Being and Doing

These are two seperate Ways of Life, and integrating them has been difficult.

Being means being open to many possibilities, and doing means concentrating on only one. The one possibility chosen was wealth. As described in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations.

There was nothing wrong with wealth, in itself - but the mindset it cultured, brought in many problems with it.

These people became super-people, and took control of the economy. And discriminated against ordinary people - whom they considered inferior.

It is important to emphasize what they developed: Business - that quickly became all-powerful. Because it had most of the money behind it.

This transition took awhile - from the middle of the 19th Century, to the middle of the 20th - and we often refer to this process as Industrialization. And it resulted in two classes of people - Business and Labor. The second category, consisted mainly of farmers who became poor - and greatly resented this.

Business people identified with their machines - and developed a machine culture, complete with political machines. President Truman, for example - was a product of the Pendergast Machine of Kansas City. And the Daley Machine, of Chicago - helped elect JFK, who was a Catholic.

This situation changed, in the Eighties, when a new machine was invented - the Computer. People have been busy adjusting to it - and it is too soon to see what the overall effect will be. We only know it will be different.