This May Hurt...

Right and Wrong—This one’s gonna hurt.

There is right and there is wrong. To me, this applies to 90% of life in a very black and white fashion. The other 10% falls into the rare gray. This lovely society we humans have created looks at it in nearly the opposite manner. Humans do this so they can either justify something to themselves, their peers, their socio-cultural group, or just out of selfish purposes. This covers nearly every type of societal grouping—political, religious, ideological, philosophical, and familial/personal.

My argument is that those that use (and love) the gray are self-serving and usually putting forth the worst of humanity. I am not writing to argue points. I am not here to banter. I will say this: I can defend my points of view in the greatest texts humans have ever written, for example: The Bible, The Tao The Ching, The Rig Veda, The Upanishads, and a plethora of revered texts. I also can back my "stuff" up, with the writings of some the wisest sages in history: Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Confucius, Martin Luther King Jr., Joseph Smith, and St. John of the Cross— the list goes on and on. On the other hand, all you who so choose the gray can use to support your ideologies are the ideas and philosophies of much lesser men.

So without further ado, below is a small list.

Right Things

1. Quality healthcare is a right, for everyone. Real, equal healthcare, the USA is the ONLY democratic country that does not have universal healthcare.

2. Helping the poor and needy—in a real and meaningful way.

3. Food, shelter, and clean water for all people.

4. Less protocol and more creative freedom.

5. The opportunity (notice I did not write ability) to a job that provides a living wage. The minimum wage should do this.

6. The freedom from slavery, both real and corporate.

7. Unity.

8. Death or life sentences to murderers, rapists, child sex offenders, and human traffickers.

9. A real Democracy, not a Republic that pretends to be one.

10. Tolerance.

11. An obliteration of political parties and the insane loyalties they try to foster.

Wrongs

1. Individual and corporate healthcare providers/ pharmaceutical companies financially raping the people.

2. The vast difference between the wealthiest and the rest.

3. People that try to justify the above with comments like, “I worked harder. I had more education. They are lazy. Why should I pay? I am only trying to be a good provider. I earned it; they did not. It was their choice.” These are excuses that prove selfishness and hypocrisy.

4. People that promote exclusivity among their respective groups. These could be religious, political, and/ or social.

5. Greedy employers that use their employees like servants.

6. 70% of what we do as a nation around the world.

7. Intolerance.

8. We are the richest country on the earth, yet we have one of the worst public school systems in the world. Among "stable" democracies we have the most expensive healthcare, the greediest financial system, and far too many people below the poverty line.

9. 99% of corporations. In fact, the very idea of a corporation is wrong.

10. If you can charge $900.00 for a tooth crown, or $150.00 for a doctor’s office visit, or pay your employees less than a tenth of what you make, and you can sleep at night, you are not making the world a better place. You are a vampire. Justify it any way you can, but you do not follow, Jesus, Vishnu, Allah, Buddha, or simply intrinsic human morality. Be more.

 Think about it; throw away your cultural ego and look inside—what do you see? Maybe more than you are now; maybe what you could be.

Talent

Tremendous Talent Thursday

 

Lindsey Stirling

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf6LD2B_kDQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkt9T9opPn0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSLPH9d-jsI

Things shared.

The world is full of hard things. Everyone has their own troubles. Troubles come like rain or a fierce storm that threatens everything in its path. Destruction of the body is nothing compared to the destruction of the soul. For in the soul resides those things that are eternal; those things that move us.

Life is nothing more than a series of moments. We may go days, even years before the moments that truly change us occur. Those moments are what matters; those moments are what we remember.

Pain is a hard thing. The harshest pain can only be afflicted by those we care about; the closer the bond, the deeper the wound. That wound is often inflicted without the knowledge of the inflictor.

It may be as simple as a lack of interest in your work or passion. Indifference is a cold lover. Parents, spouses, and friends are often the unwitting culprits. Support is not the same as genuine interest. If your child draws, really look. If your parent paints, enjoy and take the time to really see it. If your spouse writes, read it. Share the moment.

 Passion is something that is better shared.

Ink

 

This is not a thing that can be taught

 

Neither purchased, borrowed, or sold

 

It transcends these things¾

It is the mist and the wind; it is the dark and the light

 

The hand, guided by some unseen force

 Wrenching words from stone, tearing them from hearts-

Words that fiercely live on the strength of their unknown power-

Endlessly ripping great breaths from inside

 

Words that change and love and hate
Words that contain their own reality
Words achieving immortality

 

On the pages and on the souls of those who partake

 Words that become dreams and thoughts and deeds

Words that become an assemblage of those things that make us

Words forging the world, shaping it,

 

Before the Ink is even dry.

Today I have been thinking about time and routine.

 I do not believe in time as we normally define it. I think time is a construction of man. That construction is both good and bad.

 It allows people to come, go, and congregate in a way that allows for productivity and order. We can take important moments and make them tangible. It is also a preventive for activity-specific chaos. It has its uses in a world that needs parameters and structure to function. However, it is a false reality; time is really nonexistent. It is, was, and will ever be without a name. Time as we know it is more like lines that give us simple-minded humans points of reference—thus the word “timeline.” Nevertheless, time cares little for these things, it just is.

 I detest routine in its many ugly forms and the almost sacred importance many people place upon it. Many may disagree, but I do not think we were made for routine. Mankind was made to wander and think and create. We have something unique inside us that we have been trying to kill for thousands of years—the natural freedom to simply be.

Why did we create a world that judges one another on what they have, not what they are, or what they could be? We are not natural-born capitalist vampires; we are naturally free and open sentient beings. Be like a child. Think…when you were seven did you care about being late to anything? A butterfly may have distracted you, or maybe a dragon needed slaying.

 8-5, forty hour week, overtime, part-time, staff meeting, extra training, meetings for the sake of meetings, the same route because it is fastest, the way we have always done it, forms, rule upon rule, newer is better—these are profanity to me.

 

Routine is the murderer of the soul—it is the insidious assassin of dreams.

 Did you ever want to be a dancer or a singer; a writer or a painter? You may have dreamed of being an astronaut or a professional surfer. Maybe routine and the world slowly, but methodically killed those things inside until one day you awoke and somehow they went from dreams to silly, childish thoughts. You cast them aside like so much trash.

When you were little, a leaf or a grasshopper was magical; did you think about how much money you were putting in the bank? Did you lose sleep over being late to school? 

I don’t think so.

Many people think or will say to me, “You are not practical. You are unrealistic. You are a dreamer. You are foolish.”

 I proudly answer with a resounding and unrepentant, yes.

Failing

Failing

I was thinking today (actually at 2:30 am) at my own failures as a citizen of a bourgeois society, as a father, a husband, a son, as an orthodox member of my religion, and as a human being on this earth. I know—not a cornucopia of positive or productive thoughts, but demons come with truth sometimes.

I  thought upon how we are doing as humans—as a human family. We are failing. I easily found some statistics.

“According to NetAid, over a billion people, or roughly one in six, live in extreme poverty. Extreme poverty is defined as living on less than US$1 a day.

The World Bank goes on to define moderate poverty as basic subsistence living, on $1 to $2 a day. All told, nearly half the world's population lives in poverty -- that's 2.8 billion people living on less than two dollars a day.”

Some other facts to keep in mind:

• Each year over 8 million people die because they are simply too poor to stay alive.
• More than 800 million people go hungry every day.
• The gross domestic product of the poorest 48 nations is less than the wealth of the world's three richest people.
• Thirty-thousand children die every day due to hunger and treatable illnesses.
• 6 million children die every year before their fifth birthday, as a result of malnutrition.

“You can find detailed poverty assessments of specific geographical regions on the World Bank's PovertyNet. And if you're interested in learning how the World Bank comes up with its poverty statistics, take a look at PovcalNet.

The goal of the Millennium Campaign is to reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day by 2015. And the aim of the One Campaign is to direct an additional 1 percent of the United States budget towards eradicating global poverty.”

Complete stats, if you have the courage or can muster the time to read them:

 http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats

And…what about human slavery? http://slaveryfootprint.org/




The following article was pulled from Wikipedia; however, everything was cited and sourced.

“Sex trafficking

Main article: Human trafficking

Sex trafficking is a type of Human trafficking involving the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbor or receipt of persons, by coercive or abusive means for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Sex trafficking is not the only form of human trafficking and estimates vary as to the percentage of human trafficking which is for the purpose of transporting someone into sexual slavery.

The BBC News cited a report by UNODC as listing the most common destinations for victims of human trafficking in 2007 as Thailand and Japan.^[7] The report lists Thailand, China, Nigeria, Albania, Bulgaria, Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine as major sources of trafficked persons.

Commercial sexual exploitation of children

Main article: Commercial sexual exploitation of children

Commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) includes prostitution of children, child pornography, child sex tourism, trafficking of children for sexual purposes, or other forms of transactional sex with children. The Youth Advocate Program International (YAPI) describes CSEC as a form of coercion and violence against children and a contemporary form of slavery.^[8][9]

A declaration of the World Congress Against the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, held in Stockholm in 1996, defined CSEC as, "sexual abuse by the adult and remuneration in cash or in kind to the child or to a third person or persons. The child is treated as a sexual object and as a commercial object".^[9]

Child prostitution

Main article: Prostitution of children

The prostitution of children is a form of commercial sexual exploitation of children in which a child performs the services of prostitution, usually for the financial benefit of an adult.

India's federal police said in 2009 that they believed around 1.2 million children in India to be involved in prostitution.^[10] A CBI statement said that studies and surveys sponsored by the Ministry of Women and Child Development estimated about 40% of India's prostitutes to be children.^[10]

Thailand’s Health System Research Institute reported that children in prostitution make up 40% of prostitutes in Thailand.^[11]

In some parts of the world, child prostitution is tolerated or ignored by the authorities. Reflecting an attitude which prevails in many developing countries, a judge from Honduras said, on condition of anonymity: "If the victim [the child prostitute] is older than 12, if he or she refuses to file a complaint and if the parents clearly profit from their child's commerce, we tend to look the other way".^[12]

Child pornography

Main article: Child pornography

Child pornography, sometimes referred to as 'child abuse images',^[13][14][15] refers to images or films depicting sexually explicit activities involving a child. As such, child pornography is a visual record of child sexual abuse.^{[16][17][18][19][20][21]} Abuse of the child occurs during the sexual acts which are photographed in the production of child pornography,^{[16][17][19][20][21][22][23]} and the effects of the abuse on the child (and continuing into maturity) are compounded by the wide distribution and lasting availability of the photographs of the abuse.^[21][22][24]

Child sex tourism

Main article: Child sex tourism

Child sex tourism is a travel to a foreign country for the purpose of engaging in commercially facilitated child sexual abuse.^[25] Child sex tourism results in both mental and physical consequences for the exploited children, that may include "disease (including HIV/AIDS), drug addiction, pregnancy, malnutrition, social ostracism, and possibly death", according to the State Department of the United States.^[25] Thailand, Cambodia, India, Brazil and Mexico have been identified as leading hotspots of child sexual exploitation.”



How can we live our lives acting like these things do not exist?

 I cannot.

We go to dinner, on vacations, own more in our pockets than most people will ever see in a lifetime, and yet we do little to nothing.

If we cannot see the monsters they must not exist—but they do exist. We allow them to exist. We just choose not to believe in them.

We are only our brother’s keepers—unless it is easy.

This is our world; are we such worthless creations that these things do not matter?



We may walk on two legs, but do we walk upright?

Life is Complicated.

Lithium

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJGpsL_XYQI

Life is complicated.

The Dow and stuff...

Now I do not want to get all political on everyone and if you hate it I will write something odd or poetic or whatever next time, but have you read the news? If not, here’s one clip:

“NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks climbed 1 percent on Wednesday, with both the Dow and S&P 500 ending at historic highs as cyclical shares led the way higher for a second straight day.

The S&P 500 finally joined the new all-time intraday high club, surging past a record set on October 11, 2007. The index has struggled to breach the level of 1,576.09 for the past several weeks, but broke above it on Wednesday to rise as high as 1,589.07. The Dow also hit another intraday milestone, rising as high as 14,826.66.

The Dow Jones industrial average jumped 128.78 points, or 0.88 percent, to 14,802.24 at the close. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index climbed 19.12 points, or 1.22 percent, to 1,587.73. The Nasdaq Composite Index shot up 59.40 points, or 1.83 percent, to close at 3,297.25.

The day marked the best session for both the Dow and the S&P 500 since February 27, and the best for the Nasdaq since January 2. The Nasdaq climbed to a session high of 3,299.15, its highest since November 2000.”

 

I am not into the stock market. Since I am the lower end of the “99%” my idea of investing is buying an extra sack of sticky rice. Nevertheless, this sounds like a good thing economically. Of course the hydra of idiocy, Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity could find provide some expert ANALysis on how this is bad.

Beside that fact, I wonder, as I too often do about things I cannot change nor fix, of a different scenario and relate it to the conundrum of our sad reality.

 

Now first my disclaimer: I am neither attributing anything to anyone—I am just thinking/writing about what people think. In the end that is what I do.

 

Imagine if Mitt Romney won the election he so badly lost. All his minions would be screaming, “See ya’ll, Mitt knows bidness! He raised up the Dow!” (I know I am being extremely sarcastic—fun isn’t it?).

On the other hand, I hear no praises, at least within earshot of where I reside, lauding President Obama. Hmm…funny…yes?

However, you can bet your lucky made-in-China shoes that if the Dow was dropping, the valley where I live would echo hate-speech against the President like the fireworks echo off the mountains on the 4^th of July.

Am I insinuating anything here? Uh…yeah, but I am not giving anyone credit for anything, and as stated before, neither am I taking credit away.

I would just love people to think outside the social norms that they have either received from their parents, or have created for themselves. It is another of our flaws as humans to have the need to belong to a group or cause; it makes us feel united and bigger than we are. This is not entirely bad. It is just scary. We have so much potential to think bigger. We can feel deeper. We can love first and hate last—if at all. We can be so much more than just a self-imposed label, with self-allowed ideologies.

I used this silly little, but current scenario to possibly open a few minds.

 Let us not be shallow pools, stuck in the mire of our own make; let us be deep oceans that are always swimming toward a better place.

 

Post Script—an interesting article:

 http://investorplace.com/2011/01/president-barack-obama-good-for-stock-market/

Hate mail welcomed (Love mail too).

It was strange the day I realized I was not for this world—that this world had no place for me.

 I will not forget that day.

Bias?

There is probably no truly unbiased news source; nevertheless, here is my list of favorites.

New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/

BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/

NPR News: http://www.npr.org/

I like the following, but they can and do express “Tower of Pisa” stories.

The Guardian: http://www.guardiannews.com/

 The New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/

Western Livestock Journal: http://www.wlj.net/index.php

Maybe if dolphins produced a written news source, it would be unbiased. Sadly, they do not. We are stuck with the ravings of the most ignoble of God’s creations: man.

Who knows...?