Excess
Today we often associate greed with big corporations and business execs with yearly bonuses greater than many people earn in a lifetime. According to research, the top 1% of Americans account for 43% of financial wealth and the bottom 80% account for only 7% of financial wealth. On a larger scale, 1% of the population controls about 40% of the world’s net worth. The bottom 50% of the entire world’s population accounts for only 1.1% of the total global wealth.
These extremes do demonstrate just how imbalanced things are. Presented with finite resources, finite wealth and growing population, it doesn’t make sense that our advanced 21st century civilization would even consider such conditions, much less tolerate them.
New Social Pages
I’ve added a new social feature to the blog. Members can now share thoughts, make friends, and maintain a profile here. I’m obviously not trying to replace Facebook, but I do see value in additional opportunities for people with similar interests to communicate with each other. This is also a first step to providing more interactive options for the readers.
Action and Reaction
The world is composed of actions and reactions. Every action is paired with a reaction of some sort. In a physics sense, these are equal, the action force is met with equal reaction force. On a perceptual level, one event can have widespread reaction. For example, if you drop a pebble into the center of a still lake, the ripples extend far beyond the point where the pebble fell. Scientifically, we know the force creating the ripples is the same as the force of the falling rock. Visually, we see the ripples as being much more far reaching than the impact area.
The More You Know
Most life is intrinsically curious to some degree, from kittens to kids. Curiosity is an emotion that pushes us to explore our environment and learn new things. As with all emotions however, there is a need for balance.
Making a discovery, be it universal or personal, is emotionally and physically satisfying for most of us. We have love addicts, sex addicts, thrill junkies – all of them because of the pleasure gained from a certain emotional satisfaction.
Mindwalk
One movie that I have loved ever since I saw it is Mindwalk (1990). This movie is nearly 20 years old but exceedingly relevant. It centers around a U.S. politician who, after a recently failed bid for President calls on a friend in France who suggests he come visit to get away for a bit.
His friend, a one time speech writer who is also a published poet of little note, drives him to an old castle where they encounter a scientist who is on “sabbatical” after she learns her research was being used by the military. What follows is an intellectual conversation that goes on as they wander about the castle ruins.
They talk about everything from global warming, health care, political compromises and quantum physics. There’s no action and the dialogue is very cerebral, but the content is fascinating.
It was based on the book The Turning Point, by Fritjof Capra, who also wrote The Tao of Physics.
This is an incredibly thought provoking film that could have easily been made this year considering the current social and political events. If you are interested in the health care debate, environmental issues and trying to understand how these can be addressed effectively in a world where everything is heavily interconnected, you may enjoy this.
After a quick review of its Wikipedia page, I found Mindwalk is available to watch in its entirety on Google video.
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