SOMETHING BIG WAITING IN 2050 AD

Who was it that said this...? Maybe Donald Trump or Bernie Madoff. "The winner in life is the one with the most toys at the end of the game." It's the plot by which many live, and call their version of the golden rule. With much more wisdom, Bertolt Brecht said instead: "Do not fear death so much, but rather living an inadequate life."

Either way we choose to live our life, the Pew Research Center reports 58% of Americans expect life to change apocalyptic-ally by the year 2050. By then we expect either another world war, or the second coming of Christ. The US census Bureau's approach is considerably more statistical when they project by 2050 more than 50% of our population will be non-white.

Of course all this assumes our world won't already have come to an end on December 21, 2012. As predicted by the History Channel's favorite theme: the ancient Mayan Calendar!

Here's the point...

How really does our species measure life while we're still living it? Monks go to mountain tops....philosophers to campus seminars...poets to their pens...and musicians to their instruments. What's left for the rest of us? Well, in lands with caste systems there is always the privileges of your caste. In lands with tribal systems there is always the protection of your tribe.

In lands with a free-enterprise system like the United States, there is money. Money is the ultimate measure of most everything -- success, power, celebrity, court settlements, medical cures, and yes sometimes marriages. When you have neither nobility nor clan to resort to, cash is king!

The funny thing about cash is how the poor condemn it as "not buying happiness," and the rich approve it by spending it. But alas now DiscoverMagazine.com claims to have put the matter to the test. And thus to rest. It states: "Money does not buy happiness," based on experiments among hundreds of subjects. Their conclusion: "When above the poverty level, the acquisition of money has little bearing on one's happiness, because wealth makes delights that were already accessible seem less enticing...."

Now if you want to study the full experiment, that will cost you some cash. You need a good computer.