Back when; when I was a child, when my parents were young, when my neighborhood had children in every house but all the dogs were yard dogs and no one liked cats, we were all the same.
We lived in a place where mothers stayed home and cleaned house and reared (never raised--you raise sheep or cows or potatoes) children and watched daytime soap operas. Fathers came home every evening to a clean house with a homemade meal on the table, maybe a beer or a martini first and afterward, wife did the dishes while hubby watched TV and kids prepared for bed.
We all went on a 2 week vacation every year. Had a car for the family to make that trip and the weekly shopping trip and the kids either walked to school or rode the bus. Every house had a metal swingset in the backyard and a sandbox. The front yard had flowerbeds and a birdbath. And everyone was at church on Sunday morning.
It was great!
But it was never real.
It's as if we averaged all those people in the neighborhood and then pretended it was the truth, the reality. It was our shared fiction.
And we never looked outside the neighborhood. And the Whole World was the United States. Everyplace else was just a story, a fictional story, no more real than the stories about cave men or the stories about the crusades or vampires. None of that existed in our world except through TV. Which was only slightly more real than a good story book--or a bad story book.
When I was 7, the TV news told us some man that was a communist had shot our president--we all cried; our whole second grade class--and the buses took us home early, and we were off the next day or week or some strange length of time and watched his riderless horse walk down the street while wondering why he had a horse instead of a car--and cried again--poor lonely horse. And we vowed to never be communists that shoot presidents.
When the TV news showed race riots--suddenly these people of another race were in our country that had never been there before and they were trying to kill people for no reason. We had no people of other races in our world until then--all our books showed that--all our tv shows showed that. We were concerned. We were scared. Would those people of other races come to our neighborhoods and kill us, too?
When the TV showed riots on college campuses about the Vietnam war, we were confused. Our soldiers were heroes, saving people from communism, protecting us all from---something.
When the TV told us Martin Luther King was shot, we didn't know what to think. Our parents didn't like him. They wanted him to be quiet. They wanted him to go away--back to Africa or somewhere, but now they were even more worried about race riots. The fathers got their old and unused guns out and cleaned them and bought ammo.
When the TV news said the dead president's little brother, who also wanted to be president, had been shot, our families were a little shocked but not actually sad. "That family is cursed," they said. But their pick for president was fine, so our world was fine. Yea President Nixon!
When the TV news told us about Watergate, our fine president was in trouble. Something to do with a hotel. That was in his second term. In his first term, he focused on ending the Vietnam War--so that ended the war protests, and then focused on rescuing the environment from pollution and improving race relations. He was a Republican--apparently pollution was real to republicans back then. He also worked on ending the cold-war which was something none of us really understood-but how could you not hate communists--they were not like us and they were bad and evil.
The TV said he resigned rather than be impeached for supposedly paying a burglar $114,000 to bug the Democratic National Committee in order to win re-election. They weren't going to impeach him for that, but rather for hindering the investigation. I forget what they called that. His Vice-president had already resigned before that for income tax violations and taking bribes, so, before President Nixon resigned, he had picked Gerald Ford to be the replacement for the vice-president, therefore also becoming the next president. I don't think that had ever happened before.
President Ford was the last President of my childhood. He was not reelected. I remember him tripping and playing golf but not much else. I don't know if that made him a bad president or a great president.
I got to vote in the next election due to the ratification of the 26th Amendment. My parents and I squabbled about it a bit--they thought 18 year olds were too young to vote, that 21 year olds were also to young to vote. I sided with the idea that if you could fight and die in a war you were old enough to vote and drink. Hopefully in that order. (they still don't get to drink around here)
I think I voted for Ford. I was still thinking that religion and politics were genetic or at least hereditary. It was not an informed vote, but my parents approved.
Jimmy Carter won. He was a farmer, but since he raised peanuts and not cattle and wheat, or pigs and tobacco, my family was not impressed. My future spouse loved him though. Regularly referred to him as the greatest president since Lincoln. Looking back, it was probably the truest thing he ever said.
Then we had Reagan. I loved "Death Valley Days", my parents loved "Death Valley Days", If he wasn't IKE, and they really liked IKE, he was good enough. When he left office, I'd been a nurse long enough to know that he had a problem long before his presidency ended. (seeing we had no system to protect us from someone that is no longer fully cognizant leading the country was an eye-opener.)
My mother, who had been a registered democrat since age 21 changed to republican that year at the same time I changed to democrat. I would have registered independent, but then couldn't have voted in the primaries.
Then came Bush, then Clinton, then Bush again, each one disappointing in different ways. I voted for 3rd party candidates or sat it out each of those 6 elections. I was busy. I had no idea what they were doing. Looking back on history form this time--I REEEAAALLLY had no idea what was going on.
Then Obama ran. The final Bush was so grammatically embarrassing and had thrown us into that stupid Iraq war and I started paying attention again, more, really paying attention.
I did not love everything Obama did.
I did not hate everything Obama did.
Reality is, in 8 years, neither of his daughters made the news for drunkeness, or went to rehab, or got arrested. There were not stories about him starting a war to pay back the ruler that messed with his father. He did not change the judicial system from directly related to the population to logarithmically related to the population, and he did not send our troups to the middle east for oil. He gave us healthcare--not the universal healthcare I wanted, but closer than anyone since 1880's had done. And he made all those people that had always been here--that I thought didn't exist when I was 7--very happy. He made them real, made them matter, gave them hope. He gave a lot of other people hope also.
Obama was a very moderate democrat and was demonized by soooo many as if he was some left wing crazy.
I was a Bernie supporter last election. He wasn't left enough but the closest I'd ever seen at the national level. A part of me thinks, if all the folks still thinking that everyone is the same in their world would wake up, things would have gone differently.
Now, NOW we have a man that sees himself as another Ronald Reagan. Some one should explain the difference between the magic of the silver screen and the TV version of the national enquirer--reality TV.
I voted. Not for our current president. And I doubt anyone will ever refer to him as the greatest president since Lincoln.
I must admit, if he must be compared, it would be to Andrew Jackson.
Back when Andrew Jackson was keeping slavery alive and profiting from that and political power--we weren't all the same either.
Be different, and be aware that different is not wrong or bad or in any way negative.
And, don't get so busy you lose track of what is going on around you.
Sometimes you wake up in an alternate reality.
Monday, July 24, 2017
Tuesday, July 4, 2017
warrior women
We currently are in the midst of a time in which many are waking up to the way that culture, roles and beliefs create the meaning of our lives and control the direction our lives take.
There have always been cultural beliefs that cripple people, and even kill people. If you can't think of any, think of albinoism in a place that considers albino body parts lucky but albino lives useless.
Think of female genital mutilation to make a woman clean enough for marriage and prevent her from wanting sex, but that also makes childbirth dangerous.
Think of little girls with their feet bound so that they must be carried from chair to bed their whole lives--the perfect little princess, crippled by her place in society.
But there is more evidence of this than just physical crippling., In America, women were not taught to read or write unless their family was both wealthy AND thought it important. Poor girls did not go to school in many places until after the civil war--at all. That was not their place--that was not their purpose. We are not so far from the old "keep um barefoot and pregnant" advice that used to be given to sons.
There were/are times in which adulterous women were stoned.
Victorian America enjoyed clitorectomies to prevent masturbation and "high-natured" women from wandering outside their vows.
While there are a multitude of ways in which women have been controlled and punished and crippled, and we recognize those still going on in other cultures and religions, we are blind to our own cultural input into how women are. (If shaved legs, plucked brows, liposuction, implants, nose jobs, and monthly exposure to chemicals in the name of feminine beauty isn't cultural--I don't know what is?)
Our current, insidious, mental crippling of women is not well recognized by most. They offer to teach their son to use the lawn mower and their daughter to clean the bathroom. We note how pretty and proper little Betty Jo is while bragging on Sam's muscles and strength and intelligence---even when he "is just acting like a boy, i.e., tearing up the yard, back-talking his teacher or vandalizing the neighbor's garden. When they get dressed up, the boys are expected to go play and roughhouse, the girls, in dresses need to be careful not to show their underwear or break their new and delicate sandals. We now buy them both legos, but his are primary colors to build space ships and buildings, hers are pastel and come with lots of people and flowers and pets.
We question the sexual orientation of girls in science, girls in sports, girls that drive trucks.
We want them to figuratively, cover their heads and not follow dreams that are too lofty for girls.
And we do it while bragging on their beauty, their artistic ability, their cooking skill, their poetic nature, and great communication skills.
I love the beauty of women, the artistic and crafty, the well made meal, flowing word craft and long talks full of emotion and ideas.
I also love power tools and astronomy and geology and chemistry.
I will not say I am more or less feminine due to either of those loves. Our interests do not need gender identification or sexual identity.
There is so very much more to us--male us, female us, people, girls and boys, men and women--than our gender.
There is a long tradition of the triune goddess. Maiden, Mother, Crone. But I think, before someone had there way with tradition, trying to make woman less "manly" , trying to soften away her power, there was a fourth. I think the warrior woman is as basic to the female version of god as the other three.
There have always been warrior woman, from Harriet Tubman, Joan of Arc, Anne Bonny, Gruine O'Malley, Maya Angelou, Rosa Parks, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Charlote Perkins Gulman, to most of our mothers and grandmothers and selves, each a version of a warrior, that fight their fights and struggle for improvements in society and and communities like she-bears, like lionesses, like---women with a cause, a reason, a project that needs to be conquered. Every female that has rejected her place in society, that has loved a profession that is seen as manly, that has battled for her loved ones and fought for her right to be herself, is familiar with the importance of her own warrior self.
But why do we limit one half of society while empowering the other?
What does that do, how does that work, why would anyone need that to continue?
Fear?
Insecurity?
A deep need to be the boss of the family?
A strangely twisted belief that makes women less--evil and dangerous?
Who cares---women are just people just as men are just people.
Let your inner warrior woman out every once in a while. You don't have to kill anyone or even take up roller derby---but flexing those muscles occasionally will make you remember your own power.
And it might help you to tackle that next big chore--running for the senate, running a business, running a chain saw--whatever.
You can do it.
There have always been cultural beliefs that cripple people, and even kill people. If you can't think of any, think of albinoism in a place that considers albino body parts lucky but albino lives useless.
Think of female genital mutilation to make a woman clean enough for marriage and prevent her from wanting sex, but that also makes childbirth dangerous.
Think of little girls with their feet bound so that they must be carried from chair to bed their whole lives--the perfect little princess, crippled by her place in society.
But there is more evidence of this than just physical crippling., In America, women were not taught to read or write unless their family was both wealthy AND thought it important. Poor girls did not go to school in many places until after the civil war--at all. That was not their place--that was not their purpose. We are not so far from the old "keep um barefoot and pregnant" advice that used to be given to sons.
There were/are times in which adulterous women were stoned.
Victorian America enjoyed clitorectomies to prevent masturbation and "high-natured" women from wandering outside their vows.
While there are a multitude of ways in which women have been controlled and punished and crippled, and we recognize those still going on in other cultures and religions, we are blind to our own cultural input into how women are. (If shaved legs, plucked brows, liposuction, implants, nose jobs, and monthly exposure to chemicals in the name of feminine beauty isn't cultural--I don't know what is?)
Our current, insidious, mental crippling of women is not well recognized by most. They offer to teach their son to use the lawn mower and their daughter to clean the bathroom. We note how pretty and proper little Betty Jo is while bragging on Sam's muscles and strength and intelligence---even when he "is just acting like a boy, i.e., tearing up the yard, back-talking his teacher or vandalizing the neighbor's garden. When they get dressed up, the boys are expected to go play and roughhouse, the girls, in dresses need to be careful not to show their underwear or break their new and delicate sandals. We now buy them both legos, but his are primary colors to build space ships and buildings, hers are pastel and come with lots of people and flowers and pets.
We question the sexual orientation of girls in science, girls in sports, girls that drive trucks.
We want them to figuratively, cover their heads and not follow dreams that are too lofty for girls.
And we do it while bragging on their beauty, their artistic ability, their cooking skill, their poetic nature, and great communication skills.
I love the beauty of women, the artistic and crafty, the well made meal, flowing word craft and long talks full of emotion and ideas.
I also love power tools and astronomy and geology and chemistry.
I will not say I am more or less feminine due to either of those loves. Our interests do not need gender identification or sexual identity.
There is so very much more to us--male us, female us, people, girls and boys, men and women--than our gender.
There is a long tradition of the triune goddess. Maiden, Mother, Crone. But I think, before someone had there way with tradition, trying to make woman less "manly" , trying to soften away her power, there was a fourth. I think the warrior woman is as basic to the female version of god as the other three.
There have always been warrior woman, from Harriet Tubman, Joan of Arc, Anne Bonny, Gruine O'Malley, Maya Angelou, Rosa Parks, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Charlote Perkins Gulman, to most of our mothers and grandmothers and selves, each a version of a warrior, that fight their fights and struggle for improvements in society and and communities like she-bears, like lionesses, like---women with a cause, a reason, a project that needs to be conquered. Every female that has rejected her place in society, that has loved a profession that is seen as manly, that has battled for her loved ones and fought for her right to be herself, is familiar with the importance of her own warrior self.
But why do we limit one half of society while empowering the other?
What does that do, how does that work, why would anyone need that to continue?
Fear?
Insecurity?
A deep need to be the boss of the family?
A strangely twisted belief that makes women less--evil and dangerous?
Who cares---women are just people just as men are just people.
Let your inner warrior woman out every once in a while. You don't have to kill anyone or even take up roller derby---but flexing those muscles occasionally will make you remember your own power.
And it might help you to tackle that next big chore--running for the senate, running a business, running a chain saw--whatever.
You can do it.
How Propaganda Works.
/https://www.patriotbeacon.com/2017/06/budweiser-stuns-nation-releases-4th-july-ad-conservatives-awe/
The above link is to a Facebook post that is being shared this fine 4th of July.
It's about a beautiful advertisement by Budweiser about helping veterans.
It involves a famous veteran.
There is nothing wrong with this ad.
The article is from Breitbart. Here is the first paragraph.
"Since the world of Hollywood is so liberal these days, it’s rare that a brand takes a stand for veterans of the military. That’s why it came as a welcome surprise this week when Budweiser released an ad for the Fourth of July that honors veterans of the U.S. military."
This implies that advertisements are anti-veteran.
So I'm hunting for advertisements about veterans.
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=advertisements+about+veterans&id=95934FEE8F6913E03BD1D9D0C4AC495E681EC30C&FORM=IQFRBA
There were tons of positive advertisements about veterans, open the link and look at them. they go back to WWI and continue to the present. Advertisers love Veterans, veterans are as American as apple pie and the 4th of July.
Now for negative liberal advertisements that are about veterans.
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=negative%20liberal%20advertisements%20about%20veterans&qs=n&form=QBIR&sp=-1&pq=negative%20liberal%20advertisements%20about%20veterans&sc=0-46&sk=&cvid=2A0BBC2309BF4CE6B87D5321B43EF38D
There are lots of them also--there are even some that might be anti-veteran and pro-liberal--all from other countries about their own liberal parties.
There are also a crapload of anti-liberal advertisements from our own country.
Not one anti-veteran from a liberal source in the United States.
So I challenge you to find a single advertisement with a liberal source that is anti-veteran. Find it. Add it to the comments.
Why? Because this is how propaganda works--it takes something everyday and spins it so that it villanizes the other group.
It takes something that is true, that tugs at the heart-strings and hooks something to it that is untrue and aims it at their own "enemy".
Be conservative.
Be liberal.
Be one of the new independents that don't want a group telling them what is right and what is wrong.
But don't accept lies. Be a truth-seeker. Be a truth-spreader. Be a fact-checker.
On the internet, in social media--stopping and checking those things that inflame your sense of wrongness and make you want to hate someone is a first step.
Few things in life are just one-sided. If a story is not balanced with two sides and doesn't let you know how to find the basis of the horrible claims they make--it might just be pure propaganda.
Propaganda--information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.
And don't forget the challenge--to find a single advertisement that is anti-veteran and that is from a liberal propaganda engine.
(since demonizing our own sons and daughters, our young heroes, is never going to make anyone a fan, the very idea of this is preposterous--but prove me wrong and prove Breitbart to be an honest source of news--not just propaganda)
The above link is to a Facebook post that is being shared this fine 4th of July.
It's about a beautiful advertisement by Budweiser about helping veterans.
It involves a famous veteran.
There is nothing wrong with this ad.
The article is from Breitbart. Here is the first paragraph.
"Since the world of Hollywood is so liberal these days, it’s rare that a brand takes a stand for veterans of the military. That’s why it came as a welcome surprise this week when Budweiser released an ad for the Fourth of July that honors veterans of the U.S. military."
This implies that advertisements are anti-veteran.
So I'm hunting for advertisements about veterans.
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=advertisements+about+veterans&id=95934FEE8F6913E03BD1D9D0C4AC495E681EC30C&FORM=IQFRBA
There were tons of positive advertisements about veterans, open the link and look at them. they go back to WWI and continue to the present. Advertisers love Veterans, veterans are as American as apple pie and the 4th of July.
Now for negative liberal advertisements that are about veterans.
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=negative%20liberal%20advertisements%20about%20veterans&qs=n&form=QBIR&sp=-1&pq=negative%20liberal%20advertisements%20about%20veterans&sc=0-46&sk=&cvid=2A0BBC2309BF4CE6B87D5321B43EF38D
There are lots of them also--there are even some that might be anti-veteran and pro-liberal--all from other countries about their own liberal parties.
There are also a crapload of anti-liberal advertisements from our own country.
Not one anti-veteran from a liberal source in the United States.
So I challenge you to find a single advertisement with a liberal source that is anti-veteran. Find it. Add it to the comments.
Why? Because this is how propaganda works--it takes something everyday and spins it so that it villanizes the other group.
It takes something that is true, that tugs at the heart-strings and hooks something to it that is untrue and aims it at their own "enemy".
Be conservative.
Be liberal.
Be one of the new independents that don't want a group telling them what is right and what is wrong.
But don't accept lies. Be a truth-seeker. Be a truth-spreader. Be a fact-checker.
On the internet, in social media--stopping and checking those things that inflame your sense of wrongness and make you want to hate someone is a first step.
Few things in life are just one-sided. If a story is not balanced with two sides and doesn't let you know how to find the basis of the horrible claims they make--it might just be pure propaganda.
Propaganda--information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.
And don't forget the challenge--to find a single advertisement that is anti-veteran and that is from a liberal propaganda engine.
(since demonizing our own sons and daughters, our young heroes, is never going to make anyone a fan, the very idea of this is preposterous--but prove me wrong and prove Breitbart to be an honest source of news--not just propaganda)
Saturday, July 1, 2017
Make America Good!
Make America Great again Good !
I don't want to hear any more about making America GREAT! again.
Tony the Tiger can keep his "great" line and the Trump campaign be hanged.
I want to hear about making this country good.
Not again. Not for the 2nd time or 4rd time. Not like it used to be
Not "good" like less than "great" but better than so-so."
"Good" like "goodness" and "kindness" and filled with beautiful souls.
I'm talking about taking this country into a place no country has been before.
We don't have to change much as far as the rhetoric:
People all being equal, fairly treated, equal opportunity, equal justice under the law, power divided evenly--one person--one vote, no limitations except for our own ability to dream, explore, and create.
The patriotic ideals that we all heard and loved were not the problem. Those were all great---they just didn't exist for many of the people in this country. They definitely never existed for all the people all the time.
Ideals can not just be words.
Words represent ideals, but the ideal must be more than scribbles on a piece of paper or sounds coming out of someone's mouth.
They are things--like people are things and rocks are things and all the words in the world can not fully describe a person or even a single rock.
Like goals are things and dreams are things but the words we use to delineate them can lack their emotional tone and shades of wonder and strange and oddly shaded nuances.
While these ideals for our new and good country do not have to already exist in complete form, they must be based on something or someone and the traits and characteristics must be seen as attainable and sustainable and---good by everyone that cares about goodness.
But what is seen as good by everyone?
Is it like Porn--I'll know it when I see it?
Is it like chocolate--almost universally loved and enjoyed?
Or is it more like those universal truths that each religion, philosophy and moral code teaches its own children in an attempt to make both better people and a better world.
Can we make the world better by legislation?, by laws, programs and focused projects?
Can we make the world better by punishing everyone that is not "good".
Can we make the world "good" by removing everyone and everything that is "not only or always good"?
Does "good" have to be actively "good"? or can it be passive goodness--hurt no one and nothing and be good by virtue of inaction?
Is good the opposite of bad or merely the absence of good.
Are people "good".
Are things "good".
Are goals "good," are plans "good," are programs "good"?
Is good the same for everyone?
Does a good 40 year old man need to act the same as a good 12 year old girl?
Can a rich person and a poor person both be the same kind of good?
Can we measure goodness?
Maybe, good is too lofty an ideal.
But what better goal than one that is lofty.
To make a "good" country, we need a place in which everyone has the opportunity to be their best self.
How do we make a more level playing field.
The child born with access to money, love, education, nutritious food, a feeling of safety most of the time (scary movies--can't control those scary movies) and opportunities to explore the environment, be exposed to varied information and play both alone and with other children has a great chance at being a "good" person, of doing "good" things, and of helping the next generation have the same.
A child without access to any one or all of those, risks want--lack--and the very real possibility of seeing the world as a dangerous, competitive place where everything must be fought for and where their own position in the world is always in danger of being made even worse.
In an unsafe, ungood world, other people hurt you, they take your opportunities, they decrease your food supply, they make it where you feel you can't trust other people because they want what you want and their isn't enough for both of you.
To increase their own chance of-- not goodness--but success, they guide competitors away from those things they themselves see as their opportunity for their future. They tell lies, give bad advice and otherwise push their own "friends" away from success..
Perhaps the first step in making a "good" country, is getting rid of some of that sense of fear, want and competition.
Good education for all in whatever the individual shows an interest in.
Good healthcare for all so that no one is pushed out of the goodness by illness or injury of mind, body, or spirit.
Good water for all.
Good nutritious food for all.
Good, safe places to live for all.
Good paying jobs for all that want to work.
Good access to transportation.
Good parks, wildlife preserves and libraries, museums, recreational areas, and art exploration facilities that all can access, enter, and enjoy at their leisure.
Good music access for all types of musicians playing all kinds of music.
and good people, caring people, people that just want to live and let live, learn a little, see a little, share a little and leave something for their own descendants to also enjoy when their time arrives.
Is that too much?
Or is that "good".
About making the promises real for all.
About the importance of transparency.
I don't want to hear any more about making America GREAT! again.
Tony the Tiger can keep his "great" line and the Trump campaign be hanged.
I want to hear about making this country good.
Not again. Not for the 2nd time or 4rd time. Not like it used to be
Not "good" like less than "great" but better than so-so."
"Good" like "goodness" and "kindness" and filled with beautiful souls.
I'm talking about taking this country into a place no country has been before.
We don't have to change much as far as the rhetoric:
People all being equal, fairly treated, equal opportunity, equal justice under the law, power divided evenly--one person--one vote, no limitations except for our own ability to dream, explore, and create.
The patriotic ideals that we all heard and loved were not the problem. Those were all great---they just didn't exist for many of the people in this country. They definitely never existed for all the people all the time.
Ideals can not just be words.
Words represent ideals, but the ideal must be more than scribbles on a piece of paper or sounds coming out of someone's mouth.
They are things--like people are things and rocks are things and all the words in the world can not fully describe a person or even a single rock.
Like goals are things and dreams are things but the words we use to delineate them can lack their emotional tone and shades of wonder and strange and oddly shaded nuances.
While these ideals for our new and good country do not have to already exist in complete form, they must be based on something or someone and the traits and characteristics must be seen as attainable and sustainable and---good by everyone that cares about goodness.
But what is seen as good by everyone?
Is it like Porn--I'll know it when I see it?
Is it like chocolate--almost universally loved and enjoyed?
Or is it more like those universal truths that each religion, philosophy and moral code teaches its own children in an attempt to make both better people and a better world.
Can we make the world better by legislation?, by laws, programs and focused projects?
Can we make the world better by punishing everyone that is not "good".
Can we make the world "good" by removing everyone and everything that is "not only or always good"?
Does "good" have to be actively "good"? or can it be passive goodness--hurt no one and nothing and be good by virtue of inaction?
Is good the opposite of bad or merely the absence of good.
Are people "good".
Are things "good".
Are goals "good," are plans "good," are programs "good"?
Is good the same for everyone?
Does a good 40 year old man need to act the same as a good 12 year old girl?
Can a rich person and a poor person both be the same kind of good?
Can we measure goodness?
Maybe, good is too lofty an ideal.
But what better goal than one that is lofty.
To make a "good" country, we need a place in which everyone has the opportunity to be their best self.
How do we make a more level playing field.
The child born with access to money, love, education, nutritious food, a feeling of safety most of the time (scary movies--can't control those scary movies) and opportunities to explore the environment, be exposed to varied information and play both alone and with other children has a great chance at being a "good" person, of doing "good" things, and of helping the next generation have the same.
A child without access to any one or all of those, risks want--lack--and the very real possibility of seeing the world as a dangerous, competitive place where everything must be fought for and where their own position in the world is always in danger of being made even worse.
In an unsafe, ungood world, other people hurt you, they take your opportunities, they decrease your food supply, they make it where you feel you can't trust other people because they want what you want and their isn't enough for both of you.
To increase their own chance of-- not goodness--but success, they guide competitors away from those things they themselves see as their opportunity for their future. They tell lies, give bad advice and otherwise push their own "friends" away from success..
Perhaps the first step in making a "good" country, is getting rid of some of that sense of fear, want and competition.
Good education for all in whatever the individual shows an interest in.
Good healthcare for all so that no one is pushed out of the goodness by illness or injury of mind, body, or spirit.
Good water for all.
Good nutritious food for all.
Good, safe places to live for all.
Good paying jobs for all that want to work.
Good access to transportation.
Good parks, wildlife preserves and libraries, museums, recreational areas, and art exploration facilities that all can access, enter, and enjoy at their leisure.
Good music access for all types of musicians playing all kinds of music.
and good people, caring people, people that just want to live and let live, learn a little, see a little, share a little and leave something for their own descendants to also enjoy when their time arrives.
Is that too much?
Or is that "good".
About making the promises real for all.
About the importance of transparency.
Sunday, June 11, 2017
death and dying in the 22nd century
In 1969, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross wrote a book on death and dying. I had to read it for nursing school a few years later. People still use her steps of grief and read her book.
This is not about her book. It was a good book; a valuable book.
But, this is about death and dying now.
So let's get some context--because this is not a short trip--its a journey.
In the early nineteenth century, and for more than a century to come, most Americans gave birth and endured illness and even surgery at home. They mostly died at home. They belonged to a largely rural society, and few among them would ever have occasion to visit a hospital. Hospitals in the United States emerged from institutions, notably almshouses (the proverbial poorhouse we were all supposed to avoid through hard work), that provided care and custody for the ailing poor. Rooted in this tradition of charity, the public hospital traces its ancestry to the development of cities and community efforts to shelter and care for the chronically ill, deprived, and disabled. A six-bed ward founded in 1736 in the New York City Almshouse became, over the course of a century and more, Bellevue Hospital. The predecessor of Charity Hospital in New Orleans opened its doors the same year. Today’s Regional Medical Center in Memphis, the oldest hospital in Tennessee, was founded in 1829. Similar origins exist for other public hospitals—places where the “care of strangers” grew from modest origins into multifaceted municipal institutions.
During the Civil War, the first versions of health insurance came about. Everyone couldn't afford it and there weren't many hospitals. But war frequently causes strange change.
In 1883, the first European nation developed the precursor of a social medicine system as a safety net hospital system that later became their universal healthcare system.
The United states has been working on that since that same time--but with no results. In the United States, we now have at least 245 healthcare systems and an a smattering of rural and urban unaffiliated hospitals---all competing with each other for the patient dollars. (no one is competing for the opportunity to care for the individuals without patient dollars, if it wasn't for EMTALA they would mostly be out of luck.)
https://essentialhospitals.org/about-americas-essential-hospitals/history-of-public-hospitals-in-the-united-states/
The unregulated Wall Street business world, shades of the ever popular Laissez Faire (abstention by governments from interfering in the workings of the free market which has been altered slightly--we don't interfere with much they do and then we subsidize and bail them out when they take us down the toilet--I know a few smalltime business people that would appreciate that type of interference--but they are not wealthy enough to buy their own congressman) led to the 1928 fall--for years I assumed fall was referring to the rich folks suddenly made poor that jumped off the tall buildings. (who can explain the oddities of children's minds)
The social security program began with the Social Security Act of 1935, originally titled the Economic Security Act. The term Social Security was coined in the United States by activist Abraham Epstein, who led a group called the American Association for Social Security. For the first time, older people without "means" or family could retire when they were no longer able to work. This alone probably increased the life-expectancy of people tremendously, as working as a washer woman with heart failure at 72 was not likely to increase one's health.
We then had WWII, which created quite a few changes, including the reticent recognition that women had held the country together in the work field while the men were at war. The depression was over. Factories were busy. People headed off the farms and into the cities. Cities had hospitals. WWII had made changes available in medical care---one benefit of war is always an increase of technology and knowledge from the sheer number of young people needing help in the field. We now had penicillin, anesthesia that was better than whiskey and a rawhide strip, germ theory to prevent infection, and more regulations of what it meant to be a physician. We had regulation of medications decreasing the number of alcohol or poison based syrups dispensed willy-nilly. And we had hospitals. More hospitals. Hospitals with emergency departments. And for those with money or insurance, getting care at those facilities could prevent death from simple injuries and basic infections.
People without money or insurance were not so fortunate--an abcessed tooth or a broken leg was as likely to kill you as not. Back then, first aid and herbal medicine by the old herb person or vet was frequently as good as it got.
And no insurance company offered coverage to people over 65. The actuary tables called that a bad risk. Old people got sick, a lot, and died, often slowly. They would either have to have money or die fast.
Medicare was created in 1965 when people over 65 found it virtually impossible to get private health insurance coverage, in one of those many attempts to create a universal healthcare system. Medicare has made access to health care a universal right for Americans once they reach age 65. This has helped improve the health and longevity of older Americans.
Hospitals were becoming the norm. While very poor people and black people and native people and those early immigrants that are now called undocumented couldn't yet go to the hospital, the middle-class born of the 1950's could and did.
By the 1980's, most people considered the Nursing home to be an expectation in later years instead of a horrible possibility (more poorhouse than retirement home--as it had been viewed previously). Only those with experience with those fine facilities understood how many are actually still mostly poorhouse. Private money paying for a Nursing Home always bought a better experience.
DRG's, created in the early 1980s, was an attempt to prevent the outrageous costs medicare was covering . A huge number of egregious offenses by physicians, pharmacies and hospitals created the need. Medicare stopped the previous cash payments and chickens and blackberry pies for that pneumonia treatment, appendectomy or broken leg and upped the number of preventative medicine procedures, and the number of questionably helpful procedures and visits in general. Physicians became wealthy almost immediately after finishing school. Pharmacists gained money--as did pharmaceutical companies, nursing pay went up, driven by supply and demand--now, making less than your average marketing rep, but more than most teachers below professors at college level.
https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#29-0000
Healthcare was the number 2 employer in the country, topped only by government.
Home health and hospice appeared in response to Medicare changes and were seen by healthcare administrators as an opportunity to increase money that stopped flowing due to DRG's and new rules of participation--both directly aimed at those medicare dollars--and while neither are perfect, both can keep people at home where they want to be at least for a good while.
And, now here we are with the Affordable Care Act; with a watered down version of the type of universal coverage most other countries have AND about to vote in a piece of legislation--the American Health Care Act to replace it that will undo what the previous did, i.e., give more people coverage and give more people fuller coverage at a better price only to return us more closely to the frontier days when "only the rich will survive".
The various laws, like EMTALA, which aim to prevent hospitals from turning away the critically ill and injured, and laboring mothers due to lack of money is all poor people, undocumented people and people without access to coverage will have--take that away, and we can return our country to a much smaller size--life expectancy will go down. Mother deaths will go back up. Baby deaths will go back up. And only those with money will survive past that first bad pneumonia, early cancerous tumor, diabetes or obstructive sleep apnea.
If Social Security and Medicare are altered or eliminated, Average age of retirement will go up---way up, as in homeless when no longer able to work and dead if you get sick--unless you have kids that can afford another mouth to feed and have the room and time and inclination to deal with you.
Many of us have 401k's and IRA's and Roth's, there are other variants also, but they are tied to bonds or stocks or interest rates, and those are not without risk, ask the folks that lost their retirement in 2007-2009. A few have pensions from their employer or annuities. Bad things have been known to happen to those also. Our future savings has become the target of embezzlers, hucksters, shoddy investment strategies and fees, more fees than a cell phone contract or cable TV.
I'm not here to recommend a return to the stuffed mattress of old---think about India's method of suddenly making the cash worthless and giving everyone a short period to trade it in--but you might want to pay attention, call a lawmaker, stay informed. We, the people, need our Social Security and Medicare. We would mostly love to join the rest of the civilized world with a good Universal healthcare plan. We need laws to protect us from the harshness of a world about only money.
And read the Kubler-Ross book--second hand copies are cheap. It won't help with healthcare cost and retirement finance, but we should all know more about what to expect in any circumstance.
This is not about her book. It was a good book; a valuable book.
But, this is about death and dying now.
So let's get some context--because this is not a short trip--its a journey.
In the early nineteenth century, and for more than a century to come, most Americans gave birth and endured illness and even surgery at home. They mostly died at home. They belonged to a largely rural society, and few among them would ever have occasion to visit a hospital. Hospitals in the United States emerged from institutions, notably almshouses (the proverbial poorhouse we were all supposed to avoid through hard work), that provided care and custody for the ailing poor. Rooted in this tradition of charity, the public hospital traces its ancestry to the development of cities and community efforts to shelter and care for the chronically ill, deprived, and disabled. A six-bed ward founded in 1736 in the New York City Almshouse became, over the course of a century and more, Bellevue Hospital. The predecessor of Charity Hospital in New Orleans opened its doors the same year. Today’s Regional Medical Center in Memphis, the oldest hospital in Tennessee, was founded in 1829. Similar origins exist for other public hospitals—places where the “care of strangers” grew from modest origins into multifaceted municipal institutions.
During the Civil War, the first versions of health insurance came about. Everyone couldn't afford it and there weren't many hospitals. But war frequently causes strange change.
In 1883, the first European nation developed the precursor of a social medicine system as a safety net hospital system that later became their universal healthcare system.
The United states has been working on that since that same time--but with no results. In the United States, we now have at least 245 healthcare systems and an a smattering of rural and urban unaffiliated hospitals---all competing with each other for the patient dollars. (no one is competing for the opportunity to care for the individuals without patient dollars, if it wasn't for EMTALA they would mostly be out of luck.)
https://essentialhospitals.org/about-americas-essential-hospitals/history-of-public-hospitals-in-the-united-states/
The unregulated Wall Street business world, shades of the ever popular Laissez Faire (abstention by governments from interfering in the workings of the free market which has been altered slightly--we don't interfere with much they do and then we subsidize and bail them out when they take us down the toilet--I know a few smalltime business people that would appreciate that type of interference--but they are not wealthy enough to buy their own congressman) led to the 1928 fall--for years I assumed fall was referring to the rich folks suddenly made poor that jumped off the tall buildings. (who can explain the oddities of children's minds)
The social security program began with the Social Security Act of 1935, originally titled the Economic Security Act. The term Social Security was coined in the United States by activist Abraham Epstein, who led a group called the American Association for Social Security. For the first time, older people without "means" or family could retire when they were no longer able to work. This alone probably increased the life-expectancy of people tremendously, as working as a washer woman with heart failure at 72 was not likely to increase one's health.
We then had WWII, which created quite a few changes, including the reticent recognition that women had held the country together in the work field while the men were at war. The depression was over. Factories were busy. People headed off the farms and into the cities. Cities had hospitals. WWII had made changes available in medical care---one benefit of war is always an increase of technology and knowledge from the sheer number of young people needing help in the field. We now had penicillin, anesthesia that was better than whiskey and a rawhide strip, germ theory to prevent infection, and more regulations of what it meant to be a physician. We had regulation of medications decreasing the number of alcohol or poison based syrups dispensed willy-nilly. And we had hospitals. More hospitals. Hospitals with emergency departments. And for those with money or insurance, getting care at those facilities could prevent death from simple injuries and basic infections.
People without money or insurance were not so fortunate--an abcessed tooth or a broken leg was as likely to kill you as not. Back then, first aid and herbal medicine by the old herb person or vet was frequently as good as it got.
And no insurance company offered coverage to people over 65. The actuary tables called that a bad risk. Old people got sick, a lot, and died, often slowly. They would either have to have money or die fast.
Medicare was created in 1965 when people over 65 found it virtually impossible to get private health insurance coverage, in one of those many attempts to create a universal healthcare system. Medicare has made access to health care a universal right for Americans once they reach age 65. This has helped improve the health and longevity of older Americans.
Hospitals were becoming the norm. While very poor people and black people and native people and those early immigrants that are now called undocumented couldn't yet go to the hospital, the middle-class born of the 1950's could and did.
By the 1980's, most people considered the Nursing home to be an expectation in later years instead of a horrible possibility (more poorhouse than retirement home--as it had been viewed previously). Only those with experience with those fine facilities understood how many are actually still mostly poorhouse. Private money paying for a Nursing Home always bought a better experience.
DRG's, created in the early 1980s, was an attempt to prevent the outrageous costs medicare was covering . A huge number of egregious offenses by physicians, pharmacies and hospitals created the need. Medicare stopped the previous cash payments and chickens and blackberry pies for that pneumonia treatment, appendectomy or broken leg and upped the number of preventative medicine procedures, and the number of questionably helpful procedures and visits in general. Physicians became wealthy almost immediately after finishing school. Pharmacists gained money--as did pharmaceutical companies, nursing pay went up, driven by supply and demand--now, making less than your average marketing rep, but more than most teachers below professors at college level.
https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#29-0000
Healthcare was the number 2 employer in the country, topped only by government.
Home health and hospice appeared in response to Medicare changes and were seen by healthcare administrators as an opportunity to increase money that stopped flowing due to DRG's and new rules of participation--both directly aimed at those medicare dollars--and while neither are perfect, both can keep people at home where they want to be at least for a good while.
And, now here we are with the Affordable Care Act; with a watered down version of the type of universal coverage most other countries have AND about to vote in a piece of legislation--the American Health Care Act to replace it that will undo what the previous did, i.e., give more people coverage and give more people fuller coverage at a better price only to return us more closely to the frontier days when "only the rich will survive".
The various laws, like EMTALA, which aim to prevent hospitals from turning away the critically ill and injured, and laboring mothers due to lack of money is all poor people, undocumented people and people without access to coverage will have--take that away, and we can return our country to a much smaller size--life expectancy will go down. Mother deaths will go back up. Baby deaths will go back up. And only those with money will survive past that first bad pneumonia, early cancerous tumor, diabetes or obstructive sleep apnea.
If Social Security and Medicare are altered or eliminated, Average age of retirement will go up---way up, as in homeless when no longer able to work and dead if you get sick--unless you have kids that can afford another mouth to feed and have the room and time and inclination to deal with you.
Many of us have 401k's and IRA's and Roth's, there are other variants also, but they are tied to bonds or stocks or interest rates, and those are not without risk, ask the folks that lost their retirement in 2007-2009. A few have pensions from their employer or annuities. Bad things have been known to happen to those also. Our future savings has become the target of embezzlers, hucksters, shoddy investment strategies and fees, more fees than a cell phone contract or cable TV.
I'm not here to recommend a return to the stuffed mattress of old---think about India's method of suddenly making the cash worthless and giving everyone a short period to trade it in--but you might want to pay attention, call a lawmaker, stay informed. We, the people, need our Social Security and Medicare. We would mostly love to join the rest of the civilized world with a good Universal healthcare plan. We need laws to protect us from the harshness of a world about only money.
And read the Kubler-Ross book--second hand copies are cheap. It won't help with healthcare cost and retirement finance, but we should all know more about what to expect in any circumstance.
Sunday, June 4, 2017
Thumbing our nose at our children's future.
The Paris Agreement (French: Accord de Paris), or Paris climate accord and Paris climate agreement, is an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) dealing with greenhouse gas emissions mitigation, adaptation and finance starting in the year 2020. The language of the agreement was negotiated by representatives of 196 parties at the 21st Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC in Paris and adopted by consensus on 12 December 2015.[3][4] As of June 2017, 195 UNFCCC members have signed the agreement, 148 of which have ratified it.[
June 1, 2017, President Donald Trump, sometimes called "our so-called President", "The Donald" or the "Cheetoh", pulled the United States from the Accord.
His reasoning was-----no one knows his reasoning or if he reasons at all. But he seems fixated on the very strange goals of 1. Fulfilling all his ridiculous campaign promises and 2. undoing everything the 44th president did--presumably because "he wasn't born here". (and definitely not because he's a black man).
The 27% of voters that voted President Trump in (and he and HRC were a near tie, she had more popular votes, he had more electoral votes--and Russian tampering had nothing to do with that😜😜) are still his loyal and incredibly violent-prone fans. They are cheering and trolling everywhere someone is moaning about the withdrawal from the Paris Accords.
The United States of America has joined Syria and Nicaragua in boycotting the future of the Planet. Nicaragua said the deal didn't go far enough in protecting the climate.
Syria--well, Syria is having a bad time right now--Civil War, refugees, they can hardly agree to anything.
But the US?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions
We are second in Carbon Emissions, China is First. But per capital, we are over 2 times everyone else.
The coal miners are mostly proud of the President.
There are currently about 104,824 coal miners working 2,000 mines in the US.
The number of people employed in petroleum is much higher and much better compensated.
Many in oil have skills that translate more easily to other industries than the very specific coal mining work.
As of 2011, there were over 3.4 million green energy jobs in this country---and it is growing at about 50,000/year..
The thing that none of these people worried about their "job" and "way of life" seem to consider, is that
1. Coal is nasty. If I can choose between a soot covered electrical plant or having solar panels that actually help to lower my bill while not making black, choking smoke, I'm going solar. If there is natural gas, wind turbines and solar panels plentifully providing my power, I'm not going to put in a coal burning stove for heat. And my town is hopefully not going to continue with coal--same reason.
2. Change is constant---perhaps the only constant. If you have managed to avoid change your whole life--it's your turn. Most of us have had multiple major life changes due to technology and culture. The ability to adapt to change is what makes humans capable of survival in diverse circumstance. Learn something new. Be proactive--learn something new before the mine puts up a closed sign.
3. It's not just coal. We all seek out more efficient heating systems, cooling systems, refrigerators, cook stoves, light bulbs, cars, tools---not because we are trying to force people into greener pastures (pun intended) but because; my Prius saved me a crapload of money on gasoline, my energy-efficient appliances lowered my electric bill, etc, etc.
4. As soon as I can afford Solar panels, I'll get them, not because I'm out to kill non-renewable energy worker's jobs, but because I need to treat my resources with respect.
5. AND, climate change is happening. I'm no science denier. I'm not going to sit here with my head in the sand and run the planet into the ground and blame that on the end times. If we make the end times, then that is truly on us. If we rush to kill the human species in the name of Armageddon. If we deny that humans have the free-will to alter anything by our choices, greed, technology, war weapons--that is not "God's Will". That is just our willfulness.
6. If you truly don't believe in all this "Climate Change", "green technology" stuff, then
Stop buying all those bottles of water. Stop the sunscreen. Stop putting CO monitors in your house. Stop the RADON monitors. Stop with the mosquito repellant. Stop buying organic. Pour your pills in the toilet. Pour the leftover gasoline in the garden. Oh, and stop sending your kids to school because you obviously place no value on education or science or making a better future.
Me? I'm going to do what I think is right. I'm going to err on the side of caution. No one had to tell me not to take a giant dump in the kitchen because I cooked in there. I knew that by the time I was potty trained. So, I'm not going to poison my own environment, not for convenience and not so I can make a living.
As for the decision of #45.
The Paris Accord doesn't even take full effect until 2020---if we don't give him two bites at the apple, #46 can cancel this latest bit of ridiculous campaign promise fulfillment.
Thank God Obama didn't write the BILL of RIGHTS.
Monday, May 29, 2017
a non-profit world.
Imagine, if you will, (this is in Rod Serling's voice) a world in which money is nothing--where people spend their time, not money.
Imagining this is not easy.
Jesus was disgusted by money-lenders in the temple during his short human life. That tells me that the idea of money and profit already existed. Lenders are all about the profit. It's in their interest.
This doesn't really prove money lending is immoral, but it does prove humans have been profiting off the poor and unfortunate for a very long time. No one borrows money unless they are desperate or not very aware of the foibles of borrowing.
In the beginning, people bartered. Bartering is the exchange of a good or service for another good or service. Bartering was not all about profit. It was about exchanging what I have by my efforts more than I need of, for those items I need but don't have--either don't know how to make it or can't grow it or kill it. A great potter (but terrible weaver or incompetent hunter) can exchange a cooking vessel for a blanket to stay warm or a dead rabbit for supper.
https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-money-1992150
Money is anything that is commonly accepted by a group of people for the exchange of goods, services or resources. Every country has its own system of coins and paper money. At one time, salt, shells, beads, and furs have been used as money. They were items that were innately valuable to the people that traded in them. Gemstones, precious metals, all metals have also been traded as currency. So--still basically bartering.
When Europeans started paying native people in trade beads and cloth in exchange for things the native people considered easy to come by, there developed profit in bartering. Spices, perfumes, furs of exotic animals, artwork, craft items, all became more valuable when traded to people that did not have the ability to make them or the resources to obtain them. Europeans were very good at bartering their cheap goods for expensive items. And were also very good at colonizing an area that would allow them to turn the native people into unpaid workers and the resources into their own property. While feudal areas allowed that Might made Rich by virtue of providing protection from outsiders while taxing their peasantry and merchants--those first profiteers; and not allowing anyone that wasn't of noble or royal blood to own land, they made vassals of most everyone.
Capitalism replaced feudalism vs tribalism (a kind of small scale, socialism, communism with some often harsh rules and strange beliefs) with the onset of world exploration by Europeans in search of riches and adventure. Greed was the new morality of everyone, not just the hereditary leaders.
But imagining a world without profit.
That is hard.
I was raised to believe that if I worked hard my whole life I could be rich and successful. (it was always rich first, successful second, gives successful a very pointed meaning)
I was raised on the marketing ploys of written, spoken and visual advertisements that promised me that owning the right clothes, make-up, car, food, toys, furniture would make becoming "rich and successful" closer to a reality.
I was told the right places to vacation, the right hobbies to enjoy, the right styles to decorate my home, and the books I and then my children should read to become rich and successful.
I expected cigarettes to make me sophisticated and milk to make me strong. And Jello was good for me.
Since 1845 when gelatin was discovered/invented (patented) (Gelatin is a yellowish, odorless, and nearly tasteless substance that is made by prolonged boiling of skin, cartilage, and bones from animals. It's made primarily from the stuff meat industries have left over-we're talking about pork skins, horns, and cattle bones.), I with millions of children and sick people and people that frequent church suppers, have consumed a gazillion tons of wiggling, brightly colored, artificially flavored salads and desserts. Jello, heavily marketed and containing basically scrap animal parts now belongs to Kraft Foods, that has over a 4 billion dollar profit per year.
It could have been worse.
We had marketers selling x-ray machines to shoe stores so the customers could see if the shoes fit right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-fitting_fluoroscope We knew about radiation dangers as far back as the 1890's but this unregulated machine was in place in many countries from the 1920's until the 1970's. What a cool way to sell shoes.
We have soda's--carbonated soft drinks--originally marketed as a health tonic and sold in pharmacies. Those first recipes contained carbonated water, syrup, and such healthful additives as cocaine, strychnine, cannabis, morphine, opium, heroin, Sarsparilla--supposed to cure syphilis, contains steroidal components, sassafras--used to be in rootbeer but comes with warnings of cancer and liver damage.
The FDA has removed everything but the high fructose corn syrup, caramel coloring---neither are good for you, but....neither are the brightly shaded food dyes that make our children love their breakfast cereal and cupcakes and pretty much everything that isn't some shade of brown or gray. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/02/24/are-you-or-your-family-eating-toxic-food-dyes.aspx
We don't add food dyes and addictive drugs to items because we love our customers and want them to be healthy. We do it so it will sell.
It's all about the profit.
When I was a kid, a teacher that had been in WWII told me about a pal of his that had invented an engine that would get over 50 mpg. The pal patented it. But he couldn't sell it. It was not good for the petroleum industry. It would decrease the amount of gasoline they sold.
When I was a kid, my grandmother still had this monstrous refrigerator from the 30's or 40's that ran on gas--propane. It was over 20 years old when she replaced it, not because it quit working but because she remarried and he had a newer one. That newer one didn't last over 20 years before it quit.
My previous refrigerator had its door fall off it's hinges at age 3. They couldn't fix it. The model no longer existed so getting the door and paying the repairman would be more than a new one.
My father could take a car, any car built before 1970--and make it work--forever. Those cars were heavy, got terrible mileage, but if you replaced hoses and filters and plugs and changed the oil and brake linings--well, in truth, it was a 1968 overhead cam he taught me to also change rings and lifters and rods, but all those things were replaceable and the car just keeps on working.
Today, a car has an expiration date. If it is maintained well, depending on what kind, you can 200,000 or 300,000+ miles out of it. But back then, they just kept rolling over. It didn't matter, everything was fixable in the garage. Add an acetylene torch and you could even fix it after you wrecked it. Today--repairs are too high. The parts are to high.
Its part of that planned next purchase to keep the car maker's profits high.
That is the very essence of planned obsolescence. That is how you keep those profits rolling in.
We have landfills over-flowing with items that could have been built to last or made to repair, instead, we make everything with a shelf-life and expected time for next purchase.
We have created our entire culture, our whole way of life on the premise that being a consumer is good for us all. We buy over-packaged items for the convenience of it because we have to work so much we could never just make a meal from items that came from a farm. We work 40 hours and spend 50 hours a week getting ready for work, travelling to work, taking a rest break at work and travelling home from work--usually with at least one side trip because once we get home we don't want to go our again unless its for fun. We spend our weekends hauling kids to all those planned and organized activities that will help them become "rich and successful" adults.
And if we have free time--we shop. For fun. It's an activity like going to the old farmers markets and country fairs.
Walk in a mall or a Walmart on any weekend and tell me the atmosphere is not the same as going to the fair.
We have competitive couponers.
We have shopping channels--more than one.
We have magazines that tell us how to move out last years purchases so that we don't look like hoarders.
I'm still wearing 20 year old sweaters and socks. The rest of me is not the same size, so stretchy stuff only---because I can spend 3 hours in the grocery store and I'm cooking for one.
I can hardly imagine a world not based on profit.
My entire life has been about profit.
Not making one, but making sure those people that are "rich and successful" are making one.
So maybe we need to start small, with those things that have a purpose that was never supposed to be about profit.
Like water, air, education, healthcare, prisons, childcare, elder care, medication, but also maybe food and public transportation. That is to start.
Maybe we need to figure out how to "normalize" it all so that the stockholders are not making more off their investment of money that just grows and grows through no effort of their own due to government rebates and credits and tax breaks, while the miners and roughnecks and mill workers and factory line workers, the designers and marketers and specification manual writers and bookkeepers are making out like--well like the paid help.
Is the whole "rich and successful" the carrot on a stick the actual rich folks like to hold in front of us to keep us plugging away when most of us have never met an actual "rich and successful" person.
I've met successful people. People that live a full life doing what they love. People that have followed their dreams of singing or acting or painting. None of them became rich. But they were successful.
I've met successful parents. They were great at parenting. Their children turned out to be great people.
I've met people that have ran their own business for years and paid for their home and their kids education and some vacations and cars. The business was well respected and the employees considered their job a second home. They were not "Rich". Upper middle income at most.
And I've met people, a lot of people, that into their 50's were still trying to grab the brass ring. They were chasing "rich and successful" and it was making them miserable. They knew they would eventually make it. Just one more college degree. Just one more move for a new and better job. A bigger house and nicer car, more expensive clothes and someone would get that they were born to be "rich and successful". By 60 they looked 70 and owed so much money they would not be able to retire until they were 90. They had an thick belly from all the cortisol pumped into them by their own stress. Their blood sugar was high---from the same. If you drew their blood, it came out with chunks of what looked like butter floating in it due to convenience foods and fancy restaurants. Their liver enzymes were always high--from all the power lunches and business dinners with at least one martini and the pain killers for the tension headaches. The kidney function was not up to snuff from all the NSAIDs they took for joint pain from their muscle tension and inactivity. They had daily heart palpitations in response to too little sleep and too much caffeine. They were successful, and just knew the rich would follow.
I've been to several of their funerals. Too young for dying. And frequently leaving a spouse that had no idea how to deal with the debt, although, frequently still working hard for that "rich and successful" also, so doubling down to make enough to pay both their halves of the bills.
And I meet people that seem to have suddenly woke up. Looked around. Started Simplifying. Slowed down. Took up nature walks instead of shopping sprees. Decreased the number of weekend kid activities so both the child and the parent had some down time. Paid attention to the type of food they bought and cooked. Ate in more. Drank fewer sweet drinks. Started weird things like meditating daily or writing what they are grateful for every night in a journal. Took up hobbies like bird watching or rock hunting or drawing--lead pencils, even great artist quality pencils are pretty cheap. And gardening--from raised beds to patio pots to full scale plots, the excitement of picking something you grew and eating it--pretty amazing stuff.
Perhaps, in a non-profit world, we just have to learn to redefine successful--focus on the happiness part, the kind part, the thoughtful, caring, creative part.
Maybe we will eventually even redefine "Rich"
Having a great deal of money or assets; wealthy needs to become archaic
Imagining this is not easy.
Jesus was disgusted by money-lenders in the temple during his short human life. That tells me that the idea of money and profit already existed. Lenders are all about the profit. It's in their interest.
This doesn't really prove money lending is immoral, but it does prove humans have been profiting off the poor and unfortunate for a very long time. No one borrows money unless they are desperate or not very aware of the foibles of borrowing.
In the beginning, people bartered. Bartering is the exchange of a good or service for another good or service. Bartering was not all about profit. It was about exchanging what I have by my efforts more than I need of, for those items I need but don't have--either don't know how to make it or can't grow it or kill it. A great potter (but terrible weaver or incompetent hunter) can exchange a cooking vessel for a blanket to stay warm or a dead rabbit for supper.
https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-money-1992150
Money is anything that is commonly accepted by a group of people for the exchange of goods, services or resources. Every country has its own system of coins and paper money. At one time, salt, shells, beads, and furs have been used as money. They were items that were innately valuable to the people that traded in them. Gemstones, precious metals, all metals have also been traded as currency. So--still basically bartering.
When Europeans started paying native people in trade beads and cloth in exchange for things the native people considered easy to come by, there developed profit in bartering. Spices, perfumes, furs of exotic animals, artwork, craft items, all became more valuable when traded to people that did not have the ability to make them or the resources to obtain them. Europeans were very good at bartering their cheap goods for expensive items. And were also very good at colonizing an area that would allow them to turn the native people into unpaid workers and the resources into their own property. While feudal areas allowed that Might made Rich by virtue of providing protection from outsiders while taxing their peasantry and merchants--those first profiteers; and not allowing anyone that wasn't of noble or royal blood to own land, they made vassals of most everyone.
Capitalism replaced feudalism vs tribalism (a kind of small scale, socialism, communism with some often harsh rules and strange beliefs) with the onset of world exploration by Europeans in search of riches and adventure. Greed was the new morality of everyone, not just the hereditary leaders.
But imagining a world without profit.
That is hard.
I was raised to believe that if I worked hard my whole life I could be rich and successful. (it was always rich first, successful second, gives successful a very pointed meaning)
I was raised on the marketing ploys of written, spoken and visual advertisements that promised me that owning the right clothes, make-up, car, food, toys, furniture would make becoming "rich and successful" closer to a reality.
I was told the right places to vacation, the right hobbies to enjoy, the right styles to decorate my home, and the books I and then my children should read to become rich and successful.
I expected cigarettes to make me sophisticated and milk to make me strong. And Jello was good for me.
Since 1845 when gelatin was discovered/invented (patented) (Gelatin is a yellowish, odorless, and nearly tasteless substance that is made by prolonged boiling of skin, cartilage, and bones from animals. It's made primarily from the stuff meat industries have left over-we're talking about pork skins, horns, and cattle bones.), I with millions of children and sick people and people that frequent church suppers, have consumed a gazillion tons of wiggling, brightly colored, artificially flavored salads and desserts. Jello, heavily marketed and containing basically scrap animal parts now belongs to Kraft Foods, that has over a 4 billion dollar profit per year.
It could have been worse.
We have soda's--carbonated soft drinks--originally marketed as a health tonic and sold in pharmacies. Those first recipes contained carbonated water, syrup, and such healthful additives as cocaine, strychnine, cannabis, morphine, opium, heroin, Sarsparilla--supposed to cure syphilis, contains steroidal components, sassafras--used to be in rootbeer but comes with warnings of cancer and liver damage.
The FDA has removed everything but the high fructose corn syrup, caramel coloring---neither are good for you, but....neither are the brightly shaded food dyes that make our children love their breakfast cereal and cupcakes and pretty much everything that isn't some shade of brown or gray. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/02/24/are-you-or-your-family-eating-toxic-food-dyes.aspx
We don't add food dyes and addictive drugs to items because we love our customers and want them to be healthy. We do it so it will sell.
It's all about the profit.
When I was a kid, a teacher that had been in WWII told me about a pal of his that had invented an engine that would get over 50 mpg. The pal patented it. But he couldn't sell it. It was not good for the petroleum industry. It would decrease the amount of gasoline they sold.
When I was a kid, my grandmother still had this monstrous refrigerator from the 30's or 40's that ran on gas--propane. It was over 20 years old when she replaced it, not because it quit working but because she remarried and he had a newer one. That newer one didn't last over 20 years before it quit.
My previous refrigerator had its door fall off it's hinges at age 3. They couldn't fix it. The model no longer existed so getting the door and paying the repairman would be more than a new one.
My father could take a car, any car built before 1970--and make it work--forever. Those cars were heavy, got terrible mileage, but if you replaced hoses and filters and plugs and changed the oil and brake linings--well, in truth, it was a 1968 overhead cam he taught me to also change rings and lifters and rods, but all those things were replaceable and the car just keeps on working.
Today, a car has an expiration date. If it is maintained well, depending on what kind, you can 200,000 or 300,000+ miles out of it. But back then, they just kept rolling over. It didn't matter, everything was fixable in the garage. Add an acetylene torch and you could even fix it after you wrecked it. Today--repairs are too high. The parts are to high.
Its part of that planned next purchase to keep the car maker's profits high.
That is the very essence of planned obsolescence. That is how you keep those profits rolling in.
We have landfills over-flowing with items that could have been built to last or made to repair, instead, we make everything with a shelf-life and expected time for next purchase.
We have created our entire culture, our whole way of life on the premise that being a consumer is good for us all. We buy over-packaged items for the convenience of it because we have to work so much we could never just make a meal from items that came from a farm. We work 40 hours and spend 50 hours a week getting ready for work, travelling to work, taking a rest break at work and travelling home from work--usually with at least one side trip because once we get home we don't want to go our again unless its for fun. We spend our weekends hauling kids to all those planned and organized activities that will help them become "rich and successful" adults.
And if we have free time--we shop. For fun. It's an activity like going to the old farmers markets and country fairs.
Walk in a mall or a Walmart on any weekend and tell me the atmosphere is not the same as going to the fair.
We have competitive couponers.
We have shopping channels--more than one.
We have magazines that tell us how to move out last years purchases so that we don't look like hoarders.
I'm still wearing 20 year old sweaters and socks. The rest of me is not the same size, so stretchy stuff only---because I can spend 3 hours in the grocery store and I'm cooking for one.
I can hardly imagine a world not based on profit.
My entire life has been about profit.
Not making one, but making sure those people that are "rich and successful" are making one.
So maybe we need to start small, with those things that have a purpose that was never supposed to be about profit.
Like water, air, education, healthcare, prisons, childcare, elder care, medication, but also maybe food and public transportation. That is to start.
Maybe we need to figure out how to "normalize" it all so that the stockholders are not making more off their investment of money that just grows and grows through no effort of their own due to government rebates and credits and tax breaks, while the miners and roughnecks and mill workers and factory line workers, the designers and marketers and specification manual writers and bookkeepers are making out like--well like the paid help.
Is the whole "rich and successful" the carrot on a stick the actual rich folks like to hold in front of us to keep us plugging away when most of us have never met an actual "rich and successful" person.
I've met successful people. People that live a full life doing what they love. People that have followed their dreams of singing or acting or painting. None of them became rich. But they were successful.
I've met successful parents. They were great at parenting. Their children turned out to be great people.
I've met people that have ran their own business for years and paid for their home and their kids education and some vacations and cars. The business was well respected and the employees considered their job a second home. They were not "Rich". Upper middle income at most.
And I've met people, a lot of people, that into their 50's were still trying to grab the brass ring. They were chasing "rich and successful" and it was making them miserable. They knew they would eventually make it. Just one more college degree. Just one more move for a new and better job. A bigger house and nicer car, more expensive clothes and someone would get that they were born to be "rich and successful". By 60 they looked 70 and owed so much money they would not be able to retire until they were 90. They had an thick belly from all the cortisol pumped into them by their own stress. Their blood sugar was high---from the same. If you drew their blood, it came out with chunks of what looked like butter floating in it due to convenience foods and fancy restaurants. Their liver enzymes were always high--from all the power lunches and business dinners with at least one martini and the pain killers for the tension headaches. The kidney function was not up to snuff from all the NSAIDs they took for joint pain from their muscle tension and inactivity. They had daily heart palpitations in response to too little sleep and too much caffeine. They were successful, and just knew the rich would follow.
I've been to several of their funerals. Too young for dying. And frequently leaving a spouse that had no idea how to deal with the debt, although, frequently still working hard for that "rich and successful" also, so doubling down to make enough to pay both their halves of the bills.
And I meet people that seem to have suddenly woke up. Looked around. Started Simplifying. Slowed down. Took up nature walks instead of shopping sprees. Decreased the number of weekend kid activities so both the child and the parent had some down time. Paid attention to the type of food they bought and cooked. Ate in more. Drank fewer sweet drinks. Started weird things like meditating daily or writing what they are grateful for every night in a journal. Took up hobbies like bird watching or rock hunting or drawing--lead pencils, even great artist quality pencils are pretty cheap. And gardening--from raised beds to patio pots to full scale plots, the excitement of picking something you grew and eating it--pretty amazing stuff.
Perhaps, in a non-profit world, we just have to learn to redefine successful--focus on the happiness part, the kind part, the thoughtful, caring, creative part.
Maybe we will eventually even redefine "Rich"
Having a great deal of money or assets; wealthy needs to become archaic
Having a plentiful; abundant life, rich with happiness, joy, memories, skills, love---that is a "rich and successful" life that a non-profit world would be right at home with.
Sunday, May 21, 2017
There can be only one!
No one calls me politically correct after they have been around me more than an hour. Before that, they may assume I am, or that I am shy or backward or anxious.
But once I've had a chance to see if they are someone I want to talk with, I am described with such words as "blunt, frank, filter-less, honest, truthful, straightforward, plain-spoken, candid, direct, gruff, forthright, unequivocal, brusque, abrupt, curt, terse, brutal, harsh, stark, unadorned or upfront." Occasionally I will get a "rude" or "you hurt my feelings" and I will try to reword. My goal is not to hurt people or be rude. My goal is to get to the meat of the subject at hand. Time is precious.
I think a lot of people like to try to use the phrase "politically correct" as an insult to those people that are polite and thoughtful and avoidant of hurting feelings or being seen as mean, coarse or rude. While I am not one of those people, I do understand that we need to not just be mean, coarse or rude if we are going to ever reach a peaceful world for all people.
Recently, there has been an increase in extremely mean, coarse and rude behavior. Those individuals are speaking out for--as in--in favor of the shooting of unarmed people that don't follow police directions quickly enough. They want--not fewer executions but faster executions and more laws making lesser crimes capital crimes. They want undocumented immigrants and refugees to be subjected to either brutal imprisonment, men-women and children, or shot when they try to enter-- making our borders sound like a turkey shoot. They want poor people without funds to also do without housing, clothing, food, medical care or education. They want people they consider deviant---drug addicts,nonfunctional alcoholics, mentally ill, and the entire LGQBT community to go to prison for long terms and lose all there rights, and they want ex-cons to also lose their rights--permanently. And---when it comes to religion--there can only be one! (Shades of the Highlander Movies).
These are the people that watch end-of-the-world movies and think that "its about time" we thinned the herd. (End of the world movies should not be seen as jolly good fun).
So, is there an increase in the number of these type of people. No.
Most have just had reason to remain "politically correct" until current events led them to believe their time was coming. Instead of admitting they were racist and xenophobic, they wanted to be seen as conservative and law-and-order types. Instead of hate-filled, to appear traditional and religious. They spoke out at home, but around people they didn't know, they never discussed their Klan meetings or how they terrorized the one brown family that dared to move to their small town.
See, we can all be politically correct when needed.
But is there some reason for so many to be so hate filled and uncaring?
How many times have you or a close family member or friend wished for "the good old days", or wondered what it would be like to live on a mountain with just your family or go back to the pioneer days or the pagan times or the prehistoric times.
Back when a person, every person, knew everyone in their camp, village or general vicinity.
Back when there were as many other free living species as there were humans.
Back when everyone in the group was accepted and needed and missed when they were gone.
I'm not sure that time ever existed.
There were several species of prehistoric man. A few of us actually share a little of Neanderthals DNA, so we aren't more different than a wolf or coyote from a domestic dog.
Except in the movies, those other species are extinct. Why? Did they lack immunity to some new disease? Did they lose their habitat? Did Homo sapien kill them in some final war of "their can be only one"?
The Neanderthals existed for about 400,000 years and went extinct 40,000 years ago. Their population was estimated to range from 5,000 to 70,000---a medium sized town in the Midwest--but scattered across Europe and Asia. Their very size probably contributed to their extinction. Homo Sapiens share about 0.3% of their DNA with the Neanderthal without them being direct ancestors.
http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics
Humans share 99.9% of their DNA with other humans--in other words, the differences we see and hear are being created by about 0.1% of our DNA make-up.
There is a difference of 1.2% to 1.6% between humans and African Apes--genetically speaking, and a difference ranging up to 3.1% for the Asian Orangutan and greater than 7% difference in DNA between humans and our closest monkey--genetically speaking--the Rhesus.
So, what Charles Darwin theorized from the fossils and anatomy of primates in his time, the Human Genome and other DNA studies have supported in the millennium.
What if the stereotyping of people of other races, creeds, colors, religions, belief systems is just some sort of effort by humans to explain why their genetic material deserves to stay and those other groups need to die.
A weird kind of political correctness in which the knowledge that we humans are approaching too many for the planet and the biological imperative that "my genes--my offspring" must be the ones that go forward because.....
It's a biological imperative. Think biologic clock. Think heat, rut, season.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=song+fall+in+love+do+it&view=detail&mid=FD4012BB23962783CC65FD4012BB23962783CC65&FORM=VIRE
Seriously though, is there a point of saturation? Are all these people spouting hate and violence just trying to find a way to explain why they think their offspring have more of a right to survival than my offspring, or yours?
I know that at some point, both population limits and the current extincting of species of other plants and animals because they are not helping human corporations make a profit we will reach a tipping point that imbalances our ecosystem too much for any of us to survive.
There is going to be a point where the real bottom line is identified and hopefully it won't be too late to save our children---all of them, not just yours and mine.
It really isn't all about the money, that has never really been the bottom line.
But once I've had a chance to see if they are someone I want to talk with, I am described with such words as "blunt, frank, filter-less, honest, truthful, straightforward, plain-spoken, candid, direct, gruff, forthright, unequivocal, brusque, abrupt, curt, terse, brutal, harsh, stark, unadorned or upfront." Occasionally I will get a "rude" or "you hurt my feelings" and I will try to reword. My goal is not to hurt people or be rude. My goal is to get to the meat of the subject at hand. Time is precious.
I think a lot of people like to try to use the phrase "politically correct" as an insult to those people that are polite and thoughtful and avoidant of hurting feelings or being seen as mean, coarse or rude. While I am not one of those people, I do understand that we need to not just be mean, coarse or rude if we are going to ever reach a peaceful world for all people.
Recently, there has been an increase in extremely mean, coarse and rude behavior. Those individuals are speaking out for--as in--in favor of the shooting of unarmed people that don't follow police directions quickly enough. They want--not fewer executions but faster executions and more laws making lesser crimes capital crimes. They want undocumented immigrants and refugees to be subjected to either brutal imprisonment, men-women and children, or shot when they try to enter-- making our borders sound like a turkey shoot. They want poor people without funds to also do without housing, clothing, food, medical care or education. They want people they consider deviant---drug addicts,nonfunctional alcoholics, mentally ill, and the entire LGQBT community to go to prison for long terms and lose all there rights, and they want ex-cons to also lose their rights--permanently. And---when it comes to religion--there can only be one! (Shades of the Highlander Movies).
These are the people that watch end-of-the-world movies and think that "its about time" we thinned the herd. (End of the world movies should not be seen as jolly good fun).
So, is there an increase in the number of these type of people. No.
Most have just had reason to remain "politically correct" until current events led them to believe their time was coming. Instead of admitting they were racist and xenophobic, they wanted to be seen as conservative and law-and-order types. Instead of hate-filled, to appear traditional and religious. They spoke out at home, but around people they didn't know, they never discussed their Klan meetings or how they terrorized the one brown family that dared to move to their small town.
See, we can all be politically correct when needed.
But is there some reason for so many to be so hate filled and uncaring?
How many times have you or a close family member or friend wished for "the good old days", or wondered what it would be like to live on a mountain with just your family or go back to the pioneer days or the pagan times or the prehistoric times.
Back when a person, every person, knew everyone in their camp, village or general vicinity.
Back when there were as many other free living species as there were humans.
Back when everyone in the group was accepted and needed and missed when they were gone.
I'm not sure that time ever existed.
There were several species of prehistoric man. A few of us actually share a little of Neanderthals DNA, so we aren't more different than a wolf or coyote from a domestic dog.
Except in the movies, those other species are extinct. Why? Did they lack immunity to some new disease? Did they lose their habitat? Did Homo sapien kill them in some final war of "their can be only one"?
The Neanderthals existed for about 400,000 years and went extinct 40,000 years ago. Their population was estimated to range from 5,000 to 70,000---a medium sized town in the Midwest--but scattered across Europe and Asia. Their very size probably contributed to their extinction. Homo Sapiens share about 0.3% of their DNA with the Neanderthal without them being direct ancestors.
http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics
Humans share 99.9% of their DNA with other humans--in other words, the differences we see and hear are being created by about 0.1% of our DNA make-up.
There is a difference of 1.2% to 1.6% between humans and African Apes--genetically speaking, and a difference ranging up to 3.1% for the Asian Orangutan and greater than 7% difference in DNA between humans and our closest monkey--genetically speaking--the Rhesus.
So, what Charles Darwin theorized from the fossils and anatomy of primates in his time, the Human Genome and other DNA studies have supported in the millennium.
What if the stereotyping of people of other races, creeds, colors, religions, belief systems is just some sort of effort by humans to explain why their genetic material deserves to stay and those other groups need to die.
A weird kind of political correctness in which the knowledge that we humans are approaching too many for the planet and the biological imperative that "my genes--my offspring" must be the ones that go forward because.....
It's a biological imperative. Think biologic clock. Think heat, rut, season.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=song+fall+in+love+do+it&view=detail&mid=FD4012BB23962783CC65FD4012BB23962783CC65&FORM=VIRE
Seriously though, is there a point of saturation? Are all these people spouting hate and violence just trying to find a way to explain why they think their offspring have more of a right to survival than my offspring, or yours?
I know that at some point, both population limits and the current extincting of species of other plants and animals because they are not helping human corporations make a profit we will reach a tipping point that imbalances our ecosystem too much for any of us to survive.
There is going to be a point where the real bottom line is identified and hopefully it won't be too late to save our children---all of them, not just yours and mine.
It really isn't all about the money, that has never really been the bottom line.
Saturday, May 13, 2017
choosing your words
I have heard parents telling children to "use your words" and seen employers improving customer service by scripting what employees say. The first was kind of brilliant. The second mostly annoying, employees repeating words they obviously don't mean as much as the rude crap they used to say is not that big of an improvement.
I also had a major gestalt experience, a real ah-ha moment, while touring at The Whitney Plantation.
http://whitneyplantation.com/
My daughter got the tickets ahead of time. It was her one place that was not optional during our visit to New Orleans. Having visited old colonial homes and plantation homes and famous people's homes and political people's homes, I was game. I love history--all history. It's my go-to elective for college credits.
We arrived just before time. It was an unassuming building by the parking lot. It was all by tour. There was no wandering, which had been true in several of my previous experiences. "NO TOUCHING THE ANTIQUES"!
The gift shop was full of books and a few fair trade items. The tour started with about 20 people in it, a multicultural group, but that is common in Louisiana. She gave a short history about the actual plantation, dates and names and then she reminded us that this plantation tour was from the perspective of the "enslaved people" that had lived here. My daughter had mentioned it wasn't about antiques.
Enslaved people...somehow at that moment, all the old "slave stories" and histories were flipped. It was something horrible that happened to people in our country. It was part of my history.
"By 1600 an estimated 275,000 Africans, both free and slave (see how the use of this word eliminates their humanity), were in Central and South America and the Caribbean area. Africans first arrived in the area that became the United States in 1619, when a handful of captives (captives, also distanced by its implications--not people, captives) were sold by the captain of a Dutch man-of-war to settlers at Jamestown."
https://www.bing.com/search?q=first+african+to+arrive+in+america&form=EDGEAR&qs=SC&cvid=175a9d1d380b4feaa42b00b8024a026b&cc=US&setlang=en-US
It was a long tour. The tour guide was passionate about the stories she told. She didn't let the questions about how comfortable and cared for the "slaves" were. And I quote, "you won't be hearing stories about happy, singing slaves" on this tour. She discussed names, records, the origin of life insurance--much like crop insurance or stock insurance, she discussed the lack of burial grounds--"dumped in the bayous" without ceremony.
One couple, an elderly white man and woman suddenly remembered a funeral they needed to leave for not long after the jail cell was opened to our group.
I learned a lot on the tour.
I found the simple yet earthy statues of real enslaved people so poignantly, tearfully touching. They were not romanticized or done as somehow more beautiful and heavenly than real people--a thing I have seen done to make things more dramatic and unreal. I found the very old and down-to-earth older plantation house (most of the huge, white plantation houses that are reminiscent of "Gone with the Wind", so much more reflective of what the use of enslaved people to do the work was about. Plantation were farms and ranches. They were a family business. A rich family's business. Their were black people working for free (those quarters out back made it obvious that they did not have their own little family units to live in) and poor white people working for a little money--but free to change jobs or leave the plantation's employment. Only the family house was actually nice---not palatial--but for the late 1700's, quite roomy and nicely constructed.
These days, calling the people that were enslaved before the 1860's, "slaves" makes it seem distant and meaningless to most people.
Calling them enslaved, points out so much more:
https://www.bing.com/search?q=13th+amendment+to+the+constitution&qs=LS&pq=13th+amen&sk=LS1AS1&sc=8-9&cvid=A23B02C19E004631AF5F22DA1CA27D61&FORM=QBRE&sp=4&ghc=1
I also had a major gestalt experience, a real ah-ha moment, while touring at The Whitney Plantation.
http://whitneyplantation.com/
My daughter got the tickets ahead of time. It was her one place that was not optional during our visit to New Orleans. Having visited old colonial homes and plantation homes and famous people's homes and political people's homes, I was game. I love history--all history. It's my go-to elective for college credits.
We arrived just before time. It was an unassuming building by the parking lot. It was all by tour. There was no wandering, which had been true in several of my previous experiences. "NO TOUCHING THE ANTIQUES"!
The gift shop was full of books and a few fair trade items. The tour started with about 20 people in it, a multicultural group, but that is common in Louisiana. She gave a short history about the actual plantation, dates and names and then she reminded us that this plantation tour was from the perspective of the "enslaved people" that had lived here. My daughter had mentioned it wasn't about antiques.
Enslaved people...somehow at that moment, all the old "slave stories" and histories were flipped. It was something horrible that happened to people in our country. It was part of my history.
"By 1600 an estimated 275,000 Africans, both free and slave (see how the use of this word eliminates their humanity), were in Central and South America and the Caribbean area. Africans first arrived in the area that became the United States in 1619, when a handful of captives (captives, also distanced by its implications--not people, captives) were sold by the captain of a Dutch man-of-war to settlers at Jamestown."
https://www.bing.com/search?q=first+african+to+arrive+in+america&form=EDGEAR&qs=SC&cvid=175a9d1d380b4feaa42b00b8024a026b&cc=US&setlang=en-US
It was a long tour. The tour guide was passionate about the stories she told. She didn't let the questions about how comfortable and cared for the "slaves" were. And I quote, "you won't be hearing stories about happy, singing slaves" on this tour. She discussed names, records, the origin of life insurance--much like crop insurance or stock insurance, she discussed the lack of burial grounds--"dumped in the bayous" without ceremony.
One couple, an elderly white man and woman suddenly remembered a funeral they needed to leave for not long after the jail cell was opened to our group.
I learned a lot on the tour.
I found the simple yet earthy statues of real enslaved people so poignantly, tearfully touching. They were not romanticized or done as somehow more beautiful and heavenly than real people--a thing I have seen done to make things more dramatic and unreal. I found the very old and down-to-earth older plantation house (most of the huge, white plantation houses that are reminiscent of "Gone with the Wind", so much more reflective of what the use of enslaved people to do the work was about. Plantation were farms and ranches. They were a family business. A rich family's business. Their were black people working for free (those quarters out back made it obvious that they did not have their own little family units to live in) and poor white people working for a little money--but free to change jobs or leave the plantation's employment. Only the family house was actually nice---not palatial--but for the late 1700's, quite roomy and nicely constructed.
These days, calling the people that were enslaved before the 1860's, "slaves" makes it seem distant and meaningless to most people.
Calling them enslaved, points out so much more:
- They were people, either stolen from their life in Africa as a full member of a culture or as an enslaved person-which in those other cultures was more like an indentured servant--something you could get out of at least, or a victim of capture after a war, or, they were born to parents that were enslaved---what a bittersweet thing a birth must have been to those mother's.
- There are currently people in this country that are still enslaved. The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. In Congress, it was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, and by the House on January 31, 1865.
- The for-profit prisons that are getting their profit not only from the taxes of our states but also from the forced labor of the descendants of those same enslaved people that were brought to this country from Africa hundreds of years ago.
- Before for-profit prisons, we did the same--license tags, chain-gangs, work farms. (those politicians knew what they were setting up in the 1860's)
- In addition to the slavery that was allowed to continue via the 13th Amendment, we have human trafficking (another interesting word, meant to dehumanize the victims, much like the word "slave" does. Human trafficking, while frequently involving sex trafficking of marginalized women, also includes factory-type employers that arrange groups of immigrants to come in, work long hours under dangerous conditions, don't allow them to leave, charge them exorbitant rates for their cots and sad meals and not allow them out of the work place or to go home. Two industries that are disturbingly popular with fashionable women and well-to-do men are where women from Asia have been brought over to do nails and give massages.
- Last but not least, are the children brought to this country to be fostered by the wealthy that end up being used as domestic servants and sex workers. We still have plenty of people willing to use those that are already in bad straits, victimizing them even more than the homeland they were trying to escape.
The Whitney Plantation Tour Guide chose her words wisely. She made an impact--not just on me. The people from that tour visited the gift shop in Thoughtful-mode. Books were purchased, hopefully to be read. Notes were written for their wall for that purpose.
And I was made aware that our word choice can make something seem either normal or horrifying, acceptable and distant or real and current and devastating.
If you use words for things that make them sound nicer than they are, regular, business as usual, ordinary. Stop it. Bad things, events, activities, behaviors should never be glossed over to make them sound acceptable. If we would be better as a species, we need to talk about those atrocities that make us worse, less, and bad. You can't stop something until it is recognized as a problem.
And if you are going to New Orleans, take the Whitney Plantation Tour.
It will make you a better person.
Friday, May 5, 2017
The Importance of Ritual
Sometimes, we humans need something more. We need to make a thing important. We need to make it memorable. We need something with purpose, tradition, symbolism, unspoken meaning to create a landmark in our memories, and our lives.
Ritual: a religious or solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order. (Religious: 1. Having or showing belief in and reverence for God or a deity.
Ritual: a religious or solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order. (Religious: 1. Having or showing belief in and reverence for God or a deity.
2. Of, concerned with, or teaching religion: a religious text.
3. Extremely scrupulous or conscientious: religious devotion to duty.)
I have met people with obsessive-compulsive disorder that can turn their morning ablutions (that's an archaic word not heard in my home state every day) into a religious (extremely scrupulous or conscientious and according to prescribed order) every day.
For most of us, Rituals are for those rare events that serve as milestones in our lives; birth and birthdays, graduation (how ever many times and steps that might be), marriage and anniversaries. Awards. Promotions. Paid off mortgages. And, of course, death. That last one is not going to end up in the memory of the person memorialized, but rather in the memories of those that loved them.
There are a multitude of sources of ritual. We have culture and religion. We have current fads and personal beliefs. We have those creative sorts that make up a ritual from thin air, fill it with purpose, symbolism, and beauty and Voila--a new ritual tradition is available to future humans.
But why?
WWWWHHHHYYYYY?????
We have huge moneyed industries dedicated to celebrating births and their subsequent birthdays, Weddings, Anniversaries, and Death.
There is pride and status in spending huge amounts of money, frequently borrowed money and bill money and college saving, on those celebrations. And so many choices are made based on competing with others in the family or community--is it as good as? Is it better? Did I wow them? Was it the "most beautiful wedding, quinceañera, Bat Mitzva, golden anniversary, christening... etc. etc.
"Most "is a word of comparison. A sign of competition. A sign of poor reasons for why a ritual is performed.
A ritual is not for winning. It is to mark an important day--a life event worth remembering.
And remembering is as important as making an event sacred through ritual.
If something big is happening in your life, birth big or marriage big or just goal-completion big. A ritual is a great way to set the memory. But chose your ritual carefully. If all you remember later is the $30,000 worth of credit card debt you now need to pay off, you may have lost sight of your purpose. Some rituals are rather cheap and steeped in tradition--like putting the brooms in the house through a window instead of a door when moving in, or using a unity candle or unity sand to make a new family from individuals not previously related. Sometimes the use of scent, like incense or flowers or tree boughs or even a food or drink can help to set a memory. Sometimes beautiful words can set the beauty of an event in stone in the mind.
But a beautiful couple that love each other, is beautiful in jeans and a t-shirt or a simple dress and best suit of clothes without the $1,000 + dress and expensive matching tuxes rented by the day. And truly, potluck food brought by loved ones--family, friends, made with love is tastier than the fanciest caterer. The Venue doesn't need to be lavish or exotic. The decorations do not need to be over-the-top. The ritual is not to create a winner but a wonderful, or beautiful, or tearfully loving memory(I really hate funerals--and fully intend to skip mine).
If you really must create credit card debt--I strongly recommend a hobby. I personally waste all my money on art supplies.
(This was written in honor of my daughter on her Wedding Day, and all the thought and worry that has gone into this very special ritual--It will be beautiful and memorable and I did not pay for it--she did. She is a very thrifty sort of woman. I recommended they dress up in rented gown and tux, get some pictures of an event that didn't occur, and elope. My favorite rituals involve incense and meditation.)
Wednesday, May 3, 2017
Finding Root Cause.
In my work, we go in search of root causes so we can fix the cause of a problem instead of playing the blaming game.
Most of the people hate it. They just want to keep punishing the person that messed up, even if that error occurs repeatedly because our process is broken.
We competitive, hellfire and brimstone types find something very rewarding in punishment.
It makes those of us not being punished feel like we are contenders (say it like Marlon did)
But, while we can keep blaming people for falling into the many traps left for them by systems that don't work well for everyone or at all times---doesn't it make more sense to fix the system?
We, in this country (and apparently in many other countries, if global news is to be believed) are having a multitude of problems that just continue on and on.
We have prisons full of drug addicts.
We have criminal enterprises.
We have homeless people.
We have people that are unemployed.
We have people that are uninsured.
We have people with little or no education.
We have people in this country that are undocumented.
We have corruption in politics, justice and big business.
We have companies asking employees to lie and cheat people to make quotas.
We have racism.
We have gender inequality.
We have bullying in schools.
We have people being targeted for violence because of their sexual orientation.
We have hate groups.
We have religious ostracism.
We have.....
where do I stop? The world is not nice. People are not nice.
Do we punish them? Everyone? Each time someone does something that is not nice?
I hear "Money is the root of all evil!" (it is actually supposed to the be love of money...)
I hear "They need God"
I hear "We need to bring back corporeal punishment"
I hear "We need to step up capital punishment, they know that even if they get caught, they have years before anything will happen.
I don't hear "Why?"
Why? is not an appropriate question according to child psychologists. They might be right--for children--but I think even children can discover the reason why they did something. Maybe they can't answer why fast, but they can search for why?
Adults can't answer "why?" quickly AND accurately either. And Why? is not a one time question. Why? merely leads to more why's. And that is why it is useful.
#1 Why do we have prisons full of drug addicts? Because drug use, except for use of prescription drugs as directed by a physician is illegal, and usually a felony. Why? Because in the United states we have a law giving control of drug use to the Medical Community for treatment of physical and mental illness only. Why? Because if everyone can just buy them willy-nilly, they won't use them appropriately and they can be dangerous--besides, people go to Doctors for prescriptions, cut them out of the process and they lose a lot of income. So why would they buy them if they didn't need them? Because they want to escape, they want to feel better, they want to get happy, they want to relax, they feel stressed and hopeless and stuck. Why? Because they are poor and uneducated and depressed. Because they have a mental illness. Because their job is a pitcher plant, easy to get in, impossible to get out. Because they are searching for themselves and their friends are trying it and they heard it was great. Because they got hurt and it stops the pain. Because they are addicted and don't know how to stop, are afraid to stop or don't want to stop, even though they know it will eventually kill them. Why? Because modern life has lots of stressors but few places to learn to cope with them. Because modern life likes to consider those stressors to be the way to separate the winners from the losers. Because LIFE is a competition in our culture. Why? Because, while we completely reject Darwin's evolution, whereby all life evolved from simpler lifeforms, we have yet to release the idea of Social Darwinism and "Survival of the fittest". It is right up there with laissez faire capitalism and the idea that Rich people really are better than poor people. Why? Because, if those of us that aren't rich, reject the idea that money is the scorecard, what are we working for? How do we know we are still in the game. What is our reason for continuing? Why?
Why?
Why do we have criminal enterprises? Because if you can't make it in the acceptable business world, there is money to be had in the land of the illegal. Why? Because people will pay for drugs, sex, and other things it is illegal to sell, and they will pay big? Why? See question #1. But what about sex? why will people pay for sex? Or guns that are easily purchasable through half a dozen vendors? Or for stolen merchandise? Art? Cars? Jewelry? Tools? Why? The first thing to remember about any criminal enterprise, it is paid for by people that want something that they can't buy legally or can't afford except if it was obtained illegally. The Prohibition created a huge criminal Enterprise just by making alcoholic beverages illegal. So maybe the best question is why do we make laws against things that we know will create an opportunity for a criminal enterprise. Maybe the answer is finding ways to make there be well regulated pathways to obtaining these things as long as there are not victims created. For a lot of this stuff, the whole appeal is the risk and excitement of doing something that is taboo. (There is a whole realm of stuff that is only exciting if it creates a victim and for that, no mercy and no legal route to obtain)
Why?
Why do we have homeless people? Because not everyone can afford housing. Why? Because housing is expensive and not everyone can get a good job or even a bad job. Why? "Because housing is a very profitable business and the demand for housing, even crappy, unrepaired old houses with crooked porches and lead pipe plumbing, is high. There are empty houses, some rather nice in those slowly aging and depopulating rural towns, but those houses are not free and they are aging and depopulating because their are no jobs. Why is having a house or apartment linked to a job? Because we are a capitalist country. So why are there people without jobs? Because they have no skills, they are too old to do manual labor. They are mentally ill. They are addicted to drugs. They had skills in a field that is not longer needed like repairing toasters or using a spinning wheel. They have no teeth so can't represent a company to the customers. They are blind. They are on disability and would rather use their money on other things than rent and utilities--like food and medicine or alcohol. So, why do we not have housing available to them, get them off the street permanently instead of letting missions taking in a different 20% every night. Homeless people cost money to the areas they hang out. They use lots of emergency healthcare which is expensive. Why don't we try to find them a new way to live that they can succeed at.
Why?
Why do we insist on keeping our problems instead of fixing them?
Why do we demonize people and groups of people and philosophies and beliefs that differ from our own?
Why do we insist on using the same systems, processes and rules that have not worked in the past?
Why?
Why do we think that someone else is more likely to know the answers to all those questions than we are, or be able to fix the problems better than we can, or identify new solutions that are smarter than the solutions we can think of?
Why?
Why don't we all become problem-solvers, detectives, brain-stormers, think-tankers and creators of a better world.
Let us lose our lazy thinking, our comfortable thoughts about right and wrong, our borrowed philosophies that we not only haven't really read, but don't understand, and examine the why? of our human condition.
Why not?
Most of the people hate it. They just want to keep punishing the person that messed up, even if that error occurs repeatedly because our process is broken.
We competitive, hellfire and brimstone types find something very rewarding in punishment.
It makes those of us not being punished feel like we are contenders (say it like Marlon did)
But, while we can keep blaming people for falling into the many traps left for them by systems that don't work well for everyone or at all times---doesn't it make more sense to fix the system?
We, in this country (and apparently in many other countries, if global news is to be believed) are having a multitude of problems that just continue on and on.
We have prisons full of drug addicts.
We have criminal enterprises.
We have homeless people.
We have people that are unemployed.
We have people that are uninsured.
We have people with little or no education.
We have people in this country that are undocumented.
We have corruption in politics, justice and big business.
We have companies asking employees to lie and cheat people to make quotas.
We have racism.
We have gender inequality.
We have bullying in schools.
We have people being targeted for violence because of their sexual orientation.
We have hate groups.
We have religious ostracism.
We have.....
where do I stop? The world is not nice. People are not nice.
Do we punish them? Everyone? Each time someone does something that is not nice?
I hear "Money is the root of all evil!" (it is actually supposed to the be love of money...)
I hear "They need God"
I hear "We need to bring back corporeal punishment"
I hear "We need to step up capital punishment, they know that even if they get caught, they have years before anything will happen.
I don't hear "Why?"
Why? is not an appropriate question according to child psychologists. They might be right--for children--but I think even children can discover the reason why they did something. Maybe they can't answer why fast, but they can search for why?
Adults can't answer "why?" quickly AND accurately either. And Why? is not a one time question. Why? merely leads to more why's. And that is why it is useful.
#1 Why do we have prisons full of drug addicts? Because drug use, except for use of prescription drugs as directed by a physician is illegal, and usually a felony. Why? Because in the United states we have a law giving control of drug use to the Medical Community for treatment of physical and mental illness only. Why? Because if everyone can just buy them willy-nilly, they won't use them appropriately and they can be dangerous--besides, people go to Doctors for prescriptions, cut them out of the process and they lose a lot of income. So why would they buy them if they didn't need them? Because they want to escape, they want to feel better, they want to get happy, they want to relax, they feel stressed and hopeless and stuck. Why? Because they are poor and uneducated and depressed. Because they have a mental illness. Because their job is a pitcher plant, easy to get in, impossible to get out. Because they are searching for themselves and their friends are trying it and they heard it was great. Because they got hurt and it stops the pain. Because they are addicted and don't know how to stop, are afraid to stop or don't want to stop, even though they know it will eventually kill them. Why? Because modern life has lots of stressors but few places to learn to cope with them. Because modern life likes to consider those stressors to be the way to separate the winners from the losers. Because LIFE is a competition in our culture. Why? Because, while we completely reject Darwin's evolution, whereby all life evolved from simpler lifeforms, we have yet to release the idea of Social Darwinism and "Survival of the fittest". It is right up there with laissez faire capitalism and the idea that Rich people really are better than poor people. Why? Because, if those of us that aren't rich, reject the idea that money is the scorecard, what are we working for? How do we know we are still in the game. What is our reason for continuing? Why?
Why?
Why do we have criminal enterprises? Because if you can't make it in the acceptable business world, there is money to be had in the land of the illegal. Why? Because people will pay for drugs, sex, and other things it is illegal to sell, and they will pay big? Why? See question #1. But what about sex? why will people pay for sex? Or guns that are easily purchasable through half a dozen vendors? Or for stolen merchandise? Art? Cars? Jewelry? Tools? Why? The first thing to remember about any criminal enterprise, it is paid for by people that want something that they can't buy legally or can't afford except if it was obtained illegally. The Prohibition created a huge criminal Enterprise just by making alcoholic beverages illegal. So maybe the best question is why do we make laws against things that we know will create an opportunity for a criminal enterprise. Maybe the answer is finding ways to make there be well regulated pathways to obtaining these things as long as there are not victims created. For a lot of this stuff, the whole appeal is the risk and excitement of doing something that is taboo. (There is a whole realm of stuff that is only exciting if it creates a victim and for that, no mercy and no legal route to obtain)
Why?
Why do we have homeless people? Because not everyone can afford housing. Why? Because housing is expensive and not everyone can get a good job or even a bad job. Why? "Because housing is a very profitable business and the demand for housing, even crappy, unrepaired old houses with crooked porches and lead pipe plumbing, is high. There are empty houses, some rather nice in those slowly aging and depopulating rural towns, but those houses are not free and they are aging and depopulating because their are no jobs. Why is having a house or apartment linked to a job? Because we are a capitalist country. So why are there people without jobs? Because they have no skills, they are too old to do manual labor. They are mentally ill. They are addicted to drugs. They had skills in a field that is not longer needed like repairing toasters or using a spinning wheel. They have no teeth so can't represent a company to the customers. They are blind. They are on disability and would rather use their money on other things than rent and utilities--like food and medicine or alcohol. So, why do we not have housing available to them, get them off the street permanently instead of letting missions taking in a different 20% every night. Homeless people cost money to the areas they hang out. They use lots of emergency healthcare which is expensive. Why don't we try to find them a new way to live that they can succeed at.
Why?
Why do we insist on keeping our problems instead of fixing them?
Why do we demonize people and groups of people and philosophies and beliefs that differ from our own?
Why do we insist on using the same systems, processes and rules that have not worked in the past?
Why?
Why do we think that someone else is more likely to know the answers to all those questions than we are, or be able to fix the problems better than we can, or identify new solutions that are smarter than the solutions we can think of?
Why?
Why don't we all become problem-solvers, detectives, brain-stormers, think-tankers and creators of a better world.
Let us lose our lazy thinking, our comfortable thoughts about right and wrong, our borrowed philosophies that we not only haven't really read, but don't understand, and examine the why? of our human condition.
Why not?
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