Globalization - Justin Long

I've received the following "cute story" from numerous people on the Internet.

Joe Smith started the day early having set his alarm clock (MADE IN JAPAN) for 6 a.m. While his coffeepot (MADE IN CHINA) was perking, he shaved with his electric razor (MADE IN HONG KONG). He put on a dress shirt (MADE IN SRI LANKA), designer jeans (MADE IN SINGAPORE) and tennis shoes (MADE IN KOREA). After cooking his breakfast in his new electric skillet (MADE IN INDIA) he sat down with his calculator (MADE IN MEXICO) to see how much he could spend today. After setting his watch (MADE IN TAIWAN) to the radio (MADE IN INDIA) he got in his car (MADE IN GERMANY) and continued his search for a good paying AMERICAN JOB. At the end of yet another discouraging and fruitless day, Joe decided to relax for a while. He put on his sandals (MADE IN BRAZIL) poured himself a glass of wine (MADE IN FRANCE) and turned on his TV (MADE IN INDONESIA), and then wondered why he can't find a good paying job in.....AMERICA.....

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While I understand the gripe of the original author (whomever it may be), this implication of the story is that somehow things are better in other places than they are right here. This is obviously not the case. So, I've put together the following 1-paragraph "response" to this story. While both the original story and mine are lacking and inadequate in several respects to address the issue of globalization, I hope they make you stop and count your blessings.

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Joe Smith apparently has a place to sleep, which makes him better off than 1.3 billion people who have no adequate shelter. He's apparently healthy, which makes him better off than 2.2 billion people. He has an alarm clock, which he can read (better off than 70% of the world), and he has electricity (better off than 40% of the world). While his coffeepot was perking (with safe, clean water, which makes him better off than 2.2 billion people), he shaved with his electric razor (see electricity above). He put on clothes (which makes him better off than 1.4 billion people who do not have adequate clothing). He cooked his breakfast. With breakfast, he's better off than 1.2 billion hungry people who don't have enough food for an active working life -- and that doesn't mention the fact that he could cook it on a stove, not over firewood (and 1.5 billion people can't even do this, having no supply of wood). He sat down with his calculator (a technology to which more than 3 billion people have no access) to see how much he could spend today (and if he is poor, he joins 46% of the world in this category, but he is better off than 18% of the world who have no money at all and live in absolute poverty).

After setting his watch (better than 1.6 billion people) to the radio (better off than 43.5% of the world), he got in his car (better than 5 billion people) and continued his search for a good paying American job (if he has time to search for a job, he's better off than 1 billion just-coping people, is in company with 1 billion unemployed workers, not to mention the 900 under-employed labor who have no access to a job that pays good, or the 35 million slaves).

At the end of yet another day, he put on his sandals (see note above about clothes), poured himself a glass of wine (see notes about safe water and having any money at all to spend), and turned on his TV (better off than 2.6 billion people).

While he wonders why he can't find a good paying job in America, I hope he remembers that just under half the world is in the same position. I also hope he's grateful that he doesn't have to sell one or more of his children into sex slavery because he can't afford to feed them, he doesn't have to restort to prostitution himself (of which 2 million men do), he's not living under an oppressive regime (like 400 million people) or a racist regime (80 million). He can't be imprisoned for his political beliefs (unlike 1.2 million people), and he has freedom of religion (better off than 2.2 billion people) and full political freedom and civil rights (better off than 4.2 billion people). He doesn't live in a country that regularly and publicly employs torture (better off than 2.2 billion people), and he himself is not being tortured (better off than 120,000 prisoners). He has some education (which makes him better off than 850 million people with none). He's been immunized against disease (which makes him better off than 4 billion people).

He's not a woman - and this is no slight to women. It's just that his genetics put him out of a bracket that number 49.6% of the world, forms 37% of the paid labor force, heads 33% of all households, makes up 95% of all nurses, performs 62% of all work hours, yet receive 10% of the world's income, own just 1% of its property, and make up 70% of all poor, 66% of all illiterates, 80% of all refugees and 75% of all ill or sick.

I hope he counts his blessings and thanks God for them, and does something to bless someone else's life.

The Effects of Globalization: Counting Our Blessings Strategic Networks ARTICLE 10434

Joe Smith wonders why he can't find a good job in America, but forgets all of his blessings.

by Justin Long

Real Love - George MacDonald

 

I know now, that it is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another; yea, that, where two love, it is the loving of each other, and not the being beloved by each other, that originates and perfects and assures their blessedness

George MacDonald, Phantastes pp165

Eight(8) Duties of Fathering

EIGHT DUTIES OF FATHERING

 One: A father must cultivate a sense of Family identity

 Two: A father must demonstrate an ongoing love for his wife.

 Three: A father Must understand and respect his child’s private world.

 Four: A father must keep his promises.

 Five: A father must give his children the freedom to fail

 Six: A father must be the encourager of the family

 Seven: A father must routinely embrace his children.

 Eight: A father, if he’s going to build a relationship of trust with his children, must build it on God’s word and not on human wisdom

Grandmas Bishops Bread

1 ½ cup Flour 1 ½ teaspoon baking powder ¼ teaspoon salt 1 cup choclate chips 2 cups walnuts 1 cup dates 1 cup glazed cherries 3 eggs 1 cup sugar

• Grease angel food cake pan
• Mix flour, Backing powder, Salt, Chocolate chips, walnuts dates, and cherries until coated
• In large bowl beat eggs, gradually add sugar
• Fold in flour mixture pour into pan bake at 325 Fahrenheit for 1 hour 10 minutes

 

5 Spice Sugar

5 Spice Sugar

5-6 Tablespoons

time to make 5 min 5 min prep

5 tablespoons sugar

1/2-1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom

1/2 teaspoon ground corianderUse on French toast/Pancakes

Enough - Unknown

 

There is something perverse about "more than enough" Dot Jackson decided. 

When we have more, we never have "enough". 

It is always somewhere out there just out of reach. 

The more we acquire, the more elusive enough becomes.

Phil 4.11 I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content.

Quote from UNKNOWN

Majority - William Carey

One with God is a majority.

William Carey

Cultural Conflict - Alessandro Valignano

Thus we who come hither from Europe find ourselves as veritable children who have to learn how to eat, sit , converse, dress, and act politely, and so on. This is the reason why it is impossible either in India or in Europe , to evaluate or to decide the problems of Japan; nor can one even understand or imagine how things occur there, because it is another world, another way of life, other customs, and other laws. many things which are regarded as courteous and honorable in Europe , are here resented as great insults and injuries. Contrariwise many things which are here regarded as common uses of daily life, and without which no social intercourse is possible with the Japanese, are eclipsed in Europe as base and unworthy, especially in a religious community. Alessandro Valignano

Japanese Character and Culture, A group of Select Readings

 1962 Edited by Bernard S Silberman pg 287-288 University of Arizona Press

Where you Born That Way - George Howe Colt

Steel worker... Jim Lewis and clerical worker Jim Springer. Identical twins separated five weeks after birth, they were raised by families 80 miles apart in Ohio. Reunited 39 years later, they would have strained the credulity of the editors of Ripley's Believe it or Not. Not only did both have dark hair, stand six feet tall and weigh 180 pounds, but they spoke with the same inflections, moved with the gait and made the gestures. Both loved stock car racing and hated baseball. Both married women named Linda, divorced them and married women named Betty. Both drove Chevrolets, drank Miller lite, chane-smoked Salems and vacationed on the same half-mile stretch of Florida beach. Both had elevated blood pressure, severe migraines and had undergone vasectomies. Both hit their nails. Their heart rates, brain waves and Iqs were nearly identical. Their scores on personality tests were as close as if one person had taken the same test twice.

...

Studies of twins have produced an impressive list of attributes or behaviors that appear to owe at least as much to heredity as to environment. It includes alienation. Extroversions, traditionalism, leadership, career choice, risk aversion, attention deficit disorder, religious conviction and vulnerability to stress. one study even concluded that happiness is 80 percent heritable C it depends little on wealth, achievement or marital status. Another study found that while both optimism and pessimism are heavily influenced by genes, environment affects optimism but not pessimism

George Howe Colt, April 1998, Where you Born That Way, Life Magazine

Prayer - George MacDonald: Lilith

More than that I cannot tell you. If you know it, you know it; if you do not, you do not. Could you not teach me to know a prayer flower when I see it? I said.

I could not. But if I could, what better would you be? You would not know it of yourself and itself! Why know the name of a thing when the thing itself you do not know? Whose work is it but your own to open your eyes? But indeed the business of the universe is to make such a fool of you that you will know yourself for one, and so begin to be wise.

But I did see that the flower was different from any flower I had ever seen before; therefore I knew that I must be seeing a shadow of the prayer in; and a great awe came over me to think of the heart listening to the flower.

George MacDonald: Lilith

Mr Raven and Mr Vane holding a conversation over the flower from people praying in the little cemetery

Afraid of What - EH Hamilton

 

On the Odds - Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac

Heisenberg recollected a conversation among young participants at the 1927 Solvay Conference about Einstein and Planck's views on religion between Wolfgang Pauli, Heisenberg and Dirac. Dirac's contribution was a criticism of the political purpose of religion, which Bohr regarded as quite lucid when hearing it from Heisenberg later.^[47]:320 Among other things, Dirac said:

I cannot understand why we idle discussing religion. If we are honest—and scientists have to be—we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. The very idea of God is a product of the human imagination. It is quite understandable why primitive people, who were so much more exposed to the overpowering forces of nature than we are today, should have personified these forces in fear and trembling. But nowadays, when we understand so many natural processes, we have no need for such solutions. I can't for the life of me see how the postulate of an Almighty God helps us in any way. What I do see is that this assumption leads to such unproductive questions as why God allows so much misery and injustice, the exploitation of the poor by the rich and all the other horrors He might have prevented. If religion is still being taught, it is by no means because its ideas still convince us, but simply because some of us want to keep the lower classes quiet. Quiet people are much easier to govern than clamorous and dissatisfied ones. They are also much easier to exploit. Religion is a kind of opium that allows a nation to lull itself into wishful dreams and so forget the injustices that are being perpetrated against the people. Hence the close alliance between those two great political forces, the State and the Church. Both need the illusion that a kindly God rewards—in heaven if not on earth—all those who have not risen up against injustice, who have done their duty quietly and uncomplainingly. That is precisely why the honest assertion that God is a mere product of the human imagination is branded as the worst of all mortal sins.^[48]

Heisenberg's view was tolerant. Pauli, raised as a Catholic, had kept silent after some initial remarks, but when finally he was asked for his opinion, said: "Well, our friend Dirac has got a religion and its guiding principle is 'There is no God, and Paul Dirac is His prophet.'" Everybody, including Dirac, burst into laughter.^[49][50]:138

Later in life, Dirac's views towards the idea of God were less acerbic. As an author of an article appearing in the May 1963 edition of Scientific American, Dirac wrote:

It seems to be one of the fundamental features of nature that fundamental physical laws are described in terms of a mathematical theory of great beauty and power, needing quite a high standard of mathematics for one to understand it. You may wonder: Why is nature constructed along these lines? One can only answer that our present knowledge seems to show that nature is so constructed. We simply have to accept it. One could perhaps describe the situation by saying that God is a mathematician of a very high order, and He used very advanced mathematics in constructing the universe. Our feeble attempts at mathematics enable us to understand a bit of the universe, and as we proceed to develop higher and higher mathematics we can hope to understand the universe better.^[51]

In 1971, at a conference meeting, Dirac expressed his views on the existence of God.^[52] Dirac explained that the existence of God could be justified only if an improbable event were to have taken place in the past:

It could be that it is extremely difficult to start life. It might be that it is so difficult to start life that it has happened only once among all the planets... Let us consider, just as a conjecture, that the chance life starting when we have got suitable physical conditions is 10⁻¹⁰⁰. I don't have any logical reason for proposing this figure, I just want you to consider it as a possibility. Under those conditions ... it is almost certain that life would not have started. And I feel that under those conditions it will be necessary to assume the existence of a god to start off life. I would like, therefore, to set up this connection between the existence of a god and the physical laws: if physical laws are such that to start off life involves an excessively small chance, so that it will not be reasonable to suppose that life would have started just by blind chance, then there must be a god, and such a god would probably be showing his influence in the quantum jumps which are taking place later on. On the other hand, if life can start very easily and does not need any divine influence, then I will say that there is no god.^[52] 

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Dirac

Mania - Fermi about Teller

Fermi once said that Teller was the only "monomaniac he knew who had several manias."

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Teller