Small villages

With the economy backsliding and the idea that our jobs market is pretty stagnant right now, might it be time to consider more protectionism?

I am not talking about downright closing off our borders but stopping the small towns from disappearing under the weight of trying to be big towns.

Over time, we have had to become more and more creative creatures. Once we settled in an area, we had to not only feed ourselves but give ourselves something to occupy our time. Then someone else came along, and another and another and, soon, we had consolidated resources. Eventually we even came up with another way, other than feeding ourselves and staving off boredom, to up the ante, give our towns more luster.

Industries came in, we took jobs, good jobs by the standards of having to support a farm with the income and putting it back into the land. Here we started to rely on others to provide for us, all we had to do was punch a clock.

Pretty soon every town had a radius of homes and settlements where people worked for the factory and services came in, the other time-wasting things we needed to stave off boredom or to make us feel better. Florists, dentists, restaurants, grouping our education, having a trained group to put out fires, a place to hold our miscreants when they strayed from the law. Everything seemed like it was working toward a better world.

But then the factory found someplace else to do it's work, or couldn't compete with someone with more capital. Soon the factory cut staff until it couldn't keep it's doors opened. The town panicked, consolations were made, wages cut, stores closed. Suddenly the next generation saw the reality that life here wouldn't be permanent and decided to move on, not to be replaced.

And here we are, several generations beyond the beginning of the American tragedy of greed and profit margins. Many of us end up working for someone, educated to work for someone else and, some, unable to cope with the reality that our essential mission in life, to survive, is compromised but what we were taught, what we were told.

But there is hope. It is hope that we are not dead nor or on the edge of ending. We are a resourceful creature, capable of many good things and have a willingness to do better than previous generations.

Maybe it is time that we look inward, to those around us. Maybe it isn't about who has bigger or more but understanding that we are all in this world together. When crisis hits, we suddenly find funds to help out. When we have excess, we give to charity. What better charity is there but our own small tribes, our villages on the periphery? If we look around, if we see opportunity, not for the self but for the whole, then we can see that we can, with ingenuity and thought, that we are able to fill in the gaps. Without concern for making money, we can make our small worlds better without trying to compete.

But it takes a sense of caring for the greater good, something that has seemed to have been forgotten.

Our fallen comrades

One need only look outside, or venture to far over the tracks, to see what has happened when people lose sight of humanity.

Where once we shared in the everyday with our neighbors, picked them up when they fell, helped those less fortunate, we all, in an unfortunate way, got sucked up in the idea that a false economy, one where, even if you did a little, you could live like a king.

And here we are, staring at the world, judging, holding back, treating others in ways that makes one ashamed of their own being. We got greedy, plain and simple. We held back when we could do more, we put things off and we accepted that, as long as your ass was covered, you were good.

As it gets harder for more and more of us to cover our asses, we can finally see that we are in this world together. No more can we ignore the pain of our neighbor. No more can we just sweep things under the rug and move on. We made some choices in this world, good and bad, and collectively, and the ripple of negative change has caused us to have to really take a good look in the mirror and figure out who we are.

But it's not too late. In fact, it is just the right time. We have a great opportunity to stop the madness. We have gathered our resources, we have learned new ways, and we all have scars that remind us of the fools we were.

I implore people to look outside and see their neighbors again for the first time, realize that we are all just people and stop trying to put them like pegs into a board. This is our world, we share it with each other, with every living thing. We can either be great to each other or we can continue to be the worst kind of infestation: The knowing one.

Let's learn from our past mistakes. Let's come together and start talking, stop hiding and begin to pick up the pieces. It's not too late, honestly. We can be better, I promise.

Introduction

Hello.

Simple, concise, affective. It's enough to get one in the door and start a conversation about the world we share.

That is exactly what I am trying to do with this blog: Share my thoughts about how we can turn our enemies into our friends. By just trying to understand each other even just a little better we could change this world from what it is, an obviously chaotic state, to something more along the lines of what our greatest innovators were trying to do.

We are all in this world together, whether we like each other or not, share the same tastes or come from diverse backgrounds. We have spent much of our time trying to separate and conquer each other in the name of something more than the mere survival of ourselves, our families or our people. Along the way we have conscribed like-minded people into destroying our planet and those that share it with us, human or otherwise.

But now we have to start to think different. Now we have to try and find out how we can get along without disturbing the environment that we share, our world in common.

Hopefully I reach some, probably I am just writing this for my own sake, but, hey, I have to start somewhere.

Peace.