The(my) ultimate questions:

Greetings China Cat Sunflower.

May I ask which specific area, or areas, of the OPs question provided the greatest confusion? Perhaps I might be able to offer some assistance.

 

Hi Drumr.

This seems to imply that the cause of global discord is the competition among parents to insure the best for their kids. That seems rather simplistic to be an "ultimate" question. So I was confused as to whether that's the real question The Khan had in mind or if it's more an ice berg tip which might lead us to deeper causes.

In the U.S. schools are funded locally with property taxes. Parents try to move to the best neighborhood they can afford to get away from the riff-raff and get their kids into a better school. In states that border Mexico lower income school districts are saddled with the expense of bringing non-English speaking kids up to par with their peers. This detracts from the over-all quality of education for English speaking students. Consequently, parents try to buy their way into more affluent neighborhoods to get away from immigrants and the accompanying resource drain associated with teaching kids English. This, then, is an important factor in understanding how nativist and xenophobic identity politics come to hold such currency in certain parts of the country. A similar process occurs within other low to middle income school districts where the educational needs of minority children are seen to be a detriment to the education of "normal", ie white children. It is all about economics, but I don't think that these factors amount to much in the consideration of geo-economics among the nations, economic blocs and power players that move and control the destiny of the world's economy.

Chris

 

Thank you for the favor of a reply, China Cat Sunflower.
I believe that the important sticking point, as mentioned by TheKhan, may be found in this partial quote:

I am hopeful that this may help.

 

Do not concern yourself with "world/nations/communities". You do not control these things. You do not even control your own life and death. And, anything you accomplish will one day be lost of the sands of time anyway.

Instead, focus on what *you do* control - and that is your own choices, values, and behavior. Improve the world by improving the person in the mirror. Work on your mindfulness so that you can be more aware of your own responses. This way you can improve your wisdom, your compassion for all beings, and your virtue. If you do this, you will free your sense of happiness and contentment from external conditions. You will be free of your attachments to the happenstance of worlds/nations/communities and thus you will be able to experience the flourishing good life, content that you have acted in pure motivation and with virtue.

With that fortitude, virtue and duty will guide you to do your part to make the world a better place. You will find helping to make the world a etter place is a part of your practice of self improvement. BUT... it will not be because the seat of your concern is on outcomes or consequences as in "I must change this in the world". Instead, the seat of your concern and the source of your happiness will be, "I must be the kind of person who tries to change the world". That is something you control no matter what happens external to you.

Whether or not the world is changed to a certain form is irrelevant. All things change and they do so in proportion to your efforts like a tidal wave washing over an ant. But if you want a happy life, then cultivate your compassion, wisdom, and virtue. Then you will be living in accordance with your higher nature as a rational and moral being, and the fruit of that is True Happiness.