Crews Letter #2003 13 Reality and Perception

 

Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen:

 

If in the first two or three sentences your eyes glaze over and you wonder what kind of glue we’ve been sniffing, just close this Crews Letter and forget it.  Unlike some emails that urge you to read to the end because “This is really great”, we are warning you that this probably isn’t.  Sometimes, thinking out loud is helpful in sorting out some issues.

 

Epistemology addresses the question, “How do we know what we know?”  If you collect up all of your senses, you could call them your mind’s eye.  Collectively, over time and experience, your mind’s eye has developed a perception that is for you reality. 

Your mind’s eye defines the reality of the world you live in.  What else but your perception can there be? 

At some point in growing up, the adage, “I will believe it when I see it.” undergoes a metamorphous to become “I will see it when I believe it.”  How many people over the age of twelve do you know who have an open mind?  If the answer is more than 10%, did you count yourself?  Is it likely that you really have an open mind or is it another fallacy that your mind’s eye is feeding you?

 

 

Globalization is when an English princess with an Egyptian boyfriend crashes in a French tunnel speeding in a German car with a Dutch engine and driven by a Belgian driver high on Scottish whiskey while followed closely by Italian paparazzi on Japanese motorcycles is treated by an American doctor using Brazilian medicines but dies!

 

A Dutch boat is lifted out for maintenance near our Perception.  The English crew plays American CDs while applying Turkish paint.  Every fourth word that blares from the CD starts with an F.  America’s number one export is on display and it is loud enough that at least half the people in the marina must hear it.  Throw in a few M.F.er words to balance out the harmony and you get a full understanding of the rich culture that Americans have for export.  At night, this same crew can retire to the boat’s lounge for a movie or two.  Add guns, violence, sex and trash mouth language: America’s number two export.

We have been asked more than once by Europeans how we learned to talk like we do.  They are convinced that hip hop and the movies are the norm and we are the odd balls.  Why are Americans doing this?

When we were in Paris we were frequently asked about JR.  If you are from Dallas, you must know the scoundrel who led this dysfunctional family.  That TV soap opera played everywhere in the world.  Americans standards on display.  When we checked in to Greece there was genuine surprise at the customs office that anyone from Texas did not wear a six-shooter.  We don’t own one.  Never have.

It is understood that freedom of speech includes the commercial media. Wouldn’t it be nice if there could be a free press and a responsible media in the US?  There isn’t.  It has been replaced with a very commercial media.  It is understood that normal, healthy and wholesome is boring, boring and boring. That abnormality, degeneration, violence and corrupt sex is exciting and sells.  What isn’t understood is why, for only a few billion dollars each year, Americans are willing to export the worst we have to offer to a world that believes America is devoid of culture, ethics and morality.  We continue to reinforce their perception.   Why?

Maybe it’s the money.

Recently, we replenished the medicine cabinet with prescription drugs.  The prices in Greece for American manufactured products are about 15-20% of the US price.  What we paid the Greek drug store was about half of the co-payment that Blue Cross demands. Why is this? 

We had the same experience in Turkey last year.

It was nearly as bad in France.  A prescription in Paris cost $30 retail and a pharmacist in Kentucky told me that his wholesale price for the same stuff was $117. 

A frequently stated advantage for retiring to the Texas Rio Grande valley is the availability of pharmaceuticals at Mexican prices just across the border.

Why the unbalance?  If the US government enforces intellectual property rights for the drug companies at home and abroad at taxpayers’ expense, why are those same taxpayers subsidizing world health?   Or is it that they are subsidizing the pharmaceutical companies?  Why would these companies gouge Americans?

Maybe it’s the money.

In the Broadway show “West Side Story” gang members tell the local cop, Officer Krupsky, that they are depraved because they are deprived.  That was fifty years ago.  A lot of Americans accepted this idea and we nationalized it.  We explain away lawless zones in our inner cities, riots after ball games that we lose or win and gang warfare on our streets as an economic issue. 

In the Eastern Mediterranean we have experienced the opposite.

In Croatia – a country that had an ugly civil war less than ten years ago- stealing is unacceptable.  Leave your dinghy and motor on a public beach with duffle bags and groceries for an hour.  No problem.  These are not affluent people.  The per capita income is below the US poverty level.  But they have dignity.

In Greece and Turkey our experience is the same.  By US standards, this is a poverty zone.  It is also a moral zone.

The only theft we have had was the one night that we were in Italy.  It was only a flashlight but that it happened the only night we were there is noteworthy.

There is the joke about the Laker’s basketball star from Lebanon who gets a phone call from his mother.  She complains that her purse was stolen.  His sister was raped.  His father was mugged.  Their home burglarized.  And all since they moved to Los Angeles to be close to him.     

 

It is only funny because it is believable. 

 

Keep a Tight Luff,

Fred & Phyl

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