Irrational Focus

A very simple way to look at many of our world's problems is in terms of 'control'. There are plenty of people out there that want to control others. Some people allow this, but often many do not. When control issue arise, both sides feel justifed in their agenda, both put significant effort into the brewing conflict. Sometimes control issues are justified. We live in large collective groups for which we need to abide by a common set of principle and rules. This benefits all of us, but not everyone realizes it. So we'll always need to have people in a controlling position to enforce the rules and deal with those who go against them. It is easy to understand that for an issue like 'murder' this is a very good thing.  Sometimes control issues are are problematic. Some people think that things would get better if they personally had even more control. If they could just control the little things, keep all of the people in line, then our world would be a happier pla...

I feel guilty. It's been years since I last ranted about the irrational nature of our modern world, yet some readers desperately hang on waiting for a post. I wish I could say that in the interim we've managed to fix the world, correct the injustices and become a rational global society so there is nothing left to write about, but that's pretty much the opposite of what has happened. Rather, bad economics saw us slip a little farther down the notch of insanity, while most of us tried to hide from the madness. As a species we seem to pride ourselves as being "intelligent" but then we go off and do the stupidest things. We may know more than our ancestors, but we seem incapable of applying that knowledge collectively to better our lives, our planet or even ourselves. We keep buying into that next vile of cheap snake oil in the hopes that "this time it really will cure us" without every really considering that our problems are always caused by 'buying s...