Below is e-mail from K Watkins about the site and some of my writing:

 About the open letter to the Pope:  I admire the sentiments and the effort.  But  see those pigs over there, sprouting wings?  They still can't fly.

 I have a lot more than that to say in reaction to your comments on Diamond's  Guns, Germs, and Steel, thus:

You can't change a culture without the consent of its members.  The best you  can  do is eradicate it.  What we're dealing with in the "white, Pepsi-culture  dominating the planet" is not only the expansionism of its proponents, but  also  the eagerness of those expanded to.

This dominant culture specializes in material well-being, and thus it looks -  no, IS - enormously desirable to anyone conscious of material lack.  One could say that people tend not to miss what they don't have, but that's true only if they don't know about it - and not even then, if what they don't have is food  in  their bellies, warmth on their bodies, health, surviving dear ones, etc.  People  crave heat, food, or surviving children whether or not they're exposed to the  sight of a warm, well-fed couple surrounded by a healthy brood of offspring.

Another note, now that I've seen your second page of photos: how is the introduction of electric power, motorized transport, instantaneous worldwide communication, etc., different from the introduction of cattle?  I'd guess that cattle induced quite as radical a culture shift in its way.   [Tom's response: Diamond says the impact was dramatic: animal husbandry and agriculture ended nomatic culture and led to city-states] But, to resume:

When people are longing for something that strongly, there are really only two things that can get their attention:  a way to get what they're longing for,  or  a way to stop caring so much.  And if you think about it, the last time a  culture swept this planet, it was the other one:  Christianity offers a sense of  everything-that-really-matters-is-going-very-very-well which rescued its  acceptors from every kind of misery and despair in worldly experience.

One might claim that any religion offers such rescue, but I don't think so.  As  I understand Hinduism, for instance (and yes, I'm going way out on a limb by  using a tradition you know much better than I), it doesn't teach that  everything  is actually going well, but rather that caring whether everything is going  well  is inappropriate.  I suppose that from the inside that might qualify as "a way to stop caring so much"...or is it just an admonition against it?  I can't  tell  from this distance.

 Nevertheless, I do agree that there have to be passionate believers in the  value  of the expanding culture carrying it far and wide.  But there also have to be  people flocking to those who offer it.  The critical attribute enabling the  expansion of both Christianity and the Western consumerist culture hasn't been  expansionism - Attila the Hun had plenty of that! - but attractiveness in  terms of pretty universal and basic human desires.  You can call it seductive  instead of  attractive, if you like; the difference between the two is mostly connotation.

In the end, I think it's simply that people want to feel good.  They're  inclined  to try anything which they think is likely to make them feel better (without  too  much risk of making them feel worse).  And as long as it keeps working,  they'll  keep trying it.  It's really only we over-stimulated, over-satiated, jaded,  third- and fourth-generation members of this sybaritic culture who have gotten to the point where more of the same doesn't make us feel better any more.

The rest of the world is unlikely to learn from our experience on that score.  After all, we're not the first to exhaust physical gratifications, nor the  first  to proclaim its inadequacy with eloquent passion.  Every tradition which  advises  restraint in such matters bases that advice on the assertion that, in spite of how good it looks, it doesn't really work in the end.

Hinduism, as I know of it, does this, of course.  Likewise Christianity,  Buddhism, etc. etc....even the Greeks (the Stoics) and Romans (Marcus   Aurelius).  And, yes, Judaism: Ecclesiastes, purported to be by Solomon, says  approximately:  "As king, I had the option to try any and every way I could   think of to feel good, and I did: wisdom, power, pleasure, laughter,  drink, foolishness, building monuments, idling in gardens, wealth, parenthood, music, glitzy shows, fame, companionship, talking, listening, sex, skill...and I'm here to tell you, nothing really works.  'Vanity of vanities [the Hebrew word means 'smoke'], all is vanity.'  But what comes closest is sticking with  the traditional rules and not letting yourself get too worked up over it all."

Words to live by?  How many people do you know who think Ecclesiastes is a  great book?