I’ve been listening to podcasts, watching videos, and reading articles over the past two or three years that relate to the financial melt-down as well as politics and gender issues. These things really do interest me quite a bit, as I’ve always wondered how something as abstract as government really works, ever since Dr. Carter’s history class in high school. I mean, it always looked so good on paper that it boggled the mind to think that that was how things really worked in the world. Of course, now I’m much older – I’ve been out of high school (and away from Dr. Carter) for seven years or so and I’ve come to realize that the idealized form of direct democracy they teach in elementary and middle school, and the idealized form of representative democracy they teach in high school barely begin to scratch the surface.
Lets go ahead and combine this with the fact that it seems as though Planet Money, one of the financial podcasts that I follow, was created solely to explain the financial crisis to people in clear terms, seemingly a spin-off of This American Life after that show aired a few episodes regarding not only the financial issues, but issues of health care and housing. We can also add in the additional reading and discussing that has been going on between a few friends and I about the problems involved in religion, and a few other friends and I about the problems involved in gender.
Finally, combine these with a few books I’ve been reading about disparate subjects but which all involve this concept of non-spatial, non-temporal ideas and we get the hole I’ve dug myself in now.
Originally published at Drab Makyo. Please leave any comments there.