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A significant portion of the population of our planet is in deep distress. As the world wide economic situation steadily worsens we, in the USA, are looking for yet another knight errant to ride from over the horizon and pull our collective fat from the fire. The news flash from this quarter is, "Stop looking. It isn't going to happen."

It is time for us to realize that there are no political answers to our common woes. Listen to the candidates, read accounts of their positions and proposed solutions then compare what you hear to what was being said and promised twenty, thirty or forty years ago. The same or similar problems and the same or similar proposed solutions.

If the answer lay in politicians and their ability to make good on their rhetoric, we would all be living a utopian dream. Obviously the folks we elect to office are as clueless as the rest of us when it comes to solving problems facing our nation and our world. The primary difference between them and us is that they have found a way to make our collective problems pay them large dividends without the need to provide any real answers.

The ability to convince a large number of voters that one impossible dream is superior to another impossible dream is all it takes to become a successful politician. That, coupled with the "sponsorship" of corporate interests, can elevate even the most unlikely candidates to our highest offices.

This merely serves to re-identify the problem. My point is that in order to find true solutions we must begin to look in an entirely different direction.

Lao Tzu said "He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough." This simple statement speaks volumes to the root cause of most of the problems faced by those in the so called developed world and by extension, to many in the third world.

Materialism, the doctrine that comfort, pleasure, and wealth are the only or highest goals or values, defines the aspirations of the majority of our citizens.

No one needs to be convinced that we are a wasteful nation. In 1997, the last year reported, the US Department of Agriculture stated that of 356 billion pounds of edible food produced, over 96 billion pounds were discarded or left to rot. That's nearly twenty-five percent of our food supply thrown away yet we still have an obesity epidemic.

Disposal of electronic equipment is a major environmental concern.

Most large cities are ringed with automobile scrap yards and finding space for more and larger landfills to dispose of

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