Letters to the Editor
skybird
Published Letters: 7
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Issue of world population growth
[Read the article: Earth to PETA]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yes, the world population continues to grow but only half as fast as it did in 1963. The reason is that the population of European countries has been dropping significantly since the 1990s. The big gains in population are in big Asian countries as well as the southern hemisphere of the Americas. The United States has increased only slightly, mostly due to the red states who continue to have more than replacement numbers of children. The blues states populations are falling at near-European levels.
The point isn't so much the raw number of breathing bodies born on the planet as the life style these bodies practice. We all know how much more planetary energy it takes to live a "developed world" life than a rural tribal existance. The amount of red meat we consume has significant impact. Other huge issues are how many cars and homes we own, how many travelling we do, how much stuff we surround ourselves with, how many taxes we are assessed to keep our society going, and how many services we demand.
People can sip their beer and argue for population stabilization till the cows come home (so to speak) but that's just so much verbal methane . The issues raised are complex and not easily addressed. Beware the simplistic bromide.
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Ron Paul interview
[Read the article: "The message is so powerful, in spite of my shortcomings"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Just want to say I'm a senior citizen who has voted Democratic all her life. It has been a big relief to encounter the campaign of Ron Paul and know there is someone I can enthusiastically support, based on his experience, reputation for ethical politics, healthy philosophy of self-reliance, and his substantive platform of ideas for stabilizing the Ship of State. Our country is being eviscerated by a swarm of inept policies, including the Iraq war, The Middle East, No Child Left Behind, and our unsupportable national debt. Obama simply doesn't have the experience, and Hillary is coming across as a woman so hungry to enter the room to "Hail to the Chief" that she is pandering right and left. Plus her cheek-to-cheek reliance on her cheating husband, Bill, the brilliant politician cum opportunistic liar, to catapult her once again into the White House, gives me the shivers. I want to vote for someone I can trust. Ron Paul? Why not. Go, Ron!
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Make your Meaning
[Read the article: The atheist delusion]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The meaning of our entire existence is a mental construct. The idea of God is a mental construct. A dream can have life-changing meaning for us, even as it exists only in our mind. So can the idea of God. Those who find themselves constructing the meaning of their lives to include a diety, heaven, hell, commandments,liturgies, etc, are free to do that, and free to seek out others who have similar beliefs. The meaning is in the actual acting-out of one's mental constructs. What makes a mature personality is that the belief system is benevolent, and the believer accepts responsibility for the implications of their thoughts, feelings and behaviors.
John Haught is rattling around in a 19th century mental state that assumes the inner world is somehow a disciple of the outer world. It's the other way around. Each person's personal views give the world of nature its meaning in his/her own idiosyncratic way. Taken all together, a numberless series of personal beliefs delivers up to humanity our various religion systems which must, if one is intellectually honest, include the religion of "no-religion", i.e. atheism.
That's all there is to it.
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The Sadness of Our Time
[Read the article: My big, fat, unpaid credit card bill]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thinking it's OK to live beyond one's means is America's mental illness today. Of course we can have it all; the tooth fairy exists! It's like a drug. The feds are doing exactly THE SAME THING by proposing to give working people "free money" to spend on themselves -so as to rescue our economy! Now there's setting an example for you. A responsible government would have staunched the flow of dough into Iraq years ago and would be taking care of America's business: schooling, health care, infrastructure. Am I the only one who remembers a time when America could legitimately claim adult stature, when assuming responsibility for one's actions was the pride of its citizens? My immigrant grandparents, who loved this country more than their ancestral home, would weep if they knew.
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Family feud
[Read the article: I'm having a European family feud]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Expressing hot anger directly to an offender is never a good idea unless you are intending to end that relationship permanently. Try the following process: write out your grievances in a hot candid letter or two addressed to the offender, expressing everything you feel in vivid detail. It may take several letters of rage to dispel your feelings. Here's the important part -
DO NOT SEND ANY OF THOSE ANGRY LETTERS. Save them or throw them away. The writing process will gradually calm you down enough that in a few days you will be able to take a long-term perspective. Then you can decide what to do next. If you want the relationship to continue, as is usually the case with family members, write a diplomatic statement that expresses your feelings briefly, without blame, add a little mea culpa perhaps, followed by hopes/suggestions for better future relations between you. Indeed, ask the other person for their suggestions in that regard. Often they've been as frustrated and upset as you. By inviting them to relax, you may actually give everyone confidence to work things out. Or maybe not. In any case you have become part of the solution, instead of the problem. This process has worked wonderfully for me.
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Towel off, lame critics
[Read the article: Does Oscar hate his own smell?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Wilson's bouncy/delicious piece of criticism really made my day. Phooey on the nay-sayers who pooh-pooh this kind of writing: energized writing they will likely never come close to replicating. I laughed, I cried. Great job, Clintra!