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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> We know what most humans want and what most Americans want. Want  
> deprived becomes pain. Pain demands political help. Politicians want  
> votes so they acquiesce as much as they can. So how to change human  
> nature? Inevitability. Until a problem is hitting us over the head we  
> Americans will not make meaningful changes. We will, as a society,  
> strive for what we perceive is the best life for us and our children.  
> For the majority, that means a paycheck. A paycheck means a job. I do  
> not see a viable alternative.
> 

This is all true.  Unless we are hit over the head with a problem, we ignore 
it ... hence the cooking of the numbers to convince ourselves that there is 
plenty of fossil oil and we are all happily employed in manufacturing jobs.  
And 
it is equally true that we are indoctrinated to view a paycheck (or 
entitlement check, or dividend check) as the only course of action, no 
alternatives to 
be seriously considered except winningthe lottery.

That hitting over the head, says I, is imminently close.  

But recall the primary message of the Buddha.  Human suffering does not arise 
because we don't have things, but rather because we want them.  To wit:  to 
my querries to my parents and grandparents as to why the Great Depression was 
so bad, they answered, "Becuse no one had any money."  But when I asked my 
great-grandmother, she said "Lord, child, no body in these hollers ever had 
any 
money!"  Her view was that the depression caused problems for her folk not 
because it kept them from having money, but rather it convinced them that 
they 
OUGHT to have money.

Like that you had the Enron employee/investors wringing their hands that they 
had lost half a million dollars when the company collapsed.  Turns out they 
had only invested $5000, the rest was fake inflation of the value of that 
investment.  Their unhappiness wasn't because they had actually lost half a 
million 
dollars, it was because the BELIEVED that they had money which didn't exist 
in the first place.

And like that the people who told us we who did not have a mortgage on our 
property were jealous because the home-debtor was making money hand over fist 
from their appreciating houses are not now unhappy because their houses have 
lost value, but rather because they imagined they were wealthy with dollar 
bills 
oozing out of the light sockets and spigots because their house was 
increasing 
in value.

We imagine that it is our God given right to leap into the saddle and go 
wherever we will and that should only cost us 5% or so of our income, and we 
can 
all take few community college courses and all become Supervisors of 
Muckification and Coordinators of Drivel and make the big bucks.  We will not 
suffer 
because we don't have those things, but rather because we desire them.   
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