Maggie's Farm

I hope you're right about Europe. I thought the Euro was doomed from the start, so this really isn't all this surprising to me.

But I worry about the war issue. It doesn't cost much to wage war when you have a particular goal in mind and people willing to go without when the alternative is still going without and not having a goal.

You've got Greeks calling Angela Merkel "Adolph Merkel" and posting pictures of her wearing Nazi gear. Doesn't take much to take the next step, and once you've taken that, you begin to think 'in for a penny, in for a pound'.

Scary...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2054913/Europe-war-2018-As-Angela-Merkel-says-euro-meltdown-spark-battle.html

The Foulk Minifesto is good Christian values. I have no problem with them.

But expanding them into the public sphere, into politics, I start to waver. These are values which drive individuals, not societies.

Self-reliance isn't about the guy who has to drive to the food pantry to get food for his family. Self-reliance is a mixture of others seeing those in this plight and not only helping to stock the pantry, but assisting people in getting what they need. The flip side of self-reliance is giving back.

Elizabeth Warren's commentary wasn't 'wrong' in the sense that giving back for having your good fortune is to be avoided. It was wrong because she claims it needs to be enforced, that there is not, nor should be, a choice in the matter.

Self-reliance is about knowing what you can do for yourself, then once you're taken care of, finding ways to take care of others you care about (or may not necessarily care about, but feel obliged to assist). I do this at work all the time. It's part of being on a team.

But being on the team means an individual buying into a system, not having the system forced upon you. Plenty of coaches remove players who don't fit their system, trade them, and they flourish elsewhere (or they don't). But forcing a round peg in a square hole tends to make the team worse, not better.

Self-reliance, from the other point of view, from the standpoint of having little or nothing, has more to do with figuring out what you can do with what you have. If I have to get to the pantry to feed my family, I have to investigate opportunities which may exist to get there, or at least get the gas I need.

I've not reached that point in my life, but I've been close on a few occasions after periods of unemployment. It's distressing to see the savings account dwindle, know your unemployment is about to run out, and not have a job prospect. But that doesn't mean there are no alternatives. It just means trying to think differently about how to get from point A to point B.

It's precisely this unique thinking capability which has always set America apart. One of Richard Feynman's comments about the education system in the US, compared to other countries he'd worked, was the ability of American schools to promote out of the box thinking. Many other nations removed the concept of questioning authority from their curriculums, and accept rote memorization of perceived facts as the goal.

Has our system reached a point that too few of us are able to think strategically? Are we all incapable of taking a different view of our status and devising solutions? It's possible, but I don't believe it.

What I do believe is that many of us have become complacent about how we approach our situations. We reached a point of expecting things to always get better if we just keep doing what we do. As I was taught, if get what we get because of what we do, and all we do is what we did, then why do we expect to get something different?

That's the basis of self-reliance. Some are better at it than others. But that's precisely why our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution don't say "everyone gets more stuff all the time regardless of what they do." It says something very different, and allows individuals to work for what they get. We're not promised anything.