A Fulltiming Life

Wednesday, January 6, 2010 - City of Rocks State Park, Faywood NM

Poolside, Mule Creek Road, Guthrie AZ, March 30, 2008
Poolside, Mule Creek Road, Guthrie AZ, March 30, 2008

Yesterday I mentioned the spectacular ride up through the Apache National Forest to Mule Creek NM. I had forgotten how spectacularly beautiful the rolling grasslands are along the New Mexico stretch of Mule Creek Road. It's rare to find grasslands like these out here that are not overgrazed. As usual I spent all my time gawking and I have no pictures to share with you.

Night camp

Site 14 - City of Rocks State Park, Faywood NM

Emergent democracy

Culture brings us together, usually at a very small scale through mutual belief, trust and common interest. It educes, not compels, behavior. Culture codified is law. It is as inevitable as the day the night that as scale increases, law increases. Law enforced is government. Government does not, in the main, educe behavior, but compels it. Democratic or otherwise, rarely, very rarely, does any concentration of power or wealth desire to see subjects well informed, truly educated, their privacy ensured or their discourse uninhibited. Those are the very things that power and wealth fear most. Old forms of government have every reason to operate in secret, while denying just that privilege to subjects. The people are to be minutely scrutinized while power is to be free of examination.

... They were giants for their time, but their time has come and gone. Except for a notable few, one of whom was Abraham Lincoln, they could not imagine that corporations, once a creature of nation states, would so expand while ridding themselves of social responsibility to the point they could hold virtually any government to ransom for the priviledge of their presence. Today, nation states and elected politicians are more creatures of corporations than corporations are creatures of nation states. Unfortunately, while it was democracy and liberty corporations needed to reach their present dominance, in the main, their governance is the antithesis of democratic, free and just. I do not think it bodes well for the future of democracy.

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