The concept of cause and effect is not obsolete, rather it has expanded as our understanding of our world has expanded. Known also as “karma” [A concept of karma (along with samsara and moksha) may originate in the shramana tradition of which Buddhism and Jainism are continuations. This tradition influenced the Brahmanic religion in the early Vedantic (Upanishadic) movement of the 1st millennium BC. This worldview was adopted from this religious culture by Brahmin orthodoxy, and Brahmins wrote the earliest recorded scriptures containing these ideas in the early Upanishads.], this concept is basic to not just this planet but the universe itself, and the billiard all example can really be seen in the “pool hall” of the universe.

We humans “see” what we want to see. Our defense mechanisms take care of the rest.

It’s extremely educational and you really are certainly really experienced
in this field. You have got opened my eye to be able to varying views
on this topic with interesting and reliable content
material.

Just the other day, I had this conversation with my eldest son [we see each other maybe 4 times a year]:

“Did you know that here in south eastern Canada, that before the arrival of the white man the trees were 200 feet high, and 6 feet in diameter at the base? Because of the canopy they formed, there was little underbrush, so that it was really easy to walk.”

“I thought it was only on the west coast that it was like that,” my son replied. He’s 40. So he’s kinda obliged to be “chasing progress” as you say: raised on the TV and movies of the Reagan era.

“Yes, and the salmon of the Great Lakes were more abundant than now on the West coast. They used to go upstream, just like out on the Pacific coast. But the canals of the 19th century broke the salmons’ connections with the spawning grounds upstream in the smaller lakes that drained into the Great Lakes.”

“When you really think about it, it’s surprising how life can be lived in the same space in such a different way,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, “Now, most work in cages, called offices, built by and for corporations.”

Yes I saw how ” business had become destructive” during the 50s. My chartered accoutant father was “married ” to a company he did not own or have a partnership in. By the mid 60s I had chosen to become an actor to avoid being caged in an office.

But “business had become destructive” centuries earlier with the invention of the “corporation.” Historically coinciding with the “discovery” of the “New World,” corporations were a means for the king to reward his cronies. The corporation is then an extension of the king’s prerogative. The whole process of western politics–the move from royal/aristocratic to democratic rule–has been the process of curbing the king’s prerogative. The story of western economics for the past 500 years has been the increasing corporatization of the means of feeding and sheltering ourselves. Instead of the despotism of one monarch we now have the despotism of a gang of CEOs suported by their ravenous shareholders desperate to avoid owing their “soul to the company store.”

The first story we’re made aware of in public school. But the second story–the more important one–is just another inconvenient truth masked from view by the first story. You know, “don’t rock the boat.”

Unfortunately, it seems few want to hear about it. This I take as a demonstration of the truth of your position. I think it’s what people mean nowadays when they use that recently popularized phrase “going to hell in a handbasket.”

Interesting how the popular slang of any age simultaneously reveals and masks what is actually taking place.