Especially this first one, which suggests that the people in the economic middle need to identify more with the people at the bottom than the people at the top. And includes a nice turn of phrase: “money breeds power and power breeds more money”.
This second one makes the reasonable suggestion that fewer kids should be required to pass that major stumbling block called “algebra”. That way more kids would stay in school or even flourish.
Those poor, benighted Brits — celebrating their socialistic National Health Service at the Olympics opening ceremonies!
Don’t they know it would be so much better to have a system like ours?
One that is reliant on profit-driven employers paying as little as possible to profit-driven insurance companies, who pay as little as possible to profit-driven doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, who charge as much as possible.
Leaving millions without decent health care, whether or not they have health insurance, while we spend more on healthcare per capita than any other nation in the world and lag behind other developed nations in quality of care.
A system in which people often decide where to live or work depending on whether an employer provides health insurance.
A system in which a major illness can bankrupt a family.
Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life is surely a beautiful film, but it raises the question whether this world of ours is a good place to live. Is it a vale of tears, the best of all possible worlds or something in between?
Any generalization to the effect that the whole world is either good or bad seems misguided. Overall, the whole world just is. There is no other real world to compare it to (certainly none that we can observe).
When people used to say that the world is a vale of tears, they meant that this world is one of pain and suffering compared to the next world, the heavenly one. Although we can imagine worlds that are better or worse, like heaven or hell, that’s really irrelevant. We’re stuck with this one.
Or else lucky to have this one. But really neither.
We probably think, however, that living in this world is better than not living at all. That’s the common point of view, although not universal. In this case, we aren’t trying to compare this world to some other one. We’re just concluding that being here is better than not being anywhere.
Brian Wilson offered a positive view of the situation 40 years ago:
Thesis: A driver waiting at a traffic light waits for the cars coming from the other direction to pass by before making a left turn.
Antithesis: A driver waiting at a traffic light and wanting to make a left turn doesn’t wait for the cars coming from the other direction to pass by; as soon as the light turns green, the driver quickly makes a left turn without waiting.
Synthesis: A driver at a traffic light sees that a driver coming from the other direction wants to make a left turn, so the first driver doesn’t go when the light turns green; the first driver waits for the second driver to make the left turn; the drivers behind the first driver must wait as well.
Thus culture evolves: drivers get to make left turns more quickly and the drivers behind them don’t have to wait so long.
Or devolves: drivers have to wait while the seemingly polite driver in front of them waits for another driver to make a left turn; and what was a relatively simple rule of the road changes into something more complex.
Sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s office, with Fox News loudly playing on the wall-mounted TV, wondering if I can get them to turn it off and feeling mildly sheepish about asking (and mildly guilty about feeling mildly sheepish).
It turns out that one of the receptionists hates Fox News too, so she switches the channel and even turns down the sound.
Whereof One Can Speak 🇺🇦 
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