Mature Tendencies

Well, I still haven’t puzzled out the new d-e-e-p post I’m working on so I’m posting yet another thang about the Planetary Shift. I keep getting drawn back to the positives about it and what we can expect in the future—they’re such lovely diversions from all the paranoid stuff I see going on in these earliest agonies of our move from Young to Mature.

So today I was listening to Morning Edition on National Public Radio and several stories struck me as having to do with the developing Mature mindset:
First, there were a couple of stories about the beleaguered newspaper business.
There was a story about how several formerly competing news agencies are changing the ways they’re doing business. They’re COOPERATING! They are pooling resources, putting their heads together to figure out how to entice old readers back and snag new ones.
Columbia University and City University of New York are offering courses to editors and publishers on how to combine resources, share reporters and collaborate on stories they’re covering.
Who woulda thunk the dog-eat-dog world of journalism which has always valued the scoop-the-competition mindset would start to **gulp** cooperate with one another?
That's not a Young Soul way of doing things. What is the world coming to?
In a related story, small weekly newspapers and even dailies that include just a few pages of news and a few more pages of coupons from local stores are making a comeback. Such papers were common until the late 1970’s but most had since died of natural causes—until recently. Now, they’re storming back with a vengeance.

In Sherwood, Michigan residents are growing vegetables in their front yards. To be honest, I didn’t find this story to be all that outlandish. Back in Kansas City, I grew peppers, cucumbers, asparagus and luffas in my front yard. But, apparently, it’s newsworthy.
And the city of Sherwood is taking issue with the practice.
A number of residents had started using the parkway [the area between the sidewalk and the street] for their gardens because, after all, that’s the area that gets the most sun for the longest period of the day. The city sent them letters telling them to cease and desist.
But, the gardeners were getting nothing but positive comments from their neighbors and more and more people had begun joining in. So, they went to the city council asking to have the ordinance repealed. It’s under consideration now.
It used to be that the idea of growing your own vegetables was considered quaint or something you did during wartime. This movement, however, began several years before the current economic crisis. People started doing it because they wanted to.

In 2002, Norway passed a law that all publicly traded companies had to include at least 40% women on their boards. Even private companies have been voluntarily following suit.
Prior to that year, only 6% of board members were women and 70% of companies included no women at all.
Women are still underrepresented in top management executive positions—but it’s a start.
Some noticeable changes on the boards include such things as the fact that women are more likely to admit they don’t know everything. Men tend to bluff their ways through rather than admit they don’t have all the answers.
Women tend to use cooperation to get things done rather than competition.
Actually, this movement had its roots in history. Back in the 1000’s, when the Vikings went off on their raids, the women stayed behind and not only kept the home fires burning—they maintained the villages, what central government there was at the time and the culture while their menfolk were in France and England raping and pillaging and in Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland scouting out new territories.
In another related story, Norway and Sweden rank as numbers 1 and 2 when it comes to men participating in the housework and childcare. Great Britain ranks 3rd and the U.S. is number 4. [Hey! We’re in the top 5! I never would’ve guessed! Still—I think it was telling that the reporters (even the woman involved with the story) spoke about men ‘helping’ with the housework. The mindset still seems to be that this is women’s work and men are going beyond the call of duty if they ‘help out’. **sigh** We’ve still got a way to go, I guess.]
xxx
And, some years ago, I read a magazine article about people leaving the big cities and heading to small towns. They were growing tired of the rat-race. Some maintained their old jobs and, with the advent of computers, had negotiated with their bosses to begin cyber-commuting.
Others changed jobs—moving from a business that involved moving pieces of paper around to creating their own businesses that sold cheese or wine or vegetables or books or toys—things that people can actually put their hands on.
Most of the people who changed the nature of their work took considerable cuts in pay—and found they were quite happy in their new, slower paced lifestyles that included drive-in movies instead of Broadway plays.
Well, such changes have been in the news again—I heard about those a few weeks ago on All Things Considered.

Generally, larger numbers of folks seem to be paying more attention to their neighborhoods, spending more time around their kitchen tables, finding comfort in a more laid-back lifestyle—or so the news is leading me to believe.
I can only hope that such developments are heralding things that will, one day, be the norm.