10.23.2003
The Prince of Wales
I find I am often accused of living in the past, or of wanting to return to the kind of past that can only be met in the imagination. I have been branded as a traditionalist, as if tradition was some kind of disease that had to be sprayed at airports. I am told that I wish to go backwards into the Brave New World of the twenty-first century – not, as some would have us do, blindly trusting in the gloriously progressive technological utopianism of the high priests of scientific rationalism, but anchored in the mudbank of superstition and irrelevant spirituality.
HRH the Prince of Wales on Being, our world and times.
10/23/2003
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In 2001 7.1 million Americans took antidepressants
antidepressants drugs experienced an 18 percent sales growth in 2000, to $13.4 billion which accounted for 4.2 percent of all global pharmaceutical sales. North America was the dominant user of these drugs, accounting for 74.6 percent of sales with a 19 percent growth rate.
In 2002, there were an estimated 17.5 million adults aged 18 or older with serious mental illness. This represents 8.3 percent of all adults
The States with the highest rates of serious mental illness among adults age 18 and older were mostly in the South.
In 2002, an estimated 19.5 million Americans, or 8.3 percent of the population aged 12 or older, were current illicit drug users
An estimated 120 million Americans aged 12 or older reported being current drinkers of alcohol in the 2002 survey (51.0 percent). About 54 million (22.9 percent) participated in binge drinking at least once in the 30 days prior to the survey, and 15.9 million (6.7 percent) were heavy drinkers.
In 1999, the last year for which statistics are available, 43 percent of Americans said they had attended church in the past week.
According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day (or 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year). In a 65-year life, that person will have spent 9 years glued to the tube.
What do these statistics say, if anything, about our culture?
10/23/2003
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Take Back Your Time Day is tomorrow October 24th. If time is money why are working folks paid so little? Are we working to live or living to work?
What sort of society do we live in when the employment and wage structures that cause us to subvert our lives to mere working existence have been dictated by the corporate interests that have bought and melded with every level of our government?
Edited for clarity
10/23/2003
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