Washington is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting and the morals are deplorable. Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country.— Horace Greeley
And so, in that spirit, the mobs marched across the land, consuming, plowing, shaping and destroying everything in their path, until they reached the western limits of the land. And in that great energy, unsettled, unsatisfied, the mobs began to build great paths for their restless energies, and great settlements for their dreams. And if only the dreams do not become nightmares….
My ancestors gave me the gift of change, being able to see it, and to participate in it. Teachers and mentors in my youth opened my eyes to the evolution of society, constantly asking me “Why? What is the meaning?” With no great answers but many observations, I open this web log with this question: “Now that we are here, what are we going to do about it?”
In the vast geologic time that the earth has existed, (a billion years?) the human race has occupied a fly-spec on the time chart. Ten thousand years of “civilized” behavior amounts to one one-millionth on the time scale of the earth. Our studies show that other creatures that existed for millions of years became extinct. Our growth in this one one-millionth of time has been explosive – our success in consuming our environment is comparable to a cancerous growth ravaging a body of flesh and blood. On this earth of approximately 8000 miles in diameter, airborne life exists dominantly in a two mile layer (travelling in a vehicle horizontally at 60 miles per hour, you pass through that life band in two minutes). To put that into perspective, 2 miles out of 8000 miles is 0.00025. In that thin air film on the surface of this rocky ball are most of the plants and animals, including 8 billion humans madly eating everything, multiplying, and defecating their wastes into this thin film. Pond Scum!
In our near history, a group that we venerate as The Founding Fathers came up with a set of higher principles by which humans could live. Inspired by intellectual discourse during their time, they looked to design a society in which the average person was the most significant unit. By many debates and discussions they crafted a document by which social groups could conduct themselves “for the better good of all”.
This document is the Constitution of the United States. It consists of a Preamble that defines the spirit and purpose of the rule-set in the body of the Constitution. The Preamble is the purpose, the beacon, the guiding light of the ideas that The Founding Fathers came up with. The body of the Constitution is the rule-set that implements the principles in the Preamble. The rule-set structures how the authority for governance is divided and distributed among the three main acting authorities: the rule makers (Congress), the judges on the performance against the rules (The Supreme Court and judicial system), and the Executive – the group responsible for executing the rules. Also, the rule-set contains rigorous procedures for changing the rules, as well as removal of members of any acting authority.
Here is the Preamble, the principles that the Constitution was established to implement:
We the People of theUnited States,
in Order to form a more perfectUnion,
establish Justice,
insure domestic Tranquility,
provide for the common defence,
promote the general Welfare,
and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,
do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
I dedicate this web log to the discussion of the Principles in the Preamble to the Constitution. … PoorBoy
5/17/2014
It’s been a while since I sat down to record comments on The US Constitution. A whole lot of life and death has come and gone. My ideas continue to evolve as new experiences work their way through me.
The Death of a life partner of 40 years definitely is a game changer. The impacts and changes on the surviving partner leave me, the survivor, feeling that a large part of my programming is gone. Incomplete! Ripped Out!
What do I do now?
Well, I use my analytical prescient skill to look at the patterns around me to try to make sense of what is going on. Seriously, global warming is just by-product of a basic human failure: we just can’t talk to each other.
Don’t worry about the Constitution discussion, it’s still there to be had.