Read 'n' Seed 3: Second quarter of "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight"

So far in my book I have now read to page 200.  I have continued to read about more topics that all relate to each other as a whole, which end up tying back to the main idea of the importance of "ancient sunlight."  It discusses deforesting, fighting for fuel, and the rise and fall of empires in the first few sections.  It goes into a lot of depth on these subject areas and travels far back in time, discussing different empires long ago, how they operated and how they have an influence on how things are going in our world today.  We are where we are today because of the past cultures that have led us here and it looks like our planet is "on a collision course with disaster," according to the author.  This topic starts the second part of the book.  These pages also touch on social psychology and its' influence and ties overall. 

The Power of Our Point of View: Older and Younger Cultures

(Some interesting facts from this main section)

• Most people probably believe there is nothing they can do to help lessen the burden, but they are mistaken: there are INDEED powerful, meaningful things we can do to help our planet/environment
• Some experts say we are four decades too late to avoid all damage that has been created (BUT...we do hold the future in our hands)
• Ancient Greeks changed the world and established the foundations of Western Civilization with the idea of integrating democracy and slave ownership...every time our culture has been transformed since or before then, for good or bad, it has been because of an idea, insight or a new understanding of how things are or what is possible
• Relating to the bullet above- there is some good news; we can redefine cultural norms, retell the stories that make up the reality we follow, and then humans behaviors will change to conform new stories

The most recent 100 pages I have read in the book continue to go into depth about the effects of the previous generations and breaks it down into subcategories that all come together to make up the main idea that the past generations/cultures DO influence how we are today.  The author, Thom Hartmann, explains how he feels "Today's Younger Culture" views everything, which I found to be interesting and relate directly to a lot of issues we are currently facing.  He summarizes these "stories," aka myths or beliefs, as follows:

1. "We are not an integral part of the world, we are separate from it"
2. "It is our destiny to subdue and rule the rest of creation."

The following pages go on to say different reasons why certain groups or types of people may feel or accuse others as to why and how things got they way that they are now.  These are all very interesting pieces of information.  Some examples that I read about were, "It's women's fault or The creator made us all bad."  It goes to show that sometimes instead of accepting what has gone wrong and trying to fix it or work toward improving it, people try and blame someone else instead of seeing how they can do their part to move toward a common solution or goal.  The author explains how we need to realize that these ideas/assumptions do exist and understand some of the history and the "significant role that culture has played in civilizations past and present."

What We Need to Remember

(Some MORE interesting facts and information that is covered from this section of the book)

• We have lost contact with the memories of our ancient ancestors, we do not remember stories from 200 years ago...which is discussed further and is proven to have a negative impact on society
• Have other civilizations had similar forgettings and if so, how are these to be recovered?
• The sense of history is essential for humans and critical for a healthy culture
• You have to take into consideration and remember the "Older Culture" view, which obviously differs from the younger culture view I discussed previously
• The "Older Culture" view states: We are part of the world and that it is our destiny to cooperate with the rest of creation, which one can tell is much different from how the author summarizes the younger cultures view...

In general this section covers "forgotten" facts about history or how certain things may have come about and how certain cultures or generations may view specific events differently. Here is an example used directly from the book: "Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492," and children in the United States are taught that this was the time of the "discovery" of the Americans, more specifically, when the Americans were discovered by the Europeans.  North and South America were actually discovered long before that though, according to well-documented definitions.  There is much more information about this event, as well as many more events in history and how it relates to what is going on in society and the environment today.

Some New Terms: Overall, this book does a rather well job that when an uncommon word is introduced, it is described and explained well. There are a few words below though that I can across in the reading that I was unsure about:

1. Yttrium- which is a type of chemical element I had not heard of before.  For more detail on this term visit this Wikipedia website.
2. Mesopotamia- refers to what today is known as Iraq.  I found this information from a site similar to the one above.  To read more on this term visit this Wikipedia site.

Overall, these were the few terms that I was unsure about when being talked about in the book.  It is very important to be able to understand this information and the histories of other cultures and our own to know how things came about.  We can learn from the past and apply it to our future. It is also beneficial to know about this stuff and be able to understand what we can do to try and make a more positive impact on our environment.  This information provides a type of base that we need to understand in order to continue to move forward.  These 100 pages were very detailed and contained a lot of information.  I hope you were able to grasp some new ideas/facts and realize how they relate and are important to people, society, our environment, and our planet!

The picture above was found from this Google website.  I thought it related well with the information listed above because previous generations, as we now know more about, do play a huge role in how we act today and how our planet/environment is affected and influenced.