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Homogeneity: Why it is a bad thing.

First off what does it mean? It is derived from the word homogeneous. In Latin it breaks down to Homo = the same, and gen = kind/race etc. So basically it means everything is the same. Why is this a bad thing, first off its boring. Why would you want everything to be the same, variety is the spice of life. Secondly it is dangerous. The whole pet food scare is a prime example of how our (and our pets) food supply has become too homogeneous.

Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end. There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours, or days. All things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else. Your wealth, fame, and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance.

It will not matter what you owned, or what you owed. Your grudges, resentments, frustrations, and jealousies will finally disappear. So too, your hopes, ambitions, plans, and to-do lists will expire. The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away. It won’t matter where you came from, or on what side of the tracks you lived, at the end. It won’t matter whether your beautiful or brilliant. Even your gender and skin color will be irrelevant.

Consider that the United States Government is the largest single consumer of energy in the United States don’t you think it’s time for them to become a model of energy efficiency? A first step could be to require all federal buildings to use more efficient light bulbs, AND ask our bureaucrats to turn off their computers at night. According to a 1999 report by the Alliance to Save Energy, the federal government consumes about 32% more energy per square foot than the nations building stock at large.

A recent posting in the Wall Street Journal a discussion on the resurgence of the City of Chicago has a quote from Russian writer, Vasily Grossman, “Man never understands that the cities he has built are not an integral part of Nature. If he wants to defend his culture from wolves and snowstorms, if he wants to save it from being strangled by weeds, he must keep his broom,spade, and rifle always at hand. If he goes to sleep, if he thinks about something else for a year or two, then everything is lost. The wolves come out of the forest, the thistles spread and everything is buried under dust and snow”