When reading my morning news at WashingtonPost.com, I am now forced to see large pop-out advertisements from Boeing showing their latest line of military helicopters. They aren't selling anything to WashingtonPost.com readers, and they don't want me to know more about their business. This ad didn't even have an outbound link to Boeing's website or product line for more details. They just want to encode my brain with the image of their military helicopter alongside their brand name. Consider that done. I will henceforth associate the Boeing brand with death. I hope that was worth whatever the ad cost them.

It is nearing the end of September now, Beijing's best season. The air is cool and crisp - and everything feels fresher than the summer months.

A man is walking through the neighborhood announcing his visit with a deep resonating voice. "Yeeooooooaa...... Yeeooooooaa.....", he repeats in a long chant. When I first heard this sound, I thought it belonged to someone deeply religious who was meditating. I've since learned that he is simply saying "pijiu" (beer)... and wishes to refill empty beer bottles.

From sunrise until late night a constant chatter of voices can be heard from my apartment window. Unlike the States where everyone keeps their affairs as private as possible, here everything is done in the open. New mothers of the neighborhood gather together with their babies at the same spot each day to share latest developments. The click-clack of grandmas and grandpas playing mahjong on an old wooden table is a distinct sound and can be heard from long distances. They play from afternoon until late at night. (You can tell who the dedicated mahjong players are from the numerous mosquito welts on their limbs.) The local bike repairman can be heard tapping away at a piece of scrap metal. Here the equivalent to an auto-body shop is a stool, a cardboard box of old tools and a few spare bicycle parts set on the sidewalk. No sign required. In the middle of everyone's activities, young boys are giggling and chasing each other in the pursuit of a soccer ball. The remnants of a ping pong table lay in the middle of their field.

I noticed that China's cities have very little graffiti. At least not in the traditional form of gang names, love notes and ubiquitous obscenities. Instead you'll find phone numbers. Someone trying to sell fake IDs, diplomas or other such documents helpful in getting a job.

I'd like to make a statement for the record. Banking institutions are ridiculously absurd. In 2006, banks collected $80 billion in service fees. For most, a "service" means helping or doing work for someone, but banks define "service" as any mistake you make that doesn't cost them anything to fix... surcharges, maintenance fees, courtesy services, setup costs, and of course the notorious overdraft fee.

But I'm not most upset about the fact banks are making as much money as they can off the poor. What bothers me the most is that banks are not good at the one thing we ask of them. I could put my money under a mattress somewhere, but then I couldn't access my money from other places in the world. I could carry all my money everywhere I go, but this would be a security risk and is entirely impractical. This is the only reason we need banks... and I have become increasingly aware that banks are not good at giving me my money.

Why, in today's modern world of Internet communication and global alliances, am I not able to walk into a billion dollar bank (in any country) and ask them to give me some of my money? If it isn't my bank, they can charge me a small "service fee" for the trouble of communicating with my bank and performing a "wire-transfer" (or whatever they want to call it). This fee would makes sense since they are not holding my money and cannot otherwise profit from it.

I won't go into the boring details. Instead, I'll just say by now I should have at least a banking associates degree for all the research and study I've put myself through.

"...I would have to say, however, that a caveat to the ideal of nurturing the world as a whole is that I would do anything to defend my country. The two may not be mutually exclusive..." -- C A S

Point 1: Nurturing the world is a critical component of our country's defense

I understand the feeling of pride for ones homeland, and I find it an admirable quality to be willing to defend ones home and way of life. I feel it is certainly not mutually exclusive to taking care of others' homes and homelands. In fact, I think it is mutually inclusive in the respect that one must see to their neighbor's well being or at least economic balance if they don't want to end up fighting with them. Which is the truer meaning of "defense"? It is usually far less expensive to proact than react - in geopolitical as well as monetary terms. Imagine how far $580,444,463,284 (budget for Iraq war to date) would go towards education or any pro-active initiative, especially when spent in countries where a few dollars can save someone's life.

Point 2: The conviction of defending one's country is dangerous, easily manipulated and generally less virtuous than other beliefs

I fear that many of our citizens are full of pride and willingness to fight, but do not have such strong feelings about other more important virtues. It is very easy to manipulate such pride as most do not know what exactly their values are or how these values differ from other regions in the world. Not to mention it is all to easy for governments to contort facts and take its people to war for false reasons. This feeling of pride is also more instinct than intellect... and carries with it another dangerous quality. Once pride is leveraged and the fighting engine is in motion, there is little one can do to stop it. Even with newly revealed facts, pride will make a lasting emotional bond that continues to shape how one sees such facts. Consider religious wars that last thousands of years and show no sign of ceasing. Individuals on each side are almost identical in their pride and willingness to fight for what they believe - but yet they are unable to pull back the war and re-evaluate their beliefs.

A deep appreciation that people are much the same across the world would probably bear larger fruit. Many Americans have been convinced that everyone we are fighting overseas hates us and hates our way of life -- that we are fighting pure evil. This is the danger of talking about the fight rather than learning more about the world we live in. Taking up arms to defend our country should be recognized as a last resort and a failure on many counts.

Point 3: All people have pride and a willingness to fight - but wealthy countries have greater responsibility and world duties...

The wealthier one is, the greater his circle of influence and subsequently his responsibility to those around him. The richest country should not profit from lesser fortunate countries without taking careful effort to ensure the exchange is mutually beneficial. The real question is how to balanced the benefits. A wealthy man who gives 1 million to a charity may be seen as generous - even if it was only 0.0001 percent of his worth. If I were to design a system to pacify the poor and allocate a majority to the rich, it would still come in the form of nurturing the world. Any outbreak of military action against another country would be counterproductive.

Our country is the most powerful but we are also one of the smaller populations, the youngest and least experienced culture -- a tiny minority in many regards. The notion that we can build up our country, spend a majority on military forces each year and fend off outside forces to protect it is, to be quite blunt, old world thinking. We now live in a world where everything we purchase comes from somewhere else. Cross investing, multinational corporations, and Internet communications have tied us all closely together. It seems that there have always been millions of people starving in Africa -- flies buzzing overhead -- but it's just a charity advertisement to us. In the past, such crisis could remain comfortably across the ocean from us. (The ocean serves as our countries biggest defense.) This is still true today -- but far less true -- as we require more and more from these countries to maintain our way of life.

I fear that we are focused too much on securing our fortress with walls and bomb scanning devices. I believe it is an impotent distraction from fighting the war on the front lines... poverty and joblessness. Most of the people we are fighting with guns are only fighting because they have no other means for feeding themselves or their family. And it takes more than being fed, of course. "Idle minds are the devil's playing ground." Someone who has a job, a home and a family is a lot less likely to join a militia and fight against the most powerful army the world has seen. But even then, he may be filled with country pride and compelled to defend his country -- especially if the army is led by someone who is talking about fighting "pure evil".

I prefer that we run our country as a place where religious persecution and conquests are left at the door. That should be obvious (though it clearly isn't to some). What's less obvious is how we can maintain appropriate levels of governance on multi-national corporate entities who don't/can't have a conscience or soul. Our laws and systems can only do so much to keep peace... we do still end up relying on people's individual and collective conscience to do much of the work. Unfortunately, when it comes to corporations, only the natural laws of capitalism are in force. If it isn't profitable, it isn't done. It is hard, but a most necessary challenge, to make education itself a sound investment (or profitable enterprise at worst) and thus extensible to the platform of capitalism. It is my belief that capitalism can only succeed in the long run if core social and environmental systems are inherently recognized as critical to any individual's or organization's success. One specific difficulty with this is the time horizon... companies rarely look or invest 50 years into the future... nor do people for that matter.

...skipping ahead...

I wouldn't say America is broken... for many reasons, this is not true and not the point. I would say that world problems are accelerating at an alarming rate. The gap between rich and poor is increasing every year. Our dependency upon limited natural resources is growing every year. And I would say that the few people in this world who are wealthy enough to afford education are of the same demographic that is heavily targeted by advertising - whose job it is to play upon people's weaknesses. This ends up creating a culture of materialism, unsustainable living, generally poor education and highly detached apathetic people in the richest parts of the world who have the most resources and obligation to help nurture the world as a whole. The few who know better feel the weight of futility and have turned their focus inward - to their own lives - which on outward appearance looks much the same as their neighbors (and consequently supports the belief that the status quo is perfectly appropriate).

I think we are facing systemic problems on a huge scale. The rise of multi-national corporations and the Internet is entirely new... our historical experiences do not directly relate. I also think it is easy for anyone to have the view that the world is improving in many underdeveloped areas... which gives rise to a debate about whether the world is getting better or worse. I'm certain this debate is not worthy of one's focus.