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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (27372)	12/28/1998 10:36:00 AM
From: Rick Julian	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Steven, I observe that people who do address systemic issues are generally not given praise and publicity. Like Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr.? ______________________________________________________________________ So you want to focus on people who make things "better" on a systemic level. Problem is, "better" comes at a price. The industrial age made things "better" and initiated the dissolution of the family. For the first time men were separated from their wives and children, leaving their agrarian, family based roots to work in factories. This was the first step in a fundamental shift whose later stage effects we are now witnessing in our lifetimes. Then women wanted their fair share of this systemic "progress", so they too left the home to exert their independence and children are now raised by proxy. We now have more "stuff" than ever and everything is shiny and modern--everyone is feeling "actualized" and "empowered"--really should result in a better "quality of life" huh? Look at the divorce rate, our crime statistics, the rate of suicide among children. Mass transportation made systemic, fundamental change in our ability to efficiently ship products and people around the world. Companies grew, expanded their geographical presence and people became able (and were asked) to take jobs across the country. The multi-generational family suffered a blow and has nearly become obsolete. Aged parents are now left in nursing homes, where in earlier times they were able to play a vital role in the nuclear family. Modern medicine effected systemic change. We're able to keep these older people (someday ourselves) living longer. But they (and we will probably) generally live longer lives of isolation (even amidst a crowd of geriatric strangers in a "home"). We seem to be so focused on the horizontal plane of our existence. How long, how much . . .yet give too little attention to the vertical plane--the height and depth of our duration, its quality, the meaning and value of our experience. So there was this little wrinkled old lady in the slums of Calcutta who for 40 years comforted the dying in one of the poorest areas of the world, and while we in the west lived our opulent lives of bigger, better, faster, and more, she gathered diseased, half alive people and gave them a sheltered bed and a hand to hold at the end of their lives. Meanwhile there's a little wrinkled old lady in a hospital ward in America whose life has been extended thanks to modern medicine. She never sees her children--they do call occasionally (and soon at a lower rate due to internet telephony thank God!) She stares at the walls and the occasional mylar balloon that's been delivered and says to herself "Only in America, only in America." We should all be so proud of ourselves and our progress. Can't wait to share it with the rest of the world. Clear? Like a mud puddle. Rick [sorry for the poor organization of this rant--I've got a pile of work staring at me. Do hope you catch my drift though.]