This World

I'm sitting here in a peaceful, safe place that took me a lifetime to find. And yet, underneath the calm is the depressing realization that the world around this place, and also at times within it and of it, has become riots in the street at one end and virtual warfare at the other.

This is the time we live in, a time where there is no middle. In spite of the vastness of information available to us through every medium imaginable, we have isolated ourselves into a small cocoon of sameness, of things that don't vary from the rigid realities we have set for ourselves.

Our tolerance for differences is purely intellectual because in real life we don't tolerate differences very well. Rather than look at the people around us, look at those that are not around us. Those are the ones we need to examine, especially the reasons why they are not around us.That is where the true sickness of our society lives, in those people we threw away because they just did not fit into our extreme constricts of acceptable and unacceptable.

In the last couple years the polarization of the external world of politics and wealth accumulation has infected the day to day relationships of ourselves as human beings. We are so easy now to cut someone out of our lives because they are not like us. We are uncomfortable without our own personal choir of yes we agree, and we dissect the different ones who don't agree as if they were tumors infecting our perfect world.

We demand everyone be completely socialized, never say the wrong thing, never step outside the rigid lines we have drawn. If they mess up once, if they displease us in the least, if they say one thing we don't completely agree with, then we cut them out of our lives. That person annoyed me. Off with their head! We have let our ego needs turn us all into the Queen of Hearts.

The harsh thing, the dehumanizing part of this is we do it now without even bothering to talk about it anymore. No one feels the need to explain, to apologize, or even defend their right to demand only those like them live and interact with them. No one thinks much of gated communities anymore. They are normal now. They are who we have become, the walled cities of sameness.

We are no longer families with each other where the weird uncle was tolerated because that's just who he was, even if he wasn't like us. Now we cut the weird uncle out of our lives. We no longer tolerate the flaming activists who take to the streets for justice, for information, for equality, for the truth. Instead we condemn them and judge them for bringing "negative" energy into their lives, for choosing to focus on what's wrong with the world instead of what is right. We have grown so fond of living with our heads in the sand that we no longer feel the kick in our ass from those stepping over our indifference.

We no longer understand that not everyone was raised the same, not everyone speaks the same language even if it is linguistically similar. We no longer accept that intellectual and emotional growth happens at different levels and times for different people. We want everyone to be perfect, especially if we are not. The more imperfect we are, the more we demand perfection in others. It's a vicious cycle we just can't seem to break.

We no longer end marriages, relationships, friendships. We burn down the house, trash everyone associated with the destruction, even if we lit the match. We walk away bitter and vengeful and since we live in a world where bitterness and vengefulness are the norm now, it's easy to raise armies to support us in the war on each other.

We are all so special now, all so believing that only we have the right to dictate how others should be and live. We have become intolerant sheep who are led around by flatterers, by yes men and women, by artificial praise and ego boosts. Our needs mean more than the needs of others. Our aches and pains hurt more than those of others. Our childhoods were more awful/perfect than others. Our marriages were more awful/loving than others. Our relationships are more awful/perfect than anyone else. We all just know we are the only ones who get it and everyone else is deficient.

How did we get here? Maybe if we started asking ourselves that instead of finding new ways to judge each other, to make each other THE OTHER, we might just find out how to heal the mess we find ourselves living in. Until then we will continue to live with violence and despair and hatred.

And we MUST get involved. The racism that has taken over this country once more grew because too many people fell asleep. Too many people felt it wasn't their job to deal with it. Too many people didn't want the negative energy of doing something or even being aware it was happening. Too many people just didn't give a damn because their own needs, their own specialness was more important.

At some point America became a selfish, bitter, country intolerant of everyone and anyone who is and was different. This didn't happen overnight. This happened one person at a time. It happened the first time we cut someone out of our lives because they weren't perfect. It happened the first time we criticized someone for not being just like us. It happened the first time we put ourselves in the position of being the judge instead of the citizen.

We can't go on like this. If the country is to change, we must change ourselves first. It's always been that way. What hasn't been that way is our understanding of that simple truth. We let it die because we became more important as individuals to ourselves than to the greater good of a larger world.

This World

The View From Here

I live in a tiny vacation community, one of the handful of year round residents in my neighborhood. My neighbors, when they are here, are mostly Canadian. The rest of us are varying degrees of American ranging from born and raised in the same community, to recent and not so recent immigrants. In the three years I've lived here, I've made a couple of really good friends, am working on filling out a couple more, and am on good happy daily hello terms with all my neighbors. What makes this unusual is that every single one of us differs politically, religiously, and economically. And yet we live in happy harmony with each other.

I've thought a lot about this in the last few days. I thought about it as I exchanged hellos and small talk about kitties and the suddenly delightful spring-like day with my neighbor. The day after the election he wore a shirt with an anti-gay marriage theme and bemoaned the taking over of America by socialism. I made no secret that I voted for every one of his worst nightmares...Obama, same-sex marriage, marijuana legalization...his entire list of horrors. We basically nullified each other's votes.

For a couple days he avoided me and my equally treasonous spouse. We didn't see each other by the mailbox. We didn't say hello. We didn't exchange small talk. And then there he was as if nothing had happened. He was friendly. I was friendly. I played with his kitties. He bragged about their antics. We went on with our respective days.

I think what soothed this over is that we both have had a chance to interact on a small, friendly and frequent basis. Brief though those moments are,they are still enough to let both of us see we are not monsters. In fact, if you laid a lot of our lives side by side, they'd be similar. We've both worked most our lives. We both are approaching retirement with just enough to survive on if we are frugal and don't want for much, he a bit better than I because he had a great union job for most his life.  For both of us, it's how we've lived most our lives so there isn't much of a step down. It's normal. We're working class. We have no rich relatives to save us in old age. We are our own saviors.

And yet we are so different in how we think. He is conservative. I'm as liberal as they come. I have two wonderful friends I desperately want DOMA to go away for so they can stay in the country. He's terrified gays will force him to marry his cat. We've never talked religion, but I suspect he has strong religious beliefs but does not feel the need to inflict them on me, just as I have no need to talk about my atheism to him. It's ours. It is who we are and not something we need to force on others to have it be meaningful to ourselves.

We get along because we know enough about each other to feel comfortable with each other. We're never going to party together or even have a cup of coffee on the porch. We have our own lives, our own friends, our own families. We are neighbors in a small village and we both know if it comes down to it, we have each other's back, politics and religion be damned.

The neighbors that are closest to me politically are still a few levels shy of liberal and are what I consider salt of the earth type Americans, the ones you call "good people." They are not complex, but they are not stupid. They value the beauty of the land because they grew up in it and so are environmentalists by default. They hunt and fish because it's a source of food they grew up with and they still need the extra supplies to survive when money is tight. They waste nothing, grow most of their own food, and spend a lot of time just enjoying life.

They believe in a live and let live philosophy and they walk their talk. I can't imagine them judging anyone. I felt immediately accepted by them. They are familiar to me. I grew up with them. I married a man who came from the same kind of background. I like them as people. When we first moved here, they sent over cookies and a holiday card with a Bible quote that was more inclusive and loving than mean and judgmental.

I suspect they are true Christians, the kind of people who volunteer at the food bank and give generously to their church when they have extra. If I needed help with anything, I'd feel comfortable asking them and I'm certain they'd feel comfortable asking me. We are good neighbors. We joke about things in the neighborhood. We laugh a lot. I'm fairly certain they voted similar to me except for the gays, but I'm certain that soon as they actually meet and interact with someone openly gay, they'll come around. There's no reason for them not to.

My other neighbors are retired Canadians who worked as firefighters, law enforcement and white collar professions. We live here for the same reason. We love the trees, the saltwater, the squirrels, the heron, the eagles, the absolutely luscious vegetation, the blissful peace and quiet. On holidays we like to drink and be merry. We have friends and family around the fire pits and grills. We makes things go boom on the 4th of July and New Year's.

We live a simple and delicious existence. None of us are rich. Some of us are poor. But all of us have found what we require to survive and be happy. We get along. We enjoy seeing each other in our gardens, on our porches, decks, and mowing the lawns that refuse to stop growing. We are here for the same reason and that is far more important than our religions or political beliefs.

And of course, being such a diverse and delightful environment, there's also people here who are just like me. We've had delightful conversations. We've already created perfect worlds over bottles of wine, glasses of beer, and cups of tea. We've met in the local taverns, gone out to eat together, and sat down on the beach to absorb the sunsets. We've become friends and are working on deepening those new and delightful bonds.

All in all, we are a tiny neighborhood in a small community in a vacation suburb of a larger town. We are as unique as where we live and just as we appreciate the diversity of nature and wildlife, we are learning to appreciate each other. We may not always agree, and we may in some cases never agree, but what we do share is we took the time to say hello to our neighbors, got to know each other, and discovered our differences were far less important than the common ground and dreams we shared.

In our tiny piece of paradise, we've caught a glimpse of how the world can truly be if we lived in it as neighbors, if we watched out for each other, if we didn't try to force our beliefs on each other, if we respected each other's individual spaces as if they were our own, if we lived as if we all had the same right to exist in the same tiny little place on the planet. Yes, we are not perfect, but we are trying and maybe that is what makes the difference between harmony and horror. Maybe that is why we can get along with each other when others can't. Maybe we have something here that others can have as well if they take the first step, extend the first hand, share the first hello. It sure beats the alternatives.

The View From Here

Dysfunctional Planet

Sometimes we are so blinded by the bigger picture that we fail to notice it's made up of small pieces of exquisite and painful artistic moments that pass for our collective lives. And there's nothing like a death in the family to bring everything to a flash of blinding and humbling clarity.

For me, my mother's death and the circumstances around it painted a very clear picture of the world we live in. We are one large dysfunctional family who desperately need to change our relationship to each other and the planet if we are to survive as anything but wounded automatons. Within each of our own families are the families that occupy this planet. Within each of us and our respective villages lives both the cause and the cure. We have to open our eyes and our hearts and set aside the divisions or it's the end of us as a species worth anything but a scornful footnote in the passage of time.

Think carefully on this because it means our survival. Think of the last decade, the Bush/Cheney/Rove years, the divisions, the taking of sides, the losses, the rage, the despair,  and apply it not only to my family but to your own, and then apply it to the planet.

Look and see how expertly our fears and hurts and disappointments were and continue to be manipulated by those who can see what we no longer even recognize in ourselves anymore--that we are being led to the slaughter by those who care nothing about us other than the material sum of our parts. We are used by the politicians, the churches, the greedy until there's nothing left inside us that is our own anymore. We belong to them and they use us and then toss us aside because there's a continual replacement for us when we no longer suit their needs.

They are able to do this because dysfunctional is the new normal when it comes to families. How many of us have family members who don't speak to each other over something that happened years ago, something that I doubt most people can remember in complete details anymore if asked to explain it to someone else. All that remains is the gaping chest wound of misunderstanding, of division, of taking sides, of the us and them that divides us all.

How many of us have people in our lives from broken relationships that fester in pain, that isolate us and them from the heartbreak of loss? How many shattered friendships do we have that can never be repaired? How much of our lives are taken up by avoiding people instead of welcoming them? How much hate grows inside us like an evil little seed waiting to destroy everything in us that can love?

When we are like this, we are weak instead of strong. The users come along and find easy pickings. All they have to do is put on a TV show that gives us images of those we fear and then play upon that fear. Why, in the 21st century, do we still allow manipulative and evil entities like Fox News and its hateful talking heads, the Rush Limbaughs pushing drug-fueled hatred, the politicians who are beholden to corporations instead of people, to define us?

Can anyone on this planet who swallows that crap on a daily basis explain to me in anything but slogans why they hate someone? Or is everything now a talking point written by someone else, reduced to a sound bite with no substance, with no purpose but to divide us from one another?

How far back in time does someone have to go before the immigrant becomes the invader? When these hatemongers talk about taking our country back, who do we take it back from? The Native Americans we stole it from, the Mexicans who were disenfranchised from it because white people wanted it without having to pay anything for it? The Canadians whose boundaries crisscrossed our own so often we can barely tell each other apart?

Where are the papers of those who invaded this country and filled it with hateful white people? Under what justification did those same people enslave other people based on the color of their skin and think of it as anything but the most evil of actions another human being can perpetuate on another?

When did religion become an excuse to hate, to divide, to conquer? Do these haters even bother to read the Bible and its message sof love, tolerance, and acceptance? When did unholy intermediaries with hateful agendas become humanity's direct link to spirituality and connectedness with nature and each other? And why in this supposedly advanced civilization do we still allow the same people who believed the earth was flat to define who we love and marry? What the fuck is wrong with us that so many swallow this crap so easily?

I think the answers to all these questions lie within our own families, our own relationships, our own discarded and destroyed friendships. We are the small pictures within the large picture and we need to take a very close look at it before any hope of a better world for those that come after us, dies with us. Will our decade be the one that destroys hope for the entire planet because we were so obsessed with our own wounds that we failed to see how deeply others were wounded too?

I'm asking people to start within themselves and heal at least a small piece as a precious beginning to a new world. My own family never had a chance because war took their humanity before it had a chance to grow into something strong enough to fight against the divisions. But that doesn't mean I can't heal at least a small wound in myself that is there because of their wounds.

Maybe by doing so I can forgive those who hurt me so they won't continue to hurt me by taking up permanent residence in my heart. I understand all too well my parents were victims of things beyond their control but that doesn't mean I have to follow on that path. I have options they never had and if I let those options go to waste, then what was the point of their hurt, for nothing exists just to exist. Something gives it birth, something feeds it to make it live, something makes it grow strong and powerful.

I've said over and over again that working for peace is not for the weak. It takes strength to move forward when others view it as wasted idealism. It takes courage to look war in the face and say I will defeat you. It takes setting aside the divisions and working together to stand up to power and say we are stronger than you. It takes finding the place inside yourself that wants peace and making it strong enough to defeat hate.

That place is there inside us all. We must find it. We must ignore the noise machine of hate and work together for a better world, one where corporations don't destroy our planet in their greed to satisfy our own greed. We must simplify what we believe and how we live. We must reach out to each other and stop putting up walls, stop blaming others for things that are our own fault. We must grow up and be accountable for our own actions and quit using Bibles and religions and dead friendships as excuses to be complete and total jerks. We must embrace our humanity or we will lose it forever.

Love's Truest Language by orsobear
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Dysfunctional Planet

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.

Corporate Planet by orsobear
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Why I'm A Political Beast

Note to Bigots, Racists, Homophobes, and other Losers

I was blessed or cursed, depending on your perspective, with an abundance of the optimism gene. It's allowed me to get through a life that might have killed those weaker or less stubborn. I've always been able to see the positive side of a situation along with the negative. I've always believed that evil can be overcome by good, that hate takes effort and love does not, that humans for all of our flaws, are basically good creatures.

I still believe that, but in the last few months with the advent of the teabagging crazies and  their "creative" spelling known as TEABONICS or Texas Schoolbook Learning,  infecting the country with such manipulated bigotry and hatred, I have finally accepted that in order to be a decent human being some basic requirements must be met.

First, you must understand the planet is home to many people and they're not all going to look like you, worship the same imaginary friends, embrace your narrow ideology, or have the same definition of truth. If you think it's all about you, then you need to seriously grow up and open your eyes and especially your heart.

Which leads me to the requirement of compassion. If you don't have it, then you really don't have any claims to the title of human being. You're something else, something small and mean, something incomplete and lacking an essential component that says I am more than a list of skin, bone, chemicals, fat, and ego.

If you can look at another human being and consider him or her less than you because he or she does not worship where you do, does not have the same skin color as you do, does not stay within the same gender lines as you, does not speak with the same stress or lack of it on the same syllables of the same words, does not come from the same piece of dirt that held your mother's body as you fell out on it, then your claim to the label of human being is seriously in doubt.

I've said many times that love is easy, it's hate that requires you get up every day and say today I am going to hate, today I'm going to be an intolerant asshat shoving my worldview down everyone's throats. And all day long you have to feed that hate. You have to make up stupid shit about people and then get others to believe it and help you spread it, much as most of the world spreads manure on their crops.

But the crops of those who hate, those who are intolerant, are the mean and hungry gardens of bigotry and intolerance. And the most fallow of those grounds belong to the racist, that fraud of a human being who thinks that people are things to categorize like so many dead insects on a cardboard backing. The only reason to separate human beings into little herds is so they can be separated from the rest of humanity and be at the mercy of bigoted jerks who take out their hatred of life on them.

For many months now, and for a good deal of my life, I've dealt with bigots and racists differently, depending on who they were. I was much more willing to ignore the stereotypical joking of some elderly old fellow who barely remembered his name ,much less understood that his world  changed so much that the mildly racist joke that cracked everyone up in his youth, now made his listeners uncomfortable.

I never laughed, but I wasn't strong enough to walk away, especially if he was a relative or the relative of a friend. I called that being tolerant, being accepting of someone who meant no harm, but was merely old and oblivious to the changing mores of the planet.

I don't know if I was wrong to not say anything, to just listen uncomfortably. Was I respecting the elderly or was I helping grow what became the overtly racist and intolerant Teahadists with my silence? If I was wrong, I can console myself with knowing I never had a bit of a problem openly calling out a racist who was motivated by pure hatred and nothing else.

There were several times in my life where I put myself in really stupid situations for the sake of my ethical soul. I don't regret them even though I'm appalled at how oblivious I was to the danger. Idealism is like that. It blinds you to the dangers so you can move forward and make the world a better place. Not everyone survives that leap. I was lucky and lived to raise hell another day.

And because I did, I continue to speak out to the obvious racists. I won't let up on the Teahadists because they are as ugly as the KKK is ugly, as ugly as jackbooted thugs are ugly, as ugly as the Inquisition burning Pagans and other non-Christians in the name of their viscious and bloodthirsty god is ugly. Hate is ugly. Bigotry is ugly. Intolerance is ugly. Selfishness is ugly.

As human beings, we have only one enemy and it the ugliness that ferments in other human beings. I thought it could be defeated by love and yes, in those that still have a heart, those that are not sociopathic thugs, those that can see beyond the smallness of their world view, it can be defeated and made whole by love.

But I also understand there are those who are lost to humanity. They are mean little creatures who both direct the haters and thrive on the hatred they create. They do not know what it means to love authentically. It is all about usage rights with them, things that do not require compassion or understanding.

And yes, many who hate are poorly educated and ignorant. Racists are people who have only had their own race as friends. They are ignorant of other people, cultures, literature, music, ideas, and beliefs. It is a willful ignorance because it is the most easily cured if they wanted to cure themselves.

But they don't because more than anything, bigots and racists are lazy. They don't want to make the effort to understand because it requires doing more than moving sluggishly through a life where everyone but them is calling the shots. People who think for themselves are not easily led.

Freethinkers would never let a hateful, pill-infested moron named Rush Limbaugh tell them what to think, what to believe, and whom to hate. That's for the masses, the ignorant and willfully uneducated "morans" who are too lazy to think for themselves. They are the fodder, the rabble, the used and abused by everyone who has more power and influence. They are nothing and know it, which is why they hate.

And they allow the Becks of the world to yank their very short leashes and command them to take to the streets in support of the very corporations who keep them at the bottom of the shit pile of life. This is beyond stupid. This is lazy, willful ignorance. And it is damaging to the planet, to human beings and all living creatures.

These are the people I will no longer politely turn away from. I will fight them with everything I have. I will expose them for the miserable pieces of human shit they really are. I will write about how easily and stupidly they allow themselves to be manipulated because they are too lazy to take charge of their own lives. I will be mean. I will be nasty. I will beat them over the head with facts. I will humiliate them with truth. I will overpower them with the forces of good that drive me and command me to defeat their forces of evil.

And I will win because love is stronger than hate, peace is more powerful than war, and truth always always wins, even if it takes a while. Do you hear me, losers? Truth ALWAYS wins. And when it does, this is what history will show as your legacy:

As for the rest of us, we'll be working to make a better world, one where all living creatures have an equal right to exist, to share in the bounty of life, love, and yes...happiness. Without mean, hateful people to infect the earth with their vitriol, maybe that happiness thing will be a lot more in reach. Especially if people like me and others keep lifting the rock on hate because we all know it can't survive once exposed to the light. It needs the dank, ugly darkness to survive and decent people are all carrying lights these days to expose you.

Note to Bigots, Racists, Homophobes, and other Losers

The Flowering Self

"Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality." -Nikos Kazantzakis

One of the most life changing lessons for human beings is the realization that everything in life is a choice. From the moment we get out of bed in the morning, we choose who we will be, who we will present ourselves as to the world. We put on our clothes as costumes, as disguises, as props for what we want to convey and then we step out on the stage and perform to audiences of individuals all doing the same thing.

There's an absurdity in this behavior, an unconscious mocking of ourselves for playing along with a game that gets refined by whatever hands are currently pulling the strings. But the thing is, we give our puppetmasters the strings to control us with. It's our script they're using to control us. It's our fears, our biases, our intolerance, our judgments that create the strings for others to use on us. As a result everything we are is a costume someone else has dressed us in so we can perform in their version of reality.

The tragedy is that we aren't born this way. We came into the world as optimists, as believers in the theory of all possibilities that could be picked up, tasted and swallowed. The world revolved around our own vision of things. It took shape according to what we wanted from it, what we perceived as our place in its universe.

But somewhere along the way, the shaping of group consciousness took place and the individual self was subdued and steadily beaten down by tools such as religion, school, and that scourge of all decent humanity--consensus. We were no longer free to stick things in our mouth and taste at will.

If we tried to stray from the path set out for us, we were reminded of the perils in doing so because there were no good ways to say individual. Instead such people were described as anti-social, not team players, fringe dwellers, and lone nuts.

And yet we worshipped the cult of the individual, especially the rugged variety. It was a mythical cult that was and is still written about with awe, with wonder, with the sanctity of breath reserved for wondrous things and unattainable desires. It's like heaven and the old saying that everyone wants to go to there, but no one wants to die to get there.

We grew up worshipping the individual but feared him or her at the same time, and it's easy to understand way. Think of a herd contained within a wild pasture. See the comfort of knowing all the animals are in place. Visualize the ease of drawing a pen around them all in one flawless slash of movement.

Then imagine that one little sheep, that one individual little creature who never stepped outside the "taste as you go" school of life, but instead kept stopping, kept rewriting the plot to reflect changing consciousness, different realities, new ways of looking at the world. This little sheep became the source of all fear just for getting up in the morning and being his or her own sheep.

It is why churches came along and put controls on sex and love, two states that no amount of self-righteous pontificating can interrupt once they are set in motion. There's more rules for controlling those two behaviors than any other. But it is wasted effort, a moral version of beating one's head continually against a wall in the hope that the wall will collapse before the head does.

It is why forests and all wild nature was either destroyed or put under control of some entity that wanted to either exploit it or preserve it by keeping anything but sanctioned and approved individuals from it.

The control freaks saw that Nature was far more powerful than humans, far more powerful than any deity. They saw it had the ability to capture, to hold in its grasp and transform the ordinary in us to the extraordinary that goes beyond self. Once that metamorphosis took place, they knew control was a lost cause.

It is also why any kind of substance that allowed mental escape was controlled and either outlawed or puritanically dispensed at high cost. Drugs were designed to put people in a state where there was no disturbing reality, no too obvious change from one mood, one truth to the next. Variation of mood, of being, of relating was seen as wrong. Stability of existence was seen as a positive instead of the most spirit killing weapon ever devised--other than religion.

And it was especially why hate and division was always promoted over love and tolerance. Like those penned up sheep, humans wer easier to control if they were all hungry, tired, horny, and ready to be eaten at the same time. It was far easier to pipe canned entertainment into the pen than it was to hand the stage over and invite something new to emerge from the chaos.

But within that stew of overly simmered sameness, there was always the sheep that strayed outside the herd, the one that was a bit odd, who preferred the taste of flowers instead of grass, who gazed at the sky and saw clouds and birds and tall mountains instead of some scolding, foul-tempered deity.

That was the one I wanted in my life. That was the one I wanted teaching me. That was the ones I wanted to love and call friend because he and she were what gave meaning to my life. But more than anything, I also wanted to be that for them as well because without the circle that leads us back to each other, we don't really exist as authentic, empathic human beings.

Inner Peace by sun_signs
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The Flowering Self

Godless Damned Degenerate for Peace

I'm the first to admit that my inner beast is a stubborn one. It grabs hold of something and doesn't let go until there's some kind of ending, some resolution that doesn't stink of enforced compromise, or that hasn't been steeped until tasteless through the filter of consensus.

Yeah, that's me. But I'm also someone who doesn't waste my time with lost causes. I have no use for people who have given up on themselves, who have turned their brains and hearts over to some master pulling strings they don't even know they have.

It's why religion annoys me. There's nothing democratic about religion. There's some power-hungry asshat behind a pulpit preaching his biases to a crowd of people who are so afraid of their inner selves, they turn themselves over body and brain.

I hate unfair fights and there's nothing more unfair than a power whore abusing those weaker and more desperate than him or herself. The average preacher claims to be a servant or emissary of god, often using the same language as other historical mass indoctrinators of human consciousness  used those words to raise armies in the service of their own special friends.

My main objection to religions is that every one of them has its blood all over wars using some mythical deity as an excuse for the pillaging and slaughter.  One of the many reasons I don't believe in god is that if one existed then he/she/it would have smacked the holy shit out of these morons starting wars and killing people using him/her/it as an excuse. And if I am wrong, then what kind of human being would I  be if I allowed myself to get sucked into these mass murder cults that demand blood and hate as some sort of twisted homage? I couldn't live with myself if I gave up my humanity that easily and for so little. What kind of evil monster would demand such horrid obedience from me that I would literally turn over all that is loving and kind about myself to him/her/it so they could kill and destroy even more?

But every day I see people who do this, people who are so insecure, so afraid of the perceived demons inside themselves that they march sheeplike to the cadence of their masters. This is what war truly is, the strong manipulating the weak and frightened so the powerful may grow richer and more powerful. The only god they're fighting for is money and power. And they use religion to keep people from noticing their hands picking the pockets of the people as they make others die for their own personal enrichment.

This has always been the story of war. It has nothing to do with honor, with glory, with democracy or saving souls. It has everything to do with powermongers who sell weapons to everyone, no matter what their politics or religion. It has everything to do with politicians who are so willing to use the lives of others to score points in some demented game of human chess, they don't even consider the casualities worthy of being referred to as human beings. It has everything to do with land grabs, with historical grievances, with family feuds among the rich and powerful. And religion is the noose they drape around the neck of the sheep so they will die willingly and ask no questions.

But it all doesn't happen so easily. To convince the sheep to enter the slaughterhouse, they use their evil minions, the purveyors of hate and propaganda. They use the lowest of the common denominators to instill hatred and rage because that way they can control the masses. Those who love are beyond the control of evil masters, but those who hate already have one hand on the leash and are ready to hand the other end of it to the first hater who stirs up the venom in their hearts.

As human beings who have the responsibility of passing on a whole and healthy planet to the next generation, we have to understand that love is the only thing that will save us and preserve something worth passing on. Love is the only way we can move forward in a time where hate is a prison waiting to enslave us all. We need to speak up. We need to make some noise. We need to understand if we don't use our own power to create a peaceful world, then it will be taken from us and turned into a weapon of hate that will be used against us. We need to reject hate. We need to reject the cultish behavior that leads to mental imprisonment. We need to stand up and very clearly state: there's a better way of going through life and we are that way.

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Godless Damned Degenerate for Peace

On this moronic topic of hate

So Cafepress decided to take down the assassination gear after all. I suppose I should be happy they came to their senses but instead I'm left with this gnawing suspicion that they crunched numbers, talked to lawyers, measured the cost of indignation, were appalled (and not totally understanding) why they were singled out for shame on TV and Zazzle was not, and then went with the bottom line that favored them, which is the way they make all their decisions. It would fit their "profile" as they've refined it over the last year. It would solidify their standing as just another corporate crap shop that cares only about money. Yeah, thanks guys, but you already revealed who you are and doing the decent thing came too late. As they used to tell us slutty girls who actually enjoyed sex as much as the boys back then, you can't get your reputation back.

I really wish that they and others would have immediately recognized it as the hate-fueled crap it was and taken it down immediately, or at least been the leader and kept it down once they made the decision like Zazzle did. But that would imply a decency and intelligence they, and a lot of people do not possess. There's times when we seem to have become a nation of poorly educated morons goosestepping to either the almighty dollar or some barely disguised hate group.

I don't know at what point a human being can say I've had enough of this crap and I'm going to start fighting back, but that pretty much sums up where I'm at right now. I've always tried to have a live and let live approach to life. But damn it, when crazyass hating jerks who use the Bible or whatever book they choose to wave in my face to justify hate, then I'm done letting live.

I'm not a violent person and I will never, unlike these hate groups, advocate violence, but I do have ways to make my voice heard. I use my art, my words, my helping others to fight back. Those are more effective and lasting ways to effect change. If you kill someone or piss them off then you haven't really done something that will create positive change. All you've done is create more enemies, more hate, more victims.

Yesterday two of those pure little Mormon converters made the mistake of knocking on my door. All I could see were representatives of a church who used money and power to deny citizens of another state the right to marry. I still remember when African-Americans were not allowed to hold positions of power in that church. And now I see that same bigotry directed toward gays and lesbians. How dare they come to my door and push that crap on me? How would they like it if I went to their doors and lectured them on Atheism?

I sent them on their way without too much verbal damage because it's not their fault they're ignorant of what their church really is, but with enough warning that coming back would not be a pleasant experience for them. It did leave me feeling as if religion is its own worst enemy,  that politicized churches have created more Atheists than believers in the last few years.

Maybe there's a downward spiral they've sucked themselves into that has to happen, and right now the pool is just starting to whirl. Maybe some day history will look back on this time the same way they looked back on the fall of the Roman Empire, the end of Hitler, the disgrace of Nazism and Facism, the cruelty of tyrannical dictators.They will be able to point to certain people who were the propagandists who stirred up the ignorant with hatred and created enemies/scapegoats for these uneducated and mostly stupid rabble to rail against. There is no easier person to control than one who hates. They are truly the tool of any master who feeds them hateful crap.

This may seem like the most idealist nonsense you've ever read but I really do believe love and tolerance can defeat all that. As I said, you can control a hater with no problem, but a person who loves is fairly hard to turn into a missile of evil. Love is a power that only works for good and immediately recognizes when not good is threatening them.

I'm not talking about the kind of love that happens in relationships. That's a whole different kind of love, a sort of willful blindness that only hurts those who choose badly. I'm talking about the kind of love that most religions conveniently forgot were the basis of those precious books they're so fond of waving around. Maybe if people were required to actually read their bibles, their religous books, and not go on just the word of some unholy intermediary with an agenda to push, we might create that better world that religion promises so deceptively to its followers.

But in the meantime, it's up to us as individuals, as artists, as human beings to take over the message of hate and replace it with love. It's up to us to take the negative crap and replace it with positive goals. It's up to us to stand up to the haters, to call them on their hate and make as much noise over love as they do over hate. It's up to us to realize we do have the power to fight back against mean, against cruel, against hateful, against bigoted and intolerant.

We all have the means inside our hearts and it's time to start digging or the haters will win.

Hate is an STD by orsobear
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Peace Love Tolerance by orsobear
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On this moronic topic of hate

You Must Be Kind

I was talking to a friend tonight about the kinds of things old friends sit around and discuss over a bottle or two of wine, such as friendship, how it grows, how it's formed, and what holds it together. He asked me what I instinctively look for in a friendship, what separates it from mere acquaintanceship for me. He knows me well enough to know I can count my deep connections on one hand and the rest range in superficial to moving up the food chain of my heart.

I sang him one answer from Uncle John's Band, which he joined in and sang with me: "what I want to know is are you kind?"

Our connection has always been a literary feasting of souls and we share a love of many of the same books that range from classics that we struggled through in college and then learned to love as grown-ups, all the way to current well put together bits and pieces we find on the web and send to each other.

We "met" at an online book club over ten years ago that discussed one book a month for an entire month. After a time you begin to see patterns of discussion emerging and ours always crossed paths. I reminded him of the quote that he posted when we were reading  Kurt Vonnegut's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater "There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind."

And truly, kindness is the base of any friendship for me because it allows a person to step outside of themselves, out of their own needs and selfishness and focus on someone else. It allows them to give, to heal, to nurture, to support, to hear and listen and love. Without kindness all those wonderful things are just empty words.

Kindness prevents the kind of malicious and mean gossip that is so prevalent among many small communities and eats away at it from within. Kindness nourishes tolerance so others are accepted for who they are rather than what they can do for you. Kindness allows a generosity of spirit that allows a person to give of themself as naturally as they give to themselves. Kindness prevents war and violence because it won't allow you to inflict cruelty, pain and suffering on another living creature. Kindness simply makes a human being whole, because without it, we are nothing more than a sort of societal leech that always takes and never gives back.

So, yes, the base of the friendship pyramid for me is kindness as I don't ever see myself being satisfied with a friendship that is less than that. It would be meaningless for me, empty, unsatisfying. It would not be worthy of the title of friendship.

kindness, tolerance, love, Vonnegut, Grateful Dead, friendship

You Must Be Kind

Dear Ms. Selfish Asshat

I received an email this morning that left me shaking my head at the total and utter selfishness of some human beings. I'd post it, along with the name, but I'm one of those dinosaurs who believes an email sent between people is a private conversation. But that doesn't prevent me from responding publicly. Names changed to protect the clueless:

Dear Ms. Selfish Asshat:

I read the tragic tale of your lost trust fund and how after three whole years of your life depending on it showing up in your bank account, you now find yourself in the job market with no skills, no ambition, no desire or ability to work and you want President Obama to help you instead of, as you so eloquently put it: "...all those welfare queens who sit on their fat asses all day."

Ms. A, you stated in your email that you are 38 years old. Who supported your privileged little ass for the three years before the free money kicked in? Did it ever occur to you to use the education your grandparents endowed for something besides a four year long fashion parade?

No, I can't relate to you not being able to buy any new clothes to go job hunting. I spend most of my time figuring out if the money I have left after paying bills will feed us for three days or four. Some months I actually have to decide if I want to eat food or late fees. And besides, I'm sure your closet is overflowing with suitable job hunting clothes because you did mention that being nicely dressed is vital to your self esteem.

Well, my selfish little friend, being able to pay my bills is vital to MY self-esteem. There are people every day losing their jobs, their houses, their retirement funds and you're whining because you can't afford an expensive new outfit? What the fuck is wrong with you?

But there is a bright spot in your utter and clueless selfishness, and that's knowing that there's lots of people like you who will be finding out exactly what I'm talking about. Right now you're still living on what your parents give you out of their rapidly draining savings account because as you said, there's nothing left of their investments except savings. You whine because you have to cut back on what you want. Wait until their savings is gone, and then you'll learn, as many of your privileged, selfish little peers will learn, that cutting back is nothing like you thought it would be.

I hope that moment of awakening will make you more compassionate, more tolerant, more able to take charge of your own life and grow some responsibility for your lazy, incompetent ass. If what is about to happen to you will also happen to a lot of other people who are in your position right now, then maybe we will grow up to be a better nation, maybe you'll understand how you and others like you represent the dying, failed and cruel policies of the mean and incompetent Bush presidency.

If not, then you'll just go hungry and your soul will be as empty as your heart is now.

selfish, lost trust funds, bailouts, economy, compassion, tolerance, job market

Dear Ms. Selfish Asshat

Thank You Mr. Vonnegut

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”

(Kurt Vonnegut, November 11, 1922-April 11, 2007)

The day that Kurt Vonnegut died I was going to write something around that quote because it's the one that I felt described what was so important about him as a writer and as a man. I was going to write how he knew about kindness because he also knew about cruelty, the kind of cruelty only another human can inflict upon another. I was going to write that Kurt Vonnegut the man had suffered the indignity of being no more than a name and number inside the enemy's meat locker so that Kurt Vonnegut the writer could try and teach us that all human beings have value. I was going to write that the sadness inside his soul, that unbearable sorrow you could see in his eyes was what made love such a vital force in his writings. I was going to write about myself and how I grew and found the courage to be who I am from reading his words grown from pain, suffering, disillusionment, and a life that went on longer than the man himself.

But the days went by as I kept saying tomorrow I will get to it, tomorrow I will write about how important it was to be kind. And I was going to write about the horrors, the absolute evil that happens when you are not kind. I promised myself that tomorrow I would write about how it feels to be disenfranchised from the human race by those who felt it was their place to judge another human being. I promised myself that tomorrow I would write about the sadness that held tinges of anger for those hurt by the perpetually foolish act of loving another human being too much, and the even more preposterous idea that you can love someone too much. I was going to write about the pain of losing a friend, a lover, a confidant, a heart connection because you weren't good enough, pretty enough, handsome enough to keep them in a world where second best becomes insignificant.

I was going to write about how Kurt Vonnegut the writer kept me alive during some of the darkest times of my life by reminding me that love was stronger than hate, that it didn't take everyone to love to make the world a better place, that it could be done a handful at a time if those people believed in the power of love strongly enough. I was willing to be one of those people, a sort of flawed missionary of love willing to help spread this amazing truth. It made such sense to me. It was so simple. All we had to do was be kind to each other and the rest would take care of itself. It made so much sense.

And I had been hurt enough by love, by false friendships, by people who only took and never gave back that I believed I could be an effective missionary. I'd suffered with the best of them, been wounded and betrayed by the worst of them. I'd loved the total bastards, befriended the selfish, trusted the wrong people, and I was raised by people whose bodies survived too many wars to ever leave their hearts intact. I'd been used, abused, dumped, forgotten, put at the bottom of the list enough times to have respectable credentials to flash when I said love was a choice we all make. I earned those credentials by continuing to love the abusers, users, shit spouting so-called friends for life who tried to take that away from me and failed. I wanted to thank Kurt Vonnegut for their failure to strip me of what he gave to me the first time I read his words: an unbreakable, unshakable, unwavering belief in the power of love.

And then a sick, twisted, excuse-ridden, disturbed discard of society shot up a school and I couldn't write a word until today when I finally stopped crying. I had to write today because there is this burning question in me that won't go away: would it have made a damn bit of difference if people had been kind to this sick bastard? Would it? And on the off chance that the answer is yes, then isn't it way past time that we start being kind, that we stop making war on each other, that we stop drawing lines in the sand and saying this is your side and this is my side, that we stop punishing those who are different, those who aren't pretty enough, those who aren't handsome enough, those who have no social skills to save them from all the punishments that can be inflicted on them simply for being who they are. Isn't it past time that we start living as human to human instead of thing to thing? Isn't it about damn time we started being kind?

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Thank You Mr. Vonnegut