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ge·ol·o·gy
noun, plural ge·ol·o·gies.
1. the science that deals with the dynamics and physical history of the earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the physical, chemical, and biological
changes that the earth has undergone or is undergoing.
2. the study of this science.
3. the geologic features and processes occurring in a given region on the earth or on a celestial body: the geology of mars; the geology of eastern kentucky.
geography
1540s, from M.Fr. géographie (15c.), from L. geographia, from Gk. geographia " description of the earth's surface," from geo- " earth+ graphia " description".
politics(n.)
1520s, "science of government," from politic (adj.), modeled on Aristotle's ta politika "affairs of state," the name of his book on governing and governments, which was in English mid-15c. as "Polettiques." Also see -ics.Politicks is the science of good sense, applied to public affairs, and, as those are forever changing, what is wisdom to-day would be folly and perhaps, ruin to-morrow. Politicks is not a science so properly as a business. It cannot have fixed principles, from which a wise man would never swerve, unless the inconstancy of men's view of interest and the capriciousness of the tempers could be fixed. [Fisher Ames (1758-1808)] Meaning “a person’s political allegiences or opinians” is from 1769.
comments and suggestions to governor bill clinton for “preparing arkansas for 21st century”
your proposal is more for preparing the 21st century to accommodate a people who are used to living in a timeless tradition
neither your report nor mr. sam walton's "pursuit of excellence" takes into consideration the deteriorating quality of life. i am not aware of any educator's proposal for an experimental school (except for one proposed by ‘span’) that bases its curriculum on eco-centric motions of life, rather than the traditional ego-centric notion, invariably breeding forever the socio-economic fear of insecurity; and education becoming only a poor formula of how to escape from that fear.
the 21st century is only 12 years away, which is merely a game of figures. what will it change? if you can make the adults of arkansas, both teachers and parents, somehow aware of the folly of the divisions -- political, religious, ideological, racial, and economical -- in 12 years we may have a really natural state. otherwise, we would be still boring our children with our wishful thinking in the name of education.
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the above brief response was written on a form page sent to us (‘span’) some 20 years ago. then governor bill clinton has since retired as a two term president, and in the number game, we are in the second decade of the 21st century. two more presidents have occupied the u.s. notion of leadership since then, and the u.s., and its leaders’ envisioned world have been experiencing the effects of geo-politics. geo – geography, literally, a graphed earth is rendered flat in the educated urban mind from the grade school textbooks. there, the world is as flat as its image on the surface of paper, and earth’s surface not thicker than that of the ink on paper. a world thus imaged is small enough for people in position to manage it in charts drawn on papers.
almost all of world’s political leaders of past and present did not dig the surface of the earth even with the hand held mini shovel. so their knowledge of the earth is all about the earth’s flat surface in graphs and charts drawn on paper. these charts are drawn by the experts whose training has been to perceive the earth as flat with the help of those experts who invented machines that flatten the earth’s surface, for unless it is flat the draftsmen have difficulties in squaring the squares and drawing straight lines. then the architects desire to show off their designs from all around the structure, even from the sky. the result would be a humongous angkorwat or taj mahal or pyramid or buckingham palace or the white house to house the inflated egos of the dwellers, imagined, dead or alive.
earth is not just the surface that only supports life. nor it is the deep drilled holes and tunnels containing hydro-carbons and precious minerals. it is a living organism. and all living organisms are elements of the living, breathing earth. but the bible moulded human mind sees it and its contents, including the humans as only the objects of use. this ‘use’ is experienced as the abuse by those who have fallen victims to the king’s super ego. in un-intellectual, uneducated, unconventional terms, geo, the earth is observed and experienced without the graphs drawn out in the cubicles of the subordinates to fatten the egos of their employers, the rich < reich<rex: royal.
the word: rich is a politically correct identity of the king of the old times. even though the u.s. is called the first democratic country of the modern times, its founders being rich, were not democratically minded. the women and slaves were not considered to be among “we the people” then. the “we” was a small clique of the rich who were doing the same to their slaves and women folks what the english kings did, the “taxation without representation.” willingly no creature would accept the taxing subjugation. the founders of the u.s. found the taxing only in the form of money, earned by the hard labour of their non recognized segment of the populace working hard to give to the english king. but kingly as they were, they were also aware that all such personal identities are created and maintained in getting recognized as the owners of a patch of land recorded as a graphed description of its location in the county lager.
geo, the earth is thus divided into maps of domain of the rich, drawn on papers and recorded in the city, county, state, national and the u. n. registries. but since the earth is not flat, the paper drawn squared boundary of a domain creates the mismatch of the north-south lines resulting in disagreements even among the otherwise friendly neighbours over the imaginary property line separating the two domains.
it all begins with the fear, the fear of protecting the notion of the thought of the self; a literal description of a person in particular; an identity of the self as distinguished from the others around. this thought out self does not have a physical body, nor does it physically exist. in order for the thinker of this thought to become a physically existing being, the thinker has to assemble all the materials that fit the description of one’s self. initially this self was individually thought out entity. but increasingly the commercialized mass media has created categorized images of this self with detailed descriptions of pins, stripes, insignias, etc. to be worn by the person, and the required settings of things and beings surrounding this self within the self’s domain, which is the sphere of influence exerted by this self of a person, be it in a country club or country. within this frame work the self is relatively safe having worked out the pecking order among all, and having all succumbed to their own individual selves in the sliding order.
these self-images are thrust upon others in the name of authority, be it of father’s or founding father’s requiring of others the slave-like servitude. or forming a fragile alliance with those who are formidable, and hence working out a corporate encounter with a common domain. the smallest of its border line forms the home. then the like minded dwellers of homes form the township; then they form county, counties forming the state and, and states forming the nation. after the first world war, the league of nations was created, which, became the united nations’ organization after the second war.
but since the very formation of the boundary is created to ward off the fear of survival of the hypothetical self, all alliances must shift, realigned, be broken, and fail miserably. nations cannot unite due to their respective separate identities and aspirations. within nations the states seek dominance, and within states counties demand favors. within counties townships require attention. and within the smallest alliance, the home, the members feel crammed within the narrow confines of the given identities. but the narrowest cell of the identity is the self born of the fear. the bigger the image of the self, the harder is the squeeze of its encroachment. it exerts its toll on the ignored necessities of the real physical body of the wearer of the self-image. self-image is the dungeon’s solitary confining cell for the physical being.
a true individual being is a person nondescript. we are all born devoid of identities of any kind, familial, clannish, social, religious or political. having no self identity one feels not bound by any borderline, has no scripted and predetermined motions of life save those of ecocentrically evolutionary. humans are group dwelling creatures, as are several other creatures. observe the difference between the nurturing process between the humans and other creatures. it becomes more obvious between the modern urban humans and the primitives of the 3rd world. the age 6 to 16 compulsory education of the u.s. is compulsory in the sense that neither the children nor some of the parents see it to be necessary as an evolutionary element of upbringing the children. it is primarily for the benefit of the rich< reich<rex: regal. it imposes an identity of citizenry with strict codes of conduct.
the written codes of conduct of any kind, constitutional or biblical all constitute a learned way of conducting life’s affairs, all retaining the hierarchical pecking order. mighty empires have formed and dispersed in trying to confine the ever escaping biological being. the united states has had some 27 amendments to its constitution encompassing the thus far not considered aspects of the u.s. life. beyond that, the u.s. congress fusses daily over the newly arising issues, and yet, there is the growing disenchantment with the ‘american dream’. it is also as impossible to cross the border of the u.s. as it is to willfully enter a dreamland. the u.s. defense is also protecting its boundary made of thin air. only the migratory birds and few wild animals do not recognize its boundary. humans need either permit or enter unobserved by surveillance cameras and border guards.
but the human nature is no different from that of migratory birds flying long distances in need of food and warmth. when people en masse migrate across the border it is viewed as an invasion of a country. whatever stretches of land they thus occupy is assimilated into their possession, and the country’s borderline changes. new geo-political maps are drawn out as new nations are created; new identities given to these graphed land masses. the united states and all of the domains of the americas were thus occupied by europeans.
what is different about the human migration is that unlike the migatory birds and animals the humans strive to change the new found lands into the lands they came from, so that, they do not have to change their ways of life they are accustomed to. the u.s is thus western europe remade, only larger. all the efforts involved in changing the american landscape is single most cause of damage to ecology.
some of them are still feuding to have their geo-political identities changed with the commercial interests of the rich entwined in the bloody, murderous struggles. pakistan, israel and the middle eastern countries were thus recently created. take for instance, the division of the indian subcontinent. people of these divided lands have much too much in common in their ways of life than the political boundaries separating them. all such battles across the political boundaries are fought in the interests of the powerful rich, who may be local only in residence, but otherwise political implants working in the interests of the outsider rich.
then there is also the invasion of the commerce-kind. these commercial conglomerates have their own geo-commercial maps of their domains. it’s in the nature of a commercial mind to always seek out new areas to buy cheap from and new markets to sell their ware to. the wall-mart enterprise is not doing anything new, only that it is currently a dominant name in the geo-commerce as once there was the east india trading company.
earth is not manmade. nothing is manmade, though man may reconstitute natural elements in a different form within the laws of physics which are given. the only thing manmade is his self-image. and only material to make it from is thought. now thought not being an earthly element cannot be perceived through the sense organs. it has to be clothed in the scripted description, much like an actor on stage; unless he is wearing the costume of the character he plays the role of, he remains nobody.
it is for this role playing that the appropriate sets have been created: the pyramids for the pharaohs and the palatial white houses for the geo-politicians. all palaces, temples, state and commercial offices, museums, monuments, bank buildings are overbuilt in shape and size. this is so because the occupying entities -- king, god, presidents and ministers, curators and c.e.o. are mere costumed titles. since they are thought out, and not based upon the biological necessities of the wearers functionally related to the geological location, the forms of these structures are also thought out, hence they are as varied as are the forms of fear triggering the various forms of hide out. in contrast, observe the birds' nests. as they are built by the dwelling birds themselves, these nests are built with the nearby available materials they can carry. study the form-function relationship of each bird species' nest. it is never too large nor too small. even though no two bird nests are replicas of a standard form, each nest is individually precise. birds do not start out with the notion of the new design. they just make use of the available material and the functional form evolves from the work in progress. thus the swallows have learnt to make use of the undisturbed, vacant building's walls and storks have found the fireplace chimneys as the new nesting places. neither of these species have damaged their new locations.
if children were to show the other specie's dwellings, whether a nest or a burrow, or crevice in the rock or a hollow of a tree, and observe how intertwining they are with their surroundings, then children will also observe that the home building of the other creature is not a commercial enterprize, and hence, even though no dwellings are alike, none of the two are comparable; and yet each one is just right where it is.
aristotle's book, 'the affairs of state' does not question why a state, nor why states must fight. he had been raised to live in a self-image. he followed his teachers, plato and socretes in improvising a thought out existence of state much the same as weapon makers have been improvising forms of fight, from a fist fight to an unmanned drone strike, neither wondering whether the fear of a fellow being was in itself a right perception of senses. there is more need to question, since children do not fear; it is a learnt trait. and the commercial enterprise and the state find this learnt fear to be useful in making the masses to exist to safeguard the existence of the self, theirs as well as that of those in whose interest others toil.as none of those great teachers were people who worked with the soil. nothing of subsatance has been said about the earth as a living organism until in recent times. but even there is the political divide among the people who study geology. those who do it for the rich become the geo-politicians, and those who cry foul are called nay sayers.
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