The GAP

• The GAP  - We know a few things about 2020 for certain ...  
  
• The GAP Part I  - we cannot have both
• The GAP Part II  - nice try Mr. President
• The GAP Part III  - what he told his mother
• The GAP Part IV  - the cost
• The GAP Part V  - the money flow
• The GAP Part VI  - global
• The GAP Part VII  - Meanwhile, Wall Street is doing quite well ...

Phenomenally off the mark!

Republicans and Democrats!  One of the enjoyable aspects of being only loosely associated with either party is the objectivity you enjoy when either is proven wrong.  Publicly wrong, reported in the news media wrong, wrong at great length through speech after speech and even election platform speeches.  Just phenomenally wrong!

As we approach the fiscal cliff, the score is perhaps about even. Deregulation of the banking industry, fighting over the debt ceiling, silliness goes back a ways.

I remember when the Dems thought recycling paper would make all the difference for the world’s forests.  Almost zero impact, actually; maybe even a little negative effect in the final analysis. 

Recycling paper consumes energy, of course.  More than you’d like to hear about.  Well-managed forest regions can support the paper industry much more efficiently, and burning paper instead of oil can produce energy with virtually no waste for the landfills.  It's now an expensive part of our culture.

For the GOP, their assertion that global warming was a myth turns out to be a little less than half right.  Climate change is now visibly underway even though the actual results are still somewhat in question.

In the 90’s, I recall hearing a Republican friend scoffing at the 0.1 degree change per year and casually dismissing all the associated science.  And too, I remember all the left-leaning college crowds chanting the ‘recycling’ mantra in the same decade; fun stuff.  And digital media will bring an end to paper consumption.  That worked out really well.  

The left's ‘Limits of Growth’ we’ve been told about are less concrete than suspected.  Based on projections from the 70’s, we were supposed to run out of aluminum, gold, copper, mercury, natural gas and oil, all before now.  The world should have ended, or at least fallen apart. 

We adjusted and adapted, of course.  We’ve discovered more of everything or changed what we use.  Mercury used to be the backbone of the battery industry, but consumption is down 98% now as other technologies emerge.

Did you know we were supposed to run out of copper a few years back?  Known reserves were around 280 million tons when the prediction was made.  Since then, we've produced 400 million tons, and we’ve discovered new reserves of copper (about 700 million tons so far) faster than we’re consuming the existing reserves.  Not bad. 

Reserves of everything really are finite, of course.  We can't just consume.  As humanity, we’ll have to adjust and adapt.  Some of the changes will be fairly large, I suspect, but spreading them across decades has softened the expected blow considerably.  Is there a 'black swan' event in our future?  :)  National debt?  Wall Street greed?  Healthcare?  Recession?  Free vs fair trade?  We'll adjust, of course.

Perhaps the bigger question for us in the western world is whether we’ll do our adjusting at the expense of others or for their benefit.  Wealthy folks (and wealthy countries) adapt (1) because they must and (2) because they can afford the cost.  The poor are often left behind. 

  

 

It's most painfully evident perhaps when minor disturbances provoked in the marketplace of the wealthy cause massive upheaval on the far side of the world.

So, Republicans and Democrats ... how have we done so far?  

Which of the two leadership groups and philosophies do you think might understand the impact of their choices on the world’s poor?  Either of them?  Trickle down didn't, every child wasn't, we couldn't, Wall Street stole it with government assistance, and the gap widens, nationally and internationally.

The power contest between the two parties seems to have but little to do with the good of the nation's citizens as a whole, IMHO, and even less the citizens of the world.

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

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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!