END SLAVERY NOW!!!(didn't we already do that?)

NPR had an article about a man that is working to end slavery.  It was a good story and perhaps the worst story I have ever heard.

Despite the current trend to show slavery in the USA as happy slaves and happy owners, we all tend to view slavery as ending 150+ years ago and good riddance.

Despite many of our exaggerated complaints about our lives and jobs being barely better than slavery--and some of us are living pretty close to the bone, in horrible conditions, without shelter from weather or nutritious food or even potable water, very few of us understand how bad slavery is.  We can imagine, we can empathize, we can be horrified, but most of us have not been there.

So when this person starts talking about current slavery, right now, I'm thinking---OMG! where is this happening?

The slave trade in Africa was officially banned in the early 1880s, but forced labor continues to be practiced in West and Central Africa today. UNICEF estimates that 200,000 children from this region are sold into slavery each year. Many of these children are from Benin and Togo, and are sold into the domestic, agricultural, and sex industries of wealthier, neighboring countries such as Nigeria and Gabon.
  http://www.infoplease.com/spot/slavery1.html

We are not talking about people in low-paying jobs, with poor access to education and very poor  access to opportunities.  We are talking about domestic servants, hereditary slavery where groups of people have been held for generations to work mines, or sold young as concubines, laborers on farms, mines, factories, and sex workers.

When we hear about such things in India,Pakistan, the Sudan, the Dominican Republic, Thailand, Mauritania, Arabia, we think, "oh, well of course, those places"  But it is estimated that over 60,000 slave are in the USA.  
http://www.dhs.gov/blue-campaign/indicators-human-trafficking

The above site on our own government Homeland security page showed the signs of human trafficking, so we can all recognize it and know what to do when we find it.  Who knew we needed that information.  But in my own little geographic area, I have seen a small news storm over a local factory business that had brought in immigrants to work, then fixed it where they couldn't leave, slept on the premises, ate what they were given and had no contact.  Someone got loose is how it was discovered.
More recently, in a strange little recreational vehicle park, they discovered women from another country working as prostitutes that described their own lack of freedoms.  They had been promised jobs and a start in the land of the free, and were being sold by the hour.

It is estimated that there are 60,000 slave in our country right now.  RIGHT NOW!

How can that happen.  What kind of people are all right with using people, owning people, treating people like property?

• The people growing Tobacco  for Phillip Morris (why expect the tobacco industry to care about people, but just because you are addicted to nicotine doesn't mean you don't care.)
• People growing Cotton for Victoria's Secret
• People making electronics in China for Microsoft, XBox, HP, Apple, Nokia (why?  why?  aren't they  fortune 500 companies? don't they make more profit than God?)
• Cotton grown for Forever 21, Aeropostale, Toys R US, and Urban Outfitters
• Cocoa Beans for Hersheys.

Are there others?  The place in my town was making cardboard boxes or some such thing, and 2 towns over is a glass plant where the employees never spoke English and were always escorted in and out by a company manager that did all the talking and paid the bills (shades of small town ER visits)  and the rumors were not good.

Has slavery always been present?  Is it coming back?  Why does it exist?  How can someone do that to someone else?

I'm going to go have a good cry.



 

geniuses and weird vegetables

I listened to an NPR story about the growing of geniuses and their definition--genius is whatever society says it is.  I won't argue--genius isn't genius unless someone recognizes it.  Every family has it's odd ducks, handimen and handiwomen, fixers and makers and thinkers of things that make everyone else say "what???"  Those unique ones are rarely called genius by families, at least not unless the greater community calls them that first.

Among farmers and gardeners and those that make money off of produce, there are all those genius creations--100 pound pumpkins, square watermelons, unbruisable tomatoes, and they get their pictures in the local paper and are trialed by stores and even, in the case of the rubber tomatoes--sold all across the land.  They are genius.

Why?

What about those 100 of pumpkins in the pasture at an old garbage site, the watermelon that is supremely sweet that fluked up in some unknown garden, or the sadness we feel for tomatoes that taste like tomatoes.  What about those untended fruits and vegetables that are amazing to the possums and bears, those blackberries and those pawpaws?

Gifted education, which is not really funded anymore due to its reputation of elitism, is aimed at the top, those people that were identified as the most 3-1%ish  of the population--IQ score wise.  (And the students identified were usually more high achievers than genius--those children will be high achievers where ever you put them.)  In other words, there should be 1-3 individuals in any hundred with genius potential. Of course, we do know that just because we have a test for it, doesn't mean that it is always accurate or that everyone is tested.  We have acres  and acres of unidentified potential geniuses in the world, but since society has not identified them as geniuses, they remain their families' oddities and secret treasures.  They become drug addicts, depressed, outcasts due to not understanding that what is wrong with them, why no one can relate to them, is not something wrong.

Society has always used the "whatever society says it is" to identify genius.  Of those people identified, and we don't go out and try to identify them, so we are already only seeing the tip of iceberg--only a very small number are ever considered to be geniuses.  While most of us think "big bang theory",  "scorpion" is a much better example of the kinds of genius that exist.  For every amazing IQ score, there is a person so capable of understanding behavior that he or she scares his peers, the child so focused on building or making that they never develop the "normal" social skills, the child that must be "slow" because the teacher can't capture their attention in a "normal" classroom.

We are not good with non-normal people.  We like average.  We like those that do what everyone else does and sees they world like they are told to.  We want none of that wandering from the "normal" path and wondering about things that no one else is concerned about.

If you recognize someone you know in this, be kind to them, they might do something truly amazing someday--with sunlight and the right amount of care.

2016 should be Magick!

I thought I would start the year with my version of reality.  I'm aware that I sound crazy to many people when I go off on this particular tangent.

After a 20 year slog through comparative religions, eastern philosophies, western philosophies, mythologies, shamanic practices, animism, and 20th century fads, I found that I had gathered my own set of beliefs.  When an evangelical asks me what religion I am or where I go to church, I explain I have my own religion and go to my own church regularly.  I can say it honestly enough, and few continue their quest to add me to the ranks of their own mega church after that.  (I realize it might be the crazy look in my eye that makes them drop it).

But while it is not a lie, it doesn't fully explain anything.  Early on, I made the mistake of getting more detailed, and those same people that are so very literal with their own holy book, get quite demeaning of beliefs that "stretch the boundaries of believability"  I fully understand that statement, as it is what started the 20 year trip into libraries and esoterica when I was 19.

Amazingly, few of my beliefs are set in stone.  Most of those are fully compatible with physics laws--though perhaps utilizing those holes in what we know to allow for the mystical.  I love that light is a particle and a wave, and that we can't mate Quantum to Relativity---still.  Keep working on it, though, because I'm quite sure that my changeable beliefs can accommodate that.

I like the words GOD and GODDESS, though goddess is currently my favorite, as all the God-headed religions seem to focus on keeping women in roles that are both subservient and convenient to men's usage.  That definitely stretches my boundaries of believability.  It almost defines the reason that those beliefs were not just thought but also spread about and maintained.

I also like Magick and  I like it with the K at the end, because it seems to make it less Vegas and more mystical and amazing.

When I was 17, I wrote a stupid research paper about early hominids focus on God and finding explanations for the world around them.  The whole point was that humans hunt for god, for meaning, not just scientific explanations but a mystical, spiritual connection with the world.  Science explains, but spiritual things connect us.

I knew even then that it was possible that was  some instinct; like the salmon returning to the same place to reproduce or the swan mating for life.  It is part of what makes us human.  It might be some sort of crossed wire that makes our brains need more mystery or purpose, but it is a part of us.

Traditional religion can meet this need, although I think it might be why fundamentalism becomes so insane.  The need for a connection gets warped.  The need for that feeling of connection to something more is not necessarily filled by organs and and hymns, tradition and ritual.  While the beliefs contain stories of Magick--transmogrification, miracles, healings--promises of eternal life, eternal virgins, eternal paradise, they don't really involve current magick, just stories of it.

I think we need to live with magick.

I see a movie where lightning bolts shoot from the mans hands, a witch creates a fog out of dried bat and fresh herbs, an elf touches a snowflake and changes it to a diamond that can guide you to your destination---I'm entranced.  Those things should be possible. When someone annoys me I want to be able to point at them and have their ink pen change to a feather.

So my beliefs include Magick.  Although, like most that believe in Magick in this day and age, I don't expect it to be a fireworks show, but subtle, ritualized, reconnecting me to the earth and the sky.

I think we all need that connection.  Need it with our souls, our spirits, or just our cross-wired neurons, but we feel the need.   We need the mythology to help us, like poetry or art or ritual--feel that connection.  Need the freedom to think things that are not already set in stone, to dream our dreams and wish our wishes and feel a part of the song that is where and when we live.

I'm hunting for Magick this year.  I'm going to find it..