all the overwhelming bad news

I looked at my first blog--about fixing the world, written in July 2012 and originally shared with family and friends.  I immediately moved it to Google and it became a rant about the craziness around me.  It has been a good outlet for me.  My fear and loathing now vented, I can be more creative and productive.  Alas, I did not fix the world.  But I have changed.

I have become more vocal even in the real world.  I found that just like my state, 40% of my coworkers are also liberals in a conservative state.  It only took 5 years to find that out, but it has been a weird time.  People that are afraid hunker down at first--try to blend in, not be noticed, and wait out the craziness, but after awhile, the waiting starts seeming like its own kind of death. 

There is a feeling that comes to a pot of water on the fire, and if you have stirred anything over a fire, while being very calm and mindful, you can feel the change in the spoon right before it starts to bubble.  It is as if the energy is rising, but so minutely that there is no evidence except that slight change in the quality of the bottom of the pot.  As a person that always loved making jellies and puddings and candies, feeling that moment was a bit exciting.  I turned more than one recipe of fudge into sugar by stirring when I should have been waiting, but I can recognize that little vibration when it starts.

These days we are seeing a bit of that vibration in the world.  And there are a lot of pots on the fire; a lot of them need to not be stirred or the results will be worse for the outcomes.  Figuring out what needs to be done for the good of all is trying for all of us. 

We humans are a self centered species.  And while half of us are smarter than the other half (don't be offended, that statement can be said about anything, richer, taller, fatter, there is a 50% mark on them all) smart doesn't have anything to do with wise:  neither does religion or education or productivity or wealth or success.  Right now, we need wisdom-the wisdom to figure out what is most important and what is least important; the wisdom to figure out if it is more important--to be the number one country in something or to have a best possible global team in which we all succeed.  We need to have enough wisdom to know the difference between what is success for the long-term and what is just a blip on the monitor for that day.

Perhaps, what we need most is to decide who we are.  What kind of species is Homo Sapien?  Are we the future, or will the future be brighter for every other species--plant, animal, insect when we finally bring about our own extinction?

Are we mindless hordes of rampaging, slaughtering, thieves?  Are we born with no other purpose than to extinguish those cultures we see as competitors?  Are we truly just animals with an instinct to maintain our own genetic descendants at the expense of everyone and everything else?  Have we no soul?

That was not a religious question.  That was a philosophical question, and one we need to answer.  We are conscious of right and wrong.  We can think about the effects our actions have on everything around us.  We are capable choosing goodness and kindness.  We are capable of examining the long range effects of our actions.  Why then do we go about our business (and business is personal, everything is personal, saying it isn't is like telling your mom you didn't break the lamp, the floor did) as if the only thing that matters is how much money or power or prestige you get from what you did.

"Look mom, I made the Fortune 400 again this year, and only had to screw over a small poor country"  "We have access to the oil of those stupid people on the other side of the globe, and my soldiers did that in less than a year and we only had a few thousand casualties."  The pseudo-quotes could go on and on.  We have replacement words for when we do truly awful things that no wants to know about.  We keep our conversations that are most true limited to those people we know that have already committed atrocities in the name of "winning" just like we have. 

Replacement words--target for living being that we killed, plausible deniability  for lying to everyone, acceptable losses for sure people died but no one important, casualties for soldiers that are no longer available for combat due to death, injury, capture or going missing, collateral damage for loss of lives that were not important enough to avoid killing, friendly fire for we either accidentally or on purpose killed one of our own soldiers, civilian casualties for innocent bystanders, an offensive for a violent attack by military, a police action for when we decide we want our soldiers to go into a place to protect our wants (not our rights) in another country but don't have any reason to declare a war.

No one wants to be the bad guy, except for those petty criminals that have already lost their souls, had them beaten out by a society that left them no other options for success but to be the baddest bad guy of all.  But they are nothing next to our winners, our leaders, our powerful people.  Those people that are on the covers of magazines, touted as role models, as important, as "movers and shakers" are not judged the same as the people going about their day to day lives trying to do what is right, trying to not hurt anyone or anything while helping our loved ones to be as successful as possible.

 If one of the top dogs causes a small war in a country already on the brink of war, all in the name of acquiring that little country's natural resources--that is "good business".  If little Tommy down the street bullies first graders out of their lunch money, he is a horrible child with obviously horrible parents.  Why do we find excuses for the powerful people that kill, lie, steal, cheat, and bribe their way to more money.  Why do we thank them for donating a little of that hijacked money back to the community in exchange for a tax deduction and a brass plaque on the wall.  

Why do we buy the excuses for the horrible behavior of people that are more powerful in society than we are.  Sure, some of us are scared, of losing what we have, of being the victim of those that are more vicious than we are, of change.  But beyond fear, there are people out there lying to themselves.  Making excuses for those actions that if done by someone from another country or culture would be a reason to utterly destroy them.  Perhaps we need to change how we choose heroes and role models.  Perhaps be need to spend some time in front of a mirror examining our own values.