"With No Malice"©2012
A General Interest Opinion Column by an opinionated person.
Vic Topmiller Jr.
11/5/12 (45)

WORDS
"We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond to them."
Abigail Adams.


"And the World Goes Round."



One thing – I found out that I can have a great deal of intellectual fun zooming around the world on Google Earth. I don't know how the heck they created that program but it's like magic and beyond. I used to hear folks declare to the young folks that just take up a book and they can explore the earth. I agree with that old saying, I agree that it is just as true today as it was then, but I say let's go a step further and coordinate our reading with the world satellite images of anywhere on earth. There are a few places in my next book that I will never see in person, yet with Google Earth I can scan around and have a pretty good feel for the terrain – the flora – the population density and other things that bring me to the feel of "being there."

Just to give it the test, I typed in a few names (not all at once) of a few really remote places. I'm reading a book at the moment, "The Land Grabbers, The New Fight Over Who Owns The Earth," by Fred Pearce. By the title you can imagine what the book is about. No? I'll tell you. It's about certain groups of people in the form of investment syndicates, or extraordinarily wealthy people, usually with pockets full of oil money. Yes, unbeknownst to folks such as you and I there are people, individuals, with unthinkable amounts of money and wealth. And this is where the rule of "Never Enough" kicks in. We've talked about it before-it's this strange human psychic phenomenon that we are all blessed with. I need more. And more. And more. Etc. And even if you don't think you have it, you do, it's just that our benchmark is much lower than the oil Sheik from Arab. I read one time that the measure of progress is that you have a better life than your parents. I like that. It's undoubtedly how folks coped with their hardships and why we keep telling our kids how they have it so much better than we did. Funny, huh?

Dona and I love to watch movies that reflect the old days. The "Good Old Days." Well, I'm not so sure about that but I know that some things were better, like time with family. That was good for sure, but the time together could well have been because the whole family, including the little toddler, was engaged in the survival of life. One thing I recognized watching movies and reading books about the "Good Old Days" was the absolute sense of independence. Not the independence to float through life without a care but rather the independence that allowed you to sink or swim. Freedom to fall down and pick yourself up. The self-satisfaction of self-reliance. You know, kinda like-if you really want to eat, then plant a garden, stick a seed in the ground, haul water in buckets to keep it alive, if the rains don't come. Because if you don't, you just might go hungry, and it just may be that the guy down the road that hauled the water to keep his garden alive is not going to be willing to take food from his brood to sustain a guy who was too lazy to haul water. I don't think people in those days were as forgiving as they are today.

But the point is, life in the past was more geared toward survival than it is today. It seems to me that just about every move a few generations ago was geared toward food in the belly and clothes on the back because winter was coming and winter was unforgiving and like the ant, all summer the ant thinks about winter. And people survived. They overcame trials and struggles and they got up everyday with one mission- to make tomorrow a better day than today. And so they left a better world for their kids than theirs. Think the kids appreciated it?? ?? ??

It makes me sick to turn on the TV and see a healthy person whining and crying and defaming the government because the government in some way is not meeting his or her needs. At the same time, it makes me sad that so many people have lost the joy and satisfaction of self-sufficiency. They just don't seem to understand that if a government meets your needs it does it at a cost to you. You buy the government gifts with chips of freedom.

But, getting back to Google Earth. Being able to search for any area of the world is an extraordinary tool for putting things into perspective. For instance, type in Peking, China. Wow, never saw so much population, huge apartments and factories. Isn't that funny, we have huge apartments and factories. Population density, wow, the houses and structures there are fitted together like domino pieces. Gee, our northeast is fitted together like domino pieces.

If there is a point to this subject so far, it is that there are plenty of resources for all of God's creatures. It's all about the utilization of the gift.

"You will eat but never have enough; hunger pangs and emptiness will remain. And though you try to save your money, it will come to nothing at the end, and what little you succeed in storing up I'll give to those who conquer you!" Micah 6: 14. TLB.

That's My Opinion.

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