Sports Psychologist

 You may wonder how, with the best politicians money can buy, we can't seem to take much effective action when trying to deal with things like the widening wealth gap, maddeningly expensive housing and health care, and the ever growing 'hate gap'.  That these problems are world wide as much as country wide hardly ticks on our radar because we tend to be increasingly self centered.

In the book we're currently reading, The Brothers K, a minor league baseball team is visited by the parent team's resident team psychologist with the intent, pretty much of any team psych-meister, of bringing the individual members closer to each other by increasing interpersonal awareness and understanding of individual differences.

Can we get a national team psych builder ?

Trust

 Abe Lincoln was considered quite a story teller and one of those brings up his description of the United States in the condition in which he found the country....that is, a collection of two kinds of states...those states who allow the ownership of slaves and those who don't allow slavery.  He said (approximately)  "it's not quite one thing, and not quite another."  Since Abe's time, the race question has undergone a long and very gradual transition, mostly for the better, but the past 20 years have seen increasing political and social division that threatens to split this country, if not as violently, certainly as thoroughly, as did the question of race.

When I was a kid, I always had the sense that my dad trusted about everyone and everything.  He trusted the people around him, he trusted people in business, and he trusted the people in government.  He trusted the products he bought, the food he ate, and society in general to be a Good Place.  While he wasn't particularly gullible, or any more so than many small town people of the era, it just seemed that he didn't want to be bothered with doing a lot of Mis-trusting.  Being mistrustful consumes energy and really doesn't add much to the enjoyment of life.

Fast-Forward to today....it seems that mistrust is pretty much the order of the day.  Sure, we still trust most of the people we know, but the past several years seem to have seen an explosion of mistrust.  The list is fairly extensive and includes a lot of entities and people who were on our list of Most Trusted.  And it can be quite confusing to sort it all out.

A few generalizations and contradictions.  We mostly trust our personal doctors, but distrust, thanks to CoVid, the CDC, the WHO, any government medical officer, CoVid vaccinations, the medical establishment in general and, by extension, a lot of the people who don't feel as we do.  We mostly trust the politicians we think are on the right side of the fence, but distrust every one of them who seem to disagree with us....and, by extension, a lot of the people who don't feel as we do.  Some of us trust the oil companies, the pharmaceutical companies, the mining companies, the food industry and the financial system as providers of a huge share of jobs and the infrastructure of modern society, while just as many of us distrust them as major contributors to everything from addiction to pollution and environmental degradation to the lopsided political and economic structure that is fueling even more mutual distrust.

It's been suggested that I suffer from the fallacy of "things used to be a lot better".  I don't think that's true because I'm fully aware that many things Are better, but I'm also quite aware that some things are Not as good as they used to be.  I'm even aware that many of the things I think are Worse would be called Better by a lot of people.  Going into listings of such things would take too much time and belabor the point,  The point is that until we try to tackle the issue of trust, we won't be moving in a positive direction any time soon.

'Nother Day, 'Nother Dollar

A smaller, more efficient government is often proposed, but what else will combat a few private people owning most of the world's resources But a strong government ?  Efficient ?  Yes !  Small ?  Probably not That small.  But it's about doing things that make some sense.  Corporations work almost entirely for profit and not to help most of the population.  Let's limit their power, both financially and politically.

I'm a conservative liberal....I want to conserve most of the world's resources and Not make those resources the tools of private and often greedy individuals.  Do I want to give up my way of life ?  Not really..... but, as much as I enjoy computer games, movies with messages, the convenience of a cell phone, and all the other techy shit we have.....I'd give it all up if the world population chose to do logical things like raising their own food, repopulating rural areas and depopulating urban ones, and moving towards a recycling economy.

It's the rich battling over resources that cause half the wars....and other folks battling over religion causes the other half.  It's Not people who just want to raise a family or have a life who go to war....they're just Used to fight them.

Elect Me !!

 Apparently no one read the last line of the last post, and if they did, it wasn't taken seriously.  Good job ! 

 While I truly believe electing me as president would be a good move, I'm not expecting the idea to gain much (any) traction.  Still, it will be fun to spend a few minutes, maybe a few each day for awhile, pointing out some things I've noticed or come to believe.  I'm not trying to convince you of much of anything other than "maybe there's a way to fix a pretty broken system."

Suggestion #1 - Pretty much everyone who has run for or been president in recent years fails the "Catch 22" test...defined as "If you want the job, you are, by definition, unfit to hold the position."  It's a powerful place to be, and if you want that power, you should definitely not have it.  Yes, there are ways to get people not interested in holding power, we're just not using any of them.