80% US Poverty

80% Near Poverty

Some will dismiss this statistic as exaggerated, so let me add more perspective.  I work in a very popular and successful restaurant in Los Angeles, and MOST of my coworkers are juggling multiple jobs to survive.  Not a good sign.  If you don't feel it yet, pretty soon this global depression will affect you too, as automation continues to replace the monetary/labor system.  We are working harder, not smarter.  If you want to slave away the rest of your life in repetition, uncertainty, and fear, heading toward an ever-shrinking future, then keep doing whatever you're doing.  If not, then start learning about a resource-based economy, which is designed to enrich and work for us, instead of the other way around.

Another gimmicky holiday

https://medium.com/thoughts-on-creativity/6f4cb1886d41
Some people are going to think the above idea is cute and funny, until they understand the consequences.  These kids will tell others their dinosaur toys are alive, and like with Santa Claus, it is not only awkward for them when they learn it's a lie, but also for the parents.  Such fantasy delays and disrupts children's development and understanding of how the world works.  We operate better if we know how it does, and our parents' limited expertise/time already hinder our learning/growth.  Instead of the truth, we are given stories, distractions, and superstitions, producing a false sense of reality.  Some of us spend years overcoming such intellectual obstacles; many aren't so lucky and go on stumbling over them their entire lives because they are so hard-wired and reinforced.  Parents, more productive imagination and creativity comes from teaching many different relevant things.  A better game would be to use the toy dinosaurs to explain that 99% of all species are extinct due to evolution/adaptation/change.  One day we will be gone too, so we should make the most of our time.  The best way is to start out as informed, prepared, and capable as possible.  Education and science are more fascinating, functional, and enduring gifts for our children than the proposed values of mystery, wonder, and innocence, which are byproducts of ignorance.  Knowledge is power; and these false idols keep us from it.  Rest assured, there will always be mystery and questions for our primitive species.  But is it wise to spread more fantasy and lies in a world already so full of both?  What do you want: to retard our children and our future, or do you want to help make both as bright as possible?  "I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." - Douglas Adams

Jeremy Rifkin

This man speaks a lot of truth, and depending on what you know, he may evoke either fear, anger, or sadness.  Unfortunately those responses tend to produce more negative results rather than inspire change or positive action.  Why is he not talking about a resource-based economy as a proposed system-wide evolution?  Is he aware of groups like The Venus Project, Zeitgeist Movement, Open-Source Ecology, and many others which offer such fundamentally improved models of bio-eco-geo-socio-techno-logical design?  Rifkin must go further and offer a detailed solution or alternative strategy for us to work toward; otherwise he is just another man on a soapbox preaching the end of the world, while scientists and engineers like Jacque Fresco are offering ways to save it.

Good stuff

Proof that helping others is better and more powerful than focusing on our environmentally manufactured differences.
What happened right before this photo was taken blew me away.