Tom Desrosier
Much of what we believe about ourselves, our world and our politics, we learned from someone else.
Sometimes, years later, we still cling to this stufff, long after its proven wrong.
Go figure...
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Gloom, oh gloom, mine only solace
If you awakened to another bad news story this morning, join the club. If you allowed its dour context to pervade your consciousness, and darken your mood - take a bow. If you find yourself, all too often, drawn to these stories, because they aide in a burgeoning, ever strengthening notion that humanity’s state of well-being is becoming less tenable with each passing breath…
Gee whiz - you’ve experienced the “Full Monty”!
Today, I followed this link to an AP story from drudge report:
Yup, no doubt about it, Everything is seemingly spinning out of control.
Floods, mortgages, oil prices, earthquakes, tornadoes, terrorism, war…
Spinning, spinning…
Out of control.
It’s all in the context of course. That huge conglomerate of organizations, whose mission it is, to bring us the news, believes that news telling is describing what’s wrong in the world, our beloved nation, the elected leaders we have entrusted with our futures, each one of us; and of course - the news reporting media themselves.
Context…
Indeed, we have learned by rote, the mantra of reliable, accurate news: that plain and unbiased, “tell it like it is”, reporting, must solely be delivered by devastating diatribe, a harsh criticism, a “sky is falling” description of wrongness.
Such is context.
And all the positive news, the stuff human’s do that redeem us, that inspire us, the uplift us?
Forget it… A positive spin is never, ever, “telling it like it is.” Being positive is for cloud-hopping flower-sniffers.
Not us. We need our news people to “tell it like it is.”
Hey - that’s a song too…
And in bygone days, at the very genesis of news-telling, we received such bad news in small, regulated doses. A daily newspaper, a nightly 1/2 hour news program - and for the night owl, the 11PM news. Sure, they told it like it was back then - but not all day long!
The rest of the time? We took our time to contemplate, assimilate, to apply critical thinking to what we had just learned. Living our daily lives gave us a much needed perspective; a context.
But these days, there is an explosion of news! A plethora of around the clock graphic images of death, disease, crime, war, corruption… We watched Iraq get bombed, OJ Simpson slip through the legal system; we watched hurricane Katrina destroy New Orleans; we learn daily, how inept and ineffective Congress and the President of the United States are, and how Iran is inexorably bringing the Middle East to Nuclear War.
Oh, look, this one’s uplifting: NASA Warming Scientist: This is the last chance.
So is this one: IAEA Chief: Iran Could Make Nuke In 6 Months
And this: Many Dutch prepare for 2012 apocalypse
Get the idea?
Its a non-stop barrage of negative images, stories and commentary, no doubt a nefarious plot to make some kind of cartoon or horror movie Zombie out of each of us!
That’s telling it like it is.
Anyway, I thought you could use some good news for a change: Take a look at these sites.
And here: happynews.com
And here: Good News Blog
And here: Positive News
I don’t know if you noticed, but did all those sites have that flower-sniffing look and feel to them?
That’s really the conundrum - how do we make good news seem just as valid; just as authoritative as the bad.
That’s my next post - why doens’t good news feel right; why do we shun it as not “telling it like it is.
Until then
Tom
PS - help me grow - please link, pass the word, and so on. Also, appreciate any feedback.
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Cheap Solar…
In my last post, I mentioned a few innovations that were slowly making their way to the mainstream markets; innovations that would supplant oil of its dominant role.
Attend.
Really. It seems so easy sometimes. I wonder why all the pessimism in the world. Maybe its just that some people want failure; it meets with their preconceived world view. Maybe they’re waiting for government to mandate something; maybe they’d just be complaining about something else if oil wasn’t a problem these days/
But here’s the thing: folks like you and I have a choice to make: invest personally in an alternative/low energy device, such as a hybrid car, a wind mill or a pellet stove; or be one of those who do nothing but b*tch.
Or am I just b*tching here myself.
Hmmm.
Tom
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Its all coming together - you know, "it".
Ahhh, nothing gets the ole blood going like a conspiracy! It freshens the perspective; it enterprises one’s dour thoughts; it aids in our never-wavering pining for victim-hood.
Such is conspiracy - shhh… Whisper ever softly.
Here’s the situation:
Oil prices are rising with staggering speed. Up and up; due partially to supply and demand, but also partially due to those few diabolical dark figures, who drive up cost by speculating. Speculating is when you think the price of something is going up, so you buy allot of it now and sell later. Buy enough of it - gee the price goes up - simple as that.
Picture from politicalseason.blogspot.com
The value of the U.S. Dollar is plummeting with equal speed. I have no clue how this kind of thing happens; but it had much to do with mortgages being let to otherwise unqualified borrowers, much because the U.S. government relaxed regulations and even encouraged these loans. The end result was that the U.S. government went further in debt by
Picture from commons.wikimedia.org
giving money to banks, and giving Americans rebate checks. And now imported stuff is far more expensive (like oil), and American real estate and businesses are cheap pickings for overseas investors.
Humanity’s conscience has been fully aroused by Al Gore’s hysteria about global warming. As a consequence, we are shunning traditional energy sources that pollute the air with greenhouse gasses. Yup - oil again. So feverish is the pitch about this global warming specter that America’s vast oil and natural gas reserves remain untapped. Actually, that’s only partially right. These reserves also remain unexploited because we think these industries destroy and pollute the surrounding area. It seems greenhouse gasses ain’t the only thing we feel guilty about.
Picture from endangered.ning.com
With few exceptions, America is loathed by those countries who supply the world with oil. Indeed, these oil producers have dissimilar governments to ours, and are largely peopled with radicals who covertly do war with us. We pretend not to notice because of the oil of course. But we hate doing business with them all the same. But now, one of the more dangerous developments is unfolding - Iran, who is hell-bent on destroying Israel, is about to possess a Nuclear Weapon. And despite this, many countries are protecting Iran from any leverage we can muster via diplomacy, sanctions, and so on.
Picture from paulrevererides.com
Hey - it happens all the time - and America could write the book: “How to buddy-up with Satan for fun and profit, by only focusing on the part where we get stuff.”
Where were we…
The world’s breadbasket, America, is turning its agricultural resources to the manufacture of biofuel; this to supplement our aforementioned ravenous hunger for more and more oil and to begin a process of relieving this dependence on foreign sources. Unfortunately, this in turn is causing food shortages in third world countries, causing them to cut down rain forests to plant their own food crops.
picture courtesy of keetsa.com
Oops. Its those rain forests that are gobbling-up all that greenhouse gas we’re making with our hegemonic oil guzzling.
picture from www.cameronlawrence.com
China and India have become the developed world’s labor pool. China, for her hordes of minimally trained factory workers, and India, with a more educated and technically savvy horde. Of course, we like contracting work to them because they’re cheap.
Cheap, cheap, cheap.
Consequently, America and Europe send raw materials that they buy from still other countries to China and India for assembly into consumer goods, then we have these products shipped all over the consuming world. As sort of the middle-me, we all just rake in the big ole’ profits.
Picture courtesy of http://ykalaska.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/shipping-lanes-316_1866_f2.gif
All this is made possible, of course, by a world-wide network of communication. By the by - communication isn’t just talk and stuff - Communication is when human beings exchange ideas, agreements, products and money. Products are what humans create. We exchange them through barter.
Barter says, let’s swap my basket of corn for your toaster oven.
And money is the language of barter. Money tells us the relative value of things. It makes the complex and daunting task of figuring out how many ears of corn equals a toaster, rather common place.
Who would know otherwise!
Yes, In the end, everything is barter, transported via a world-wide network of communication, and translated into value by money.
And so, lines of communication are not just Internet connections, telephones and newspapers -they must include highways, railroads, airways and shipping lines. Because talk is cheap; real gratification requires a brand new Plasma TV, invented in Japan, contracted to China by an American business, and sold in Canada by Walmart! All made possible by ships, trucks and railroads.
Picture from themarkofaleader.typepad.com
Yes, transport being the cheapest link in the economic affairs of humanity, raw materials are brought to the point of manufacture, and then transported again to the consumer. Indeed, some products require multiple transport stages in their manufacture. For instance, automobiles… Parts are made in one location and assembled in another. Indeed, even some of the individual parts are made and transported in multiple stages.
In any case, our lines of communication are what make this economic model work. Communicated by rail, truck, ship our aircraft, to the point of best economic advantage, products are whizzing about, this way and that, in a seemingly helter-skelter fashion.
But that’s what is at risk right now.
Unfortunately, these lines of communication run on oil. And just as America controls much of the “language of barter”, that is, the money, a cartel of oil producing states is emerging ever stronger as the controllers of these lines of communication. Soon, even America’s and Europe’s vast financial reserves will be squandered on oil to run these ever-increasingly expensive network of communication.
Said chicken little to the hen house…
Oil that is, black gold, Arab tea… Oil from people who generally hate us; who don’t care if all of us live or die - after we’re broke of course.
Damn.
But what’s emerging from all of this doom and gloom is not more dire conditions which will devastate much of the free world, but something truly inspiring; a testament to human ingenuity and the unstoppable power of free enterprise.
Yes, While many of us have been lamenting about how bleak things are, still others have been dancing with glee, with the new opportunities that abound.
Attend…
Vast Solar Power installations…
Smarter Cars…
Wind farming throughout Europe, America and Canada…
Electricity from ocean waves in Europe…
A renewable source of gasoline…
A replacement for home heating oil…
And the Arabs are getting nervous…
And so on…
My good friend Rob Patterson drew a rather bleak picture of what life might be like this winter, given today’s trend in prices. He also hints at a rather chilling future of what many call “peak oil.” That is, a state in which the world is pumping oil out of the ground as fast as we can, but its still not enough. And no doubt, this might come to pass before the research and innovation takes firm hold.
I don’t think peak oil will be the catastrophe many believe; no, not a catastrophe, but a catalyst. I think as oil escalates in price, other technologies and work-around’s that supplant oil will appear in a rapid and steady stream. So they must - its what always occurs when free enterprise is allowed to work its magic.
Behold.
Behold the winds of change… Out with the old, in with the new; that’s the spirit!
And its all good.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot about the conspiracy.
Here it is:
Made you look!
Tom
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