So many people believe they understand. Do they?
There's only one way to fully understand anything;
Forget what you believe you understand, and learn.
If you wish to understand anything, Do this.
A Cup of Tea
Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912)
received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.
Nan-in saved tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then
kept on pouring.The professor watched the overflow until
he no longer could restrain himself.
'It is overfull. No more will go in!'
‘Like this cup,' Nan-in said.
‘You are full of your own opinions and speculations.
How can you understand anything unless you first empty your cup? '
Part I
Where things came from ..more or less
One thing that always amazes anthropologists whose job it is to unearth ancient communities, is the clear evidence of vast lines of trade between prehistoric civilizations. In North America seashells from the Gulf of Mexico made their way to Minnesota while arrowheads and flakes of flint found in southern Alabama originated from cliffs in Kentucky. Amber from the Black Sea has been found in Crete while 4,000 year old Minoan pottery has been unearthed in modern day Belarus.With an absence of national borders or common languages, prehistoric men and women went far and wide to not only trade but trade regularly, freely and peacefully. We owe them our sincere gratitude and reverence for many ubiquitous legacies they bestowed upon us through ancient trading practices.
By the time writing evolved, common weeds had already been cultivated into valued food products. They were as vital to prehistoric civilizations as they are to us today. We would be nothing without their contributions of wheat, rye, oats, barley, corn, rice and the Inca's resourceful cultivation of potatoes. Also from the times before written history came tomatoes, onions, peppers, spices, mined salt, squash, melons, beans, apples, pears, plums,peaches, grapes, cattle, swine, sheep, ducks, chickens, and geese and basic cabbages.
By the time men developed writing these crops upon which we still depend were well developed and spread far beyond their natural ranges. Wheat, originally an inconspicuous weedy grass of the Middle East, had been spread by unobstructed trade throughout Europe, Asia and North Africa. In the process it lost its ability to survive and compete in the wild, becoming wholly dependent upon the men who cultivated it.
In the prehistoric Americas another grass, just over knee high with a small cluster of as many as nine to twelve seed kernels, began its long transition into what we know today as corn, spreading far and wide from its homeland in central Mexico.
To help us get a deeper understanding of commerce in prehistory, you need only look to the variety of freely traded crops and livestock. All of which were traded far beyond their original ranges ~ all this and more, before the invention of writing.
A Babylonian farmer who may have run his domesticated ducks and geese through his wheat fields discovered they made easy work at of eliminating ravenous grasshoppers. This farmer would have had a definite advantage over another who hand fed kept his fowl kept securely couped. The first farmer who figured out that he could either break his back preparing a field or use an ox to do a better and faster job was the Bill Gates of his era. Just imagine the discovery that mud could be shaped and baked into pottery.
To push the point even further, aside from the Incas and their 16 varieties of potatoes, can you name one ancient civilization that did not rise from the cultivation of grains such as rice, wheat or corn?
Egypt? ~ Mesopotamia? ~ Rome? ~ Greece? ~
China? ~ India? ~ Japan? ~ Mississippian ~
North America? ~ Aztecs? ~ Mayans?
Maybe that mundane loaf of bread may
never look the same to you again.
..."And give us this day, our daily bread"...
The next time you hear those words take a moment
to thank the people who made that bread possible.
We owe them more than gratitude.
We owe them everything.
The Basic Flaw of
Centralized Control of Anything
Centralized Control of Anything
"I've never met a socialist who willingly worked in order to
give away the rewards of his endeavors to his own disregard.
Nor will you ever meet one.
However, you'll meet many who'll
extol the virtues of you doing it."
However, you'll meet many who'll
extol the virtues of you doing it."
Freedoms to excel, achieve and attain are the core principles of capitalism. They foster a competitive nature that encourages production of the best and most over the worst and least. Overproduction is a significant byproduct of freedom's inspired competition. Isn't it always better to have too much than not enough?
Lack of freedom, the result of any form of centralized control, extinguishes or diminishes the drive to excel by eliminating the full rewards for the individuals. Focus is diverted from individual progress in achieving and attaining once rewards for their labors are diminished. Underproduction is an invariable consequence of centralized control. What's in it for you to spend more energy than you have to produce enough to feed more than yourself and your family?
That's why massive famines and shortages have always and will always follow from even partially free markets to controlled ones. Look no further than the millions of famine deaths in the years after the Russian and Chinese communist revolutions. Due to malnutrition over a half century of malnutrition, communist North Koreans are three inches shorter in stature than their free market South Korean counterparts.
In no small part, a government and culture steeped in rigid centralized control is one reason the most scientific and technologically sophisticated civilization of 4th through 7th centuries never even came close to becoming a dominant world force.
As Europe devolved from the Roman Empire into Dark Ages, a near millennium ahead in its inventions, medicines and science, China stood. 'Stood' is the operative word. In spite of mechanical clocks, gunpowder, hand guns, printing presses with movable type, paper for writing and the toilet, many medicines, an accurate calendar, incomparable navigational advances and much more, China stood.
It was a case of trickle down stagnation. The emperor, ruler of the land was best best loved and admired for doing little, or even nothing but presiding as the center of the empire with all else revolving around him. The feudal society and classes were not only enforced by lords of the lands but by the predominant religions of China. Taoism, which means, 'the way', taught and embraced the concept that things would not change. What you were born into was what you would die being. That was the way it was in China.
Farmers cultivated fields belonging to landlords would only to take enough for themselves, surrendering all surpluses as rent. There was no profit, no reward in innovating and moving from a crafts oriented industry to any form of industrialization. Merchants could make profits however they would die merchants. Their invention of the compass never moved beyond being considered a novelty. As a result to their culture, most of their inventions languished short of their potential applications.
By contrast, consider the monumental impact of Gutenberg's printing press on western civilization in a mere two centuries. not one aspect of the western world escaped its influence. There's not one person in the western world today who would have the life they have had it not been for the innovations of printing in the western world. It changed western religions by making the Bible free from arduous hand copying and accessible in other languages than Latin.
As books became plentiful, learning to read became less an occupation only for monks and scholars. Ideas and philosophy printed in Italy could be read in France, Germany, England, Spain and several other nations, all at the same time.
In our age this means little. In the years when Gutenberg began printing, people were accustomed to waiting years for a popular hand copied book. Printing in western civilization began the Renaissance, the Reformation, and eventually the development of schools for students other than the elite.
(Trivia ~~ Gutenberg didn't originally plan to construct a printing machine. He was foremost a Goldsmith. His plan was to make a machine to mass produce stamped gold jewelry that at that time, was all tooled by hand. He adapted his invention for printing only when he was pressured to begin repaying the loans he'd received for his business venture.)
I've been laying the foundations of our society before you so you can eliminate one of the following. Pick one and imagine a world without its influence.
- The Printing Press and all it set in motion. No public schools. No newspapers. Unless you're one of the elite or royal, you'd currently be illiterate, unable to read this.
- Cultivated food and all it has brought about for the development of society. Get up each day and go forage. No supermarkets.
- Pottery, no plates, cups. That would in turn mean no need for knives, forks or the development of glass.
The Gowlands Steps, of Gibraltar
They're only symbolic to me.
I walk out of my way each day to go around them.
In his time, My grandfather scaled them daily.
His grandfather scaled them daily.
The grandfather of my grandfather's grandfather scaled them as well.
One day I want to feel worthy to walk on them.
