Great ideas of the past continue to titillate our minds, but they no longer touch our hearts.  They have become intellectual toys rather than fundamental beliefs.  We reason about them but they no longer shape our lives.  They are in our minds but no longer in our bones.

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Belief that the information age and so called “virtual world” will be superior to the natural world are akin to belief that perusing a wilderness map is superior to a walk in a primeval forest; that reading a menu is superior to a gourmet meal; or that listening to reports of a town meeting is superior to participation.

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First came privateers and pirates, then commercial corporations.  That the first were freebooters outside the law and the second were legalized by nation states, materially changed the form but did little to change the function.

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If we were to define as material as that which endures, then such things as wisdom, reverence, generosity, empathy, humility and love would fill our minds and hearts, while physical possessions would be treated as the transitory trash they so swiftly become.

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We think we cannot live well without technology when, indeed, mankind did so for millennia.  What we do not know, is whether we can live well with it.  What we do know is that we cannot live at all without nature, and that much technology is destructive of it.  

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One of the greatest anomalies of nation states is the ease with which their highest officials become despots in the name of national security and the comfort citizens take in submitting to the despotism.

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We laugh at belief systems and societal organizations of the past knowing them to have been naive and flawed.  Societies in future will laugh at and scorn capitalism, free markets and nation states, knowing them to have been even more naive and flawed.  

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If you are brave and daring, act boldly and seek new heights.  if you are timid and afraid, act cautiously and descend to the lowlands.  If you are uncertain or indifferent, stay where you are and do nothing.  

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Most people do not want an equitable, just society that provides everyone a secure sufficiency.  They have been conditioned to accept organizations, laws and policies that force millions into abject poverty so a few can become obscenely rich, in the vain hope they will be among the few.

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If commercial corporations have their way, government will be largely compose of compliant sycophants willing to conspire with them to turn democratic ideas into a system of unrestrained, economic pillage and rape.  Come to think of it, they already have.