Wednesday, June 11, 2003

We've Changed Our Name

Two people noticed. There are a couple of reasons. On my home planet, rlbtzero, which is pronounced "Ray," means, literally, Raven Watches. On our planet, as on yours, Raven plays an important part of our mythology. Raven is the instigator; the catalyst. He is not a part of the system, prefering to remain on the edge of things, looking for opportunity. Nothing gets past him. He doesn't react to everything, but he notices. He has an opinion, but not many are really interested in the opinion. He knows that and he's cool with it.

I see that as a model for my own observations. No one is really interested in my opinion. I watch. I witness. The world's spiral into hell isn't helped or stopped by my observations and opinions. Or troubled by my judgment ("spiral into hell"). Actually that's more an observation than a judgment. As the competition for resources becomes more intense, the quality of life is diminished. For awhile, the advances in science, medicene, food production technology, etc., kept lifting us up despite the increasing scarcity of resources. When I was born, the population of the U.S. was around 100 million. We're at 260 million now, and the end is nowhere in sight. Houston, Texas had 100,000 people. What's it now, 5, 6 million? Same north-south freeway running through it?

Since we're a democracy (of sorts), who has a vision of how society is supposed to work based on some sort of equitable distribution of our resources? Should the distribution hinge on political organization as it does now, or should there be a more human wide approach to the sharing of resources? Who decides what's equitable?

My co-worker asked me on Monday how things were going. I answered, "I'm sorry the world is going to hell in a handbasket, but I'm doing alright." Can I be doing alright if the world IS going to hell in a handbasket? Are we not all connected?