I've decided that the only answer to all of this, is to teach the children of what Keith calls the "ruling cliques" and what Barry and Ed call the "Power Seekers." Have any of you read Jay Haley's book: The Power Politics of Jesus Christ?
Happily making money doesn't take much intelligence, as noted by the Gypsies of Romania who became rich after the fall of Communism. http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/04/kings-of-the-roma/ If you work hard, refuse to give up, accept amorality in your life and can count, you can make a fortune almost any place in the world unless you are a member of a despised caste. Even then, consider the Gypsies who have their own caste system. As Keith points out, England may be the exception to that rule. Belonging to a clannish hard working, committed small group that helps each other makes it even more likely you will prosper. There are to many groups in the US for me to name for that. But every now and then one of the hoarders get stopped by the wall of reality. For example, an indifferent New York Mayor Giuliani who stereotyped the ghetto and had no compassion at all, except the compassion of Ayn Rand, got prostate cancer and faced his death. Suddenly, he gained some understanding about a lack of personal control over his life. But after he recovered, he regained his indifference for political use. Then 9/11 happened and all of the city services that he had set up in the Twin Towers were destroyed plus he almost died when the towers came down. His arrogance had put them all in one visually obvious place tied to world trade and his belief in the building's strength made him locate his emergency center in the lobby of one of the buildings after the attack. After the building collapsed he was again a compassionate conservative, until he had to make his run for President and the immensity of the melting pot, that is the Republican party after Nixon absorbed the racists, made him switch back to the line that eventually made Mitt Romney fail. That belief about the 47% that Romney thinks are shirkers and unworthy "entitlers." So payments to Indian on reservations for land is today called a "welfare entitlement" by the Republicans as is Social Security that we elders have paid for all of our lives. It's not entitlement, it's insurance and a savings plan. We call such self serving imperialists yonega. The word for them in Greek is the root word that forms the basis for the English word "Idiot." "Idiot Yonega" is a redundancy. Our great, great grandfathers created a dance to help us deal with our own impotence in resisting the Yonega invasion. It's called the Booger Dance (later called the "Boogie Woogie" by the Jazz folks). It speaks of the Booger's venal nature that removes them from the realm of human beings and places them in the world of mere two leggeds. Frankly, it was all we could do as they washed over us, stole everything and never learned Cherokee so they just inferred everything about us from their own heads. Since they controlled the printing presses, [they stole ours and it's still in a government warehouse] they controlled all of the information to the American public about us with a couple of science exceptions and one American Poet. Two scientists (Mooney and Gilbert) did learn to speak Cherokee but they were such hard headed science types (not believing anything but what they saw in front of their noses), their inference was minimal, as was the insight about what they collected. The other was the American poet John Howard Payne who learned the language, wrote about our worldview, and documented our religion. But, (like the greatest American philosopher C.S. Peirce,) Payne's writings about the Cherokee have barely been published and is housed still in the Newberry Library in Chicago. Peirce is en-libraried at the University of Indiana. The Newberry library where Payne is housed is far away from the Cherokee children who would benefit. Remember, we were forcibly removed from our language, religion and culture by law for almost a hundred years [1883-1978] and four generations of children. At the Jewish Seminary where I teach the Foundations of Professional Vocalism, there are tales like this as well as the living grandchildren of those who changed it, about the Hebrew language, after the founding of the modern state of Israel. The stories resonate and are very moving. With the advent of the wealth from the gambling, we have just begun this journey ourselves. It's a disgrace that the Lakota have been forced by the state of South Dakota and federal government to either sell the center of their religious world, their "temple mount" and their "Jerusalem", for capital or swear a vow of poverty and starvation. Thus far they have chosen to remain Lakota and follow the religion they hid in the backwoods for so long, as the Federals would put them in jail for practicing it. Nominally they were forced by the Federal government to become either Catholic or Anglican. That was their mask. They knew their own Sundance Religion intimately and they came to know both Christian religions as well, but once the Freedom of Religion Act for American Indians was passed and signed by President Jimmy Carter, they chose to go back to the older religion of their souls given to them by the Lifegiver, the Creator of All. This complicated story told so often about so many of our Nations, has been a constant source of pain and conflict within our communities. REH -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Saturday, April 13, 2013 7:30 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] Gelt Even if something were done about it, it would rise again in a different form. It does make the point that if you want the politically powerful to listen to you in our present-day democracies, you have to buy their attention. Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: <[email protected]> To: "RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION" <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, April 12, 2013 7:26 PM Subject: Re: [Futurework] Gelt > Ed, you may find the following links interesting, given your recent > interpretation of Nietzsche. It's enough to make one a bit paranoid! I > don't think there's anything to be done about this stuff in the US right > now, but perhaps one day... > > https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/01/31/us/politics/super-pac-donors. html?_r=0 > > https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/superpacs.php > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Futurework mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework > _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
