I’ve gone from ramblings to scrambling trying to think up witty introductory bits in our online conversation… view the preceding post here. The little engine that could is sleeping.
- the only constant is change – east end: London graffiti (Photo credit: mermaid99)
OK I will start, but I can’t guarantee the next post won’t be on racism. A lot of silly things going on in the world at the moment, perhaps worst of all I saw an article on the segregation of African migrant children in Israel, some say they have built separate schools for them to attend, others say it isn’t true. There are 8 year old kids working in gold mines in Tanzania, and a blog I just read where the author mentioned she doesn’t own slaves so she’s not racist or something like that. I need to stay right away from that stuff 🙂
I agree with your thoughts on instant gratification, if the expected lifespan of a human was 3 days, then I could understand the emphasis on instant gratification. I think if we humans keep on with this approach there might well be only 24 resilient, thinking humans left on the planet and everyone else will be co-dependent….hmmm…am I talking about the future or now? It’s like we’ve forgotten how we learn.
Why is it that we don’t get born already being able to walk? Why can’t we learn to pole vault just minutes after we have been shown how? Is it because we haven’t refined our bodies enough with medical or technical innovations or figured out how to circumvent the physical laws of the universe (whatever they are)? Is it because of lack, must we do something to fix it, or is it our greatest gift?
I didn’t get all the way through Guns, Germs and Steel, but what I did read made a big impact and if I find my copy I am probably ready to get back reading it soon. I think environment has a lot to do with it, but I wonder whether it really gave long-term advantage to those with faster technological advancement. Although some may be in a position of so-called advantage even to this day, they may not actually really have an advantage. All conditions must remain static for any advantage to be sustained and if I was a betting man, my experience would tell me to bet on the side that says change is the only constant.
In our social structures and organizational systems we haven’t fully allowed for the new information, what we now understand about the physical universe, to guide our decisions. We have not taken up the call yet, but when we do I believe we will need to draw on a wide repertoire of skills and styles of thinking to regain a sense of our relative position in the universe and our relationship to each other.
Have a great day, I’m off to sleep.
View the response to this post on Cloak Unfurled here
Loosely related articles
- Instant gratification (gritify.us)
- Why Agrajag? (read excuses here)
Jambo Robyn 
We have spring here today, yay. You will get fall tomorrow, no?
Saturday night is the absolute worst night for sleeping when you live in a block of apartments. Conversely, it is the best night for writing and thinking and general time-wasting. Off to read your response now. Thanks!
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We mark the season change with the equinox so Fall won’t technically start until Sept. 21st. Usually leaves don’t start turning until October although it’s not uncommon to have them turn in late September so Sept. 21st works well. 🙂
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Really – I had no idea the US was running the seasons.
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Haha…not running the seasons and not just the U.S. Canada as well…I thought everyone marked seasons according to the equinox or solstice. Although it makes sense that a country like Australia might not since the northern portion is equatorial and thus doesn’t really have seasons except rainy and dry from the monsoons, and the southern portion is subtropical thus spring would start earlier than the equinox. I imagine temperature already start to get hot well before the solstice there.
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Well you learn something new every day. We would do it on the first of the month because of the UK, no doubt. Now I gotta find out what they are doing in Europe and everywhere else for that matter. This is a supreme failure in my school education.
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Well mine as well. I had no idea that seasons would be determined elsewhere by something other than the astronomical positions between the sun and the earth. Now I have to do some searching too. lol
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OMG! Aren’t you the very definition of meteorological man?
Myopia, myopia, everywhere,
There was nothing left to see
Now the seasons turned on their head
Has utterly delighted me!
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It seems that many locations use climatic averages for their seasons. So the 3 warmest months are considered summer, the 3 coldest winter, and the ones in between spring and fall. Fascinating! 🙂
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Ummm, we are doing it again…LOL
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I am the meteorological man. lol I mean in reality it’s no different than here. If we determined our seasons the same way, tomorrow would be our first day of fall. Because December January and February are our coldest months. I think for many September is the month they first start associating with fall, because you do start to get that chill in the air at night. But yes I do have to say that I prefer a celebration that is more pagan. lol Positions of the sun, moon, stars. These astronomical markers that determine the change in season remind that at one time watching the movement of the heavens was all one could do at night, and those earliest of scientists who tirelessly watched the change in shadow length as the sun reached it’s zenith during the day or as the sun reached it’s highest and lowest point throughout the year. Waiting for things to be in the exact same position in the sky. Wondering when the very careful observers noticed that the Earth wasn’t going to make it easy for them by taking 365 days to revolve around the sun (or more likely at that time thinking the Sun was revolving around them!).
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I just love the fact that we were both so confidently incorrect!
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LOL Now my ponderings of the first day of fall and the globally experienced 12 hours of light and dark won’t be as exciting to you. You’ll be like “First of all this is the Southern Hemisphere and the seasons already changed! Write about something else!” 🙂
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Well I was going to suggest that you do up a post on what you just discovered… It has instantly changed the way I think about all kinds of things. Amazing!
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Will do. 🙂
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