Room 8, the cat who never left grade school

[Angry Dragon]

I was doing some web surfing tonight and ran across this article on a cat that adopted a school back
in the fifties and sixties. I got to thinking as I read it. How have we allowed politicians, corporations,
corrupt school administrators, the media, the religions, to corrupt and nearly destroy the learning
process of the youth of today?? These forces working together are trying to take the future away
from your children and grandchildren.

Perhaps I am just naive and old fashioned in thinking that the world should not be a place of hate and fear.
A place where people can exchange ideas and not be called names because one does not agree with another.
A place where one set of beliefs is as valid as another as long as one does not hurt another.
It just seems today that many feel that the only way to get their way is to hurt and threaten others.
Do they not see that by working together they can still come out better?? Is it all about power and money??

Here is the link http://www.explorehistoricalif.com/room8.html

It is about an animal and people working together to bring people together for one common goal.
I feel it is a story about humanity and learning, it is about having a soul. I just want to know
where the soul of this country has gone and who stole it

[Bobbieo]

1. Soul is such a beautiful word in Spanish - 'alma'

El mundo no tiene alma!

[Angry Dragon]

2. Thank you for the Spanish lession

I know very little Spanish ...hola

[KT2000]

3. Thank you for posting this

This story filled my heart and reminded me of the world as I once thought it was.

Your story also reminded me of being in the 5th grade in 1961. My two cats were running across the street one night and one was hit by a car. The other cat, Archie, ran off and did not come back.
Then one day three months later I was sitting in my classroom and one of my friends ran into the room yelling "Archie is outside! Archie is outside!"

Sure enough, my cat Archie was standing out in the playground - skinny, dazed but just sitting there looking at all the kids. I took him to the office so they could call someone at home to come get him. My sister had to walk the mile plus from home with a box to take him home. I felt like everyone cared about Archie - the kids, the teacher, the principal and the secretary too. People shared my happy.

[Angry Dragon]

5. I am glad the story could fill your heart

with glad pleasant feelings. I feel the world is a lesser place without these feelings. It just seems that so many people have fear and hate that fills them that they have no room inside of themselves for things of joy.

[KT2000]

7. You are right but I think

people will wake up from this.
The truth is - hate and anger make people feel good. They become addicted to the adrenalin of hate and seek it out in their media choices and choice of friends. It makes them feel alive and superior.
But anger and hate do not sustain life.

I have made the decision to inform people who try to spread their anger and hate to me, that I don't want to hear it and then I ask them to make a list of all the things they are angry about. Then I ask them why they want to live like that when they are actually among the luckiest people on this planet.

The spiel varies but I attempt to take people out of their "loops." At least they don't dump their gripes on me after that.

[jotsy]

4. If 'better' as defined in the minds of the PTB means having more than others

Then a self absorbed extension of that dictates being best means having it all, which is pretty close to where I'd argue we are.

I just don't get why they don't see we've come too far and learned too much to accept what they seem to want now, or that coveting such a scenario speaks volumes about how truly lacking they themselves are.

K and R

[Angry Dragon]

6. I have no idea what PTB means.......sorry

[jotsy]

8. It is an acronym for the Powers That Be.

The 'they' I thought you were referring to in your OP.

[Angry Dragon]

9. "They" would include the PTB

But what troubles me most is that the people at the top whether they be politicians, church leaders, ceos, media, use hate and fear to incite the masses. This trickles down and the masses start hating because they look up to the people with authority and if it is okay for them then it must be okay for the people on the bottom. The haters on the bottom will not realize what they are giving up until it is too late and then they will have nothing and nobody to blame except themselves.

[jotsy]

12. And which limb from that octopus do I chase first?

The perception of a lack of EQUAL justice in the eyes of a pressed public is an inherently volatile state. I submit the hate and fear you refer can be boiled down to envy and division, which I contend have both been artificially created. An advertising class was required curriculum for me as a journalism student, and I'd bet what I learned there has saved me a fortune since. The pretty girl, the spiffy car, the clear skin, whatever 'it' may be, the job of advertising is to make you want it and the most expedient path to that lies in creating envy.

Consider that the soil and division a seed, water it with a lack substantive education and weed the pursuit of individuality as artists, athletes and scientists. The result is us, a conditioned society decades in the cultivating. Blame is used as more of a shield to deflect suspicion from where it should be to where ever the pointed fingers lead.

A couple of things you might check out which I hope provide some insight to the development of my contentions can be found if you look in to the work of Stanley Milgram, who ran an experiment with stunning results regarding authoritarianism decades ago. The origins of the term 'perception management' might also be worth a look see. I looked it up one day before attributing it to the gopher they call Bush's brain and got a big surprise as to who it was that developed and defined the phrase.

I'd love to say try not to be troubled. Anyone one with a heart and a head that work in unison should be.

[Angry Dragon]

15. Thank you for the information

I will research it.

[Angry Dragon]

10. K

[G_j]

11. wonderful story!

thank you

[ceile]

13. That's a wonderful story.

Got a little teary eyed....

[montieg]

14. Regarding how this condition came to be................

back in the 50's Eugene Burdick (also author of The Ugly American)wrote a skinny little book that transformed my perceptions of the world when I read it in college in '65. It's called The Ninth Wave (surfer paradigm about the ninth ninth wave being REALLY BIG). However, the crux is this: governments operate on the two-gate theory. One gate is fear---open the fear gate out among the people till they are frothing at the mouth. Slam the fear gate down and open up the hate gate---give the people an object to hate and stand back.
Personally I think this is exactly what the right-wingers have been doing since Nixon unchained Spiro Agnew in '69. I even came up with a little time line that traces Rove-ist dirty tricks all the way back to a guy named Murray Chotiner who worked for Nixon in 1950.

And I think our culture is permeated with that rancor and dissension. Witness the coarsening of our culture by all the football/basketball psych-out mind games to dominate the opponent.

Burdick was frighteningly prescient, even though he was analogizing the totalitarian WWII era.

[Angry Dragon]

16. I will look into this...............