All too often the human race becomes the victim of its own methods of measure. We become caged in ideas that, for better or worse, were largely created over a generation ago. And we protect those cages quite well.

New ideas are generally accepted based on who says them - not how worthy they are. Those of us who think through an idea presented find ourselves awash in people who are quite happy parroting the cerebral flatulence of someone else instead of risking their own cerebral flatulence being made public. And if the someone who said it was considered highly by other generations (not necessarily their own), then the idea becomes as much fact as the planet we are on... to us.

This is the resistance to change. It's not necessarily a bad thing - it filters out a lot of bad stuff too, like an idea to combine a razor with a toothbrush. Unfortunately, it makes us 'measure' everything within an imperfect rating system and build things with an accepted scaffolding that defines the shape of our ideas.

So many people are talking about innovation and creativity when our very systems of deciding what innovation and creativity are could use some...

Having read Should You Adapt When You Travel? and having traveled quite a bit myself, I agree with the article.

But I have further comment.

I don't recognize the distinction between 'authenticity' and 'adaptability' as Akila (The Road Forks) writes of. The adaptability aspect I have no problem - but the authenticity I do. Maybe it's just the wrong word for me; maybe she means 'not changing' - I believe that is what she means.

Culture is a lot like baggage. In that, I have always had the blessing of traveling lightly whereas others - such as Akila and her own examples - may carry more cultural baggage. She mentions vegetarianism as an example, and while it is a personal choice for her that choice was made more possible for her by her culture. There's nothing wrong with it. It is sort of funny how vegetarians identify eating vegetables as a lifestyle but rarely identify eating meat as a lifestyle. Akila seems above that.

But I don't have that issue. I don't have the problem of religion. Adaptation has always been easy for me because I live outside of the cultures that so many people cling to unquestioningly. And that has given me a lot of different ways to look at things.

This train of thought, thanks to Akila, got me on a train of thought that lead to what we now call tourism - which is the manufacture of a more acceptable culture for tourists so that they spend money. { Read more }

The human body is an intriguing system of systems. In a finely tuned body, each cell scoops what it needs from the various fluids in the body (blood, CSF, etc) and puts the trash out in the same way. We should marvel at this, at the power of osmosis - a system designed for transferring things according to concentration differential across a permeable membrane.

If only society worked that way. I suppose if you had to label a human body as some form of 'ism', it would be socialist. If it had to be labeled a form of political government, nothing would fit. The body isn't democratic. It isn't communist. It isn't a monarchy. It isn't a form of anarchy, either - in fact, if it were any of these things the body would probably become ill. Maybe even die.

Yet, somehow, we organize our human society in ways that don't mimic the way our own bodies work.

Our human nervous system is made up of about 1 trillion cells - roughly 166 times the population of our planet (6.x billion)¹. The human body in entirety is made up of close to 50 trillion cells - 8,333 times the population of human beings on Earth^ibid.

And, for the most part, it works quite well for the average human being. But there is the downside: cells die. Cells live. Cells die. Cells live. Our bodies constantly are being regenerated, though different cells at different rates. Red blood cells, for example, die at about 2.89 million per second (and give your stool that brown color).

Nonetheless, it's a working system that is continuing to evolve. And human society, as far as medical science has come, has not really learned all that much from medical science outside of marketing for pharmaceutical companies.

Wouldn't it be interesting to consider how the human body governs itself - or doesn't? { Read more }

In a lot of the world that can read this, people respond to 'on demand' as a very deep concept. And in developed world modern culture this is very true - it's steeped in society, with its brownian motion magnifying over time... particles colliding, making the modern culture a very strong tea. Exponentially so. And so now, people in that world can buy things on demand. Movies by Internet. Music by Internet. Software by Internet. Pornography by Internet. Junk mail by Internet. You get the idea.

And they broadcast that they have it to the rest of the world through cable channel advertisements, the Internet and yes - even pornography. The payment system that supports that society doesn't exist or isn't attainable in the rest of the conceptual world.

Things just move faster. Drive thru pharmacies make way for drugs-to-your-doorstep, including those for pets. Music bought through an account shows up through iTunes within moments instead of that 'silly, idle time' at a music store. Block Buster was killed by the Internet stars. And so on.

If osmosis was conceptually median, this would mean that there would be a trend to homogeneity in this context - as well as others. But osmosis requires a permeable membrane. And the Internet provides this. The Internet is a permeable membrane. Popular things are downloaded. 'Copied'. 'Pirated'. 'Stolen'.

The permeable membrane remains. But there are those who don't want that permeable membrane. And the trouble with this civil war - and it is a civil war - is that it pits neighbors, friends and family against each other. Relationships are actually determined, in part, by whether one can access what is 'on demand'. Popular. Downloadable. And the question - the real question - is not whether something is illegal or immoral. The real question is which of the two cultures is sustainable.

Which culture do you think is really most in demand?