Reclaiming Human Worth

    So many of us go through life questioning our worth, trying to overcome or justify our perceived weaknesses. Our status-driven, narcissistic culture; compounded by the "like/dislike" social media self-importance training machine... has made many of us completely neurotic about whether we measure up to some imaginary (and often impossible) societal standard. Marketers spend their whole lives concocting ways to convince you that you are inadequate and that only by purchasing gadgets, lavish cultural icons, and "lifestyles" can you prove that you are a worthy and successful human.

    How much of that is/was complete corporate programming? One of the most remarkable mistakes corporations have made in recent times, was when the ultra-wealthy were forced to bunker in their mansions due to COVID-19... they called what they previously convinced the public were "unskilled laborers"... now all of a sudden were "essential workers." It may be mere semantics to the ultra-wealthy... but to those workers who were paying attention... they realized something. They realized that they had REAL worth. They realized that we are ALL important to making this machine run.

    I don't know how many, or to what degree the psychological zeitgeist has changed, but it seems to me to be a good time to remind and re-enforce the ideas that WE are the architects of our lives, and of our society. We need only to ORGANIZE, EDUCATE, and implement POLICY... to transform our civilization away from the dystopian nightmare it is right now, into a sustainable, humane, and prosperous one. The bigger the changes, the more of us it will take, but it IS WITHIN OUR POWER to make those changes.

Side note: No matter what your belief system/faith is, this is a good time of year to take the time to thank your fast food worker, cashier, cab driver, mail courier, grocer, and/or all of the people the system doesn't recognize enough, and find/embrace that shared humanity.

Scrubbing History

Colin Powell died recently, and while he is not the worst person in his circle, he was horrible and did undeniable damage to our world. Normally, Powell would not rise to a level of importance that I'd feel the need to talk about him, but the MEDIA can not stop singing praise and whitewashing history...so I feel the need to at least remind people that he was deeply involved in the Iraq War. He pushed (now debunked) lies that Iraq was readying biological agents and nuclear materials to use against us/the world...the so-called "Weapons of Mass Destruction." Again, this war cost the lives of about a MILLION Iraqis (many innocent civilians), and countless US soldiers as well. Even after helping get us into this murderous, oil-stealing, nonsense foreverWAR, he continued to be a direct military participant and popped up for strategy presentations and other propaganda efforts. Egregiously, years later he tried to pretend he was never for the war, told us the Bush-Cheney administration was a force for good, and never fully repented for his crimes or the crimes of the administrations he served.

Now look, can people get things wrong...yes, but your due diligence is measured proportionally to your position of power. This man was a General in the U.S. Military...it is his job to find accurate information and make intelligent decisions regarding military operations. The Media keeps talking about the "Powell Doctrine"...look, I'm tired of people calling out the damage AFTER THEY CAUSE IT. Eisenhower created the Military Industrial Complex, then warned us about it...TOO LATE; Woodrow Wilson created the current central banking system in the U.S., then warned us about the abuse by banks...TOO LATE. I give them all very little credit for bringing the threat into existence...then saying it's bad.

We must not continue to let these people DO massive harm, I don't give two sh*ts what they say before or after. Stop doing the harm.

We must also not let them CHANGE the story after they do the harm. You see it in who actually defeated Nazi Germany in WWII (the Soviet Union under Stalin), to "The Big Lie," to Christopher Columbus, to racism and Civil Rights...they keep trying to suppress/change historical facts. We must protect the facts, and share it with the next generation, however great or terrible the facts are, whether we like them or not. That is how we progress as a civilization.

The "Restraint" Narrative

The new narrative floating around the news is that the police, during the January 6th insurrection, showed "great restraint" by not shooting at the insurrectionists...F this narrative. The police were entrusted to protect the people in that building, the mob had already assaulted/killed(?) security/police, and were shouting to kill (or worse) the legislators/VP. Not only should they NOT have show "restraint," it was their duty to use deadly force on anyone who violently besieged the Capitol in that manner.

Meanwhile, if minorities/leftists don't show their vehicle registration in the exact tone/manner the cops prefer, on a routine traffic stop, they will pump peaceful citizens full of lead at the drop of a dime (as body cam footage shows time after time). It's tiring to see the stark differences in treatment that various groups in society get.

As an example, we all saw how the Bundy's completely hijacked a government building, stole government vehicles, and SHOT at police...but they were allowed to stay in occupation of that building for weeks, while mail/supplies were delivered, they shot video of their crimes and posted them on social media, and even after they were forced out...nary a slap on the wrist for their insane criminal activity. Contrast that with the BLM protests; they were teargassed, clubbed, shot with "less-lethal" bullets, run over by police vehicles, and even black-bagged/kidnapped by unmarked government agents...and video shows the VAST majority of protesters were completely peaceful when the violence against them began.

There CAN'T be these sliding scales of justice. The law must be applied objectively, to prescribed, well-defined conditions/parameters, and in a consistent and fair manner. If we continue down this road, "Rule of Law" will lose all meaning, Social Contract will break down, and we will no longer be a "civilization"...just large groups of tribal marauders, ruled by violence, greed, and delusion.

Our Roles In Change

Most of the activists I meet are not the most vulnerable people in society. I say that, not to diminish their passion, compassion, or importance, but just to highlight that THAT particular group is one that is privileged enough to be able to have some time off work, protest, organize, research, etc. There are also a lot of underprivileged people who, despite being the people MOST likely to need broad Structural change, are unlikely to know the mechanisms needing systemic change, unlikely to have excess time and energy to protest, unlikely to have the positions of most freedom to organize.

Why am I saying all this? We need to know that we are not all in the same circumstances, and therefore, our roles in Structural change differ. We can't expect everyone to show up to every protest, we can't expect everyone to be completely knowledgeable about political policy, we can't expect that everyone knows which politicians to vote for and which ones are liars... those are all things we need to MAKE happen.

If you are one of the "middle class" activists, you can't just sit around wondering why everyone just doesn't "get woke" and hope they all vote the way you think is correct... perhaps your role should be as an organizer or awareness educator... you likely have more time for research and administration than your lower class colleagues, access to more resources, etc. If you are a lower class change actor, don't get caught up in the "blame game" or pity party, you need to realize that your power comes from solidarity and influence in your own circle, and you need to acknowledge that you might have to accept direction if you can't afford the time to organize or gain awareness yourself. If you are wealthy... and for some reason have a conscience and a Structuralist perspective, your job is to lead/seek out honest and dedicated talent, and provide resources for key change actors and movements.

None of us can make change alone, we must all know where we stand in society, and apply pressure where we can be most effective.

Be Curious, Not A Consumer

To be blunt, media today is poison. Mainstream media, social media, television, radio... the majority of it is complete garbage. It falls upon YOU to be discerning, curious, find the contradictions, catch the flip-flops, read the underlying motivations, and try to seek out factual and EVIDENCE-based information. I know it's hard and inconvenient... but I'm sure you all see what is happening to truth and reason today... it's evaporating.

The main way people fall into this trap is just consuming whatever someone puts in front of them. The church, their social media feed, their partisan news station... NO, seek out information beyond what is FED to you and what is easy. "Strongman" your opponents arguments and try to find honest actors who disagree with you. Only then can you know that what you believe holds up to scrutiny.

Lastly, we need to teach our children about MEDIA LITERACY, who produces information, motivations, finding multiple sources for information, consulting experts, verifying consistency, and learn to navigate the propaganda and marketing battlefields that pollute information.

Until we get to a place where we agree on what's true and real, we can't evaluate priorities or create plans of action for the URGENT problems we face. No change can be made until people can critically think and reason and work towards a common good.

When "Good" Stops Being An Option

Been watching a (bad) series that has a corrupt cop character, who says:

"I never meant for any of this to happen. I don't even know how it did. I was just going out there every day, trying to do some good... At some point, for some reason, good stopped being an option."

It struck me as so true... how many potentially great people are turned into destructive beings by our SYSTEM. When, Structurally, you must either be the exploiter or the exploited.

I've always believed, and still do, that "free will" is an illusion, but that we must "act as if it exists" in order for our first-person brain to be able to make sense of the world. I think I must amend that statement to say, we might have to "act as if it exists... as individuals"... but that we should strive to create systems where OUTCOMES are all that matter. Don't confuse that for "the ends justify the means"... that's not what I'm saying, I'm saying the total, holistic outcome of a system, as best we can measure that.

Bottom line, we have created a system that not only does not let us reach our potential, it corrupts and degrades our moral selves, in addition to degrading our environment. We must stop with this cult of individualism and thinking only our own Preference matters, it is 1) incompatible with Rule of Law, but 2) we must start thinking Structurally if we want to continue to exist on this planet... we are destroying our environment and each other with our individualism and our self-centered philosophies.

The "Others"

Political/economic misinformation, these days, often comes in the form of bigoted tribal narratives. When we talk about "welfare"...we are told that the recipients are "urban welfare queens" who milk the system and live high on the hog while stealing benefits... the reality is the elderly and disabled are usually who receive these benefits, many veterans (who also make up a lot of our homeless), and mostly in conservative states. When we talk about the Minimum Wage, we are told that we don't need to raise it because these are jobs held by high school kids just learning to work... the reality is that the average minimum wage earner is a 35 year old woman, trying to make ends meet for her family. When we talk about immigration, we are told that immigrants are dangerous criminals, but in reality immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than native-born citizens... and of immigrants, undocumented immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than documented immigrants (shocker... immigrants are usually just regular people coming to the US to work, not to commit crimes).

We have to stop worrying about the "other"...the boogeyman...stop the nail-biting and pearl clutching. Even IF we could correlate a group with some negative behavior...we should be asking WHY? What can we do to solve that problem? Not punish people for their circumstances. We have to start looking at society as a whole, fixing root causes of problems, being POLICY focused, and we need to stop placing blame and protecting egos.

Why People Do Things

When someone lies, for instance, there is a wide range of reasoning people give to explain why. Some try to make it an ideological thing...that some people believe in lying and some don't (like many economists/economic philosophers). Some people try to make it a biological thing...that some gene or hormone definitely is the reason. For all practical purposes though, it's really simple, people lie when it's too difficult not to.

If people would just extend this reasoning to most human behavior, I think we'd realize that there really aren't all these ideological or "good vs evil" battles going on...it's individuals with various stressors, states of health and being, and environmental circumstances...that all pressure people to act the way they do. Thinking in these irrational false-dichotomies just drives us further into tribalism and conflict.

Recently, there has been a lot of nonsense talk about "unity" but nobody is really talking about what that means.

If we want REAL unity we must:

• Align ourselves with REALITY, learn about evidence-based beliefs, reason, and logic.
  
  
• We must accept that we aren't all that fundamentally different from each other (we have to stop all eugenics-type thinking), and focus on our SHARED needs and goals.
  
  
• We need to stop judging people on made-up, biased, selfish scales of what is in the range of normal human preference and behavior, especially behavior that only affects themselves. On the other side, we must START punishing people for harming masses of people, destroying public health, inciting violence, implementing detrimental societal policies, or starting unnecessary, non-defensive wars.
  
  
• We must stop creating ego-driven, zero-sum institutions, and create systems that take care of our basic needs, allow us to make mistakes and grow, and generate the highest possibility of everyone reaching their maximum potential and contributing to society.

Corporate Control Of Media

I left social media years ago for this reason, but it's become undeniable that saying something these tech corporations don't like will result in suppression of your speech, no matter how true, factual, or well-reasoned it is. This has become a problem for independent journalism, media creators, activists... these large tech platforms have decided they are the gatekeepers of truth.

Now before I continue, I'd like to say I GET IT... there is a lot of misinformation on the Internet, and a lot of brainwashed people... BUT, letting giant tech corporations be the arbiters of truth, will NOT solve this problem; you will just be getting the misinformation that they approve of. I would also like to say, IT'S "OUR" FAULT. People are demanding that these platforms police content... when we should be asking that they have NO ability to prioritize or censor content. We should be creating/converting these essential Internet services into Public Utilities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBoNDJadQNk

The Regime Change Wars Continue

I knew Biden was a "hawk" (or in other words, a warmonger captured by the Military Industrial Complex)... but how, after all this time, are we not seeing the obvious... they are greedy for resources, they will play the "communist" card, they will play the "dictator" card (even though, in Venezuela for instance, many independent, international entities have verified that their elections are extremely fair). The State Department signaled hostility with Russia, Venezuela, China, Iran... I'm so sick of it.
I've seen that both the left and right oppose our constant, pointless, regime-change, forever wars, and both would love to see those resources be put towards alleviating the suffering in our own nation... and I hope we can find a way to unite against these psychopaths who would see us war perpetually.

https://youtu.be/a5aucqZnM2o?t=561

"Eat The Rich"

Here you have it, from one of the only extremely rich people who sees the problem with inequality. The people must organize, the political parties won't solve it, the powerful will not introspect... we gotta "eat the rich" if we want to change the system to be sane.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0A26Pmg7sE6RAtSN5XFpE2

Public Spaces

I've been advocating for new, truth-telling media sources/social networks for the public because communication and factual information is crucial. No doubt our "electronic" spaces have come under much scrutiny and debate these last few years, and there is much work to do there. That said, we must not forget about the original "town squares"... the physical places we have forgotten and taken for granted. We need spaces for us to socialize and communicate in personal and intimate ways. This is why we need free, open, public spaces for us to relax, reflect, discuss, or connect. Safe, but not surveilled, beautiful, but not walled gardens.

https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_diller_a_stealthy_reimagining_of_urban_public_space

Art Informs For Social Change

"Grief carves a place in the heart and sits there forever, but when focused it can be a powerful motivator; sadness becomes resolve, and pain becomes action."

- A Discovery Of Witches

Takeaways From Inauguration Day

It's obvious the political class has learned NOTHING these last few years. The democrats vomit platitudes, ceremony, and elitist decorum...the republicans spew delusional lies, fundamentalism, and complete selfish indulgence.

By the way, if you haven't learned by now, "Unity" means the cowardly democrats will concede massive amounts of power and policy to corporations and republicans.

Jingoism, anthems, poems, ceremony... wasteful, meaningless gestures and performance. If these events are any indication, that is what we'll likely see for the next four years. I am VERY open to being proved wrong... but we're being given no reason to have a lot of hope.

Enjoy the first 100 days; Biden will likely use his executive orders to try to project competency, and be the most productive of his term.

Beyond that, the people need to leap light-years in understanding and maturity, massively organize, put their bodies on the gears of the machine, and choose leaders who will do what's right and needed.

Show, Not Tell & How To Think, Not What To Think

Remember when stories used all your senses to tell stories, hinted and suggested, and inspired you to think. No longer, we are now in the age of preachy cinematic universes. Now, I'd actually forgive them if they did it well... I mean we just came out of 4 years of Trump, so obviously peoples intellectual and moral compasses are far from calibrated... and the "Heroes Journey" can probably be a propaganda tool for good... BUT we aren't getting good lessons, we aren't being challenged to raise the intellectual bar. No, we are being preached Identity Politics, Market Fundamentalism, and some warped post-modern, Christian-ish spiritualism.

Hey media, please stop... we don't need your minority / gay / trans / impoverished, (insert more Identities here) character to create absurd stories that STEAL from the actual experiences/struggles of REAL people. I mean it's a good psychological trick... "hey, she's not just a super hot girl in spandex, she's a lesbian, feminist, freedom fighter! yeah, that's the ticket! please, let us sell sex for a few more decades..." Give it a rest. If you're going to use sex to sell shit, at least be honest about it, and stop trying to run a psy-op on the public... that's why they are so confused and cognitively dissonant. Stop suggesting a lack of religiosity is a lack of morality, it's almost always the opposite. Stop telling us that our unsustainable economic practices are the "end of history" and that anything that deviates is some scary "other" something, something, Communist, government is coming for you, conspiracy, baby eaters, (insert tribal fear tactic here).

Bottom line, there is no replacement for skilled storytelling that make people critically think about important topics. There is no replacement for actual wisdom and diligently reasoned ethics...you can't just ask any old writer to manufacture it for you, or any old supermodel to communicate it. I know our society runs purely on profit-motive these days, but it really bugs me that we THINK it doesn't. We think our news anchors tells us truths, we think our traditions give us good morals, we think our systems are proven and functioning...the reality is we are in free-fall on all fronts.

The Lesson Being Taught

We have been and are doing everything we can to create peaceful change through rational discussion... but what lesson are our leaders teaching at this point? I've never seen them move so fast to meet out justice since THEIR lives were in danger. Political leaders have taken corporate money, done all the bidding of their donors, ignored and openly refused the will of the people, parties unfairly interfered in elections... and only when they feel fear for their own lives, does justice even get discussed. Only now is there serious talk of removing the President and all the Congresspeople who've been committing crime after crime. Now to be clear, the rioters in DC were unhinged maniacs, and I'm not condoning what they've done nor do I think have any legitimate grievance. But...

Hey politicians, YOU are making the case for authoritarian and/or violent practices. Those scenarios seem to be the only times things get done.

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

-John F. Kennedy

Trump's "Sedition"

Hey (every media personality)... SAVE IT. Trump has been unhinged from the very start. Stop pretending like -all of a sudden- he's crossed some line that nobody could have seen coming. You didn't learn when we found out he was a serial sexual predator? How about when he used his power to enrich himself? No? How about when he assassinated the top general of a sovereign nation without being at war? How about when he said we'd steal the resources of countries we were supposed to be helping? How about when he became the face of the White Supremacists movement? How about when he used nationalist rhetoric and authoritarianism to bully our government and anyone who dissented? How about when he murdered hundreds of thousands of people, via Corona Virus, through negligence and apathy?

The sad truth is Trump is a mob boss, and 90% of our "leaders" are in the mob with him. If you've only just woken up to this truth you've been grossly negligent...YOU are part of the problem. Before Trump set one foot inside the White House, every sane person knew he was unfit to be there...and everyone who allowed him to actually have the power, have his finger on the button, etc.... you all have the worst judgment imaginable.

Life isn't a game, and if you treat it as one you are GOING to make horrible-irreversible decisions. The environment isn't a game, war isn't a game, human suffering isn't a game... it's not about tribes, personalities, scores... it's about REAL outcomes, real suffering, real damage. If this one day of rioting at the Capitol was your awakening, splash some more cold water on your face because it's likely you've been sleeping on much more than this subject. Make today the day you start questioning EVERYTHING in your life.