Promises to Keep

Robert Frost wrote, "I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep." We waited today for a landscaper who promised to come after lunch, and another landscaper who promised to come after lunch. And we aren't perfect, but we also are readily available by all the communication schemes... so why couldn't they call or write or ?

And my priest friend wrote me long emails objecting to my point of view expressed in my blog yesterday. In Buddhism you hear talk about trying not to have a position, but toward being equanimous. I've hardly met a Buddhist who was able to pull that off. Usually they are like the rest of us, full of opinions.  I suspect any system will work ok if the people are behind it. It is unfortunate that there is such a division now in the house, so to speak. Sometimes that may be the cost of progress.

And in the Scientific American there was an article about a study of many societies to see which ones acted fairly toward strangers. It seemed that the subsistence societies with a local religion didn't treat strangers very well, but that societies with established markets and a world religion did much better. Personally I'm suspicious about every study I read about. I know that someday someone else will do a study to prove the opposite.