%.

Take the time to understand your world.

Legal Purchase of Government Policy

One person, one vote.
One super-rich person, one vote, but troublingly greater influence.
Despite the Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment, this really isn't equal representation, IMHO.

Most folks conclude that the Super PAC use of influence is crooked as a dog's hind leg.

The 9 biggest PACs are primarily funded by just a few rich individuals, yet they have great influence in our country's governance.

Super PACs emerged from the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling in 2011. PACs can legally raise unlimited amounts of money. They can legally spend that money on messages supporting the election or defeat of federal candidates.  This isn't money spent on research and analysis for the benefit of the nation, this is just advertising constructed to sell, to persuade, to inordinately influence.

From Forbes/Business:

"Super PACs are responsible for a new flood of secret and unlimited cash infiltrating our political system. They have become far more important and influential than the candidates themselves or the voters, and have fundamentally changed American politics. 

To date, there are 328 super PACs that have raised about $99 million and spent about $48 million in the 2012 election cycle, $42.5 million of which has been spent on the presidential race." 

The super pacs have more influence at election time than the candidates do.  That's a troubling possibility.

Update:  10/2016

2016 financial activity for super PACs

2,331	number of super PACs
$1,107,816,814	total raised by super PACs
$734,282,837	total spent by super PACs

That's money spent on advertising, smear tactics, biased recounting of history, and inaccurate representation.  There's no objectivity and no value in the actions, only detrimental misrepresentation and division in the nation.  If you're curious how it happened, this is a centerpiece.

I can see clearly now ... can't I?

World. View.

Worldview?

Every day, we are assaulted by talking heads, pushing us to accept some 'obvious' truth, or 'point of view' ... 

GenX/Yer    Millennial      Mosaic         ...?

Liberal  Conservative   Moderate    Radical       ...?        Tween  Teen   Twenty-    Thirty-something        …?

Optimist  Pessimist   Realist     Fatalist      Idealist         …?

     Do we know why we see things the way we do? 

Did we acquire our perspective from the media, the years, the culture?   From stories our father told?
Or perhaps we were dragged to it by life's circumstances.  
Do we see things clearly?   

One sociologist, for an example, describes us in terms of how we view people outside our own circle.  If we visited a dozen places, what might we see?

People as:
(1) interesting illustrations in dress and manner, or as 
(2) folks with whom you might interact as you travel and shop and eat, or as 
(3) potential friends, even extensions of your own circle of family and intimate friends.  

It's another way to describe our view, a continuum from isolation to social integration.  Does it help?  How many more such differentiations might there be?

   We hope to understand the world we see, to avoid narrow-mindedness born of ignorance.   

  We hope to make the world a better place for our having been in it.  

So what might one do for a better worldview?  
You can choose, you know.  

As a youngster, I was told with a smile ...

 Things are not as they seem.
    You were born into a world at war.
       Everything you do counts.

Perhaps a helpful beginning point.