In the Age of TV families shared quality moments together in front of the screen. In the Internet Age we sit quietly in our rooms and maybe chat via AIM together. Computer screens don’t provide the same social glue as TV screens.

Several people fighting for the remote control was bad enough - but a consensus could be reached which show to watch for an hour or two. But you can’t have four people controlling a computer and surf different websites at the same time.

TV serves as the radio today - it provides the noise to our life, but it is the computer with it’s highly individualized interaction that grabs our FULL attention.

So our media experience is more and more individualistic - and all these digital toys and gadgets (especially cell phones and instant messaging) keep us “busy” and distracted all the time.

In front of the TV the whole family could switch off - today that switch has been lost. We are always “ON” …

It’s either your favorite heavy breather or your sick mother is crying out for help …

Giving your kids a pet will make them happy and teach them lesson for life. Anyone ever asked those dogs, cats, hamsters, mice or whatever if they want to be abused by ignorant kids so they learn how to treat humans? It is highly unfair to train humans on animals how to behave with other humans.

One of the real differences between men and woman is the maternal instinct. Sure not all girls like to play with dolls and want to be married and humped immediately after they menstruated the first time.

But the female body is built to breeds - as much as the male is made to procreate as well, but in a different way. Woman have to deal with their ‘function’ on a regular monthly basis, while the male sexual ‘function’ just runs more or less maintenance free.

But also the so called biological clock - as much as it is also a social pressure to be a successful breeder - drives woman much more than men.

From that perspective it’s much more work for woman to become ‘neutral’ and free individuals (instead of just being driven by the mating instinct), because they have to deal with their purely biological ‘function’ on a more regular basis.

The Economist has a great special this week about "The End of cheap Food" (essay and an article). Highly recommended.

There are several forces at work:

One is simply demand and supply. For years farmers in Europe have been over subsidized and told to use their lands to overproduce even more food. Now with need these extra capacities back. Since the production of biofuels is so heavily subsidized as well - demand has made it for example more lucrative to sell wheat for fuel production instead of making pasta (here some background on the state of Wheat production worldwide).

Most of all food production is distorted: for decades now poorer countries with an agricultural base had no chance of competing against European and American farmers - because they are heavily subsidized. Sometimes local production has been so damaged by the price difference that they had to close - so these poor countries actually had to import food they could have easily produced themselves.

What we need is curbed up production in all countries, less subsidies and more sensible production. It makes no sense to transport milk from Europe to China. That’s a lot of fuel wasted - fuel which gets more and more expensive.

After the second world war many western nations became more socialist then many people would have admitted at the time. The social welfare of their citizens was very important to European countries - especially in fear of another working class uprising like in the Soviet Union, but also to keep another Hitler from happening.

But in search of social consensus many countries overdid it. Instead of building social societies they build nanny states that would infiltrate people’s life instead allowing them to make a living. In the attempt to bring social peace and equality they took out the vitality of the society itself and strangled any innovation and development within.

Hardly forty years later the welfare states ran out of money - countries like Britain, Sweden and Germany started to cut down on social budgets. Suddenly social welfare became a war against social parasites. Profit was more interesting then social consensus and support.

Welcome to the new old world of total capitalism - with it’s new saints Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher.

Working together - to survive.

In the search of efficiency and ever tighter budgets the main victims of this new spirit were the kids and the educational system. It is a harsh joke that child poverty is on the rise in many western countries. The educational systems in many countries are failing or under siege as well.

Plus the real income of white and blue collar workers in industrialized countries actually has declined in many countries for the last 30 years. The middle class is thinning out in many countries. A new lower class has developed in highly sophisticated countries.

Education is a human right and should be free. The same should be true for health care. A smart, healthy and educated citizen is the most valuable investment for any countriy. It’s not a question of money, but dedication, moral and priority within a society.

How do you introduce spirituality to kids in a free and open way? The chance of indoctrination instead of education is very big. Too often the voice of (any) god becomes the instrument of parental instructions. How can we show the wonders without destroying them?

Do you own pictures of dead people? Not just people you knew who have died - but people you never met, but are part of your family’s history? Our fear of death has made us produce great ancestral art, monuments, long chains of memory - to give us some reassurance that not all is lost, because of death.

Our psyche can’t cope with death - therefore we simplify it, try to make it understandable, to trick ourselves into believing that we or our loved ones continue in some way.