When was the last time you were amazed?
Last night.
I was thinking about the politico-legal systems within which we live, and was thinking about the role of money.
I thought of the separation between law makers and law interpreters, and it was suddenly clear to me just how much influence money exerts in that separation.
It is easy to see how money influences the political system. It influences campaigns, through funding contributions. It influences the decision making process in many ways, directly through funding advisors and think tanks and lobbiests; and indirectly through funding of academic endowments and particular academic projects.
What is less clear is the effect that money has in the legal system.
Lawyers get paid for what they do. The ones that do what money wants get paid very well. These ones tend to rise to the top of the system.
There doesn’t have to be active bribery or corruption, it only needs that people who think in ways compatible with the needs of money are those that get to the top.
Those are then the ones who become judges.
Thus the interests of money are deeply embedded in the structure of our systems.
Changing it is going to take something profound.
Seeing all this, all the linkages, in a single instant of intuitive awareness, was an amazing experience.
[followed by]
Hi Sandi
I have been amazed at the birth of both of my children.
We were asked for what most recently amazed me.
What tends to amaze me most is the power of the subconscious intuitive mind. Even though I know in broad principle how it works, the power and beauty and majesty of what it delivers never ceases to amaze me.
To see the deep patterns of relationship, deep cause and effect, deep incentives, this is what I find profoundly beautiful.
Searching for contexts that allow me to glimpse paths never seen before through possibility space.
Society needs new paths, the old ones are too dangerous, too damaging to too many.
Ted Howard NZ's Blog 