General Dislike and General Despising

People think I’m easier on the Democrats because I like them.  Uhm, no, I don’t.  I just despise what their opponents do, and that tends to seem to let them off the hook, but only in comparison.  

Press On It

Anyone miss me? :)

The things we accept at face value often fall apart when we press on them even a little.  I thought about this in all the traveling I’ve done lately.  You see these little placards in hotel rooms about all the “Earth responsible water and detergent savings” initiatives at hotels.  How it will save so much if you hang your towels, etc. up so they can be used again.  In my experience, either the hotels don’t REALLY care, or they don’t do any follow up.  Because in what I’ve seen traveling to a lot of different places, it doesn’t work.  Your towel doesn’t get hung up.  It gets replaced with a fresh one, and the one you hung up gets washed.  Why?  I can only speculate that the (largely) immigrants who provide maid service at many hotels—immigrants who are poorly educated, maybe illiterate (at least for English)—are in any case a bit overworked.  So whether it’s can’t read, won’t read, don’t have time to read, or maybe wouldn’t care if could and did read, it’s easier to just replace the towel.  But my main feeling is that if it was REALLY important to the hotel and its management, the maids would be trained, with follow-up.

What did you think, that they just used the hair dryer to dry the towel so it wouldn’t feel wet when you touched it? :)

Spank Daddy

A prime reason the country is in bad shape because you, the citizen, probably know WAY more about:

Your favorite sports and sports teams

Your house and homes in general

Your car and cars in general

Shopping and bargains and stores

Clothes

Pets

Food

Grilling and barbecuing

Drama

Video games

TV, internet, social media, and entertainment and diversion in general

Making money

You get what you focus on, because that’s what you consider important.  And what you don’t focus on gets dictated to you.  And then you claim you are “powerless,” to do anything about it.  Which converges to be self-fulfilling prophecy, manufactured reality, and dictated result.

Absolutely Speaking

“I am done.”

“We are through, forever.”

“My biological father made his choice to not be a part of my life.  I don’t care about him anymore.”

“I’ll never be like that again.”

Oh, humans, and their funny words.  Spoken into the ether, into the universe, into eternity. 

The ether, the universe, and eternity all laugh back.

When it comes to relationships, nothing is so certain as uncertainty.  In fact, what becomes unusual is when someone actually fulfills, to the letter, what they say.

Because:

You probably aren’t done.  You might be momentarily frustrated, furious, hurt, or something else, but when you calm down, you’ll likely be back in (sometimes illogically or even incredibly) for another round.

Forever is so long your puny and time-bound consciousness can’t even adequately conceive it.  But it seems to make you feel better to thunder about finality, although disinterested observers probably only think it makes you look silly.

Of course you care about your father.  No matter how bad or absent he has been, he’s your father.   You would forgive him a thousand times for a chance at acceptance, at connection, at love.

Those who issue guarantees about the future spit in the wind, and often set themselves up to be liars. But we seem to have a desire for ourselves of the fortitude of futuristic pronouncements, and so the solitary, biological, limited-senses, mortal unit presumes to pronounce what he or she cannot even see, let alone have certainty of power to determine!

Ever get the feeling that otherworldly beings might somewhere be chuckling endlessly at us? :)

Not Failed Yet, But Failing

We are failing as a people.  Because we cling to illusion, to our emotionally anchored beliefs and false “facts.” Because, in Jack Nicholson’s character’s words, we “can’t handle the truth.”

And so the climate swirls in changes, summer arrives bizarrely early, the rhythms of nature are perverted, the economic guts of the country are eaten out. 

But hey, the game’s on.  Return to the anesthetic. 

Correcting the B.S. Machine

The tremendous amount of misinformation about “energy” being infused into the media outlets:  I often wonder how much  the transmitters really believe, how much is just fed to them, how much they do just to deliberately deceive and deflect, and how much they do solely because it’s their job. 

For instance, the current drivel, pushed by Levin and his ilk, about “the nation’s energy being controlled by the government,” and “nothing has been done by this administration, even when they controlled all the government.”

And to heap bizarre absurdity and outrageous falsehood upon bizarre absurdity and outrageous falsehood, the duplicitous then accuse others of being duplicitous.

Let’s just look at one small piece of ONE of the many assertions:  “Control of the government.”  Leaving aside what government really “controls” in a capitalistic economy dominated by wealthy and powerful corporations, “control’ of the (national) government means what exactly?  This current administration, of which I am no great fan, has found opposition in the judicial branch, especially at the top, so one of the main three branches has never been in its corner.  When its party “controlled” the Congress, the other of three branches, it didn’t really, because the vagaries of Senate rules allow a minority of 41 senators to block anything significant they want.  It is MUCH easier to obstruct and to subvert than it is to actually accomplish something.

The purveyors of disinformation are banking on people not knowing how their government “works.” 

And so the republic suffers in its ignorance.  And we get mindless clamoring for oil pipelines that will create few jobs, bring little oil to use here, do little to change prices, and, most importantly in our disconnected-from-results illusory culture, have no consideration of the perpetuation of how we poison ourselves and our biosphere.  And avoids TRANSFORMATION to a better world, to solve the problems of the present and future.  No, we would rather reach for the “easy” solutions offered by the visionless, the corrupt, the greedy.  Pay no attention to the climate effects of more oil. Particularly pay no attention to the incredibly polluting extraction methods of this “new” tar sand/shale oil supply.  Pay no attention to how heavily corrosive it is.  Pay no attention to how, when it spills--and it WILL spill, in both pipelines and tankers--it can’t really be cleaned up in any effective manner.  There is a 40 mile stretch of the Kalamazoo River in Michigan which is still off limits to use because of a “small” spill of this “new” oil TWO YEARS AGO.

And don’t find out what pair of brothers have their hands in many aspects of the proposed pipeline.

And don’t figure out that the price of gas is in large part a reflection of hedge funds, speculators, futures contracts, and international demand.  Or that there are taxpayer subsidies for refining, not just drilling.  Or that refined oil is our biggest manufactured export.

And don’t realize that climate change, unchecked, will cost, from weather devastation alone, greater than WW1, WW2, the Great Depression, and the Cold War, COMBINED.

Americans have become exceedingly proficient in straining at gnats and swallowing elephants.  And, of course, accepting most of the illusions that come their way.

The Ancients

The ancient philosophers took a great deal more opportunities to truly THINK than we usually do.  Consider, in this political season of hyperbole but without further comment, this quote from Aristotle’s Ethics, on what people should do in their behavior and their thinking “in order to become happy or to avoid unhappiness, the principal emphasis being placed on the cultivation of the virtues, both moral and intellectual, although other goods are also recognized as necessary for happiness, such as wealth, health, friends, and a just society in which to live.”

Our challenge is to holistically see and value all the parts of what he said, and not just pick out pieces.