Next time I'm going to be an artist. something visual in 2D or 3D, but that is it.
It does require reincarnation, with which I have no problem, but I do have a problem with regrets. And I regret that every time a decision came up, it put the possibility of focusing on what I wanted to do most--make beautiful or moving or amazing or bizarre things that when other people looked at them they had to think a little different, look a little harder, wonder, it took that choice out of the decision..
I have spent a lifetime trying to learn to paint, trying, just trying. I currently get the opportunity about 8 hours every 3 weeks. That is the most time I have ever had for it, and I have wanted it since I was ten.
But I always had the benefit of other people's regrets. My parents who did not prepare for well-paid and in-demand jobs; the family friend that was an art teacher--and hated it because he spent most of this time preparing for the social studies classes he had to teach so that he could also teach art---to a bunch of kids that thought art class was "an easy A" or "free time", my grandmother(who wanted to be a nurse, but trained as a teacher, then got married before ever getting to work) who recommended a solid education in nursing or education (I now have both) which are appropriate for good women, and a school system that not only didn't recommend that I take art, they didn't offer art unless you were in the 2nd grade class that the only art teacher in the system, taught. (I was in the other teacher's 2nd grade).
I am trying to avoid regrets. I've had a decent life. And I my free time is spent on what I want, but I don't have much free time. Perhaps because when a person reaches a certain age, all that you can interrupt is their hobbies. Hobbies aren't important. They are time fillers. Something for lonely, old people to fill up their time. But I really would like the time to practice, experiment, maybe take a class or two. Instead, I work 40+ hours a week, and babysit, and help with other people's current projects around their houses. Other people are family. I do love my family. But family is family whether or not they know you, know what you want, what you believe, how you think. In other words, family is not necessarily a friend and definitely only an intimate friend if their version of talking also involves listening.
Has anyone else noticed that listening is not important anymore. People that love to talk about themselves, their lives, their complaints, their problems, how stressed they are, how busy they are---well those people can talk about those things for hours without interruption. WITHOUT INTERRUPTION! The fact that they can stop interruptions is a sign that it is not a conversation, they are using the listener.
They need to quit being selfish and get a journal.....
Or a blog.
Well, off to a family birthday party. Maybe I can paint a while when I get home.
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Sunday, September 14, 2014
Romance in the 21st century
ro·man·tic
adjective \rō-ˈman-tik, rə-\
: of, relating to, or involving love between two people
: making someone think of love : suitable for romance
: thinking about love and doing and saying things to show that you love someone.
But what about love? Surely there is more to a relationship than romance. Most people realize rather quickly that life is a lot of things. Yet I hear, "he isn't romantic enough" "she doesn't treat me like she used to" "the zing is gone"
Good grief. Turn off the porn and chick flicks and grow up. People are not there to help you live your fantasies. If you both want to share some fantasy time--ask for it, and be ready for the other person to say no. These days people want to compete with their spouse, use their spouse for chores, rely on their spouse for money, not have to be alone, always have a date for weddings and funerals, etc, etc, etc.
Who ever treats their spouse with the same respect they want to be treated with; who talks to them like they value their opinion; uses them as a sounding board because they know they will be honest; shares their hopes, fears, hateful thoughts about others or themselves without fear of their words being thrown back in their face. Who treats their partner like family?
If you want to be romantic---lay down the phone, listen to them when they tell you a story, and tell a story back and see if they listen. And if either of you decide to debate, dissect, judge or minimize any part of the other's story. You have a problem. If you can't show your partner the love and respect of hearing them, just hearing them, then there is no hope for a future of happiness (plus your kids are in for a bad time and other people probably are glad when you leave early) A romantic relationship must be safe. And both people, if they are competitive, must be on the same team.
So the next time you want to gripe about the lack of romance, ask yourself these three questions?
But what about love? Surely there is more to a relationship than romance. Most people realize rather quickly that life is a lot of things. Yet I hear, "he isn't romantic enough" "she doesn't treat me like she used to" "the zing is gone"
Good grief. Turn off the porn and chick flicks and grow up. People are not there to help you live your fantasies. If you both want to share some fantasy time--ask for it, and be ready for the other person to say no. These days people want to compete with their spouse, use their spouse for chores, rely on their spouse for money, not have to be alone, always have a date for weddings and funerals, etc, etc, etc.
Who ever treats their spouse with the same respect they want to be treated with; who talks to them like they value their opinion; uses them as a sounding board because they know they will be honest; shares their hopes, fears, hateful thoughts about others or themselves without fear of their words being thrown back in their face. Who treats their partner like family?
If you want to be romantic---lay down the phone, listen to them when they tell you a story, and tell a story back and see if they listen. And if either of you decide to debate, dissect, judge or minimize any part of the other's story. You have a problem. If you can't show your partner the love and respect of hearing them, just hearing them, then there is no hope for a future of happiness (plus your kids are in for a bad time and other people probably are glad when you leave early) A romantic relationship must be safe. And both people, if they are competitive, must be on the same team.
So the next time you want to gripe about the lack of romance, ask yourself these three questions?
- Am I really talking about sex?
- Do I trust my partner enough to be relaxed and open with them and visa versa?
- Do I listen like a friend?
I don't know if that can be fixed, but fantasy is only in your head. If you want a fantasy partner, you don't really want another person in your life. You just need your imagination.
Grow up!
Sunday, September 7, 2014
Why all the panic about Social Security running out?
Think about it.
Social security is paid for by everyone that receives a paycheck, every month.(or two weeks, or twice a month or weekly--whatever) It is not part of your federal taxes or state taxes. It's not even part of your medicare payment as that is now an additional and separate amount. I also pay for an employer determined health insurance amount, a dental insurance amount, and the amount to put into my 401k.
(No one has ever called my 401k an entitlement. But I am putting less in that than I am into Social Security)
Since I was knee high to a grasshopper, and yes, I was short even as a child, there have been news announcements about the Social Security running out before I will ever get there. It was supposed to run out before my parents got there, but they got lucky, and received their monthly.check and it supplemented them until their deaths. Both took their social security at 63. My father received his for 19 years and my mother for 12 years. Social Security started August 14, 1935, so they both paid in their entire working lives. Both called it their Welfare check. The humiliation of a government check has long been present.
So why did FDR start the Social Security Administration? Other than he was some kind of communist and bleeding heart liberal etc, etc? Before Social Security, the PROPORTION OF ELDERLY WHO were poor was nearly one in two, and it is now less than one in eight. More than 60 percent of those lifted from poverty were women.
Before social security, each community had their own way of dealing with the destitute. From providing for them in individual family's homes, indentured servitutude was used. The family provided food and shelter in exchange for chores. Frequently this involved children and widows. The poorhouse or almshouse was another method, and a good many horror stories started with this type of house. These houses were transitioned to nursing homes and hospitals after social security. The fear of both nursing home and hospital among those that experienced the great depression was very closely related to the horror and shame of the poorhouse.
But why the constant threat of it running out? It is tied to the constant threat of more people than ever that are elderly. The median age in the U.S.A is 37.6 years. That means half the population is under 37.6 and half is over 37.6. Projections always imply that this median will go upward as the population ages, but reality is that the population is always being increased. In 1960 the median age was 29, in 1970 it was 28, by 2010 it was 37.2. We talk about the baby boomers as the root of all population evil, but the median age in 1950 was about 30 and in 1940 it was about 29. But in 1920 it was about 23 (men about 25 and women about 21). We had just finished a world war, we had no antibiotics, we had just gone through a nightmarish influenza season, women died in childbirth, there was no insulin, we didn't get the whole germ theory thing then, so people died and not of old age.
So it sounds like more people than ever are living long enough to work and pay into social security. (what? you have never heard anyone say it like that?)
So what is the pay-off for constantly threatening that social security is going to run out? Is the pay-off fear? Is it a way to try and stop a social program so you can then tax that money--moving it from social security to the general coffers where the politicians can spend it on their favorite pet donator? Is it to keep people too rattled to ever feel secure enough to think about what else is going on around them?
Am I paranoid? Sure I am. I don't trust the current people in power as far as I can throw them. History should explain why, look at all the long-term corruption that has come to light at various times in our countries history. We have stories about it daily in our own time. How much never sees the light of day? Do I think that the global warming deniers getting massive contributions from the oil industry have only my best interest at heart? Do I think that the richest congress this country has had for eons is highly empathetic to the plight of the poor. (Mary Antoinette's famous though probably inaccurate quote comes to mind--"let them eat cake")
Our power structure encourages people to work until they fall over dead, acts as if retirement is a sign of a lazy user. All the while they are vacationing for weeks and months each year as part of their due, most of us have been putting off getting to travel, relax with our favorite past times, fish, paint, or do anything we would choose to do---until we can retire. Since no one ever said "when I grow up, I want to set in a cubicle 40-60 hours a week while a crappy daycare raises my kids and the public schools expose them to poorly paid teachers and undiscipline peers whose parents don't want them disciplined at threat of violence to the poorly paid teachers. I want to put off seeing the national parks and put off seeing great art and put off relaxing on the beach because I just love this boring, underpaid, repetitive, unappreciated but necessary job I have and that is why I'm on the planet." No one has ever said that.
Is Social Security going to run out? Only if we keep messing with it until it does. Its basically an annuity system. A person that lives long enough could get more than they put in, but every person that dies without collecting has already donated to the annuity. Most annuities pay the insurance company to keep selling them. And there are a lot of people profiting off of social security besides the people putting in to the coffer.
Yet the panic continues. Why do we panic---I personally am going to be really hacked off if I die without getting to retire. I don't think I'm alone in that. I think the panick is from that sick feeling that "I wasted my whole life trying to get to do just what I want, and now its too late." I have a lot of empathy for those poor individuals that died in slavery never knowing freedom, that died in prison for false or ridiculously silly charges hoping every day for a reprieve, that died at work......
I'm taking retirement the minute I can.
Social security is paid for by everyone that receives a paycheck, every month.(or two weeks, or twice a month or weekly--whatever) It is not part of your federal taxes or state taxes. It's not even part of your medicare payment as that is now an additional and separate amount. I also pay for an employer determined health insurance amount, a dental insurance amount, and the amount to put into my 401k.
(No one has ever called my 401k an entitlement. But I am putting less in that than I am into Social Security)
Since I was knee high to a grasshopper, and yes, I was short even as a child, there have been news announcements about the Social Security running out before I will ever get there. It was supposed to run out before my parents got there, but they got lucky, and received their monthly.check and it supplemented them until their deaths. Both took their social security at 63. My father received his for 19 years and my mother for 12 years. Social Security started August 14, 1935, so they both paid in their entire working lives. Both called it their Welfare check. The humiliation of a government check has long been present.
So why did FDR start the Social Security Administration? Other than he was some kind of communist and bleeding heart liberal etc, etc? Before Social Security, the PROPORTION OF ELDERLY WHO were poor was nearly one in two, and it is now less than one in eight. More than 60 percent of those lifted from poverty were women.
Before social security, each community had their own way of dealing with the destitute. From providing for them in individual family's homes, indentured servitutude was used. The family provided food and shelter in exchange for chores. Frequently this involved children and widows. The poorhouse or almshouse was another method, and a good many horror stories started with this type of house. These houses were transitioned to nursing homes and hospitals after social security. The fear of both nursing home and hospital among those that experienced the great depression was very closely related to the horror and shame of the poorhouse.
But why the constant threat of it running out? It is tied to the constant threat of more people than ever that are elderly. The median age in the U.S.A is 37.6 years. That means half the population is under 37.6 and half is over 37.6. Projections always imply that this median will go upward as the population ages, but reality is that the population is always being increased. In 1960 the median age was 29, in 1970 it was 28, by 2010 it was 37.2. We talk about the baby boomers as the root of all population evil, but the median age in 1950 was about 30 and in 1940 it was about 29. But in 1920 it was about 23 (men about 25 and women about 21). We had just finished a world war, we had no antibiotics, we had just gone through a nightmarish influenza season, women died in childbirth, there was no insulin, we didn't get the whole germ theory thing then, so people died and not of old age.
So it sounds like more people than ever are living long enough to work and pay into social security. (what? you have never heard anyone say it like that?)
So what is the pay-off for constantly threatening that social security is going to run out? Is the pay-off fear? Is it a way to try and stop a social program so you can then tax that money--moving it from social security to the general coffers where the politicians can spend it on their favorite pet donator? Is it to keep people too rattled to ever feel secure enough to think about what else is going on around them?
Am I paranoid? Sure I am. I don't trust the current people in power as far as I can throw them. History should explain why, look at all the long-term corruption that has come to light at various times in our countries history. We have stories about it daily in our own time. How much never sees the light of day? Do I think that the global warming deniers getting massive contributions from the oil industry have only my best interest at heart? Do I think that the richest congress this country has had for eons is highly empathetic to the plight of the poor. (Mary Antoinette's famous though probably inaccurate quote comes to mind--"let them eat cake")
Our power structure encourages people to work until they fall over dead, acts as if retirement is a sign of a lazy user. All the while they are vacationing for weeks and months each year as part of their due, most of us have been putting off getting to travel, relax with our favorite past times, fish, paint, or do anything we would choose to do---until we can retire. Since no one ever said "when I grow up, I want to set in a cubicle 40-60 hours a week while a crappy daycare raises my kids and the public schools expose them to poorly paid teachers and undiscipline peers whose parents don't want them disciplined at threat of violence to the poorly paid teachers. I want to put off seeing the national parks and put off seeing great art and put off relaxing on the beach because I just love this boring, underpaid, repetitive, unappreciated but necessary job I have and that is why I'm on the planet." No one has ever said that.
Is Social Security going to run out? Only if we keep messing with it until it does. Its basically an annuity system. A person that lives long enough could get more than they put in, but every person that dies without collecting has already donated to the annuity. Most annuities pay the insurance company to keep selling them. And there are a lot of people profiting off of social security besides the people putting in to the coffer.
Yet the panic continues. Why do we panic---I personally am going to be really hacked off if I die without getting to retire. I don't think I'm alone in that. I think the panick is from that sick feeling that "I wasted my whole life trying to get to do just what I want, and now its too late." I have a lot of empathy for those poor individuals that died in slavery never knowing freedom, that died in prison for false or ridiculously silly charges hoping every day for a reprieve, that died at work......
I'm taking retirement the minute I can.
Saturday, September 6, 2014
strange connections
Sometimes, when I'm working and it is boring (and how many times can you do the same job with no differences without it being boring) and the halls are noisy, I put on my headphones and turn the classical music on my Ipod to shuffle. The assumption is that it is to relax me, but boring does not really call for relaxing. I drink my coffee and the music causes my brain to travel--not far, the job is in no danger, but the computer is slow, so while the little circle slowly spins, I think and with the classics, I remember.
For some reason, when the big drum, or the cymbals, or certain runs on the piano start, I can see the TV of my childhood, and feel my parents sitting to my left, eating popcorn or ice cream while i'm snuggled under a quilt. Late night television; those old black and white movies that were the bread and butter of after-the-news entertainment, almost always used the classics for their soundtracks. Early Disney cartoons did, also. But watching the old shows doesn't put me back in my childhood, it just reminds me of how glad I am that we now have color on more than cartoons and how cheezy some of those old movies were.
At any rate, doing my repetitive and boring work with my long gone parents sitting in the dark behind me is very comforting.
My point is, anything can be the connection. I used to want a blue popsicle every time I smelled DDT. No one ever purposefully gave me DDT, but they sprayed it on the dump about the same time the ice cream man came when I was four. I loved blue popsicles back when I was four, and from then till it was outlawed (probably later, those DDT stashes were loved by farmers and all my family were farm folks).
Smells, music, tastes--not like chicken, but like paw-paws or persimmons or really soft blackberries, and occasionally some strangely perfumed cleaner or body wash that makes me think of the medicine I was given when I was sick. Kid medicine has changed in the last 50 years, these days its bubble gum or cotton candy.
Sometimes a shadow from a tree will remind me of a conversation sitting on a rock wall with an uncle gone almost 40 years. Sometimes the memory will almost make me dizzy, as if my feet are fully on the earth, as if I might be hurtling through time. Sometimes these strange mental connections make me miss someone so much i could cry. Other times its like I have them back for a moment, a tiny blessing brought by the wind.
I don't understand the human brain or the memory connections that create such things. I understand the human soul even less, but such memories make me think we have a soul. Something that hooks us to a universe that is beyond time and space, something behind the physical. Could it be my own loose screw? Sure. But it might be my favorite.
For some reason, when the big drum, or the cymbals, or certain runs on the piano start, I can see the TV of my childhood, and feel my parents sitting to my left, eating popcorn or ice cream while i'm snuggled under a quilt. Late night television; those old black and white movies that were the bread and butter of after-the-news entertainment, almost always used the classics for their soundtracks. Early Disney cartoons did, also. But watching the old shows doesn't put me back in my childhood, it just reminds me of how glad I am that we now have color on more than cartoons and how cheezy some of those old movies were.
At any rate, doing my repetitive and boring work with my long gone parents sitting in the dark behind me is very comforting.
My point is, anything can be the connection. I used to want a blue popsicle every time I smelled DDT. No one ever purposefully gave me DDT, but they sprayed it on the dump about the same time the ice cream man came when I was four. I loved blue popsicles back when I was four, and from then till it was outlawed (probably later, those DDT stashes were loved by farmers and all my family were farm folks).
Smells, music, tastes--not like chicken, but like paw-paws or persimmons or really soft blackberries, and occasionally some strangely perfumed cleaner or body wash that makes me think of the medicine I was given when I was sick. Kid medicine has changed in the last 50 years, these days its bubble gum or cotton candy.
Sometimes a shadow from a tree will remind me of a conversation sitting on a rock wall with an uncle gone almost 40 years. Sometimes the memory will almost make me dizzy, as if my feet are fully on the earth, as if I might be hurtling through time. Sometimes these strange mental connections make me miss someone so much i could cry. Other times its like I have them back for a moment, a tiny blessing brought by the wind.
I don't understand the human brain or the memory connections that create such things. I understand the human soul even less, but such memories make me think we have a soul. Something that hooks us to a universe that is beyond time and space, something behind the physical. Could it be my own loose screw? Sure. But it might be my favorite.
Sunday, August 24, 2014
intimidation
To intimidate someone is to make timid or fearful : frighten; especially : to compel or deter by or as if by threats <tried to intimidate a witness>
Policing by intimidation is a common enough technique.
Workplace intimidation is intentionally and maliciously causing an employee or coworker to feel inadequate or afraid. This includes verbal threats, unjust criticisms, sabotage of a person's work or supplies, sexual harassment, and physical violence. Actions like these erode the confidence of employees and affects their ability to do their jobs. In many places, it is punishable by fines and imprisonment, and businesses may also be held liable if they do not respond appropriately. Those who feel they are being subjected to workplace intimidation can get help from managers and law enforcement.
One form of intimidation is bullying.
Policing by intimidation is a common enough technique.
Workplace intimidation is intentionally and maliciously causing an employee or coworker to feel inadequate or afraid. This includes verbal threats, unjust criticisms, sabotage of a person's work or supplies, sexual harassment, and physical violence. Actions like these erode the confidence of employees and affects their ability to do their jobs. In many places, it is punishable by fines and imprisonment, and businesses may also be held liable if they do not respond appropriately. Those who feel they are being subjected to workplace intimidation can get help from managers and law enforcement.
One form of intimidation is bullying.
Physical: Physical bullying involves harmful actions against another person’s body. Examples include: biting, kicking, pushing, pinching, hitting, tripping, pulling hair, any form of violence or intimidation. Physical bullying also involves the interference with another person’s property. Examples include: damaging or stealing.
Verbal: Verbal bullying involves speaking to a person or about a person in an unkind or hurtful way. Examples include: sarcasm, teasing, put-downs, name calling, phone calls, spreading rumors or hurtful gossip.
Emotional: Emotional bullying involves behaviors that upset, exclude, or embarrass a person. Examples include: nasty notes, saying mean things using technology (e.g. cyber bullying using emails, instant messaging), chat rooms, tormenting threatening, humiliation or social embarrassment.
Sexual: Sexual bullying singles out a person because of gender and demonstrates unwarranted or unwelcome sexual behavior. Examples include: sexual comments, abusive comments, unwanted physical contact.
Racial: Racial bullying involves rejection or isolation of a person because of ethnicity. Examples include: gestures, racial slurs or taunts, name calling, making fun of customs/skin color/accent/food choices.
The best immediate response to intimidating behaviors is
1.Walk Away: If possible, remove yourself from the situation immediately.
2. Say “Stop:” If it feels safe, tell the aggressor to stop in a firm but calm
way. If you feel confident to do so, use humor or a clever response to
weaken the effect of the mean behavior.
3. Keep Cool: Try to control your emotions in the moment. Showing fear or
anger may egg on the aggressor.
4. Don’t Fight: Try not to fight or bully back in response—this may just
continue the cycle of bad behavior.
But if the intimidator is in a position of power, then walking away or saying stop will be seen as insubordination. If the person being intimidated is young or this is round 57 of the same old thing, staying cool and not fighting is very unlikely.
So the question is, why do bullies and intimidators go into positions that allow them to repeatedly do what they like best. I know from personal experience that while I'm basically peaceful, if you get in my space, touch me, or crowd me or try to box me into a corner, i'm going to start pushing back. Its automatic. I am no longer capable of hunkering down and surviving. I'm going to let you know that I won't be intimidated and will not be pushed around. For millions of people that have been victimized/ostracized/bullied/demonized/and treated like they aren't human, that response is also automatic.
If i'm waving a gun at you or trying to kill someone, shoot me. But if i'm walking down the street and you get in my space, i'm going to try to get you out of my space--its automatic. And while some people will tell you that you should expect that from people in power, reality is, people in power don't do that to anyone unless they are trying to elicit that automatic response.
We need to make sure that the people we put into positions of power and control like police and probation officers and social workers and teachers and anyone that interacts with less powerful people and has the ability to use intimidation be educated fully about the subject. I know that large, urban police departments require 4 year degrees, but a lot of small departments require only a cleet license--which is all about gun law, and not at all about not being a bully.
We need to make sure that people do not get placed in those positions with known prejudices---a hard thing to do, as many of the people doing the hiring have the same prejudices; that people with a history of using intimidation to get cooperation not be given that kind of power over people.
And last, we need to not have such deep loyalties to our fellow coworkers because they are pals or watched our back or "know what it's like out there" that we protect them when they are viciously wrong.
Repeatedly the citizens of this country have witnessed the way a group of people that has been hired to protect and serve, becomes a criminal enterprise, covering up the bad and criminal behavior of its members because they are family. Time to stop the "us against them" attitudes that create so many problems in our communities (and the world--its what starts every war).
We are all in this together. None of us want to be robbed by anyone, or hit or shot or otherwise victimized. All of us want to be treated with respect despite our differences. We have all worked with the person that is dearly loved by everyone up the ladder, but despised for their rudeness, arrogance, and self-aggrandizement by everyone equal or under them.
The hierarchy is a sham, we are all on the same plane. So, without pushing or crowding, lets all just do this together.
Sunday, August 17, 2014
A Barren Mind, a Barren Soul.
The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. The opposite of happiness is not sadness but boredom. And the opposite of rich is not poor but barren.
The first two are obvious; most of us have had someone we love that hurts us so badly we hate them. That is just the other side of the same coin--the yin of it's yang. We have all had moments of happiness, sometimes amazing happiness, and times of utter sadness. But the hardest to withstand day after day is boredom. Boredom makes people quit jobs that pay well for their lives, and leave marriages that they sincerely wanted to work or worse, make them turn off their brains. Boredom feels like it kills brain cells and dulls everything.
But the last, rich and poor vs barren--what is that supposed to mean? Barren is the opposite of fertile and therefore the opposite of productive or creative. While not all people choose to have children, the couple that wants them but can't feels they are missing the full richness of life--despite the evidence that kids are actually a lot of work with no guarantees of any pay-off at all.
While people with massive amounts of cash and properties--both real (and not so real), are always called rich by everyone; people that created things, made things, used their imaginations, volunteered to help others, or teach others, producing things both ordinary and sublime, frequently describe the richness of their lives but rarely are described that way by any except close friends and family.
But the last, rich and poor vs barren--what is that supposed to mean? Barren is the opposite of fertile and therefore the opposite of productive or creative. While not all people choose to have children, the couple that wants them but can't feels they are missing the full richness of life--despite the evidence that kids are actually a lot of work with no guarantees of any pay-off at all.
While people with massive amounts of cash and properties--both real (and not so real), are always called rich by everyone; people that created things, made things, used their imaginations, volunteered to help others, or teach others, producing things both ordinary and sublime, frequently describe the richness of their lives but rarely are described that way by any except close friends and family.
We need to make the definition mean everything it used to.
having abundant possessions and especially material wealth
2
a : having high value or quality
b : well supplied or endowed <a city rich in traditions>
3
: magnificently impressive : sumptuous
4
a : vivid and deep in color <a rich red>
b : full and mellow in tone and quality <a rich voice>
c : having a strong fragrance <rich perfumes>
5
: highly productive or remunerative <a rich mine>
6
a : having abundant plant nutrients <rich soil>
b : highly seasoned, fatty, oily, or sweet <rich foods>
c : high in the combustible component <a rich fuel mixture>
d : high in some component <cholesterol-rich foods>
7
a : entertaining; also : laughable
b : meaningful, significant <rich allusions>
c : lush <rich meadows>
8
: pure or nearly pure <rich lime>
While we know about rich soil, the opposite being called poor but meaning barren--incapable of producing anything, we rarely considered the richness of people in any terms but materialism--until they are old and facing death.
We want our children to become rich, it was the american dream--getting rich. The millionaire was the standard, although the unspoken inflation that has made a car that used to cost 3000$ new now cost 30,000$ and a house go from 25,000$ for a basic starter to at least 80,000$ for a basic starter that needs work and comes with a iffy neighborhood. A millionaire is not middle-class, but only barely not. You need at least 10,000,000$ to be "well-to-do" secure in your standing/position in life. If your job has a retirement advisor, they will make sure you know that you can't retire with a measly 500,000$ saved. (What? that is 10 years of my salary! What?)
Our society has been all about the money for a while. And while some wise folks have figured out that it is not what it is all about, and lived their lives with a different goal, there have always been a large number of our population that can never even acquire enough for the basics, food, water, shelter, weather-appropriate clothes, medicine when sick and therefore they never get the opportunity to find out what true riches are. Barely surviving is life-sucking. If you have ever almost drowned, then you know that you were not enjoying the beautiful view while treading water and trying to keep your nose above the waves. All energy went one place. Drowning people are desperate, they will try to use their fellow drowning victims as flotation devices. They will bargain with god, and curse their own mothers and anyone else they can blame for the position they are in. And they will take other's down with them. Its not evil, or meanness or even cowardice, but just pure panicky fear. Most creatures when placed in a position where they think there might be a way to survive and get on with their life will do the same (a few won't, but they are rare heroes).
The people generally described as rich, tend to act like they believe that in some way they are worth more, their life if more valuable, their ideas more important, their contributions to society more meaningful. They are frequently jerks or worse.
Rich people gave us cars and computers and tv and professional sports---of course they didn't really give them to us, they sold them to us and got rich doing so. The people working for them are unknown unless they happened to be a name that was being sold. Some professional athletes and actors and directors and CEO's also get rich when we buy those things, but the guy that put your car together didn't get rich, and the man that ran the camera or put on the monster makeup or sold the hotdogs or swept the stadium or showed you how to program your smart phone, that person didn't get rich.
Who decides who profits and who gets by. Artists have always known that the difference between a 50$ painting and a 5,000,000$ painting is a patron. A patron with some money can help you find an audience of higher paying customers and a patron that blows millions on a whim can make you rich also. For some reason, if rich man #1 wants a painting by Joe Blow, then rich man #2 and #3 also want one, only bigger or more expensive.
At any rate, the man or woman with millions and billions is not necessarily the one to die rich. At the end of it all, the richest is the one with the best memories, the most loved-ones, the wisest wisdoms and that ended up getting the chance to create all those things that lived in their head. Use the rich and creative and productive mind and soul you were born with--die rich.
The people generally described as rich, tend to act like they believe that in some way they are worth more, their life if more valuable, their ideas more important, their contributions to society more meaningful. They are frequently jerks or worse.
Rich people gave us cars and computers and tv and professional sports---of course they didn't really give them to us, they sold them to us and got rich doing so. The people working for them are unknown unless they happened to be a name that was being sold. Some professional athletes and actors and directors and CEO's also get rich when we buy those things, but the guy that put your car together didn't get rich, and the man that ran the camera or put on the monster makeup or sold the hotdogs or swept the stadium or showed you how to program your smart phone, that person didn't get rich.
Who decides who profits and who gets by. Artists have always known that the difference between a 50$ painting and a 5,000,000$ painting is a patron. A patron with some money can help you find an audience of higher paying customers and a patron that blows millions on a whim can make you rich also. For some reason, if rich man #1 wants a painting by Joe Blow, then rich man #2 and #3 also want one, only bigger or more expensive.
At any rate, the man or woman with millions and billions is not necessarily the one to die rich. At the end of it all, the richest is the one with the best memories, the most loved-ones, the wisest wisdoms and that ended up getting the chance to create all those things that lived in their head. Use the rich and creative and productive mind and soul you were born with--die rich.
Saturday, August 16, 2014
symbols, keywords and other cues to our environment
There is a great bumper sticker out there, (coexist) and it has a lot of variations, but every time I see it, I like the person whose car it is on. I don't know them, and it might have been slapped on there five minutes ago while they were in a store---by the person that was different than them and that they had just cussed out. I'm responding to the bumper sticker and not the person. It represents something that is positive to me.
Symbols represent. They give us clues. They help us know if something is good or bad, safe or dangerous, desireable or worthy of avoidance. And which is which is frequently taught to us by our beliefs. Most of us get those from the people that raised us and while we rebel about speeding and seatbelts, getting high and safe sex, we rarely rebel against the beliefs we were taught as children.
When we do rebel against those beliefs, it is usually more reaction-formation than an actual examination of the beliefs. We have all met at least one person raised in a home with strict fundamentalist religious beliefs (any religion--they all have families like that) that becomes the biggest atheist or satanist fundamentalist that could exist--reactionary to the point that their whole life is taken up with going against the teachings of their family. They are consumed with being the opposite and do not even admit that anything except the opposite exists as a possibility. They can not see that they are as blind to the other possible beliefs as their family that raised them was. They would only recognize two symbols, the one of their childhood--which they now hate, the one of their current belief, and the rest would be meaningless.
We give symbols their meanings. But a symbol doesn't have to be a drawing or visual representation of a religion. It can be anything. It can be detected by any sense. And it can be meaningful to an entire culture or only to a single individual.
Currently, we are having riots in a neighborhood outside of St. Louis, and the symbols involved in that are both highly recognized, and unspeakable. The face of the young black male and the blue uniform. While the first should not be a symbol, it has been for a very long time. And it means very different things to different people. We know through discussions of profiling that the young black male is supposed to be violent, criminal, and the list could go on and on from here. Show someone a picture of a young black male and ask them to tell you what he is doing in the picture, the stories will be different depending upon the culture and background of the person you ask. The picture itself has no meaning except the meaning placed on it by the person telling the story. The same is true of a picture of a person in a police uniform, and while the sex and race of the person in the uniform may make a difference depending upon the beliefs of the person telling the story, the story of the young black male in the blue uniform will not be the same as the story told for the first picture. The uniform is its own symbol.
We are rioting now, and it is spreading because being a symbol causes a person to lose their individuality. They are judged as the symbol and all the connotations the symbol has to the person doing the judging. And we are all judging. It's what we do. We recognize patterns and sort things into groups. It is why we can accomplish so many things, and why we do so much evil. Obviously, the ability to recognize a nail and use it, even if it is a little different than the first nail we saw makes us able to make things, and just as obviously, our inability to judge each other without prejudging them based on appearance,culture, worklife and health and habit creates social injustice, poverty, fear and even war.
Our natural tendencies, to judge, to react, to panic, to gossip, to put things in little boxes according to our beliefs, to be loyal to what we see as "like us" and to be against what we see as "not us", makes us dangerous. Only our own awareness of how we as people can be, how wrong, how unjust, how murderous, that awareness can help us to examine our own thoughts, our own beliefs. We must look closely. And it is hard to do, because of our loyalty, because we don't want to think that the people like us could be wrong, could be predators or users or any of those things we say we don't like. But clear vision is needed, self-honesty is needed, commitment to being a good person is needed if we are going to stop hurting each other as if the other is only a symbol.
We need symbols, stop signs, international bathroom signs, red-tipped white canes, yellow cabs, even uniforms to identify people functioning in roles of service. But people need to stop being symbols. I know how hard it is to find even one person that is just like me---I've never really found that, so how can whole groups, cultures, countries, and continents of people be the same.
Don't react to the symbol, get to know the person.
Symbols represent. They give us clues. They help us know if something is good or bad, safe or dangerous, desireable or worthy of avoidance. And which is which is frequently taught to us by our beliefs. Most of us get those from the people that raised us and while we rebel about speeding and seatbelts, getting high and safe sex, we rarely rebel against the beliefs we were taught as children.
When we do rebel against those beliefs, it is usually more reaction-formation than an actual examination of the beliefs. We have all met at least one person raised in a home with strict fundamentalist religious beliefs (any religion--they all have families like that) that becomes the biggest atheist or satanist fundamentalist that could exist--reactionary to the point that their whole life is taken up with going against the teachings of their family. They are consumed with being the opposite and do not even admit that anything except the opposite exists as a possibility. They can not see that they are as blind to the other possible beliefs as their family that raised them was. They would only recognize two symbols, the one of their childhood--which they now hate, the one of their current belief, and the rest would be meaningless.
We give symbols their meanings. But a symbol doesn't have to be a drawing or visual representation of a religion. It can be anything. It can be detected by any sense. And it can be meaningful to an entire culture or only to a single individual.
Currently, we are having riots in a neighborhood outside of St. Louis, and the symbols involved in that are both highly recognized, and unspeakable. The face of the young black male and the blue uniform. While the first should not be a symbol, it has been for a very long time. And it means very different things to different people. We know through discussions of profiling that the young black male is supposed to be violent, criminal, and the list could go on and on from here. Show someone a picture of a young black male and ask them to tell you what he is doing in the picture, the stories will be different depending upon the culture and background of the person you ask. The picture itself has no meaning except the meaning placed on it by the person telling the story. The same is true of a picture of a person in a police uniform, and while the sex and race of the person in the uniform may make a difference depending upon the beliefs of the person telling the story, the story of the young black male in the blue uniform will not be the same as the story told for the first picture. The uniform is its own symbol.
We are rioting now, and it is spreading because being a symbol causes a person to lose their individuality. They are judged as the symbol and all the connotations the symbol has to the person doing the judging. And we are all judging. It's what we do. We recognize patterns and sort things into groups. It is why we can accomplish so many things, and why we do so much evil. Obviously, the ability to recognize a nail and use it, even if it is a little different than the first nail we saw makes us able to make things, and just as obviously, our inability to judge each other without prejudging them based on appearance,culture, worklife and health and habit creates social injustice, poverty, fear and even war.
Our natural tendencies, to judge, to react, to panic, to gossip, to put things in little boxes according to our beliefs, to be loyal to what we see as "like us" and to be against what we see as "not us", makes us dangerous. Only our own awareness of how we as people can be, how wrong, how unjust, how murderous, that awareness can help us to examine our own thoughts, our own beliefs. We must look closely. And it is hard to do, because of our loyalty, because we don't want to think that the people like us could be wrong, could be predators or users or any of those things we say we don't like. But clear vision is needed, self-honesty is needed, commitment to being a good person is needed if we are going to stop hurting each other as if the other is only a symbol.
We need symbols, stop signs, international bathroom signs, red-tipped white canes, yellow cabs, even uniforms to identify people functioning in roles of service. But people need to stop being symbols. I know how hard it is to find even one person that is just like me---I've never really found that, so how can whole groups, cultures, countries, and continents of people be the same.
Don't react to the symbol, get to know the person.
Saturday, August 9, 2014
LONER OR LONELY?
Sometimes i ask myself, "am I really a loner? or am I lonely?" When I was 7 I would have said lonely, and at 12 and at 18, it was lonely but instead of a friend and playmate, it was for a soulmate. So why is it that I avoid people now? Did something bad happen? Did I become old and crusty and antisocial? Maybe. Or maybe I stopped listening to the people around me.
I don't know that I will ever be able to completely dissect the past and find the answer. I wanted more friends because my mother told me I needed friends--translate "popular friends" as I always had at least one person and usually more that I talked to, some were closer than others, but none of them were at all popular. The closest was a neighbor child, and we shared our childhood games and imagination and hopes and dreams. the others, in truth were not to be put off. I have always had a few people in my life that are aggressively friendly. They need a sidekick and I am unattached, always, to anyone. When I was a child, with a mother so desperately wishing for a popular child (thankfully my little sister was both popular AND social) and fears that by not wanting what everyone else wanted and seeking out friends and trying to be popular, I must be a freak, a weirdo, some kind of defective. I wanted to be normal as much as the next person. But shared experiences do best with shared interests. And I guess I was a weirdo. While the other girls were playing with barbies and talking about the boyfriends (6 year olds, I swear, it was all about the passing of notes in class and church) I was wanting to play cowboys and indians (I loved cap pistols) and was reading life books about evolution. I went to a school that never taught evolution and the 10 grade biology teacher stole my favorite book on the subject. When every girl that wasn't pretty and heading for cheerleading or majorette with their string of boyfriends started playing sports, it was discovered I was so myopic that even with glasses, I couldn't catch a ball until it hit me in the nose.
At puberty, I became more popular--read that as every little hormonally deranged male decided to make rude sexual comments, but we had nothing in common. As one homely C student told my mother on the phone, "I might ask her out but she has to quite acting like an egghead". I was fine without him, having no interest in listening to his group talk about coon hunting or what truck they eventually hoped to buy.
By twenty, I was decidedly seeking a "soulmate" although it might be that all the cousins having married by 19 in their white satin, or maybe the biological clock was ticking. At any rate, two kids later I had learned a few things.
One, being a good listener is fine for a therapist, but lonely in a relationship when it is only one of you listening. Two, you really do need to have mutual interests. Three, it doesn't matter what society says everyone needs, what do I need?
Reality is that I have always been fine with a good book or working on a project. I have enjoyed some wonderful conversations about things I am interested in, but don't really enjoy that feeling of wasting time listening to someone else go on and on about themselves. I don't want to be a therapist. Shoot, a good therapist will just point out the person's narcissism and ask if they want to work on that. If they don't, they can go on about their business. I don't want to play a role. I definitely don't like meeting societal expectations to play a role. I still haven't given up on stopping the waste of energy on mowing lawns to make them look---why do we do that, I don't get it at all.
So, am I lonely? Occasionally. I listen to family members periodically. I don't talk to them much about my concerns and interests. That is what this blog is for.And pretty much, it works. Other than no feedback its about perfect. Am I a loner? I don't know that such a thing even exists. There are a lot of people in the world. People like to interact with people like themselves. The bigger the world gets, the more outliers there are. Amazingly, some of them even find each other. For those that don't, keep writing, painting. sculpting, you know--expressing yourself in a way that maybe will make you feel less alone, more a part of the world.
Those individuals that don't fit easily into the current social scene have their destiny. Maybe some day I'll figure out what mine is.
I don't know that I will ever be able to completely dissect the past and find the answer. I wanted more friends because my mother told me I needed friends--translate "popular friends" as I always had at least one person and usually more that I talked to, some were closer than others, but none of them were at all popular. The closest was a neighbor child, and we shared our childhood games and imagination and hopes and dreams. the others, in truth were not to be put off. I have always had a few people in my life that are aggressively friendly. They need a sidekick and I am unattached, always, to anyone. When I was a child, with a mother so desperately wishing for a popular child (thankfully my little sister was both popular AND social) and fears that by not wanting what everyone else wanted and seeking out friends and trying to be popular, I must be a freak, a weirdo, some kind of defective. I wanted to be normal as much as the next person. But shared experiences do best with shared interests. And I guess I was a weirdo. While the other girls were playing with barbies and talking about the boyfriends (6 year olds, I swear, it was all about the passing of notes in class and church) I was wanting to play cowboys and indians (I loved cap pistols) and was reading life books about evolution. I went to a school that never taught evolution and the 10 grade biology teacher stole my favorite book on the subject. When every girl that wasn't pretty and heading for cheerleading or majorette with their string of boyfriends started playing sports, it was discovered I was so myopic that even with glasses, I couldn't catch a ball until it hit me in the nose.
At puberty, I became more popular--read that as every little hormonally deranged male decided to make rude sexual comments, but we had nothing in common. As one homely C student told my mother on the phone, "I might ask her out but she has to quite acting like an egghead". I was fine without him, having no interest in listening to his group talk about coon hunting or what truck they eventually hoped to buy.
By twenty, I was decidedly seeking a "soulmate" although it might be that all the cousins having married by 19 in their white satin, or maybe the biological clock was ticking. At any rate, two kids later I had learned a few things.
One, being a good listener is fine for a therapist, but lonely in a relationship when it is only one of you listening. Two, you really do need to have mutual interests. Three, it doesn't matter what society says everyone needs, what do I need?
Reality is that I have always been fine with a good book or working on a project. I have enjoyed some wonderful conversations about things I am interested in, but don't really enjoy that feeling of wasting time listening to someone else go on and on about themselves. I don't want to be a therapist. Shoot, a good therapist will just point out the person's narcissism and ask if they want to work on that. If they don't, they can go on about their business. I don't want to play a role. I definitely don't like meeting societal expectations to play a role. I still haven't given up on stopping the waste of energy on mowing lawns to make them look---why do we do that, I don't get it at all.
So, am I lonely? Occasionally. I listen to family members periodically. I don't talk to them much about my concerns and interests. That is what this blog is for.And pretty much, it works. Other than no feedback its about perfect. Am I a loner? I don't know that such a thing even exists. There are a lot of people in the world. People like to interact with people like themselves. The bigger the world gets, the more outliers there are. Amazingly, some of them even find each other. For those that don't, keep writing, painting. sculpting, you know--expressing yourself in a way that maybe will make you feel less alone, more a part of the world.
Those individuals that don't fit easily into the current social scene have their destiny. Maybe some day I'll figure out what mine is.
Saturday, August 2, 2014
Middle-class
When I was a kid, I considered my family middle-class. And yes, I was living in the U.S., which is supposed to be a classless, "we are all equal" kind of place. But that has never actually been a reality; just the ideal.
Today, I watch who calls themselves middle class, and it is everyone that is not receiving full government subsidies to the top 2 percent. That translates to everyone making from $23,851 to $224,000. All the families or households in this range are middle-class. That is a lot of range, and the actual way of life of the bottom third of that has little in common with the top third.
So what are we really talking about? Maybe a way of life? A way of thinking? A self-image? Who says "I am middle-class"
First, people whose parents said it. Perhaps it is genetic. (it is early in the morning, i like to be ridiculous early in the morning) It is definitely part of a family's identity. And for a lot of people I have met, it is a positive thing, like saying they come from a good family, are good people, have value to society, are givers not takers, work hard, do the right thing, care about each other, live right.
Sometimes, I hear people divide the middle-class into its own 3 levels, the upper-middle-class, which is what television loves to display in its sitcoms and dramas as the the regular people of this country; the working class, which are those people that are not at poverty level(barely), consider themselves middle-class, and frequently get displayed in movies that are more gritty, you know, the ones where people struggle a bit, have dramatic emotional lives, and the lighting seems to be a bit dark--what film are they using for that, or is it all digital and using filtering effects?
Reality is, my family was very much working class--first generation off the farm. Not the corporate farm, more like the "grapes of wrath" farm. And it may have been genetic. I used to chide my grandmother that we had great genes, came from good hardy peasant stock. She had been raised with certain Victorian sensibilities and did not find that funny. Reality is, most of this country has similar roots. We aren't all the lost descendants of royals and nobles. We all have relatives that excelled in something, maybe a lot of relatives, maybe direct ancestors, maybe someone we highly respect and have no idea we share a few genes with. There is a lot more to life than genetics.
Highly under-rated is luck. The differences in the life of a person with great giftedness in iron works and when they were born could send then to a decidedly middle-class blacksmith position in a certain time periods, a very low-wage industrial position in the bottom of the working-class at other times, or the top of the art industry with timing and luck, guaranteeing the upper-middle-class, or even above. (think Anish Kapooar. Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Jasper Johns) Most artists feel lucky if they get to make a basic living that includes not have 1-3 other jobs to pay the bills.
Successful people that make it to the top of their field usually deny the impact of luck. It was hard work, perseverance, incredible planning, goal-directedness---. Who are they kidding? We have all seen people that did all those things all their lives---truly middle-class beliefs guiding them--and died no closer to that goal than they started. Their lives were not wasted. We learn during our lives and influence the people around us. Some people, like the highly unlucky Van Gogh, become Iconic after their deaths, their talents only recognized when they can no longer be lucky enough to become successful. (post-mortem success--what does that even mean?) Others gain wisdoms in there lack of luck, learning to appreciate the lessons life has taught them and valuing more than the ideal they started with. Some of them get to star in documentaries about how Mr. or Ms. middleclass ended up homeless for 20 years. Luck.
So who are the middle-class? What is their place in society? Why do they even exist? And they have always existed in some form. The world has never been just the rich and the poor. The middle-class is the meat of the sandwich---the rich need us because they couldn't be rich without our work efforts and consumerism; the poor need us because without us, the rich would probably exterminate or enslave them. The middle-class people with their empathy and compassion are who actually volunteer to help the poor, who points out the inequities of society, who fight in revolutions when those inequities quit being addressed at the level of the government law-making. The Middle-class, with its large numbers and wide range is the majority of the population and thus has the ability to turn the country in any direction it desires.
Currently, the middle-class has a large number of people that are sure they are dependent upon the rich for their place in society. They have "drank the koolaid" so to speak. They have bought in to the idea that everything good they have is dependent upon rich people letting them work and rich people making them jobs, rich people supporting their cities arts projects, schools, etc, etc, etc. But not one rich person has ever hired anyone to do a job that they didn't need done. When you go to work, your work is necessary to your place of employment. No one puts in a machine part that 's not needed for the correct function of the machine. Our jobs are not charity. And we are paid only as much as the machine feels is necessary to keep us--supply and demand. If a lot of people can do the job with little training, then no matter how physically difficult, dangerous, or hard on the workers mental health, the job will pay little and will have lots of people willing to do it for that. That is why we try to get our children the education and skills they need to do something they enjoy and that there is high demand for or in which the requirements are so specific there is little competition. And we want them to be lucky. Luck is required for almost all of the jobs that can carry a person from middle-class to rich. If you doubt that, check out the number of wait staff in Hollywood waiting on their big break. Watch the career of a few of the singers on American Idol, or the Indies out of Nashville. And find the stats on the amount of money spent on competitive sports in elementary school and the number of them that are involved then compare it to the number professional athletes that moved to rich, or even the number that were able to get a full scholarship out of it.
In my lifetime, most of the young people I have talked to expected to get lucky. The goal is not middle-class, its moving to rich. Some have a plan. Some are brilliant or talented or creative. Some have parents that are already at the top of the middle-class income and have no doubt they can make it. The latter are probably the only ones that don't require much luck.
If, on the other hand, your goal is "rich" and your currently living in subsidized housing with a father in prison and a mother who can't get enough meth to make the day ok, you need a lot of luck no matter how brilliant, and talented and creative you are. I have met several young people that should have been highly successful due to their giftedness, but by twenty they were dead. And god help the children born in poverty that suffered from the neurological effects of poor diet, lack of cognitive stimulation, emotional and physical abuse and no role models that could show them what success looked like. No amount of luck can fix that.
The middle-class needs to take back its position of power and control. Majority rules. And the majority is not a political party--its people that share an ideal and goal. The middle-class heart needs to open up and stop letting the fearmongers run them toward the cliff. We can be strong. We can save the world.
With a little luck.
I'm going to go buy a lottery ticket.
Today, I watch who calls themselves middle class, and it is everyone that is not receiving full government subsidies to the top 2 percent. That translates to everyone making from $23,851 to $224,000. All the families or households in this range are middle-class. That is a lot of range, and the actual way of life of the bottom third of that has little in common with the top third.
So what are we really talking about? Maybe a way of life? A way of thinking? A self-image? Who says "I am middle-class"
First, people whose parents said it. Perhaps it is genetic. (it is early in the morning, i like to be ridiculous early in the morning) It is definitely part of a family's identity. And for a lot of people I have met, it is a positive thing, like saying they come from a good family, are good people, have value to society, are givers not takers, work hard, do the right thing, care about each other, live right.
Sometimes, I hear people divide the middle-class into its own 3 levels, the upper-middle-class, which is what television loves to display in its sitcoms and dramas as the the regular people of this country; the working class, which are those people that are not at poverty level(barely), consider themselves middle-class, and frequently get displayed in movies that are more gritty, you know, the ones where people struggle a bit, have dramatic emotional lives, and the lighting seems to be a bit dark--what film are they using for that, or is it all digital and using filtering effects?
Reality is, my family was very much working class--first generation off the farm. Not the corporate farm, more like the "grapes of wrath" farm. And it may have been genetic. I used to chide my grandmother that we had great genes, came from good hardy peasant stock. She had been raised with certain Victorian sensibilities and did not find that funny. Reality is, most of this country has similar roots. We aren't all the lost descendants of royals and nobles. We all have relatives that excelled in something, maybe a lot of relatives, maybe direct ancestors, maybe someone we highly respect and have no idea we share a few genes with. There is a lot more to life than genetics.
Highly under-rated is luck. The differences in the life of a person with great giftedness in iron works and when they were born could send then to a decidedly middle-class blacksmith position in a certain time periods, a very low-wage industrial position in the bottom of the working-class at other times, or the top of the art industry with timing and luck, guaranteeing the upper-middle-class, or even above. (think Anish Kapooar. Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Jasper Johns) Most artists feel lucky if they get to make a basic living that includes not have 1-3 other jobs to pay the bills.
Successful people that make it to the top of their field usually deny the impact of luck. It was hard work, perseverance, incredible planning, goal-directedness---. Who are they kidding? We have all seen people that did all those things all their lives---truly middle-class beliefs guiding them--and died no closer to that goal than they started. Their lives were not wasted. We learn during our lives and influence the people around us. Some people, like the highly unlucky Van Gogh, become Iconic after their deaths, their talents only recognized when they can no longer be lucky enough to become successful. (post-mortem success--what does that even mean?) Others gain wisdoms in there lack of luck, learning to appreciate the lessons life has taught them and valuing more than the ideal they started with. Some of them get to star in documentaries about how Mr. or Ms. middleclass ended up homeless for 20 years. Luck.
So who are the middle-class? What is their place in society? Why do they even exist? And they have always existed in some form. The world has never been just the rich and the poor. The middle-class is the meat of the sandwich---the rich need us because they couldn't be rich without our work efforts and consumerism; the poor need us because without us, the rich would probably exterminate or enslave them. The middle-class people with their empathy and compassion are who actually volunteer to help the poor, who points out the inequities of society, who fight in revolutions when those inequities quit being addressed at the level of the government law-making. The Middle-class, with its large numbers and wide range is the majority of the population and thus has the ability to turn the country in any direction it desires.
Currently, the middle-class has a large number of people that are sure they are dependent upon the rich for their place in society. They have "drank the koolaid" so to speak. They have bought in to the idea that everything good they have is dependent upon rich people letting them work and rich people making them jobs, rich people supporting their cities arts projects, schools, etc, etc, etc. But not one rich person has ever hired anyone to do a job that they didn't need done. When you go to work, your work is necessary to your place of employment. No one puts in a machine part that 's not needed for the correct function of the machine. Our jobs are not charity. And we are paid only as much as the machine feels is necessary to keep us--supply and demand. If a lot of people can do the job with little training, then no matter how physically difficult, dangerous, or hard on the workers mental health, the job will pay little and will have lots of people willing to do it for that. That is why we try to get our children the education and skills they need to do something they enjoy and that there is high demand for or in which the requirements are so specific there is little competition. And we want them to be lucky. Luck is required for almost all of the jobs that can carry a person from middle-class to rich. If you doubt that, check out the number of wait staff in Hollywood waiting on their big break. Watch the career of a few of the singers on American Idol, or the Indies out of Nashville. And find the stats on the amount of money spent on competitive sports in elementary school and the number of them that are involved then compare it to the number professional athletes that moved to rich, or even the number that were able to get a full scholarship out of it.
In my lifetime, most of the young people I have talked to expected to get lucky. The goal is not middle-class, its moving to rich. Some have a plan. Some are brilliant or talented or creative. Some have parents that are already at the top of the middle-class income and have no doubt they can make it. The latter are probably the only ones that don't require much luck.
If, on the other hand, your goal is "rich" and your currently living in subsidized housing with a father in prison and a mother who can't get enough meth to make the day ok, you need a lot of luck no matter how brilliant, and talented and creative you are. I have met several young people that should have been highly successful due to their giftedness, but by twenty they were dead. And god help the children born in poverty that suffered from the neurological effects of poor diet, lack of cognitive stimulation, emotional and physical abuse and no role models that could show them what success looked like. No amount of luck can fix that.
The middle-class needs to take back its position of power and control. Majority rules. And the majority is not a political party--its people that share an ideal and goal. The middle-class heart needs to open up and stop letting the fearmongers run them toward the cliff. We can be strong. We can save the world.
With a little luck.
I'm going to go buy a lottery ticket.
Saturday, July 26, 2014
war crimes!!!!!
I heard on the news that Israel is now accused of war crimes against Palestine. That horrified me. How could a nation that became--or rebecame a nation after sort of surviving the most horrible war crimes I could have imagined. Surely they did not become the monsters. Surely they have not forgotten so soon what it is like to be a people that is homeless and without acceptance.
But being no Pollyanna, I accepted that the people of Israel, the people that survived the Holocaust after surviving 2000 years of wondering after the loss of their own country was not made of wimps and wusses. Of course they are capable of war crimes.
Then the term--war crimes--struck me. What about war is not a crime. There is no good in a war. Wars could all be avoided, but they aren't because one group always decides that someone else has something they want, and they want it enough to send their young people at risk of life and limb, to get it. Their is always an aggressor. And the aggressor always wants something. Something that is currently not theirs but that could be if they kill enough of the other people to make them decide keeping it is not longer worth it.
We have grand and patriotic terms for war. We always are fighting for freedom here in this country. I'm not sure how we always know which side to take to be fighting for freedom. I haven't not noticed much freedom in the Ukraine, or Afghanistan, or Iraq or anyone of those countries that we want to fight for or against. I didn't see much in Vietnam either--France left after years of colonialization---read long term pillaging of another countries resources, and two factions went at it. As usual, the poor on both sides lost. I don't know that anyone won. Or that anyone ever wins.
Same with Korea, we fought with the South, and I do think the dictatorship in the North is pretty scarey, but no one won. Maybe buying some peacetime is all war ever does. And we humans should figure out that if we don't go to war, its all peacetime.
But back to war crimes. What part of war is not a crime and therefore how does one determine what is a crime. I personally find that there have been many atrocities, but during war and during peace. I wasn't sure we Americans wouldn't commit our own atrocities upon those children at the border. They are certainly raising the hackles on many of our people. We watch the news, hear the spins placed by our personal favorite newscaster, and take side. We haven't had a war on our soil in over 100 years so its almost like cheering at a tv football game. Choose your side, be loyal, be supportive when they are doing good, don't boo when they aren't doing so good. You know, be a good cheerleader. but those things our there that are loud on our TV screens, those are people, and in many of those places, they have lived lives similar to ours, this is just as horrifying to them as if suddenly found ourselves in the middle of an invasion of aliens. When suddenly your home isn't safe, your children could be killed, not as a rare accident but by a gun or bomb or for smiling or not smiling at the enemy soldier now inhabiting your town, then what isn't a war crime. If your son or daughter is conscripted into the war, with no desire to go to war, with a new spouse, plans for a career, wanting children, and they are sent in to shoot at people they don't know and those people are shooting back and kill them. Is that not a war crime? If your five year old doesn't know not to walk through the empty field by grandma's because it is now a minefield, is that not a war crime? If you family business of 6 generations is taken as a temporary headquarters for the newly arrived allies and they tear up the walls and throw out the supplies to make room for their own needs, how is that not a war crime?
Perhaps all war is a crime, and then all warmongers are war criminals. Who would be on that list. The weapons manufacturers, the developers of technology that has no use but to kill large numbers of people, the people that want war, that profit from war, that start wars for their own gains.
Our own country is full of war criminals. The politically connected, the rich and powerful, the greedy and military powers that know their only purpose is war, they are war criminals. The 18 year old that snaps and strangles a kid in a village when they startle him, the soldier that suddenly sees "enemy" with every person that looks like the peoples that have been shooting at him and blasts a group of teenagers that were out trying to party in their blasted city that is not surviving in a war, the mother that throws a grenade into a jeep after watching her toddler run over by the same kind of jeep. Those are the true fruit of war. PTSD, missing limbs, traumatic brain injury, family trees that suddenly end, those are the fruit of war.
This is where everyone brings up Hitler. "We had to stop Hitler" Agreed, but why would so many people follow him. Why was it so easy for him to make so many people kill for what he believed. Hitler was one man, who gave him the power to start a war? We did. Just like we do now. Just like we do now. Hitler did not personally kill all those people. It is estimated that WWII lead to 60,000,000 dead world wide counting military and civilians. Over 50 countries lost people in that war. And everyone blames one man---Hitler. A small man with a bad moustache. There is no way he could have killed 16,000 people a day by himself. We didn't have that kind of technology back then. (we might be able to do it now, but reality is, the people giving orders usually can't even run the equipment, so one man couldn't do it alone now, either)
Yet, every single person that fought in that war saw themselves as a patriot, a hero, doing their duty, from every side, from every position.
We all need to do a better job teaching our children. The problem is not that we need wars to protect our freedoms. We need to all know that no one can take our freedom. No ONE person, no ONE idea can make us do what we know is wrong, no ONE desire for possessing what does not belong to us can be used as an excuse to kill. We all matter, we all have a right to live in safety, with personal freedoms (that end at the tip of the other person's nose) and enough food/water/medicine/shelter to keep from being on constant want. Acquisitiveness is not a right to take from others, power hunger is not a right to tell others what to do, and personal beliefs are not a right to make others live by our rules. That is freedom for all. And real freedom doesn't kill people, people kill people---and calling it war doesn't making it any less a crime.
But being no Pollyanna, I accepted that the people of Israel, the people that survived the Holocaust after surviving 2000 years of wondering after the loss of their own country was not made of wimps and wusses. Of course they are capable of war crimes.
Then the term--war crimes--struck me. What about war is not a crime. There is no good in a war. Wars could all be avoided, but they aren't because one group always decides that someone else has something they want, and they want it enough to send their young people at risk of life and limb, to get it. Their is always an aggressor. And the aggressor always wants something. Something that is currently not theirs but that could be if they kill enough of the other people to make them decide keeping it is not longer worth it.
We have grand and patriotic terms for war. We always are fighting for freedom here in this country. I'm not sure how we always know which side to take to be fighting for freedom. I haven't not noticed much freedom in the Ukraine, or Afghanistan, or Iraq or anyone of those countries that we want to fight for or against. I didn't see much in Vietnam either--France left after years of colonialization---read long term pillaging of another countries resources, and two factions went at it. As usual, the poor on both sides lost. I don't know that anyone won. Or that anyone ever wins.
Same with Korea, we fought with the South, and I do think the dictatorship in the North is pretty scarey, but no one won. Maybe buying some peacetime is all war ever does. And we humans should figure out that if we don't go to war, its all peacetime.
But back to war crimes. What part of war is not a crime and therefore how does one determine what is a crime. I personally find that there have been many atrocities, but during war and during peace. I wasn't sure we Americans wouldn't commit our own atrocities upon those children at the border. They are certainly raising the hackles on many of our people. We watch the news, hear the spins placed by our personal favorite newscaster, and take side. We haven't had a war on our soil in over 100 years so its almost like cheering at a tv football game. Choose your side, be loyal, be supportive when they are doing good, don't boo when they aren't doing so good. You know, be a good cheerleader. but those things our there that are loud on our TV screens, those are people, and in many of those places, they have lived lives similar to ours, this is just as horrifying to them as if suddenly found ourselves in the middle of an invasion of aliens. When suddenly your home isn't safe, your children could be killed, not as a rare accident but by a gun or bomb or for smiling or not smiling at the enemy soldier now inhabiting your town, then what isn't a war crime. If your son or daughter is conscripted into the war, with no desire to go to war, with a new spouse, plans for a career, wanting children, and they are sent in to shoot at people they don't know and those people are shooting back and kill them. Is that not a war crime? If your five year old doesn't know not to walk through the empty field by grandma's because it is now a minefield, is that not a war crime? If you family business of 6 generations is taken as a temporary headquarters for the newly arrived allies and they tear up the walls and throw out the supplies to make room for their own needs, how is that not a war crime?
Perhaps all war is a crime, and then all warmongers are war criminals. Who would be on that list. The weapons manufacturers, the developers of technology that has no use but to kill large numbers of people, the people that want war, that profit from war, that start wars for their own gains.
Our own country is full of war criminals. The politically connected, the rich and powerful, the greedy and military powers that know their only purpose is war, they are war criminals. The 18 year old that snaps and strangles a kid in a village when they startle him, the soldier that suddenly sees "enemy" with every person that looks like the peoples that have been shooting at him and blasts a group of teenagers that were out trying to party in their blasted city that is not surviving in a war, the mother that throws a grenade into a jeep after watching her toddler run over by the same kind of jeep. Those are the true fruit of war. PTSD, missing limbs, traumatic brain injury, family trees that suddenly end, those are the fruit of war.
This is where everyone brings up Hitler. "We had to stop Hitler" Agreed, but why would so many people follow him. Why was it so easy for him to make so many people kill for what he believed. Hitler was one man, who gave him the power to start a war? We did. Just like we do now. Just like we do now. Hitler did not personally kill all those people. It is estimated that WWII lead to 60,000,000 dead world wide counting military and civilians. Over 50 countries lost people in that war. And everyone blames one man---Hitler. A small man with a bad moustache. There is no way he could have killed 16,000 people a day by himself. We didn't have that kind of technology back then. (we might be able to do it now, but reality is, the people giving orders usually can't even run the equipment, so one man couldn't do it alone now, either)
Yet, every single person that fought in that war saw themselves as a patriot, a hero, doing their duty, from every side, from every position.
We all need to do a better job teaching our children. The problem is not that we need wars to protect our freedoms. We need to all know that no one can take our freedom. No ONE person, no ONE idea can make us do what we know is wrong, no ONE desire for possessing what does not belong to us can be used as an excuse to kill. We all matter, we all have a right to live in safety, with personal freedoms (that end at the tip of the other person's nose) and enough food/water/medicine/shelter to keep from being on constant want. Acquisitiveness is not a right to take from others, power hunger is not a right to tell others what to do, and personal beliefs are not a right to make others live by our rules. That is freedom for all. And real freedom doesn't kill people, people kill people---and calling it war doesn't making it any less a crime.
HOSPICE AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
There is a lot of discussion about the cruel and unusual punishment that is occurring with lethal injection in capital punishment. The drug companies don't want their drugs used for it--bad advertising. The people that have taken oaths to do no harm are avoiding participation. The people willing to participate don't actually have a clue about what they are trying to do. Where is Dr. Kevorkian when you need him?
In truth, people working in hospice will tell you that natural death is not all that pretty. It isn't quick, and it is only as painless as you can make it without hurrying it along too much. The description of the person gasping for breath for almost 2 hours sounds pretty much like---death. Inadequate respiratory effort caused by the mix of opiate and benzo--what everyone working with patients on that combination for a procedure knows to be aware of and ready to treat. Hypoventilation leading to acidosis and death. Guppy breathing.
Why, after years of using potassium to stop the heart, suddenly no one can figure out that is what is missing, not the barbituate but the actual chemical that causes death. No pain medication or anxiolytic will cause death, they just depress respiratory centers in the brain. A strong, healthy person can stay that way a good time---I've seen old and sick and dying people with respiratory acidosis during their active dying that maintained a heart beat and shallow, ineffective breathing for hours---and they were old and sick and dying. Why would we expect that drugs that do not stop the heart, merely depress the respiratory centers, to cause a younger, basically healthy person that is also sporting a healthy dose of adrenaline to just lay down and die in a short and inoffensive timeframe.
Perhaps the question we need to be asking is not about what is cruel and unusual punishment; perhaps the questions we should be asking are about the court systems in our country. We have DNA evidence of executed inmates that whose DNA didn't match the crime scene. We have Police officers that are willing to bet on their own gut feelings by planting evidence to ensure convictions, we have juries that ignore the evidence or are chosen for their inability to think clearly as it makes them easier for the lawyers to sway. We also have crimes so horrendous that the jurors can only think of revenge, and can't separate their own need to punish someone from the job of deciding if that is the person on trial.
None of the problems are intentional and in fact our court systems, with their checks and balances, rules of protections, and use of a jury of our peers was all intended to remove the problem of a king or his representative passed judgement with whatever evidence and however ruthlessly suited him that day. A person that shot a rabbit in the King's forest could be executed, or maimed, or sent away from his family to labor in one of the King's colonies--colonies always had plenty of labor needs, and criminals were a good source of free labor.
So, our constitution improved upon the previous laws, but then we set about turning it into a game, a game of chess, a game of politics, and game made up of powerful people and powerless people--guess who always loses?
The following is a list of people with considerable doubt raised posthumously as to their guilt. I'm sure they all feel much better about their executions knowing someone actually questioned their innocencs.
In truth, people working in hospice will tell you that natural death is not all that pretty. It isn't quick, and it is only as painless as you can make it without hurrying it along too much. The description of the person gasping for breath for almost 2 hours sounds pretty much like---death. Inadequate respiratory effort caused by the mix of opiate and benzo--what everyone working with patients on that combination for a procedure knows to be aware of and ready to treat. Hypoventilation leading to acidosis and death. Guppy breathing.
Why, after years of using potassium to stop the heart, suddenly no one can figure out that is what is missing, not the barbituate but the actual chemical that causes death. No pain medication or anxiolytic will cause death, they just depress respiratory centers in the brain. A strong, healthy person can stay that way a good time---I've seen old and sick and dying people with respiratory acidosis during their active dying that maintained a heart beat and shallow, ineffective breathing for hours---and they were old and sick and dying. Why would we expect that drugs that do not stop the heart, merely depress the respiratory centers, to cause a younger, basically healthy person that is also sporting a healthy dose of adrenaline to just lay down and die in a short and inoffensive timeframe.
Perhaps the question we need to be asking is not about what is cruel and unusual punishment; perhaps the questions we should be asking are about the court systems in our country. We have DNA evidence of executed inmates that whose DNA didn't match the crime scene. We have Police officers that are willing to bet on their own gut feelings by planting evidence to ensure convictions, we have juries that ignore the evidence or are chosen for their inability to think clearly as it makes them easier for the lawyers to sway. We also have crimes so horrendous that the jurors can only think of revenge, and can't separate their own need to punish someone from the job of deciding if that is the person on trial.
None of the problems are intentional and in fact our court systems, with their checks and balances, rules of protections, and use of a jury of our peers was all intended to remove the problem of a king or his representative passed judgement with whatever evidence and however ruthlessly suited him that day. A person that shot a rabbit in the King's forest could be executed, or maimed, or sent away from his family to labor in one of the King's colonies--colonies always had plenty of labor needs, and criminals were a good source of free labor.
So, our constitution improved upon the previous laws, but then we set about turning it into a game, a game of chess, a game of politics, and game made up of powerful people and powerless people--guess who always loses?
The following is a list of people with considerable doubt raised posthumously as to their guilt. I'm sure they all feel much better about their executions knowing someone actually questioned their innocencs.
Carlos DeLuna Texas Conviction: 1983, Executed: 1989
Ruben Cantu Texas Convicted: 1985, Executed: 1993
Larry Griffin Missouri Conviction: 1981, Executed: 1995
Joseph O'Dell Virginia Conviction: 1986, Executed: 1997
David Spence Texas Conviction: 1984, Executed: 1997
Leo Jones Florida Convicted: 1981, Executed: 1998
Gary Graham Texas Convicted: 1981, Executed: 2000,
Claude Jones Texas Convicted 1989, Executed 2000
Cameron Willingham Texas Convicted: 1992, Executed: 2004
Ruben Cantu Texas Convicted: 1985, Executed: 1993
Larry Griffin Missouri Conviction: 1981, Executed: 1995
Joseph O'Dell Virginia Conviction: 1986, Executed: 1997
David Spence Texas Conviction: 1984, Executed: 1997
Leo Jones Florida Convicted: 1981, Executed: 1998
Gary Graham Texas Convicted: 1981, Executed: 2000,
Claude Jones Texas Convicted 1989, Executed 2000
Cameron Willingham Texas Convicted: 1992, Executed: 2004
Troy Davis Georgia Convicted 1991 Executed 2011
The links should take you to more detailed information. (and this is only a small number of them, and reality is, many more than this have maintained their innocence till the time of death but no one backtracked to check it out. It is interesting to note that half of these are people of color. Half of these occurred in Texas, All of them occurred in southern states.
In each case, only those witnesses that made the case were used, those that said it wasn't him were not invited to testify, several police officers either recanted or were later removed from uniform for unethical methods of getting confessions--and yes, we have known for a very long time that hurting someone will make them say whatever you want them to say. Several had evidence that was not pursued once the prosecution decided it had enough to win a case. All focused on one suspect to the exclusion of others once a suspect was identified. In once case, an arson, later examination revealed that, just like the convicted said, the fire was not purposefully set---the conclusions of the investigator were wrong and no arson occurred.
People can be wrong, it happens, we have all been wrong and we have all had to apologize to someone for something at some time. But the executed do not forgive us. They can't. They're dead.
What is the problem? Our legal system has forgotten its purpose. We have lost our humanity and our justice system has lost its credibility. The people investigating are pressured to provide a high solve rate. The Heads of the police are pressured to make the current local politico's look good, to make them look like they are "tough on crime". The District attorneys are elected officials and need the votes so their conviction rate is more important than anything else. We have 3rd party jails and prisons that like a full plate---more prisoners equals more money, and death row is special, more guards, more money, more everything. The victims' loved ones want someone to pay. There is never a lack of people being accused that can bargain at witnessing someone else's guilt in exchange for time off their own sentence.
To make everyone happy--a conviction is needed. The family of the victim can start healing, the community quits fearing a killer in their midst, the police look smart and dedicated, always good PR, the prosecuter ensures his numbers in the next election, the Mayor looks like he is all about the helping the community attract more ______(insert business, jobs, tourism, money---chose the latest mayoral buzzword) and thus help everyone living there, and the corporate topdogs get their bonuses for having a full jail/prison)
The only person not happy is the person that gets executed, the person that didn't do that particular crime, the person that may not have committed any crime, the person that ceases to exist in the name of a lie.
That is the problem with capital punishment. If they did not do it with a camera running and with a full disclosure of what led to the crime (I do think that anyone can be pushed to kill--ask anyone that has lived in a condition of war for protracted lengths of time, and some marriages or communities might qualify as war zones) then how can we kill them for it. How can we ever close that book so permanently. I think that the time of capital punishment is over. We all die but making people kill innocent people as part of their job is inhuman. The guilt, what do those executioners do with that. What do they do with it when they know beyond any shadow of a doubt that they are guilty. I think I don't trust a person that could be executioner without any remorse. That person may be scarier than the person they are killing. Its time to come up with another plan. Dahmier lasted 2 years after his conviction--no death row, just general population. General population has always been a scarey world. I wish our guards weren't part of the problem, but the cost of death row, both in money and in soulessness, is too much. Time to call an end to it. Time to stop the game.
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