I’m Crying. . . No Wait, I’m Laughing. . .Living in the Dream

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crap I learned but wished I hadn't

I rather doubt that Mrs. Neanderthal had these problems.

I mean seriously. The sun came up, the moon went down. It rained, or snowed, or the Smilodon ate the children. Things were pretty darn reality-based.

Today?

Not so much.

I swear, more people fall for satirical sites than ever before because it is just that hard to tell fiction from reality. I mean is there ANYTHING that Sarah Palin couldn’t necessarily say regarding Russia or Malaysian Flight 370?

So, it seems to me, that mostly, we are keeping our heads tucked into our turtle shells as a matter of self-defense. The brain can only take so much nonsense before it says in effect, “I’m outta here!”

Which is all to say, that this is what I found crazier than spit this week, or whatever.

The religious right continues to moan and groan about how the “others” portray their favorite sacred cows. Whether it be how Neal De Grasse Tyson portrays the universe and humans or how Hollywood portrays Noah, the Right claims that it is not being consulted, nor given “equal time” to present their fantasy-based interpretation.

I scratch my head. Actually I scratch my head a lot when listening to the religious Right, since hypocrisy and contradiction are their middle name. Cognitive dissonance is written across their foreheads.

Are not these the same people who harp on how we need to return to a “free market economy” because that’s what made (and will make again) Merika great? Despite all the evidence that proves that we have never been such a thing, they surely want it.

Isn’t Cosmos just a bunch of people who took free market principles, gathered money, made a show, sold it on the open market and presented it? Is there  anything stopping the cuckoo birds on the Right from doing the same? Ain’t that your “free market” in action?

In other words, why do you think you get equal time?

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Is it just me or would it all just be more fun if all the GOP frontrunners who have gathered at the foot of the throne of Sheldon Adelson to beg him to lavish his money upon them, would just give the old ugly fart a blow job, best one wins?

I hear Chris Christie wooed the old man to a standing ovation with his promises to give Israel a new cabinet seat in his hoped for Administration. I will give Chris one thing. If apparent sincerity were the gauge of truth, he’d be right up there in believability. Most demagogues sound good don’t they?

And Chris, I saw ya sitting at the Garden watching UConn. Dude. That belt thing is getting out of hand. I mean you could stick your tongue out and lick the buckle. Go for suspenders and then you can wear your pants under your belly and not be afraid they’ll fall down and expose your miniature penis. I promise.

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Meanwhile GM is furiously trying to stop Tesla from selling their cars from the factory. What part of “free market” economy don’t you guys get? See above regarding Religious Right.

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Did he think we would miss this? Scott Walker, who for reasons that escape the sane head, thinks he might run for President, has happily signed into law measures to limit voting in his state, like on weekends and so forth, times when WORKING people find it easier to hit the polls. All the while, he extends the time allowed for BUSINESS to make campaign donations (no doubt to his coffers).

I have to hand it to the GOP. They really make no bones about the fact that they know they can’t win elections if people actually vote, at least if SOME people actually vote, so they are more than happy to do their best to make sure those SOME people can’t vote. Yea! We Won! (by reducing the electorate to only US!)

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There is a Hollywood right-wing organization called “Friends of Abe” that you might want to become aware of. Prominent members are founder Gary Sinise, Clint Eastwood, Kelsey Grammer, Jerry Bruckheimer, Patricia Heaton, Robert Duvall, and David Mamet. Our dear Ted Cruz went out to give a speech to them recently. They appear to be embroiled in some very questionable legal activities regarding their attempts to gain 501 (c)(3) status from the IRS.

It’s all very creepy, you know, these poor misunderstood and much maligned conservatives. Read the usual “victimization” crap.

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In, “This is Great News!” Steven Seagal, “action” figure turned awful actor, says he think Vlad Putin did a great job swallowing Crimea, and figures he will soon be living in Moscow himself.

If we get really lucky he might take Joseph Farah crazy grifter from WorldNetDaily for whom Seagal “writes” and Sheriff Arpaio, whom he supports because, hey, what’s a little racism among friends?

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I figure that the film Noah will do just fine at the box office if they just show remarks by Ken Ham. “Boring”, “worst film I’ve ever seen”, “extreme environmental message”, “psychopath”, “pagan elements”, “anti-biblical”, “a sci-fi fantasy”, and “an insult to God”. Coming from Ham, this is worth it’s weight in golden calves, er Oscars.

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Seriously. This is women’s history month. And it’s nearly over. So do read about black women and their fight to stop lynching in America. It’s sobering. And in a world where racism still exists too too much (any at all is too much), it’s timely.

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If you aren’t already you should be reading Charles Pierce. He writes for Esquire and he is irreverent, spot on in his right-wing hostility, and rip-roaringly great with words. Just Google him and then make sure you read his stuff.

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As some of you know, I’m in the midst of yet another push to figure out all this enlightenment, spiritual, God stuff. I tend to go by fits and starts. Do not for a moment think that I am unaware of the incongruity of being a snarky mouthy opinionated leftie while at the same time pursing non-dual non-self, self-awareness at the same time. I am most aware that they are at polar opposites.

So witness a truly integrated double personality! I do the former because (a) it is what I truly believe and touches my soul as stuff that matters to humanity writ large and (b) is kickin’ fun. I do the latter since I’m this frightened pile of poo like everyone else, not afraid to say that and wanna know what comes next, or at least to live with death stalking me with more peacefulness that I now do. Let’s face it, most of us deal with our impending end by (a) refusing to think about it (b) medicating it to death or (c) mantra-ing it to death with our favorite religious, “I do believe, I do, I swear I do, please believe me GOD and don’t send me to hell” chanting when ever the scary stuff gets too close.

Part of being me is speaking truth, AND striking down falsehood and misleading bullshit where I find it, which doesn’t make me necessarily right, but at least gives others a fighting chance to see that there are two sides and not just one. It’s on you. YOU gotta think and you gotta decide. I’m just doing that out loud.

So happy Sunday.

Enough Freakin’ Already!!

Tags

crap I learned and unlearned

Okay, so get ready cuz no doubt I’m gonna piss off somebody.

I’m surely not the first to be critical of the coverage we are getting from the media on Malaysian flight 370 and what happened to it. As usual, for good reason I might add, CNN gets the bulk of the criticism for it’s as always, over the top, wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling coverage.

My criticism is deeper and broader.

I’m sick of ALL of it.

Almost from the beginning it was too much.

This is where some will take issue with me:

None of this crap matters except to a tiny tiny few people.

It matters only that enough time has past for any decent scenario that involves the plane landing somewhere and the passengers being cast-a-ways on some LOST island. Please don’t forget to push that button!

So we can safely assume that all aboard are dead.

I agree that it is important to find the plane for a variety of reasons, least of which is that if there are recoverable bodies, people I guess would like to bury them in the family plot.

But let’s face facts. Dead is dead.

All these people screeching for answers don’t want answers. They are really just avoiding their real pain and agony by not having this idiotic thing called “closure”. What happened? How did it happen? Was it a catastrophic defect in the plane or was it a bomb? Was it shot down? Not one of these scenarios changes anything for the families of victims. Dead is still dead, and you are not going to feel one bit better whichever “how” turns out to be the the case here.

That’s hard to hear. It’s also true.

I’m not sure that it matters whether somebody dies after a lingering illness, of old age, or from random gunfire down the block. The pain is what it is, and no fine words of “he had a full life”,  or “at least her pain is over” changes much the misery of those who will be without someone they love. We are, whatever you may like to think, grieving for OUR loss, not their loss of life, say what we may.

But even if one posits that the “family needs to know”, you and I don’t. It’s unfortunate to be sure, as every death is, or nearly every one. But shit happens. Planes fly, planes crash. So do cars. Tractors turn over, trains run off tracks. The whys and wherefores matter little except to those who job it is to insure that this don’t happen often.

The people who built the plane are interested in this, as are search and rescue people (for what they can learn to do a better job). Pilots are interested to learn to do a better job to, if that is the case.

NOBODY else should be interested or care about this.

And media is wasting my time and their air time in seducing me to waste my time.

There are people who are dying from war.

Children are starving.

Medical breakthroughs are being made.

New books about important subjects are being published.

People are being denied their right to vote so one party can win what it cannot win otherwise–fairly.

Animals are being abused.

Our lakes, rivers and oceans continue to be polluted. Isn’t it a commentary on all this that there is so much likelihood that the mysterious “debris” is really just sea junk, something our oceans seem full of?

I’m sick of hearing about this.

I’m sick of hearing about Justin Bieber.

I’m sick of Housewives from Hell anywhere in the USA, of that Honey Boo Boo, who ever in hell she is,  of all those crazy women who make up their CHILDREN to look like sluts and parade them on stage to win pageants, of ice road truckers, and swamp hunters, and moonshiners in the hills of West Virginia. I hate all this crap.

It’s just cheap time-wasting, mind-numbing, intelligence-killing drivel, and so is non-stop coverage of somebody else’s personal tragedy.

I’m sick of religious nuts everywhere. By the way, did you hear that the family of the dead wacko job, Fred Phelps, has the amazing audacity to plead for no one to picket their dear loved one’s funeral–for the public to have some “decency”. After all he was a fine man who loved God and “stood against perverts and fags” Seriously, his son said that!

And other than that, I’m having a wonderful Monday.

 

 

 

It’s Not Left vs Right, It’s Right vs Wrong

Tags

economy, editorial, GOP, poor, race, rant, teaparty

A movement is arising.

It began with Occupy Wall  Street.

It arose with Moral Mondays in North Carolina.

It’s spreading.

Throughout the South.

It’s moving to Wisconsin, and there are murmurings in Missouri.

People are getting tired of being tired.

And it’s not Democrats although no doubt most are. It includes Republicans and Independents and people who have little to do with politics. It includes some business folk, but probably not so many as people who are working stiffs. And poor. Lots of the poor.

And they come to state legislatures and stand in silent witness that these bodies of Republican control are unjust and immoral.

Yes immoral.

Republican extremism known by the name of Tea Party, is an immoral wound in America and people are not going to take it any more.

Let us be clear. Like it or not, believe it or not, (and the extremists are very good at refusing to accept reality), big business (aka Koch brothers) organized and funded the Tea Party movement. Their intentions were not made known of course but their intentions are clear: reduce taxes on the rich, reduce corporate taxes, reduce regulation on business, and continue to subsidize business so we can continue to laud “free market economies” (which of course given all this are not even close to being free, but are protected by government itself) as the best thing on earth.

To the Tea Party they formed, the message went: your taxes are going to takers not makers. You have worked hard and deserve that money yourselves. All you need do is fund the military so we can continue to enforce our will of “right” on the world. We can create the jobs if you just do your part and give us a free hand. That’s what democracy is all about, that is capitalism. It’s the government and its incessant socialistic welfare mentality that is destroying this country.

Now some of the Tea Party are well-educated business types. They are tiny business operations for the most part, but they like to think of themselves as “entrepreneurs” which makes them sound like the Kochs, and Trumps and those kind. But most of the Tea Party consists of not very well-educated white aging men and their overly made up and coiffed wives who like that idea that more money should be in their hands and not going to “those” people. You know “those” people, the ones are required to called “black” now, when in the day it was fine to call them “N*****”? And all those Mexicans, which are still just Mexicans, even though plenty of “them” actually come from Guatemala and Nicaragua and other places called Latin America. And then there are those “Orientals” from the “Orient” since Asian is still not de rigueur in this culture, and it’s all one big country isn’t it? After all, Sarah thought Africa might be a country, right?

Then in the ultimate hypocrisy of all hypocrisies, there in a dose of “Christianity” to hide that racism/downright hatred underneath. “See, it’s not me, it’s God who has a problem with fags!” And if that makes them feel vulnerable, well, throw in a dose of the 2nd Amendment was made for you and me, and voila, we have a mess of a human being filled with self-righteous hate, little actual knowledge of the world, but a gun-defended arrogance to do everything but call it publicly what they call it privately.

But ordinary folks are getting tired. Ordinary decent people who don’t have to wave a bible around to know what is right and what is wrong. And they are tired of watching years of work being undone by barely literate Republican senate and house members who pass insane laws one after another, making it safe and right for white America to live in their fantasy of the “good ole days”.

So people are marching. And more of them march every week.

IN NORTH CAROLINA THE GOP HAS SINCE 2010:

1. Raised taxes on the lowest 80% of it’s citizens
2. Removed a tax credit on 900,000 working families
3. Enforced restrictive voter laws
4. Blocked increased Medicaid coverage for the poor
5. Cut Pre-Kindergarten funding
6. Cut unemployment benefits
7. Voted itself a right to intervene in abortion lawsuits
8. Repealed a law that allowed death row inmates to challenge their convictions on racial grounds
9. Increased the standards at abortion clinics to that of surgical centers and made it illegal to offer abortion coverage if you are a public health insurance company.
10. Offered no increase in base salary to school teachers even though they are paid at the lowest rate in the country.
11. Tenure is to be phased out and no salary increases are to be given for master’s degrees. Teachers aides are severely cut.

IN GEORGIA, THE GOP HAS:

1. Refused to grant increase in Medicaid coverage affecting some 600,000 Georgians and made it a crime to assist someone who is seeking ACA coverage.
2. Cut more than 7.6 BILLION dollars to public education over the last 10 years.
3. Restricted workers rights and benefits
4. Promoted more stand your ground and like gun legislation.
5. Cut unemployment benefits
6. Promoting enforcement of voter suppression laws.

When you go nation wide, the results are the same. GOP-led legislatures are doing the Koch’s bidding everywhere, often with bills written by the KOCH legislative arm, ALEC. Everywhere the tune is the same–lower taxes on the rich, cut out programs for the poor, all with the promise to Mr. and Mrs. White OLD people–this will all benefit you, we promise. Just wait for it.

Let me repeat. There is nothing Christian in any of this. People who are TEA PARTY adherents and claim they are Christian are lying. They are at best Christianists, people who use the bible and their own personal interpretation of it to hide behind while they endorse and argue for a denial of health care for the poor (they can use the emergency ward if they need to — duh who pays for that stupid?), a denial public education to the poor (let’s have vouchers, and the poor will end up with the poorest of poor systems but they had their “choice”), a denial of food, unemployment insurance (that breeds dependence and doesn’t teach work ethic–yeah hungry babies are eager to work), a denial of voting rights (everybody can get a voter ID–yeah except for the cost and the travel to a distance center, and oh yeah, lots of people can’t get a birth certificate any more because records are lost, but a gun permit is okay, but  student ID is not), a denial of basic rights to undocumented workers (since they steal our jobs–yeah we were wondering where you were in the bean fields yesterday and even the little one’s can pick can’t they?), a denial of fair wage (business can pay whatever it wants to, that’s the American way–along with child labor, and unsafe working conditions right?), and on and on…

They say all this and have the temerity, the audacity, the chutzpah, to suggest that Jesus would approve! Jesus hated government they say, and Jesus hated the minimum wage. Jesus loved guns and self-defense. Jesus is nothing more than a malleable dummy used while these vile gutless wonders shrink in horror at their own diseased and flesh eaten faces staring out from the dead sockets from which they look upon a world they hate as it slips from their nail-torn fingers.

Lord save me from the Christianists and though I don’t believe in Hell, but God, sometimes I wish there was one, for these puke excuses of humanity.

Other than that, I’m having a great Sunday.

Gravitational Waves are Us

Tags

Enlightenment, spirituality

Big news in science this week. Something or other about gravitational waves–the original ones–like in the big bang theory. Yeah, another theory, like evolution (meaning all stupid/ignorant idiots can stop reading and go back to fantasy island). Not that I judge of course. *smirky face inserted ——>This stuff goes back a few decades to some guy or other who predicted this wave would be there, as a way of explaining what seemed to be the rapid inflation of the universe from a singularity into the vast expanse we find today, mostly of empty space and dark matter. Also it explained the general uniformity of matter concentration, throughout. Got all that? Doesn’t matter.

Just know it’s big. About as big as the Higgs Boson find a while back. Maybe bigger. Like in Einsteinian big. As in a whole lotta folks near peed themselves.

You and I? Ah, not so much. Didn’t affect the price of gas nor reduce my angst about non-duality achievement any. What else matters?

Speaking of which, non-duality that is. I’m not any closer. Nor any farther. Since it’s not a place to go to, it’s just opening your eyes and seeing R E A L I T Y. Dontcha wish Aretha had sung about that instead of a very dualistic concept like respect?

Anyway, I been hanging around with such concepts for a while now. Some of it is making some sense. But I don’t feel enlightened in any way. I mean, one of the things that some and I mean S O M E people say is that to the enlightened or awakened mind, “everything is exactly the way it should be.”

Which is way way uncool and kinda sick given the cesspool of poo the world is in. But ya see, there is a logic to it. Saying that the world is a shit hole is a value judgment quite clearly. Various despots, political and economic, probably would disagree because they have island homes and barely raised a buffed finger before someone is at hand to step and fetch for them. They are powerful and they like it. The world is their oyster.

But there’s a whole ‘nother level where everything is exactly as it should be. In fact, it’s exactly as it has to be. I can no other than it is. And that’s very non-dual when you think of it. See, reality is nothing but the sum total of all actions by everyone, and all actions by everything, as far as the eye can see as they say, like in to the edge of the universe. Given what you are doing, thinking, feeling, and multiplied by all the rest of it, including the blade of grass that is struggling to grow, and either is or isn’t, a one-time-only unique reality is formed. And it is what it is, and is exactly what it must be.

Let me know when your eyeballs quit spinnin’ and I’ll go on.

The reality of all this, is neither good nor bad, nor right or wrong, or any other dualism. It just is.

Human egos (that’s us) attach ourselves to certain desires of what that reality should/could be, and then the fun begins. We try to change it, all the while other people are doing the same, but maybe not at all in the way we want. And some people just say to hell with it, and create their own little fantasy reality. Those are the really interesting one’s when you think about it. Talk about your Sim city! It’s like a game box filled with deities, and laws, and morals, all designed just by YOU for YOU. It’s amazing how far some people will take this. Just ask Ken Ham how far you can parade a fantasy world and get people to pay you for it.

So the trick, as I see it, is the not give a damn, because it won’t change anything anyway, but somehow be a good person and do “good” in the world, all the while not being attached to any outcome that is most assuredly not going to go your way anyway–since who the hell are you to dictate the world?

Can you see where I am stuck?

It’s not all no God, if you think that I’m headed that way. I’m not. I think the same “truth” derives from either a god-model or a spontaneous out of now where for no reason explanation. One may take a bit longer to arrive at, but in the end, both lead to the same thing. Reality is still gonna be reality, unless you get off the train and decide to hitch your donkey to a literal star over Bethlehem. Then you just dig the ditch a little deeper, or sink deeper into Plato’s cave.

All roads lead to. . . .

What?

They lead to realizing that a mind is just conveniently for aesthetic? purposes, housed in a bony case called a head. And the rest of “us” is conveniently covered over with bones and tissue and skin and offered as an “entity”. The mind is not mine, or yours, it’s ours. It’s as big as the universe at least, and perhaps bigger. I haven’t walked around the block very far yet. Yet that’s where it has to lead. Unbounded mind, all mixed in a soup of unbounded minds all being one big mind. Trying to be “me” is fairly selfish and silly at the same time.

Yet I go on being me. Reading Jed McKenna doesn’t enlighten me, nor do I agree with a lot he says, and I find some of his explanations of why he acts so darn ego-driven when he’s not, unsatisfying and vaguely con-artist in the attempt. I surely don’t buy into the idea that everyone who has ever become enlightened has to pass through this “first step” which wrenches the guts and destroys everything. Is it essential to leave spouses and children and go off barefoot in a quest? He claims a fair percentage end up in loony bins at least for a while.

I don’t buy that. Course, he would say that anyone who doesn’t agree with him, hasn’t become enlightened and probably doesn’t want to suffer the slings and arrows as it were. But since Mr. McKenna remains an enigma of sorts and unreachable pretty much, I’m not sure he’s any more real than the Wizard of Oz. All show and glitter, but look behind the curtain.

I don’t know that any of it matters. But clearly it seems to matter to a whole lot of humans because we spend billions of bucks on thousands of teachers and gurus and books and CD’s and speeches, all to help us along the road to what was that again? Some place not here.

And it’s not that we are all so god-awful unhappy being here. I know I’m not. Life right here and now is damn good in my book. I got no serious complaints. I’m pretty sure that a whole lot of seekers would agree.

Yet something keeps being that itch we can’t quite scratch.

I’ll let you know if I ever get there.

When I’m not too busy doing whatever it is you do when you are enlightened.

I hope pizza is still on the menu.

We Educate Rats Too!

Tags

critical thinking, editorial, education, truth

Sometimes it takes a long time for the coffee to work its way through the grounds.

Or if you will, one day you open your eyes like any normal day, and see something that was there all the time.

The point is, I’ve always known this in one manner or another.

What you ask?

That our education system just sucks.

I knew it in undergraduate school. It was obvious, but I of course was way into my, “damn I’m smart” phase so I figured that the awful truths I was learning about Merika, and Western Civilized?zation, and all that was just cuz, only smart folks like me were capable of internalizing this shit and not declaring open war against the government. I was “big enough to take it.” The big secret of what a dirty little nation we really were was given to me, one of the small legion of people who would smile at the masses, all the while becoming part of  the new engine of democracy. Or some such blather. It was never spelled out, nor was it ever thought out.

We regaled our friends and family at “home” in middle or as we were wont to say, the middles who were really the worker class, with tales of elite power holders mostly unknown to the masses of semi-literate drones like themselves. They of course sucked air and murmured to themselves the question, “what is going on in our colleges to produce such talk?”

It all got confounded in our hippie/anti-war/feminist/ rhetoric and colleges mostly dodged the bullet in terms of responsibility. Drugs would do ever so much better as causation to our nasty smart-ass talk.

I maintained that I was still of that elite I-know-better group even when I was shocked to learn that my decision to enter law school with the professed desire to “work in Washington for some committee or other” was never gonna happen. I learned that there were lawyers and then there were lawyers. I was not one of the latter. Those lawyers, were graduating from Princeton and Harvard and Yale and Stanford and had parents who were RICH, as in Freakin’ Rich. I was a lawyer meant for county prosecuting/defense, and handling peoples wills and small claims. That’s what people who went to your average state law schools got.

I started to get it. A little.

Since I had no desire to be “rich” or any of that rot anyway, I went my way, did my time, and emerged with a decent life style, and time to pursue hobbies of an intellectual nature.

Sure from time to time, I wished I had had it to do all over again. Paleontology was more my style. Theology and biblical studies later. I grumped as to why some people got exposed to that and others didn’t until it was “too late”. Did some schools give it’s kids a heads up on subjects like anthropology, archaeology, cosmology? I suppose they do if you are in Groton, Cranbrook or other prep type schools. maybe?

In the back of my head I realized that most of us are steered elsewhere. For our “own good” as it were. Not too many good jobs revolving around archaeology. Or philosophy. Gosh I loved that, but what to do with it? So I moved to a “practical” discipline. Law. It could have easily have been medicine I suppose. Neither requires more than an average head upon one’s shoulders.

The point is, I vaguely saw that most of us were ushered “elsewhere”, to those places where “we” were needed.

This is no indictment per se on education as we know it, nor upon teachers, most of whom are or were nearly as clueless as I. A few were frankly well above smart and did that one thing that makes them ripe for pedestal worship–they inspired a kid to follow a dream.

When I located old classmates a few years ago, I was admittedly quite shocked at what I found. I guess I wasn’t so surprised that most had not gone on to college. Pretty much I figured that a few would start and then bail when they found that they were no longer the center of attention. Jocks and cheerleaders often find their celebrity status missing in undergrad and because they never were students in high school anyway, they bore quickly in academia, leave and get cheap white-collar jobs and get on with life.

What surprised me were the number who lauded (to some old teachers who also joined the group) those teachers for being so “good” and teaching them so much. Seriously?

Let’s get real.

Basic education in this country for the vast majority, consists in learning to read at a basic level (8th grade), write a simple sentence that can be understood, and to behave. Behaving consists of learning that it’s good to be lawful, bad to be a crook, and that citizenship consists of paying your taxes and voting every four years. You learn a small amount of “correct” American history such that you are reasonably patriotic, i.e., willing to go to war and die for rich men’s greed.

That’s about it.

That gets you workers who sew the clothes, build the cars and planes, man the office machines, put out the fires, work the fields, nurse the sick, teach the next generation, and settle petty disputes over property rights. A few split off to hear your confessions and bury your dead.

The rich white dudes send their kids elsewhere where they learn to run armies, run industries, and run governments.

I do not need to know that Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492, nor do I need to know that Hawaii was the last state admitted to the union. I don’t need to know that Moby Dick is a classic about man’s struggle over the existence of God, and good and evil. What do I learn from dissecting a frog for god’s sake? What did I learn from all that Civil War crap? To be holier than thou regarding the South, while Southern kids were learning the opposite?

All that crap is available to be found by anyone who can use a card catalog back “in the day” or a computer today. That is simply factual DATA.

WHAT I NEEDED TO LEARN WAS HOW TO THINK.

What constitutes a rational, well supported argument? What code words suggest fluff rather than substance? What sources are reliable, and how do I discern that? What does it mean that every writer comes with a set of biases, known or otherwise? What is logic? What is charismatic bullshit and how do I tell the difference? What is just well written but basically crap? What is poorly written but true?

How do all those “things” that happened since the dawn of the written word and before, stack up into patterns that tell me something about who I am, who WE are? What can we be? What can we never be? What did WWII have to do with megalomaniacal men, and what had it to do with greed, industrialization, resources, and democracy?

We are not taught this stuff. And I’m very sure it’s intentional. They simply can’t have too many out there who are on to them. Oh, no, I’m not getting all conspiratorial here. But extremely rich people do exist. They live in a world that is divorced from us. They think they are the natural “kind” to decide things. And they do. They decide almost all the important things.

We think we matter, with our democracy and our voting. There are differences between Republicans and Democrats. The GOP figures that things were going pretty nicely when most people were poor, busy just scratching out a living, consumed by putting food on the table. The Democrats are just Republicans with a heart–let them have a life that is decent enough to enjoy a bit. They will still not interfere with us as long as they have a few toys and a couple of weeks vacation at their cabin and some fishing.  But on the big stuff, both parties are agreed–they will decide what’s best. Our kids will do the dying.

Almost all our high school educational system are designed to produce law-abiding workers who don’t raise a ruckus. Most of our colleges simply prepare MOST for those slightly more complicated necessary service professions.

Only a teacher or professor here or there, has a glimmer of truth, and imparts it. Suggests that the mind is meant for so much more. It’s meant to see the big picture, and once it has, it knows that solutions are so much beyond that of a  farm bill, or a fair trade treaty, or some utility regulation.

It’s about how we see each other as a species. How we view other species. How we see the universe.

Truth is a powerful thing. And almost nobody knows it.

I’m just starting to see.

 

 

The Thing About Gratitude

Tags

God, gratitude, life

It’s all good, right?

I mean, we see it every day. The call to gratitude. We are told to journal it. We are told to start every day with it.

Well I read something the other day that got me to thinking that perhaps we are looking at it wrongly, or at least superficially.

Let’s be real here.

When do we invoke this “count your blessings” doctrine?

Usually when crap is going badly for us. When the winter has been too long, or we are challenged by a health issue, or a loved one dies, or doesn’t love us any more. When the kids fly the coop, when the sinuses act up, when a promotion falls through. The list of human bumps in the road are endless.

And somebody reminds us, or we remind ourselves, to remember how darn fortunate we are “all things considered.”

So we dig our way out of the hole by posting a list of ten “gratitudes” each day, or we write in a journal, or we at least start our meditation/prayers with a list. Partly this greatly enlarges our concept of what we can be grateful for of course. The flowers, the sun when it has rained for days, a really good cup of coffee.

But what underlines much of this process, either consciously or otherwise, is an assumption of who or what one is to be grateful to. In fact, it’s pretty much in your face in some meme’s I’ve seen on Facebook.

God.

We thank God for this, that, and everything good that happens to us. We thank God for a sunny warm day for that outdoor wedding, for surviving that heart attack, and for keeping us from that awful accident  at that spot we passed only seconds before.

And that creates the great unspoken counterpoint.

Other people died in the accident we avoided. Others don’t survive their heart attacks. It rains on plenty of outdoor weddings. What have these folks done wrong? not enough of?

When we give gratefulness to God for the good, we automatically suggest that others weren’t deserving enough, didn’t believe enough, well enough, or something. Not enough. We however, are “good” enough.

God must love us a lot since we have all “this”. And God, consequently must not love them as much.

That is what we mean, even if we don’t think it.

And of course even our prayer of gratitude is not pure. It’s done for a purpose. To get us out of our sad/angry/scared place.

See all the benefits?

Surely we should be grateful. We work hard, we are patient, we study, we have friends and family who help us. All these things can be the point of our gratitude and no doubt deservingly so. Whatever my parents were or were not, they got me to college, allowed me the opportunity to become a lawyer, make a good living, set myself up for a nicely comfortable financial life. I owe them my gratitude. I also owe it to myself for all those endless days and nights of studying that first year of law school without which their funds would have been wasted.

But when I take it up the scale and I thank God, then I’m heading in a whole new direction.

For then I must posit and belief that God is a meddler. God is a minutia freak. God is pulling an infinity of strings to make sure that I got that education, that job, met that man, moved to that place, and on and on and on. Once you start here, you can’t stop. God ends up being responsible for every tooth not rotted with decay. God becomes responsible for somebody remembering to post birthday greetings on your Wall.

Free will is out the door, because it’s all part of God’s plan, that fall-back position for “I don’t know how the hell this happened”.

And if it’s one way, then it’s all ways. God is also responsible for the flood that ruined your home with not enough insurance to cover the repairs. God is at fault the reason for sonny boy not getting into Princeton. God ruined the souffle.

Because He is either in charge or he’s not. There’s no middle ground. It’s all part of the great mysterious “plan” and it’s gotta happen that way. You have to have a headache on March 7, so that a husband doesn’t keel over from a stroke because you didn’t make that chocolate cake that was the last straw that would break the blood vessel’s  wall two days later.

And if all that is true, then people who are shot and killed in Syria today were only dying because God willed it. It was for that higher purpose “plan”. And if people live with not enough to eat, well they are supposed to. There are slippery slopes, and this is one of them. Start down the path to praising God for the good in your life, and you have to admit that he causes all the bad too.

I’m not saying that God sits back and never does a thing. I think he speaks to each of us urgently every moment, begging us to rise to the occasion. And if we do, we’re looking out for ourselves, our loved ones, and all the people we don’t even know. We’re kinder and better to ourselves and everyone else. God urges that surgeon to be the best surgeon and completely focused. He begs her not to drink the night before. BUT SHE EITHER LISTENS OR DOESN’T AND IF SHE DOESN’T, AND HER HAND SLIPS, SHE’S TO BLAME, NOT GOD, FOR THE PATIENT’S DEATH.

You see what I mean?

That’s how God is God and we are we, fault-prone humans with free will to do or not do as we choose.

So by all means, give thanks for all you have. It’s a fine practice. Just remember who you need to thank and who not.

God can be thanked for much, but micromanaging your little life? Ahhh, not so much.

It Ain’t Easy Bein’ Me. . . err, Green

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Humor, me, me and me and me, more about me

Life confuses me.

Make that people confuse me.

Except myself. I don’t confuse myself.

But I do find myself confusing.

I’m not confused about what confuses me.

Now that we have that straight, we may proceed.

I’m complicated. I know. Everyone is, but some people are not, and most people aren’t very, yet I am very. So I’m unique in that.

I’m what is referred to as a renaissance mind, not to be confused with a renaissance person. Da Vinci was a renaissance person, brilliant in a whole series of categories, or at least able to hold his own with experts in myriad fields of interest. I’m not Da Vinci nor would I wish to be since he is dead. I’m thankfully still flapping my jaws.

No, I’m a renaissance mind. That means that I have grandiose interest in lots of things but the general attention span worthy of no expert. So, I can chat generally on a whole lot of topics but if you look closely you might, just might find that the depth is shall we say, lacking. But let me point out, I still know a heck of a lot about a lot, which is more than I can say for most of my fellow humans.

Which is not to be judgmental in any fashion. For I see no obvious merit in knowing a lot about a lot of things. It’s perfectly fine to know a very lot about a couple of things. As most spiritual guides will tell you, it’s perfectly fine to be as you are and not actively seek nirvana or whatever you call enlightenment. There is no right or wrong here. Just choices.

Where I find myself uncomfortable with me is that I’m always vaguely twitchy. I mean instead of writing, I could be beading, or baking, or reading down the stack of books that never isn’t growing upward and outward. Or gardening. Or meditating. Or getting into that re-organization of my craft room which is fresh with tons of new shelf space and begging to be sorted and prettied. Sometimes I think that where crafts are concerned its more the “setting up” than the doing that fuels my passion. I have three crafts in process, and I spend a few minutes on each a day–hardly an addiction.

Days like today make me even more twitchy. Which is a nicer feeling word than anxious. I don’t like surprises.

I had today all planned out.

It’s all unraveled now.

You see, we were going to the Home and Garden show at the convention center followed by lunch.

It started off right. I took Diego on his walk and noted that I was going to be one very unhappy woman come Monday. Why you ask? I assume you are asking. Because with Daylight savings time going into effect on Sunday, our walk will commence at what is truly 5:00 a.m. as the sun doesn’t rise, and I’ll be back to walking in the light of a flashlight beam. Which is boring first of all, and second, makes animal sounds all the more scary when Diego stops, looks intently into the darkness and growls.

But today was nearing the sunrise over the mountains and the wind was light, and the walk was uneventful. I started the Friday wash, and reminded the Contrarian that we were leaving around 9:30 a.m., and make sure you are dressed in your big-boy clothes.

Being a thoroughly responsible person, I picked up the paper to double-check the TIME, and frowned. “What day is this?” I queried. “The seventh,” he chimed. “OH FREAKIN’ FUCK A DUCK!”

“Whatsa matter?” he bellowed.

The damned House and Garden thingie is not until tomorrow!” I moaned, near tears (no not really, but I thought the effect dramatic).

Now to people who are kinda, laid back, this is puzzling no doubt.

But to ME, it’s a catastrophe, because a host of other chit is based on that schedule.

Tomorrow was to spatchcock a whole chicken on the grill with a soy-based sauce.

Tomorrow was to make a cheesecake.

Tomorrow was NOT TO DRIVE ANYWHERE.

So, I have to reorganize and I mean NOW!

So here I sit, writing, which I now have time for, and the cheesecake is cooling on a rack, and the laundry is spinning and drying away, and we are still going out to lunch, for not only did I get the day wrong, but the time for tomorrow. It’s at 9 a.m instead of 10 a.m and we won’t be there long enough to eat in town, so it’s pork chops and somethin’ and somethin’ yet to be decided tomorrow, and the chicken can’t possible be ready for today since  I had just taken it from the freezer, and so that recipe is off until next week, Saturday, and who knows about the meatball casserole come Monday?

But I think I have it all straight now.

Meanwhile, since I’m a renaissance mind, I’m grousing fairly frequently as I hear the “speech” given by one major GOP asshole after another. Seriously how do normal looking people get so geeked up by trading lies back and forth in some group masturbatory extravaganza?

Boehner is out this year, and the “other” white Bush just had to be on vacation this year and couldn’t attend which is probably because he is bucking ma-Babs and might take a run at the Presidency anyway and needs to appeal to Independents who are NOT people who know much of anything but DO get a little scared by the rhetoric of a Ted Cruz who they are not yet aware of but will be at least three weeks before the nominations are being decided.

Meanwhile, McConnell came with a rifle to look all teabaggerish in his Charlton Heston mime, which means he is REALLY REALLY SCARED he’s gonna lose. Rickie Santorum has been relegated to day two, since nobody cares. Wayne la Pee Pee  LaPierre, ranted about having a gun in every room, every closet, every vehicle, and perhaps a side holster on the kid’s bike just for extra-sure safety. All because Obama is gonna take your guns ya know.

As if that weren’t enough to make you upchuck your morning coffee, fundamentalists, I find are still the most insanely illogical but perversely self-serving people I know, or rather am forced to know, wishing I’d never met them, let alone spent untold numbers of hours being close to their toxic brains all before they discovered that the “bible interpreted my way” brought much personal satisfaction and the obvious scapegoat for all personal bigotry and selfishness.

I was nearly thrown off my horse this morning (figuratively, though I once owned a fine sorrel quarterhorse named Patty who had good form, a great canter but was afraid of bridges), when I was grousing that I had forgotten to put a pair of slacks in the wash, when the Contrarian offered this gem: “That’s okay babe, I left a pair of my shorts in the garage.”

“Are you changing your clothes in the garage now?” I screeched in an octave above human hearing.

“NO,” he snidely proffered, with that look of contempt that only a man dealing with his wife knows how to do, (similar to the one she has when dealing with him–in fact we might have mirrored that look at that very instant–which could cause a black hole in space I’m told). “I was going to throw them in the washer, and walked out into the garage forgetting,” he snarked.

Don’t get me started on mechanical hands as I call him. His brain short-circuits a lot (and I have the MRI’s to prove it), and when it’s out of mind, it’s out of hand, meaning that when he “forgets” what’s in his hand, it opens and drops said item where ever he may be. I cannot begin to tell you the strange places I  have found “things”.

So, all told it’s been a bad start.

And it’s my turn to pick where we go to lunch.

And I would rather be reading the latest in Scientific American on the “Revolutionary tools that will reveal how thoughts and emotions arise”, since as you can see, I could use some help.

It ain’t easy bein’ me. Seriously.

Laughing through the nonsense.

P.S. why does anyone care what wrong-ways McCain, Bilbo Kristol, Lindsey *Pink* Graham,  or Dick Vadar Cheney HAVE TO SAY ABOUT ANYTHING? Have they ever been right?