Success Outside the Cult

I think it is depression that is preventing me from seeing any reason to do anything. But I also see a lot of inefficiencies in what people do. I understand that religion is a myth, that there is a limit to the stuff one can buy, that renting isn't a worse financial investment than buying a house, that processed foods aren't worth the stuff they're packaged in, that lower taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations hurt society, and that the only way to make a living in a society like this is to drink the kool-aid.

It's frustrating and depressing. What good is knowing all this stuff if I end up unemployed, with no access to health care?

I Wish

I wish I could just be honest, with everyone. I'm not bad, I wish no ill on people, and there is nothing wrong with anything I have done. I barely have the will to kill the tiny ants in my bathroom right now. I wish I could tell them what I want to do, and how I want to contribute.

I wish everyone could calm down. I wish they could let go of their silly hangups. I wish everyone, like me, could focus on what is truly important. I wish they could find the truth, I wish they all could be smarter than me. I wish I was the dummy in the room, instead of the one who can see through it all. I wish people could resist the urge to drink that soda, or buy that stuff they saw on the commercial, or go to that bland chain restaurant.

I wish I could pull down this house of cards, redistribute the wealth, pay farmers, teachers, and careworkers what they really deserve. I wish that all the blowhards would just fade away, and let me work a 5 hour day, from home. I wish they would reduce their expectations - the computer can't read their mind.

I wish all the rich folk would move out of their over-sized mansions in the countryside and come back into the nice houses in my neighborhood. I wish we could all realize that nothing is ever like it used to be, that how it used to be isn't how it always was, and fighting change is a losing game.

I wish I wish I wish that I never had to watch 24-hour news channels again. I wish people in Texas would realize that they don't need to eat that much. I wish that the farmers on land that needs to be irrigated understood the path that they are on. I wish everyone knew as much as me.

I wish that wishes came true, I wish the genie wasn't just a myth. I wish I may, I wish I might have this wish I wish tonight.

Won't Fit on a Bumper Sticker

I wrote this comment in response to a facebook posting of an image that said "Those who wear a helmet to defend our country should make more than those who wear a helmet to play football."

The truth, the very sad and upsetting truth is that no one fighting in the name of the United States is actually protecting "the United Sates". They are protecting special interests of global corporations, some of which may be headquartered in the United States.

There is an argument to be made about rooting out terrorists that are plotting to attack the United States. However, there are far more effective ways to prevent those attacks than to run around their home with guns. In fact, running around the homes of people already upset enough with the US to plan attacks, with guns and in tanks, is a pretty good way to ensure that those people STAY upset with the US.

However, these are not the decisions of the individual members of the military. It is my opinion that those individual members should be compensated enough to have a comfortable life for them, and their families. They should have employment opportunities after their military service ends, and a military pension. When the United States government recruits an 18-year-old, it should understand the cost of supporting that person for another 70-80 years.

That the government doesn't make decisions this way is part of why high-profile athletes, and even low profile major league athletes make so much money. It is because humans are profoundly stupid, and short-sighted. Most of us, and especially those with a lot of money to waste, only look at dollars in and dollars out. But dollars in does not equal real value. The irony is that people who do understand the meaning of real value are unlikely to bother having a lot of money, and it is easier to procure power and influence with dollars than with living a valuable life.

But I find the comparison in this image to be kind of stupid. Both positions fill a role in society. American football players are providing entertainment, which a lot of people think is frivolous. Those people, however, do have means of entertaining themselves, and do not think of their own activities as frivolous. Entertainment is important, and American football in particular fills a very important role. I shudder to think of what fall 2012 in America would have been like without the ritual of the NFL and college football to distract all of the angry white (mostly male) conservatives in this country.

American football also fills a role in American society that exists in all societies, going back as far as we have recorded history. Like it or not, people like to watch other people, and sometimes animals, fight. Roman gladiators, jousting matches, organized boxing matches, rugby, and American football seem "barbaric", but they all let a lot of people (the spectators number higher than the participants) get their aggression out, without actually hurting anyone.

Cynically, I can say that American football gives stupid people, who are, sadly, the majority, something to get excited about. Whining that they should be excited about something else is a losing game.

How Much More Productive Could I Be?

Working with this person is seriously the worst day of my life. The person is supposed to be an expert at a topic that I know more about. I don't even know. This person wants to leave the hotel together, and keeps inviting me out for dinner, and to eat lunch together, and we're sharing a damn office. I want to scream.

This person noticed that I was growing impatient, and wondered if it was something they "had done." How do you tell someone that the reason that you are so irritated around them is that they are dumb as a box of rocks? I made up some stuff about my seasonal affective disorder, which is making me less outgoing. Then I got a talk about how great I am, and I should remind myself of this when I am sad.

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My sadness is not going away because I remember that I am the sh*t - depression doesn't work like that. I know that I am awesome. I'm irritated because I have to slow myself down to work with some idiot, which just happens to be the person I'm talking to at that moment.

Random Thought, Only Not

Why do people fight aging? It is so pointless - you'll be old eventually, you're already old. Me, I can't believe that I'm going to exist, take in information, have emotions, and hear annoying things, like the guy snorting snot back into his sinuses, for at least another 50 years. I'm going to be menstruating for another two decades, for crying out loud.

One Hundred Fifty Years Ago, Today

Lincoln delivers the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that slaves in the territories held by Confederates are now free. This enables those slaves to enlist in the Union Army, and changes the war from a battle to preserve the Union to a struggle to end slavery.

The Library of Congress has this to say:

In an effort to placate the slave-holding border states, Lincoln resisted the demands of radical Republicans for complete abolition. Yet some Union generals, such as General B. F. Butler, declared slaves escaping to their lines "contraband of war," not to be returned to their masters. Other generals decreed that the slaves of men rebelling against the Union were to be considered free. Congress, too, had been moving toward abolition. In 1861, Congress had passed an act stating that all slaves employed against the Union were to be considered free. In 1862, another act stated that all slaves of men who supported the Confederacy were to be considered free. Lincoln, aware of the public's growing support of abolition, issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, declaring that all slaves in areas still in rebellion were, in the eyes of the federal government, free.

The This Day in the Civil War site comments that an American president could only do this when states were seceding and there was a war on.

But history is so dry and unemotional. The real deal is that today is the sesquicentennial of the Federal Government's decision that slavery was wrong for the Union. 150 years ago, roughly five generations in the past, is not so long, when you start to think about it. The election of 2012 should also show us how tied to history we all are too. All of the descendants of those aristocratic, dumb-as-rocks slave owners, still using nepotism and charm to worm their ways into positions of power.

But that is unfair - really unfair, in the sense that some of those people could be very intelligent, and kind. Some of those people could have an understanding of all things and all people, but the slithering ways of cultural memory and not wanting to make waves, especially when things are going well... Well, no one should be so naive as to believe that the legacy of slavery ended with the end of the institution. No one should be so naive as to believe that racism went away with the Civil Rights Act. No one should be so naive to believe that the Cold Civil War is not still happening.

Yet we are. Somehow, history became "back then" in America, and completely separate from what is happening now. My hypothesis, my gut feeling, based on my study of history and cultural memory is that the Second World War had a severing effect in the United States. The mobilization of the United States was awesome in several ways. Many look at it as a good thing, but there has always been a contingent who saw it as overreach. When peacetime came, and the excesses of truly overreaching governments were clear to Americans, this contingent drew parallels between the United States Federal Government and Stalin or Mao. It was idiotic, of course, but after a while, a generation of new people, born just after the war, began to come of age. Being in the majority, they were catered to in many ways. Their ideas were seen as "edgy" when they may have just been anti-social, or stupid. They did see a lot of problems in the established ways of doing things, so they shook them up. But instead of understanding the historical aspects of the current problems, they got a single victory, like Roe v. Wade, and then thought everything would be solved.

Then of course, in their childhood, Americans forgot how much of a problem Republican administrations created for the economic well-being of the country, and elected a moderate one. So all those kids grew up with a positive, but inaccurate view of actual Republican ideology. Naive, ignorant, children, in the majority. I am encouraged by the fact that their children and grandchildren, with more of an appreciation for the past, are growing up and getting voices. And there is the internet. It is a lot harder to push a rewritten version of history when the internet is there, and people know how to use it.

Past is prologue. Past is always the prologue, and reading it will answer all of your questions. One hundred fifty years ago, today, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that all slaves in the seceded states were free.