Darrell Ross

I am not sure my title conveys the thesis of my thought.

Democracy is an attempt at keeping the power of governance in the hands of the people, keeping it out of the “hands of the few”. In the current political sphere in the USA, it feels like most people are controlled by television and media. There is a great deal of disagreement but very little quality discussion. While the media stirs the pot and keeps the minds of the people distracted (and thus their hands too), political power is slowly but surely concentrating into the hands of the few.

Over time, the few eventually treat the masses too poorly and the masses revolt and it all resets.

Looking at this through an evolutionary lens, it almost looks as though this “reset button” is the evolutionary rejection of various forms of governance. Ergo, the few must be the type of people who are not selfish and who govern in the interest of the masses. Otherwise they ensure their own eventual demise.

If the masses could remain well educated enough to not be so easily cowed by shiny images, then perhaps we would reach the next stage in evolution — world peace.

Feels pretty distant right now. We need a more sustained push for education.

My Dad recently e-mailed me his results on a US Religious Knowledge quiz. I went ahead and took the quiz and got 10 out of 15 questions correct. Fun conclusions can be drawn from all the statistics available from the full survey. For one, Atheists are more better informed about world religion in general than many religious people.

Quiz: http://features.pewforum.org/quiz/us-religious-knowledge/
Full Article: http://pewforum.org/Other-Beliefs-and-Practices/U-S-Religious-Knowledge-Survey.aspx

In my limited experience working for a company with 100 employees which should produce some form of structured employee system, I have moved around quite a bit. I found the following two articles very interesting.

How to Transform Reliability from a Corporate Initiative to a Corporate Culture
http://www.apmadvisor.com/article.asp?id=207&elq=1df8f4ff20824bbe876f5e938775f8c2

How a Healthy Challenge Culture Benefits Process Safety
http://www.apmadvisor.com/article.asp?id=206&elq=1df8f4ff20824bbe876f5e938775f8c2