Sound bite culture not prepared to react to complexity.

[dogindia]

I see it in the unbelievable will to cut nectar, seed and berry plants along the highway. Many birds and insects need this complex ecology to survive. We Americans want everything to LOOK neat so we willfully cut even the marginal areas down. Without any thought. It has come to me that it is a lack of education and understanding about how nature works.

Pollination, insects......food crops. etc.

The same seems to be occurring with reference the mortgage bubble and crash and the complex interactions of banks, markets and many of the credit systems that allow businesses (YOUR EMPLOYMENT) to function.

Just cut it down many on DU and main street say.

I think it is lack of education that is to blame. And lack of the folks who should be explaining it better.

[Richardo]

1. Can you cut that down to about a half dozen words?

:)

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. I can

People are willfully ignorant

Now that is FOUR...

:-)

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

2. I've spent hours trying to understand it and I *still* don't get all of it.

I have the beginnings of a rough sketch of an outline of an out-of-focus grainy black-and-white photograph of what is happening, and I actually *unerstand* a lot of the underlying principles. God help any sane human being who tries to understand this mess.

[dogindia]

5. I think it is deregulation of bundling and selling for credit swaps

like insurance by many brokerage and banks to hedge the subprime lending.. lots of non educated folks being lured into bad deals but

became so big and the money must have appeared to be good that the banks and money houses got caught

then the real estate bubble burst and housing prices dived.

that is my take but it is complicated as I said. Run on banks. Short selling (betting they would go down) the weaker firms

Now the whole system is frozen with even good businesses not being able to borrow for payroll and inventory (ie your job). Or at least that is the fear.

The fed dropped a bundle today into the system.

[dogindia]

7. Fed Pumps Further $630 Billion Into Financial System (Update3)

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a9MTZEgukPLY&refer=home

[angstlessk]

4. I recall after I bought my first microwave oven...for the first time in my life

I thought 30 seconds was a long time!!!

[Venceremos]

6. I think your lack of education is to blame for your position.

Listening too much to the talking heads on TV. Read the bill for yourself - it was awful.

[dogindia]

8. maybe it is that the systems we are living in are beginning to be more

visible and sometimes at risk...ie global warming....

I was not meaning to slam the education system although it sounded like I was. I think it is a developing work in progress (adjusting and educating for complexity) that in the end will benefit many

[stillcool]

9. overly simplistic never works..

and I think we all know that. We accept flawed explanations for lack of anything better..or..try to tear it up logically and hope to make sense..(conspiracy theory) I guess truth is always elusive but I don't think I've ever had such a lack of faith in what is supposedly fact. And for so many of us we are so busy balancing everything on our plate while speeding around like hamsters on a wheel, scared shitless to stop, we don't have the energy or the inclination to ask why.

[depakid]

10. Precisely

There's also the herd effect (which is particularly strong in the sound bite, IM and "few word poster" culture).

One suspected that there were lots of sheeple here who can't reason things through- now that's been confirmed. Dramatically.