Today, yesterday's news is still very much on my mind - too much of which has not been good. This is a time when I would suggest that no nation take its own regions for granted. In other words, quit making local regions fragile and dependent on government handouts. Quit allowing central bankers to destroy the destinies of younger generations. Quit supplying the friggin war toys to local police forces, local separatists or whatever they call themselves. Just do it.
Instead, give people the right to help themselves economically at home. Allow citizens to rebuild their lives in the ways that count most. How can nations encourage their local economies to become the positive growth of the future, which others would in turn seek to emulate and gain hope from? How might local economies be assisted in those goals?
Recent gains of the twentieth century need not be forgotten, if they can only be made real in the lives of individuals and the communities one is actually a part of. Knowledge is the wealth we have to make this possible. But first, no one can afford any more to isolate knowledge as though it were a scarce commodity. Doing so has already started a chain reaction around the world, which needs to be stopped now.
Too many areas in the world are becoming places which citizens somehow need to escape just to live a good life. They especially seek to escape to those places where we have carved out public monuments to "special" knowledge sets which supposedly matter more than any other. When we pretend that some knowledge obliterates other "contenders", entire societies are forced to make decisions as to what is important, which in turn forces them to turn their backs on much of what is valuable in the world. Think this doesn't matter? Think of the families which turn their backs on one another, when they disagree as to which knowledge is even important.
In the twentieth century, countless varieties of product flourished, which came from every conceivable imagination and place. Because this was product separate from the use of our time, it held a special freedom which lifted the potential of all nations. But the product which was connected to our time use and place of residence, did not have that same freedom to benefit from widespread innovation. Places which were once bastions of knowledge and culture, became more about the prosperity of regions or lack thereof, as locals became hostage to whatever limitations were imposed. In local economies, imagination and innovation were given short shrift as groups focused on standards which everyone was expected to emulate.
Even as I decry the folly of nations, I have an idea where the folly stems from. Once, nations were able to overcome the shackles of small mindedness and exclusionary tendencies, as they sought to uplift their own citizens with all the potential that innovation and technology held. But over time, nations have given in to the limited mindset which says one has to exclude in order to survive.
Life circumstance is too important to leave in the hands of planners, developers, government officials and ruling elite. Even as knowledge use has become the tool by which to overcome oppression and despair, it remains tightly held by those who see little benefit in bestowing true wealth on entire populations. Once, it was not so easy to make the connection between stinginess and greed in knowledge use and whether nations might be able to prosper for the long run. Now, the connection has become impossible to miss.
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