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It's done! Time for a new approach.

10/14/2020

The very fact that one man can, through just his own words, cast enough doubt to destroy the credibility of our election system tells me that he is not the problem. The problem is we who refuse to admit how antiquated, decrepit, obsolete and broken our entire system really is.
Yes, let’s vote him out of office if we can. But let’s not for one moment think that we will have solved much of anything if we do. Congress failing to pass another “stimulus bill” is another sign of how run-down our central government has become. No, it won’t collapse overnight, .... but it’s time to turn our attention away from trying to fix it and toward other ways to help each other through these challenging times without it. We CAN and we ARE already doing this. We just have to open our minds, actively seek out new ways, connect with others, and act.

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Finally, Finally, Finally! (part two)

8/11/2019

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Just a few days ago there was a news report about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who gave a speech. In it, she made a "... direct appeal to racists and white supremacists ― and her message was simple: “Come back.”

I urge you to take a few minutes and watch it.

For years, I've been saying that these people, these mass shooters, etc. are not "monsters" or "mentally ill" but are actual human beings, very similar to you and me, but pushed to the brink by cultural forces that we have been either unable or unwilling to acknowledge. I have literally ached to get other people to understand that this is the way to work on this problem (connect with them, somehow, rather than push them away), but for most people, change is difficult.

Just like prisoners who are forced to stay in solitary confinement, or residents of racially segregated neighborhoods in perpetual poverty, people under harsh conditions are very likely to experience debilitating trauma. We have just refused to acknowledge that white men can be stuck in a similar situation, possibly through a gross misunderstanding of "male privilege."

Over time, given the chance, people hurt in this way will seek out something that helps them feel empowered again. Join a gang, perhaps. Or join a white supremacy group online. Whatever is available and seems to resonate. Then, at least a few of them will finally build up such rage and despair that they see no way out but to find some source of power (in their otherwise powerless lives) such as a gun, and "take their anger out" on those who they see as responsible. It could be members of a rival gang, or even just random members "of society" around them.

I posted the above link to Alexandria O-C's speech on Facebook, then wrote the following two comments below:

"Finally! We are just starting to hear some of the themes that will make a difference in all this. This is about that four letter word that seems to make people cringe so often: Love. This is about a culture wide problem with Love - speaking about love, practicing love that reaches way beyond the romantic, finding the forlorn, the forgotten, the isolated, the shamed and humiliated ones, and figuring out how to connect to them with Love. This is the hard work we are faced with."

And:

"A devastating side effect of patriarchy is how it made manhood conditional. If you are a girl and grow up to be a woman, we don't say you have to prove you are a woman. After puberty you are.
But we say to boys you have to prove that your are a man, or else you are a "loser." We have shamed men into accepting that violence is necessary to settle differences. Are you tough enough? What does tough mean when we ask that? Tough enough to beat the living sh-t out of someone who has offended you? Is that what it takes to be a man? If you can't or won't resort to that, does that make you a loser?
Then we turn around and shame men when they resort to violence. We call them monsters or worse. Look, we can't have it both ways! This is one of the many foundations of today's epidemic of violence."

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Finally, Finally, Finally! (part one)

8/11/2019

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On the radio just the other day, there was a story that compared mass shootings to suicides. Once there is one, other "copycat" events are more likely to take place, just like suicides. As if they are contagious. And most mass shooters have no exit plan - they expect to die.

When I heard this, I thought, "Well, at last!" Ever since Columbine, I knew in my gut that these events were really suicides with an added component. The despondent person does not only feel hopeless and powerless, but also enraged and furious that nobody will listen to their plight in life. They are so angry that they decide to "take as many people down with them" as possible in order to "get back at" the world that has hurt them so deeply, and "teach everyone a lesson" in an attempt to force others to "wake up" and listen.

The problem is, for years all the talk has been about guns and "mental illness." Both of those arguments are way off base. This is not about guns. Ok, certainly guns make it a whole lot easier to kill a lot of people in a short amount of time. But trying to restrict the sale of guns by government action is largely a hopeless task. Just as we have shown that government action to stop the flow of illegal drugs is a colossal failure, so will it be with guns. How do you define an "assault weapon?" A recent shooting involved a gun classified as a "pistol" but had a barrel added just short of being classified as a "rifle" and 100 round ammunition magazine attached. So, we could be arguing about that forever.

And what constitutes "mental illness?" Is suicide ideation (having the idea that one might like to commit suicide) constitute mental illness? What about the millions of other people with some kind of mental health issue (on meds, been hospitalized, self-harming, etc.)? How are we going to keep track of ever single one of them, provide documentation for everyone to prevent them from committing mass murder with a gun? Impossible. Will never happen, I guarantee you.

That leaves the real reason this is happening, which I will discuss in a subsequent post.

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The next revolution

7/22/2019

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I just read this article on sex offenders from Huffington Post.

It really left me feeling almost unable to breathe. I had a mixture of despair and anger. I'm a very empathetic person. I have vivid imagination. What if I were in their shoes? What would life be like if I was "branded" like this and ended up homeless, with little or no income and no place to go?

It was a horrible feeling!

And angry that we as a society have created an "Us versus Them" or "Good guys versus bad guys" kind of dichotomy where people "wall them selves off" from a minority because of unwarranted fears. I feel like crying out "fix this!" but I know all too well how people can let their fears run away with them, and not stop to understand what's really going on.

So, this is one of the next steps in the revolution of love. There are more, of course. But if 900,000 people (mostly men) are being mistreated this way, then it's time to find a path through our fears and out the other side. I don't know what the exact way is, but perhaps restorative justice methods are used to reconnect us with each other after someone has stepped out of line.

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WW III is something completely different

1/15/2019

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There was a guest on On Point Radio this morning. A woman who wrote a book about what she calls "Surveillance Capitalism." There is a link to the web page HERE.

This really made me stop and think. What is the way forward? Is there an upside to this? This amounts to a "shadow government" - not elected or chartered in the classic sense of government, but government in that it it attempts to govern us by other means.

If climate change is going to go ballistic in 15 years and a few billion people are still burning coal to stay warm around the world, will we find a way to change that? Can something like Facebook (or other social media) be a tool in changing behavior of billions of people within a short time? Is it valid to use big data social media manipulation to achieve a desired result? Does the ends justify the means? This is a heavy question! Right now, surveillance capitalism is just that: a way to make money selling our information to businesses to get us to buy things from big companies.

I'd be interested in your thoughts.

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Not All Men?

10/23/2018

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I was born and raised a white man. I hear remarks about white men these days all the time. White men have privilege. The system is designed to benefit white men. And so on. These days, I wear dresses in public, so I’m not exactly conforming to the typical “cis gender” white man, but that’s how I was raised and socialized.

So, yes. I do have privilege that others don’t have. And yes, the “system” seems to have been designed that way. And I fully acknowledge that many, many people who are not white or not men have been and still are disempowered. People have been hurt, both economically and physically under this system. There has been pain and there have been deaths.

And I stand ready to listen, and have been listening for a long time by now, to the stories of those who have lived with the injustices, the poverty, the lack of opportunities, and the physical and sexual abuse or the threat of those things. And I want to help change things so that everyone can thrive and be free of these harms and threats of harm.

What’s bothering me is the blame and hate speech I hear directed at white men. I could guess as to why this is going on, but as I think it’s wrong for someone else to speculate about what I think or what my motives are, I will refrain from doing the same to others. All I will say is that there have been some very public examples of white men behaving in very hurtful ways (such as marching with torches and disparaging Jews), so that is an image that sticks in the mind. If that is how you see white men, then it stands to reason that you would be upset. The thing is, I, as a white man, was extremely upset by that display as well.

What I think is hiding under the surface is the fact that we are all, ... all races, all genders, all economic classes, ... are all very diverse groups of people. To me, #NotAllMen is a legitimate complaint, just as #NotAllWomen would be legitimate if I made some generalization like “Women are manipulative gold diggers.” Ouch! Although “men” might at first appear to be some kind of unified fraternity of people who scheme together in secret to massively to exploit everyone else, I can assure you that that’s far from the case. In fact, I have little or no knowledge or access to the places and people who have seemed to do the most damage. I don’t hang out in bars or corporate board rooms and some of the things that are done there scare me just as much (or nearly as much, if you want) as they probably scare you. I had no idea that Bill Cosby, for example, was doing what he did behind closed doors, or that Harvey Weiinstein was doing similar things. The extent of it just floors me. Perhaps I am naive. That's one of my faults, I guess. I always expect the best in people.

The point is, I’m convinced that if we want to really improve things then we all have to find ways to stop blaming each other for what has happened and find ways to build bridges and work together. After all, most of us alive today were born into this world where the racism, the sexism, and the classism already existed and ran deep in our culture in complex and often invisible ways. We marinated in it from the time we were small children, without knowing what was going on. In fact, we were all brought up in a world where we humans abused the natural world around us for our own benefit, for that matter. In a sense we’re all “privileged” in that we have the means to dig up or cut down and destroy whatever we want of the world around us, just to get our food, our goods, our energy, etc. We can just flip on a light switch, or buy a frozen dinner at the supermarket, without a thought about the impact we’re having.

I think the ultimate lesson to be learned through these hard times is this: We are being challenged to love each other and love the planet on which our lives are based. And not just to feel that love, but to express it, to work to show it, to resist any means to impede it. For, ultimately, I’m convinced that this is really the only way to get through this.

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Rethinking the definition of Government

7/3/2018

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You might not think of Apple Computer (now aka "Apple, Inc.") as "the government" but I do! It governs me just as much as any "official" government does. Why would I say that? Essentially because of how inescapable their control over my life is at this point.

Look, there are only two computer operating systems: Windows from Microsoft and Mac, from Apple. For phones and tablets, again there are only two: Google's Android and Apple's iOS. Theoretically, I have a choice. But in practice, there is not much choice.

A good analogy is the two party system, Republicans and Democrats. I don't happen to like either of them because of their strong ties to big money interests. But what choice do I have? OK, I vote for Democrats usually, because they slightly better align with my interests. But overall, they don't really represent most of what I would like. Sure, I may be an outlier in many ways, but only two choices? Give me a break! This not democracy according to my opinion.

The same goes for Apple Computer. Over the years since Steve Jobs passed away, the company has changed from a "high quality" product company into a "chasing the market" company. So, do I have a choice? It's a free market, right? Well, it's not that simple. To change over, I'd have to make a significant investment in equipment. I'd need to spend thousands of dollars I don't have at the moment. But in addition, there would be the time to learn the ins and outs of entirely different software systems. I can get around inside an Apple system in my sleep, practically. When it comes to Windows, I'm all thumbs, confusion, and ignorance. With the deep level I use technology, this "learning curve" would have a significant impact on my life.

So, I'm stuck. If Apple doesn't have a feature or fix a bug, I'm stuck with it. If Apple comes out with a new product and renders a previous one obsolete, I'm screwed, ... if I can't afford the new one. Sure, I can write to them to ask for changes, fixes, etc., but that's just like writing to my congressional representative. Apple doesn't reply, and my congressional representative sends a form letter that mentions topic I raised in the most general of terms. Not much different, really. I'm just one of millions upon millions of people trying to have an impact on a centralized power. Good luck to me!

I vote for Democrats (mostly) in elections in November. I "vote" for Apple Computer each time I purchase a product from them or download the latest version of one of their systems (Mac OS or iOS). You can rant all you want about Donald Trump threatening to create a totalitarian system. In my opinion, I already live in one, almost, when it comes to my technology platform..

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And now, a break from all the serious stuff, ...

6/12/2018

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For weeks by now, I've been thinking of creating and posting some new videos. I had plenty of ideas, but nothing clicked. Then, yesterday afternoon, I got this one idea that was simple enough to produce right away. And within 24 hours of concept it's done! It's here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUxc_TjAHl8 and on Vimeo if you prefer that site (somewhat less cluttered) https://vimeo.com/274735817.

Enjoy!

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I can't believe, ...

6/6/2018

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You know what’s most discouraging? The number of people who go to the grocery store without something as simple as a reusable bag. We outlawed plastic bags in Arlington, so now I see people walking out of the store with their groceries in paper bags instead. Sure they’re recyclable, but it takes trees, water, and energy to make them.

The price of gasoline was low for the past few years. So did people learn? No, they bought bigger vehicles. Trucks & SUVs. Now the price is going up again. I can’t believe that most people just don’t seem to learn this!

President Trump is nothing compared to this. This stuff is what really scares me.

Just to be sure, I looked it up. This is one of a number of sites with a good analysis.

https://ecomyths.org/2014/05/27/myth-paper-bags-are-greener-than-plastic/

They say, reusable bags have a bigger environmental impact, BUT you after a few times for plastic, or over 100 times for cotton, you’re ahead. Yes, I've used my cotton bags over 100 times easily. And now that the handles on one have almost worn through, I'm going to sew new handles on. The rest of the bag is fine. I can even wash it, but in cold water only! I once washed one in warm water and ended up with a miniature shopping bag (the shrinkage was astounding!)

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May 22nd, 2018

5/22/2018

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Back in April, I read this news story on NPR. It's about Republicans feeling besieged these days, in spite of having control of both houses, the presidency, the Supreme Court (it can be argued), the majority of governors, etc.

I suspected as much. The story only confirms what I've been thinking about why there is significant continued support for Donald Trump as president (approval ratings in the mid 30% to 40% figures). People are scared. It doesn't matter whether their fears are of something real, the point is that their perception is that there is something to be afraid of.

And why not? If you're someone who's convinced that romance between people of different races, between same sex partners, etc., etc., just to take a few examples, is morally wrong (or spiritually wrong, take your pick), then the progress made in the last few decades would look mighty scary. I mean things just keep happening! Now we're finding transgender rights being approved in more and more places.

Many of us think these trends are progress. We want everyone (and every romance) to be supported in this world. However to those who don't agree, these developments may seem to be nothing more than the road to hell.

The point is, these are real people experiencing real fear. What can those of us who consider ourselves “progressives” do? There are options, of course, ...

• Keep working for change.
• Vilify anyone who opposes us. Call them names and disparage them for their opinions.
• Listen to those who oppose us and gently promote the idea that most people (including the ones for whom we're working to gain rights) are essentially down to earth people who all have much in common, as we all try to make a living and a life of meaning for ourselves in today’s world.

My opinion? I like options 1 and 3, but not 2.

I admit, not everyone is going to respond the same way. I just think it's worth a try.

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<<Previous

It's done! Time for a new approach.

Finally, Finally, Finally! (part two)

Finally, Finally, Finally! (part one)

The next revolution

WW III is something completely different

Not All Men?

Rethinking the definition of Government

And now, a break from all the serious stuff, ...

I can't believe, ...

May 22nd, 2018

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