OBSERVING THE UP SIDE from Murph
I’m writing this on Sunday, June 8. This morning I read an article on Zerohedge
that asserted that we spend too much time on the doom information rather than
looking at the “fact” that economic data has some positive aspects. http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2014-06-07/doom-gloom-sells
Now I will readily admit that I tend to look at the negative
side much more than the positive side of the information I see on a daily
basis. I have noticed that I am seeing
more articles and analysis’ claiming that things are getting better. The central argument seems to revolve around
government data on housing, employment, and GDP and a few other metrics. These articles do not even broach the idea
that maybe the data is manipulated to look positive and is in reality not
positive at all. It comes down to
whether you put trust into government bureaucracy’s honesty in publicly
reporting their findings. I also recognize
that in the popular press, doom sells, especially if there is blood
involved. I will also admit that not
everything I look at is negative at all.
There are folks out there that are trying to make things better, even
the popular press has some positive stuff that I believe actually is
happening.
However, in the MSM, there is a huge amount of information
that is left out that is distinctively negative. Any of us that read or listen to other than MSM information can
compose long lists of very negative stuff going on that is not reported in the
MSM, or very minimally, and almost always of very short duration. The very real question, is how much of the
information, both positive and negative, is factual.
One of the advantages of getting old is having a lot of
years to compare present and past events and consequences. Even though I sometimes wish it weren’t
true, situations do change, constantly.
We all have our perceptions on the past that we consider “better” than
the changes we experience in the present.
I am not naïve enough to look at all changes as negative all of the
time, even if I don’t like those changes.
As expressed in the previous post, I tend to look at the consequences
inherent in those changes. Examples; I
do not like the consequences of poisoning the land with pollution and caustic
chemicals despite whatever temporary advantages I experience from it being
done. In a longer time frame, it sure
appears to me to be damaging and having catastrophic effects. I can’t believe that there are no long
lasting effects that are going to be catastrophic to humans and the biota of
this planet in scattering depleted uranium over large areas of land. Or, the indiscriminant use of herbicides
and pesticides that ARE LONG LASTING, I emphasize long lasting, because despite
the propaganda put out by the companies selling the stuff. If any of you have read the information put
out by Monsanto and Dow, to name only two of the biggies about putting these
chemicals on the ground and into the food supply, you know what I mean. The suppression of research and refusal to
deal with long-term effects is astounding to me. Oh hell, I forgot, the long term effects compared to short term
profits means that long term loses almost every time. Silly me.
On a positive outlook, most of the positive stuff, IMO,
seems to be happening at local levels.
Our area does seem to be interested in home production of food. IMO, this is a good thing. We have been battling for 8 years now over
ground and surface water contamination.
There are many conflicts of interests on this issue. But one thing the community can agree on is
that we do not want to contaminate the water.
The arguments center around how not to contaminate. There are large amount of communities in
the U.S. that are in the same bind. In
our case, the government bureaucracies have declared a problem that does not
currently exist and on an emergency bases formed public policy that is, and has
been for 8 years now, very detrimental to the community. Property is not selling; jobs are near non
existence and ALL because of these public policies. All of this is coming from the Department of Environmental Quality
(the DEQ state bureaucracy). All of
their public policy is based on very non scientific conclusions, a whole bunch
of faulty assumptions and I suspect some greed thrown in and most definitely
job protection, by their own admittance to me. Despite there being really great folks in the area that we are
very much friends with, if we had known about what was happening around this
single issue, we would not have moved here.
The result of feeling pressured by circumstances to make a decision
without sufficient time to find out about such issues. We keep meeting more folks that were caught
up in the same trap; lack of time, financial resources and reluctance to do due
diligence before making a decision.
Freeacre and myself have noticed a distinct escalation of
complexity in our daily lives. Not that
we embrace this complexity, but that it is imposed on us by governmental forces
and the financialization of everything.
We spend an enormous amount of time dealing with paperwork and getting
the needed information to do so. It
didn’t used to be that way. This
complexity of compliance is an escalating problem that is distracting people
from very pressing problems that need to be solved. Most of these issues have fairly simple solutions, but hell no,
lets make it so complex that folks have neither the time or ability to sort it
all out. I talked to a state
representative a week ago that seemed to feel that 8-10 years of working on a
problem was not unreasonable and should be expected, despite the damage it
does.
So yes, I find it difficult to see the up side on what is going
on locally and the country as a whole.
In fact, it sure appears to me that our situation nationally and
globally is deteriorating despite the happy talk that is showing up these days.
