I hope you're lucky enough to have had a functional compass of instincts set up for you when you were young. My family and community did pretty well, and I'm blessed to be able to let go of Philosophy and Religion both when life flows in unalterable directions. Otherwise we're caught on a track that needs rails. Both ways have advantages, and both ways have a noble purpose in keeping a community thriving and surviving.
I'm glad you're here and I'd love to chat about something I think is very important. It's about how we think of each other and the world around us, and the tremendous benefit it is for us to come to common terms in the pursuit of Life and Liberty (for my purposes, Liberty includes Happiness). How could you declare anything but your agreement once you've heard some clear reasons why our lives and ideas must change - the more in concert together the better. If we are truly individualists, we could at some point see how even an individual prospers in a community of individuals that do what they can to work together. To achieve this, the doubters, the negative person-ions (picture the meanies from Yellow Submarine, only every-day people you know), even the Ayn Rand self-actualizers-at-all-costs will some day be forced by tragedy or poverty to unite with their community or perish (except for those lucky few who are born with means and left untouched by the humbling power of life to make you it's occasional victim). Even the lions get toothaches, after all.
So what I think is important is that we, nearly all of us, accept some plausible ideas offered by all sides of the political spectrum. The Greens have some great election reform ideas; the right has some ... well, I admit I'm at a loss sometimes to know what Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, or even Mark Sanford have to offer this country - but I'm also willing to listen and negotiate. Maybe tort reform is a good idea for health care...whatever.
What I'm really trying to get at is this: quit your Wal-Mart addiction, your recent romance with that new show on the tube, halt the fast food and processed food and the meat cheese and bread conglomerate that is holding you by the gas nozzle. Wouldn't work be nicer if it was closer and couldn't we have it easier if we biked there. Couldn't you do with less busy places to go and more natural energy to expend. How much caffeine to we need to keep a country running, and how much corn oil, saturated fat, and artificial chemicals? Could I own a dozen cars and be happy, or is one right, or one twelfth - like if my neighbors and I ran our own conglomerate to keep money in our pockets and everyone tries to keep the money in the community in the city where the things they buy are hopefully produced. How much of long term economics requires this thought?: How much do I pay Coca-cola Corporation over the course of my life to provide the fizzy beverage that destroys my body if taken in large quantities - who's diet variety contains ingredients cause tumors in lab rats - when a little sugar, some water, yeast, and flavorings are all that is needed.
I watched a homebrewer batch some brew up today, and I thought about my life in the web of the economy. How many Coca-cola and Missal Defense Corporations do I support with my consumption habits, my addictions, and my choices in my day? The conscience of the nation should have some humility before these crowded streets, and take the pulpit away from their egos, and do whatever it takes to get the actions of our government and, more importantly, the daily lives and routines of you and me and everyone we know 's collective act together and get smart like our ancestors were: keeping means of production and organic homespun technologies at the forefront of our rearing and legacy efforts. Being a survivalist means far from just packing heat - the more self-sufficient you are the earlier to bed and earliest to wise you become. Turns out that making your own root beer is also much cheaper and makes far less trash than the way Coocoo-Loco does it. It's been said that if you aren't living well, that you should travel wide to help alter your perspective into a more corrective mode; whether you travel or not, then please join the rest of the world in our struggle for survival during the first great epoch of our populations eruption. At least begin with a little effort to become humble and less needy in the face of the obviously and potentially huge calamities that are now within our collective event horizon.
Thanks.
