March 18th - Making Sense of our World

**If you'd like to follow my ramblings which I'm hoping will lead me to a simple answer to the question 'What has gone wrong in our world and what can we do to change direction?' it would be best to start at March 3rd below.

Now I’ve got some idea of what our problems are and what some people are writing about and doing to help us move to a better future, I'm beginning to feel that my ‘simple’ explanation might be difficult to find.  I look at the whole thing with some trepidation but not without hope.

Its fortunate that many of my past experiences have given me some idea of how societies work so it might be helpful to re-visit what I’ve learnt so far.  I started my working life as a reporter on a small weekly newspaper and that gave me a good idea of how the town worked:  I reported on Council meetings and the Magistrate Court, called regularly at the Police Station, the local churches, local clubs and generally kept my nose to the ground to find out just what was happening. Later I studied sociology and psychology and became a community social worker, generally getting the feel of our local community in S E Essex.

Sociology helped me to think of how a society (any society) works and, most importantly, where we get our ideas from and how change comes about.

It feels to me that the best view of our world could be had from outside. If we could only, as it were, take on the view of an alien looking down on us from outer space, taking in the incredible differences in the way in which humans live on Planet Earth.  The Inuit living within the Arctic Circle, nomads in the vast reaches of the Kalahari Dessert, tree dwellers still living as their ancestors have for millenia in the Amazon rain forest, city workers commuting in their droves …  

 So, I will begin my exploration of Planet Earth 21^st Century style by looking at just what it is that keeps societies living as they do …