My brother majored in political science at the university. Tonight, he was chatting with me about what he had learned there. And it dawned on me that this academic field of political science really is at the heart of a lot of the problems of our usa society. Political science sees the events of the world as defined by a competition between different interests. And the power dynamics between different parties are seen as the key to understanding how the world works.

I see this as being an extremely immature way to view things. One thing I've seen in the journalism of New Zealand in recent months, is that there aren't any games of power taking place as the authors write. It's quite different - journalists seek to nurture the citizens of their city and their country - they write in a transparent and disarming fashion.

Journalists, of course, have a lot of power in setting the framework for how people will think about their society, and talk about their communities. In contrast to New Zealand, usa journalists and news commentary folks are always engaged in these efforts to gain power for one particular consensus or the next.

I think it's only sensible to see that we can all reason with eachother, and come to an agreement about the wisest course to take, and see eye to eye about the assessment on a situation. It's an insane idea to believe that one person's gain is another's loss. Things just don't work that way. There's a story which christians use, where they describe their religious community as being like a human body; each person, or group of people have a different set of skills, and interests - and like different parts of a body, they perform different functions to benefit the community. And the other thing that is recognised, is that if one part of the body hurts, the whole body suffers. This is a much more realistic way to see a community, than to view it as a bunch of separate competing interests.