Third Saturday Seminars 2015-16

To refer to an ancient Chinese saying, “Our World is in interesting times.” The Cold War is over. Technology continues to advance in great leaps. Terrorism has replaced Communism as the “common enemy”. Wealth and Poverty continue to grow. Productivity is mushrooming as is the impact of our species on the planet.

Not only is our world interesting in the Chinese sense, but We the People of the world, like Rip van Winkle, are waking up after a long siesta. Obviously, the new instant media technology is one of the major factors in bringing this about. Not only do they recognize the injustice of their own situation, but they see there are many in the same boat and they also see that there are other places on the planet where people live much better lives (continued below the Schedule).

Come, join the discussion! Let’s see if there is hope!

TSS Schedule and Session Information

Session Themes or Issues are developed as the year progresses. This grid is to facilitate access to current meeting notices and previous session material. See course description below for course details.

Previous Sessions

How else can you explain phenomena like: Occupy Arab Spring, Tea Party and now, ISIS? Long oppressed peoples have spontaneously finally risen up to express dissatisfaction with their rulers, and challenge the foreign policies of the rest of world to respond.

The “powers that be” sincerely claim they desired to bring “Democracy”, “Justice” and “Freedom.” But things do not seem to have worked out as hoped. In many cases one form of oppression is replaced with another more often puritanical and brutal one. In fact, millions of people have become refugees to avoid the destruction and murder going on around them.

Sparked by the insult of 9-11 the US and many allies have engaged in nation building exercises using purposely limited resources, which turned into reactive attempts to suppress insurgencies which diverted them from ever creating an environment for the establishment of new popular governments.

Those we have put in charge totally ignored the cultural realities of these areas. Though “chaos” has apparently not reached our shores, we are being distracted by the dire predictions of terrorist attacks, which really are not existential threats to our existence. But, our Leaders and media magnify their effect so they appear to threaten the end of the world as we know it and causes us to dismantle more of our Constitution.

Osama bin Laden’s purpose was to get the US and the Western countries to react to his attacks and threat of more in such a way we would waste our economic and political resources impoverishing and demoralizing our populations, bringing internal dissatisfaction and chaos, making them easy targets for the so called religious zealots to move in and pick them clean. So far bin Laden’s plan has worked. (“We will use your democracy to destroy your democracy” Omar Bakri Mohammed, 2000)

The International world used to be able to distinguish Good Guys from Bad Guys. That is a now very complex problem.

The individual citizen is assaulted with a blinding array of propaganda from every conceivable source. Religious, commercial, political. We have every reason to be concerned with social, political, health, educational, commercial, international, local etc. issues.

To this observer there are almost no easy answers. We are presented competing ideas in just about any venue. The improved flow of information has made it more difficult to ignore the shortfalls of all our institutions and that promises are rarely are fulfilled.

Most of us feel overwhelmed by our mega-governments and mega-companies. The “flow” is just carrying us along at a fast speed, and sometimes it is difficult to feel that we have much to say even about things which very closely affect our lives.

The Third Saturday Seminar is about empowerment of the individual. We hope to help the individual to discover strategies to help deal effectively in this and the future world through a combination of acquisition of knowledge and deciding what, if anything to do with it or about it.
We will learn from each other as well as many other sources. The participant is the only arbiter of their own “right answers.”

The Seminar normally meets once a month on the Third Saturday from September to November and February to May.
Lone Star College – Montgomery,
3200 College Park Drive
Conroe, Texas 77384 936-273-7000

Third Saturday Seminars – Spring 2016

LSC-Montgomery
3200 College Park Drive, Conroe, TX 77384

Membership in the seminar is through the LSC Montgomery Academy for Lifelong Learning (ALL) program (936.273.7446). The ALL program membership is $35 and allows you to participate in TSS and most of the other excellent ALL Activities at no additional cost (except for materials) for the entire year. 

This is the sixteenth session of the Third Saturday Seminar (TSS). We start every session talking a lot about current world events before the main issue.

Normally the meeting is held on the Third Saturday from 09:30am – Noon in Room B-102.
However, please check the schedule as conflicts sometimes require the room and the date to be changed.
We will be pleased to send you an e-mail the week of the session which will remind you of the meeting and usually give you links to the material to be covered. To be added to this list: gcgconsult (at) n-star.com

Come, join the discussion! Let’s see if there is hope!

Curt Gibby, Spring, Texas
Director