We lost ourselves when we became a 24/7 world.

The seeds were sown at the opening of the Industrial Age. I told a young woman once that the root of the present unhappiness in the world took hold then, and she scoffed. I was disappointed in both her response, and the fact that this young woman, raised in a 'good' home, would be so disrespectful to an adult she claimed to hold in high regard.

Today, we work 7 days a week. Stores are open longer hours to meet the market demands, demands brought on by the market needing to have more and longer shopping hours to gather the supplies required to maintain a minimal standard of living brought up by the demands of greedier and greedier market owners, who know that if they make it, people will buy it, thus enlarging their coffers.

So, workers work on their former Sabbaths, workers have forced sex with the boss, workers accept the increasingly unreasonable requirements of their employers, all to keep their jobs, because the cost of living goes ever higher.

Capitolism is not the great evil. I believe in a market driven economy, it beats the hell out of communism-witness the utter degradation of Russia and China.

Greed is the great evil. The Bible tells believers that "The love of money is the root of all evil." So true.

I look back on all of the business people I have known who refused to admit the value of 'good conscience' in business. Despite every model that running their business with fairness, honesty, and integrity yields higher returns-long and short term, greedy people expose themselves with alarming frequency.

They manipulate, and bully to get their way. With increasing brutality they are forcing their false and worthless values on everyone with no sense of concern much less responsibility at the consequences of their stupidity.

And when called out, they shrug, and use the crudest of sophistry to 'justify' their behaviour.

Bad enough long ago, when the world was ever so much smaller population wise, and the implications of their evil had less impact and on fewer people-not to denigrate the depth of sufferring they inflicted on their victims.

But today the impact of unrestrained greed in global, the sheer numbers of victims makes no good excuse to condone by turning a weary and overburdened eye away from the impending disaster.

Historically, nations that turn away from an ethic and philosophy that safeguards the physical and spiritual commonweal of all citizens fall.

I grieved when Greece degenerated into a fetid immitation of it's self. I absolutely hated Rome. The moment I set my foot on British soil, I felt hope in me I had not had for centuries, believing with all of my heart that I had finally and forever found a home. Every lifetime lived away from it was filled with one thought-get through this until I can get home.

The 'Empire Years' cast a pall on my feelings; by then I'd lived through the horrors of the the crumbling of the Pax Romana; I'd been amoung the searching women at Hastings. Hastings-oh dear God, I still hate to see a live crow! I'd seen a usurping liar and cheat hailed as King at Bannockburn; I watched a red-coated bastard murder a suckling babe during the Highland Acts, I witnessed the evil done to fellow Britains by the English during the Famines in Ireland.

But centuries, millenia really, before Britain, I'd been speared by a Spartan, his eyes glittering like total emptiness through his faceplate. He showed no emotion at my death-no even satisfaction. Yet as I died I prayed that he would recover his humanity one day...

And the hope that sustained me then did so again during the 'Empire Years' and my hopes for America have not been diminished by G.W.'s "Mandate!"

Still, when I look at the hate that thrives nowadays, I can only say with the experience of all my years, that these are perilious times for Man.

God, help us who yet seek your face.