The Left and Right: Same Goals Different Views

There's a strange co-mingling of ideas coming from the far right and the left and landing squarely all over America. The other day I saw an add on TV talking about rampant consumerism and how it is bad for everyone. It wasn't an anti-consumerist or environmental group flipping the bill for the add, it was a Southern Baptist Church. Now the probable reason for the church running the add is that they would rather see you donate your dwindling funds to the church (the recession has to be hurting them too) instead of buying that new pair of pants, but the message is still the same. In these hard economic times it appears as if America is awakening from a long slumber of 30 years and discovering something new. We don't have to buy everything we can get our hands on to be happy, family and community is more rewarding than a big screen TV. If we do buy everything within our reach, we're starting to realize that it isn't necessarily a sustainable practice and one day we may actually run out of the core stuff needed to make a bunch of not only useless stuff, but much needed stuff as well.

Not only can you see a convergence in thought when it comes to the lack of need in consuming large amounts of goods, but you may also see an amazing coming together in the areas of fossil fuels and the need for alternative energy as well. As fuel prices go up we see people ditching their SUVs and Trucks at an increasing rate. The losses posted by the U.S. auto manufacturers is proof as they are finding it hard selling their large inventories of gas guzzling behemoths. The message that our dependency on oil is not only funding terrorists, but is putting us at risk as the wells start to dry up. Not to mention, all that carbon spewing into the atmosphere is not all that great for us all either. People are buying more fuel efficient vehicles now just as they did in the 70's. The difference now is that we have technologies that are better and even more capable of delivering us from the dark ages of moving material around and putting us into a brighter cleaner future. In the green movement of the seventies, people had to give up their lifestyles in order to be truly green. Now with technology it is an easier and more logical move to change a few habits and a few light bulbs to save your self some money while inadvertently changing the world.

We have oil men (T. Boone Pickens) putting up wind mills and Southern Baptist Churches advertising the woes of unchained consumerism. We have retailers (Wal-Mart) and suppliers (Milk Produces and Toy Companies) changing packaging and their core products to reduce waste while still delivering low cost products. It is a changing world and the converts are growing at an alarming rate. It is highly possible that we are truly awakening into a new age where we think before we purchase and want to live less wasteful and more fulfilling lives. It will be nice to see further adoption of sustainable ideas by various groups regardless of their ultimate reasons. As long as we all see the same thing regardless of point of view and are willing to tackle it, then we will all benefit and be a stronger nation and world because of it.

The terrorists may have inadvertently created a stronger America. We now have a common direction that is driven mainly by the desire to drop the oil and the need to save money. Our incompetent president may have inadvertently set us up for success through recession. Without the high prices of gas and the dire economy, people may not be so willing to embrace more sustainable lives. Even though the left and the right are obviously charged and at opposite ends of the spectrum at the moment, they may actually have more in common than they think. The things they have in common are beautiful and is something that our nation should latch on to and use to keep us moving forward into the future. Reducing our need for oil will make us stronger and less resistant to foreign control. Our reduction of waste will change the way less wasteful countries see us. Sustainable energy and sustainable communities will give us stronger brighter futures and make us a healthier happier nation.

Talk to your friends and neighbors and discuss ideas on how to save money. Chances are, by saving money, you are also saving valuable resources that our country can use to propel us into the future. If we all started talking about saving money and coupled that with saving the planet we could find common grounds that will bring about the goals of everyone (except for the terrorists).

Trusting Those that Promise to Cure Us

Two articles have just been released (see links below) providing further evidence that pharmaceutical companies are in business to make money and are willing to take risks to raise profits even if it means killing a few customers in the process. You usually trust your doctor, but when he hands you samples for a drug and a slip of paper containing a prescription you have to wonder if he truly believes that it is the best drug for you. Is he basing his decision on his own research or has he been psychologically persuaded to dish out the drugs because some beautiful twenty-something pharmaceutical sales rep took him out to dinner and gave him a bunch of documentation on the drug that is slanted in favor of the company that manufactures the drug?

It seems that Baxter International was selling Heparin to people that contained a "heparin like" substance that was cheaper to produce. Now, Baxter says you can't blame them. They didn't intentionally alter the formula, it was their Chinese manufacturers that decided to taint the drug to make a profit. This raises a valid question. Should we trust a company that hires a factory in a foreign country to provide medicinal components to the drugs we take on a daily basis? We're already told to be weary of lead tainted toys, now we have to worry about the medicine that we may rely on to keep us alive. Where are the labels on our prescription bottles stating "Made in China"? The consumer has a right to know if their medicine is being off shored in order to cut costs for the producer of the drugs. When you think of China made goods, you think of cheap labor and often substandard materials. These two ideas are not what we should be equating with our prescription drugs.

Another appalling example of the direction drug manufacturers are taking is the case brought forth against Merc and their drug VIOXX. It seems that Merc hired outside "professional writers" to write what they provided as "solid academic research". This "professionally written" material was delivered to doctors as valid scientific information. These for profit pharmaceutical companies are hiring for profit writing firms to produce material that is marketed towards your medical provider in the hope that he/she can be manipulated into prescribing the medication to you. It is in the best interest of the pharmaceutical company to sell the drug. They market medications as if they are marketing a pair of shoes or a cup of coffee. A cup of coffee or a pair of shoes won't necessarily kill you, but a drug manufactured and marketed based on lies could.

The government is not helping regulate this to the extent that it should. It seems that our capitalistic system lets the consumer down hard when it comes to health. Drug companies should not finance studies into their own products. Doctors should research medicines and should not allow pharmaceutical sales reps into their offices, no matter how pretty they are and how many baseball tickets they offer or how many free lunches they provide the staff. The concept of ethics has deteriorated all the way around.

Visit the Google health news feed for at least a year and take note of the news stories there. You may come to the conclusion that things are good for you one week and bad for you the next. Breakthroughs are mentioned and then never heard of again. It seems that health news is hard to put your trust into because the medical field has lost its way. The truth is that these economic powers are wrestling to keep you buying what they have to sell. It appears that they don't care if it is good for you or not. They market to you and manipulate you and in the end they say it was your decision to take the medicine or to smoke the cigarette or to drink the soft drink. It's hard to make your own decisions when you have been brainwashed since your youth while you innocently watched your Saturday morning cartoons along with the heavy dose of commercials pushing goods in order to build brand recognition in your developing sense of self. We are just fodder for the systems we have developed. We are a renewable resource that feeds the non-sustainable consumerism machines.

One must be paranoid when it comes to health and trusting the "system". We must all wonder if we are given drugs to just simply "maintain" our illnesses. If a cure for something is discovered, then the pharmaceutical companies lose. They don't want to lose. They sell drugs and want to continue selling those drugs. It is in their best interest to develop drugs that offer a way of providing relief without providing a cure. It may sound sinister, but it is basic economics.

Further reading:
Hired Writers, not Scientists, Create Information for Doctors
Drug Altered for Profit
Fighting the Drug (Ad) Wars

Garbage Warrior....Sustainable Housing

The "Garbage Warrior" is a man named Michael Reynolds. Michael is a non-traditional architect who has been making houses out of non-traditional materials with his rag tag team of workers for the past 30 years in Taos New Mexico. He makes you question why we have been building houses roughly the same for the past hundred years.

The problem with being a radical thinker, like Michael, is that people often want to stick their fingers in their ears and not hear from you and some want to shut you up completely by barring your every move. The houses that Michael and his crew have built have been evolving in complexity over the past several decades and are self contained habitats that collect their own water, generate their own energy, provide food and process their own waste. With any evolving process, there are mistakes that must be learned from and used to produce a better next step. These mistakes nearly shut Michael down completely.

The people that worked for Michael built their own homes while other experimental homes were sold to people looking for something different in life. In the late 90's the Taos County government didn't like this. They stated that as a developer Michael had to provide electricity from the grid to these houses. They stated that he needed to provide water. He had to build roads. He also had to divide the lots up and sell them appropriately. It seems that bureaucrats are unable to see outside of the box and think about the future needs of humanity. In 2000 Michael gave up his New Mexico architecture and construction licenses because the State Architects Board of New Mexico moved to take his credentials from him.

Building houses out of trash such as used tires and beer cans seems just a little strange, so it is no wonder that stodgy old politician puppets of established industry would fight Michael's every move. It wasn't until the tsunami of 2004 that Michael and his team received his chance to make a difference and to prove his methods.

A small island that was all but destroyed by the tsunami requested that Michael and his team travel there and help them rebuild. The island had approximately 30,000 residents prior to the tsunami. After the tsunami they had roughly 7,000 inhabitants. The people were living in shanty towns and the government had to ship water to the residents. Michael and his team came in and built one of their sustainable houses out of the debris that was laying all over the island. The local people helped build the house and the knowledge of doing so was not only transferred to them, but to area architects and builders as well.

A fantastic documentary was made by Oliver Hodge showcasing this great thinker and architect of our modern times. The film helps demonstrate that in this rapidly changing world we need to listen to radical thinking people that are able to show us different ways of living. If we let governments and the systems we have built get in the way of experimenting and we dismiss people like Michael Reynolds, then we just may doom the human race. We need to embrace these people instead of trying to shut them up. This emotionally moving film proves that one person, no matter how unconventional, can make a positive difference in our world. Visit the Garbage Warrior film website. Visit Michael's company here. See a preview of the film below and a piece produced by CNN. You may just be amazed at how luxurious a house built out of garbage can be.

Have you Lost your Poetry?

In this 40 hour a week world where we plan our lives around our work, it is hard to gather our thoughts and take stock of our deepest emotions. It seems that a third of our lives is work, another third is sleep. The remaining third is fragmented between personal time and the work that we have to do to keep our households in order. Deep within us all is a pure human spirit that wishes to express itself. If you find yourself, on your free time, watching prime-time television as if you were a zombie controlled by some greater thought process, maybe you should break free.

Think about expressing yourself. Look deep inside your spirit and bring forward your own imagination. Stop mindlessly watching what others want you to watch. Go out there and make your own world. Take control of your environment, stop being scared of your surroundings. We all have the power to be greater than what we are told we are. You can be the positive influence you wish to be. Stop falling prey to the mass entertainment. You have one life to live and this is your opportunity to make a difference in the world. Go out there and do what you can to make this a better place for us all to live.

So, many of us fall into the trap of being simple pieces of some other reality instead of being a force to drive that reality in the ways that we wish it to move. Express yourself. In a world where we are all being forced into behaving the way that our employers wish us to behave, it is becoming harder to be ourselves. Before you fully drink the kool-aid, think about who you want to be. When you buy into the corporate world, you should understand that you are at risk of being cut free after you find yourself totally indebted. No matter how much you love the company you work for, they are in business to make money. You are just a piece of the machinery that will be rejected whenever the need arises. One day, you may be let go...the company will move on, and you will be left alone.

In the free time you have, take the time to be you. Reach deep within yourself and pull the creativity out of your inner self. Don't waste your evening hours watching prime time TV. How many of us find ourselves wasting precious hours of free time watching mindless entertainment? If you spend your night watching television to just go to sleep in order to wake up to go to work and then to watch tv later that next night, then you need to think about your life. You are more than your training and current circumstances. Think about your daily events. Are you just doing what everyone expects of you...do you feel empty? It's not about goofing off and not participating in the world, it's about being an agent of change and being yourself. Expression is the most important part of the environment we are now in. Do not fall prey to trying to fit in with the latest fads and styles...if you do, then you may be at risk of being manipulated by the people that are falling prey to the "group think" that is prominent in our culture. We all need to now think about being truly original and only come together as a whole when our deepest needs and desires are at risk of being destroyed.

The most important part of being human in the twenty first century is being yourself. Never let media control who you are. Take the lessons taught by your parents, your closest friends, and your own deepest feelings and move with those. Be honest to yourself and others. Do not listen to what you see in advertisement, on television, or what you hear on the radio, the Internet, or other forms of advertisement. Do not fall prey to the tactics of the mass media effect.

The most import thing is to think of your life. Are you yourself or are you becoming what your job expects of you? Take that and think of yourself again. Who are you? Are you your job, or are you something greater? We all have something more to give than what our jobs expect of us. If we go farther than what our jobs expect, then we will find that we are more fulfilled within our lives. When you die, what do you want to look back upon? What do you want your life to stand for?

As the song writer Bright Eyes writes: "Don't be a criminal in this police state, you better shop and eat and procreate. You got vacation days, and you might escape to a condo on the coast." The condo will last you about five years or so as you deteriorate and lose your mind in your continuing mental decline of old age retirement. Bright Eyes also writes: "To the deepest part of the human heart, the fear of death expands. Till we crack the code, we will always know, but could never understand...on a circuit board we will soon be born again and again and again." We spend our lives working to be left alone at the end as we wither alone and wishing that we had done more to bring meaning to our lives. If we all stand up and do more now, when we are young, then the world will be a better place for us all. Regardless of the future that technology holds for us, we are the generations that will create the next step. We should all strive to make the future an environment that is pleasing for all inhabitants. We need to make this a place of enrichment and fulfillment. Humans should have the ability to discover their own abilities without being used as pieces of a greater machine. Don't be part of a machine...go out there and make your world.

DARPA Funds Artificial Limb Research

DARPA is funding research into artificial limbs. These artificial limbs would be connected directly to the nerves of the muscles and controlled naturally through the brain. The researchers at John Hopkins are working towards bionic arms and legs that allow the user to feel the objects they are holding as well as the temperature of the object. This is part of a four year program that should end in 2009. The goal is to have limbs that can be controlled subconsciously by the user as natural limbs are. With the number of amputees on the rise due to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this is a much needed technology. Not to mention, the future cyborg soldier would benefit from this early adopter group.

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