This is a common question asked by people of faith to the would-be atheist.
It's an implication that is obvious in it's core argument. The design of the rhetorical question points to "purpose". People of faith are ingrained with many purposes, bestowed by their gods. There are countless points of interest when it comes to finding meaning in our existence when you refer to the books of whatever religion you subscribe to. Common questions I encounter are:
"So it all happened on accident, and as a product of that random chain of events, we exist?"
"Do you really think we all came about without any method of design or purpose?"
The question seems daunting at first, when you haven't given it proper thought and preparation. But when we look at the large scale of science and the timeline of life on Earth, we start to see a clearer picture. The Earth is 4.54 billion years old, or in Sagan units, 1.135Su (There's a joke hidden in there). In that span of time, since the first organisms took form in the soup of elements on Earth, we have evolved slowly and surely through the crevices of our Earth's history. From meteoric impacts, and floods, fires and earthquakes, life finds a way to continue. We share a bond with plant and animal alike, constructed of the same nucleotide building blocks and strung together in the double-helix.
The trees you drive by, or seek shade under are your distant relative-your ancestor in the chain of life. The animals are also your ancestors sharing that information that started the slow grind of evolution.
My point is that nothing is accidental. Nothing is left to chance. Life fights a war everyday. It has been fighting a war since it's existence. The fight is to survive. How to march forward and become more suited to the environment, faster, more intelligent, more efficient. Natural selection is the system by which the rules of continuity take effect. It's a game of "Go Fish". Natural selection and the environment play their cards, each taking a turn. In cases where Natural selection wins, a new species better suited to the environment emerges. In cases where the environment wins, the mutations fail to surpass the rigorous competition of other species in their habitat.
This is the way of the universe. Stars in a safe harbor, free from asteroid belts and unstable entities in space will find time to mature in their systems composed of planets and moons. We are in effect, very fortunate to witness this existence.
But imagine if we were to view this existence within a short matter of years. You only know of the moment you became self-aware, until the present. It's like the Earth was put here just for you. All of these things around you, are impossible to conceive on a timeframe beyond thousands of years. We can barely imagine the changes that are to come in the next 100,000 years.
Try to predict the outcome of all species on Earth in 1,000,000 years. Then multiply that by 1,000. Now you have 1/4th of our planets lifetime. We really can't grasp the concept because humankind hasn't even existed for 1% of our planets age.
But we were an inevitability. There was no accident or chance. Nothing was random. The guiding hand, the conscious breeder of evolution was there the whole time steering all of the species of the Earth towards a safer, more beautiful existence.
Imagine for a moment, Nature was guiding us all this time, so it could look into our eyes and see the awe in our hearts as we observe the Earth in it's magnificence. To create a species capable of sharing a bond, we take from the Earth and in return we give it an awareness. We give the Earth an ultimate meaning in the vastness of the universe, where we realize it is our safe harbor coasting through the sea of space, finite and lonely.
Then push your imagination one step further, and think, if we are the Earth's offspring. A species destined to travel across the galaxy, given the tools and nourishment to succeed in such a task. All so that we may spread to other star systems and propagate the information in our veins and in our being. Like two lovers, our progression carrying our race to the far reaches of space to a planet, fertile for our existence.
These thoughts, bring me great peace. To know that Nature has a plan, one that is greater than us all, but one that we have a choice to participate in, is undeniably beautiful. I wonder if we have what it will take.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Stockholm Syndrome of God
There are eternal questions that hover over us and revisit our minds as time bears on. One of which is a "spiritual" query that I dare not start with here. Daring to write an overly lengthy manifesto is something I'm not prepared for, but instead I'd like to talk about the stockholm syndrome of Christianity.
Whether you be latino, asian or black, or any other ethnic denomination that has a large Christian population, the weight of religious conviction has effected their lives to a degree that is alarming and in a way that is grotesque. All these cultures have at some point essentially been indoctrinated into the Judeo-Christian ideologies. The resurgence in religious piousness has definitely been reinvigorated since the 1970's, and it's gained it strength in evangelical forums and wriggled it's way into the core of our politics.
But we have to look at the details of indoctrination in our own country and those across the seas that have been the victims, of the Christian God. In South Korea and in the Philippines, you have devout Catholics and Christians who seem to have forgotten that the gift left on top of corpses of opposition was a blood-covered bible. In Latin America, the same process took part in burying the Aztec and Incan gods. Like Quetzacoatl and whichever other deities would make me choke on my tongue if I tried to pronounce their names correctly. Then you have perhaps one of the most recent and disgusting displays of indoctrination: Black-American-Christians.
They are particularly the group that has kissed the blade of white control the most fervently. All Fox News correspondents aside, Black Americans are so far removed from their historical roots that they have no god to reference aside from the one they've been acquainted with in the bible. Over 80% of Blacks are Christian, 10% of which do not identify with any religious group. In between are Jewish and Muslim Blacks.
To think that this religious idea found it's way into the minds of slaves, 10% of whom were Muslim, is pretty astounding. God had some real cutthroat salesmen out there.. literally. Because of course, if you were threatened with torture or more work you'd say you believe in God too. But it seems as if this idea has slipped the minds of the black community today. Yet this population is considerably devout, even though the idea was propagated by people who kept them bound and didn't consider them human. I think the concept of God should seem the most obscene to Black Americans. God didn't save the black forefathers. He never did anything to stop slavery of the past or in America. I guess Lincoln had to take it upon himself, God must've been having an especially long session on the heavenly throne after too much angel hair pasta.
I believe this is the perpetrator for the Proposition 8 vote ballots among Blacks as well. Only the ancient and often contradictory dogma of the bible could blind a victim to instill the same limitations and binds on another group of people. Blacks turned out to the voting booths in record numbers during the Obama election. And with their presence, they decided to refuse gays the right to marry. An idea that finds it's roots in maybe 2 passages of their expansive and often repetitious Christian doctrine.
I'm not going to go into what good and what bad the church has done over the millennia, but I will say that it's time for indoctrinated minorities to re-examine the faith that was forced down their throats, and sworn into their hearts in lieu of a blade if not accepted.
All I'm really asking minorities to do, is take a look at the big picture. Before the great white machine came to your country and brought it's American Coca-Cola, what were your people drinking? Why were they drinking it, and why did they change their choice of beverage? And if morality is your answer to any questioning of your faith, remember the actions and methods of the people who came to your ancestors nations with God on their tongues.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Arnold Movies and The Stossernator
While both these things is not like the other, where in one is well.. Uh! Fucking Awesome, with a capital 'A'. I have some thoughts on these two topics that I have to vent/commend.
I'll start with the polar negative of the two. John Stosser, maybe his name is spelled "Jon" or maybe his full name is "Johnathan". I honestly don't care, because he backs Rand Paul, who's running as a senatorial candidate in Kentucky.
Side note: I've had cousins that lived in Kentucky, and experienced a favor flavorful brand of racism there. And while I'm not whitewashing the entire state, I must say it's particularly potent if the long-distance call warrants a mentioning of it with a limit of 5 minutes.
So back to this Rand Paul character and how he ties in with John Stosser. Rand Paul was recently asked what he thought of the Civil Rights and what some of those details in 1964 detailed. In a nutshell he thinks that private business owners should receive the right not hire anyone they want. This means private business wouldn't have to fulfill a quota of multiracial hiring, or hire any women, or hire anyone they just didn't like despite their qualifications. This was a battle fought before my time, but something that you can still see in full color today. It's called:
Discrimination.
Yeah, not news to us born in the era of Martin Lawrence and In Living Color, but honestly, we don't really understand the full implications of discrimination on the level that it appeared through the late 1950's until the early 1970's. Our teachers in high school gave us a crash course to say the least, and we remember that one asshole in class who denied that racism still exists today because he's white and lives in a part of town where everyone is too smug for him to see past his hillside house.
But back to the topic, so here we have two news correspondents talking about Rand Paul. A pretty blonde chick with a dress that can only push ratings, and John Stosser. The pretty blonde representing the sane side of the argument, and Stosser representing a voice that favors Rand Paul's idea. For reference here's the vid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aakt1J91wlE
Sadly, the blonde can't put together a good argument because her anger is real and her emotion is true. Bless her for being a mess about it. Stosser's basic argument is:
"Private business should be able to discriminate what customers to serve and who to hire, and by the natural laws of business, those business will suffer if they choose to be racist."
"Private businesses ought to get to discriminate, and I will never go to a place that's racist, and I'll tell everyone else not to, and I'll speak against them, but they have a right to be racist."
He goes on to say that Black organizations should have the right to refuse white members, and a Gay softball team should be able to refuse straight players. Blondie says that clubs are still protected as to being able to have more freedom in choosing who they will accept.
And this is why we have the KKK being able to not admit black members of course. There's no legal way to prosecute them because they're a private organization. NOT a private business. Private businesses have a responsibility to the public through product and service. This much is obvious. But Stossel's argument is broken from the start.
First off.. His ideas seem to be logical if existing in a vacuum. But he completely ignores the fact that even today there are organizations that have to exist for the sole purpose of combating racism. He's a whitie living in his own world, where he thinks that naturally racism will be drowned out by the call for profit. But he negates every Black/Latino/Asian/Etc, group out there that supports people of color to get better education by means of college prep courses and seminars, and people pushing for diversification in the job world.
They exist because we still have racism in business. The fantasy world he thinks is reality is the kind of faux-progressive attitude that bleeds ignorance. The results of allowing private businesses to discriminate would set us back before the Civil Rights Act, and you'd have parts of town that were white only, and black only. Hell, can anyone else see a North/South uprising down the line? Parts of town could be dominated by white neighborhoods that will refuse anyone of color because it's their right.
Giving people the Right to be racist entails enforcement of that Right. And by doing so you create a government and a police force that will back a racist in their choice to refuse gasoline to a family traveling across Kentucky, or Alabama, or Arizona or wherever.
Imagine living in a country where you have to check the business bureau for establishments that will serve "your kind", before planning a road trip for fear of being stranded in a racist county.
If you're afraid of this.. act on it. NOW: http://www.colorofchange.org/stossel/
And now on a lighter note: Arnold Schwarzenegger. While I don't think he's an adequate governor, part of me thinks he just had to one-up Jesse Ventura when he got the governorship of Minnesota. I personally think it's a sub-plot of revenge for getting his virtual ass killed in The Running Man.
But Arnold movies are so great for a number of reasons:
Nobody can ever in the rest of history deliver one-liners the way he did.
He makes punching a camel look completely acceptable in Conan The Barbarian.
He can do action, family, drama and be equally bad in all three.
And he has no problem knowingly making a fool-and parody-of himself.
I'm about to watch Total Recall again. And from the start you know you're in for something special. The theme was written by Jerry Goldsmith, and sounds too familiar to the "Anvil of Crom" from Conan The Barbarian. But it's hard to avoid including the metal-hammer pounds, on a soundtrack with Arnold in it. Terminator 2 used them pretty excessively, and I think Predator had some of them too.
I actually get a little depressed thinking about an action-star that could fill his shoes. I mean, he's way past his prime now, but who have we seen attempt to parallel his persona?
Jean-Claude Van Damme? Didn't work out.
Well, he worked out in the physical sense, and directors wouldn't dare short-change him on that. Bloodsport has him showing off his ass-crack and doing the splits between two chairs in a hotel room, along with slow-motion shots of him flexing while cross-eyed. So why didn't Van Damme pull off the whole action-star thing well enough? Well I think it's mostly because he tried a little too hard to use expressive emotions, while Arnold just dropped the line like he didn't even care. Also, who can recite a Van Damme quote off the cuff? Usually his opponents got all the best lines. Take for example the bad guy "Chong Li" played by Bolo Yeung.
Side note: Bolo Yeung is still working out and training at a local gym near Los Angeles. And he's 71 years old!
His best line was "You break my record! Now I break you! Like I break your friend!" I'm still unsure as to is he actually said this line, because he was dubbed in most of his movies.
Then we have Steven Seagal, who made a pretty good run with "Out For Justice", "Under Siege", and "On Deadly Ground". But I think the part of his persona that made him hard to watch was the pony-tail swinging around, the soft voice and the stiff composure. I couldn't tell if he was trying to sound like Clint Eastwood, if he was born a girl, or if he was trying to do impressions of Brando's godfather. Then the pony-tail, something he just couldn't part with for what, like 30 years? Sometimes it was more exciting to just watch his counterparts in some of his movies like Gary Busey and Tommy Lee Jones. Why would you put him next to these guys? They're acting proficiency eclipses him tenfold to a point where you wouldn't mind if they won. Then in "On Deadly Ground", he's opposed by Michael Cain and John C. McGinley. John C. McGinley is badass as it is, but Michael Fucking Cain? How can you keep up with that?! I don't even need to go into it. His saving grace in his films was the moment you saw a bad guy get arm-locked and they cued the blatant bone-snapping sound effect to a close-up of some guys elbow touching the back of his own shoulder. Which was pretty awesome. But beyond that, he just couldn't stay up to par.
It's getting late now, so I'm going to have to save the rest for a Part 2. And you know how good the sequels are. Or not. Whatever. Goodnight.
I'll start with the polar negative of the two. John Stosser, maybe his name is spelled "Jon" or maybe his full name is "Johnathan". I honestly don't care, because he backs Rand Paul, who's running as a senatorial candidate in Kentucky.
Side note: I've had cousins that lived in Kentucky, and experienced a favor flavorful brand of racism there. And while I'm not whitewashing the entire state, I must say it's particularly potent if the long-distance call warrants a mentioning of it with a limit of 5 minutes.
So back to this Rand Paul character and how he ties in with John Stosser. Rand Paul was recently asked what he thought of the Civil Rights and what some of those details in 1964 detailed. In a nutshell he thinks that private business owners should receive the right not hire anyone they want. This means private business wouldn't have to fulfill a quota of multiracial hiring, or hire any women, or hire anyone they just didn't like despite their qualifications. This was a battle fought before my time, but something that you can still see in full color today. It's called:
Discrimination.
Yeah, not news to us born in the era of Martin Lawrence and In Living Color, but honestly, we don't really understand the full implications of discrimination on the level that it appeared through the late 1950's until the early 1970's. Our teachers in high school gave us a crash course to say the least, and we remember that one asshole in class who denied that racism still exists today because he's white and lives in a part of town where everyone is too smug for him to see past his hillside house.
But back to the topic, so here we have two news correspondents talking about Rand Paul. A pretty blonde chick with a dress that can only push ratings, and John Stosser. The pretty blonde representing the sane side of the argument, and Stosser representing a voice that favors Rand Paul's idea. For reference here's the vid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aakt1J91wlE
Sadly, the blonde can't put together a good argument because her anger is real and her emotion is true. Bless her for being a mess about it. Stosser's basic argument is:
"Private business should be able to discriminate what customers to serve and who to hire, and by the natural laws of business, those business will suffer if they choose to be racist."
"Private businesses ought to get to discriminate, and I will never go to a place that's racist, and I'll tell everyone else not to, and I'll speak against them, but they have a right to be racist."
He goes on to say that Black organizations should have the right to refuse white members, and a Gay softball team should be able to refuse straight players. Blondie says that clubs are still protected as to being able to have more freedom in choosing who they will accept.
And this is why we have the KKK being able to not admit black members of course. There's no legal way to prosecute them because they're a private organization. NOT a private business. Private businesses have a responsibility to the public through product and service. This much is obvious. But Stossel's argument is broken from the start.
First off.. His ideas seem to be logical if existing in a vacuum. But he completely ignores the fact that even today there are organizations that have to exist for the sole purpose of combating racism. He's a whitie living in his own world, where he thinks that naturally racism will be drowned out by the call for profit. But he negates every Black/Latino/Asian/Etc, group out there that supports people of color to get better education by means of college prep courses and seminars, and people pushing for diversification in the job world.
They exist because we still have racism in business. The fantasy world he thinks is reality is the kind of faux-progressive attitude that bleeds ignorance. The results of allowing private businesses to discriminate would set us back before the Civil Rights Act, and you'd have parts of town that were white only, and black only. Hell, can anyone else see a North/South uprising down the line? Parts of town could be dominated by white neighborhoods that will refuse anyone of color because it's their right.
Giving people the Right to be racist entails enforcement of that Right. And by doing so you create a government and a police force that will back a racist in their choice to refuse gasoline to a family traveling across Kentucky, or Alabama, or Arizona or wherever.
Imagine living in a country where you have to check the business bureau for establishments that will serve "your kind", before planning a road trip for fear of being stranded in a racist county.
If you're afraid of this.. act on it. NOW: http://www.colorofchange.org/stossel/
And now on a lighter note: Arnold Schwarzenegger. While I don't think he's an adequate governor, part of me thinks he just had to one-up Jesse Ventura when he got the governorship of Minnesota. I personally think it's a sub-plot of revenge for getting his virtual ass killed in The Running Man.
But Arnold movies are so great for a number of reasons:
Nobody can ever in the rest of history deliver one-liners the way he did.
He makes punching a camel look completely acceptable in Conan The Barbarian.
He can do action, family, drama and be equally bad in all three.
And he has no problem knowingly making a fool-and parody-of himself.
I'm about to watch Total Recall again. And from the start you know you're in for something special. The theme was written by Jerry Goldsmith, and sounds too familiar to the "Anvil of Crom" from Conan The Barbarian. But it's hard to avoid including the metal-hammer pounds, on a soundtrack with Arnold in it. Terminator 2 used them pretty excessively, and I think Predator had some of them too.
I actually get a little depressed thinking about an action-star that could fill his shoes. I mean, he's way past his prime now, but who have we seen attempt to parallel his persona?
Jean-Claude Van Damme? Didn't work out.
Well, he worked out in the physical sense, and directors wouldn't dare short-change him on that. Bloodsport has him showing off his ass-crack and doing the splits between two chairs in a hotel room, along with slow-motion shots of him flexing while cross-eyed. So why didn't Van Damme pull off the whole action-star thing well enough? Well I think it's mostly because he tried a little too hard to use expressive emotions, while Arnold just dropped the line like he didn't even care. Also, who can recite a Van Damme quote off the cuff? Usually his opponents got all the best lines. Take for example the bad guy "Chong Li" played by Bolo Yeung.
Side note: Bolo Yeung is still working out and training at a local gym near Los Angeles. And he's 71 years old!
His best line was "You break my record! Now I break you! Like I break your friend!" I'm still unsure as to is he actually said this line, because he was dubbed in most of his movies.
Then we have Steven Seagal, who made a pretty good run with "Out For Justice", "Under Siege", and "On Deadly Ground". But I think the part of his persona that made him hard to watch was the pony-tail swinging around, the soft voice and the stiff composure. I couldn't tell if he was trying to sound like Clint Eastwood, if he was born a girl, or if he was trying to do impressions of Brando's godfather. Then the pony-tail, something he just couldn't part with for what, like 30 years? Sometimes it was more exciting to just watch his counterparts in some of his movies like Gary Busey and Tommy Lee Jones. Why would you put him next to these guys? They're acting proficiency eclipses him tenfold to a point where you wouldn't mind if they won. Then in "On Deadly Ground", he's opposed by Michael Cain and John C. McGinley. John C. McGinley is badass as it is, but Michael Fucking Cain? How can you keep up with that?! I don't even need to go into it. His saving grace in his films was the moment you saw a bad guy get arm-locked and they cued the blatant bone-snapping sound effect to a close-up of some guys elbow touching the back of his own shoulder. Which was pretty awesome. But beyond that, he just couldn't stay up to par.
It's getting late now, so I'm going to have to save the rest for a Part 2. And you know how good the sequels are. Or not. Whatever. Goodnight.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
State of the Union
So I was listening to sound clips of Glenn Beck today, and his famous "get off my phone" line that he embarrassed himself with on his radio show. And I'm past wondering why he's on TV of course, but really, has this been some gradual culmination of crazy going on in the world lately?
I only have 2 and a half decades of experience on this planet, and for most of that time I've avoided politics to the best of my ability. at a certain point I figure you have to get involved to some degree in order to keep in touch with what's going on around you, and how to react to something that you disagree with. But it's people like Glenn Beck that remind me of what Socrates pointed out over 2 millennia ago-and I paraphrase: "..the problem with democracy is that everyone believes they are entitled to an opinion."
Now I don't have a negative view of democracy as a concept, and strongly believe it was a good idea in the foundation of our country. I wouldn't hold myself to say it may require a few addenda to keep it current and applicable to the needs of a nation like the U.S., but having an opinion isn't a right. The abuse of free speech is wholesale today, and nearly every idiot that has enough money to buy a megaphone is out on some corner mainlining their gospel into your ear.
The problem-I think-lies inherently in thinking we are qualified to an opinion despite our ignorance on the subject or discipline. This is why I limit what I say when talking about the Middle East, or why I just kind of disappear when the girls and gays start talking about Sex and the Twilight Groove Back 3. At least until I've educated myself a little more on the topic. But I duck out of that conversation for a whole list of different reasons. This kind of entitlement to an opinion allows the idiots to come out of the woodworks and bestow the gems of wisdom they will on us about Obamacare, and how we've "tooken der jarbs". I'm really getting of sick of seeing this; people who react off of their emotions, with no thought to being informed and thinking through the facts.
I don't really remember world history that well from high school. But if I remember one thing standing out, it's the 200 year tipping point. It seems that a pattern takes shape when new countries are formed after those two centuries. some kind of pressure on the government and people shows up. And I think it's especially intense this round, due to the rate of information exchange, the age of the internet, and technological breakthroughs along with our position as a world superpower.
There are so many amazing things happening right now. The Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, the amount of good information on the internet, medical discoveries, cat and dog videos all over the place. it's really an exciting time to be alive.
It's just too bad that we've been so spoiled by all of the hype and all of the spectacles that grace our TV screens. MTV and reality shows have been drilling this idea into our heads that we need to watch morons' lives. I don't know who decided it, or when it clicked, but all of TV is reality-based now and i don't think it's entertainment... it's garbage.
Patton Oswalt makes a good point when he said,
"we try to tell ourselves we're being entertained by their stupidity, but are we really that dark and depressed? what happened to truly being entertained? it used to be a guy on the Ed Sullivan show that was doing something nobody could do, and that's why they put him on TV, cause he had talent."
.. and I can't agree more. I was in a supermarket a few months ago with someone as I was saying this nearly verbatim, when they started asking me to keep my voice down. I brushed it off like I didn't think I was being too loud and persisted into a tirade about how the Kardashians would just be another word that people would reply to with a "bless you", if not for a "leaked" videotape of her getting pounded by the washed up Ray J. and i don't know if it's supposed to be Rayjay, or RayJay, or who gives a flaming shitfuck, but think about it:
Brandy gets famous for her singing. Her younger brother-who had no musical experience-then tries his hand at music, and fails. Then he tries acting and fails. Then after a long period of continued failure, the narcissistic, talentless guy that only got famous through Big Sis' hooks up with Beverly Hills trash and makes a sex video that "accidentally" leaks to the internet.
There really isn't any other reason why anyone would care about her. And in our drone state of just eating whatever the "entertainment" industry puts on our plate, we get a slice of the Kardashians like we never had good TV to begin with. Reading-Fucking-Rainbow got canceled in 2006, Mr. Rogers is dead and now we have this crap filling some of those voids. Hell, even the Fresh Prince isn't on TV anymore for the kids. We have to stop watching this mind-trash, and stop paying the bills of talentless hacks whose opinions will drop into the soft malleable brain tissue of the next generation.
Moments after this, and old woman in her 70's-I presumed-politely interrupted me and said this, "Excuse me, I just wanted to say that I agree with everything you just said." And that was a nice connection. It was validating.
Think about how scary it will be to imagine the next generation of world leaders growing up on The Jersey Shore. America has lost it's sense of humor. Now we only laugh at stupid people, while icons like George Carlin wither in a box, and yet we allow ourselves to be starstruck if we see the douchebag reality-TV "stars" in person. Our idea of deserved respect is ruined. We pay respect to people who have yet to prove anything and simply pay it as a matter of status that's preached to us by a network that also tells us what trends we have to follow to avoid snide schoolyard harrassment. Merits in society no longer apply.
Where are the heroes of our communities? Allow me rephrase that question: Why aren't we being exposed to the great people helping to make the world a better place? Why aren't they on a red carpet? Why don't we know who received a Nobel Prize this year and for what? Have all the news outlets given into the madness and decided to only report drama? There are so many distractions in our lives now, that our previous president was able to infringe on our Bill of Rights without impunity.
Is it really just all about the individual now? Sure the previous decades and generation may not have been the most affectionate or sane, but goddamn it, they got shit done! It's because there was a time when your neighborhood was important to you. When you knew your neighbors by their first and last names, and who the mayor was, and who your governor was and what they were doing for you and your family and friends. The knife's edge has been pushed closer to our throats every year since those times, slowly violating our lives through legislation. The desperation our country is in for money, for war, and for control at home and abroad has reached a level that is unfit for the people.
And now we bleed. We bleed because of selfish ideologies from the Republican party, and the cowardice of the Democratic party. The government kisses the ring of big business, and we suffer through it. We're at the shit-end of the deal as a buyer being sold an overpriced shiny red apple with a worm inside waiting to send us to a hospital where we learn our health insurance doesn't honor the procedure because of pre-existing conditions, forcing us to work harder and past our age of retirement. And then we can recoup the losses of the poison that was inflicted on us in the first place with our social security regenerating our vitality to that of a whittled branch that had a metal stake in its roots to control the growth from the beginning.
Since I don't have the time to talk about how religion has been turned on us, as a tool for mob mentality and how even now, it can walk freely beyond respect for any non-believer, I'll close this entry.
I realize now that I have much more to say than I'd thought before writing this entry. And I hope my thoughts don't maintain a repetition as I continue to add to this. Because there is a whole lot that can use improvement, and time can't be wasted with what little time we have to enjoy the simple things that keep us going.
I only have 2 and a half decades of experience on this planet, and for most of that time I've avoided politics to the best of my ability. at a certain point I figure you have to get involved to some degree in order to keep in touch with what's going on around you, and how to react to something that you disagree with. But it's people like Glenn Beck that remind me of what Socrates pointed out over 2 millennia ago-and I paraphrase: "..the problem with democracy is that everyone believes they are entitled to an opinion."
Now I don't have a negative view of democracy as a concept, and strongly believe it was a good idea in the foundation of our country. I wouldn't hold myself to say it may require a few addenda to keep it current and applicable to the needs of a nation like the U.S., but having an opinion isn't a right. The abuse of free speech is wholesale today, and nearly every idiot that has enough money to buy a megaphone is out on some corner mainlining their gospel into your ear.
The problem-I think-lies inherently in thinking we are qualified to an opinion despite our ignorance on the subject or discipline. This is why I limit what I say when talking about the Middle East, or why I just kind of disappear when the girls and gays start talking about Sex and the Twilight Groove Back 3. At least until I've educated myself a little more on the topic. But I duck out of that conversation for a whole list of different reasons. This kind of entitlement to an opinion allows the idiots to come out of the woodworks and bestow the gems of wisdom they will on us about Obamacare, and how we've "tooken der jarbs". I'm really getting of sick of seeing this; people who react off of their emotions, with no thought to being informed and thinking through the facts.
I don't really remember world history that well from high school. But if I remember one thing standing out, it's the 200 year tipping point. It seems that a pattern takes shape when new countries are formed after those two centuries. some kind of pressure on the government and people shows up. And I think it's especially intense this round, due to the rate of information exchange, the age of the internet, and technological breakthroughs along with our position as a world superpower.
There are so many amazing things happening right now. The Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, the amount of good information on the internet, medical discoveries, cat and dog videos all over the place. it's really an exciting time to be alive.
It's just too bad that we've been so spoiled by all of the hype and all of the spectacles that grace our TV screens. MTV and reality shows have been drilling this idea into our heads that we need to watch morons' lives. I don't know who decided it, or when it clicked, but all of TV is reality-based now and i don't think it's entertainment... it's garbage.
Patton Oswalt makes a good point when he said,
"we try to tell ourselves we're being entertained by their stupidity, but are we really that dark and depressed? what happened to truly being entertained? it used to be a guy on the Ed Sullivan show that was doing something nobody could do, and that's why they put him on TV, cause he had talent."
.. and I can't agree more. I was in a supermarket a few months ago with someone as I was saying this nearly verbatim, when they started asking me to keep my voice down. I brushed it off like I didn't think I was being too loud and persisted into a tirade about how the Kardashians would just be another word that people would reply to with a "bless you", if not for a "leaked" videotape of her getting pounded by the washed up Ray J. and i don't know if it's supposed to be Rayjay, or RayJay, or who gives a flaming shitfuck, but think about it:
Brandy gets famous for her singing. Her younger brother-who had no musical experience-then tries his hand at music, and fails. Then he tries acting and fails. Then after a long period of continued failure, the narcissistic, talentless guy that only got famous through Big Sis' hooks up with Beverly Hills trash and makes a sex video that "accidentally" leaks to the internet.
There really isn't any other reason why anyone would care about her. And in our drone state of just eating whatever the "entertainment" industry puts on our plate, we get a slice of the Kardashians like we never had good TV to begin with. Reading-Fucking-Rainbow got canceled in 2006, Mr. Rogers is dead and now we have this crap filling some of those voids. Hell, even the Fresh Prince isn't on TV anymore for the kids. We have to stop watching this mind-trash, and stop paying the bills of talentless hacks whose opinions will drop into the soft malleable brain tissue of the next generation.
Moments after this, and old woman in her 70's-I presumed-politely interrupted me and said this, "Excuse me, I just wanted to say that I agree with everything you just said." And that was a nice connection. It was validating.
Think about how scary it will be to imagine the next generation of world leaders growing up on The Jersey Shore. America has lost it's sense of humor. Now we only laugh at stupid people, while icons like George Carlin wither in a box, and yet we allow ourselves to be starstruck if we see the douchebag reality-TV "stars" in person. Our idea of deserved respect is ruined. We pay respect to people who have yet to prove anything and simply pay it as a matter of status that's preached to us by a network that also tells us what trends we have to follow to avoid snide schoolyard harrassment. Merits in society no longer apply.
Where are the heroes of our communities? Allow me rephrase that question: Why aren't we being exposed to the great people helping to make the world a better place? Why aren't they on a red carpet? Why don't we know who received a Nobel Prize this year and for what? Have all the news outlets given into the madness and decided to only report drama? There are so many distractions in our lives now, that our previous president was able to infringe on our Bill of Rights without impunity.
Is it really just all about the individual now? Sure the previous decades and generation may not have been the most affectionate or sane, but goddamn it, they got shit done! It's because there was a time when your neighborhood was important to you. When you knew your neighbors by their first and last names, and who the mayor was, and who your governor was and what they were doing for you and your family and friends. The knife's edge has been pushed closer to our throats every year since those times, slowly violating our lives through legislation. The desperation our country is in for money, for war, and for control at home and abroad has reached a level that is unfit for the people.
And now we bleed. We bleed because of selfish ideologies from the Republican party, and the cowardice of the Democratic party. The government kisses the ring of big business, and we suffer through it. We're at the shit-end of the deal as a buyer being sold an overpriced shiny red apple with a worm inside waiting to send us to a hospital where we learn our health insurance doesn't honor the procedure because of pre-existing conditions, forcing us to work harder and past our age of retirement. And then we can recoup the losses of the poison that was inflicted on us in the first place with our social security regenerating our vitality to that of a whittled branch that had a metal stake in its roots to control the growth from the beginning.
Since I don't have the time to talk about how religion has been turned on us, as a tool for mob mentality and how even now, it can walk freely beyond respect for any non-believer, I'll close this entry.
I realize now that I have much more to say than I'd thought before writing this entry. And I hope my thoughts don't maintain a repetition as I continue to add to this. Because there is a whole lot that can use improvement, and time can't be wasted with what little time we have to enjoy the simple things that keep us going.
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