• AN UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCE OF SMARTPHONE OBSESSION IS LITERALLY IMPACT ON HUMAN HEADS. Nearly five hours average daily hunching over handheld devices has impacted over a third of 1,200 persons (in a study of Canadian men + women aged 18 – 86) whose “bodies are adjusting to worsening posture by growing a spike at the base of their skulls to relieve the pressure” from heads held in a down position. ‘Enlarged External Occipital Protuberance’ (EEOP) involves the main bone at the lower part of the skull, which also correlated with nearly seven in ten university students reporting neck pain which preceded that occurrence. [LBN EXAMINER – 6/30/19]

• THE POLITICALLY POPULAR TERM ‘TRANSPARENCY’ MAY BE LEADING TO CHAOS. The impact of borderless connectivity, which the Internet has fostered, includes “citizens of nation-states becoming far more mobile… Many now lean towards a radically ‘transparent’ world where, as the thinking goes, we’ll live much safer if we know everything about everybody (including bank & credit account numbers & passwords)… But transparency unimpeded means we would soon lose our ability to own things – a foundational principle on which the world operate… If 180 countries develop different Privacy Policies, without legal, technological or cultural definitions, it will quickly create a very blurry privacy landscape.” [FUTURESPEAKER.COM – 6/20/19]

• MILLENIALS UPDATE from Deloitte’s 2019 Global Survey “shines a light on the human toll taken by years of societal discord, technological transformation, and economic insecurity.” 25% express zero trust in media as reliable sources of info and 45% say zero with regard to political or faith leaders. Over 60% say they’d be healthier & happier spending less time on social media. 78% believe the social/political climate will never improve. 49% said that, if given a choice, they’d quit current jobs within two years. 57% want to “travel and see the world.” 49% want to own homes, but only 39% plan to start families. [FORBES – 5/20/19]

• THE TERM ‘THIRD WORLD’ generally denotes “poor failed states all over the globe of all races and religions, typified by predictably corrupt government, unequal or nonexistent applicability of the law, two rather than three classes, and the return of medieval diseases. Third World nations suffer from high taxes and poor social services, poor transportation, gangs, lack of security, official denial of all of the above, and a vindictive, almost hysterical state response to anyone who points out those obvious tragedies. Another is massive out-migration… Does 21st-century California increasingly fit that definition — despite having the nation’s most amenable climate and most beautiful and diverse geography, with major natural ports naturally rich in timber, agriculture, mining, energy, and blessed with a prior century’s inheritance of effective local and state government?” A sad and scary analysis of “America’s First Third-World State”: www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/california-third-world-state-corruption-crime-infrastructure/

• THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK: “Gratitude is the least deeply felt of all human emotions. Whatever you do for others, try to think of as doing for yourself… and then try the hell to forget it, because the beneficiary certainly has.”

ABOUT FOCUS:
When your focus on existence becomes about the things you own, and the pleasure of the moment gets pre-empted by a phone,
When you recognize your world of colors turning monotone, do you ponder the unknown?
When pattern keeps repeating and becomes your life routine so everything seems yin or yang with nothing in between,
When you recognize the world around you having turned obscene, are you following your dream?
When novels, art or music are pre-empted by remote control and the more you try to change your life, the deeper looks your hole,
When you sense the way you’re headed doesn’t lead to any goal, do you wonder of your soul?
When your focus of attention is immediate in need and the cause of present tension stems from pursuing greed,
When you recognize selfishness as the priority you heed, is it time to intercede?
When your focus on the HERE and NOW is all that you envision versus WHERE you wish to get to and how every next decision
almost certainly impacts your eventual position, is your path toward any mission?
Reality is just a collective hunch–not black or white, but gray. It’s time to get a focus where you wish to be some day,
or a time will come when you may find it impossible to say if you’ve ever found your way.        DENNIS GRAY