Ya know, I had the exact same thought. It’s funny how easy someone’ll buy an erroneous mental model without really thinking about it you know?

Prentiss,

Thanks for the links. I’m taking them with me to go.

For example: The Old Norse and the Algonquin-speaking people had over 15,000 phrases with similar sounds and meanings.

Historical documents on two continents record the Greenland migration story. Three Walam Olum verses describe how the Norse, using a republican government, made the right decision to walk across the frozen sea.

Mr. Diamond is continuing to sustain the erroneous European model (Nothing written in Europe; nothing). The Norse in Greenland had a mental model based on first hand knowledge of the evidence. It saved their lives. Survival, even today, requires a workable mental model supported by evidence.

a prominent feature of how success is defined in the U.S. is through monetary definitions. i often think about the term “third-world country”, and what it describes and entails. such that a country is automatically subverviant, subdominant and less important to the Western “standard”. perhaps it might help if the countries were viewed as being different, but not less important.

when you look at helping out coutries from the “third-world” perspective, you see one “important” country giving to a “less-important” country. this fits one definition of charity.

another vision would be to look at charity as goodwill for the benefit of humankind. instead of goodwill towards another country or person, who is less than me, and should be grateful towards me.

i like the charity for humankind idea better because it looks at countries as just being different in structure and tastes, as opposed to a set ideal of how success can be defined. because i think success is a subjective thing.

but is charity just a way for one country to give to another country, so that it can worry less about being attacked later?

i think religion plays a part in this question because every major country in the world has a geographically identifiable religion. and, i would guess that something like “charity” would be a part of all the major religions, eastern or western. and although there is a litigal separation of state and religion (in America), the two will always be intertwined because govt is made up of people, and people inherently create nuances in reality.

i think the Western governments are in prominent and long standing positions to stay in power, and consistently remain. they have learned from past cultures, and are identifying new ways to convince people of what they think is correct.

for instance, look at how Media Outlets have become increasingly homogenized, and therefore biased. indeed, i think it can be ascertained that most top executives of large media outlets, TV, newspaper, and magazine, probably identify more liberally than conservative (as compared to the US national average).

however, an exception to this is the overt, and somewhat obtuse Fox News, which has just signed a deal with Clear Channel Radio to be the “sole news provider” of all CC stations. Clear Channel owns approx 1,300 stations in the US alone, a lambastic amount. additionally, CC owns approx 35% of the billboards, a slew of music venues, and a fair amount of public land (and that’s just in the US). this is a perfect example of how one school of thought (the conservatives) can put out their opinions. what’s more, this is the tip of the iceburg when dealing with the amount of ownership by Rupert Murdoch and Lowry Mays in the media business.

media is how the govt controls people, and gets them to coalesce to “popular opinion”. i think that this would be one very direct “new” way that the Western Govt has learned from the past, and is preventing for the future.

although, i think that the 2-party system could cause some problems in the near future for the US, unless the demographics of the parties start to cross political lines.

also, i think the US might be setting itself up for a fall by a lack of fundamentals in education, realization, and contemplative thinking. whereas, in some other countries they are emphasized more. fundamentals are important. ask anyone who’s good at anything.

governments can only protect themselves by learning from situations that have happened in history. obviously, because they can’t prevent for something that has never happened; although they can speculate and anticipate.

that’s why 9/11, strictly from an attack standpoint, was a success from the perpetrators. similar attacks have taken place in the past, but none have come on such a large scale.

in the French film, “the Barbarian Invasions”, there is a small insignficant (to the plot) sequence where a film shot is shown of the attack on the Towers from ground level. afterwards, it shows a French political analyst speaking and he says something like, “9/11 represented the first time that the U.S. government have allowed an ‘outside’ force into its boudaries. not the periphery, but the heart. it’s the first time that the Barbarians were able to invade.” the last line involves the title of the film. it’s an interesting idea…and from a perspective that is outside the U.S.

in the end, and towards the future, i think there will be an endless list of problems, which could cause an endless sense of change. and some people will like that change, and some won’t.