Why the Economy Is As Undependable As the Weather
Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists?
- Kelvin Throop III, grandson of a likely fictional character of disputed origin, possibly Canadian (in other words, origin uncertain)
No matter where in the world people live, they all complain of the inaccuracies of their weather forecasters.
No matter where in the world people live, they are also feeling the effects of the economic downturn, despite the accumulated expertise of noted economists.
Why are weather forecasts so often wrong? In my country, Environment Canada (the government weather service) claims it is right 89 percent of the time. And it is, if you count only forecasts made within the previous three hours of any given time.
Weather and climate may follow general patterns, but they do not adhere to weather charts nor necessarily follow computerized climate models. As technologically advanced as we are in the 21st century, our meteorologists and climatologists know with certainty as much about the accuracy of their forecasts as doctors know about the human body. Which is very little despite their claims to the contrary.
Have you ever taken the time to watch dust moving around in a puddle or fog swirling on a summer morning? They defy accurate description. I have watched waves on the lake near where I used to live approach each other from opposite directions, then continue on by passing through each other as if the other weren't there at all. Shouldn't they cancel each other out? They don't. Waves are an effect of weather above them.
The economy of a country depends on so many factors that no one person or computer can keep track of them all. The current recession began when unethical bank officers granted mortgages to people who could not afford to pay them back, even though the interest rates were below the prime lending rate. The banks then sold these "loser" papers to other banks around the world, combined with good mortgage papers. Somebody had to pay. Turns out we all did.
Remember the dotcom collapses several years ago where internet startup companies collected fortunes with little more than a dream to sell? Or the Worldcom and Enron collapses (among others) where their executives stated profits and sales increases in the 30 percent range when they were only a fraction of that?
A great deal of the economy of a country depends on the honesty and integrity of those who move money around it. Stripped to its essentials, an economy functions on the greed and honesty of those with money. In the end, greed always dominates.
So weather forecasts are based on factors we don't even understand, while economic forecasts depend on the integrity of those with money. Is it any wonder that neither can be depended upon?
As for science fiction, some of it from the past may be seen in technology today?
Yet that's not the point of Throop's quote. His point is that many people will believe forecasts created by those who claim to be experts, while deriding technological and cultural forecasts from sources such as writers of science fiction. Science fiction writers don't claim to be experts.
Anyone who claims to have expertise in any subject will find followers provided that they can back up their predictions with good stories.
Weren't snake oil salesmen of the past successful because they told the best stories? Are our biggest advertisers today not successful because they tell the best lies that appeal to our vanity and need for social status? Didn't our ancestors believe the tribal chiefs and medicine men and women who told the best stories?
We tend to believe those who tell the most convincing stories, whether the stories have truth and validity or not.
So it rains on our parades and our retirement nestegg stocks tank. Our lives remain determined largely by our beliefs.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to grow children who believe what they can depend on.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Showing posts with label environment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label environment. Show all posts
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
What Kind Of World Do We Have Really?
People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession to their character.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, American philosopher and poet (1803-1882)
Think about it. That person who is so negative about the world, isn't he also a pessimist about his own future and his place in the world?
The loving mother who dotes on her children also looks on the world as a loving place, with bad guys being the exceptions not the rule.
The happy person sees happy people around him and finds happy situations even when reading world news.
The violent person can cite not just violent experiences from his own family while growing up, he can show you violence all around his community and the world.
A trusting person believes that the world operates on trust, while untrustworthy people are few.
Is your opinion of the world a confession of your character, as Emerson claimed? While the two are related directly, I believe that the relationship goes the opposite way to what Emerson stated. We see in the world people like ourselves. Those who are not like us seem to be the exceptions. When we don't see people like ourselves in our immediate world, we look for them in other places. Sometimes that means a move, a change of job or a change of partner.
Even in the face of apparently overwhelming evidence to the contrary, people will believe about the world what they want to believe. An optimistic person will see the world as a positive place. Nothing will console a negative person about what a hell-on-earth we live in and how no one should bring up a child in the present conditions.
Is the world really a great place with enormous possibilities? Or is hell something we live through each day of our lives?
It depends on what kind of person you are.
If you don't care for the world as it is, change your attitude toward yourself and those around you. You world will gradually become a marvelous place.
You don't have to take Emerson's word for it. Think about what you think of the world in general and about what you think of your own life.
It's true that life is what we make of it. It's also true that your world is what you make of it.
Live the life you want your life to be. The world around you will follow your example.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children with positive attitudes toward themselves and their world and need the tools to make it happen.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, American philosopher and poet (1803-1882)
Think about it. That person who is so negative about the world, isn't he also a pessimist about his own future and his place in the world?
The loving mother who dotes on her children also looks on the world as a loving place, with bad guys being the exceptions not the rule.
The happy person sees happy people around him and finds happy situations even when reading world news.
The violent person can cite not just violent experiences from his own family while growing up, he can show you violence all around his community and the world.
A trusting person believes that the world operates on trust, while untrustworthy people are few.
Is your opinion of the world a confession of your character, as Emerson claimed? While the two are related directly, I believe that the relationship goes the opposite way to what Emerson stated. We see in the world people like ourselves. Those who are not like us seem to be the exceptions. When we don't see people like ourselves in our immediate world, we look for them in other places. Sometimes that means a move, a change of job or a change of partner.
Even in the face of apparently overwhelming evidence to the contrary, people will believe about the world what they want to believe. An optimistic person will see the world as a positive place. Nothing will console a negative person about what a hell-on-earth we live in and how no one should bring up a child in the present conditions.
Is the world really a great place with enormous possibilities? Or is hell something we live through each day of our lives?
It depends on what kind of person you are.
If you don't care for the world as it is, change your attitude toward yourself and those around you. You world will gradually become a marvelous place.
You don't have to take Emerson's word for it. Think about what you think of the world in general and about what you think of your own life.
It's true that life is what we make of it. It's also true that your world is what you make of it.
Live the life you want your life to be. The world around you will follow your example.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children with positive attitudes toward themselves and their world and need the tools to make it happen.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Monday, April 09, 2007
Help! Let Me Out Of This Damned City
If only I could so live and so serve the world that after me there should never again be birds in cages.
- Isak Dinesen (pen name of Karen Blixen), author (1885-1962)
Is she really concerned about birds in cages or is this a metaphor for something much larger? Both could be true at once.
Birds are kept in cages because people want to be able to see birds daily. These are the only wild animals that are permitted in city residences.
If birds were no longer allowed to be caged and people still wanted to be able to see them, they would have to create natural environments in urban areas where birds other than pigeons and gulls could safely live and propagate.
That would mean planting many more trees than presently exist in many cities, building more parks that are larger than will hold a playground for small children and perhaps creating some bird-friendly locations for nesting.
Ironically, the kinds of wild animals that live in cities today tend to be those that we don't want, such as rats, raccoons and some skunks. Many large cities have more rats than people and about one raccoon for every four people. Most of the time these are out of sight, so city dwellers are not aware of their presence unless they become a problem.
Why would anyone care as much about birds as Karen Blixen does? Big city environments, especially those with a great number of living units above ground level, have created a disconnect between humans and nature. Children grow up believing that meat and produce must be manufactured in the back rooms at supermarkets. That there is never enough room for cars on the streets or in parking areas.
That people should naturally secure their doors with multiple locks because anyone could break in with only a couple of security measures. That many people will be mean to you, even bully you, no matter what you do unless you are as hard-hearted as they are. That no one cares about you or loves you except a precious few in your family, if you are lucky.
Many studies have shown that people who live most of their lives above ground--such as in apartment buildings and office towers--feel less connection with nature than those who have regular contact with the ground and who can see ground when they look out their windows.
Today in North America, though people live in all parts of the USA and Canada, 85 percent of the populations of those countries live in urban environments. Few people have regular contact with what those who live outside of the city would call nature. Those who live in cottage areas can testify how very little city people know about nature and the countryside and its inhabitants when they escape the city to their cottages. They abuse nature by trying to turn a natural environment into a suburban type property.
The Iraq war pits military personnel who have lived most of their lives in cities and who have been trained by superiors who dictate high tech and sophisticated ways to fighting the enemy against people who are mostly "of the land," even those who live in a big city like Baghdad. In a guerilla war where terrorism is the main weapon of one participant, the side that knows the land and its features will present a challenge that foreign city-soldiers can never overcome.
How can a city be made more countrified? For one thing, the need to conserve energy has resulted in many large city buildings with flat roofs turning these into gardens with flowers, trees and birds, and people who love every minute they spend in these rooftop Shangri-las.
We can develop more ideas about how people can engage in activities that are outdoors, such as devoting some parts of parks to garden plots where people can have permits to plant real flowers and real vegetables. These can also be built on the roofs of buildings with flat tops, resulting in a cooling effect in summer and a warming effect in the minds of those who use them. (They clean the air as an added benefit.)
Just like their ancestors did. Those ancestors didn't need birds in cages to feel a part of nature. They lived on the ground and felt part of it every day.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to bring us all down to earth, for real.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Isak Dinesen (pen name of Karen Blixen), author (1885-1962)
Is she really concerned about birds in cages or is this a metaphor for something much larger? Both could be true at once.
Birds are kept in cages because people want to be able to see birds daily. These are the only wild animals that are permitted in city residences.
If birds were no longer allowed to be caged and people still wanted to be able to see them, they would have to create natural environments in urban areas where birds other than pigeons and gulls could safely live and propagate.
That would mean planting many more trees than presently exist in many cities, building more parks that are larger than will hold a playground for small children and perhaps creating some bird-friendly locations for nesting.
Ironically, the kinds of wild animals that live in cities today tend to be those that we don't want, such as rats, raccoons and some skunks. Many large cities have more rats than people and about one raccoon for every four people. Most of the time these are out of sight, so city dwellers are not aware of their presence unless they become a problem.
Why would anyone care as much about birds as Karen Blixen does? Big city environments, especially those with a great number of living units above ground level, have created a disconnect between humans and nature. Children grow up believing that meat and produce must be manufactured in the back rooms at supermarkets. That there is never enough room for cars on the streets or in parking areas.
That people should naturally secure their doors with multiple locks because anyone could break in with only a couple of security measures. That many people will be mean to you, even bully you, no matter what you do unless you are as hard-hearted as they are. That no one cares about you or loves you except a precious few in your family, if you are lucky.
Many studies have shown that people who live most of their lives above ground--such as in apartment buildings and office towers--feel less connection with nature than those who have regular contact with the ground and who can see ground when they look out their windows.
Today in North America, though people live in all parts of the USA and Canada, 85 percent of the populations of those countries live in urban environments. Few people have regular contact with what those who live outside of the city would call nature. Those who live in cottage areas can testify how very little city people know about nature and the countryside and its inhabitants when they escape the city to their cottages. They abuse nature by trying to turn a natural environment into a suburban type property.
The Iraq war pits military personnel who have lived most of their lives in cities and who have been trained by superiors who dictate high tech and sophisticated ways to fighting the enemy against people who are mostly "of the land," even those who live in a big city like Baghdad. In a guerilla war where terrorism is the main weapon of one participant, the side that knows the land and its features will present a challenge that foreign city-soldiers can never overcome.
How can a city be made more countrified? For one thing, the need to conserve energy has resulted in many large city buildings with flat roofs turning these into gardens with flowers, trees and birds, and people who love every minute they spend in these rooftop Shangri-las.
We can develop more ideas about how people can engage in activities that are outdoors, such as devoting some parts of parks to garden plots where people can have permits to plant real flowers and real vegetables. These can also be built on the roofs of buildings with flat tops, resulting in a cooling effect in summer and a warming effect in the minds of those who use them. (They clean the air as an added benefit.)
Just like their ancestors did. Those ancestors didn't need birds in cages to feel a part of nature. They lived on the ground and felt part of it every day.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to bring us all down to earth, for real.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
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