Friday, May 21, 2010

Why I'm A Political Beast

Someone asked me the other day why I let myself get so wrapped up in politics. It's one of those questions that's nearly impossible to answer because it falls in the category of  if you don't live it as I do, then I can't explain it so you will understand. Because I care about the person who asked, I'll try and explain my passion for this mean and nasty piece of life.

I wasn't always political. What people often misinterpreted as politics was an inner sense of fairness that could never be denied. To me it is not and will never be a complete world until it is a just world. And I really believe we can't have a just world as long as there is war. We can't have a just world as long as people aren't equal. We can't have a just world as long as there are victims. We can't have a just world as long as there is greed, selfishness, intolerance, racism, bigotry and hatred.

It's as simple as that on the surface.  In my life I've learned there are certain things that  need to take place before the world becomes a just place, and they won't happen by themselves. It's too big a job. So I use my talents as a writer, as an artist, as a passionate person who cares about this planet to educate others into what needs to be done.

First and most importantly, we need an end to war. There can be no justice without peace as a foundation for a better world to grow its roots. People tell me it's an impossible dream, that we humans are a warlike species that will never know peace.

I disagree completely. I believe we all begin as peaceful creatures but life twists us around, wounds us, teaches us the wrong things, and we grow up believing we are a warlike species that will never know peace.

We need to walk back from this untruth and it requires the most difficult of all things to even get a grip on the path toward peace. It requires first and above all that we take a good look at ourselves, that we learn who we are, what shaped us, what created us, what gave form to the essence of opinions, dreams and desires we are as human beings.

But to do that we have to set aside a lot of crap. One of the biggest pieces of crap is religion. I don't care what people believe individually. I even think spirituality is good for people, that it gives them a focus, a center from which to evolve. But religion is a different thing all together. It is a business, a giant system of brainwashing large groups of people to believe just one point of view and nothing else.

This is not spirituality. This is mind control for the purpose of using human beings for things they were never intended to be used for. Religion fills the heart with hate instead of love. It creates an us and them world where there is only you and those who believe as you do against the enemy, the outsiders who are bad where you are good.

Without religion, people would question the need to go to war. They would question the need to believe in only one ideology. They would go outside their own safe little reality and explore, examine, and come to understand there are many truths.

But that makes humans dangerous to those who need war, because you see, war is a need. It is what makes people obscenely wealthy inventing and selling machines meant for only one thing: killing people. And that's where politics enters the picture. No arms merchant can sell his death tools by standing on a street corner with a cart and a cardboard sign. Arms merchants need politicians to convince the people of the need for war. And their reward is wealth and power and prestige. For a politician, this is what it means to be a human being.

And that's why I spend so much of my life educating myself and others about politics. I want people to see how they are manipulated, how they are used, how they are controlled  by those whose only desire is to make themselves richer. It's all about money and that is the disgusting simple truth of it all.

I can't fight the powerful with money because I don't have any. But I have a strong sense of who I am from decades of taking a stand for things that affect me but are not me. It is how we grow. We MUST step outside ourselves and look at what's out there from a different perspective. This is my fight, this understanding that what we are and what we believe was fed to us by those who don't really give a damn about us as living beings. We're tools to them and I am offended and disgusted by this.

And since I've never been one to sit around, I let people know about the corruption in politics, the bad people, the hypocrites, the racists, the bigots, the mean-spirited and greedy. I treat them like the cockroaches they are and shine a light on them because as they scatter and run for the darkness where they can destroy the world for their own personal gain, they know that I'm out there, that there are others like me out there, and that we care enough about the earth and those who share it with us to never let them operate freely without fear of being caught. We're waiting to catch them and they know it.

It won't stop them completely but it will slow them down. And since I believe in evolution, I have faith that even the worst in our species will change over time if they have something to change towards that is vital and alive and precious instead of evil, greedy, and dead.

 I am a patient person as is anyone who has ever planted seeds in a garden and waited for them to grow. I know I won't see world peace in my life time, but I learned long ago to content myself with seedlings knowing I  had a hand in their growth. And those seedlings are why I stay aware of politics and politicians, why I'll never shut up, why I'll never stop doing my part to make a better world. Multiply me by several hundred thousand over a period of time and you have the world I know is possible.



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