Quick addendum

This article from the NY Times China Retreats Now, but It Will Be Back underscores my point about how we don't get the LONG term planning that eastern philosophy represents. The stock market is a glaring example. We worry about the minute to minute changes in stock prices while we should be concentrating on the long-term trends in the market itself. This is the micro-intense, short burst attention span that our sound-bite media has trained us to be satisfied with and expect. Eastern philosophy, on the other hand, plans for generations in the future. This Amazon interview our interview with author Thomas L. Friedman of "The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century" is a great primer for insight into this type of thought process. Each generation sees itself as a link in the continuum. A rather non-western narcissistic view of life eh? Not that I'm saying we will see, in our life time, the Germanic hordes streaming over the seventh hill before the gates of Rome. However, we may be witness to the direction they could be coming from.