Opposite sides?

I stopped by the room to fill my mug with some fresh caffeine. The ever present TV set to a 24 hour news channel was telling the tale of some Republican ranting about some Democrat being corrupt and needing to be removed from office. (By the way; is there a public room anywhere in the industrialized world that does not sport a TV? Even public bathrooms have them now. And 24 hour news? I know that life goes on 24 hours a day, but how much of that is actually "news"?)

"The only thing stranger than a Democrat complaining about corruption," I said to the man standing at the other coffee machine, "is a Republican complaining about corruption."

He immediately took offense, suggesting that Democrats are more corrupt than Republicans on any day of the week.

And I had to laugh. Somehow we had taken opposite sides while saying the exact same thing. So indoctrinated are we in the left v right, conservative v liberal, capitalist v socialist, ad nauseum, that even when we agree with each other we fight over just how agreeable we are being.

Depending on something completely arbitrary, the time of the day or the positions of the stars, something, one will take the position that the Democrats are dumping 15 tons of shit on us while the Republicans are dumping just 13 tons. Another will insist that the Republicans are the ones dumping 15 tons and the Democrats just 13. And somehow, while arguing over who is right, both forget that they are wading though tons and tons of shit.

I openly admit that I exited the reservation stage left. I see little hope in the claim that true freedom results from religious fundamentalism being forced on all. The idea that personal responsibility means working dutifully to provide international corporations with a consumer market and a fat profit strikes me as a sad delusion that can only lead to ruin. And the claims that a human invented "free market" will dispense divine justice and lead to a fair and progressing society without continuous oversight, adjustment and regulation, are clearly the ravings of the insane.

But what of those who exit stage right? The person who who insists that freedom is jeopardised by an overbearing and intrusive government will find me nodding in agreement. One who claims that personal responsibility is not fostered by a society that attempts to provide cradle to grave safety and prosperity regardless of individual effort will get little argument from me. As for the capitalist crying that communism is anything but fair and has the added benefit of failing where ever it is tried, well, guess what? Not only does she have a point but she is probably not very happy with the kind of "capitalism" currently inflicted on America.

Left or right, we cherish and even demand freedom and personal liberty. Liberal or conservative, we will insist that no society can thrive that demeans personal responsibility. Capitalist or communist, we desire a system that allows universal access to success; that rewards work and innovation and courage; that does not abandon the weak or the ill or the old; and does not celebrate greed as the most noble aspect of human character. And we will probably agree that, what ever label is hung on our current economic system, it does none of those things. Liberty, personal responsibility, fairness and compassion? How much disagreement can there be on these things between thinking human beings?

Those in power are staying in power by making sure we don't realize that fact. As long as they keep us angry with each other we will forget that we should be angry with them. They are working together to leech the liberty out of America while getting us to believe it is those damned liberals or religious conservative who are at fault. To "win" and "save our society" we are told to trust and obey those in power and be responsible to them, not to our families, friends and to ourselves. They have set up the most skewed society in modern history, where the political and business elite grow obese at a table set by the labor of those going without, while telling us that those not at the table, (which is most of us by the way) are the inferior ones.

The chattering class is in on the same scam, not so much to stay in power but to keep the easy money flowing from their sponsors. Be they right wing or left, they generate money by generating heat, not light. In fact the current structure is perfect for them - all they need do to stay fat is keep stirring up the shit! Accuracy doesn't matter, nor facts or truth or context. Far from being shameful and derided, hate speech and shear lunacy are celebrated for the ability to hold an audience.

The very idea that there are "opposite sides" is an invention of those grabbing power. Each person has a unique history and a lone view of the world. An idea that forms the very core of your being, (a religion for example) may not interest me at all. That makes us different. That does not make us opposites. In all probability tied up deep in your religion are notions of personal responsibility and justice that are parallel to mine. My need for liberty and insistence on compassion will be echos of your own hopes. We only come into conflict if I try to force you to abandon your god or you try to force me to kneel at an alter.  Even then our conflict is over a single issue. All we need to to resolve the conflict is to leave the other person be.

This is not to suggest we will all be sitting around the fire singing in blessed harmony. Just because we are not opposites does not mean we are not different. Nor does it mean we will actually like each other. There are people very different from me who I like (even love) very, very, much. There are people very much like me that I don't care for at all. And there are some things that are "deal killers." The white supremacist may be a good father, a loving husband, a talented sailor or pilot or motorcycle rider. Doesn't matter. We are not going to be sharing a beer. Even then (and as much as it might pain me to admit it) we are not opposites in anything but our view of justice as it applies to race. I may really want to see him get his ass kicked into next week, but until he raises his hand to inflict his illness on another, he is safe from me.

And I think that is where those in power are playing us for fools. Every nuance of the propaganda machine reinforces the idea that if I don't agree with someone on every single level, then I can't trust them and don't like them. If I can't trust them and don't like them then we are opposites. If we are opposites we must be enemies and kicking some ass is my inalienable right. To kick ass we need leaders. Those in power just love to call themselves leaders. We buy into the story and keep electing them to kick some opposite ass.

I don't know if there is a way out of this morass of "opposites." But calling it for the horseshit it is can't be a bad start.

Home made religion

I take it as a given that all gods are invented by human kind. To some degree every believer I have ever talked with has modified the god offered him or her, making it tolerable. One young lady is a good example. Over a dinner hosted by a Seminary friend she insisted that she was a Bible believing Protestant, though she was sure the "submissive woman thing" was a mistake. When I suggested that her bible very specifically declares that women should be subjected to men and that she had, in fact, modified the Christian god into one she could worship, she was deeply offended. (Oddly enough she was offended at me, though I completely agreed that no real god would insist that women be subjected to men.)

In addition to rejecting doctrines they can't swallow, each believer is faced with a holy book full of contradictions. Each ends up interpreting that book as fits her or his own society, personal history, and prejudices. In addition most such books were written thousands of years ago when even the most educated person knew less about the true nature of the cosmos than does the average kid in an eighth grade science class. (Not including those in Texas or Kansas.) The gods described in the holy books are severely mismatched to the universe we see; thus even more interpretations are required. There appear to be as many different gods as there are believers.

That strikes me as curious. If there is really a god out there why is it so impossible to get a clear view of It, Him, or Her? Most of my species insists that there is a god, what if they are correct? Assuming a god actually exists what should I look for? What would I expect to see in a universe created and overseen by a real, Honest To Goodness God? (HTGG) How would such a god be noticed and described; what should I believe, really?

My first assumption is a certain level of honesty or, at least, a disinterest in deception, on the part of a HTGG. Fact is, if the HTGG, being ancient and powerful and a lot smarter than us, has a desire to deceive, then we will all be deceived. Nothing we think we see, nothing we imagine, and nothing we experience can be trusted in the least. If the HTGG lacks this tiny bit of morality, then the cosmos is a nightmare experience where there is no hope of understanding. All alone this assumption of honesty puts some serious dents in the god beliefs floating around our little planet, forcing me to look elsewhere.

To be honest the HTGG ends up being constrained - unable to do (or be) some things if it does other things. Claiming to be god makes it even more so. I consider lying a serious affront, but in no way claim I have never told a lie. A HTGG however, would not be considered "honest" if it could be demonstrated that IT had ever lied about any thing, for any reason. One deliberate falsehood on the part of a being who claims perfect morality and the whole story falls apart.

A real HTGG could not (for example) create the universe just 10,000 years ago where every observation, every natural process from plate tectonics to the speed of light to the cosmic background radiation, points to a cosmos being 13+ billion years old. To do so would be to deliberately mislead anyone who was trying to understand the nature of existence. Christians who believe in a literal interpretation of the first books of their bible are, without recourse, worshiping a lying god. That they do so with such enthusiasm is curious, but the god is fundamentally flawed and needs no serious consideration.

This essential honesty makes it impossible that the HTGG has actually written any books as a revelation to mankind. Any such book would have to be internally consistent and true in every particular, parallel the universe we observe. Such a book could simply not contain any errors about any subject, never get its history wrong, never trip over its science. If it did the only claim it could make would be a collection of some person's thoughts about what god is like. Interesting, maybe even helpful, but no more holy than are these scribblings.

Integral to that honesty, a HTGG could not make mutually exclusive claims about It's own character. For example the HTGG could not claim to be an all-loving, all-powerful, all-knowing deity with no recourse but to invoke a hell. (2300 years later, Epicurus still awaits an answer.) In the end, if the god is not honest it is a poor excuse for a god.

Honesty suggests that, if the HTGG is all powerful, then there is no Anti-G who is being allowed to deceive. I know this is a favorite of the Jewish/Christian/Muslim faith. But either the HTGG is omnipotent and therefore utterly immune from opposition, or the Anti-G roams the world. And if there is an almost-as-powerful-as-the-HTGG Anti-G who is free to deceive, we will, again, be deceived. Of course many religious folk claim exactly this. But they then make the claim that they are the exception, they alone are not deceived; without having any real explanation as to how they managed to pull that off. (And they still have the problem of not agreeing with each other.) In a universe rife with deception, accepting their claim of knowledge without a single fact that backs them up would be colossally foolish.

Thus this universe with an HTGG as its creator is fundamentally honest. What we see is what we get. The HTGG cannot contradict itself and cannot exist in contradiction to the cosmos.

The search for an Honest-To-Goodness-God gets kind of stuck right here. A look about the cosmos doesn't uncover anything that looks like a god. Nor does a look around our little planet. What we do see is a continuous evolution of natural processes. From here on all god-thoughts can be nothing but assumptions and guesses. Even if there be a HTGG, It can hold no grudge against those who sally no further in faith. This is, after all, how the cosmos presents itself to be...godless.

Could an honest god deliberately hide for some reason? It is hard to see how, but an honest god could be surprised, perhaps even delighted, by a cosmos that evolved in ways unexpected. That may leave an omniscient god out of the picture; but that appears to be the only option that fits into the cosmos. To get to some kind of god belief means looking for a different kind of god.

An engineer starts a project (say a bridge) knowing exactly what needs to be built. Each bit is designed for purpose, strength, and fit with all the other bits in mind. Tools are deployed to make the bits, and any surprise is a failure of design or execution. An artist, on the other hand, starts out not knowing the exact image that will ultimately appear on the canvas, it is a journey of discovery.

Could it be that the HTGG is an artist and not an engineer? That the cosmos is a canvas and not a bridge? If so the universe would appear exactly as it does, its history would be what we have learned, and we would fit into it exactly as we do. Creation is not a place we inhabit; it is a process of which we are a part.

I have the privilege of knowing a couple of artists. Sometimes, as they work the canvas, things appear that don’t seem fit, that have a tinge of ugly to them, things no one really wants to see. But they appear anyway and even the artist can’t explain why. What usually happens next is that the artist buries the offensive image into the painting. The image doesn’t just go away, it can’t. It has become a part of the work. But instead of projecting ugly that layer becomes the foundation for the next, and ugly is absorbed by subtlety and depth. It is a reach, but not much of one, to accept the ugly in our evolution as a parallel experience for the HTGG. Racism, tribal warfare, genocide, murder, torture, slavery; from our prospective such massive evil, such overwhelming ugly, appears irredeemable. But we can grant that the HTGG works a canvas beyond our vision, that what appears beyond redemption in this tiny corner of the canvas will be layered into the whole.

It could be that the HTGG is a duffer, that the canvas will be fit only for some attic somewhere. But I’m going to take our collective morality, even as it appears just slightly more moral than immoral, as a hint this is not so. As art reflects the artist I think we are safe to assume that consciousness and morality (nascent as it is in our very young species) could suggest that such has been infused into work by an Artist. This might be the one place where the cosmos hints at a god-like entity being involved…that an unconscious universe has evolved bits of consciousness.

With the HTGG envisioned as an Artist and not an Engineer, the cosmos as a work in progress, and life as an unexpected or unanticipated facet glowing out of the work, we at least have a god that does not contradict the cosmos we know. However, the real goal of every god belief seems to be to find a way for us to remain “alive” after we die. If the HTGG is going to make it as a “real” god-possibility of any interest, somehow, some kind of life-after-death has to fit the picture. Thus we are forced to assume that eternal life is inherently “good” and desirable, and a lack of same is inherently “not-good”. There is the problem of the 13.7 billion years of cosmic history that passed before any of us showed up. True we are a bit part of that history, but those passing eons had no real impact on our conscious selves. They passed without our realizing and left no trace in our memories. Is it really unlikely that the eons that unfold after we die will be different? Still, I think I can get there, (that is to eternal life).

The Artist and the Canvas are but an analogy, and not particularly nuanced. The cosmos is clearly more dimensional, more faceted, than a canvas. Compared to an artist, the HTGG would be equally more complex and dynamic. Imagine life, consciousness, and self-awareness emerging from the cosmos as layer upon billion year layer is brushed on; a glow imperceptible at first, lost in the flux of light washing through creation. It is an image parallel to what we know to be true. Matter and energy are two sides of the same coin, energy being nothing more (or less) than patterns in the light. Matter precipitated out of the light of the early universe. Organized by gravity, the matter (mostly hydrogen) coalesced into masses, compressed and ignited into stars. From those early stars was all of the complexity of a chemical universe bred. As those first stars expired the calcium, iron and carbon that forms the foundation of life’s chemistry flowed into new stars, solar systems, planets and biospheres; layers that built up even beyond the attributes of chemistry. We know our very minds to be layers, complexities mounded up on earlier complexities that form our brains. We know that conscious thoughts ride on the sub-conscious and that we are social creatures. Our “individualism” rides upon the structure of societies and civilizations. So deep and intricate are these layers that much of our decision making happens on a sub-conscious level; our conscious self being told only after the fact. Our self-awareness lies at the surface of the most subtle of interactions of light flowing through literally billions of years of layering.

Fragile as human life and each individual may be, it is not difficult to envision such as being interesting, even a delight, to the HTGG. Self-aware bits, the Canvas alive, looking at itself and wondering from whence it came? Why let such mastery pass away? Indeed, could the HTGG allow such to fade knowing that to do so would be considered immoral, even evil, by the bits themselves? It seems unlikely. If the cosmos is a canvas, and if life brings beauty to that work, then the HTGG might (Must?) preserve that beauty somehow.

So here we have a religion that allows for an Honest To Goodness God to actually insist in the cosmos we observe. The universe is consistent with such a Being, our existence and evolutionary history fit as well. Morality is a bit different than what we usually imagine. What the Artist sees as beauty we interpret as moral. People can still live differently as their history and geography dictate, customs will change and sometimes clash, but an underlying common existence will allow for a shared sense of being and importance.

Immoral acts, even when done in the name of the HTGG, are universally ugly, marring the artwork and a direct affront to the Artist. Such an evil line or splotch is sure to be layered away, left far from the surface when the work is completed. Only the beautiful will be visible. How one chooses to live one’s life determines one’s place in the eternal canvas; layered away and hidden forever, or part of the visible to join in an ongoing celebration.

My own prejudice is to envision the universe more like a thought than a machine, a conscious entity because we are conscious. It wouldn't take much faith to reach my Artist God, but I put no value in faith. (Nor am I convinced that "eternal life" is of much value either.) Indeed, trying to force a god onto a cosmos that shows no evidence of such is always a impediment to wisdom. Still, if a god belief is necessary there are worse ones out there than god as an Artist.

Election news

The election, still almost a year away, is the most talked about subject when it comes to "news". (Which is why taking the "news" in very small doses, spaced a couple of days apart, is probably a good idea.) There is some serious weirdness going on with the coverage of this upcoming debacle of democracy.

One is the breathlessness, the shear "little-girl-giddiness" that underlines the stories. One would think that the most important event that has ever happened in the history of the cosmos is about to unfold. Part and parcel of the giddiness is that the talkers clearly don't have much of a clue. There is only one real story that matters this election; Democrat, Republican, Independent, Third party, what ever. The only thing that the American people really need to know about any candidate this election is, where is the money coming from?

The Supreme Court of the United States has ensured that this election will be an orgy of graft, corruption, and influence peddling. Rivers of dirty money will ensure that the winner of the election will be bought and paid for. Who is buying any particular candidate is the most important, indeed the only, information that matters. In the (claimed) immortal words of Mr. Deep Throat - bane of the corrupted Nixon administration - "Follow the money."

And it needs to be detailed information. Some truth obscuring name for a political action committee is not enough. American Crossroads, America's Family First Action Fund, Club for Growth Action, but I couldn't find one named, "We buy ugly Politicians" though that might be closer to the truth. Who are the people behind the PAC, what is their agenda, how many will end up in the administration? Unfortunately it takes serious investigative journalism to uncover such details. The best we can do in America is talking heads.

An American worker

My wife got fired a few months ago. She has never been fired before and took it kind of hard. Actually, to put it bluntly, it pissed her off to the core. And rightly so. She got fired for the same reason most Americans get fired these days; her boss found someone younger and drastically less capable who would try to do her job for less money. Customers will suffer but the boss will keep a little more of what he regards as "his" money.

Like most Americans my wife worked for a for a small company where there is no union, in a country that long ago sold itself out to business. Employees have virtually no protection from employers, and (in my experience) small company owners/employers are the very worst. Every penny they chisel out of their suppliers, every nickel of pay / benefit / vacation day / sick day they can steal from their workers, every dime of quality they can cut from their product, is change that goes directly into their pocket. Even if they started out trying to build a better widget at a slightly more competitive price, eventually there is nothing left but pure greed and utter selfishness.

My work history is a bit more storied but reflects the same realities of working in America. I bailed out of job #1 just before the government/military contract that supported the work went away, and with it the loss of thousands of jobs. It was with a big company with many layers of management trained at Ivy League schools boasting of the letters after their names. The program went millions of dollars over budget but at least managed to be months and months behind schedule. The "workers" took the blame of course; never mind that we weren't provided with enough tools and equipment to make use of all the people thrown at the project. It was a good thing there were some extras around though, since more than a few got killed in the unsafe working conditions. As there were thousands of us in the factory the odds were good that any particular worker would live to find another job, and I did.

I left Job #2 when the company decided they could make more money off of me by moving me to a production line rather than keeping me at the job I was hired to do. It was also at a big company and all workers were just like the parts of the production line, moved around at whim.

Job #3 was my first with a small company. It went away when the owner looted most of the accounts and ran off with a girlfriend. I had to talk the Sheriff into taking the padlock off the hangar door long enough for me to roll my toolbox out to the van.

Job #4 was for another big company. After managing to aggravate my immediate supervisor, mostly by simply doing my job without needing much from him, I was once again “moved” to “new responsibilities.” That lasted until the newly appointed President of this international company happened to run across a grade 5 aircraft mechanic sitting on the wing of an airplane after finishing up with the list of airplanes to be washed that day. After a good deal of loud conversation, (with my supervisor, not me) I was moved back to the job I was being paid to do. I kind of enjoyed the fact that my supervisor had his ass chewed off by the President of the company, sort of on my behalf. But clearly that job was not going to be tenable for long.

Job #5 was a move closer to family and lasted for more than a decade. But the owner of the company was determined that he would dictate to the market, not the other way around. I locked the doors and turned out the lights on my way out. Job #6 was half way across the country.

I liked job #6 right up until they decided they were spending too much money on things like safety, equipment and training. For some reason they took offence at me pointing out that they were likely to get someone killed, and that I might be that someone. Threats of being fired ensued, but I bailed before, 1) getting fired and 2) getting killed. Just a few months after I left one of the people who did the threatening and who was, himself, not particularly well trained, died in a piece of poorly maintained equipment. He took two co-workers with him and the company folded.

Job #7 was ¼ of the way back across the country and for another small company. The owner resented every dime that flowed through his hands that didn’t end up in his bank account. It was a fun job in some respects, but being consistently treated as an expense he resented took its toll. As time passed the job changed from being a key part of a challenging enterprise to being a Boy Friday running errands. I still did the skilled work needed, after all I was the only one on the payroll who could. But The Boss was clearly getting tired of giving some of "his" money to me and was upset by the fact that I wasn't as impressed with him as he was with himself. Once again threats of getting fired ensued so I started looking for another place to be. When I left he hired someone cheaper with fewer skills, then someone even cheaper and less skilled after that. Eventually he faded away, though thankfully managed to do so without actually killing anyone.

I took Job #8 mostly because it seemed a good chance to get away from Job #7 and they sang me a good song about starting up a first class operation. Within weeks the song changed to one of how they were smarter, quicker, and better than everyone else who had ever been in the business. They were wrong. The carnage ended up including at least 2 dead, several others severely injured, and the dollar amount of equipment damaged too high for even a lunatic reported to be worth some $200,000,000 to ignore. Fortunately I missed the memo that said my job was to nod, say, “Yes Sir,” and stroke the boss with continuous praise as to just how smart he and his demented little band of children really were. They fired me just BEFORE the first body hit the ground, and I am forever grateful it worked out that way.

Job #9 was a good job running a department for a large University and being involved with educating truly extraordinary young people for a demanding career. But eventually the University had “other priorities.” After nearly 7 years of nothing but glowing job reviews, job #9 disappeared into the hole being dug for the foundation of a new Basketball Stadium.  Fortunately the U. found places for the others in my department, but my job skills are a bit specialized.  Out the door I went with a couple of weeks pay and not so much as a "thank you." (My already dim view of big name collegiate sports programs took a real nose-dive after that.)

Job #10 was a brutal schedule with minimum pay and a management team that never saw a union worker they thought worth the trouble. Still, I kind of liked it and intended to hang around for a while. The equipment was new, the people out on the line were mostly good folks, and the job could be a real challenge. But Job #11 was too good to pass up.

So far job #11 is working out pretty well. With any luck it will be the last one I have. If so the score will be:

Jobs left for my own reasons on my own time? #10

Jobs that went away? #1, #3, #5, #9

Jobs that changed into other jobs I didn’t want to do? #2, #7

Fired or bailing just before getting fired? #4, #6, #8

Jobs that came perilously close to getting me killed? #1, #3, #6, #7, #8. Now I admit my job is a bit more dangerous than most - usually listed in the top 5 of the most dangerous jobs in America and currently at number 3. But wouldn't you think that people involved in such a risky enterprise would be more careful, not less?

Jobs I look back on as "good" jobs? #5, #9, #11. It is no coincidence that at these jobs I report(ed) to people I regard as first class, expert individuals who treat(ed) me as fairly as they can or could.

So far as I can tell my experience isn't that unusual. Being exploited as a revenue source on one hand and despised as a financial liability on the other, while being sacrificed (rhetorically or factually) to the whims of those in charge, is pretty much what it means to be an American worker today. Not always and not everywhere, but 3 out of 11 is just about 27% of my jobs that were good verses bad.

With the unions neutered and the government long ago sold to the highest corporate bidder, an American worker had best be a nimble, unencumbered individual who can throw any job back at any employer and walk away. Kind of difficult with credit card debts, mortgages, and family to feed. Which is probably why the government and banks are so eager to push credit card debt and home ownership. It helps keep the work force immobile and compliant.

Cut the Government!

"Cut the Government!" That seems the current battle cry for everyone, along with the claim that doing so will "fix" everything. It sounds good, nice and clean, the kind of bumper sticker politics that passes as policy in our country. In addition it is something everyone seems to agree on; that excessive regulations are killing the country. I make my living in the aviation industry and will certainly admit that we suffer our share of "excessive regulations." I can't say that they have killed anything though. In fact it seems to me that, should the cost of complying with one regulation or the other actually increase the cost of doing business, that cost will be passed along to the customer just like every other cost. Anyway...

We flew into an Indianapolis airport the other night. It was a typical early winter flight, low visibilities all day, mist and fog, instrument approaches everywhere we went, and bumpy clouds all sporting a little ice. Working our way toward the final approach course Air Traffic Control (ATC) asked us to reduce to our slowest possible speed. It seems they had an emergency situation unfolding and someone needed to get on the ground ahead in a serious way. To make room we climbed up out of the worst of the ice and motored around for 15 minutes while the problem was resolved.

A small, single engine airplane had taken off from somewhere to somewhere, stumbled into the icing conditions, and was quickly overwhelmed by the deteriorating situation. The pilot in command kept his shit together, (no mean feat with ice encrusting your airplane on a dark and stormy night) and aborted to the same airport that was our destination. Declaring an emergency ensured that he got all of the help he needed. No harm, no foul, well done.

We landed a few minutes later, dropped off a passenger of our own, and went inside to order a little gas so we could make our last jump to home base. One of the endless, 24-hour a day news programs was playing inside the business aviation terminal, (as there always seems to be). The passengers from the emergency airplane were also inside waiting for a cab. The T.V. mentioned a speech made that day by Obama, where he outlined some program to try and stimulate job creation.

"Great," one of the passengers grumbled, "another government program when we need to cut the government."

I found myself a bit mystified by that statement. The ATC system in the US is a massive government program; some $1,865,000,0000 worth of it this year. It makes use of the combined efforts of tens of thousands of some of the world's top experts; controllers, inspections, engineers, pilots, maintenance inspectors, accident investigators, weather forecasters; an endless list. Before that airplane ever departed the government insured that the pilot was trained and current, the aircraft was properly designed and built, that there was an airport for it to depart from and another to arrive at, that the navigation satellites were in orbit and working properly, and that the instrument landing system (ILS) was calibrated properly to allow a pilot to find the end of a desperately needed runway on a dark and icy night. When the grumbler's pilot declared an emergency, literally millions of dollars of assets where put into play to get himself, his airplane and his passengers safely back on the ground.

I wonder which parts of that particular government program he would like to see cut?

People always seem to be for cutting the parts of the government that don't seem to be helping them at that particular moment; like I said, bumper sticker politics. Those on the right really should stop talking as if every single penny that the government spends is a wasted penny. There are a lot of wasted pennies for sure, but far less than half of the pennies that are spent; likely less than a quarter of the pennies spent; and possibly less than 10% of the pennies are wasted, (particularly if it is assumed that no military / security penny has ever been wasted - a budget which accounts for about half of all the pennies.)

Those on the left have to stop talking as if there is an endless supply of pennies that they can throw at every harebrained idea that comes down the pike.

The smart bet is that neither side is likely to fess up to the idiocy of its rhetoric. (Any more than the grumbling passenger mentioned above is ever likely to admit that a massive government bureaucracy saved his ass on pitch black night of ugly flying.) Since each party is bent on committing social suicide before admitting to uttering idiocy, it seems pretty clear that all of the pennies will soon dry up and nothing that makes for a first world society is going to get done.

Until something new rises in its place.

Which is something my grand kids will not see, and maybe not my great-grand kids. (Or yours.) But that's what happens when a whole society loses its mind and utters nothing but idiocy.

Muslim dictatorships

From what I can gather from the American propaganda machine the Arab spring is being hijacked by Muslim fundamentalists; which appears to have my fellow Americans all in a twitter. That seems a little odd to me. America's staunchest ally in the Arab world is Saudi Arabia, the definition of a Muslim fundamentalist state. Fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi Arabian, as was the not so long gone and justly reviled Osama bin Laden. The suspicion still lingers that much of the financing for the 9/11 operation came from Saudi Arabian oil money. Iraq is now a fundamentalist Muslim state, as is Afghanistan, and Pakistan is certainly leaning that way. These are all ally nations. (Or maybe occupied nations, which is probably not the same thing.) Iran is, of course, a fundamentalist Muslim state that the US counts as an enemy; clearly being an Islamic fundamentalist dictatorship doesn't upset the American population a majority of the time.

Egypt seems to be the focus of this panic over Islamic fundamentalists taking over once secular Dictators are toppled and something resembling elections are held. We Americans seem very unhappy with free elections unless the elected happen to agree with us. At least we are fair in this regard; mostly feeling the same way about elections in our own country. The American media trashes Obama with complete abandon and without the slightest hesitation, forgetting (apparently) that he basically crushed McCain in a free election. (Elections in the US are of little value - but Americans are still free to choose between two equally ugly and unsavory candidates.) If Egyptians elect a Muslim fundamentalist government wouldn't that put them ahead of Saudi Arabia in the "democracy" department? Throwing off a dictator and electing people to represent a constituency sounds like something we Americans might boast of doing. We don't do it very well, gerrymandering our "constituencies" to make sure that a minority can outvote a majority; but we like to boast about it. Voting Egyptians would seem closer to the dream than non-voting Saudies.

I find it amusing (in a sad kind of, WTF? way) that those who howl the loudest at the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in place of once secular dictatorships are mostly the Christian fundamentalists of the American right wing. Apparently religious oppression of a free society is only acceptable when it is Christian or Jewish oppression of a free society. Islamic oppression of a free society being the worst, and secular oppression being okay so long as they will sell us oil or make our kid's toys and sneakers cheap. Somehow that is supposed to make sense? (Okay, I'll admit that it isn't just Christian fundamentalists who give a pass to tyrants who sell us oil and make cheap toys and sneakers. A lot of us secular Americans will give a pass to oppression so long as doing so helps our wallet.)

People who support democracy and personal liberty first, over and above religion, find it easy to criticize both secular and religious tyranny. I would hope that the people of Egypt, who found the courage to overthrow a secular dictator, can find a way to build a secular society that allows people to worship (or not) with a degree of personal freedom that seems beyond the grasp of most of the Arab world. If they can't then they will have failed to catch the flow of human history...at least for now.

But they are not the only peoples to so fail. Americans are failing in much the same way though, fortunately, on a much smaller scale. It would be impossible to argue that civil rights and individual liberty are on the march in America still; rather they are increasingly under assault and in retreat. Mostly they are trampled under the feet of American Christian fundamentalists and their political allies in both the Republican and Democratic parties, and hopefully we will not retreat too far before we remember what it means to claim the title of "The land of the free."

Islamic dictatorships are a blight on the world, new ones no less than old ones. Then again any dictatorship is a blight on the world, in any guise, in any place, on any scale. It can only be hoped that the current unrest growing across the planet is the result of more and more people demanding liberty in the face of any oppression, anywhere, at the hands of anyone.

Atheists, going where mystics fear to tread

A quick Internet search suggests about 92% of humanity believes in some sort of god; with 1/3 Christians of one sect or another, a tad less than 1/4 claiming Islam as their own, 14% are Hindu, 6% Buddhist,with a mix of this and that making up a bit more than one out of 10. (I have heard Buddhists described as atheists with a sense of theater - but I'm going to include them in the "believer" column.) Go around the world, pick any 100 people at random, and barely a hand full will admit to not having a god belief. I would be among that handful.

Which is one of the reasons I am off the reservation. According to dictionary.com an atheist is, "a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings"; which sounds a bit more harsh than simply not believing in a god. Would they claim that the average person denies or disbelieves the existence of Santa Clause? (Actually, I'm not sure "disbelieve" is a word. I can conclude that what I am being told is true. I can conclude that what I am being told is false. I can conclude that what I am being told doesn't include enough information to decide either way. But how do I disbelieve something?)

Anyway, it isn't so much that I "disbelieve" in the existence of gods. It is true, I have concluded that all the gods and the religions that follow are inventions of human kind; myths, stories, analogies, anthologies, attempts at sharing moral teachings and efforts to explain things that are currently misunderstood. But that is just a surface objection, and a minor one at that. There is nothing wrong with sharing moral teachings or undertaking the task of explaining things. Often myths, stories, and analogies are the best and only way to share understanding and a bit of wisdom. (Sometimes wisdom is even more subtle than myths can convey, which is why we also need art, music, theater, poetry and dance to share what the heart can know.) But I am not an atheist just because all the gods are clearly human created characters in mythical stories.

Humanity is so new to, and such a small bit of, the cosmos, that it is impossible to think that we have much of anything right yet. Imagine an intelligent species one hundred million years further down the evolutionary trail then is humanity. (Not much of a reach actually, the dinosaurs roamed the earth for more than two hundred millions years.) How likely is it that they hold any concept of god at all, or if they do that it is one that we could even recognize? How likely is it that theirs is wrong as compared to ours? Is it even remotely possible that their concept of god is based on the idea that IT created the cosmos specifically for human kind, that humanity is at the very center of ITS attention? The shear scale of the universe makes our god concept little more than the imaginings of arrogant children. Still, I am not an atheist just because all of our god imaginings are most likely akin to a child's first attempt at coloring inside the lines.

In all of human history the only observations, the only things we have ever seen that were clearly created items, are items that we created ourselves.  Everything else we have observed, everywhere in the cosmos as far as we can see, has turned out to be the manifestations of natural processes. We have even uncovered the natural processes that lead to us. But because we create things we make the assumption that everything must be created. All through our history we have attempted to inflict this "created assumption" on the rest of the universe in the guise of one god or another.

Centuries ago human kind had no clue that lightning and thunder were natural phenomena eventually to be explained by thermodynamics and Maxwell's equations; and so invented Indra, Thor, Perun, and Zeus. The concept of nature was wrong, the concept of what the god needed to explain was wrong, and the invented gods were nothing more than myth. Today's gods are no better. Nothing could be further from the truth than the Jewish fable of creation. It errs in every possible detail yet believers cling to its basic claim that god did it! The Greeks said the same about Zeus and lightning.

The very foundation of our god concept is based on a human view forced on the cosmos. Based as they are on ignorance the gods we invent are a direct reflection of humanity. At times they call to the best of what we hope for; love, forgiveness, tolerance, justice and peace. More often they mirror humanity at our worst; jealous, hateful, scornful, easily offended, war loving and vengeful. There are hells of eternal torture, regional wars over this bit of desert or that bit of mountain, genocide and slavery. And every god seems to be the worst sort of petulant child if someone dares not worship it. Really? If you were god, could you imagine yourself being so petty, churlish and infantile? There is something seriously wrong with the very concept of a god that so closely parallels the evolution of a species of tribal ape just recently climbed down from the trees.

I am not an atheist because all the gods are human created characters. I am not an atheist because humanity is too young to have any concept of the universe that is likely to be anywhere near the truth. And I'm not really an atheist just because the very idea of "god" is so clearly a human construct.

It seems to me that over the centuries even some religious and spiritual teachers have stumbled onto these same kinds of thoughts about gods. Often they are known as "mystics" and inhabit the fringe (or the core - depending on your point of view) of many a religious ideology; including most of today's mainstream religions. They don't start at the fringe (or the core) and must make some inner journey to "mystic". Since that inner journey happens in a human mind and heart which lives in the cosmos as it actually exist, it is no surprise that many of them end up in nearly the same place. Along the way they notice that the gods bare a remarkable resemblance to humanity and, realizing that is unlikely to reflect the true nature of a god, shed those perceptions as they journey toward understanding. Eventually they end up with an experience of a god that is beyond description, bereft of all vestiges of humanity, where language fails and the mystics find they have little to add to wisdom. They are left with an experience impossible to share, "The Divine mystery" is about the best they can do, (probably why we call them "mystics".)

I am just an airplane driver and an arm-chair philosopher. (An arm-chair philosopher is a claim any thinking person should make. Why bother using up good air if, at least once in a while, you don't think about this stuff?) But it seems to me a very similar journey can be made even if one doesn't start from religion. Believing in a god is not a prerequisite for wondering about the cosmos, one's relationship to it, and one's position in it. The same inner journey is made in the same human heart and mind that inhabits the same cosmos as it actually is. The atheist doesn't have to shed the erroneous perceptions of a god that the mystic must contend with, but that just leaves the atheist with a slightly shorter path to tread. The atheist and the mystic are likely to end up at a very similar place.

Both will find themselves gazing out at a cosmos that stuns with its complexity and shear existence, but that completely dwarfs the human scale. Both will find it a beautiful mystery that they exist to hold such a wonder in thought. And,(though I can only speak for myself and take as honest the words of other atheists and mystics alike) both will often find a knowledge of intimacy and belonging, of being part of an unimaginable whole. (Which is a pretty good description of being loved.) Most importantly both will find an experience that is beyond words, a mystery so deep as to be impenetrable, a vision (if you will allow me to use the word) to be spoken about but beyond description.

Do they discover the limits of what is? Of course not, something they both joyfully admit. Are they connected somehow to what they perceive Yes, though the mechanisms of that connection are also a mystery. Do they fear what they have encountered? Not usually, though it seems there is often a profound mixing of the knowledge that they are, at one and the same time, infinitesimally small yet of unimpeachable value. The believer now turned mystic assumes to have been touched by the divine. The atheist is content with the idea that a bit of wisdom and a touch of understanding have swept by. Both are often deeply moved by the experience, understanding, or encounter; call it what you will. An almost universal reaction seems to be a quieting of demands, a willingness to be a bit more gentle in judgments, a deeper appreciation for both the differences between individuals and the connections we all share. It is nothing to be dismissed out of hand, but the interpretations of the experience need to be handled with care.

While I haven't the slightest hint of god belief I find mystics of any religion to be kindred spirits. Though they cling to religious rituals of various types, taking communion, making the sign of the cross, going on a pilgrimage, meditating on a set schedule, repeating selected words at selected times, attending worship services; they know the rituals to be illusions, nearly transparent reflections of a mystery, reminders of what they don't understand but hope to experience in a continuing way. The rituals are a way to quiet the mind and brush against the mystery. There is no vice in such rituals, no evil intent on the part of the practitioners. By their own words the intent is to keep the mystery center in their lives, letting it infuse their whole being with joy. It is an impulse I completely understand.

What I do not understand is the mystic's insistence that the flawed human idea of god is somehow necessary to the mystery. The cosmos has no need of any human offering, understanding, or concept. Insisting that some human idea of a god must be responsible for a cosmos we barely understand isn't humility, it is a nasty piece of hubris that hides a vital bit of truth and dims the heart just that little bit.

Until we embrace the cosmos as we find it to be we will forever remain ignorant children. What we find is beyond fascinating; space is warped, time is pliable, what we can see in the universe is less that 5% of what is, (dark matter and dark energy making up about 96% of what is) entangled particles that share something akin to information beyond the edge of the individual particle's light cone, reality is probabilities until a observation is made. Does this sound like the day your are having? Yet this is the world as humanity goes about growing up. And those are just the edges of some of the easier mysteries. Things we suspect include multiple dimensions and universes (Universes!) uncountable. The cosmos is as much a thought as it is a machine with both analogies being equally misleading.

Religions claim that the fear of god is the beginning of wisdom. Observing the universe suggests the beginning of wisdom lies with laying all human prejudices aside, including the one for gods. Even the mystic can not quite find the wisdom sought so long as the human concept of a god is allowed to block the way.

Which is the real reason I am an atheist.

"Revolution" is a loaded word

REVOLUTION; noun

1. an overthrow or repudiation and the thorough replacement of an established government or political system by the people governed.

2. Sociology . a radical and pervasive change in society and the social structure, especially one made suddenly and often accompanied by violence. Compare social evolution.

3. a sudden, complete or marked change in something: the present revolution in church architecture.

Given the state of the union it seems reasonable to think about the revolution needed to revive the vision that was once a free democracy. For me part of the debate revolves around the effectiveness of a peaceful revolution and wondering if it doesn't take, at the least, some property violence to power the change. But the word "revolution" needs to be used with some thought. When used in relation to politics and government "revolution" immediately brings to mind guns and bullets and cities reduced to rubble. Basically revolution via civil war. While that may well be a possibility in the near future for the US, it does not seem very likely. The revolution that we need is more in line with definition No. 2, a social revolution that drags a protesting government along with it.

The first pervasive change we need is a near universal rejection of the corruption that has become our government. The OWS protests are a good first approximation of what is needed, but on a much larger scale. Those who have benefited most from the corruption, and those who have done the most to facilitate it, need to be driven from power by shear force of public opinion. (As stated in other places in this blog, the Robert's Court would be as good a place to start as any.) I think a good argument can be made that the leaders of both major political parties are knee deep in graft. This would be a good time for them to take their millions and head off into the sunset somewhere. Let them play golf and write books to explain how they are not actually thieves that belong in jail as we will have a much better chance of fixing the future without them around. Filling the streets of Washington DC until a whole slew of "leaders" goes away would be a fair portion of the revolution needed.

(By the way, Mr. Obama is surly in as deep as any of the Republican leaders. His inner circle is recruited mostly from Wall Street, the wars go on, defense spending goes up, and the economy is still on its ass even though Banks and the Stock Market are doing pretty well. It isn't clear how we could get rid of him though. Of the current 18 names in the line of succession none look to be free agents that would act in the best interests of the people of the United States. The upcoming "election" is a total farce. And that is kind of a depressing thought.)

A second pervasive change would be a robust anti-war movement. The US has become a war mongering nation. By nearly any accounting we spend more on the military and weapons than all of the other peoples on the planet, combined. We have amassed, by far, the largest collection of WMDs on the world and have repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to use them. We are the only nation now using unmanned drones to kill, at a distance and inside the boarders of countries that we are not a war with, targeted individuals who we think might be a minor threat at some point future. That we are killing mostly civilians is not even a regular part of our national conversation. Our love of killing is completely entwined in the relentless propaganda of the military / corporate system that is largely responsible for the corruption of our democracy. But that does not absolve our individual guilt for going along with the brutality. A simple change in mindset from, "war is good" to "war is evil" might just be the most jarring revolution that could happen in our society.

We need to reject the notion of war that has seeped into every bit of our national conversation. Ever notice that we are "at war" with everything; poverty, drugs, socialism...there is a war against Christmas (and now a war against Thanksgiving)? The Christians think everyone is at war with god and the Muslims think they are at war with everyone in the world. Yet the reality is that the human species is successful insofar as we are cooperative. Sure, in the past, the tribe that cooperated the best subdued the rival tribe. But now we are all one big tribe of humanity inhabiting one increasingly crowded planet. We need to find ways to disagree, discuss, compromise and move along without reaching for a gun and going to war. And that means we, as individuals and as a nation, need to reach for hate a little less often as well. It has become our favorite emotion, the driving force behind our politics, the lens though which we look at the rest of the world, and forms the foundation of much of our religion.

We really need to reject religion, or at least acknowledge that the particular religion "I" happen to follow may not be the only description of reality. Give a little room for different interpretations based on a different history or geography. (For example, the Muslim idea that women should be covered from head to toe would never have come from a society that lived in the tropics.) If nothing else at least admit that the Jewish / Christian / Muslim tradition that most of us follow is based, at its very core, on war; war in heaven, war on earth, war in the soul. Our worship of war is not helping. More to the point the idea that there is a god who endorses any of the political, corporate or military leaders currently tearing up the world, is near total insanity.

We could all do with a little less consumerism and, eventually, will be forced to concede that unending, exponential growth as somehow a sustainable economic model is pure foolishness.

Point blank, the best thing you can do for your family, yourself, your friends, your community and maybe the world at large is to turn off the TV more often and never, ever, listen to talk radio again. We need to visit with neighbors, friends and strangers, working once again to find our common connections. We need to think for ourselves, put in the effort to learn what is happening rather than just passing along the gossip that keeps the talking heads in money. (We need to quit taking the gossip as gospel as well!) I'm pretty sure that talking through a microphone doesn't improve one's I.Q. or make one an expert in every subject under the sun. Microphone talkers are primarily pitchmen, out to sell us whatever their sponsors want us to buy.

We need to admit that most of the people who got rich by talking got rich by lying to us. It worked, they are rich, now we need to just walk away without embarrassment, remorse, or recrimination. In addition to giving us all a chance to clear our heads a little this will have the added benefit of reducing the avenues for consumer propaganda and deflating, at least a little, the political coffers of the powers-that-be. It might even make for a little more money in your pocket. How much was that cable bill again? How much stuff would you actually decide you needed to buy if it wasn't relentlessly pitched to you by pretty people with perfect white teeth?

As individuals we need to be basically disgusted by the corrupt; we need to be anti-war, and need to be moderate in our consumerism. Then we need to force these views onto the powers the be through the market place and in the streets. Eventually that will allow us to enforce these views in the voting booth, but not yet. With both parties completely engulfed in the current putrid system of lies and propaganda and war, with all elections tainted by special interest money and every potential candidate vetted by those already in power before they are allowed on the ballot, voting is still a waste of time. In fact, at this moment in history, voting helps keep the corrupt in power by allowing them to proclaim a "mandate." Before voting can matter again a whole bunch of people need to be driven from power, a few people really, really need to go to jail, and a large number of international corporations need to be brought to heel, (or at least prevented from buying elections).

So the revolution that will salvage the American Dream actually starts with definition No. 3; "a sudden, complete change in something. That "something" would be us.

SCOTUS

When the revolution comes I envision it starting at the Supreme Court; with millions of Americans locking that building down until the current Justices, all nine of them, are driven from power. It doesn't appear as if the political system in the United States can recover until the corruption that is endemic to that system is rooted out. When it comes to corruption no one holds a candle to the Robert's Court.

One does have to give them credit for shear chutz-pa. Imagine standing straight-faced before the people of the United States and declaring that the Founding Fathers wrote into the Constitution the inalienable right of a corporation to buy any elected official it thinks it can afford.

There can be no political reform until there is campaign finance reform; and the Supreme Court has determined that campaign finance reform is unconstitutional. Corruption is now enshrined as a Constitutional right. The only candidates that are ever going to make it onto a ballot are those swimming in special interest money, pre-approved by those determined to keep the system exactly as it is now. There will be no anti-war candidate, no one pro-union or pro-environment. There will be none who will seek financial reform, or who will rein in military spending, or even demand that the military account for the money it does spend. There will be no one calling for the prosecution of Wall Street criminals, or who runs on the promise of investigating how the United States became a nation that uses torture, that sent prisoners to Muammar Gaddafi to be interrogated and murdered. "Left-wing" will be a label for people who think Regan was pretty much a moderate. (Right wingers might invoke Regan's name, but he couldn't compete in today's Republican primary or hope to raise a dime of corporate money.)

Thanks to the SCOTUS reform is now beyond the reach in the current American system. Revolution has become the only chance for revival. It may as well start with on the steps of a Supreme Court that made illegal any chance of changing the system from the inside.

Hunkering down for the winter

Police violence against the OWS protests is increasing, and so a common story of history is repeated before our very eyes. It is still unlikely that OWS will be the movement that leads to a real change in government, though they have clearly bent public discussion. The once unbreakable stand of Republicans on "NO NEW TAXES" is giving way (oh so grudgingly) to the political reality of being the "PARTY OF THE 1%". They are the party of the 1%, they intend to be the party of the 1%, they just realize they can not survive as a viable political force if enough voters think of them that way. They need better P.R., they know it, and they are hoping (as usual) that it proves enough to give them cover as they serve their real masters.

And they might be right. Citizens of the US, bound as we are to having TV and radio do all of our thinking for us, make us the most P.R. susceptible people on the planet. All governments use propaganda of course; the difference in the US is that we actually swallow it without hesitation. It seems likely that the Republicans will raise a few taxes on the poor and middle class by doing away with deductions, insist on even more draconian cuts in social spending on things like roads and schools and public safety, declare themselves the champions of fiscal responsibility. A good many of the people in the US will buy it.

But not everyone will buy it. Maybe not enough every ones that the OWS protests will grow into something that actually will change the trajectory of this country. Not likely, but there is a remote possibility. The OWS protests will fade away during the winter. Police oppression, the constant propaganda playing up the violence as being started by the protesters, as well as a good bit of the country being locked in ugly weather; people will find a warm place to hunker down for the winter.

But come spring...
...of an election year
...with an increasingly schizophrenic government completely detached from
the realities of people trying to live with their "pro-rich" policies
...and an increasingly angry and mobilized population
...that remembers the protests of the fall
...and starts them up again
...Wall Street, Main Street and K Street
...with all the places in between
...knowing that the police will be sent out once again to "restore
order" (as in protect the status quo)?

Imagine an actual leader stepping into this cauldron. Someone unexpected. Someone basically unknown. Someone savvy enough to exploit the mass communications channels that bypass the propaganda machine. Someone who manages to survive the assassination attempts of the lunatic fringe and the black ops of the established power structure. Someone who counts the 99% as the base, and the 1% as the enemy.

Her vision will determine how the government of the US falls, and what replaces it.

(I think a "her" is a bit more likely than a "him". Arrogant, middle aged white guys need not apply. African American males? After Obama and Cain? Tough sell there as well. Latino male? Could be. But maybe the time has come to be done with shallow male machismo of all colors, and I hope that takes the religious fanatics out of play as well.)

Fantasy? Probably. But all revolutions start from such. This social system cannot survive the path it is on. Some kind of revolution is inevitable. Maybe this spring?

Allies

So I'm heading into work today and hear a story about women and Saudi Arabia, (on NPR, which means it was actually a whole story and not just a headline). I knew that women are not allowed to drive and must ask a male "guardian" for permission to leave the house. The utter absurdity of one restriction just struck me; a group of women cannot get on an elevator if there is a man in it, they have to wait for an empty car. For some reason that one little detail put a spot light on how depraved that society actually is. Break any of these "laws" and women are likely to be beaten by the religious terrorists knows as Mutaween. (Beaten mind you, as in with a whip. Are you fucking kidding me?)

These people are allies? Imagine the Saudis declaring that a black man was not allowed on an elevator with a white man. Imagine them dragging a black man into the city square and beating him with a whip for driving a car. The USA would be screaming for sanctions in every hall in the UN - and rightly so. Hell, we would park an aircraft battle group or two off their shores, aim a big barrel directly at Riyadh, and dare them to drag another black man off to a public beating. Furious crowds would gather around the Saudi Embassy and, should someone upload a U-tube vid of such a grotesque act of barbarism, probably burn the place to the ground. And you can bet your ass not a single politician in all of Washington D.C. would utter a single syllable of support for King Abdullah. (Speaking of which, exactly why is it we are such big fan of a King? Wasn't our democracy launched in defiance of Kingdoms?)

But the Saudi brutality toward women is a religious and cultural thing, so we give it a pass. That, and they have a lot of oil. It can't be just oil though. We give a pass to Iran when it comes to women as well. The US government is mute when it comes to women's rights in Pakistan or Afghanistan. In Iraq, with the approval of the US, woman's rights were sacrificed to appease the new Islamic Theocracy. (Iraq, the country we "liberated" from Saddam Hussein? Are you fucking kidding me again?) In fact, the more I read about it, the more amazed I am that American women haven't already set fire to the White House.

Maybe its because we good Americans sort of understand. After all, Christianity doesn't have much to boast about when it comes to treating women as equals. Our own Christian fundamentalists are doing their best to walk back the civil rights of women with the help of all kinds of political types. But even they aren't crazy enough to suggest that women shouldn't be allowed to drive or should be beaten in the public square. (Not allowed to have sex? That they would go for. And they do like their beatings, though children are the usual victims of that particular abuse. I didn't say they weren't a little bit crazy.)

It doesn't really matter that Saudi Arabia is a Muslim society. When the United States was born most of its citizens believed that Christianity supported slavery. Then some changed their minds and decided that Christianity opposed slavery. Now, most US Christians see slavery as an evil thing regardless of what the Bible might say or the history of their religious tradition. South Africa was a "Christian Nation; the USA worked to end apartheid anyway. In the US people go to prison for beating their children to death even when they do it in the name of god. Honor killings are not ignored by our legal system regardless of the religion of the murderer. Very often religious people work with their secular neighbors to move society forward. And, like slavery, it is in defiance of what their holy writings might say or the history of the ideology. (Which is to say that religious people often transcend the worst part of their own traditions and are better at serving humanity than are the gods they worship.) Maybe, someday, Islam will look on its history with women with the shame it deserves. (Maybe, someday, so will the Christians.)

Protesting abuse, oppression, and slavery isn't a religious thing, it is a human thing. The USA should be protesting the abuse of women where ever it occurs, loudly and consistently.

POTUS

I think the last few presidential elections, and certainly the string of Presidents since at least Nixon, are all the evidence anyone needs to conclude that Democracy as practiced in the US of A needs reinvented. (It would be no surprise if historians of the future mark the reign of Regan as the beginning of the end of the US experiment in representative democracy.)

The upcoming 2012 election puts an exclamation point to our failing system. Whatever hope there was when Barack Obama beat McCain was quickly abandoned. I'm not sure how he managed it, but President Obama may well turn out to be a worse president than the second President Bush. Obama, while carrying on with the worst of Bush's economic and military policies, while completely buying into the narrative of the extreme right wing of American politics, and while caving into same at every turn, still manages to be portrayed as a left wing radical. (It helps that the right wing owns most of the media outlets and controls most of the information disseminated in our culture.) In addition he is now rightly regarded by nearly everyone as an ineffective leader, a man without a single moral backbone to be found anywhere in his body. He has earned the right to be a one term President.

Unfortunately his Republican opponent is likely to be the most whacked of whacked out nut cases. The entire Republican field is made up of religious fanatics, people who are sure they hear the voice of god ringing in their ears. They are anti-science, anti-education, and universally pro war. Though all claim to be "outsiders" there isn't a one of them who wasn't bought and paid for years ago. There isn't an international corporation they distrust or a working person they like. Greed seems to be the only motivation they know and hate their favorite emotion. Which ever of them eventually ends up the standard barer, in any normal election in any normally functioning society, they wouldn't find the backing to run for dog catcher.

So in 2012 we will have a President who should not be re-elected running against an opponent who should be unelectable. This is what passes for Democracy in the US of A today. The upshot is I honestly don't believe it matters which of them wins. Regardless, the US will continue its military adventurism (right up until we are utterly, completely bankrupted both morally and economically). Regardless, corruption will still be the backbone of our tax policies, greed the only measure of our economic policies, and re-surging oppression and abandoning of care for the civil rights of others, (especially anyone who doesn't happen to be "An American") the basis of our social policies. Though the imbalance of wealth distribution will eventually lead to the disintegration of our society (as it has in countless other societies throughout history) any attempt to redistribute the wealth in any semblance of fairness will be decried as "socialism" and "class warfare." We will continue to protect the very thing that is killing us right up until the society dies.

Given what we have become, whose to say it shouldn't die?

The state I'm in

“We were told things would run more smoothly – less crime, less disease, less unhappiness, less trouble – if everyone stuck to the same plan, pursued identical goals. What makes me want to run was the ease with which people gave in.”


Eric Rutterman – Resistance.

Sometimes I am puzzled over my disenfranchised state. By any accounting I am one of the “winners” of our society. As a young, married, adult I started out at the very center of US society – a Bible believing Evangelical Christian Fundamentalist working my way (somewhat unconsciously) up the economic ladder. What I lacked in a formal collage education I made up for with solid technical skills in aviation maintenance, piloting, and management. With a life long willingness to take risks and a bit of luck to survive those risks I “made” it…good income, nice house, fun toys. I should have settled in and enjoyed the ride. But it didn’t work quite like I expected.

Religion failed first. A simple description of what was a longish road was that I could no longer worship a god who needed a hell. It was a bit of a relief to discover that both were just myths. Though many of my non-religious friends still find joy or comfort in various forms of spirituality, all my mystical leanings faded with the god belief. For me the mystery (not mystical) and grandeur of an unimaginable cosmos, of which I am as much a natural part as any star or ocean, are more than adequate. In us at least part of the cosmos has evolved with a yearning for love and place, acceptance and humor, joy and adventure. We are born with all we need to find our way; we just need to quit confusing ourselves.

Next to crumble was my faith in industriousness. Work is one of my favorite things. I love work. I love to work. But our society has perverted work into something mean and burdensome. No longer a skill practiced for the benefit of family, friends, and neighbors; work has become an insatiable demand for service. Productivity is the new Holy Grail, producing the most while getting paid the least. Thus working no longer brings joy, just weariness and ache, and a paycheck meager when measured against the toil. (The Christian idea that work is somehow a punishment for sin has aided in this perversion, and is another reason to abandon the religion.) Now we work to earn profits for others; others who rule, and punish in ways both subtle and cruel those who demand a fair share for their efforts.

With religion rejected and my attitude towards work changed, there were clear fault lines showing between myself and the culture where I once felt at home. Still, I was a rampant consumer – a big fan of toys. Slowly though, I began to realize that the toys didn’t hold the value, it was what I did with them. Those that let me explore new places, experience new things, and face new challenges were also things I didn’t hold too tight. Invariably the toys I loved the most, airplanes, motorcycles and small, ocean-going sailboats, could get me killed. My view of consumerism took a shift similar to my understanding of work. It isn’t the toy, it isn’t possessing the toy, that matters. It is the experience and the mastering of a skill that holds value.

By now I had moved far from my starting place, and many years had passed. Religion, work, consumerism, my views clashed loudly with those of my culture. But I still clung to modernism – the drive to “make things better.”

“Make things better.” What things? Better how?

We certainly make things more efficient. We produce more food than ever in the past. Instead of reducing hunger we just flooded the world with babies and made more hungry people. Some of us live longer and healthier lives. Many of us don’t, and many of us who do basically just live longer in misery. Often we push the years of unhealthy living off to the end, finishing up in a long twilight of pain and fear. With our planes and our trains, our cars and our diesel powered ships, we travel much faster than we ever have before. But just a little further. A few have travel into orbit, fewer still to the moon. The rest of us can go no further than did Magellan.

We are making things better, but not much better, and not for many. Realizing this lead me to another serious rethink, and another degree of separation.

Democracy. That was a foundation stone that could never be moved. Democracy is the triumph of human social evolution. Shed of the tyranny of Kings, War Loads, Nobles, Barons, Popes and prophets…everyone longs for democracy and freedom.

True but…have we really found either democracy or freedom? Some of us have shed the Kings and War Lords and tyrants in other costumes. Yet Kings and War Lords flourish across the globe, mostly supported by us. If not for us most of them would have been overthrown long ago. But so long as they will strip the land and abuse the people they rule for the resources we demand, we will do all we can to see that they remain in power. The US has long proved we will not support democracy at the cost of whale blubber, grazing land, coal, diamonds, or oil. Are we really a democratic people if we survive by employing tyrants? Does that not make us the tyrant instead?

My last foundation stone wasn’t as stable as I imagined.

So in a religious, industrialized, consumer based democracy I discover I am not really any of those things. To put it another way; elected to any post in the Federal Government I would be a miserable failure. The US is not “#1,” we have no right to impose our definition of freedom, or our economic ideologies, on anyone. Freedom OF religion does not exist without freedom FROM religion. People should be masters of their skills not slaves to their work. The endless production of “things” need not, should not, be encouraged. Production should be coupled as directly as possible to raising the quality of life for humanity – medicine, healthy food, clean water, educational materials, quality clothing and material for homes. Tanks, guns, bullets and knick-knacks? No. And as long as democracy rests on tyranny, neither society is free. Uttering any of those thoughts from the floor of the House or the Office of Oval, would get one accused of treason, trashed by the talking heads of corporate media, and probably shot at.

As I see it humanity’s only hope for greatness lies in an allegiance, the worship if you will, of a single, shared morality whose basic tenet is simple, and which applies to every one of the six plus billion individuals sharing the planet. I will not force you – you will not force me – we are all actually responsible to each other.

Girded by a dedication to this simple principle we can work together freely. It becomes a matter of the heart. What is my intention? Is it to labor with you, to pool our resources that we may finish some larger work or share in some accomplishment? Or is it to coerce, fool or force you to toil for my benefit without regard to yours? It is a subtle turn of intent, but the latter has led to most of the evil in the world.

So the breech is complete. Regardless of creed, religion, social status, citizenship, political party or stated intent, what do your actions say of the intent of your heart? Do you rely on trickery, lies, propaganda, subtle inducements, or outright force to get others to do your bidding? Do you guard the gates of some ideology that imagines it has all the answers to all the questions of every person breathing? Do you fancy yourself a “leader” and assume you know better than I what I need or want? To the extent that you do I will count you as a servant of evil. Your claims of wisdom, as a speaker for god, as a representative “of the people,” or as a protector of human rights, will not count. The same yardstick applies to my own life.

This is a new thing and will take a while to work out the details. I do hold toys with an even lighter touch, and hold fewer of them. They all take up space in a life, and each of us has only so much space to spare. And, to be honest, many of them are being built by people who are laboring, not working. Building my toys is not really doing them much good. That makes me guilty, though removed by some steps, of forcing my will on them.

Slowly, as wisdom and opportunity allow, I hope to reduce the amount of resources I think I need. Not always, but often, those resources appear to be stolen. My unlimited demand serves mostly to enrich the thieves while adding to the number of victims.

It is the way our world works and I am well aware I can’t change it…much. But I need add no more too it than I chose. And I chose to add less than I have.

And maybe I can off-set some of the evil simply by pointing it out, demanding an accounting (as ineffective as that currently seems to be) from those who engage in the most evil…the movers and shakers, the leaders who think they know. Religious, political, corporate, union, liberal, conservative…whenever they use force, where ever they use force, be it outright or by lies, be they Popes or illiterate religious fanatics hiding under some rock, Presidents or self proclaimed “movement leaders...” pass the story on to me and I will pass it on to the next person.

More importantly I will do as little as I can to help their cause. Whacked out religious sect? I won’t be joining, nor will I be putting any money in the collection plate. (And I will vote for the first politician who says he will work to eliminate tax exemptions for religious organizations.) Corrupt Union? I won’t be joining if I can avoid it. If I must join I will soon be looking for some other job some other place. Liberal, conservative, Democrat or Republican? I’m done voting for the “lesser of the evils.” If no one on the ballot measures up I will not give credibility to a failed “democratic system.” Boycotting can be an effective civil action. What would “democratic leaders” do if they threw an election and no one came? The old USSR held elections, Cuba, China; turnouts neared 100%. But it didn’t matter. Only those approved by those already in power ever made it too the ballot. It is the same in the USA today. Elections are a Hobson’s choice between two flavors of evil.

On the one hand it isn't much.  On the other it is everything I have to offer.

The T-party and me

My thoughts of the T-party are pretty simple, a pack of barely informed religious nut-cases being played for fools by the corporate world, often demonstrating against their own best interests, with the added twist of barely suppressing their racism. That's just a first impression of course, maybe they are all really good folks with bad P.R.

I did see a picture of one carrying a sign decrying being ruled by government bureaucracy. Therein lies a hint to both how badly informed the T-party types are, and just how badly they are being played.

The liberal democracy that was the original United States was born in a rebellion against the government bureaucracy of King George III. Liberalism is the very core of a people whose only desire is to rule themselves, free of the overburden of government, churches, kings, tyrants, popes and princes.

And now, some 230 odd year later, also free from the overburden of corporations, international bankers, and robber barons.

Something that sails right over the heads of T-party types who regard liberalism as the enemy in their world. Not surprising since they are in the service of corporations whose real desire is to expand their own power without restraint. Clearly, a liberal population would rebel against corporate tyranny just as it has political tyranny.

If the T-party types ever pull their heads out of their collective asses, they might discover that the liberals, people who seek to be free from anyone dictating the quality of their lives and whose only desire is to rule themselves among themselves, might actually be far down the road of democracy. A liberal democracy is far from a perfect type of government, (human beings be far to young as an intelligent species to have worked much of anything out to perfection yet). But living with a government which is, at least to some small degree, responsive to the demands of the governed, is a far better arrangement that suffering under corporate tyranny that cares only for maximizing the profits of the few at the expense of the many.

That would make a real democracy a bad place for most T-party types; who seem determined to free the corporations of any restraint as well as installing a social dictatorship that establishes the "proper" religion, the acceptable make-up of a family, which recreational drugs one is allowed to enjoy, (alcohol and tobacco good, marijuana bad) and ensure that any idiot should be able to carry a maximum amount of firepower anywhere at anytime; church, school, or campus, and therefore be able to threaten the lives of as many people as bullets that will fit in the clip.

Exactly how it is that the T-party types see themselves as "freedom loving" is a bit of a mystery.

Burning down the house

I am completely convinced that there is no hope of renewing democracy in America by working within a system of institutionalized corruption. Without a revolutionary change some new form of fascist tyranny is the only place the US can end up - the most heavily armed nation on the planet bucking the tide of humanity's desire for liberty.

That's going to be a mess. It may well precipitate a large decline in the human population of the world. Of course, the current dependence on exponential "growth" as the cure for our economic and social ills must, inevitably, result in the same.

This growing tyranny has a simple basis, the power structures of the country have become monolithic. The corporate / military / 2 party system of the US is now a single, all encompassing, entity. Every single political leader now claims that the government's role is to aid and cooperate with business and corporate interests. There is no mention of the people of the US or the world. The only hope for a future of liberty in the US in to break that power structure apart.

The only hope for that is through massive demonstrations. But it must be the generation coming up that finds the fires within itself to take to the streets in the required numbers. The generation in control, mine, will not see the need. The efforts of our entire working lives are invested in that same power structure. We have voted these people into power since Regan and have drunk deeply of the supply-side economic cool-aid. Wall Street and Social Security hold all of our retirement assets, our dwindling hope for a good winter to our time on this planet. We have been "educated" by corporate / media all of our lives. While young people have had access to a wild-west of the Internet, a flood of information barely contained and uncontrolled, for their entire lives, my generation grew up with 3 TV stations spoon feeding us a view of the world that worked for those in power. We are, perhaps, the most thoroughly propagandized "free" people in all of history. Look at the "leaders" we offer, Bush, Perry, Obama, Bachmann...outside of people numbed by relentless mis-information, who would imagine this group as anything but a collection of the insane?

No, the revolution must be waged by the next generation in an effort to salvage their future. If they are to avoid being slave laborers they will have to start the fires that burn down this corporate world and build anew. They will have to find the compassion for others that my generation scorns. They will have to build a respect for this planet's environment that my generations sees as only resources to be exploited for the benefit of the few. They will have to build a system where wisdom and generosity, not hate and greed, pave the road to leadership. They will have to destroy this monolithic power structure and build a world were the power is spread around to the many.

And they will have to do it without, indeed, in spite of, the parents and grand parents they love.

Protests and Movements

In spite of my pessimism the "Occupy Wall Street" folks are getting some attention; helped somewhat by the excesses of the NYPD. (One thing that can always be counted on in the US, when the violence starts it will be the police who deliver the first blows.) That is the good news.

That they will probably amount to nothing more than a few headlines for a couple of months is the bad. It isn't that they aren't trying, but they don't seem to know that they want to see happen. "End corruption" they say, without a slightest hint of what corruption is being referenced or what they would do to end it. There is not a single demand for any particular individual to be forced from power or to face a legal tribunal of any form. Bent on being a "peaceful protest" they can't even carry their protest to the Wall Street they hope to occupy. (The Police and their barriers are not going to move without being shoved.)

Still, the fact that there is any "movement" at all forces a little optimism. The media is noticing even if most of the coverage is misleading, critical or downright false. That isn't surprising, coverage of nearly everything is misleading, critical or downright false. (The people who gather, edit and deliver the news are rarely experts in anything. I notice it nearly every time there is news that involves aviation - something I am an expert in. My guess is experts in power systems, oil spill recovery, transportation systems, education, and nearly every other technical field in existence notice the same thing.) More to the point when it comes to the OWS protests, the protesters are directly challenging the very people who own and operate most media outlets; massive corporations and near monopolies who have every motivation to spin the “news” to their advantage. (You don’t really think they will tell the truth if it offends sponsors – who are mostly other massive corporations - and hurts the bottom line, do you?)

But I still don’t think it likely that this will turn into some kind of “American Autumn” and force any real change. I hope I am wrong, but I don’t think a system as badly corrupted as this one can be reformed or repaired. It is failing at nearly every level, overcome by greed and fueled by deliberate ignorance. Facts are ignored or misconstrued, history is revised to fit the narrative of those in power, public opinion does not matter in the least (not that the public bothers to learn much)and even “historic” elections don’t change the direction determined by corporate campaign money and special interest lobbying efforts. No system can survive an assault on so many fronts at once, and a democratic system is particularly sensitive to propaganda, false information, and the twisting of history.

This democratic system is failing. Hopefully a more robust one will rise in its place.

Off the reservation

They say there is nothing new under the sun, but is that really true? Human kind seems a new thing, with a written history of just 10,000 years or so in a cosmos some 13,700,000,000 years old. Even if there are other intelligent civilizations in the cosmos, or the galaxy, humanity is certainly a new thing in this neighborhood. (I like to think there are others but, so far, the evidence for them is pretty thin.) Each person is a new thing as well, a unique collection of genes, an improbable entity in history, whose life will be an individual sojourn unlike any other.

Though we are prone to seeing ourselves as something central in the cosmos, the focus of attention, the apple in god's eye; that isn't anywhere near being true. In cosmic terms our family climbed down from the trees early in the week, transitioning from climbing to walking. We learned to talk just a few days ago. It was only yesterday that we started to write down our thoughts and the industrial revolution started a few hours ago. Within the last few minutes we have been astonished to discover some of the basics of the history of the universe and ourselves. We have just now discovered that we are a species of ape recently climbed down from the trees.

Most of us seem a bit stunned and more than a bit disappointed at this revelation. Instead of admitting to the now obvious, we cling to the fantasy of being important, of being central to creation, of having power. We cling to god beliefs that teach we were created just as we are about the same time as the stars started to shine. Some of us imagine that we actually talk with a god, and that he/she/it/them talk back – giving instructions on, say, running for the office of President of the US or qualifying some people’s love as acceptable while others as sin. Most of us seem to imagine that the earth belongs to our generation to be stripped bare if necessary, exploited without regard to possible consequences. We act as if there is a guarantee that our species can’t possibly become extinct, in spite of knowing that 99.99% of all the species that have ever existed on this little planet are.

Manifest childishness. The universe has evolved in a way that bits of star stuff have become self-aware and intelligent. This is a wondrous thing! There is no telling where that intelligence can lead, what it can evolve into, where it can go. But it will not go far if we continue to cling to the illusions of our early childhood.

We really should admit to how new we are at this. We are so new that we are still trying to figure out how to govern ourselves with any semblance of justice and compassion while protecting the individual liberty that most of us crave. Clearly we are not doing a very good job, though we are not doing as bad as it might seem at first. There is a growing realization of the uniqueness of each individual, and the need to protect the minority from the prejudices of the majority. The short hand label for this realization, at least here in the West, is "Civil Rights." The US started with the civil rights of Land Owning White Guys, then expanded to Non Land Owning White Guys, Non-White Guys, Woman, Children, and is starting to include people who are not just heterosexuals. We haven't gotten it perfect, but we are doing a much better job than we were 50, 100, or 500 years ago. Integral with that governing is designing and preserving an economic system that fairly rewards work and innovation while establishing and preserving the social fabric that makes us who we are. Once again there is far to go before we figure it out; with millions of individuals suffering while we work on it.

We are terrible at balancing power against power, and though 6+ billion of us crowd this little world, we do much better in small groups than we do in big ones. But we are new at this as well. Up until a few hundred years ago we didn't even know how big the earth was, or that there were other people living in those parts. The vast majority of us are still only vaguely aware of the parts of the earth outside of our local 20 miles or so, and even more vague about the people who live there. We imagine all kinds of things about them, things that make them different. Most of our imaginings are far from true, but then again, empathy is something we are new at as well.

In all of our efforts there are at least two bits of wisdom lacking. The first is admitting that we are just now discovering how much we have left to learn. We should be astonished at what we have learned and absolutely mesmerized by what we have not. Clearly a large part of our cooperative efforts should be in learning as much as we can as quickly as we can. We have a hint of how much there is we don’t know yet, we need to get after it.

And we have to remember that we are children still, prone to acting as such. We frighten easily. We can't see the consequences of our actions and we are terrible at looking very far into the future. We have a tendency to be utterly self-centered, and we often do things that can and do get us hurt. A sizable percentage of us are bullies.

Maybe we are reaching a turning point in history. We are just beginning to understand that the universe is nothing less than an engine of constant creativity, endlessly evolving, of which we are an integral (though not central) part. In spite of what we have learned, what we do know, most of us haven’t grasped our true place in the universe and cling to an archaic view. As mentioned we cling to religions that teach a fixed creation where we were made as we are, the same as we have always been and basically unchanging until some fixed point in a fixed future. Our political leaders are just as bad. We vote for people who claim they already know all the answers or worse, vote for those who claim the answers of the past were the right ones. They cling to nation-states, borders, war and exclusionary policies as if the mistakes of the past will be the good ideas of the future. They act as if limited oil reserves will always be the real source of energy, as if technology isn't changing the way we know our world and interact with each other.

Up until now we have been involved in the continuous creativity and evolution in spite of ourselves. We didn't know, but it didn't matter that we didn't know. Now I think it matters. Those in power have enough power at their command to kill most of us off. They can destroy our civilization and maybe even drive the species to extinction. Recent history has given us every reason to believe that some political, and certainly some religious leaders, would rather destroy human kind than see continuing creativity mark them as irrelevant. Their clinging to the old way of seeing our place in the cosmos is putting all of our futures at risk.

There are only two options. Political and religious leaders can figure it out for themselves, changing policy and re-interpreting ideologies to reflect this new understanding. They can ride the wave and be part of the rapidly accelerating creativity. Or most of the rest of us figure it out in spite of them and shove them out of power. Should it go that way those doing the shoving can be nothing but the most dire of enemies to those in power. I think some of what we have seen around the world these past months is a first wave of this growing realization.

So how far off the reservation am I? I think all of our political and economic systems are doomed to fail. Not because they are necessarily bad systems, but because they are still just prototypes, first efforts, systems created while we were basically deaf, dumb and blind. Those who rule cling to the old idea because therein lies their claim on being rulers. In doing so they abandon creativity and thus betray the very nature of human kind in the cosmos.

How far off the reservation am I? I think the future lies in reorienting ourselves, recognizing that it isn’t the systems that work or don’t, it is the people, the engines of creation in those systems. No matter how good the system, if the people are corrupt the system can’t survive. Likewise, there are no really bad systems if the people involved are looking to the good of the many and striving for a better future of the whole. Dictatorships and kingdoms need not, necessarily, fail; it is dictators and kings who fail the societies they control. Democracy is not necessarily good, not if the democracy is corrupted by power and greed, where the only choice given for an election are those already bought and sold. Nor is democracy immune to a kind of collective failure. Hitler's National Socialist Party won 230 seats in the Reichstag in a free election. The result was political chaos and deadlock, (Sound familiar?) and the eventual rise of the Third Reich. (You should look it up; it is a fascinating and - sadly - contemporary story of duplicity, dishonesty, political corruption, violence and fear mongering.)

Socialism can work to a remarkable degree. The old U.S.S.R. was a Superpower for decades, and fell more due to greed, corruption and military adventurism than to anything having to do with its economic system. Capitalism can fail, all that need happen is that greed becomes the only driving factor with all other social needs abandoned or ignored.

We, creative bits in an ever creative cosmos, make the difference, no gods, no guarantees, nothing fixed. But we can't stop creating new politics, new economies, new ways. We can't stop creating for, the moment we do, we have no place in an endlessly creative universe.