Today’s Interview
Many apologies to those of you who wanted to listen in to Dr Valerie Kirkgaard’s interview of Tony Wilkinson and myself on Waking Up In America today. It turns out that she lost all her data through an internet provider’s (who shall remain nameless) failure. Computers and phones were barely functioning. She wound up having to broadcast a re-run.
As my dear computer-savvy friend Andrew says: there are two types of people, those who have had a computer failure and those who are about to have one.
I think that places me firmly in the first category, several times over.
The good news is that the interview will go ahead, probably in two weeks. Watch this space for the updates. Dr. Val is an unusual person and great fun on the air (and surely in the rest of her life, too) so it’ll be a real pleasure to speak with her again. As she puts it ‘Powerful conversations transform’, and I agree entirely. So check out her website at wakingupinamerica.com, and have a look at Tony Wilkinson’s site too. His book is The Lost Art of Being Happy (what a great title!) and there’s a page on the Findhorn site, www.findhornpress.com with a link to his personal site.
on May 21st, 2008 at 11:49 pm
Andrew’s point is well taken and - like yourself - I’m in his first category.
MLou
on May 23rd, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Dear Mary Lou,
Yes, blessed as computers can be (and I don’t think we can deny how many things have been made easier) it’s worth remembering that easier always comes with a cost attached. Most of us seem to act as if every improvement in our world is a miraculous gift that has no strings to worry us.
Not so long ago we didn’t think that way. If you bought a horse you got to haul your things more easily, but you also had to look after the horse every day. Anyone who’s ever owned a horse knows just how time consuming and expensive that is, and how much feed and manure one has to shovel, rain or shine.
Where did we get the ’something for nothing’ way of thinking?
Allan
on May 27th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Perhaps when technology removed ordinary human beings from essential survival tasks like growing food and maintaining animals, we got the idea of something for nothing?
Yes, there is care and feeding to maintain a horse as transportation. (On the plus side, even a child can learn how to do it and the horse is a companionable mode of transportation.)
With ships, trains and cars; airplanes and space capsules, specialized skills are demanded and plain “folks” are removed from the process. In lieu of “care,” we pay a fare.
While the Internet connects me to friends near and far, it leaves me disconnected from the “commute.” Enter The Geek Squad.
Have I run amuck?
MLou
on May 28th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Dear Mary Lou,
Ah - the money nexus is where it’s all at. Because of it we are removed from the ‘process’ as you point out, and so we’re removed from the real cost of what we do. Partly that’s because we never get to see the pollution caused by Korean car plants, gulf oil wells, refining facilities and so on. I used to live a few miles down wind of one of those, in an otherwise idyllic corner of Italy. Talk about Paradise Lost. One might almost say Paradise Raped. If we could see any or all of this up close we’d all think differently about how we use what we have.
Now, where’s my mule and buggy?
Allan
on May 29th, 2008 at 10:16 am
Not so much anymore but years back, the Porter Square shopping center was regularly littered with debris from MacDonalds. Empty cups and plastic burger containers were collected when the city cleaned the parking lot causing me to wonder back then what does cheap, fast food really cost?
MLou
on May 29th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
An excellent point, Mary Lou, because ‘hidden costs’ like those are one of the crimes big business gets away with. So the largest ship dismantlers in the world are in Bangla-desh, where underpaid workers strip the hulks and asbestos washes out to sea with other toxic items the west will not alow its workers to handle. Someone will have to pay to clean up the degraded environment, one day, at vast expense. And until then the workforce will suffer and die prematurely, as will their children …
Allan