One of the things I often ponder is how our growing self-involvement is contributing to our problems.

Whether "good, bad or indifferent," our response/reaction to change agents of any sort is becoming more and more laced with mistrust and suspicion because I watch how people increasingly defend a "NOBODY gets to tell ME what to DO!" even if the suggestion is life-saving and paradigm altering.

To make a bad example because I can't think of a better one on short notice... the government says "wearing seat belts saves lives" but instead of considering even the possibility that seatbelts might save lives, people reject ideas out of hand because "no government, authority, organization, corporation or whatever is going to tell ME how to live my life!"

Sure, it may be your "right" to be free to do as you wish and die... but the consequences of your "right" is that someone else is going to have to wipe your guts off the highway... and that's a pisser of a job, but I guess that never occurs to anyone. Evben if we think we are "independent," we rarely operate in a vacuum.