The title is good advice for living in the moment and experiencing all your life, fully. It is a great goal for those that worry about the past or the future constantly to the exclusion of current sensory input. The image of the vacationer sitting on the beach with his or her work computer tapping away with a grimace of concentration while the rest of the family is laughing and running and having a good time is the perfect example.
I do think we might be at a period of total breakdown as far as "living in the moment" is concerned. It is becoming a time where parties only need enough space for everyone to sit and talk or text or surf the internet. Family dinners, funerals, weddings, church---everywhere that we previously considered "being there" to include physical, mental, emotional and spiritual interaction with the others attending are already being disconnected by texts/phone calls, sudden photos, and don't forget those people so self-absorbed that when they aren't talking, they are surfing the web for their next thing to say.
Does it matter if we only interact electronically? Maybe--maybe not. I don't enjoy a lot of chitchat, find most conversation gossipy and boring, am too opinionated to tolerate a nod-session with someone determined to change my religious, political, or latest news item beliefs. It ends with me sharing my opinion back. I figure if you are going to take my time I'm going to get some of yours back.
Some experiences are worthy of total immersion, though. Texting for other people's feedback on a painting in a museum instead of looking at the painting, searching for birds on the net while out for a nature walk or talking to the bff while attending a school lecture are all examples of times to be in only ONE place for best enjoyment of the experience.
We have all heard about the multi-tasker, "I can do six things simultaneously without a problem", "one thing at a time bores me" "I'm just being efficient".
OK, (this is the person that can't just listen and nod, i'm showing up for the dance)
1. It is not possible to do six things simultaneously. Our brains will start one thing, then another, then another, but attention is not going to stay on 6 things at once, its serial not parallel. Those six things are getting 1/6th of your attention each, and if they are simple and you are very familiar with them, you may be able to juggle them successfully.
2. If you are bored with one of the things you are doing, quit pretending. If you don't want to be there, leave. Don't volunteer to go with the family to the museum when you want to go to a game or a club or whatever it is you think would be less boring. Believe it or not, some people like the museum or the zoo or the family dinner and don't need to watch you not being there. Be honest--"I have other plans" is fine.
3. Most people doing six things simultaneously are doing a bad job at all of them. Some people may only be doing a bad job at a couple of them and an average job at the others. No one is doing a great job at all of them.
If you are the mother of 4 with a sick parent and a job, I am sorry for your situation. If you are the mother of one with a job and a tablet and a smart phone,set some priorities. Who is most important, what is most important and do I need to be on the phone and the web twice at the same time while the 3 year old wanders into the street and the boss calls to see why I'm late and the husband yells for clean socks (you may notice that I hadn't mentioned him before,--men find your own socks, your wife is not your servant)
The point is. If you are paying half attention to everything, all the people in your life know you aren't there with them. You become an absent parent, an uninvolved employee and a MIA spouse. And when you are old, alone, wondering where the years went--are those memories of texting and surfing really going to help you through the years?
We all love the net. But when it is more important than everything else, when it is consuming, when your hand is constantly reaching, well that sounds a lot like addiction.
Think about it.
Monday, March 23, 2015
Saturday, March 21, 2015
on not being me
When working chemical dependency units, I always heard talk about the reason moving doesn't help. You can't leave your problems behind because "where ever you go, there you are". Twelve step programs have a bunch of those little homilies. I liked some of them because of that off-guard, "sound of one-hand-clapping" zen thing.
And it is true, if you are the problem, all the moving in the world won't fix it.
But I would like to take a little trip from being me, and don't require a change of geography. Not just go somewhere no one knows me, by myself, no expectations about who I am or how I am or what I should do and usually do and never do. That does sound nice, though.
What I really mean is a break from my reality. A totally new perspective in which I don't have to consciously push aside the wisdom and prejudice of my ancestors, teachers, preachers, past reading, past movie watching, past relationships---you know, everything that came before and created who I am right now?
I'm not at all sure that wouldn't leave me more brain damaged than free. Who am I without any of that? a newborn? an amnesiac? no one? I don't know, but I can never truly understand another person through my own life filter. I can never just do something that I have never done before without all the stuff that kept me from doing it before, weighing on my mind. If we are talking about a horrible crime, that is good, but what about going to a supper club alone in the evening, never have, my parents never did, and truly didn't think females should go anywhere alone after dark. I have worked many night jobs and made many emergency trips in the dark alone, but never just for entertainment. It wasn't that I didn't feel safe so much as it seemed "not me".
I have ignored a lot of the prejudices and tried to find the wisdom that was truly worth keeping, but how do any of us ever know for sure that we are basing our lives on current thinking and not just memory loops. I here the crap I heard as a child, about "the wrong part of town" and the "wrong kind of people", how scary people of other races or cultures or with mental illness, how strange the practices of some people are--eating grubs or pig intestines or monkey brains, while they nibble on their lunch of tamales or lasagne or curry--foods my own father called the foods of "those people".
None of that is real. People eat--they have to, and people have a religion-or at least beliefs about why they are here--and I think as humans we also have to have that, and we wear clothes, and have rules made to protect the status quo, rules to control the behavior of those not in power. Rules. We all have rules. And they may be good or stupid or evil or archaic, but they are there, and by being there, we all incorporate them into who we are in some manner.
I knew people that even as small children fight every rule. Their first word is still dada or mama, the second year it is "no" and then they go straight to "why" and never stop. As children, they are annoying, but perhaps we all need to keep a little of that. Why is a good question for just about everything.
So every time I want a break from myself, I try to get a little alone time, and ask myself why until I'm OK with just being me again. If I do it right, I'm an improved me, with less garbage and more answers than before. And if I'm not truly free of being me, I don't need a neurologist and diapers, either.
Guess I'll save not being me for the next life.
And it is true, if you are the problem, all the moving in the world won't fix it.
But I would like to take a little trip from being me, and don't require a change of geography. Not just go somewhere no one knows me, by myself, no expectations about who I am or how I am or what I should do and usually do and never do. That does sound nice, though.
What I really mean is a break from my reality. A totally new perspective in which I don't have to consciously push aside the wisdom and prejudice of my ancestors, teachers, preachers, past reading, past movie watching, past relationships---you know, everything that came before and created who I am right now?
I'm not at all sure that wouldn't leave me more brain damaged than free. Who am I without any of that? a newborn? an amnesiac? no one? I don't know, but I can never truly understand another person through my own life filter. I can never just do something that I have never done before without all the stuff that kept me from doing it before, weighing on my mind. If we are talking about a horrible crime, that is good, but what about going to a supper club alone in the evening, never have, my parents never did, and truly didn't think females should go anywhere alone after dark. I have worked many night jobs and made many emergency trips in the dark alone, but never just for entertainment. It wasn't that I didn't feel safe so much as it seemed "not me".
I have ignored a lot of the prejudices and tried to find the wisdom that was truly worth keeping, but how do any of us ever know for sure that we are basing our lives on current thinking and not just memory loops. I here the crap I heard as a child, about "the wrong part of town" and the "wrong kind of people", how scary people of other races or cultures or with mental illness, how strange the practices of some people are--eating grubs or pig intestines or monkey brains, while they nibble on their lunch of tamales or lasagne or curry--foods my own father called the foods of "those people".
None of that is real. People eat--they have to, and people have a religion-or at least beliefs about why they are here--and I think as humans we also have to have that, and we wear clothes, and have rules made to protect the status quo, rules to control the behavior of those not in power. Rules. We all have rules. And they may be good or stupid or evil or archaic, but they are there, and by being there, we all incorporate them into who we are in some manner.
I knew people that even as small children fight every rule. Their first word is still dada or mama, the second year it is "no" and then they go straight to "why" and never stop. As children, they are annoying, but perhaps we all need to keep a little of that. Why is a good question for just about everything.
So every time I want a break from myself, I try to get a little alone time, and ask myself why until I'm OK with just being me again. If I do it right, I'm an improved me, with less garbage and more answers than before. And if I'm not truly free of being me, I don't need a neurologist and diapers, either.
Guess I'll save not being me for the next life.
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
king of the mountain
When i was a kid and a group congregated near a mound--usually sand, but dirt, gravel and even hay counted, we would play "King of the Mountain". The rules were loose, frequently shouted out as whoever was losing tried to make it a fairer game or give a winning struggler an advantage. The dynamics of the game changed with the group composition. If it was just those of us from the very close houses that played together every day, it was pretty low key. we would try to gain the top, but would also help the littlest or most unathletic up there with us. We also were prone to grabbing the arm of a friend that lost their balance and started to slide or tumble back down.
When the group was bigger, more unknowns, more diverse, then the game was more serious. At that point, those children most likely to get hurt were frequently relegated to cheerleeding or moping on the sidelines. The bigger, stronger children pushed and shoved to reach the top and hold it, friends only helped good friends and only if it also benefited them.
See? Children do understand politics.
The stranger part was actually what was happening on the sidelines. While the biggest bullies, the most likely to try to cause injury, or cheat, or otherwise "not play fair" were always contenders, the smallest, weakest, least likely to ever even make it into those tougher games, almost always aligned themselves with the very people most likely to call them names and give them pink bellies and exclude them from everything. Only rarely would a sidelined child root for the kid that was playing hard but fair and struggling to win using the friends only rules.
So why do we we powerless folks chose to follow those people we see as having power? Why do we turn them into stars, heroes, leaders? Do we not know what they are? Or do we somehow believe that by being on the winning side, instead of on the loving side or the righteous side or the nice side, that we will get that helping hand, that friend pull-up, the advantages of the meanest, toughest, bullyingest person that is winning. Or is it just an attempt to feel powerful by association?
We see it today, in "grown-up politics" and the reward is usually money and power and a bunch of followers that are following, apparently thinking that because they are voting for them, they are part of the winning team. It doesn't matter that their own family is struggling under that harness just like those that are not on that team. Loyalty to the home team always beats out smart and right.
I never really understood loyalty. I understand love: unconditional love, blind love, but loyalty based on love, isn't it just----love?
Loyalty is supposed to be both unconditional and blind, unchanging and unjudging? And for a group or a cause or a party or a team. If that group, cause, party or team stops meeting my ideals, why would I continue to be loyal? I realize that is called "turncoat" in times of war, but I believe our revolution was full of people that changed from loyal to the King to fighting for the freedom of the colonies. If loyalty to something was a true life committment, we would still be a part of the UK.
Loyalty seems to be more about group identification than love and understanding that is tough. Our first group is our family, our families tend to identify with some larger family/extended/cultural/economic/religious that has rules, dogma, "Us vs Them" identifiers. I think we are currently calling people that are holding tight to that mentality, "haters". I can see why that blind loyalty and exclusionary focus could be seen as hate--it is definitely not love.
But just because we can identify the "haters" doesn't mean we aren't participating in it. People that have been excluded from the ruling power structure have their own power structure. The ruling group tends to criminalize their structures and condemn their loyalty to their own groups, frequently playing on the idea that if they aren't loyal to those criminalized groups, they can become a part of the mainstream ruling group. That is a carrot that many have tried to get but few have found to be fully as tasty and nutritious as they had been led to believe. (wondering? drug cartels, gangs, criminal syndicates, etc, etc, etc, power structures that make money, employee large numbers of people that are not considered employable by the shakers and movers of the ruling class, they protect their own, defend against those that threaten them and are very loyal)
I don't know how we stop people from blindly following those they see as strong. I we get people to see that all those little arbitrarily drawn lines around the various group affiliations are just that, lines. Not walls, not cages, no more than those lines we drew in the sand when we were children daring someone to step over it and see what they got. (I always crossed that line, I thought it was funny. An ant could cross that line, and what did it prove---apparently I was off from birth)
But truly, how are any of us different? We all love. We all believe that what we believe is the truth . We all believe that our way is best.(who ever did something because we thought it was the 2nd or third best way to do something---ridiculous) and we all look sidewise at people that call our beliefs into questions.
Perhaps, instead of always searching for our differences, we would be better off finding our similarities. (My granddaughter is working on compare and contrast--more compare, less contrast) We all have needs, the basic needs of food, water, shelter, safety, the opportunity to continue our genetic line, the opportunity to participate in a social life and find companionship, the need to feel good about ourselves, the need for cognitive stimulation/aesthetic surroundings, and the need to accomplish something with our lives. (yes Maslow, I stole you stuff)
The point of that list, is that a person without food or water or shelter doesn't try to fix anything about the world except those three things, acquiring food, water and shelter, and a person who is being shot at is not going to paint a beautiful painting. A person that is stuck thinking they are a worthless piece of garbage will never be able to accomplish anything with that life.
Globally, there are sooooooo many people that can't get past the bottom of that mountain. Maybe it would be better if we chose people to lead that were at the top of this pyramid instead of the bullies on the dirt hills.
Think.
Empathize.
Question.
When the group was bigger, more unknowns, more diverse, then the game was more serious. At that point, those children most likely to get hurt were frequently relegated to cheerleeding or moping on the sidelines. The bigger, stronger children pushed and shoved to reach the top and hold it, friends only helped good friends and only if it also benefited them.
See? Children do understand politics.
The stranger part was actually what was happening on the sidelines. While the biggest bullies, the most likely to try to cause injury, or cheat, or otherwise "not play fair" were always contenders, the smallest, weakest, least likely to ever even make it into those tougher games, almost always aligned themselves with the very people most likely to call them names and give them pink bellies and exclude them from everything. Only rarely would a sidelined child root for the kid that was playing hard but fair and struggling to win using the friends only rules.
So why do we we powerless folks chose to follow those people we see as having power? Why do we turn them into stars, heroes, leaders? Do we not know what they are? Or do we somehow believe that by being on the winning side, instead of on the loving side or the righteous side or the nice side, that we will get that helping hand, that friend pull-up, the advantages of the meanest, toughest, bullyingest person that is winning. Or is it just an attempt to feel powerful by association?
We see it today, in "grown-up politics" and the reward is usually money and power and a bunch of followers that are following, apparently thinking that because they are voting for them, they are part of the winning team. It doesn't matter that their own family is struggling under that harness just like those that are not on that team. Loyalty to the home team always beats out smart and right.
I never really understood loyalty. I understand love: unconditional love, blind love, but loyalty based on love, isn't it just----love?
Loyalty is supposed to be both unconditional and blind, unchanging and unjudging? And for a group or a cause or a party or a team. If that group, cause, party or team stops meeting my ideals, why would I continue to be loyal? I realize that is called "turncoat" in times of war, but I believe our revolution was full of people that changed from loyal to the King to fighting for the freedom of the colonies. If loyalty to something was a true life committment, we would still be a part of the UK.
Loyalty seems to be more about group identification than love and understanding that is tough. Our first group is our family, our families tend to identify with some larger family/extended/cultural/economic/religious that has rules, dogma, "Us vs Them" identifiers. I think we are currently calling people that are holding tight to that mentality, "haters". I can see why that blind loyalty and exclusionary focus could be seen as hate--it is definitely not love.
But just because we can identify the "haters" doesn't mean we aren't participating in it. People that have been excluded from the ruling power structure have their own power structure. The ruling group tends to criminalize their structures and condemn their loyalty to their own groups, frequently playing on the idea that if they aren't loyal to those criminalized groups, they can become a part of the mainstream ruling group. That is a carrot that many have tried to get but few have found to be fully as tasty and nutritious as they had been led to believe. (wondering? drug cartels, gangs, criminal syndicates, etc, etc, etc, power structures that make money, employee large numbers of people that are not considered employable by the shakers and movers of the ruling class, they protect their own, defend against those that threaten them and are very loyal)
I don't know how we stop people from blindly following those they see as strong. I we get people to see that all those little arbitrarily drawn lines around the various group affiliations are just that, lines. Not walls, not cages, no more than those lines we drew in the sand when we were children daring someone to step over it and see what they got. (I always crossed that line, I thought it was funny. An ant could cross that line, and what did it prove---apparently I was off from birth)
But truly, how are any of us different? We all love. We all believe that what we believe is the truth . We all believe that our way is best.(who ever did something because we thought it was the 2nd or third best way to do something---ridiculous) and we all look sidewise at people that call our beliefs into questions.
Perhaps, instead of always searching for our differences, we would be better off finding our similarities. (My granddaughter is working on compare and contrast--more compare, less contrast) We all have needs, the basic needs of food, water, shelter, safety, the opportunity to continue our genetic line, the opportunity to participate in a social life and find companionship, the need to feel good about ourselves, the need for cognitive stimulation/aesthetic surroundings, and the need to accomplish something with our lives. (yes Maslow, I stole you stuff)
The point of that list, is that a person without food or water or shelter doesn't try to fix anything about the world except those three things, acquiring food, water and shelter, and a person who is being shot at is not going to paint a beautiful painting. A person that is stuck thinking they are a worthless piece of garbage will never be able to accomplish anything with that life.
Globally, there are sooooooo many people that can't get past the bottom of that mountain. Maybe it would be better if we chose people to lead that were at the top of this pyramid instead of the bullies on the dirt hills.
Think.
Empathize.
Question.
Saturday, March 7, 2015
Activists, Idealists and Fools
There are a lot of causes right now, not just the standard "give to your favorite illness research team or college foundation, but the kind of causes that want more than just money; they want time, they want heart; they want a commitment to come out and march through riot gear and volunteer in countries under police action--frequently from more than one set of policers (?is that word?) and they want people willing to die for their causes.
That sounds amazing, but the activists on the opposing side are frequently called terrorists or criminals or rebels or fools.
Activism has occurred at different times in our nation's history and usually in clumps, with long stretches of time with almost no activity and other times when there are so many activist level causes being heard from,that keeping them straight is tough.
Globally, there has been little time with no activism. There is a war, a rebellion, a call to action, a call to return to our roots or reclaim our heritage or get fundamental about our religion, somewhere about all the time. By country, though, I think everyone gets about the same, a period of activism with a calm lull (some places have longer or quieter lulls than others). Amazingly, we are currently having a lot of countries on the same biorhythmic wave right now. Maybe that is because the internet is making us all more in-sync, sort of like the dorm where all the women start to share a similar menstrual calender.
While activism is rather cyclic, Idealism is a steadier and more subtle thing. There are always idealists, and they don't all share the same ideals, but they do tend to share the same heart, a heart in which right and good and better and what it means to be human and what it means to be alive are both definable and hard to actually find in the real world. Idealists are usually thought of as pie-in-the-sky, building sand castles in the air, non-productive, and useless. But while the Miss America candidate speeches about creating world peace by buying every little girl a barbie is always seen as an idealist, the Ayn Rands, Adolph Hitlers, and Dalai Lamas are also idealists. They have a view of the ideal world and they were (are) all three pretty effective at working toward their ideals, or getting others on board to work toward their ideals. Reality is, most of those big religious leaders, and political changers were idealists. They believed they saw what the world should be like and shared their ideals--whether to the improvement or detriment of the world.
Not everyone is an idealist, though most people can develop an ideal of how the world should be. Frequently it hits like a little bolt of lightning or the iconic lightbulb over the head. My own father, a man none to found of reading (he limited himself to books on car repair and animal first aid and the occasional tool use guide, once woke up and decided he had to write a book. He knew the whole story, got a steno pad from my mother and some pencils, and started writing. He worked on that for a number of days, made it through most of that pad, then the writing stopped. He never told us the story. I have no idea of the story involved an ideal world, but Gestalt is "for real". Brains and ideas are funny. Activists don't have to develop the ideal, they are just as likely to work toward someone else's original ideal as their own, but they do need to believe the ideal is, well---ideal.
So, where do the fools come in? Well, I am an idealist, and have woken up with many ideas about how to improve the world, but I am no activist. I am more of a nester, or perhaps a hibernator, although certainly not a hoarder---though I take the 3-R's seriously (not those 3 r's, and its A-rithmetic, not rithmetic). I'm only as active as I have to be; a turtle not a bunny.
Perhaps I'm one of the fools.
That sounds amazing, but the activists on the opposing side are frequently called terrorists or criminals or rebels or fools.
Activism has occurred at different times in our nation's history and usually in clumps, with long stretches of time with almost no activity and other times when there are so many activist level causes being heard from,that keeping them straight is tough.
Globally, there has been little time with no activism. There is a war, a rebellion, a call to action, a call to return to our roots or reclaim our heritage or get fundamental about our religion, somewhere about all the time. By country, though, I think everyone gets about the same, a period of activism with a calm lull (some places have longer or quieter lulls than others). Amazingly, we are currently having a lot of countries on the same biorhythmic wave right now. Maybe that is because the internet is making us all more in-sync, sort of like the dorm where all the women start to share a similar menstrual calender.
While activism is rather cyclic, Idealism is a steadier and more subtle thing. There are always idealists, and they don't all share the same ideals, but they do tend to share the same heart, a heart in which right and good and better and what it means to be human and what it means to be alive are both definable and hard to actually find in the real world. Idealists are usually thought of as pie-in-the-sky, building sand castles in the air, non-productive, and useless. But while the Miss America candidate speeches about creating world peace by buying every little girl a barbie is always seen as an idealist, the Ayn Rands, Adolph Hitlers, and Dalai Lamas are also idealists. They have a view of the ideal world and they were (are) all three pretty effective at working toward their ideals, or getting others on board to work toward their ideals. Reality is, most of those big religious leaders, and political changers were idealists. They believed they saw what the world should be like and shared their ideals--whether to the improvement or detriment of the world.
Not everyone is an idealist, though most people can develop an ideal of how the world should be. Frequently it hits like a little bolt of lightning or the iconic lightbulb over the head. My own father, a man none to found of reading (he limited himself to books on car repair and animal first aid and the occasional tool use guide, once woke up and decided he had to write a book. He knew the whole story, got a steno pad from my mother and some pencils, and started writing. He worked on that for a number of days, made it through most of that pad, then the writing stopped. He never told us the story. I have no idea of the story involved an ideal world, but Gestalt is "for real". Brains and ideas are funny. Activists don't have to develop the ideal, they are just as likely to work toward someone else's original ideal as their own, but they do need to believe the ideal is, well---ideal.
So, where do the fools come in? Well, I am an idealist, and have woken up with many ideas about how to improve the world, but I am no activist. I am more of a nester, or perhaps a hibernator, although certainly not a hoarder---though I take the 3-R's seriously (not those 3 r's, and its A-rithmetic, not rithmetic). I'm only as active as I have to be; a turtle not a bunny.
Perhaps I'm one of the fools.
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
I'm blaming bows.
I have noticed that the politics here and kind of everywhere else, also, has taken a decidedly "woman are second class citizens" stance. Being a feminist before I knew that everyone wasn't one or that there even needed to be one, I had to really try to examine my memory to tell how we got to where we are today.
I once argued with a male teacher in public school about whether women had equal rights. He said no, not by law, I took the stance that was impossible because I was equal to anyone. My lack of understanding of the law and what the law had to do with that was huge. I'm still pretty sure I'm equal to anyone, though.
But I get the law part now. It only took 50 years of anecdotal stories and news reports, but I get it. I do think that women in this country were making an effort, and then I look up and almost all the women in politics look like Tammy Faye Bakker, perfectly coiffed church hair, doll make-up, wearing nice office skirt suits and heels. I work. And the people in skirts are inevitably in the executive offices in Jimmy Choos.
Why would anyone subject their body and their feet to work, even highly powerful, executive work, in uncomfortable shoes (sorry jimmy, I'm sure they are the bomb, but 4 inch heels are 4 inch heels).
Then you catch them commiserating with their other female power brokers about men not giving them respect, not treating them seriously, calling them doll saying something ridiculous like," honey, how about a cup of coffee while we men work" even though they are totally lateral on the organizational chart, and they are angry. I get the angry. I have felt that anger--but I have not felt the anger from a lateral or higher position while decked out like a Barbie doll.
I'm blaming hair bows.
If you watch the popularity of hair bows, as it goes up, women are seen as more vapid, girly, (and girly is the same as calling you a child--what adult wants to be called a child?) more shallow, superficial, more worried about attracting a man and less worried about impressing a business/campaign/world.
Hair bows have been more popular for the last 15 years than since the 1950's. We stick them on the heads of our baby girls ("don't put that thing on my son, are you nuts") right after birth, and continue to decorate our daughters with them throughout their lives. I have seen competitive softball teams where all the girls had matching pink and zebra bows instead of hats (wasn't that hat bill about the sun?). And there are adult female hair bows, usually less pastel, but frequently more flamboyant, with jewels and feathers and chiffon, perfect for a masquerade ball, but seen in the office hooked into a messy ponytail.
I am not really against self-embellishment. I am not the "tattoos are of the debil" or the piercing police that every workplace has--usually made of women in skirt suits and high heels and hair bows.--the tats and studs don't bother me because they are pretty equal opportunity and permanent without going to some effort to remove them. But no one can say--"I know the shoes are not really work appropriate and bow is awfully cute, but they were affixed to my body at a much earlier age and won't come off"
Women need to take themselves seriously. They need to see themselves as more than something to be looked at, more than someone whose power comes from their appeal, someone that is just of capable of giving orders and creating game plans and managing meetings in a pair of chinos and a shirt standing flat on the ground as anyone else in the room. And they need to stop being the first person to denigrate the coworker that is not dressed to the nines, 3 hour hair, killer shoes and pretty face. Unless you are a model, that is not your job, and no one really takes models seriously when they open their mouths---even if they are brilliant.
I would love to see the equal rights amendment ratified in my lifetime. At eight, I was sure that had happened hundreds of years earlier. But in an hour, when I go to work, I will be invisible (and I like it that way) but the women in powerful positions will be giggling to the jokes the men tell, even if they aren't funny, getting them
coffee, and batting their eyes as they get in the personal space of whatever man is in charge of what their department needs.
The message is simple, teach your daughters they are all right in jeans and a t-shirt that has no glitter or sequins, even if it is just one day a week. When they talk, listen to what they say, don't pat them on the head and tell them how cute-pretty-beautiful-sweet-funny-nice- they are or look. When they talk about how someone else dresses or someone else's bad hair day or ugly shoes, let them know those things aren't important.
And as a role model, do not spend 4 hours getting dressed for a 1 hour event. It makes your own focus obvious. If it ok to be plain. It is ok to have your hair that does what your hair does. It is ok to get older or have scars or whatever thing about your own appearance you hate. And if you can be ok in your own skin, she will see she is ok also.
If the only way we can tell the difference between our daughters and our sons is by the way they dress, perhaps we are trying to make more of those differences than was ever intended.
I once argued with a male teacher in public school about whether women had equal rights. He said no, not by law, I took the stance that was impossible because I was equal to anyone. My lack of understanding of the law and what the law had to do with that was huge. I'm still pretty sure I'm equal to anyone, though.
But I get the law part now. It only took 50 years of anecdotal stories and news reports, but I get it. I do think that women in this country were making an effort, and then I look up and almost all the women in politics look like Tammy Faye Bakker, perfectly coiffed church hair, doll make-up, wearing nice office skirt suits and heels. I work. And the people in skirts are inevitably in the executive offices in Jimmy Choos.
Why would anyone subject their body and their feet to work, even highly powerful, executive work, in uncomfortable shoes (sorry jimmy, I'm sure they are the bomb, but 4 inch heels are 4 inch heels).
Then you catch them commiserating with their other female power brokers about men not giving them respect, not treating them seriously, calling them doll saying something ridiculous like," honey, how about a cup of coffee while we men work" even though they are totally lateral on the organizational chart, and they are angry. I get the angry. I have felt that anger--but I have not felt the anger from a lateral or higher position while decked out like a Barbie doll.
I'm blaming hair bows.
If you watch the popularity of hair bows, as it goes up, women are seen as more vapid, girly, (and girly is the same as calling you a child--what adult wants to be called a child?) more shallow, superficial, more worried about attracting a man and less worried about impressing a business/campaign/world.
Hair bows have been more popular for the last 15 years than since the 1950's. We stick them on the heads of our baby girls ("don't put that thing on my son, are you nuts") right after birth, and continue to decorate our daughters with them throughout their lives. I have seen competitive softball teams where all the girls had matching pink and zebra bows instead of hats (wasn't that hat bill about the sun?). And there are adult female hair bows, usually less pastel, but frequently more flamboyant, with jewels and feathers and chiffon, perfect for a masquerade ball, but seen in the office hooked into a messy ponytail.
I am not really against self-embellishment. I am not the "tattoos are of the debil" or the piercing police that every workplace has--usually made of women in skirt suits and high heels and hair bows.--the tats and studs don't bother me because they are pretty equal opportunity and permanent without going to some effort to remove them. But no one can say--"I know the shoes are not really work appropriate and bow is awfully cute, but they were affixed to my body at a much earlier age and won't come off"
Women need to take themselves seriously. They need to see themselves as more than something to be looked at, more than someone whose power comes from their appeal, someone that is just of capable of giving orders and creating game plans and managing meetings in a pair of chinos and a shirt standing flat on the ground as anyone else in the room. And they need to stop being the first person to denigrate the coworker that is not dressed to the nines, 3 hour hair, killer shoes and pretty face. Unless you are a model, that is not your job, and no one really takes models seriously when they open their mouths---even if they are brilliant.
I would love to see the equal rights amendment ratified in my lifetime. At eight, I was sure that had happened hundreds of years earlier. But in an hour, when I go to work, I will be invisible (and I like it that way) but the women in powerful positions will be giggling to the jokes the men tell, even if they aren't funny, getting them
coffee, and batting their eyes as they get in the personal space of whatever man is in charge of what their department needs.
The message is simple, teach your daughters they are all right in jeans and a t-shirt that has no glitter or sequins, even if it is just one day a week. When they talk, listen to what they say, don't pat them on the head and tell them how cute-pretty-beautiful-sweet-funny-nice- they are or look. When they talk about how someone else dresses or someone else's bad hair day or ugly shoes, let them know those things aren't important.
And as a role model, do not spend 4 hours getting dressed for a 1 hour event. It makes your own focus obvious. If it ok to be plain. It is ok to have your hair that does what your hair does. It is ok to get older or have scars or whatever thing about your own appearance you hate. And if you can be ok in your own skin, she will see she is ok also.
If the only way we can tell the difference between our daughters and our sons is by the way they dress, perhaps we are trying to make more of those differences than was ever intended.
Friday, February 13, 2015
god
God, not the name of God or a god; not the belief in God or a god; and not the religion created to worship a god; but god, the concept, has always fascinated me. I don't mean like a magic window book or a freak show fascination, I mean come back to my mind and sent me on many searches for answers. The fact that someone's concept of god has caused almost every war we have known, whether directly or indirectly, should not shock me. I am shocked, though.
Most of us develop our concept of god, our beliefs about god starting as children. We are schooled in our parents version of god, through either formal training or through the strange osmotic process that occurs when no one talks of spiritual things but beliefs about good and bad, life and death, and feelings about other peoples religious, spiritual or life beliefs are either ridiculed or held up as correct.
I was no different, my parents were both raised in mainstream protestant religions and those basic beliefs were built into my life lessons at an early age. As children, we went to church sometimes, and sometimes didn't go to church. Neither parent was devout. My father had been angry at his concept of god since his mother and sister died in his late teens. My mother was a reader and we had books with maps of the holy land, and bible commentary and multiple versions of the bible in the house. We prayed before meals when my mother's mother was around.
By my teens, I attended church regularly, read the bible in search of answers about the nature of god and the reason we are all here and what happens when we die. Our bible study focused on the meaning of original translations, taught by a man that was trained in ancient Greek and Aramaic. We rarely delved into the old testament except for the prophets. We argued about the meaning of nouns and verbs, and discussed whether killing was wrong or only murder. We tried to decide if we were living in the end times. My father, usually silent if the bible came up at home, expressed the opinion that people had been saying we were in the end times since revelations was first written.
By my twenties, I too was angry at god as I understood him from my earlier life. Unlike my father, I became obsessed with finding out who or what god was. What god had to do with me. I even considered that the desire to know and understand god might be some genetically determined quirk of the brain that bore no more spiritual importance than the paranoia of an unmedicated paranoid schizophrenic. It was an exhaustive search, and took twenty years for me to move past the obsession to a kind of spiritual peace. (At this point, I could probably argue the whole chemical basis of the schizophrenics paranoia, also,but that is another subject). My outcome is that I found the answers I needed to live comfortably in my own head without ever needing to kill anyone that disagrees with me about my concept of god. I guess that qualifies as Peace.
So why do people fight about god? Why do they feel the need to punish people that say things about their beliefs, impugn their religion, speak things that they consider blasphemous or heretical. Why? When not a single version of god is based on anything but love and peace and learning to live together successfully?
I do get, that when the first leaders of each religion finished with god, they went on to justify the maligning of their enemies: other religions, misogyny, racism, not giving enough money, not being devout enough. It might be that those leaders thought they were doing a good thing. First they explain god to the rabble, then they give them very specific, rigid rules on how to live. Then they tell them not to question either one--their concept of god or their rules, as that is a sign of a lack of faith or an act of ego, (or heresy, or blasphemy, or an affront to god) in simplest terms--wrong..
My first ten years of searching for answers was very slow. I was hobbled by fear of being blasphemous. I feared the wrath of GOD. I worried about disloyalty to this powerful, unknowable spirit, about making god angry or jealous, about being struck by lightning. And I wonder about the millions and billions of people that had chosen the wrong god, whether by poor judgement or by being born in the wrong place at the wrong time. Were they in hell? in purgatory? in limbo? no where--just dead? I got angry. I was scared. I was horrified. But I kept looking, wandering farther and farther from the god I was born to. I found people living by concepts that had no spirit being, yet they still believed in something, a unifying principle or consciousness, something directing things, creating. An endless group of people had proceeded me and many of them had stopped on the end of the branch they had followed outward, then wrote down their beliefs, turned it into a new religion, "the one true religion" every time.
There seems to be a most common belief that god has not spoken directly to anyone since the person that wrote down the holy book set it to paper. God does not change and therefore the one true religion can not change. If a person lives in a community where most believe the same thing (and while the geographic community has broken down in this new global world, the religious communities, even in places with freedom of religion, remain quick to call anyone that does not believe as they do, an atheist. If the person they are denouncing responds that they are a member of an organized religion that is not at all similar to the one of that community, they are free game to proselytize, a form of love aimed at taking them from their erroneous ways to the correct way. It is not pleasant having someone try to change your beliefs against your will. All the church suppers, prayer meetings and new friends in the world can not change that.
My own father left this world less angry at god, but scared of dying, because he "was not right with god". His childhood beliefs--we used to joke that his family was old testament baptist, since it was all hellfire and brimstone with little mention of love or forgiveness, were never really shaken, just ignored on a day to day basis. He felt that maybe the god of the animals had more in common with his view of god. Oddly, I don't know that this god was not one he created himself, as he seemed to have a horrible time with the idea that animals might not have souls. My mother, reader with an adventurous spirit, would venture out then pull back when she got too close to what she saw as dangerous ground. We had some strange and conflicted conversations while I was on my search for god. Neither of them ever expressed any concern for my soul. I never felt judged by them on that front. Perhaps they had their own searches that they didn't speak of.
So now i have my peace, my "higher power" as they say in AA. I am fond of the Taoist beliefs, and they are technically an a-theistic philosophy, but so different than the usual person that refers to themselves that noun. I have been asked many times how I can not believe, how is it possible to believe in nothing. What a funny idea. Try for one minute to NOT believe in anything. It is harder than not thinking of an elephant once someone tells you not to think about an elephant. My whole world is defined by my beliefs. It always has been. They just aren't the ones I had earlier. They are the ones I have have chosen to have now.
And god, well, god is not a name. It is a title. If you believe there is only one, and the actually name can-for whatever reason-never be spoken, then GOD is fine. Or if you call your god by a specific name, or no name, referring rather to it all as more process than noun, or as something so unknowable and undefinable that no single word can come close to a name or a description, that is also fine.
But about god, we all have had some inner conversations that may or may not be done. In mine, while I have some peace about the subject, I also have decided that god---whatever that means--is changing. That may be just my perception, or it may be absolute truth. I don't mean in some erratic or unguided or unhinged way, but rather that god is evolving just as we--humans, animals, everything, are evolving. I think maybe that is why we are all here.
Most of us develop our concept of god, our beliefs about god starting as children. We are schooled in our parents version of god, through either formal training or through the strange osmotic process that occurs when no one talks of spiritual things but beliefs about good and bad, life and death, and feelings about other peoples religious, spiritual or life beliefs are either ridiculed or held up as correct.
I was no different, my parents were both raised in mainstream protestant religions and those basic beliefs were built into my life lessons at an early age. As children, we went to church sometimes, and sometimes didn't go to church. Neither parent was devout. My father had been angry at his concept of god since his mother and sister died in his late teens. My mother was a reader and we had books with maps of the holy land, and bible commentary and multiple versions of the bible in the house. We prayed before meals when my mother's mother was around.
By my teens, I attended church regularly, read the bible in search of answers about the nature of god and the reason we are all here and what happens when we die. Our bible study focused on the meaning of original translations, taught by a man that was trained in ancient Greek and Aramaic. We rarely delved into the old testament except for the prophets. We argued about the meaning of nouns and verbs, and discussed whether killing was wrong or only murder. We tried to decide if we were living in the end times. My father, usually silent if the bible came up at home, expressed the opinion that people had been saying we were in the end times since revelations was first written.
By my twenties, I too was angry at god as I understood him from my earlier life. Unlike my father, I became obsessed with finding out who or what god was. What god had to do with me. I even considered that the desire to know and understand god might be some genetically determined quirk of the brain that bore no more spiritual importance than the paranoia of an unmedicated paranoid schizophrenic. It was an exhaustive search, and took twenty years for me to move past the obsession to a kind of spiritual peace. (At this point, I could probably argue the whole chemical basis of the schizophrenics paranoia, also,but that is another subject). My outcome is that I found the answers I needed to live comfortably in my own head without ever needing to kill anyone that disagrees with me about my concept of god. I guess that qualifies as Peace.
So why do people fight about god? Why do they feel the need to punish people that say things about their beliefs, impugn their religion, speak things that they consider blasphemous or heretical. Why? When not a single version of god is based on anything but love and peace and learning to live together successfully?
I do get, that when the first leaders of each religion finished with god, they went on to justify the maligning of their enemies: other religions, misogyny, racism, not giving enough money, not being devout enough. It might be that those leaders thought they were doing a good thing. First they explain god to the rabble, then they give them very specific, rigid rules on how to live. Then they tell them not to question either one--their concept of god or their rules, as that is a sign of a lack of faith or an act of ego, (or heresy, or blasphemy, or an affront to god) in simplest terms--wrong..
My first ten years of searching for answers was very slow. I was hobbled by fear of being blasphemous. I feared the wrath of GOD. I worried about disloyalty to this powerful, unknowable spirit, about making god angry or jealous, about being struck by lightning. And I wonder about the millions and billions of people that had chosen the wrong god, whether by poor judgement or by being born in the wrong place at the wrong time. Were they in hell? in purgatory? in limbo? no where--just dead? I got angry. I was scared. I was horrified. But I kept looking, wandering farther and farther from the god I was born to. I found people living by concepts that had no spirit being, yet they still believed in something, a unifying principle or consciousness, something directing things, creating. An endless group of people had proceeded me and many of them had stopped on the end of the branch they had followed outward, then wrote down their beliefs, turned it into a new religion, "the one true religion" every time.
There seems to be a most common belief that god has not spoken directly to anyone since the person that wrote down the holy book set it to paper. God does not change and therefore the one true religion can not change. If a person lives in a community where most believe the same thing (and while the geographic community has broken down in this new global world, the religious communities, even in places with freedom of religion, remain quick to call anyone that does not believe as they do, an atheist. If the person they are denouncing responds that they are a member of an organized religion that is not at all similar to the one of that community, they are free game to proselytize, a form of love aimed at taking them from their erroneous ways to the correct way. It is not pleasant having someone try to change your beliefs against your will. All the church suppers, prayer meetings and new friends in the world can not change that.
My own father left this world less angry at god, but scared of dying, because he "was not right with god". His childhood beliefs--we used to joke that his family was old testament baptist, since it was all hellfire and brimstone with little mention of love or forgiveness, were never really shaken, just ignored on a day to day basis. He felt that maybe the god of the animals had more in common with his view of god. Oddly, I don't know that this god was not one he created himself, as he seemed to have a horrible time with the idea that animals might not have souls. My mother, reader with an adventurous spirit, would venture out then pull back when she got too close to what she saw as dangerous ground. We had some strange and conflicted conversations while I was on my search for god. Neither of them ever expressed any concern for my soul. I never felt judged by them on that front. Perhaps they had their own searches that they didn't speak of.
So now i have my peace, my "higher power" as they say in AA. I am fond of the Taoist beliefs, and they are technically an a-theistic philosophy, but so different than the usual person that refers to themselves that noun. I have been asked many times how I can not believe, how is it possible to believe in nothing. What a funny idea. Try for one minute to NOT believe in anything. It is harder than not thinking of an elephant once someone tells you not to think about an elephant. My whole world is defined by my beliefs. It always has been. They just aren't the ones I had earlier. They are the ones I have have chosen to have now.
And god, well, god is not a name. It is a title. If you believe there is only one, and the actually name can-for whatever reason-never be spoken, then GOD is fine. Or if you call your god by a specific name, or no name, referring rather to it all as more process than noun, or as something so unknowable and undefinable that no single word can come close to a name or a description, that is also fine.
But about god, we all have had some inner conversations that may or may not be done. In mine, while I have some peace about the subject, I also have decided that god---whatever that means--is changing. That may be just my perception, or it may be absolute truth. I don't mean in some erratic or unguided or unhinged way, but rather that god is evolving just as we--humans, animals, everything, are evolving. I think maybe that is why we are all here.
Saturday, February 7, 2015
SPINNING GOLD FROM WORDS>
It recently was stated on some news show that the people that were really running the nation were not the politicians but the speech writers and campaign managers and assistants and lobbyists. I was dumbfounded. What an idea--the whole political process nothing more than an illusion. (shocking to me, but basically being a somewhat paranoid realist, I survived the jolt.) Could it be true? Wholly true, partially true, or merely some attempt to make me feel even more powerless in my own life?
What makes us all tick in unison? Is it the news? The latest hot story? We have all been affected by buzzwords, new bands with gold songs, authors that are suddenly being interviewed everywhere we turn?. does that affect us? Does it change who we are even a little bit?
I know I am not the same as I was 40 years ago, my beliefs have changed about the world around me if my values have not. And how I view the world, that is not so rosy as it once was. It is also not such a trusting view or as simple. At this point, every story seems to be webbed to every other subject in my world. A person is murdered, and it isn't just a bad person killed someone, it is the childhood of the person that chose to kill and the victim, and what the victim represented to the person that killed them and the news the day before and the stock market the week before and the housing market and what we spent on education and the unemployment rate and the cost of a loaf of bread. No single event exists. Everything is tied in to every other thing. Our choices, the decisions about those choices, our beliefs about who we are regarding those choices, everything. One thing.
The people putting out the news have a big influence--is the car wreck with no one hurt news? Is it a "feel good story" or is it only filler if nothing better shows up. Do we side with the gun buffs or the gun control when there is a modern shoot-out at the local drive-in. Each news program knows who they cater to and they know the hierarchy of grabbers of our attention. Warriors are not the only ones that appreciate a body count. Younger, more innocent, is more sympathetic than older, seamier, and scarier. Politics is simple, they know who they back, then paint their side positive and the other negative. Of course, a good, steamy scandal is always good about either side, just figure out how to frame the blame.
But what about those speech writers, campaign managers and lobbyists. Well, we have all heard good speeches, and while the opposing side will always find fault at the time, those of us that suffered the assignments of memorizing past speeches can tell you that twenty years later, the naysayers kids are memorizing the same ones and everyone recognizes the way they pull at the heartstrings and prod the person toward action.
Campaigns, lobbyists, money people, those individuals that are in the background deciding what the rest of us will see and not see, hear and not hear, those people might be the most powerful of all. They are why activists, scientists, and attentive citizens are important. If a lobbyist with bottomless pockets comes to your state, you may not have a single person on the ballot that is not in their debt. If the campaigns are being run by people with close ties to a cause, or a business, then the campaign will be aimed at the success of that cause more than the success of the candidate. And the easiest way to control it all is to make sure that both sides are for the same thing.
Our state doesn't need that yet. We have a firm majority going one way and almost no one trying to fight them. But if we were a purple state, those lobbyists would be wining and dining twice as many people. So money gets to decide what is important enough to come to the public's attention. And words are used to capture our attention, our imaginations, our hearts. Words have two purposes, one is their definition, but the other, the one that serves a more important purpose is the nuance of a word. If you want to influence, you need those nuances. If you would lie, sway, make people sympathize, scare them or egg them on, the choice of words is important.
If I say that someone passed away last night in their home, a picture forms, it is sad, and sympathetic and will incite feeling about our own losses. If I use a different word, say, killed, or stabbed, or tortured to death or consumed by fire or even "suffered a heart attack after years of drug use", that picture changes. I may be less sympathetic, less sad, more judgemental of the victim. Or I may be scared for my own safety or my families safety. I may blame it on the local leadership or law enforcement. I may suddenly decide to deport everyone ties to some other country.
There are words that are without much emotional load, and words that are very emotionally loaded. Words like lover, hate, terrorist, loyal, criminal, extreme or extremist, funny, patriotic--all those words have an emotional load that can be used to increase or decrease the response to a story. We don't call international groups that are currently bombing or kidnapping people patriots or loyal or funny, although individuals in those groups can be any of those things. And we do not call our favorite people in our personal political party extremists or hate-filled although both can be true. We choose words that paint them in a better light. We use words we view as positive to describe what we want others to view as positive and words we view as negative to describe people we want them to view as negative.
What? Do I really want terrorists and criminals and hate-groups and murderers to be viewed in a more positive light? I personally wish no one would ever do anything that could be called those things. But it really is all about perspective. I have many ancestors that have served in the armed forces. I know that they may have killed in that capacity. I also know that the families of the people they killed did not look at them as heroes. Our nation has committed atrocities and war crimes, our leaders have been caught in scandals and in acts of corruptions, our news stations and journalists have used non-neutral words to describe the actions of the people they want me to like and the people they want me to hate. Is it propaganda? Of course it is. Is it a well organized plan to make us think the world is different than it is, maybe, maybe not.
We know a lot about psychology now. We know a lot about marketing. We know how to use words and campaigns and advertising and fashion and style and education to alter how people react to situations and respond to events. And that means that we can all know. A magic trick is only magic is you don't know how it works, and puppets are only amazing if you never see behind the curtain to the puppet master.
We all need to start peeking behind the scenes and translating the words and viewing more than one source. Be informed and think. Unless you really do just like being led by the nose or only take in what confirms your own hates and prejudices.
Get a world view that means something real.
What makes us all tick in unison? Is it the news? The latest hot story? We have all been affected by buzzwords, new bands with gold songs, authors that are suddenly being interviewed everywhere we turn?. does that affect us? Does it change who we are even a little bit?
I know I am not the same as I was 40 years ago, my beliefs have changed about the world around me if my values have not. And how I view the world, that is not so rosy as it once was. It is also not such a trusting view or as simple. At this point, every story seems to be webbed to every other subject in my world. A person is murdered, and it isn't just a bad person killed someone, it is the childhood of the person that chose to kill and the victim, and what the victim represented to the person that killed them and the news the day before and the stock market the week before and the housing market and what we spent on education and the unemployment rate and the cost of a loaf of bread. No single event exists. Everything is tied in to every other thing. Our choices, the decisions about those choices, our beliefs about who we are regarding those choices, everything. One thing.
The people putting out the news have a big influence--is the car wreck with no one hurt news? Is it a "feel good story" or is it only filler if nothing better shows up. Do we side with the gun buffs or the gun control when there is a modern shoot-out at the local drive-in. Each news program knows who they cater to and they know the hierarchy of grabbers of our attention. Warriors are not the only ones that appreciate a body count. Younger, more innocent, is more sympathetic than older, seamier, and scarier. Politics is simple, they know who they back, then paint their side positive and the other negative. Of course, a good, steamy scandal is always good about either side, just figure out how to frame the blame.
But what about those speech writers, campaign managers and lobbyists. Well, we have all heard good speeches, and while the opposing side will always find fault at the time, those of us that suffered the assignments of memorizing past speeches can tell you that twenty years later, the naysayers kids are memorizing the same ones and everyone recognizes the way they pull at the heartstrings and prod the person toward action.
Campaigns, lobbyists, money people, those individuals that are in the background deciding what the rest of us will see and not see, hear and not hear, those people might be the most powerful of all. They are why activists, scientists, and attentive citizens are important. If a lobbyist with bottomless pockets comes to your state, you may not have a single person on the ballot that is not in their debt. If the campaigns are being run by people with close ties to a cause, or a business, then the campaign will be aimed at the success of that cause more than the success of the candidate. And the easiest way to control it all is to make sure that both sides are for the same thing.
Our state doesn't need that yet. We have a firm majority going one way and almost no one trying to fight them. But if we were a purple state, those lobbyists would be wining and dining twice as many people. So money gets to decide what is important enough to come to the public's attention. And words are used to capture our attention, our imaginations, our hearts. Words have two purposes, one is their definition, but the other, the one that serves a more important purpose is the nuance of a word. If you want to influence, you need those nuances. If you would lie, sway, make people sympathize, scare them or egg them on, the choice of words is important.
If I say that someone passed away last night in their home, a picture forms, it is sad, and sympathetic and will incite feeling about our own losses. If I use a different word, say, killed, or stabbed, or tortured to death or consumed by fire or even "suffered a heart attack after years of drug use", that picture changes. I may be less sympathetic, less sad, more judgemental of the victim. Or I may be scared for my own safety or my families safety. I may blame it on the local leadership or law enforcement. I may suddenly decide to deport everyone ties to some other country.
There are words that are without much emotional load, and words that are very emotionally loaded. Words like lover, hate, terrorist, loyal, criminal, extreme or extremist, funny, patriotic--all those words have an emotional load that can be used to increase or decrease the response to a story. We don't call international groups that are currently bombing or kidnapping people patriots or loyal or funny, although individuals in those groups can be any of those things. And we do not call our favorite people in our personal political party extremists or hate-filled although both can be true. We choose words that paint them in a better light. We use words we view as positive to describe what we want others to view as positive and words we view as negative to describe people we want them to view as negative.
What? Do I really want terrorists and criminals and hate-groups and murderers to be viewed in a more positive light? I personally wish no one would ever do anything that could be called those things. But it really is all about perspective. I have many ancestors that have served in the armed forces. I know that they may have killed in that capacity. I also know that the families of the people they killed did not look at them as heroes. Our nation has committed atrocities and war crimes, our leaders have been caught in scandals and in acts of corruptions, our news stations and journalists have used non-neutral words to describe the actions of the people they want me to like and the people they want me to hate. Is it propaganda? Of course it is. Is it a well organized plan to make us think the world is different than it is, maybe, maybe not.
We know a lot about psychology now. We know a lot about marketing. We know how to use words and campaigns and advertising and fashion and style and education to alter how people react to situations and respond to events. And that means that we can all know. A magic trick is only magic is you don't know how it works, and puppets are only amazing if you never see behind the curtain to the puppet master.
We all need to start peeking behind the scenes and translating the words and viewing more than one source. Be informed and think. Unless you really do just like being led by the nose or only take in what confirms your own hates and prejudices.
Get a world view that means something real.
Saturday, January 24, 2015
all the overwhelming bad news
I looked at my first blog--about fixing the world, written in July 2012 and originally shared with family and friends. I immediately moved it to Google and it became a rant about the craziness around me. It has been a good outlet for me. My fear and loathing now vented, I can be more creative and productive. Alas, I did not fix the world. But I have changed.
I have become more vocal even in the real world. I found that just like my state, 40% of my coworkers are also liberals in a conservative state. It only took 5 years to find that out, but it has been a weird time. People that are afraid hunker down at first--try to blend in, not be noticed, and wait out the craziness, but after awhile, the waiting starts seeming like its own kind of death.
There is a feeling that comes to a pot of water on the fire, and if you have stirred anything over a fire, while being very calm and mindful, you can feel the change in the spoon right before it starts to bubble. It is as if the energy is rising, but so minutely that there is no evidence except that slight change in the quality of the bottom of the pot. As a person that always loved making jellies and puddings and candies, feeling that moment was a bit exciting. I turned more than one recipe of fudge into sugar by stirring when I should have been waiting, but I can recognize that little vibration when it starts.
These days we are seeing a bit of that vibration in the world. And there are a lot of pots on the fire; a lot of them need to not be stirred or the results will be worse for the outcomes. Figuring out what needs to be done for the good of all is trying for all of us.
We humans are a self centered species. And while half of us are smarter than the other half (don't be offended, that statement can be said about anything, richer, taller, fatter, there is a 50% mark on them all) smart doesn't have anything to do with wise: neither does religion or education or productivity or wealth or success. Right now, we need wisdom-the wisdom to figure out what is most important and what is least important; the wisdom to figure out if it is more important--to be the number one country in something or to have a best possible global team in which we all succeed. We need to have enough wisdom to know the difference between what is success for the long-term and what is just a blip on the monitor for that day.
Perhaps, what we need most is to decide who we are. What kind of species is Homo Sapien? Are we the future, or will the future be brighter for every other species--plant, animal, insect when we finally bring about our own extinction?
Are we mindless hordes of rampaging, slaughtering, thieves? Are we born with no other purpose than to extinguish those cultures we see as competitors? Are we truly just animals with an instinct to maintain our own genetic descendants at the expense of everyone and everything else? Have we no soul?
That was not a religious question. That was a philosophical question, and one we need to answer. We are conscious of right and wrong. We can think about the effects our actions have on everything around us. We are capable choosing goodness and kindness. We are capable of examining the long range effects of our actions. Why then do we go about our business (and business is personal, everything is personal, saying it isn't is like telling your mom you didn't break the lamp, the floor did) as if the only thing that matters is how much money or power or prestige you get from what you did.
"Look mom, I made the Fortune 400 again this year, and only had to screw over a small poor country" "We have access to the oil of those stupid people on the other side of the globe, and my soldiers did that in less than a year and we only had a few thousand casualties." The pseudo-quotes could go on and on. We have replacement words for when we do truly awful things that no wants to know about. We keep our conversations that are most true limited to those people we know that have already committed atrocities in the name of "winning" just like we have.
Replacement words--target for living being that we killed, plausible deniability for lying to everyone, acceptable losses for sure people died but no one important, casualties for soldiers that are no longer available for combat due to death, injury, capture or going missing, collateral damage for loss of lives that were not important enough to avoid killing, friendly fire for we either accidentally or on purpose killed one of our own soldiers, civilian casualties for innocent bystanders, an offensive for a violent attack by military, a police action for when we decide we want our soldiers to go into a place to protect our wants (not our rights) in another country but don't have any reason to declare a war.
No one wants to be the bad guy, except for those petty criminals that have already lost their souls, had them beaten out by a society that left them no other options for success but to be the baddest bad guy of all. But they are nothing next to our winners, our leaders, our powerful people. Those people that are on the covers of magazines, touted as role models, as important, as "movers and shakers" are not judged the same as the people going about their day to day lives trying to do what is right, trying to not hurt anyone or anything while helping our loved ones to be as successful as possible.
If one of the top dogs causes a small war in a country already on the brink of war, all in the name of acquiring that little country's natural resources--that is "good business". If little Tommy down the street bullies first graders out of their lunch money, he is a horrible child with obviously horrible parents. Why do we find excuses for the powerful people that kill, lie, steal, cheat, and bribe their way to more money. Why do we thank them for donating a little of that hijacked money back to the community in exchange for a tax deduction and a brass plaque on the wall.
Why do we buy the excuses for the horrible behavior of people that are more powerful in society than we are. Sure, some of us are scared, of losing what we have, of being the victim of those that are more vicious than we are, of change. But beyond fear, there are people out there lying to themselves. Making excuses for those actions that if done by someone from another country or culture would be a reason to utterly destroy them. Perhaps we need to change how we choose heroes and role models. Perhaps be need to spend some time in front of a mirror examining our own values.
I have become more vocal even in the real world. I found that just like my state, 40% of my coworkers are also liberals in a conservative state. It only took 5 years to find that out, but it has been a weird time. People that are afraid hunker down at first--try to blend in, not be noticed, and wait out the craziness, but after awhile, the waiting starts seeming like its own kind of death.
There is a feeling that comes to a pot of water on the fire, and if you have stirred anything over a fire, while being very calm and mindful, you can feel the change in the spoon right before it starts to bubble. It is as if the energy is rising, but so minutely that there is no evidence except that slight change in the quality of the bottom of the pot. As a person that always loved making jellies and puddings and candies, feeling that moment was a bit exciting. I turned more than one recipe of fudge into sugar by stirring when I should have been waiting, but I can recognize that little vibration when it starts.
These days we are seeing a bit of that vibration in the world. And there are a lot of pots on the fire; a lot of them need to not be stirred or the results will be worse for the outcomes. Figuring out what needs to be done for the good of all is trying for all of us.
We humans are a self centered species. And while half of us are smarter than the other half (don't be offended, that statement can be said about anything, richer, taller, fatter, there is a 50% mark on them all) smart doesn't have anything to do with wise: neither does religion or education or productivity or wealth or success. Right now, we need wisdom-the wisdom to figure out what is most important and what is least important; the wisdom to figure out if it is more important--to be the number one country in something or to have a best possible global team in which we all succeed. We need to have enough wisdom to know the difference between what is success for the long-term and what is just a blip on the monitor for that day.
Perhaps, what we need most is to decide who we are. What kind of species is Homo Sapien? Are we the future, or will the future be brighter for every other species--plant, animal, insect when we finally bring about our own extinction?
Are we mindless hordes of rampaging, slaughtering, thieves? Are we born with no other purpose than to extinguish those cultures we see as competitors? Are we truly just animals with an instinct to maintain our own genetic descendants at the expense of everyone and everything else? Have we no soul?
That was not a religious question. That was a philosophical question, and one we need to answer. We are conscious of right and wrong. We can think about the effects our actions have on everything around us. We are capable choosing goodness and kindness. We are capable of examining the long range effects of our actions. Why then do we go about our business (and business is personal, everything is personal, saying it isn't is like telling your mom you didn't break the lamp, the floor did) as if the only thing that matters is how much money or power or prestige you get from what you did.
"Look mom, I made the Fortune 400 again this year, and only had to screw over a small poor country" "We have access to the oil of those stupid people on the other side of the globe, and my soldiers did that in less than a year and we only had a few thousand casualties." The pseudo-quotes could go on and on. We have replacement words for when we do truly awful things that no wants to know about. We keep our conversations that are most true limited to those people we know that have already committed atrocities in the name of "winning" just like we have.
Replacement words--target for living being that we killed, plausible deniability for lying to everyone, acceptable losses for sure people died but no one important, casualties for soldiers that are no longer available for combat due to death, injury, capture or going missing, collateral damage for loss of lives that were not important enough to avoid killing, friendly fire for we either accidentally or on purpose killed one of our own soldiers, civilian casualties for innocent bystanders, an offensive for a violent attack by military, a police action for when we decide we want our soldiers to go into a place to protect our wants (not our rights) in another country but don't have any reason to declare a war.
No one wants to be the bad guy, except for those petty criminals that have already lost their souls, had them beaten out by a society that left them no other options for success but to be the baddest bad guy of all. But they are nothing next to our winners, our leaders, our powerful people. Those people that are on the covers of magazines, touted as role models, as important, as "movers and shakers" are not judged the same as the people going about their day to day lives trying to do what is right, trying to not hurt anyone or anything while helping our loved ones to be as successful as possible.
If one of the top dogs causes a small war in a country already on the brink of war, all in the name of acquiring that little country's natural resources--that is "good business". If little Tommy down the street bullies first graders out of their lunch money, he is a horrible child with obviously horrible parents. Why do we find excuses for the powerful people that kill, lie, steal, cheat, and bribe their way to more money. Why do we thank them for donating a little of that hijacked money back to the community in exchange for a tax deduction and a brass plaque on the wall.
Why do we buy the excuses for the horrible behavior of people that are more powerful in society than we are. Sure, some of us are scared, of losing what we have, of being the victim of those that are more vicious than we are, of change. But beyond fear, there are people out there lying to themselves. Making excuses for those actions that if done by someone from another country or culture would be a reason to utterly destroy them. Perhaps we need to change how we choose heroes and role models. Perhaps be need to spend some time in front of a mirror examining our own values.
Thursday, January 22, 2015
warmongering.
We all know from comic books and superheroes that the weapons industry is full of war mongers. It is supposed to be what they exist for. A warmonger is a person who advocates, endorses, or tries to precipitate war. Since a corporation is a person, any group can also be a person. I am going to assume that a war means not just a "declared war" but also police actions and peacekeeping actions in which people are killed and maimed for the safety of the world. Don't forget that every genocide that has occurred was for the "greater good" and the safety of the world.
So who is warmongering besides those most obviously vested in the profits of war? We know about the defense contractors, the mercenaries, the leaders of our armed forces---but who else?
Well, there are the people, the scared people: the people who are full of hate for people that are different than they are, the people that think the only way to stop change is to kill everyone that represents change to them. In our country, they are mostly white anglosaxon protestants. In other countries they look differently. They are the people that fear that the people at the bottom will quit being at the bottom and start rising above them. If inequality is the only thing giving you an advantage, you like inequality. The less advantage you get from that, the more desperate you become. One hundred and fifty years ago, it explained why poor, white sharecroppers in the south didn't want black people to be treated like humans. And today, it explains why poor people that have ancestors that got here as immigrants hundreds of years ago, don't want poor immigrants allowed in. The only thing safe about the status quo if you are almost at the bottom of the societal structure, is the certainty that you are not at the very bottom of that structure.
But where do the warmongers come in? Well, we have many groups these days that are dedicated to hate and to egging on the fear and paranoia of those that feel their position in society threatened. The woman that declared secret messages to Islamic people were embedded in the State of the Union Address this past week. Since she is part of a group that is concerned (read as "stone them all") with LGBT people--as in "they are destroying the American Family", what she said regarding messages to the Islamic community was odd--unless the goal is to use the current fear of the second largest religious group in the world to set off the fear, anger, rage, and craziness of the first largest religious group in the world.
Last time I checked, Islam was much less friendly to the LGBT communities than the average American. Of course, belonging to her group, she might have a skewed view of that. More likely is an agenda in which she riles up the larger groups of people, the ones that are fearful of all Islamic people due to the current threats of terrorism by violent Islamic extremists. It is ironic that the group she is trying to align the president with is a hate filled fundamentalist group, much like her own. The only similarities between the political stance of the president and the Islamic religion is his middle name.which means beautiful. There is no evidence of Islam in his family, his father's people had a religion that was related to both Christianity, Islam, and the original tribal African beliefs. The president went to catholic school and currently goes to church with his family, although I have no idea what, if any, religious beliefs he has.
So why try to align a pro-LGBT president with an anti-LGBT fundamentalist religious group that is currently at the top of the fear-provoking curve by the average (read average as you wish). Because it makes the president the enemy. And most average Americans are not in a panicky fear of the LGBT community. We have plenty of homophobes, and people whose minds can not wrap themselves around the idea that 1950's America had a lot of stuff that was never printed, only discussed in whispers and over fences. And, they want someone to make everyone be like them. They want to know what is normal. They want rules that eliminate anything gray....or rainbow. But the reality is, most families have somebody in the LGBT community that is also in their family. Some of those families have exiled their members that don't meet their specifications, but others have had to open their minds and hearts to other possibilities. In other words, pointing out that this president is not anti-LGBT isn't doing it for her group.
So how crazy does a person have to be to buy that crap? Well, fear makes normally sane people less sane. And people that are sitting on a load of hate and feeling hopeless and trapped by a system that will never let their loved ones succeed, at least not like the TV shows depict people succeeding, those folks have a low tipping point. But how is this warmongering? What is her goal. What could be her goal. We have a lot of activism going on right now. We have a lot of craziness going on right now. Which is which takes a lot of discernment.
I am using that old parent question, the one aimed at building empathy and ethics in a child.
"How would you like it if someone did that to you"
It's good for biting children and it's good for recognizing crazy agendas.
And really, why would a state of the union address contain a secret message? Is there a decoder ring for that?
So who is warmongering besides those most obviously vested in the profits of war? We know about the defense contractors, the mercenaries, the leaders of our armed forces---but who else?
Well, there are the people, the scared people: the people who are full of hate for people that are different than they are, the people that think the only way to stop change is to kill everyone that represents change to them. In our country, they are mostly white anglosaxon protestants. In other countries they look differently. They are the people that fear that the people at the bottom will quit being at the bottom and start rising above them. If inequality is the only thing giving you an advantage, you like inequality. The less advantage you get from that, the more desperate you become. One hundred and fifty years ago, it explained why poor, white sharecroppers in the south didn't want black people to be treated like humans. And today, it explains why poor people that have ancestors that got here as immigrants hundreds of years ago, don't want poor immigrants allowed in. The only thing safe about the status quo if you are almost at the bottom of the societal structure, is the certainty that you are not at the very bottom of that structure.
But where do the warmongers come in? Well, we have many groups these days that are dedicated to hate and to egging on the fear and paranoia of those that feel their position in society threatened. The woman that declared secret messages to Islamic people were embedded in the State of the Union Address this past week. Since she is part of a group that is concerned (read as "stone them all") with LGBT people--as in "they are destroying the American Family", what she said regarding messages to the Islamic community was odd--unless the goal is to use the current fear of the second largest religious group in the world to set off the fear, anger, rage, and craziness of the first largest religious group in the world.
Last time I checked, Islam was much less friendly to the LGBT communities than the average American. Of course, belonging to her group, she might have a skewed view of that. More likely is an agenda in which she riles up the larger groups of people, the ones that are fearful of all Islamic people due to the current threats of terrorism by violent Islamic extremists. It is ironic that the group she is trying to align the president with is a hate filled fundamentalist group, much like her own. The only similarities between the political stance of the president and the Islamic religion is his middle name.which means beautiful. There is no evidence of Islam in his family, his father's people had a religion that was related to both Christianity, Islam, and the original tribal African beliefs. The president went to catholic school and currently goes to church with his family, although I have no idea what, if any, religious beliefs he has.
So why try to align a pro-LGBT president with an anti-LGBT fundamentalist religious group that is currently at the top of the fear-provoking curve by the average (read average as you wish). Because it makes the president the enemy. And most average Americans are not in a panicky fear of the LGBT community. We have plenty of homophobes, and people whose minds can not wrap themselves around the idea that 1950's America had a lot of stuff that was never printed, only discussed in whispers and over fences. And, they want someone to make everyone be like them. They want to know what is normal. They want rules that eliminate anything gray....or rainbow. But the reality is, most families have somebody in the LGBT community that is also in their family. Some of those families have exiled their members that don't meet their specifications, but others have had to open their minds and hearts to other possibilities. In other words, pointing out that this president is not anti-LGBT isn't doing it for her group.
So how crazy does a person have to be to buy that crap? Well, fear makes normally sane people less sane. And people that are sitting on a load of hate and feeling hopeless and trapped by a system that will never let their loved ones succeed, at least not like the TV shows depict people succeeding, those folks have a low tipping point. But how is this warmongering? What is her goal. What could be her goal. We have a lot of activism going on right now. We have a lot of craziness going on right now. Which is which takes a lot of discernment.
I am using that old parent question, the one aimed at building empathy and ethics in a child.
"How would you like it if someone did that to you"
It's good for biting children and it's good for recognizing crazy agendas.
And really, why would a state of the union address contain a secret message? Is there a decoder ring for that?
Saturday, January 17, 2015
5 continents?
Let's start with "race is a social construct". The human genome both denies and confirms this. Are there any differences between people of different races at a genetic level? Yes! Are the differences within a race much more diverse than between races? Yes!
Things to remember. Race is not species.
Things to remember. Race is not species.
Biology definition of species; the major subdivision of a genus or subgenus, regarded as the basic category of biological classification, composed of related individuals that resemble one another, are able to breed among themselves, but are not able to breed with members of another species. (for pure curiosity, look at a comparison of chromosome counts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_organisms_by_chromosome_count http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_organisms_by_chromosome_count
Obviously from this chart, having the same number of chromosomes does not make it possible to reproduce. Hybrids are infertile, with exceptions of domestics from wild counterparts--perhaps these particular species are also a social construct.
So what is with the continents? Continents explain our races. (Antartica??? who knows--if humans ever lived there, they also died there.) Specifically, geographic isolation over a long period of time explains races. And yes, I know that there are more than 5 continents. At one time (an ice age), the mountains separating two groups of people were as effective as an ocean in separating people.
Think geologic time. There is evidence that humans have been around 190,000 years. The last Ice Age was from 110,000 to 12,000 years ago. That is not a "some time in there" time frame, but 102,000 thousand year time frame. History, the part we know via pictures and written word is about 6,000 years. That means the Ice Age was over for about 6,000 years before we recorded anything that made it to now. During our "modern, 6,000 years, we traveled pretty well. We find evidence of ships and artifacts from one place in very unexpected other places. Just plain determination and teamwork was not as efficient as mechanics and electronics, but effective none the less.
The Ice Age made our current Midwest winters look pretty mild. People weren't traveling very fast or very far. And it is likely, that teen pregnancy was more the rule than the exception during that 100,000 plus period of time, so a generation was more like 15 years than 20. That means over 6,000 generations passed with most people choosing mates from people that lived nearby.. That makes for a small gene pool, not as small as the cheetah gene pool--which will likely be the cause of their eventual extinction--but small enough to create some definite family resemblances. A combination of natural selection for those traits that make surviving in a freezing place versus surviving in a sunny, warm place alter who is more likely to survive long enough to reproduce. Never underestimate the importance of Vitamin D in reproduction. Add to that humanities tendency to characterize people as beautiful or ugly, desirable or untouchable and you have altered the gene pool again. A people that values hair color over intelligence, a society that likes short over tall, fat over thin, light over dark, all those things will create changes in the population of that location. And soon, after only 10 or 20 millennium, you have something we call race.
If you look at the people living in borderlands, places where the continents connected during that 6-12 thousand year period after the Ice Age (and yes, I am aware that the last Ice age is still sort of slowly melting away as proven by our glaciers still being present in places they weren't during the age of the dinosaurs, but I don't know that we humans really want to speed that up too much, we aren't prepared for the world the dinosaurs loved, we didn't genetically develop for it. If it is slow enough, we will, or at least we might survive it.) you will note that they have certain similarities, although those similarities involve a greater diversity than those people living in the areas more isolated. We see a preponderance of dominant gene phenomes with enough recessive phenomes appearing to make it obvious we are a heterogenous group. In areas without genetic isolation, people rapidly become more diverse in appearance and in genome. In places that have maintained their gene pool isolation, either by geography or by culture, you develop what racists frequently refer to as racial purity. A population homogenous in genome and displaying whatever recessive genes they consider to be superior--such as those all blond haired, ice-blue eyed children--no wait, that was the "Village of the damned". Just kidding, but the Nazi's knew what I was talking about.
But I'm sick of social constructs, thus the 5 continents. Five geographically isolated-mostly-land masses is all we have. Therefore, 5 continents: Africa, Australia, America, and Eurasia.and Antartica (because it is an isolated landmass and may one day prove to be our salvation from ourselves. If you think I have cheated anyone of there own continent, check a map, or better, an accurate globe.
And while we are eliminating social constructs, maybe we should make race and species synonymous--and leave it at human.
But I'm sick of social constructs, thus the 5 continents. Five geographically isolated-mostly-land masses is all we have. Therefore, 5 continents: Africa, Australia, America, and Eurasia.and Antartica (because it is an isolated landmass and may one day prove to be our salvation from ourselves. If you think I have cheated anyone of there own continent, check a map, or better, an accurate globe.
And while we are eliminating social constructs, maybe we should make race and species synonymous--and leave it at human.
Monday, January 12, 2015
I can't take it anymore--give me a real deal.
I'm gathering up my satellite TV boxes this morning and returning them. It isn't that I don't watch anything or that I think watching is bad for me or morally wrong or anything like that. It is the fact that once again, I'm facing a huge monthly bill rivaling my electric bill. I'm being charged 56.99 a month for channels, 35.00 a month for equipment, 1.68 for other charges, adjustments and taxes. Originally it was 42.00 a month total. but that was because when someone comes onboard, they get specials, they get rebates, they get coupons. they get freebies. As those go away, the price rises.
If I call them, they will offer me three free months of a movie channel. If that doesn't entice me to stay, they will offer me three free months of three movie channels---then they will find another six month discount bringing me back to only 10$ over my starting price. I could do that forever, they get their 1 month to 6 months of full price then discount me again.
But the actuality of the call to get the price back down, the time on hold, he number of phone transfers, the number of times I get cut off or some new and desperate telephone sales person decides to threaten me if I try to get out of an already expired contract, it makes me nauseous. I put it off. Thus, the six months at full price.
And what is it I'm being offered at this nice ridiculous price? Channels 1-9999 as far as the guide is concerned. But the reality is, I have access to 165 different channels unless I want to get pay-per-view (not included in my bill, it raises it quickly if I use it)
Of those 165 channels, 11 are available locally if I get a good digital antennae. 50 are shopping and ads, 17 are news and weather, 16 religion, etc. In other words, I'm going to miss BBC, and AMC. Thank god for computer sites for these networks. Most of the escapist crap I watch is on broadcast anyway. And while I will miss the DVR, I'll live. In 3 months I can buy one of my own with the money I've saved turning off the satellite-- if I miss it that much.
What do I want? I want a Cable or Satellite company that gives me complete Ala Carte. I only want to pay for what I watch. I don't want to have to go past 20 pages of Pay-Per-View listings to see what is on TV. I don't want to see stuff that is not available to me. I REALLY don't want to pay to have access to all the crappy stations that do nothing but try to sell me their junk. I don't want to see line after line of the same show available. And I don't want to be offered a special deal for a few months. I want a good price. I want a price that makes sense. If I watch about 2 hours of TV per day, then I don't want to pay $1.50 per hour to watch what is available for free. There are very few great TV offerings. I enjoy some of the series. But most of us just turn on the tube for the noise when we are alone, to mindlessly relax for a minute before going to bed, to escape.
I can do all that for $7.00 a month with Netflix. I can get most of my preferred shows with a digital antennae or off the internet. I guess the question to the company is, does it really pay that well to install your equipment, keep a fully staffed group of people whose job is to keep you from cancelling when they lose their discounts, and reinstall them again when they come back in 2 years after going through the same thing with the other local TV access company? Back and forth, back and forth, and with better choices for accessing exactly what we want without satellite and cable companies available every year. Figure out what you really need to charge to provide the service your customers want. Leave the prices alone. Make them honest, none of those add on installation, equipment, tax fee surprises. None of those sudden increases. None of that crappy double-talk to convince people that they don't want to cancel, they want three free months. How about an honest price for an honest service.
And I know what you are paying your people, so who is raking in all that money?
Late note--4 hours after I cancelled, an earnest telephone customer service representative told me he could get me 3 free months of my preferred movie channel. When I told him my starting price and my current price, he looked it up, then finally after thirty minutes of add-ons, offered me a year of 37.00 a month for my current package with all the movie channels for the full year and a 200$ visa gift card, bringing my price for all that to 25$ a month. Did I take it? I was tempted. But at some point, enough is enough. Quit screwing your customers in the first place. Sell us what we want at a reasonable price.
If I call them, they will offer me three free months of a movie channel. If that doesn't entice me to stay, they will offer me three free months of three movie channels---then they will find another six month discount bringing me back to only 10$ over my starting price. I could do that forever, they get their 1 month to 6 months of full price then discount me again.
But the actuality of the call to get the price back down, the time on hold, he number of phone transfers, the number of times I get cut off or some new and desperate telephone sales person decides to threaten me if I try to get out of an already expired contract, it makes me nauseous. I put it off. Thus, the six months at full price.
And what is it I'm being offered at this nice ridiculous price? Channels 1-9999 as far as the guide is concerned. But the reality is, I have access to 165 different channels unless I want to get pay-per-view (not included in my bill, it raises it quickly if I use it)
Of those 165 channels, 11 are available locally if I get a good digital antennae. 50 are shopping and ads, 17 are news and weather, 16 religion, etc. In other words, I'm going to miss BBC, and AMC. Thank god for computer sites for these networks. Most of the escapist crap I watch is on broadcast anyway. And while I will miss the DVR, I'll live. In 3 months I can buy one of my own with the money I've saved turning off the satellite-- if I miss it that much.
What do I want? I want a Cable or Satellite company that gives me complete Ala Carte. I only want to pay for what I watch. I don't want to have to go past 20 pages of Pay-Per-View listings to see what is on TV. I don't want to see stuff that is not available to me. I REALLY don't want to pay to have access to all the crappy stations that do nothing but try to sell me their junk. I don't want to see line after line of the same show available. And I don't want to be offered a special deal for a few months. I want a good price. I want a price that makes sense. If I watch about 2 hours of TV per day, then I don't want to pay $1.50 per hour to watch what is available for free. There are very few great TV offerings. I enjoy some of the series. But most of us just turn on the tube for the noise when we are alone, to mindlessly relax for a minute before going to bed, to escape.
I can do all that for $7.00 a month with Netflix. I can get most of my preferred shows with a digital antennae or off the internet. I guess the question to the company is, does it really pay that well to install your equipment, keep a fully staffed group of people whose job is to keep you from cancelling when they lose their discounts, and reinstall them again when they come back in 2 years after going through the same thing with the other local TV access company? Back and forth, back and forth, and with better choices for accessing exactly what we want without satellite and cable companies available every year. Figure out what you really need to charge to provide the service your customers want. Leave the prices alone. Make them honest, none of those add on installation, equipment, tax fee surprises. None of those sudden increases. None of that crappy double-talk to convince people that they don't want to cancel, they want three free months. How about an honest price for an honest service.
And I know what you are paying your people, so who is raking in all that money?
Late note--4 hours after I cancelled, an earnest telephone customer service representative told me he could get me 3 free months of my preferred movie channel. When I told him my starting price and my current price, he looked it up, then finally after thirty minutes of add-ons, offered me a year of 37.00 a month for my current package with all the movie channels for the full year and a 200$ visa gift card, bringing my price for all that to 25$ a month. Did I take it? I was tempted. But at some point, enough is enough. Quit screwing your customers in the first place. Sell us what we want at a reasonable price.
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