Seasonal Mercantilism Challenges Holiday Traditions: The Secularization of Society

Many are upset and voicing their opinions that many corporations are "canceling" Thanksgiving. In what appears to be a struggling attempt to get a "jump" on Black Friday sales , stores have introduced a new shopping day ( now known as "Brown Thursday"), things may have backfired unintentionally. The problem is that this designated Thursday is Thanksgiving and the new "shop-until you drop" day falls on one of the most hallowed days during the Holiday season. Critics of this concept state that Americans typically rest on this day and enjoy time with their families and give thanks for the blessings they've been fortunate to receive. Many large companies are challenging this basic view by "suggesting" to employers, managers and employees that they work and create a profit . Some see this as dismantling and demeaning to what are the very fundamental values of the heart of American traditionalism which is being "threatened" by corporate forces. Many have come to see this pinnacle of the free market system as falling into a hedonistic orgy of materialism. This is far from the original view of the bond of the Pilgrim immigrants and Native American peace treaty. The English Pilgrims were outcast socially from England and were struck with the very possibility of starvation in a brutal New England winter. The Native American Population took in this group and harbored them so that they could survive. Today, this story has been over-shadowed by pitching a tent overnight at a mega-mall and getting into a long line to prepare for a battle royal known as Black Friday, now extended to Thursday. But, now it will be extended one day earlier. The pressure on workers to labor, who are themselves shoppers and consumers the moment they leave there place of employment becomes greater. The pressure to manage regular home life with new expectations at the holidays become both a sociological, psychological and economic concern for the average family. What message does retail corporations send when they make Thanksgiving a "working holiday"; that there is nothing really to be thankful for ? Corporate America substituting traditional values for something other than those earlier traditions will become a battle between secular views versus traditional values. The holidays become more politicized and perhaps even a class issue born out of something that once gave the appearance of national identity, but the thin veneer of this is eroding. The "working holiday" sets a new precedence for American values and is seen by some as the potential exploitation of the American worker. For five weeks consumers will feel greater pressure by the illusion of choice and discounts that has been pre-calculated into the corporate bottom line the day after last year's Christmas accounts in attempts to estimate 3rd quarter objectives. Perhaps GDP and the red line is the real factor behind this move. What makes the situation particularly humorous is that the public will slowly become sober again from the five weeks of "merry spending" . The loss of temporary holiday jobs will prove that this slow economy is really no more close of being in the black. No new years resolution will be enough for what affects the feeble attempts of "stimulating" our economic situation will have by this method.

When Global Western and Eastern Problems Collide: Over-Population v. Over-Pollution

We live on the precipice of an inevitable and eventual global situation. A perfect storm continues brewing on the horizon as civilization may be witnessing the start of our world being utterly dismantled. This will not occur from a meteor from outer space, nor a thermo-nuclear situation, or even economic collapse. It will occur from our hand because of our own indifferences towards a total environmental meltdown of the biosphere . The part of inhabitants of the planet are deluded by our own petty cultural differences and others by our marvels and unlimited giant leaps in science and technology. We are harboring a sense of planetary denial and possess a narcissism out of control which harbors the "ignorance is bliss" belief. This past week In November, witnessed another international environmental congress known as the COP19 in Warsaw, Poland, where over 130 countries sit down to try and figure out what is causing the highest emissions of pollutants to the planet and how to standardize and control "normal" levels of emissions from nuclear power plants, coal fracking , mining, oil drilling, sewage and waste, sanitary land fills, carbon based sources and even that from human consumption. Many of the western and developed nations have trouble understanding the implications of what this effect has on our ozone layer, the survivability of numerous species and our own demise. If they did , we would have supported the Kyoto Protocols years ago. Kyoto is a city in Japan , the nation that has suffered one of the worst continuous nuclear waste spillages in history(how ironic is that). It occurred in 2010 and yet still to this date emits 400 tons of nuclear material into the Pacific Ocean. The western nations at these environmental summits have been criticized as being merely shills for international corporations. These critics decry these meetings act as mere economic conferences to fill the coffers of economic and financial institutions in a way not so much to eliminate emissions, but rather create tools and measurements to allow it to be traded , bought on international markets or taxed in some way. In other words it is an economic summit with its focus on how to further its own monetary endeavors at the expense of humankind and everything else on the planet. Therefore if pollution can be monetized to serve some higher economic and commercial good. The misinformation and ignorance continues to go unchallenged for example when westerners hear that climate scientist have said that even a global elevation of one degree Celsius can tip the scales of the world into an abysmal decline, most interpret that rise in temperature as virtually nothing. Because are thinking "locally" about their home temperature. But, in fact, this rise must be taken into account that air or especially water temperature is measured by each cubic meter(cubic foot) and if the world has a circumference of 20,000 miles and we multiply one degree rise to each cubic foot by each mile , we are look at an exponential factor that could spell disaster. This is heat contained in the medium of the biosphere over time. This is the "super-hearting" culminating effect. Pollution such as green house gases further insulates the planet by "blanketing" it in a cloak of soot and further destroys the protective layer of the ozone further creating warming. Many in the west however are content to be "programmed" by the same multi-global corporations who own the media and commercialize and monetize their industrial projects with television sports and entertainment. So you how an oil company that has spilled tons of oil has destroyed beaches, jobs, animals and land. "That's ok", all they have to do is have a cute T.V. commercial and it will be alright. This type of programming dominates the culture of the populous that is misled by the apparent comfort it provides in a world of global economic demise. The health consequences for these environmental disasters are legend and will continue to rise. The health implications from environmental diseases such as lung, heart disease and cancer will rise for a profit in the market and will support the "cycle" of programming. Not to mention climactic effects from melting ice caps, super heated oceans, ground shifts in tectonic plates and super cells in the atmosphere causing phenomenal storms, all which is incompatible with many life forms. ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE GLOBE: We have a situation where billions of people are now super-packed into poor living conditions in urban areas. The United Nations has always been aware of a "population bomb". The worlds population hit 7 Billion last year and this is a doubling in the global population in a short few decades. More people are alive now than all the millennia previously in history. The population will now, not just have a tendency to double again it will rise exponentially. In Africa and Asia wars , droughts, poor irrigation, archaic nomadic living styles all have proven non-sustainable for its inhabitants, therefore the rush is on to larger metropolitan areas. This causes more a mal-distribution of population and over-crowding as well as "overpopulation". Without agrarian solutions with clean water, healthy cattle, solutions to war, education for irrigation, hydraulics and non-genetically modified seeds many of these societies will continue to over-crowd cities. This is not only a problem for Africa and Asia, many family owned farms can not continue to run the land and are taking subsidies because they can not compete. The "overpopulation" situation is marred by numerous other factors it appears. A side-effect of overcrowding is not enough comfortable living space, over competition for jobs markets, less time to seek higher education, artificially higher prices for food and clothing, disease, unclean water supplies and epidemics.As local farmers leave the land unattended large corporate farmers and wealthy land owners, tribal warlords, as well as foreign interests seize these resources . The local inhabitants can not compete in their own markets. There is a tendency for crime to develop as well as civil war under these conditions. The world will have to come up with a highly technologically advanced solution for everyone to agree as what is sustainable for this planet and its inhabitants because continuing to buy and trade our pollution is not really getting is closer to a sustainable life on the planet. I would hate that the globalist are not thinking of the rash, extreme "quick" solution to "reduce" these crisis. If that is so, we are further into a demise than we may think.

Social Media v. Digital Voyeurism: License Is Consent

There is no argument that the Digital Technology Age has changed our world in a phenomenal way, forever . What might have seemed like a fantasy in 1985 became a techies greatest dream or perhaps a Pandora's box with hackers by 1990.In the midst of this occurs the genius of social media. However, like a chameleon ,it continues to redefine itself by its masterminds who control it by influencing how we think and see as it flashes images across the screen. Their design and desire is to mold and shape not just your data but how that data can even recreate your reality orientation. In the movie "Minority Report" the concept of "pre-crime" had become a reality in a society that can now predict your next move before you even knew what you are going to do because of your current or past behavior activity in a network similar to the internet. The "system" can in fact "read" you based on patterns. These patterns are essentially based also on your phone calls. In this system your texts, what you buy , where you buy, what you eat, who you e-mail, what advertisement you look at and even who your social contacts are all compiled in a database. Thereafter a sophisticated tracking of your data activity is followed systematically. If your activity is not "regular" to the database or is irregular because of inconsistency in your movements, irregularities in purchases or contacts with non-regular persons in your network, the system alarms. The essence of the film "Minority Report", though fictional, was that your whole life can be "data-profiled" and made into bytes of information for any computer to predict what you do. In other words your profile is your personality. Data therefore risk stratifies a person into potential threat assessments in a system that procures information. This method already is used assiduously by financial, marketing , retail, major corporations and yes, even social media. Before you have even typed in a word completely on your laptop or tablet the very responses you are searching for seems to magically appear with a list of possible choices you could be looking up. This isn't just a cute little application being used by the search engines to assist, it is in fact "learning" your behavior. The search engine has "anticipated" what you could be searching based on your habits and the patterns they create. Based on your previous searches , the content, the frequency or types of selections allows a company to put together a profile of "who you are" . It also permits them to find out what type of consumer you could be. This means that the database describes all possibilities of what you are looking up by anticipating your next purchase even down to the type of brand you prefer. This enhances the company to know how to induce you . Sounds like something out of a science fiction movie, but it is social reality. Computers have already been designed to create contingencies to mathematically determine outcomes. This special technique of studying and formulating mathematical patterns is called stochiometry. Whether it is tracking an epidemic ,matching criminal behavior patterns in communities, or recognizing trends in the economy , they are all mathematical analysis predicting outcomes or behaviors. Whether you are swiping your credit card or shopping online there is virtually no difference to the methods approach. What are the implications when a state or county wishes to use those data in either predicting voter turnout or worse yet allow it to "fabricate" the data by tweaking districts (digital gerrymandering) . When it comes to health there are two ways to look at it. On one side it could help epidemiologist map an outbreak of an epidemic by helping to find the leading edge of it. While in the case of personal health profiles could make diagnosis speedier . Medical data-basing can be further fortified by hand held devices such as cell phones, tablets or even laptops through simple touch interface. The skin of your hand to the screen could allow real time data to become accessible to a healthcare system . New devices such as these and others exist today that would allow virtually all physiologic functions of a person to be monitored so that professionals could react quicker to emergencies, alter drug dosages faster, accurately or even activate a pacemaker all done remotely. It means labs, pharmacies, clinics, doctors and 3rd party payer systems can intercept those data for purposes of assisting a healthcare system at anyone's daily life routine. But , much like social media, health companies could use the data on patient/consumers by advertising to them with new treatments and medical devices and procedures. Intelligence data-basing corporations( i.e.,Life Lock) never could have conceived of individuals giving over their personal data, files, or photos to cross check against their own data file to "verify" an individuals identity. A more sophisticated version is now bio-metric scanning where an individuals digits, iris or face could be recognized as they sign on to social media. But, there is another side to all of this technology as it expands and is modified to our lives, that is these pernicious uses can lead to abuse and misuse. The sell or trade of data for a company's own or a rogue agent's purposes becomes possible. The potential for hacking files or a electrical grid or satellite brown out can also become problematic. Social media has often raised the issue of privacy , patent law, copyright law, as well as ownership of intellectual properties. The use and misuse of your words and image is always a potential in a system run a muck. If social media is made to be more safe for public use, it begs the questions then who are the "elite" few who are privileged to see your data files(medical, financial, travel)? Also what can someone draw or conclude from the patterns of your data history? If on the other hand social media isn't policed , a potential misuse of unauthorized sources may become a bigger issue. Whether it's a right of privacy , potential hacker issue or merely digital voyeurism, social media is influencing culture and how we all interact . Is this technology a final piece of a greater highly complex and complicated jig saw puzzle that sees the advantage of the human- digital interface beyond capitalism in a brave new world? As an aside it is rather ironic that Randi Zuckerberg, sister of famed Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg announced on NPR(National Public Radio) this week that consumers should cut back on the time used on social media! OVERALL ANALYSIS:Some have hinted that the current world system is slipping into black hole . Failures in economic, financial, political and health, energy systems are at a crisis level . Many look at digital technology to solve many of these same issues and it potentially can. A computer can perform thousands of equations within seconds. This technology has been reduced to RFID which evolved USP bar coding exponentially. Now the implantable micro-chip has been proposed as a definite improvement to this technology. This device puts all financial, social, psychological and medical profiles at the hands of its handlers immediately to "solve" problems before they get out-of-hand. This is perhaps the pinnacle of trans-humanism at its most pristine moment. The world has a "solution" device , But, is it a solution?(More at nanonutrition360.blogspot.com)