My very first blog. Edit or delete it? I guess I’ll edit it. And keep it simple. For everyone who already blogs, you’ll maybe appreciate the doorway I’m stepping through. Here’s hoping it’s everything it can be and that I share things of value. Tonight I’m intriqued by Obama’s talk with Iran. It’s an interesting approach. A level of propaganda we’ve not seen in this country in a very long time. Speaking to the heart and hope of a people angry and weary of war. I haven’t read the reactions to it yet, but I plan on doing so. It’s long past time in my opinion to take these people on in a variety of ways. To let them know that we think they exist and have opinions. I wonder about the debate (among men) in the cafe’s of Tehran and behind closed doors (among women) tonight.
Hello world!
12 Comments to “Hello world!”
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Hello Pat;
Well it is interesting isn’t it. Do you think that the trust is mutual? Obviously someone has to take the first step. We do have them surounded between Afganistan and Iraq, so perhaps our position is solid. Iran will have nuclear capability soon. Are we holding our enemies closer?
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Hi Sam,
I wasn’t thinking about the military or geopolitical aspects of it from that point of view. If as you say, in the giant game of RISK we appear to be playing, we have them surrounded both militarily and economically then holding them closer and soothing a cornered enemy makes perfect sense. The question becomes are we actually that savvy or is it a clever politically driven tactic that builds on Obama’s inherent desire to “do the right thing” and engage in a way that is in direct opposition to the bully tactics of the past administration(s). Not being naive enough to think any power base is that altruistic (nor can afford to be) I’d also speculate that to some extent the confusion is part of the plan…what will he do next? Someone, somewhere is having a chuckle about that alone.
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Well, the confusion part is only us. I would submit that commique between the US and Iran is crisp and concise and in a clear channel. We, the observers are only seeing it from the outside. That view is clearly obscured ( all puns intended) by the politicial / public relations goals of both the US and Iran. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out. Personally, I am not sure that we, as an agnostic democracy, understand how to negotiate with a theocracy. The basic value systems are very different. There is no “judeo-christian” basis for common understanding. But perhaps that can all be set aside. It will be interesting to see the results. Frankly I hope that the “hold them closer” approach will work.
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I’d agree about the confusion – and about being on the outside. I suspect much of the turmoil (that transcends basic territoriality) is based on the way we communicate now. IF you only have part of a story but are exposed to disparate pieces of other points of view it can be truly frightening. I wonder how many more times a day people ask themselves “what’s happening???” today than say 50 years ago when it was all remote from getting up in the morning and going to work pretty much oblivious to what is happening until days or sometimes months later. Everything is larger than life. Statistically speaking are that many more atrocities taking place today than say 1000 years ago when it was immediate and bloody but only to the participants?
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Hi…
Interesting question… Is there more violence today than 50 years ago? We certainly hear about more, but is there more? There have been nasty periods in the history of man. It would be interesting to know the actual counts.
Listening to the news on a regular basis will make you absolutly paranoid. Have to resist the temptation to pile on…
So, that makes a good case for sit-coms!
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I think that’s a question worth researching. I wonder not just about the basic numbers but the percentage it might represent of the total population.
Seems to me that it would be somewhat similar to the way we look at flying. Because the crashes are so “spectacular” it “feels” more dangerous than than the statistical realities of driving across down or crossing the street.
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Hi…
Here are a couple of starts….. VERY SCARY
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history
Quite startling… I think that you could argue that we have not made a dent in peace in THOUSANDS of years. Measured as % of population, Measured in real deaths we have fallen.
BUT… This is a very depressing topic.. no?
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Hi Sam – and yes it is. I’d started to do the same research and was surprised that in such a long period of time we’d learned nothing. I was getting ready to post the values and then got sidetracked by the implications for regional, national or global statistics. For example, as a pure exercise in math can we make a correlation between national conflict and global conflict and see the same results. I suspect we can. If that’s the case then does it become proof that as a species some long held necessity for survival can not and will not be undone by a few hundred years of organized warfare? Or will we have destroyed ourselves before we figure it out. Does it matter? If as we go through our daily lives are we in fact capable of truly factoring in the global impact of any single action – does it doom us to “ignorance is bliss” or just looking up in wonder when the final cloud overcomes us? Have you ever read the novel, “When Sheep Look Up”?
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Hi Pat;
Well as a species it’s in our DNA to survive. Caught the end of a program about the history of Man that traced the beginning back to one of the “STANS” in the Middle East. (Can’t remember which one) Any way the point was that our DNA was verifiably traced to 1 family hundreds of generations old. From which came Europeans, Asians, American Indians, and all the acient human tribes. It was the next step from the African migration. So, I believe there is an genetic predisposition for survival, one component of which is elimination of threats to the gene pool.
A brutal comentary on man, but I think we are wired this way. The gating factor seems to be cultural. Some cultures accept the violence some suppland the physical violence with geopolitical and cultural domination. But in the end, it is classic survival of the species.
I have not read “when sheep look up” is it good?
Sam
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Ah…I’d gotten the title wrong in my earlier post. From Wikipedia…
“The Sheep Look Up” is a science fiction novel by British author John Brunner, first published in 1972. The novel’s setting is decidedly dystopian, the book dealing with the deterioration of the environment in the United States. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1972.
The title of the novel is a quotation from the poem Lycidas by John Milton.
With the rise of a corporation-sponsored government, pollution in big cities has reached extreme levels and most (if not all) people’s health has been affected in some way. Continuing the style used in Stand on Zanzibar, there is a multi-strand narrative and many characters in the book never meet each other; some characters appear in one or two vignettes only. Similarly, instead of chapters, the book is broken up into sections which range from thirty words in length to several pages. The character of Austin Train in The Sheep Look Up serves a similar purpose to Xavier Conroy in The Jagged Orbit or to Chad Mulligan in Stand on Zanzibar: He is an academic who, despite predicting and interpreting social change, has become disillusioned by the failure of society to listen. This character is used both to drive the plot and to explain back-story to the reader…………
For a long time I wondered if we were not going to destroy ourselves in some horrific and violent way but instead simply eradicate the human species as we have countless others by design or by accident. It’s not so much that I believe any of the extreme propaganda on either side of the genetic or environmental debates but because I suspect and regret that we are so driven by our need to survive that we’ll miss the opportunity to move our societal norms out of harm’s way.
I agree that the gating factor is indeed cultural but I’d go a step farther and say that some cultures embrace the violence, others find it strategically necessary but no culture exists without it as part of their central theme for survival – regardless of it’s politics.
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Well,
I intended to invent a vaccine for AIDS can I get the Noble for medicine???
