How Did We Become So Jaded

I was driving home one night from work and in the distance I started seeing fireworks lighting up the night sky just over the tree line of a forest preserve.  The colors were bright reds and vibrant yellows juxtaposed by cool shades of blue and green; all in all it was very impressive for a fireworks show considering that it was being put on to celebrate a local high school’s homecoming.  The light show peppered my fairly routine ride home and it provided a welcomed, yet perhaps distracting reprieve from the normal grind as I was driving at the time.  It did get me thinking though and I started to watch my fellow drivers reactions as we collectively headed north towards the high school.

Each red light that we stopped at I would look around at the various cars surrounding me and I would note just how many people were watching the fireworks.  There was a mid-sized family SUV next to me with a father and son who were not only watching the show but seemed to be sharing the awe that I was.  They were talking about the fireworks commenting on what colors they liked and how big each explosion was.  Outside of the duo and myself, not a single other person seemed remotely interested in the spectacle that was unfolding before their eyes.  The car to my left seemed more interested in his text messages while both at the red light and while in motion.  The people in the car ahead of me seemed to hate the fact that they were even in the same car together.  It was like almost no one else except the father, son and myself were even cognitively aware that there was this pageant of lights and sounds unfolding in front of our very eyes.

This got me thinking pretty hard because these reactions actually annoyed me.  Here was this beautiful display illuminating the night sky in front of us and a solid majority of my fellow drivers were not even aware of it in the least.  This started me thinking about just how jaded we have become in our modern life.  Now, I am about to say something that I can totally see would label me as an “old man” - BUT - when I was younger I remember how something as simple as a firework display would bring people together and cast a spell of wonderment, filling people with joy as those filaments lit up the sky.  It was just a small trivial thing that would break up the monotony of our daily lives with astonishment and become fodder for our imaginations.

Yet, here we were at a red light where 15% of the people there including myself seemed to not even care less.  The fact that these people were not interested in watching fireworks is not the issue.  The fact that these people seemed to not even care that they could partake in this lovely spectacle is the issue.  Have we become so jaded that we cannot even just stop for two-seconds and enjoy the things we have around us?

Again, I stress very heavily, I’m not questioning this because I’m an old man now or I’m nostalgic for a “better time” or any of that crap.  This is just an indicator of a pattern that I have been watching for sometime in people.  Put is bluntly, people are just not giving a fuck about anything anymore.  We seem to be trapped in wrapping our tiny little mammalian brain stems around our own self absorbed self importance that we forget to stop and smell the roses.  

To quote Master Yoda: “This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away… to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph. Adventure. Heh. Excitement. Heh. A Jedi craves not these things. You are reckless.”  Now granted the little mystical Muppet was making an analogy that Luke Skywalker was a self absorbed little shit who was untrainable in the ways of the Force, but think about it for a second: just how often do we think about where we are going and often to we not think about where we are?  We are constantly battling for more time in our lives to do more stuff.  We drive fast to get to someplace that we are already running late for.  We eat food with little to no actually sustenance because it can be prepared quickly and consumed on the go because we are speeding to get somewhere that we are late for.  We spend money we don’t have to buy the food that we shouldn’t eat as we drive recklessly towards a destination that we haven’t a chance in hell to get to on time.  It’s this constant pattern of insanity and stupidity as we rush around fulfilling these future needs and yet we never stop long enough to live in the moment.  Its like our lives are one day, someday, going to catch up with whatever the hell we keep rushing around towards and magically all of our running around will be worth in the end.  The only thing is that we forget to live our lives in all this running.

Think about it: how many special moments have you missed in your life?  How many times were you really there at that family function but you weren’t really there because your head was somewhere else?  I bet as a people in our modern society a majority of us have never really been present in anything in our lives ever.  We are always concentrating on what’s the next big thing or where is the new hip thing.  The availability of anything that we really want is a mere mouse click away, so why would we ever not stop rushing around?

I guess what this has taught me is that we have to stop and smell the damn flowers every once in a great while.  If we don’t, we’ll end up becoming so damn jaded that we won’ even appreciate something simple like fireworks.

I Am Not A Republican

I am not a Republican.

I am not a Democrat.

I am not a Communist.

I am not a Libertarian.

I am not a political niche label.  Truth of the matter is, I don’t know exactly what my political beliefs truly are because I don’t believe that the system of government I want to support has even been practiced on this planet before.  What I believe in is…complicated and convoluted if at best and at the worse insanely hard to put into words.  I have decided to frustrate myself immensely in a vain attempt to put my political philosophy into script.

Well….I mean…what the hell else am I going to do while drinking a bottle of wine?  Watch porn?  No….this is much more engaging.

So…where to start.  Let’s start with a foundation of belief.  At the foundation I believe in a society living in a cooperative community where talents and resources of the people are used to benefit all as well as the individual.  I believe that the accomplishments of the individual should be celebrated and enjoyed.  Someone who works their ass off to be a successful businessman should be able to enjoy some comforts from all the hard work that person put in to reach their success.  However, that successful businessman should feel morally obligated to help those within the community because not everyone is able to be as successful as that businessman.  People should be rewarded for their work and enjoy things like a vacation or a nice house, however the sloth in which those things are enjoyed should be tempered so that not one person or a small group of people don’t find themselves in control of a disproportionate amount of resources.

People should be reminded that they aren’t an island to themselves.  They live in a community that all need to be a contributing member to or the community will fail or worse splinter.  All must be unified in the goals of the community and by continually attempting to consume more than their neighbor the focus of the community falls to the wayside.  This is exactly what happens today in our society.  People live in these communities and being to covet what their neighbor has or even judges their neighbor for what their neighbor doesn’t have.  This negative behavior leads down a path were neighbor and neighbor begin to attempt to gain more than the other.  Whether it’s the hottest consumer good or an extravagant add on to their home, resources of the individual end up being pissed away on a contest of whose grass truly is greener on the other side.  So when one of their neighbors have a true crisis and needs to lean on the community for support there is none to be had.  Their neighbors are leveraged up to the hilt in debt as they all played the game of consumerism.

That doesn’t mean that I slight those trying to make a profit on their goods or services that they sell.  Hell, like I said in the beginning of this, I don’t have an issue in enjoying the fruits of ones labors.  However, does that mean or justify businesses and companies operating at profit margins of 50% or 100% or 150%?  This happens every day in our current marketplaces.  Businesses will sell a good or service that returns an obscene profit to the company that provided it.  Profit is the actual amount of money brought into the company after you pay off all of the expenses from selling that good or service.  People who say that companies should be able to make large profit margins don’t understand that it does nothing for the consumer and only helps empower the faceless company.

Which brings us to my next point in ideology:  corporations.  The whole structure of what a corporation is all about I find appalling and abysmal.  We have allowed corporate laws in this country just get fucking stupid.  I mean, a corporation has rights as if it was a person as a benefit and if completely autonomous and held to no accountability for its actions because it is faceless.  Companies are led by people who use their corporate anonymity to perpetrate some of the most heinous crimes against our communities and our planet.  They are legally allowed to rape our environment as they fit.  They are legally allowed to have no oversight for their fiscal actions except for their word that they are doing the right things.  They are legally allowed to price gouge the communities they claim to serve.  They are protected by a system of government that allows companies to buy political clout and protection to absolve the corporation of their sins.

Money and the greed that comes with it has coated our political system is a film of filth.  This filth are those who do not come to the political world to serve their communities, but rather fill their pockets with their thirty pieces of silver and then rewrite laws to benefit their pimp’s needs.  Money has made our politicians very adapt whores who can turn tricks for their pimps whenever and however they need them to.  They sell, literally sell the power of the representative democracy for whatever they can get for it.  The power that you, their direct reportable and accountable bosses empowered them with to use on your behalf.  But ask yourself this question: have any of you actually been asked by your Senator or Representative what you feel about a certain subject?  Or on a particular vote?  I'm going to bet the answer is no. 

So….basically my political beliefs are pro-community, anti-greed, anti-corporate, anti-political monetary gain.  I still have no ideal what to call this belief and frankly I don't want to label it.  I think that we as a society waste too much time on labels to quantify our ideals in an attempt to unify and align our beliefs with others.  The problem is that we all don't and can't all agree on exactly the same thing in exactly the same way.  We may agree on the basis, but there isn't a way that all of us would agree on the execution. 

The only way that I can see that as a possibility is through two ways: either empowered anarchy where people can directly influence their world their way or through a belief in a non-profit direct democracy that tackles situations through evolving ideals and not absolutes.  This is why I consider myself a soldier and not a politician.  Politics is fucking intense!

Ignorance Is Not Bliss

Social media has become a place where anyone with a highly charged opinion can find an instant audience amongst the author’s peers.  The virtual soapbox where firebrands can expose and wax poetic on the truly important subjects and questions of the day.  The place where the spark of a new ideal can lead to the fires of revolution and dramatic change.  Mind you this is what social media idyllically has become after years of evolution and cultivation of it as a tool.

Unfortunately, this is what social media has become:

1)      Paranoid rants about how good things use to be or how it was never like this before so why should things be this way now.

2)      Blanket statement of blaming a person, place or thing without welcoming discussion on how to change said person, place or thing

3)      A random assortment of hypercharged posts about announcements or declarations that have not been confirmed or, most of the time, are not even true.

Now, I’m not saying that every post that goes onto social media has to be the highest quality of content and tripled source checked before being posted to the Interweb.  I mean, I like mindless memes just like the next person; however if you are going to be posting political declarations or the like some source and fact checking might be in order.

The social media channels are starting to be plagued with posts from people who are making up complete fabrications of how our government works.  For an instance, the other day I ran across a post that stated that State’s Attorney Generals were going to prosecute President Obama for “making up laws” that go “against the Constitution”.  This statement was going around Facebook, a lot, and in the body of its declaration it claimed to be from Fox News and that the “Facebook police” were going to be “pulling it down soon” so it was imperative to repost said nonsense immediately and keep spamming your feed with it so they couldn’t censor the information.

Because I didn’t want to seem like I was making this shit up I present for you a copy of the post that was floating around Facebook over the last week:

FB is trying to delete this post,

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OK, BREAKING NEWS...BREAKING NEW....THIS IS WHAT I SAW AND HEARD ON FOX NEWS A FEW MINUTES AGO....THE ATTY. GENERAL OF TX, GREG ABBOTT, SAID THAT HE AND 11 OTHER ATTY. GENS. HAVE FILED CHARGES AGAINST OBAMA FOR WRITING HIS OWN NEW LAWS WITHOUT CONGRESSIONAL APPROVAL...WHIC H MEANS HE HAS BEEN BREAKING THE LAW AND TRYING TO CHANGE OUR CONTITUTION BY DOING SO....SO THEY HAVE FILED THE CHARGES AND THIS IS FIRST STEP FOR IMPEACHMENT OR AT THE VERY LEAST THAT OBAMACARE IS AGAINST OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS....HE CHANGES THE LAWS TO SUIT HIMSELF AND THE ATTY GENS AND THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE SICK OF HIM ACTING LIKE HE IS KING OBAMA....

Let’s let this sink in for a second….if you paid attention to….oh I don’t know….high school….you will find that everything in that declaration ri-god-damn-diculous!  I get that people don’t like that their government is telling them that they have to have insurance.  I understand that.  But for FUCKS SAKE COULD YOU PLEASE JUST FOR FIVE SECONDS FUCKING GOOGLE JUST THE FUCK HOW OUR GODS DAMNED GOVERNMENT ACTUALLY FUCKING WORKS!!!!!  FUCK!!!

Sorry…..I do apologize.  I realize that I have a tendency to fly off the handle a bit.  But, I’m calm now.  I’m good.  It’s…ok.

………….

Nope, fuck that it’s not.  Seriously if you have not one fucking clue as to how the government actually works you should lose all right to bitch about it.  You know, I actually wish I was actually kidding about that.  If you think that the President of the United States just makes laws up you should not have the ability to complain about anything…ever.  Because you are an idiot.   Seriously.  I’m not even going to sugar coat that one.  If you really believe that the President can make up laws I pray you don’t have children.  No…that’s harsh.  I pray your children actually pay attention in 5^th grade social studies and don’t rely on your concepts of American Government.

As most people who paid attention in school know, the President is the Chief Executive of the United States government.  That means he enacts the laws that have been voted on by Congress, which is the Legislative body for the United States government.  We have these things called branches of our government and each one is responsible for a system of checks and balances that keep our representative democracy spinning right along.  The President can’t make a law, he can only enforce the ones that have been voted on.

The common misconception that most angry white people and uneducated blowhards make is they think that Executive Orders are a form of a law.  This is very incorrect; an Executive Order is a order from the President to the other departments within the Executive Branch.  Here’s the best part, if an Executive Order has no legislative backing, Congress and the Supreme Court can take point against said order and actually reverse said Executive Order.   

Since this particular inaccurate rant specifically mentions ObamaCare as its target I can only assume that the uneducated originator of this message is assuming that ObamaCare is a “law” that was “enacted” by the President via Executive Order.  Congress, you know that branch that makes laws, voted into reality.  So, Obama isn’t making any laws….

Then there’s the bit about the whole Attorney Generals of the U.S. are banning together to blah, blah, blah, blah.  Again….5^th grade social studies.  Greg Abbot is the State of Texas Attorney General which means that he is responsible for upholding the prosecution of the laws of the State of Texas and not any Federal laws.  He, or the other State Attorney Generals would be wanting to uphold the laws of their State and have now jurisdiction over Federal laws.  This is just common sense.

This brings me a long way to my point.  Common fucking sense.  Good fucking netiquette.  Not just randomly posting stuff that you wish was true and propagating it as the verifiable truth.  And then, when you are called to the mat on what you posted and it is pointed out as being full of shit – please keep your anger and indignation to a polite and respectful minimum in deference to the fact that the rest of the internet paid attention in school.  And you did not.