The Climate Fad

                                                                                  written 14 December, 2025

                                                                              published 21 December, 2025

 

            In the last few months, articles from pundits, nationally known to local, have announced the end of the climate crisis, declaring it was just a bankrupt liberal fad that fell out of fashion.  

            However, scientific consensus is the climate crisis results from combustion of fossil fuels, which changed atmospheric chemistry, inexorably heating the planet to levels never before experienced by humans, let alone human technological civilizations.  Effectively addressing this problem requires radically reducing further combustion, and aggressively removing what has already been added to the atmosphere, returning to atmospheric conditions we know can support humanity.  This threatens fossil fuel industry profits.  

            The president states the climate crisis is fake news (along with the affordability crisis, the Epstein files, and the rule of law).  Despite his declining mental capacity, he is still a bully with immense power.  Any governmental agency related to climate has been closed, gutted, or staffed with climate deniers.  Responding to economic and legal pressures, businesses have backed away from effective climate mitigation, and corporate media reporting on climate matters has diminished.  Climate concern wasn't a fad that faded, but was deliberately destroyed by oppressive political policy.

            Because we are in late-stage capitalism, where concentration has distorted the economy, making profit more important than product, or even life, the fossil fuel industry responded with well-funded denial.  Inspired by the lethal tobacco companies, this involves attacking individual climate scientists, climate research, and science in general.  Massive disinformation, death threats, lawsuits, pressure on the university employers, and defunding further research, are all on the rise.  The result is less information by design, combined with such chaos from our distractor-in-chief, that attention has been diverted.  If you can't even afford food, electricity, housing, or health care today, who cares if the entire life support structure of the plant is slowly dying.  Future concerns are swept away by immediate problems.  This is not an accident, but by design.

            The deniers say there is no evidence of a climate crisis.  It still gets cold in the winter.  There is still winter ice at the poles.  What is the problem?  But anyone who looks deeper is concerned, because the evidence is there to be seen.

            A recent UDJ article about a coastal abalone poacher, mentioning the season had been closed for the last 8 years, due to a lack of abalone.  The abalone died because 95 percent of the kelp it feeds on has died, eaten by an explosion of purple urchins, the result of a massive die off of the sea stars which eat urchins, due to a pandemic of sea star wasting disease, the consequence of unusually warm ocean waters, that resulted from the global heating of the atmosphere due to the changed chemistry.  

            Greenland has been in the news this year, as the president wants to either buy, or steal it, for America.  One of two non-demented reasons is access to rare minerals as the warming planet thins the Greenland ice sheet.  The second reason is control of the increasing Russian and Chinese shipping through the Arctic Ocean.  What was once totally impassable is now open to container ships for a growing part of the year, because the ocean is warming.

            Record breaking oceanic warming fuels stronger hurricanes, which intensify rapidly, going from tropical storms to category 5 hurricanes in a single day, leaving residents little time to prepare, increasing damages and insurance rates.

            Climate denial makes money for a few, but we all pay the price.  Our present energy policy pours hundreds of billions into nuclear (the most expensive) and natural gas (the most climate damaging), while killing the renewable industry which is the cheapest power to install and addresses the climate concerns.  While it takes a decade or more to build a gigawatt scale nuclear reactor, the rest of the world installs a gigawatt of cheap solar every day, because not everyone in the world is beholding to the fossil fuel industry, 

            The future of a sustainable technological civilization is renewables.  China is already a leader in production of solar panels, battery storage, and EV vehicles.  But US leadership is retarded on this, working for the benefit of the billionaire class.

            So, the next time you read, or hear, the climate crisis is an obsolete fad, recognize they are either short sighted and ignorant, spouting something they were told, or they are lying to you, because they are making money off the existing system.

 

 

 

Capitalism and Democratic Socialism

                                                                                    written 7 December, 2025

                                                                              published 14 December, 2025

            On November 19th and 20th, 2025, Daily Kos (dailykos.com) posted essays under the name Trenz Pruca, excerpted here, clarifying the conversation about capitalism and socialism.  Specific definition of these words is important, as confusion comes from people using different definitions for the same words, talking past each other in circular debates, when trying to communicate.

            A conventional business school definition of capitalism is: private ownership and free markets.  But Adam Smith's theories were an idealized form, assuming such things as equal access to funds and information, which don't exist in the real world.  So, capitalism can't be considered as just mindless commerce, independent of social impact.  It needs human feedback if humans are to survive. 

            History shows that unrestrained capitalistic systems change over time.  They begin with competitive growth, consolidating with maturity, become dominated by financialization with age, and eventually decay into oligarchy, with eventual collapse.  This is a logical progression, not a defect.

            In the early stages, capitalism is typified by small business, entrepreneurship, competition, risk and reward, and a rising standard of living.  In the later stages capitalism is dominated by monopolies, financialization, rent extraction, political capture, and wealth concentration.  Both can be called capitalism, but their impact on society is very different.  

            In a similar way, some people believe socialism means: governmental ownership of everything, a command economy, with bureaucratic central planning.  This is properly called state socialism, and the failed former Soviet Union is an example.

            Recognizing the natural life cycle of capitalism, and desiring to prevent oppressive oligarchy, societies can take actions to keep capitalism from digesting itself.  This takes the form of taxing capital, regulating corporations, investing in public services and unions, and instituting strong anti-trust and anti-corruption laws.  Such regulated capitalism is what the rest of the world calls democratic socialism.  Examples include the Scandinavian countries, and certain eras in New Zealand, Canada, and even the US.

            In the US, we have been taught to associate all socialism with authoritarianism, a result of Cold War polarization and business school indoctrination, a simplicity that benefits the wealthy.  But democratic socialism is capitalism with guardrails.

            The US is clearly in a late stage of unrestrained capitalism.  Almost every sector of the economy has concentrated into monopoly control by a few large conglomerates.  More than half of all rental housing is owned by a few corporations.  The financialization of the economy is overwhelming, shifting from producing quality products to maximizing shareholder value.  Wealth inequity is at a historic high, and labor unions are relatively weak.  Regulatory agencies have been captured, and money influences politics to the level of corruption.  This is not Adam Smith's capitalism, but a system near the end of its life cycle.

            In contrast, Scandinavian countries are working examples of democratic socialism, with vibrant markets.  Individual firms are privately owned, working in competition, encouraging entrepreneurship.  However, essential services are publicly or cooperatively owned and universally available.  Government regulates capital, limiting the concentration of wealth, protecting political equity from corruption by extreme wealth.  Unions are strong, and nobody confuses human rights with "handouts".  Capitalism powers the system, but democracy determines the direction.

            Where we have monopolies and mega corporations, they have a mix of private, public, and cooperative businesses.  Our profits are diverted into speculation and corporate buybacks, while their profits reinvest in social systems like healthcare, transit, and housing.  While our firms regulate politics, their politics regulate markets.  We see concentrated ownership of everything and they have broad based ownership.  Our economy protects capital with public bailouts, they allow poor business to fail without destroying the society.  America falls lower on measures of happiness than Scandinavia.

            The issue is not about markets, but about power.  Who controls the surplus, sets the rules, or avoids the risks?  Who writes the laws, funds the politicians, or decides who fails?  In late-stage capitalism, the answers are: capital, but in democratic socialism the answers are: citizens.

            "Capitalism is like fire, brilliant, dangerous, and transformative, so societies have three choices: let it burn out unchecked (oligarchic collapse), extinguish it (authoritarianism), or manage it (democratic socialism).  The United States choses the first, and Scandinavia choses the third.  The societies that flourish will be the ones that treat economics not as theology, but as gardening: tending the healthy growth, pruning the dangerous overgrowth, and remembering that unchecked systems, like unchecked fires, consume everything."

            Do we have the wisdom, and will, to change?

AI, Salvation Or Destruction?

                                                                                  written 30 November, 2025

                                                                                 published 7 December, 2025       

 

            Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere, and expanding quickly.  Every Google search now has an AI option at the head of the list.  About half of all new entries on the web are now AI generated.  Students have easy access to AI answers for questions, and AI generated essays are now common at all levels of education.  AI bots can do your shopping and routinely handle making reservations, needing only your credit card and login information, allowing you to do other things.  

            AI previews job applications and are increasingly part of online medical advice and psychological counseling.  A significant number of people have AI chat buddies, particularly teens alienated by social media. 

            Computer code is written by AI.  Complex evaluations, such as reading medical images or calculating how a DNA sequence will fold into an active protein, are accomplished more rapidly by AI than by humans.  AI is essential to self-driving cars and trucks, and AI enhanced drones have changed the balance of power in war.  

            Hundreds of billions of dollars are pouring into AI data centers and their support infrastructure.  Over the last 6 years, this river of money has about doubled the stock market valuation.  The heart of this frenzy is NVIDIA, now the most valuable company on the planet, which produces the complex chips essential to AI progress.  On average, over the last 6 years, NVIDIA stock price doubled each year.

            It is indeed a brave new world.

            However, there are down sides, even as AI works apparent miracles.  Students focus on obtaining an answer, rather than cultivating the process of deriving an answer themselves.  The more a person depends on AI for answers, the more their capacity for creative thinking diminishes, with measurable deterioration in brain structure, reducing IQ, leaving them more stupid.  The displacement of workers, ranging from vehicle drivers to computer programmers, is creating turbulence in the economy.  Mid-level management positions are disappearing.

            Furthermore, AI tends to hallucinate, or fabricate (lie!).  Experts in the field say this is endemic to the structure of AI, not just a bug.  AI generated governmental reports, full of misinformation, have made headlines.  Numerous lawsuits have been filed claiming AI chatbots encouraged suicides.  AI medical assessments are biased against women's health issues.   

            As more socially critical infrastructure systems, such as power, water, and telecommunications, are turned over to AI, humans become less involved in operations, and are therefore less prepared for any problems that emerge.  Hackers, from bored teenagers to malevolent nation states, use AI to enhance computer scams, malware development, and fraud.  There is concern AI itself could turn on humanity as a logical conclusion.

            AI data centers demand massive amounts of power.  The industry is growing rapidly, but constructing power capacity takes time, so AI boosters submit multiple power claims, unsure where an actual site will be developed.  Estimated power increases range from 15-50 percent, stressing power providers who must make long term plans.  With so much money behind it, power prices are irrelevant to AI, but real people living near proposed centers see electricity rates increasing by double digits.  Because AI needs uninterrupted power, other uses may face rolling blackouts.

            It is proposed this power surge will be supplied by natural gas and nuclear power.  But natural gas is becoming more expensive, and large turbine delivery is slowed by supply chain constipation.  Billions are being poured into nuclear: restarting decommissioned reactors, building new conventional pressurized water reactors, and the promise of Small Modular Reactors (SMR).  However, there are only a few nukes to restart, new conventional construction takes a decade, and SMR's are still mostly nonexistent.  Since the AI power demand is immediate, the AI boom is thrown into question.  

            Fear Of Missing Out on the expected trillion dollar economy means many companies are trying to be first, in an industry that has yet to show it produces an economically viable product.  80 percent of AI companies have never made a profit, yet still ask for billions more.  Talks have begun to get government guarantees: socialist support for this capitalist adventure.  

            Each week there are more articles suggesting this economic surge is a bubble, doomed to pop.  Since the basic economy is already struggling, when the AI economic bubble collapses, the economic shock will be widespread.

            If AI succeeds, our people become more stupid and unemployed, and if it fails the economy goes into recession.  It's a 21st century miracle.

  

 

 

 

 

 

What We Know

                                                                                  written 23 November, 2025

                                                                              published 30 November, 2025

 

            At a Science and Non-Duality conference, a UC Berkeley professor of mathematics once said, "There are two things we can know for sure: I am, and something is happening.  Everything else is just a story we tell ourselves."  

            The two things are direct personal experiences.  By our belief, we make the stories we tell ourselves into a potent reality that shapes our experiences.  But the infinite nature of the universe, and the finite limitation of any story, means all stories are either wrong or incomplete.

         Mark Twain said, "It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so."

            Dr. Gabor Maté, who works with trauma survivors, defines a trauma as something bad happening to you, or something you need, not happen to you.  He figures as many as 90 percent of the population has suffered trauma.  What keeps people stuck in dysfunctional behavior is the story they told themselves at the time, imperfectly trying to understand their situation, which is still active after the actual event is long gone.  His successes involve helping people rewrite their internal story.

            Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist who suffered a massive aneurism in her left brain, the primary seat of the ego, describes the event in her book "My Stroke Of Insight".  She experienced losing all her personal history and capacity for sequence or language, but became aware of a profound peace and connection to everything everywhere.  She got medical attention in time, and over her eight years of recovery, she was able to examine the stories that had once controlled her life, editing out most of those that no longer served her.  

            We are all a collection of stories, some laid down even before birth.  Our native language sets patterns of perception below our level of consciousness.  Our family dynamics, our culture, our religious orientation, all tell stories that draw lines, make definitions, and shape our experience of what is going on.  Across the globe, one of the most fundamental stories is the illusion of separation, which often expresses as greed, hatred, and violence.  

            Religious organizations, even those founded by prophets preaching unity and love, eventually accumulate material wealth, and to preserve it, often shift to promoting separation and domination.  Hundreds of millions have died, and many more impoverished, because religious groups claim to have the exclusive truth, ordained by God, thereby justifying slaughter and oppression of the other.

            Men feel entitlement over women, a story of misogyny thousands of years old, even embedded into religious dogma, disempowering half the population, and traumatizing children for hundreds of generations.  Superficial skin color is the root of racist entitlement stories, because anyone different is considered suspicious.

            Our economy proclaims the rich are entitled over the poor, insuring wide spread misery, anger, and rebellion, making enduring peace just a dream.  To sell products, businesses tell lies in the form of advertising.  To protect profits, businesses tell lies to cover corruption and defects.  

            A person locked into the story of separation works only for their own gain and has few, if any, true friends.  Our current president typifies this, and our county, and even the planet, suffers as a result.  But we all manifest some of this same separation story, because this is how we have been raised to a great extent.  We know we can do better.  

            We can begin by examining the stories we have accumulated over time.  Some near the surface may be easily examined, and changed.  Deeper stories are like the water we swim in, and not easily noticed.  However, if we pay attention in life, reality reflects our stories back to us as we encounter the world, for life is like a mirror.  We get back what we put out, both from our conscious and unconscious being.  

            At the least, we can apply critical thinking, and begin examining stories as they are presented to us, rather than just embracing them whole.  This is good advice for dealing with Internet scams, and it applies to life in general.  Does this story actually help me, or improve my experience of life?  Does this story align with other information I have come to trust?  Does this make me feel better, or more at peace in this moment? 

            We are expressions of an infinite world, and are much more than we have been led to believe.

 

 

 

 

Learning From History

                                                                                  written 16 November, 2025

                                                                              published 23 November, 2025

 

            Black swan events have low probability, but very high impact.  Because the frequency, magnitude, and duration of these events are uncertain, it is difficult to plan for resilience, or calculate the cost.  However, we can get some information from history.

            The Cascadia subduction zone stretches from Ferndale, CA, north into British Columbia, Canada.  This is an area of geophysical plate motion where part of the oceanic crust is being forced under the lighter weight continental mass of North America.  Subduction zones, due to the physics and scale of the masses involved, produce the largest earthquakes on the planet. 

            The entire Cascadia fault last ruptured 324 years ago, estimated as a magnitude 9.2 event based on Japanese tsunami records.  Geophysical investigation has found that over the last 10,000 years, the entire length has ruptured 20 times, with intervals ranging from 110 to 1,150 years.  The southern portion has ruptured twice as often, with intervals ranging from 40 to 720 years.  We have now gone longer than 93 percent of the known times between earthquakes in the last 6,000 years.

            Large earthquakes make the planet ring like a bell for several days.  Seismologists report a Cascadia event could trigger motion on the San Andreas fault.  The northern portion under San Francisco hasn't moved since 1906, and the southern portion under Los Angeles hasn't moved since 1857, both were magnitude 7.9 events.  A Cascadia/San Andreas combined disaster could affect the entire west coast of the United States, costing hundreds of billions, requiring years to recover.

            Beginning in the December, 1861, two strong atmospheric rivers hit both northern and southern California dumping 10 feet of rain over 4 weeks.  The central valley was flooded 20 feet deep, which didn't clear out for 6 months.  164 years ago, the area was relatively unpopulated.  Such an event today could cost a trillion dollars, displace millions for the duration, and take untold time to recover.  These inundations have occurred before, with intervals ranging from 51 to 426 year, some greater than the 1861 flood.  On a warming planet, storms carry increasing water content, making inundation events more frequent and extreme. 

            In September, 1859, the Earth was hit by a strong solar flare: an electromagnetic storm known as the Carrington Event.  When a magnetic field passes through a loop of wire, an electric current is induced in the wire.  This is why electric motors and generators work.  166 years ago, telegraph systems were just being installed, creating loops of wire many miles long.  The solar flare induced such large currents in these loops, that sparks flew from the telegraph keys, and the system was able function without any batteries.

            Since then, the national electric grid has been constructed, with many more miles of wire forming loops.  If such a flare was to hit the Earth today, the induced currents could blow out the large transformers that are essential to the operation of the grid.  A modest geomagnetic storm knocked out power across a wide area of Quebec in 1989.  There are about 55,000 transformers in the US grid, and destroying as few as 9 critical ones could black out power across the country.  These transformers are all custom built for their specific location, and delivery time is measured in years. 

            Society today has the expectation of constant electricity, but is dependent on an electrical grid which is ageing, fragile, and occasionally stressed carrying even the normal load, in a world that can change very quickly.  Systems that worked before electricity no longer exist, or are unable to carry a civilization of so many people.  If electricity went away completely, 90 percent of the population would die. 

            Any of these three natural disasters, without even considering hostile human activity, could disrupt our electrical supply for an unknown duration.  These natural events have already happened, and we know they will happen again.

            While atmospheric river and space weather forecasting can give a few days warnings of flooding and solar flares, earthquakes are essentially unpredictable.  We could have a quake before you finish reading this article, or not for another century.  In the face of this reality, it is prudent to prepare for what is possible, even if we can only lessen the magnitude of the impact.  The technology for local power resilience not only exists, but is the cheapest power to install.  

            Do we have the will to act while we still can?

 

 

Blessing The Rain

                                                                                    written 9 November, 2025

                                                                              published 16 November, 2025

            My entire life, I have been a left brained, plan-acholic, living primarily in the world of concept.  I have been educated in science and trained as a mechanical engineer, with a rewarding career.  But I am also driven by curiosity about the world.  Over time, I became aware of the limitations within the western scientific paradigm, specifically, the consideration of consciousness.

            I define consciousness as the combination of awareness and volition: input and output.

            Western science had to dig out from under the lethal dogma of the Church.  In order to thrive, science limited itself to just objective reality.  This perspective of the physical world eventually prevailed, but abandoned serious consideration of subjective reality.  Consciousness, if considered at all, was described as nothing more than a consequence of material complexity, a view still widely held in western biology today.

            A little over a century ago, two revolutions in western thinking shook the world: psychology and quantum mechanics.  Psychology recognizes that what we think affects our experience of life, and that our waking, self-conscious, mind is but a small part of a larger constellation, containing individual and collective subconsciousness, and an overriding super consciousness.  Quantum mechanics recognizes material reality is both a particle and a wave, arising from a vast unity of energy.  We experience particles or waves depending on how we choose to examine the world.  Consciously observing physical reality changes it, challenging the assumption that consciousness arises from matter.  

            Eastern science understands consciousness transcends material reality.  I suspect this is because eastern religious thinking is more inclusive, accepting there may be many understandings of the divine.  This is not to say there are no eastern fundamentalist fanatics, but there is more institutional tolerance than in the west.

            Our experience of material reality can be described by four dimensions, three of space and one of time, but modern physical theories consider 10 or more dimensions, most of them beyond our direct experience.  Chaos theories of disordered physical systems postulates stable patterns in higher dimensional fields.  There is more to the world than just our waking experience.

            Each level of dimension has a new quality associated with it, not available to lower dimensions.  A line (one dimension) has extension, while a plane (two dimensions) also has area.  Volume has density, and time adds endurance.  We can consider consciousness the quality of a higher dimensional form, which transcends and includes all the lower dimension forms we experience as matter.  Thus, material reality resides within consciousness.  

            Remember, what is normally considered consciousness is really only the small self-conscious part of the larger quality of consciousness.  Whomever we think we are, that is actually only a part of something much larger.

            But this is all just words: logic chopping.  Is there any objective proof of any of this?  

            In 2004, Masaru Emoto wrote the "The Hidden Messages In Water", which chronicled his efforts to demonstrate that proof.  As described in Wikipedia, "his water crystal experiments consisted of exposing water in glasses to various words, pictures, or music, then freezing it and examining the ice crystals' aesthetic properties with microscopic photography".  The resulting pictures showed water exposed to positive thoughts and words formed elaborate, symmetrical crystals, while water exposed to negative thoughts and words formed asymmetrical, relatively simple crystals.  He found the two most positive words were Love and Gratitude, qualities that show up in all spiritual traditions.

            Of course, mainstream science has dismissed this work as pseudoscientific and eccentric, the same dogmatic rejection early scientists received from the Church, but without the lethal consequences, which shows some form of progress.

             I have chosen to embrace Emoto's work, and live my life as an experiment.  I am grateful to live where it still rains each season.  I feel drawn to experience the rain as often as I can, especially after the long dry summer.  This last week, during our first strong rainfall, I sat on our covered deck, thanking the rain with each inbreath, and blessing it with each outbreath.  I could hear the rain pounding and experience the energy of the storm.  I imagine this blessed rain flowing into the groundwater, and on downstream, enhancing everything it touched, and could feel my connection with all life.

            Does it matter?  Who knows.  Objective proof is impossible.  But I feel better, perhaps helping heal the planet, if just a tiny bit.  Imagine if we all did this?

 

 

            

Crispin B. Hollinshead lives in Ukiah.  This and previous articles can be found at cbhollinshead.blogspot.com. 

 

Antifa

                                                                                    written 2 November, 2025

                                                                                published 9 November, 2025

  

            My father was antifa (anti-fascist) years before my birth.  He was one of 50 million Americans trained and armed to fight against the previous malignant narcissistic authoritarian, who was then stomping around the globe.  They were victorious.  While my father survived the war and procreated our family, he died from consequences of his fight 10 years later, and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.  He would be sad to see authoritarianism now waving the American flag.   

            But capitalism and fascism share the same illusion of exclusive gain and control.  Hitler rose to power in 1933, and many US companies profited doing business with him, ignoring the morality of his social activities.  Even after Pearl Harbor, a few still did business in Germany.  

            Exclusive gain is an illusion because the world is fundamentally whole.  It is significant that every spiritual tradition on the planet has some form of the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have done unto you.  This is not about morality, but describes the appropriate actions to take in a unity reality.  

            The quantum mechanics of western science has come to the same conclusion, understanding material reality is not just particles, but has a wave form manifesting from energetic unity.  This is validated by technologies like nuclear weapons, computers, and solar panels.  

            Since everything is constantly arising from the same energy field, how I treat the so-called other, affects me as well.  The pursuit of exclusive gain requires ignoring that fundamental unity.  The resulting adverse impact eventually corrodes the entire society. 

            In our country, the stock market reaches new heights each week, but most of the value accrues to the few at the very top.  Meanwhile, more people are out of work or underpaid, food and energy prices are rising, and health care is becoming unaffordable, if it even exists.  When essentials become more expensive, all other consumption decreases, and the economy becomes unstable.  This is further driven by the changing global energy and climate realities.

            At the individual level, the illusion of exclusivity is the foundation of our ego.  The stronger the ego, the more detached we become, disconnecting from others, our community, and the natural world we depend upon.  This has been a human challenge for thousands of years, having the inertia of a life time of programming from families, cultures, and religions.  

            We can see a cautionary example at the very top of the federal government, a man driven so exclusively by his ego, moment to moment, that he has no constancy, no enduring commitment to an ideal or any other person or group, taking credit for everything, but responsibility for nothing.  The destructive consequences are already apparent, and are growing worse with time.

            Hitler died when he was 56, still physically and mentally in his prime.  But he was so identified with his ego, that he believed his personal defeat should be reflected in the whole country.  Shortly before he killed himself, he ordered his generals to destroy all the remaining civil infrastructure, essentially killing what was left of Germany.  His generals, motivated by compassion for the future of their people, disobeyed.

            Our leader is older, nowhere near good physical or mental health.  In his deterioration, rather than accepting his failure, he might also decide to destroy the country.  Unfortunately, technology has advanced, and he has unimaginable destructive power at his disposal.  Perhaps our military leaders will have enough compassion to avoid this fate.

            Despite our efforts and desires, we can't insure a positive outcome on the national scale.  But in unity, we are each a reflection of our leader, affected by our personal ego.  Although this disconnects us from the larger reality, each individual has the power to choose how to respond in every moment.  For however much time we might have left, we can choose to follow a different path.  By choosing to intentionally practice kindness, compassion, and respect, we cultivate a conscious connection to not only other people, but to all living beings, even the inanimate physical world.  

            Despite the apparent chaos we see today, there is an evolution of human consciousness already in process, as people increasingly experience the wholeness of reality.  As more people know this, experience this, and align their lives to practice this, the world changes.  It may be easier for some than others, but we can all do this.  Without such a cultural change, nothing else really matters.