Remember The Others

“The free must remember the forgotten.”  Amnesty International

On this Independence Weekend, take a moment to think about all those who do not have your freedom.  The forgotten prisoners of conscience across the world.  There but for the grace of happenstance and fortune go you.

Millennials And The Future of Uncool

The Millenials should not get too smug.  They are not immune to succeeding generational divides.  The aspects they think are cool or hip and set them apart today—whether it be tattoos, body piercings, or just fascination with phone apps—will not be so much to the generations that follow them.

It’s the pattern of chronology. J

"Diary"

Is “love” really love when it is selfish?

“You’re mine,” we hear supposed lovers say to each other.

Possessive.

“You are what I want.  You belong to ME.”

And then we wonder—actually, we DON’T think enough to wonder—why the relationships we have often become destructive, hurtful wrecks that disrupt and sometimes shatter lives.

A selfish society of individuals functions poorly in relationships.  A society of people concerned with trying to make others’ lives better, on the other hand, would be transformative, both at the personal level and the societal level.

Thoughts that came to me when listening to the David Gates’ and Bread’s song “Diary.”  The last two lines make the song.

Miss Much? :)

The clamor because I didn't post here on Sunday must be in dog hearing range, because I haven't noticed it, lol.

I was just going to point out, relating to the P&H postings:  Grover Cleveland was nearly 50 when he courted the 20 year old who would become his wife. 

Cultural settings, and, well, times, make for interesting observations.

The Oppression of the Individual

Margaret Thatcher famously declared in 1987: “There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families.” Revolting to think she is idolized, as that hyper-individualistic worldview has brought ruin for 500 years.

Don’t Hear Anything Bad About This One

While I do not know that I necessarily ascribe to the “Messenger” aspect of the Baha’i Faith, its “oneness of religions”  stance is appealing.   Bahai’i core principles:

Oneness of humanity and dignity of every human being

Freedom from prejudice

Equality of women and men

Spiritual solution to economic problems

Commitment to education and the search for truth

Harmony of faith, reason, and science

Highest moral standards

Improve the material, social, and spiritual life of each community

One of their proverbs stood out for me:

“Breathe not the sins of others so long as thou art thyself a sinner.”

I sure fail at that one now and then and need to do better!

Karma To Me

It would have been my mom’s birthday today. Guess it still is.

How many times I hurt my parents thoughtlessly and unintentionally, so unaware and self-focused I was.  I didn’t care enough to know how my words and actions might affect them.  Like they didn’t have feelings, or if they did, were so tough nothing could affect them.  How childish I was, even as a near “man.”

I thought about that recently.  Because now it has been my turn with my children.

Satire Confronts Myth

“I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way.  I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.”  Jon Stewart, “The Daily Show”

Unrooted

Young men often don’t know how to act.  They think because they speak/write the wildest, craziest, sickest, misogynistic, most demeaning things in their online games that they can say anything via FB message, or other quick social media.

People would be appalled at what is said.  Specific public figures are wished to have some awful affliction or die in the worst ways. 

And they see nothing wrong with saying those things either.

We probably have a contributing lack of economic opportunity problem.  We also either have a social decorum problem, or we have a lot of malicious behavior underneath the surface of too many—and all that says for the potential explosions in waiting.

In Form

If Americans continue to get “informed” about political candidates from 30 second to 1 minute ads in the month up to the election, they will continue to vote on emotion and distortion, and not from reasoned fact and careful consideration.

The political scientist in me looks at the data and says the odds are against good sense prevailing in the 2014 elections.  That I should not work myself up and cause more stress, expend time and energy when there is none to spare, or risk more friendships and other relationships.

Then I look at my daughter, and know there’s no letting myself off the hook.

Even if failure comes, and malevolence, ignorance, delusion, fear, selfishness, evasion, and escapism prevail yet again, I must be able to look at her and say I REALLY did what I could toward something different.

And know that, when enough individuals are determined like that, change becomes possible.

Parentis

There is no love—and there is no worry—like that of a parent for their child.  Of any age.

Emotional, Knee-Jerk Reactions that Feed Preconceptions

There is a large element of “the Left” or “Progressives” or “American Liberals” that is just as ready to be irrationally offended on their emotional issues as the “Right” and “Tea Partiers” and “Conservatives” have been on theirs.  In this case, the issue is “assault.”

Let’s be clear in this mindless chattery we live in:  Assault, including sexual assault, is unfortunately prevalent in too many places in our stressed and barely connected society.  But assault by strangers?  Still rare.  Yet do all the incensed chatterers on the airwaves and in print and online make a distinction and avoid misconceptions?  Uhm…rarely.

Frankly Speaking

Barney Frank, recently retired congressman, says that conservatives have belied their “conservatism” because they decry big government but want government to regulate what we read, what we smoke or ingest, who we have sex with, who we can marry.  

You know, big, intrusive government issues.

So much of the human condition is about this mad desire of humans to control the world, and by implication, the words and actions, of those around them.

Often by the very souls who spout (or shout) the words “freedom” and "independence."

Must mean the freedom and independence for everyone to do what those souls dictate. :)

Relation Ships Passing

All the words are said as they gather at the grave site: “Let’s make sure to get together some time where death is not involved.  Someone should not have to die to call us to the same spot.”  Everyone assures that they will, that they will make the time to get together sometime outside where a family member or friend has died.

And it is the way of this frenetic life that they won’t.  For many hundreds of years now, this Western culture, and in particular, this American one, has not valued relationships enough.  It even nearly stamped out the culture here that did.

And there is little that could make us poorer as a result.

High School Lows

The de-emphasizing (the mildest or most generous term I could think of) of the middle class in favor of the wealthy is in evidence at my high school’s alumni basketball tourney.  Once a crowded, boisterous, broadly supported fundraiser, it is now a ghost of its former self.  A wealthy alum, who gives to the school, has his wife (who didn’t even attend the school), run the tournament.  She banned all alcohol, including the beer garden, “for liability purposes,” and because “it shows a poor example to children.” She designs the brackets herself, but only releases them less than a week before the tourney, making impossible the return of those who must schedule flights.

The result?  It is minimally attended, gets few spectators or non-players, doesn’t even raise a tenth of the money it used to, the sense of community and camaraderie are hollowed out, and even general contributions to the school are down (forcing the school to rely more and more on a small number of wealthy donors).

Oh, the school now has a new gym and a new football field, compliments of this wealthy donor.  Yet has far less “glue” and community than when it had an old gym and no football field.  And far less enrollment.

I wonder how much people think about the second and third order effects of emphasizing one class and dismissing another.

I guess with the hollowing out of the middle class, and their resultant fewer and fewer “spare” resources, maybe there wasn’t much of a choice.

Some Last Gasps In A Cultural Battle

A logic trap, not original to me, on the refusal to do business with homosexuals:

Gay man: “I will come into your establishment.” 

Refuser: “Don’t. I’m not going to serve you. I don’t even want you coming in the door.”

Gay man: “It’s okay.  I won’t be gay for an hour or so.”

Refuser: “No, you can’t choose not to be gay.”

Gay man: “Did you hear what you just said?”

Aching Voids

Even now, over a year later, it can wash over me without warning.

My mother’s not here anymore.

You tell yourself to get over it, be an adult, it’s all a part of the life cycle.

It doesn’t help.

Instead, a tsunami of sorrow floods over me.

That nothing and no one can console.

She used to tell me how much she missed her own mother after she was gone, about how she felt, well, OLDER than she should afterwards.

I couldn’t relate then.

I seem to relate just fine now.

Real Life Mr. Potters Are Having a Merry Christmas

My retired uncle and aunt live in a once-thriving upper working class/lower middle class neighborhood, the same one they have for nearly 50 years.  The transformation of the economy from being middle class centric to upper class centric has unfortunately also transformed their neighborhood.  The good jobs the people who lived there once held are largely gone.  Rental houses now dominate.  The neighborhood pool has closed, and the neighborhood association has dissolved.

My uncle did everything right.  He bought used cars not new, paid off his little house early and never “traded up,” invested in the stock market, and although he had a decent pension and Social Security, he saved enough money in addition to live comfortably, raise three daughters, go on vacations, and be able to enjoy his retirement.

Except that picture is marred.  He now sees, where perhaps he didn’t before, that if you take care of yourself only—if you aren’t helping to support, sustain, and fight for a healthy economy and social structure for the rest of people, ultimately it won’t matter because of all the stress around you.

That’s the way it is—unless you’re super rich.  Then you can live—courtesy of the decisions you support that gut the places like my uncle lives—in a gated community, with armed guards, amid a purposely ignorant life of relative seclusion and disconnection at others’ expense.

Potter may not have won in Frank Capra’s fictional holiday classic, but his ideological brethren are well winning in real life. 

Just like the same Roman wealthy did. Until they could no longer escape the results of theirs and their predecessors' myopically selfish decisions.

The Fast Are Furious

There is SO much that can be said about the fast food strikes that were launched across the country recently.  Here’s just two selected points:

1   The workers were invigorated a bit by the fact that their ranks have been bolstered by better educated people who have been marginalized economically in this post Great Recession “recovery.” These people remember what it was like to be something approaching middle class.

2   The corporatized media has, as expected, given short shrift.  But so have most fast food restaurant attendees, even those whose economic status would be similar and whose goals would in theory be nearly congruent.

In an over-individualized culture of disconnection and social in-camaraderie, the isolation strategy of the wealthy class seems to be working splendidly. 

Sexual “Excesses” By The Few: Criminal! Poverty and Squalor For The Many: Acceptable.

A Nebraska sensation right now is a woman who supposedly prostituted herself and her largely willing 13-14 year old daughter.  The woman will probably serve close to 40 or 50 years in prison. 

Aside from ignoring history, and aside from the infantile societal infatuation with severely punishing sexual proclivity among the biologically able (the alleged main “client” in the case also faces prison time), as well as punishing what one does with one’s own gene pool, there is another issue.

The woman and her daughter were destitute, homeless.  Society can work itself into a lather for one thing but not about the other. 

Selective moral outrage is not a pretty sight.