Inevitable Conversations

Let's build a society. Let's build a world where 60% of the people do not have enough money to eat and shelter themselves. Then give enough money to 2% of the people to buy entire countries, and do nothing to make them give back to the world.

Now lets deny everyone basic human healthcare, mental and physical. Let's stigmatize mental illness, so even if they can get around our financial hurdles to healthcare, they will be ashamed to ask for help. Now let's add a whole bunch of guns to the mix.

What could possibly go wrong?

What?

Oh.

Ok. How do we fix it?

I don't want to talk about gun control. The reason for that is, EVERYTHING above leads to these terrible tragedies. Until we deal with ALL of it, they will still happen. We can lessen them by dealing with portions of it. So personally I want to deal with the things that take the least time.

Controlling the guns, filtering them out of society will take decades. Gun restrictions, licences  and waiting periods will only scratch the surface. Then we have to get the guns that are already out there. This can be done, but again, it will take decades. Let's get started, but lets work on something we can do now.

Destigmatizing mental illness will take generations. I don't even really know how it's done, but changing social beliefs is rarely done within one generation. We are still fostering out racism, and we've been working on it for hundreds of years.

Changing health care will take about a year. A few weeks to write and pass complicated legislation, and several months to put all the right clinics, doctors in place, and to remove the entrenched insurance companies out of the picture. It could be done quickly and efficiently. This needs to start NOW.

Or maybe in 30 minutes.

Changing poverty in the US could begin by passing legislation in less than 30 minutes, because it's already written, and it's simple. And it could be enacted in two months. Raise minimum wage to $25.00 an hour. Tax the richest people 90% like the pre-Reagen days. We have tons and tons and tons of money in this country. Giving it to people who are in desperate need would go well on it's way to putting us on the right track, and it's so so easy.

And we have politicians in place that care, and want these things to happen. Bernie Sanders, Alan Grayson, Elizabeth Warren, Brandon Dillon, John Yarmuth, and some others. So getting people into power who want to help is not the first step. Getting rid of the assholes who don't want to help. That's our priority. If we forced the issues that would heal us, and put in only people that will do what we want, we could solve all these problems with lightning speed.  Unfortunately we not only have to elect people who care, we have to not elect those who don't. And counter their lies and bullshit. Lots of helpful laws were proposed in the last 4 years. And they were filibustered and blocked at every turn.

So I am shaken and disturbed and weeping for the loss we as a country have just suffered and particularly those poor souls who have been directly affected by this terrible crime.

But even though I know lots of people will, I don't want to talk about gun control because it's distracting, and will keep us from doing something we can EASILY do RIGHT NOW! Let's make them end American Poverty, and provide health care both mental and physical to EVERYONE in the country. By the end of next year,I believe these horrific crimes will have been greatly reduced.

Memorial: Learning from our mistakes

It’s the memorial day of 9/11. I mourn for the loss of anyone during any war. It is a greater tragedy when it is civilians who were no part of the decisions that led to the violence. 

What saddens me most, however, is that we learned nothing from it. The many people who see the whole thing as a crazy unprovked attack because the Taliban “hate’s freedom’ is part of what prevents us from preventing the whole thing from happening again.

We can not prevent these things by turning the country into a police state, subjecting women and men to cavity searches just to board a plane, and outlawing mouthwash. We can not prevent it with rhetoric, posturing and chest beating. And we certainly don't prevent it by ignoring the issues that generated it.  The first step in preventing terrorist attacks of this type is to look at what happened and why it happened.

We need to  recognize that the attacks were a direct retaliation for our interference, arming, training and support of violence and war in Afghanistan. It was exacerbated by our depletion of all financial aid and resources at once when Russia ended the war.  A country in chaos, torn apart by years of bombings, flooded with weapons which America freely sold to whoever would buy them, is very likely not to take well to us walking away at the worst possible moment and saying “sorry not our business” as their country crashes down around them.

We must  realize that the key to stopping this sort of hatred, is to put firmer better control over our weapon sales, and attack interventions.  We helped to create chaos, rule by guerrilla states, and an unprecedented hatred of American foreign policy.  

We must hold our officials accountable, and demand firmer stricter rules be placed on our distribution of weapons to terrorists and governments. We must approach with more diplomacy, and not intervene in wars where we are helping to repress and terrorize local populace.

Do not get me wrong, the attacks on a civilian population were NOT an appropriate or reasonable response to our mishandled foreign policies. However, it didn't happen in a vacuum, and now that those we hold responsible have been removed from power, we need to work to prevent creating new terrorist groups that will continue to hate us, and use diplomacy and other approaches to become the good guys again. A country people looked to for moral guidance, instead of one people hated and feared.

That’s how we honor those who died in these terrible attacks. 

Giving up a piece of self

I was 16 when I discovered gaming. I really can’t express to you how much it’s been a part of my life over the years. To say that it was the entirety of my social life for the greater portion of my adulthood, would be an exaggeration, but it would still FEEL like an understatement. I’m not really sure how I got there, but at parties, I’d wait until the party broke into some kind of game. I went to rpg’s at one point 4-5 nights a week. The other nights we’d play board games.

I went to conventions to game for days and days. I ran convention game rooms, locally and otherwise. And even to this day, I met nearly all my friends, even my non- gaming friends, through gaming. It’s how I met people, how I interacted with people, who I dealt with recreation, and it was my art. I sold board games for a small company for a while, did some freelance work for Chessex, and the Larp, oh the Larp was so pervasive in my life, that I literally had to make rules that people couldn’t talk about it around me unless it was prearranged, so I’d have some social time that wasn’t Larp related. It was everything. And I loved it.

And now for some apparently unrelated history. When I was in high school I met someone who was passionate about the calliope. He was the youngest professional calliope player in the US, and everything he did had to do with steamboats. He knew what he wanted to do with his life, his career and his art. He had one thing that overran everything else. I admired him greatly, and for many years, he was my best and dearest friend. His passion and love for steamboats music, and that painful yet beautiful loud music, were just a few of the things I loved about him.

Over the years, as these things go we did lose touch, and I have recently seen him online and learned that he kept that passion. I envy that. It seems so easy. It may not be true, he may have had doubts, but he always seemed to know he wanted to be a part of steamboats and callipopes. In some ways that part of his life seemed mapped out to me.

Despite what I say about gaming, I never totally felt that way about it. Even though I tried,  I never found a way to make it a carreer, and  I didn’t totally want to make it my life. It just became my life. I also wanted to take part in political activism, writing, comic collecting, making movies, film reviews, internet communities, polyamory activism, and participate in Unitarian Universalist conventions and committees. I did all of that, but gaming was always there, somewhere in the background. I’m 48 years old, and I still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up.

And I’m bored with gaming. Thing is, I’ve been bored with it for a long time. I’m not sure how long. I know my rpg campaigns that I’ve run have gotten shorter and shorter and shorter. It takes less and less time for to get bored with a character or a story. And for the first time, I find myself cancelling board games night to go hear music or visit art shows.  It’s holding less and less interest for me, and in some ways, that scares me.

It makes me feel great that I’m expanding my horizons. I feel like maybe now I can be a whole person. But now that I step away from it, I also recognize the obsession, and maybe I miss it. I don’t miss gaming exactly. I miss being obsessed with gaming. I miss the clarity of knowing how I wanted to spend my time. I’m more conflicted now, even more than before. I’m just not sure I want to spend all my time in rpgs and board games.

So last week I decided to stop running any rpg campaigns for at least a year, and it’s scary. Do I have a social life without gaming? Am I me?

I took a break not to long ago for a few weeks, knowing it wouldn’t last. Knowing I’d miss gaming before to long, and before that longing could completely take hold, I leaped back in. I wasn’t ready really. Maybe I needed more time. Maybe I’ll never be into it again. It’s almost like a part of me has died.

But it’s also very reassuring that there may be someone in there that’s been hiding in fantasy for over 30 years. I will still be doing some rpg, playing a character, but even that I’m drifting from.  Plus, I've always run the games, so this is a drastic new shift for me. I’ve barely taken weeks off in the last 30 years, and now I’m taking at least a year hiatus. Change is scary.

Giving up on Empathy

I remember sitting with my grandmother and a few others having a discussion. Somehow the idea came up from someone in the conversation in the sunlit church courtyard, that Nazi’s might want to join our group advocating religious freedom. The ridiculousness of this occurred to everyone, but it was part of a larger discussion about how far tolerance goes.

My grandmother kicked in with “this is the one area I have to be a hypocrite, but I am intolerant of intolerant people.” I laughed, smiled and was filled with joy at how much I love my grandmother. Also with the respect due her, it basically stopped the conversation in its tracks, and steered us towards more sensible things.

This was not the only time I heard my grandmother say this. She said similar things often, and throughout her life. I thought it was a cute little phrase, and I embraced it. Proud as I stood up against intolerance, and glad to battle against it.

It was my grandmother's funeral where I discovered some things about her character I did not know. The minister who spoke at her service had been her minister for 10+ years. He shared how much she had done for the community, for the church, for civil rights, and for so much she was passionate about. And then he shared that she had one personal obstacle she truly struggled with. One thing in her life that made her feel she was not everything she could be. This one emotional sore point made her struggle through pastoral counseling in an attempt to find a way to deal with her weakness. “I am intolerant of intolerant people,” she would say. Her intolerance ran deep, and I had no idea till that moment, that this glib phrase was really her cry of frustration within herself. I don’t know if I could have helped if I had known, because to this day, I’m not sure she was right to be concerned.

I think we can only stop intolerance by fighting it, and we can’t fight it if we accept it. Maybe it’s possible to try and have more empathy with intolerant people, and that’s where I fail. I also have no empathy for people with no empathy. I cannot understand the mind that does not feel for others at all, that would yell out “let them die” at a political rally when speaking of people struggling without health care. I can not understand the mindset of people who make an effort to not consider others. I do get people who struggle with certain kinds of racism, and I’m pretty good at putting myself in other people's shoes. Except when they don’t even try to have that same skill. People who close off, who follow people like Ayn Rand who believes that the very trait of having empathy makes you a parasite.

I am intolerant of intolerant people. I have no empathy for those who don’t even try to have empathy. I have no understanding for those who do not even try to have understanding. And I’m proud of it. Because unlike my grandmother, I don’t think there’s a way to accept these things, and still stand against them. And standing against them is the only way we survive. 

Asange: Hero or rapist?

In 1972 Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstien became national journalistic heroes, by digging deep, finding the truth about what’s going on behind closed government doors, and obtaining documents labeled as classified. They made a movie about them, gave them a Pulitzer prize, and they were generally perceived as the greatest most inspirational journalists in history.

In 2008 and 20010 Julian Asange released information about government cover ups and corruption relating to the 9/11 attacks, Iraq, banking irregularities, Afghanistan and more. He is currently hiding out, facing extradition from a variety of sources, is branded a criminal by the banks, the US and England, and is seen by many as a villain.

What the fuck has happened to us. One of the greatest heroic acts of the 21^st century, and he’s fighting for his life. And yes, I believe he is likely to end up dead if one of these governments gets ahold of him.

Fox news gets a press seat up front, and Julian Asange, the last living REPORTER, is hiding out in a foreign country fearing for his life. This is beyond fucked up. Someone finally brings us the truth, and very few hail his name with the credit he does deserve. He does deserve acclaim, even if he also deserves to be executed and strung up by his balls for unrelated crimes.

Because the rape charges are at issue but Government conspiracies do run deep. Is this all a ploy by governments to get him where they want them, or is this a legitimate cry for justice. It’s hard to know the truth, and the one man who has strived to bring us the truth, is involved and suspect, and I have not heard any reporters really bringing home the truth, or thoroughly investigating, because apparently doing that in modern times, is a crime. Asange has made a lot of people very unhappy by doing just that.

Did Woodward and Bernstein have similar fears? Did they think one of them was going to wake up in a dungeon never to see the light of day again? I would love to hear their impressions now about the situation. 

The only thing that REALLY gives me pause, is that It is the Swiss government, which takes women’s rights very seriously, and usually stays out of international politics. That gives it some credibility. But no one has issued assurance that he would not then be extradited to the us, where Bradley Manning has been locked up for 800 days with no trial for the same “crime”. What’s the answer? Someone needs to have a trial based on Swedish law, without risking being biased by the fact that he is considered a hero by many people and a villain by many governments.

The older child speaks

I’ve had a few computer catastrophes lately. Whenever I resolve to do something like this blog, and I get behind it, life throws obstacles at me, and usually I just flake out. But in this case, it’s improved my resolve. I NEED to do this, so I’m still here, though I was ahead of the game in writing, so if I didn’t have anything I’d have a few days to catch up. Losing the back log slows me down, plus there’s the fact that I haven’t had a computer for days, so I haven’t been updating obviously.But I have a computer again, so I’m here.

 So I guess I’ll talk about my age. As I write this, I’m 20 hours short of being 48. I work in a hotel for near minimum wage. I’m divorced. And I feel about as successful as a person can feel. Because for me, I think you have to base success on the only thing that matters in life - joy, happiness and love. And I have had an abundance of all three throughout my life. I guess someone who does rate life on financial, commercial or business success could cry sour grapes, but I don’t see it that way. I’m very proud of the fact that I've never burned any huge section of my life chasing the almighty dollar, or devoting my life to a career for its future potential. I've really tried to live every moment, and enjoy it.  And I've spent most of my life happy, despite the roadblocks, the personal failures, and the disconnections that do occur. I miss some people I have lost (more on death in another post) but I also love the ones I have so much, I just can’t imagine things another way.

I think back. I would have liked to have saved my marriage, but the truth is I made my wife happy for a few years, and she’s happy again where she is now, and that’s good. It means I've helped someone I loved on their journey, and whatever my frustrations, how can I feel bad about that.

And I love where I am. I’d like more time. I’d like to free myself from a ‘clock in’ type job., but actually I think that’s possible, in a way I never did before. And there’s one more thing that I think keeps me young. I’m still learning. I’m still learning about life, love, computers, music, religions, and well, everything. As long as there is more to learn, more to embrace and more to look forward to, well that’s all youth is isn’t it? So I’m happy that I am still so young, to see the world of hope and possibility lay before me, and look forward to another 40 years of childhood, before I become the bitter curmudgeon many of my friends think I already am.

And now that I have left my house and restarted things, I don’t have a lawn to chase people off of like a bitter angry old man, so there’s that.

Honest to a fault?

I once recently read someone who said that they did not like the phrase honest to a fault. For them it seemed like using honesty as an excuse to avoid tact. I get that and I agree with it. Because in that case, the fault isn’t the honesty, it is the lack of tact itself. There really is no situation where honest is a fault.

In the classic scenario of a woman asking “how do I look in this outfit” honesty is still required. If she asks the question, she wants an answer, at least I think so. She is asking your help, to make her look like she wants to. She is asking your help, and by lying, you deny that help. Be direct and honest but you can do that while also using tact.” Other  dresses look much better on you” for example.

I have people in my life who have faced me with painful truths, and I am grateful to them, for while others avoided confronting me, indeed, perhaps avoided me all together, others have stood to me and told me things they knew that it would be painful for me to hear, because my awareness is the only way I could improve.

I’ve had hygiene issues, loudmouth issues, and a few other barriers in my social interactions, and I’m rarely (if ever) aware when they are happening. It takes someone facing me, and helping me understand what I am doing for me to discover it, and upon its discovery, change it.

And I try to do the same. I had one friend, who when he was not around, every woman I knew would speak poorly of him. Of how they thought he leered, how desperate he seemed, and how he always seemed to treat them like an object. Thing is I knew this guy. He was a feminist, and a heartfelt guy. So I took it upon myself to let him know. Not to call any woman out, but to let him know how his actions were being viewed. No one had ever talked to him. Just about him. Just around him. I felt someone needed to talk to him. Not to belittle him, not to judge him, but to help him stop, to help him improve. It worked, almost instantly. He made a concrete effort, asked me for advice and for cues when he was acting inappropriately. He backed off. And no one looks at him that way now. So the truth is he was a great guy, and had no idea what signals he was sending. Awareness was the key to understanding.

I recommend the Kindle singles book Lying by Sam Harris. He looks at many of these issues and has reached the same conclusions as I. That even white lies are damaging. One thing he does mention is there is something called ‘messages of expectation.” If someone asks you a question, and you know sincerely and surely that they do not want a real answer, but it is more a phrase or politeness, than the polite response is not a lie.

For instance “how are you today” from a total stranger. They don’t really want to hear about your cough, your friend’s illness, or how your rheumatism is flaring up, at least not usually. In this case, “I’m fine’ isn’t a lie, it’s a programmed response. I reacted to this at first, because truthfully if I were to ask someone how they were and they were to tell me, I would appreciate it, but I do get that most people don’t. So I can see how it’s acceptable.

What do you think? What’s the right answer to ‘how are you’ if fine feels like a lie?

And while I’m asking…and since I haven’t gotten any comments on this blog yet, how are you today?

Capitalism and the root of evil

I may shock some people here, but I don’t think the capitalist system is all bad. The premise as I see it is this. Each person is free to pursue ideas, and make things or provide services, and charge for them. Doing work or providing ideas in exchange for some kind of return.

It might be that you will discover that you can increase how much profit you make, by getting some more people to help you with the work, and giving them some share of the cash generated. On the whole this is a good system. If the people doing the hiring continued to think of it in terms of a sort of partnership, where the person helping is making it possible to make more money, and they should get some share of that, there would be economic justice.

Instead, we think of it as wages. Instead of thinking of the corporation or company as ‘everyone in it” we think of the owner and stockholders as the company, and those in it as ‘employees.’. Everyone in the machine, is part of the machine, and everyone who works, deserves credit for that work. If I generate a million dollars for you, it is not reasonable to keep 900,000 for yourself, put 90,000 back into the company, and compensate me with 10,000. If any employee position is not in some way helping your company do better, be better, or make more money in SOME way, you’d have never hired them in the first place.

That bears repeating. No company anywhere ever, would hire anyone if it was not beneficial to the company. Your job is not some glorious gift from the company. The relationship is symbiotic. They need people, and people need the job. The one sided view of employers as gift givers and even owners, is ludicrous.

Everyone matters.  Everyone counts. The idea that if my company succeeds I succeed is fundamental to how the process should work, how it has to work. If that’s not true anymore (and let’s face it, it hasn’t’ been true since the 1960’s) the system is broken.

Ben Cohen and Jerry Geenfield wrote a book which outlines the idea that a company can be ethical and still be profitable. Lets face it, they’ve done well. And they had rules when they owned the company, that the highest  paid employee could make no more than 30 times the lowest paid employee. And they got wealthy doing it. They aren’t the richest people in America, but how wealthy do you need to be. Their children's children may never have to work a day if they don’t want. I think that’s enough to legitimize the American dream, and they did it while helping their country and it’s economy, instead of destroying it.

Double Dip: How to be ethical and make money too

The greedy idea that if I just get you to make  more money for me, and give you as little as possible, I get richer, is destroying America. If you create something, you deserve some benefit for that. I’m not insisting wage  shares be equal, but they should be equitable. And they aren’t.  Not even close.

Not a review: Peace Love and Misunderstanding

So you might think you are coming in in the middle sometimes. I guess we all are. There are numerous incarnations and attempts of this blog before. This is the first real post of this incarnation. So sorry to have lost old stuff, but at the same time, every once in a while I need to start fresh, and tell myself this time I’ll keep up with it. So welcome back for the first time.

Every once in a while I like to talk about some of the many movies I watch here. I don’t like to review them, because you can find reviews anywhere. I’d rather just use the experience of viewing as a launching point for conversations. I think the best movies get you thinking about things outside the movie. This is part of my ‘Not a Review’ series.

We recently saw the movie, Peace Love and Misunderstanding. Jane Fonda plays a 60’s hippy living at Woodstock, who tries to reconnect with her straight conservative daughter. Since this isn’t a review, I won’t bother to go into much more detail than that, because there was just one thing that struck me after the fact.

In one scene, one character belittles Jane Fonda’s character for her promiscuity. The guy then defends her saying, “Well, I think she just uses it to cover up her loneliness.” And of course my wonderfully trained mind just nods and says ‘yeah.’

But there is no sign anywhere that this is true. Her character seems happy with most aspects of her life (except for her disconnection with her daughter and her grandchildren). She does not seem apologetic, desperate or sad about her relationship life.

Here’s an alternative idea. Maybe she likes sex. Maybe she enjoys sharing joy and love with others, and is comfortable enough with herself to do that. We are trained to believe that someone who is promiscuous cannot possibly be happy with it. And even I buy into it sometimes.

I write this not because I am a promiscuous person. I’m not. I never have been really. Well not by my standards anyway. By some I’m sure my numbers are staggering. But I’ve never been the sort to just hop into bed without thought of consequences, of calls tomorrow, and of future entanglements. But the truth is I’m not that person. Part of me wishes I could be that, and another part of me is glad I’m not, because there are consequences, emotional and physical (such as disease exposure), and maybe I think it takes a callous person to disregard all that. Or at least that I'd have to be less concerned. I guess fantasy is always different than reality. I am happy with who I am, but I still imagine different scenarios, and different me's,. The point is, I cannot say someone who chooses a wilder life, is not happy. I can only say they aren't me, but i can certainly imagine it.

If you are emotionally able to be happy sharing love then why not be promiscuous? Can someone be happy and sexual at the same time? Why does someone who wants to share pleasure automatically have to be sad and lonely?  I can certainly envision a person who is comfortable and happy with themselves, who wants to experience pleasure and share pleasure. That person may have a single partner or they may not. Even though having a life partner is something I desire and I am glad to have, I don’t think it is necessary to every person’s individual happiness.

 But I think we are jealous of people like that, and tear them down. We don’t have the power or ability to be promiscuous ourselves. I think we are so jealous of that freedom, that we sour grapes it, and say they can’t really be happy like that. That sexual relationships strung together instead of being one deep sharing after another, must be shallow exchanges, leaving the person empty and alone. We take the sexually liberated free person, and imagine them to be a victim of their own excesses, instead of admiring their understanding of themselves, and their ability to be free.

It’s like locking ourselves in a cage because it’s safe, and then imagining how scary it must be to live out in the big free world, with no bars or boundaries to protect you. How lonely it must be, to be without a cage.

And so it begins anew. This is my Phoenix from the ashes.