$4 billion for a war with no enemy?

Mandy Potankin is on Colbert tonight, oppressed.  He says we need "a new paradigm".

That sum could go a very long way towards educating the world's disadvantaged, marginalized, and opressed.

Lack of, or poor, education is clearly the biggest problem the world's population faces.  Ignorance encourages hatred and fear, which then incite violence.  I have been saying since the 80's that the real chant of young people in disadvantaged and war-torn countries is, "We want our MTV".  Sadly this desire for wordly goods and associated global perspective is denied those who could actually use it to advance their own messages of peace and commonality.

Sadly, in many parts of the world, particularly those with restrictive religious tenets, the concept of education is itself under fire, literally, especcially for girls.

My One-minute movie about the Boko Haram in Nigeria is only one extreme example.  In our own country, we fan fear with the increase of mass shootings and the associated proliferation of guns.  The fear of people "not like us" causes events like targeting Sihks and other Asians who at first glance may look like Muslims because of their garb.

Where does it stop?  In the 60's and 70's we feared nuclear annihilation, but those potentially responsible were easily identifiable and located, and their motives clear.

Now it is far more like Orwell's 1984, including "doublespeak", supporting the sociological perspective known as conflict theories. Conflict theories detract from ideas of society being naturally in harmony, instead placing emphasis on political and material inequality as its structural features (which we seem to be suffering from now).





 

standing

My doc said something a cople weeks, ago, that was so zen-like it was funny.  And it was, but in a completely unexpected way.