|
This is definitely not the first time that this topic has come
up on this web site and I can say for certain that it is sure to arise many more
times in the future, because it is our nature to view all things, be it weather,
the economy, our day to day lives, or the laws and regulation that governs how we
act and perhaps even affects the way we think. Every event, every single incident
of any kind has consequences that combine with other seemingly unimportant consequences
to change the way things happen and even alter the future.
Almost a decade ago the Mcdonalds restaurant chain added a "MacBLT"
to its menu. It was a minor thing in the scheme of things, but because Mcdonalds
sells so much of any one product it has on its menu this small decision actually
inflated the price of tomatoes that year. A simple change, adding a tomato slice
to a hamburger increased demand for tomatoes and that exceeded production and the
price rose remarkably.
The little white collar crimes of corporate executives to increase the value of their
company stock shouldn't change the world economy, but when a whole bunch of executives,
in a whole bunch of companies do similar things and the very leaders of the second
largest country in the world, do the same kind of thing before they come into public
office, we realise that the American way of doing business is quite simply based
on one premise, theft.
It is no wonder that the stock market is plunging and the whole world is on the
brink of a dangerous depression.
By themselves a big or small act has little immediate consequence. For the workers
at Enron, the seventh largest company in United States with direct
links to the executive office of the country, caused a little stir, but it was not
the end of the world. But with other companies being caught doing the same thing,
it is clear that this is a pattern of corporate behaviour, sanctioned by the political
and economic system, we should not be shocked to realise that screwing with the books
in a small company, or huge one, is going to have disastrous affects.
To help us understand this whole idea let us think about what we know.
The reality we experience is based on the input of stimuli into our system and that
lets us make judgments and governs our behaviour based on these senses. Now consider
that the senses of a company, a business, a massive corporation, are its book keeping
methods. Lie to the ones self and reality ceases to exist as you have moved into
delusion. You are now function in the world of unreality and that is a dangerous
ground for if you can not tell what is real and what is unreal then you have reached
the definition of insanity.
During the winter we were shocked by the extremely mild climatic conditions, then
came spring and we were shocked by the amazingly prolonged and cold period that should
have been spring. Weather systems that typically whisk by us in a day or two were
arriving and remaining locked in place for weeks and in some cases months on end.
When the cold of the long spring ended and we were exposed to summer, we were faced
with prolonged and extreme heat conditions that in the past would come for a few
days and then be replaced with a change in the weather. After three weeks of heat,
record breaking heat, we have just now experienced four days, one after another,
of rain in the form of showers and amazingly high humidity readings, almost never
seen on the great central plains.
Do you see the pattern? Weather, day to day heat, cold, rain, dryness, winds or
calm are a remarkable combination of insignificant conditions over the whole planet.
A tiny change one place ripples to another forcing just a tiny adjustment somewhere
else and so on. The variation in temperatures on a planet that permit life as we
know it, are extremely narrow in their range, just a few degrees.
When you begin to realise that a vulcano spewing particles into the upper atmosphere
reduces the amount of sunlight coming through that atmosphere in a belt around the
world. A single vulcano can lower the earth's temperature just a tad, but it won't
alter the climate. However, a series of factors that increase the temperature of
the atmosphere can trigger a series of events which in turn trigger others, water
temperatures in the ocean change, affect the air above that water, one thing leads
to another and the mystery of combined chaos theory kicks in.
The weather and its extremes are only examples here, but it is clear that even minor
forest fires are huge naturally occurring climatic events that in turn produce far
reaching changes in the earth's atmospheric chemistry. They have always happened,
but the affects of human life, now six and half billion individuals, an increase
of almost six fold in a mere hundred years, that has also profound affects. The
point being that things add up.
For those politicians who have an event horizon of only a few years between elections,
to reckon that the economy can not sustain modification to green house gas emissions,
their decisions could spell doom for not just many people, but perhaps a civilisation.
Ultimately, we have to come to the realisation that with the gift of free will and
our innate decision making process, we personally are in charge of this world. What
we do individually may seem completely unimportant, but on the other hand what we
do, think, or say, might have far reaching and amazing affects.
A man from Rhode Island wrote me yesterday wondering what became of "Tim's
Tips" he had accessed these through a search engine and been unaware that
they were part of this web site in general and on May 20, 2002, I had to switch
from one page to another in the archive and he had lost sight of them. He wrote:
"the little blurbs of wisdom. It was a refreshing view
written in plain English and so often the thoughts were complete and whimsical."
The very idea that the little thought I jot down each day when
I put this web site together is being read in Rhode Island and the reader thinks
about the comments, is definitely humbling. What we say, what we write and what
we think, is important. So important that our individual voices put together can
and will change the course of history time after time.
The communications capabilities of the last century continue to increase in their
power. Marshall McLuhan described our planet as becoming a "Global
Village" as we were becoming increasingly more capable of communicating
with each other in a meaningful manner. McLuhan had recognised the power
of the Internet
long before most of us even knew there was an Internet and just as television interfered
and determined the outcome of the 60s/70s conflict in Southeast Asia, the Internet
is absolutely going to change history as the corporations know they are with their
backs to the wall and their advocates (politicians who depend for funding on the
rich) up the anti to even more push the public toward some belief that what is good
for the 1% owners of wealth, is good for the rest of us.
|
