Copyright © CR Edmunds
www.onestillfree.com
This time of year is sacred to many cultures. It has to do with the short days and the long dark nights that bring out the darkness in our souls – the primitive fears and feelings of aloneness and powerlessness that make us huddle around the small light of our hearths, nervously jumping at every noise from the shadows. It seems that we are such little spots in the infinite universe, tiny points of brightness that burn so feebly against those dark nights.
Times are hard now for most of us, here on the bottom half of the economic pile. It’s so easy to feel cheated, to feel that everything we’ve worked for and striven for is being sold out from under us, impoverishing us and disenfranchising us. We fear that our rights and our livelihoods are being stripped from us while the few in power – the few we’ve put there to act in our best interests – profit from our losses and wallow in our suffering.
The sacred holidays approach but many of us are not uplifted by them. We instead become withdrawn in stress and trepidation, resenting the symbols of celebrations around us, feeling left out. We worry that as bad as things are, worse is yet to come and nothing can be done about it. Is the end truly so near? Will we - can we - keep up the struggle? Should we bother?
But this is just the reaction to another long, dark night. We are, after all, humans – each of us more alike than not. We lash out at perceived dangers in our dark private terrors, when in truth safety is all around us. We forget that we are each the one who stands at our neighbor’s back. It has always been that way, from the days of saber-tooth tigers. It is no different today.
Truly, it is time for us to open our eyes and see that the shadows contain no danger, for they are cast by our family and friends – those who share the vigil of the long night with us. It is time for us to cease to cower in fear or lash out in anger. It is time for us to remember our faith in who we are, in what our place is in this life.
It is time to give thanks that we have come this far and to trust that we, together, can and will endure and prosper.
It is time to band together, to find cause to celebrate and to forget our fears for a few hours or days. To focus on hope and faith and a brighter future.
These are the facts: The solstice always passes, the days always start lengthening, and even though it is still cold and dark and hard for a long time afterwards, somehow we can push through it. Brighter days will come.
Like our ancestors before us, let us make merry and joyful noise and, in doing so, banish the darkness of the night.
Happy holidays.
Showing posts with label elder wisdom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label elder wisdom. Show all posts
Monday, December 7, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Obama Lies About Pandemic?
Obama says 1000 have died from H1N1 flu but CDC data shows no such thing – the CDC hasn’t been testing for H1N1 deaths since last July, probably because the majority of specimens tested are not only not H1N1, but not even flu!
Massive PR campaign by Obama to what end? To justify the massive spending on vaccines (to support Big Pharma) or to set up one more control of the population through fear?
I’m betting both.
Evaluate for yourself: http://articles.mercola.com/swine-flu-article/20091027.htm If you've been told you have H1N1 after August 1, since there's been no actual testing for it, your doctor *cannot know* but is only assuming the diagnosis.
Listen to the audio at the Mercola website - they read actual quotes from CDC!
Massive PR campaign by Obama to what end? To justify the massive spending on vaccines (to support Big Pharma) or to set up one more control of the population through fear?
I’m betting both.
Evaluate for yourself: http://articles.mercola.com/swine-flu-article/20091027.htm If you've been told you have H1N1 after August 1, since there's been no actual testing for it, your doctor *cannot know* but is only assuming the diagnosis.
Listen to the audio at the Mercola website - they read actual quotes from CDC!
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Common Sense Uncommonly Rare
For millennia human beings survived and thrived because they used common sense. Those who didn’t enabled their own removal from the gene pool (they died). Maybe its just me, but it sure seems that the gene pool is getting a wee bit murky these days as whatever has contributed since the dawn of history to common sense is somehow fading away.
The disappearance of common sense from everyday life is a scary thing, if you ask me, because common sense is really the basis for the success of democracy. The founders of the USA were a pretty brilliant bunch, but they didn’t expect that everyone who was going to have a vote was going to be brilliant. In fact, democracy doesn’t require brilliance to succeed; it just needs good old common sense to keep it going and healthy.
The point of voting is to let everyone who is ruled by our government have a say in how that ruling is going to happen. This was a very bold, exciting concept back in the day, and it still is. Our brilliant founders knew that extremists would be moderated by the overwhelming mass of people who didn’t need brilliance or higher education to see the right thing to do. That’s because people then, who had to rely on common sense applied in their daily lives to survive, would apply that same common sense to identifying what was the right thing to do.
Thing is, it doesn’t take common sense any more to make it in our daily lives. With the mass withdrawal from fundamental interaction with nature (growing our own food, building our own houses, being responsible for our own safety) that has resulted from mechanization, technological innovation and the internet, we have lost the need for exercising our common sense. Industrial farming and the importing of so much of our food and other commodities means that fewer and fewer people in this country are connected to the real world. Fed by the fantasy world of TV, movies and video games, spending all day long indoors, has created a gap between what is real and possible, and what is desired - and the gap is growing faster and faster.
Simply put, most people just aren’t practicing the use of common sense any more because they don’t have to. So, like any other faculty that doesn’t get used, common sense is just dying out. Unfortunately, what we’re losing is what is needed to vote in something approaching a rational manner in order to maintain a living, healthy democracy. Without common sense, it all falls apart.
Today, our health, our well being, our communities, our society and our country are all going away so rapidly that it’s hard to see how things can be brought back to equilibrium again. We’re all being fed information that has so little connection to reality that it’s stunning. There is so little common sense being used that sometimes I wonder if we’ve been taken over by alien beings from another dimension. Such irrational behavior isn’t all that surprising, since that’s pretty much what has happened - just substitute media, government and political correctness for alien beings.
Really, coming up with a solution is tough, but it seems to me that a first step would be to return power to the people via local governments, because it’s obvious that locals know best about local issues. This means that locals should be the ones who implement federal and state programs in the places that they’re meant to be implemented. It’s only common sense that locals would do a good job of it as they have throughout history - because they’d be the ones who’d suffer if they screwed up.
You can’t force people to use their common sense, and you can’t expect people to suddenly begin using any faculty when it has become atrophied. Still, things have a way of balancing out over time. I’m hoping people wake up and shake themselves up on their own before too long, though, because as bad as it’s become, those who will be paying for the folly of this and past generations will be our children, their children and beyond. That’s not a legacy I’m happy about leaving for them.
The disappearance of common sense from everyday life is a scary thing, if you ask me, because common sense is really the basis for the success of democracy. The founders of the USA were a pretty brilliant bunch, but they didn’t expect that everyone who was going to have a vote was going to be brilliant. In fact, democracy doesn’t require brilliance to succeed; it just needs good old common sense to keep it going and healthy.
The point of voting is to let everyone who is ruled by our government have a say in how that ruling is going to happen. This was a very bold, exciting concept back in the day, and it still is. Our brilliant founders knew that extremists would be moderated by the overwhelming mass of people who didn’t need brilliance or higher education to see the right thing to do. That’s because people then, who had to rely on common sense applied in their daily lives to survive, would apply that same common sense to identifying what was the right thing to do.
Thing is, it doesn’t take common sense any more to make it in our daily lives. With the mass withdrawal from fundamental interaction with nature (growing our own food, building our own houses, being responsible for our own safety) that has resulted from mechanization, technological innovation and the internet, we have lost the need for exercising our common sense. Industrial farming and the importing of so much of our food and other commodities means that fewer and fewer people in this country are connected to the real world. Fed by the fantasy world of TV, movies and video games, spending all day long indoors, has created a gap between what is real and possible, and what is desired - and the gap is growing faster and faster.
Simply put, most people just aren’t practicing the use of common sense any more because they don’t have to. So, like any other faculty that doesn’t get used, common sense is just dying out. Unfortunately, what we’re losing is what is needed to vote in something approaching a rational manner in order to maintain a living, healthy democracy. Without common sense, it all falls apart.
Today, our health, our well being, our communities, our society and our country are all going away so rapidly that it’s hard to see how things can be brought back to equilibrium again. We’re all being fed information that has so little connection to reality that it’s stunning. There is so little common sense being used that sometimes I wonder if we’ve been taken over by alien beings from another dimension. Such irrational behavior isn’t all that surprising, since that’s pretty much what has happened - just substitute media, government and political correctness for alien beings.
Really, coming up with a solution is tough, but it seems to me that a first step would be to return power to the people via local governments, because it’s obvious that locals know best about local issues. This means that locals should be the ones who implement federal and state programs in the places that they’re meant to be implemented. It’s only common sense that locals would do a good job of it as they have throughout history - because they’d be the ones who’d suffer if they screwed up.
You can’t force people to use their common sense, and you can’t expect people to suddenly begin using any faculty when it has become atrophied. Still, things have a way of balancing out over time. I’m hoping people wake up and shake themselves up on their own before too long, though, because as bad as it’s become, those who will be paying for the folly of this and past generations will be our children, their children and beyond. That’s not a legacy I’m happy about leaving for them.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Vulcan Logic and The Good Of The Many
Copyright © 2009 CREdmunds
Mr. Spock, with his pointy ears and his dispassionate logic, said that "the good of the many outweighs the good of the few or the one" at the end of Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan. A noble thought indeed, but putting it into practice necessitates having a clear idea of what the “good of the many” actually is.
In the USA, the good of the many is based on the rights of the individual. That is, the “many” is a collection of individuals, the rights of each collectively protected by the Constitution.
Currently in this noble country of ours, we have a situation that threatens our Constitution and our American way of life, and it is based on a warping of the notion of the “the many” to mean a homogenous group of like-thinking people. This new point of view is promoted by special interest groups - in my opinion the most dangerous threat we have to this country today.
What are special interest groups? They would be the well-funded, powerful groups that want each of us to think and act like they want us to - like zombies instead of independently thinking individuals - so that their decision makers (you know, CEOs and such) can afford to live in the lifestyles they have become accustomed to. (Check out my article Global Warming Zombies from November, 2008.) These groups don’t care what damage they do to the rest of the country - or the world - to achieve their ends.
How can you identify a special interest group? Let me count the ways.
First, special interest groups are just that - their interests are unique, and narrow-based interests rather than the interests of the many. Their point of view does not represent the truth for all (and in my opinion may not represent the truth in any shape or form).
Second, special interest groups use fear tactics to achieve their goals. While they say they are working for the betterment of all - which should be enough motivation for people if that was really true - they use the whip of predictions of disastrous results if they aren't supported or don't succeed in their work.
Third, special interest groups put a lot of money into spreading their own version of the truth and dire predictions of disaster. Since most people will not act unless they are personally involved, generally the public just believes the propaganda they read and hear, and pretty soon it's "universal truth". Then the special interest groups get to do whatever they want.
Fourth, special interest groups will file lawsuits at the drop of a hat - even if they don't plan on following through. Since most people avoid lawyers and courts, people figure that if a group is willing to sue, they must be right.
Fifth, special interest groups also seek to implement legislation, usually legislation that involves other people losing their personal and property rights.
Sixth, special interest groups generally don't do any actual on-the-ground work themselves in the field they are supposedly improving.
Finally, and perhaps most tellingly, special interest groups put out that they are working for the betterment of all, but almost always their "truth" requires that other people give up something or change in a fundamental way. In the movie, Mr. Spock was telling Kirk why it was right that he, Spock, should sacrifice himself “for the good of the many”. Special interest groups don’t give up anything for their cause. The sacrifices always come from others.
Isn’t it time that we all used Vulcan logic to look more closely at what special interest groups are doing to - not for - the people of this country, and to our Constitution? Isn’t it time that we all started defending our rights as individuals, a fight that would truly protect the good of the many? I’m pretty sure if we don’t, to paraphrase Spock in Amok Time, that we, the people, may discover that the freedom we are having is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as the freedom we are wanting.
Mr. Spock, with his pointy ears and his dispassionate logic, said that "the good of the many outweighs the good of the few or the one" at the end of Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan. A noble thought indeed, but putting it into practice necessitates having a clear idea of what the “good of the many” actually is.
In the USA, the good of the many is based on the rights of the individual. That is, the “many” is a collection of individuals, the rights of each collectively protected by the Constitution.
Currently in this noble country of ours, we have a situation that threatens our Constitution and our American way of life, and it is based on a warping of the notion of the “the many” to mean a homogenous group of like-thinking people. This new point of view is promoted by special interest groups - in my opinion the most dangerous threat we have to this country today.
What are special interest groups? They would be the well-funded, powerful groups that want each of us to think and act like they want us to - like zombies instead of independently thinking individuals - so that their decision makers (you know, CEOs and such) can afford to live in the lifestyles they have become accustomed to. (Check out my article Global Warming Zombies from November, 2008.) These groups don’t care what damage they do to the rest of the country - or the world - to achieve their ends.
How can you identify a special interest group? Let me count the ways.
First, special interest groups are just that - their interests are unique, and narrow-based interests rather than the interests of the many. Their point of view does not represent the truth for all (and in my opinion may not represent the truth in any shape or form).
Second, special interest groups use fear tactics to achieve their goals. While they say they are working for the betterment of all - which should be enough motivation for people if that was really true - they use the whip of predictions of disastrous results if they aren't supported or don't succeed in their work.
Third, special interest groups put a lot of money into spreading their own version of the truth and dire predictions of disaster. Since most people will not act unless they are personally involved, generally the public just believes the propaganda they read and hear, and pretty soon it's "universal truth". Then the special interest groups get to do whatever they want.
Fourth, special interest groups will file lawsuits at the drop of a hat - even if they don't plan on following through. Since most people avoid lawyers and courts, people figure that if a group is willing to sue, they must be right.
Fifth, special interest groups also seek to implement legislation, usually legislation that involves other people losing their personal and property rights.
Sixth, special interest groups generally don't do any actual on-the-ground work themselves in the field they are supposedly improving.
Finally, and perhaps most tellingly, special interest groups put out that they are working for the betterment of all, but almost always their "truth" requires that other people give up something or change in a fundamental way. In the movie, Mr. Spock was telling Kirk why it was right that he, Spock, should sacrifice himself “for the good of the many”. Special interest groups don’t give up anything for their cause. The sacrifices always come from others.
Isn’t it time that we all used Vulcan logic to look more closely at what special interest groups are doing to - not for - the people of this country, and to our Constitution? Isn’t it time that we all started defending our rights as individuals, a fight that would truly protect the good of the many? I’m pretty sure if we don’t, to paraphrase Spock in Amok Time, that we, the people, may discover that the freedom we are having is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as the freedom we are wanting.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Whining - the New National Pastime
I have a confession to make. I’m not a Greenie. Nowadays that makes me the bad guy, because Green has become the new banner and badge of being part of the politically correct crowd.
I’ve been giving some thought lately to the fact that we have a society run by youngsters (this is because as I age, I find so many in office to be younger than I am), yet we have a population the median age of which is growing older and older.
Used to be that people respected age - being an “elder” meant having wisdom that younger people valued. Over the years that has changed; our older folks have not been considered founts of wisdom or valued parts of family and society for a long time. Rather, older folks are stuffed into retirement homes and assisted living facilities soon as they have no money left to support the younger generations that can’t (or won’t) get jobs to support themselves.
Aha, you say - the reason no one pays attention to elder wisdom is because older folks’ minds wander off the topic - but not so! Bear with me a bit longer.
The reason older folks are founts of wisdom, even though some of us are dumber than doorposts, is that we have experienced more. This is so simple concept as to be profound. No matter how smart you are, how educated you are, how technologically facile you are, if you’re young, you cannot have experienced as much as someone who has lived longer. It’s a matter of sheer numbers, quantity of time. You can never really know what can be known at 50, 60 or 70 or older until you’ve lived 50, 60 or 70 or more years. You can never apply the experience of time until you’ve experienced the time. And you cannot possibly begin to comprehend what we old folks know as we view life from the perspective of just having lived longer.
“Bail me out, save me!” is what I’m seeing everywhere nowadays. I see lots of this whining going on, and see few solutions offered that encompass the big picture. I see this as a result of inexperience (i.e., young folks’ reaction) because we’re all here on the same planet and ultimately there is no one to bail us out or save us other than ourselves. That’s something it just takes time to learn.
Let me pick on the Greens as an example. Go to any petition website these days and it’ll be Green. What is a petition? It’s a bunch of names of people who’d rather whine about a problem than roll up their sleeves and do something directly. That’s whining, in my opinion, I don’t care how noble the label.
Or look at proposed (and, more scary, passed) legislation that “fixes” things by imposing more rules and regulations in our lives, legislation which takes away personal responsibility and substitutes government responsibility. Being bailed out ends up with giving up our rights and making us dependant - like children.
Whining happens because the people who are doing it don’t have any real answers. They feel the pressure, the pain of the situation, but they don’t know how to effectively make it go away. Like children, they don’t know how to fix things properly because they just don’t have the tools, the experience and perspective to see the whole picture. In other words, they don’t go to their founts of wisdom for answers: to the old folks, their elders.
We older folks pretty much don’t qualify as real Greenies because we’re not young enough to have tunnel vision any more, we can’t see things as black and white so easily. Life has taught us painful lesson by painful lesson how unrealistic that is. We older folks - at least those of us who have moved beyond the flower power years - have been around long enough to know first hand that everything is connected to everything, and that disenfranchising anyone or disallowing anything isn’t going to solve any problems. Tunnel vision isn’t wrong, it’s just so very limited as to throw everything out of kilter when acted on.
The innocent ignorance of tunnel vision is not going to go away, so it’s up to us old folks to fix things - if only we ourselves would pay attention to our own elders. Answers for today’s problems won’t be Green, won’t even necessarily be in what we know ourselves here at this time today. The big answers for the questions facing humanity and for the planet are going to be found in the wisdom of the ages, of our own elders. I don’t think they will be Green.
I’ve been giving some thought lately to the fact that we have a society run by youngsters (this is because as I age, I find so many in office to be younger than I am), yet we have a population the median age of which is growing older and older.
Used to be that people respected age - being an “elder” meant having wisdom that younger people valued. Over the years that has changed; our older folks have not been considered founts of wisdom or valued parts of family and society for a long time. Rather, older folks are stuffed into retirement homes and assisted living facilities soon as they have no money left to support the younger generations that can’t (or won’t) get jobs to support themselves.
Aha, you say - the reason no one pays attention to elder wisdom is because older folks’ minds wander off the topic - but not so! Bear with me a bit longer.
The reason older folks are founts of wisdom, even though some of us are dumber than doorposts, is that we have experienced more. This is so simple concept as to be profound. No matter how smart you are, how educated you are, how technologically facile you are, if you’re young, you cannot have experienced as much as someone who has lived longer. It’s a matter of sheer numbers, quantity of time. You can never really know what can be known at 50, 60 or 70 or older until you’ve lived 50, 60 or 70 or more years. You can never apply the experience of time until you’ve experienced the time. And you cannot possibly begin to comprehend what we old folks know as we view life from the perspective of just having lived longer.
“Bail me out, save me!” is what I’m seeing everywhere nowadays. I see lots of this whining going on, and see few solutions offered that encompass the big picture. I see this as a result of inexperience (i.e., young folks’ reaction) because we’re all here on the same planet and ultimately there is no one to bail us out or save us other than ourselves. That’s something it just takes time to learn.
Let me pick on the Greens as an example. Go to any petition website these days and it’ll be Green. What is a petition? It’s a bunch of names of people who’d rather whine about a problem than roll up their sleeves and do something directly. That’s whining, in my opinion, I don’t care how noble the label.
Or look at proposed (and, more scary, passed) legislation that “fixes” things by imposing more rules and regulations in our lives, legislation which takes away personal responsibility and substitutes government responsibility. Being bailed out ends up with giving up our rights and making us dependant - like children.
Whining happens because the people who are doing it don’t have any real answers. They feel the pressure, the pain of the situation, but they don’t know how to effectively make it go away. Like children, they don’t know how to fix things properly because they just don’t have the tools, the experience and perspective to see the whole picture. In other words, they don’t go to their founts of wisdom for answers: to the old folks, their elders.
We older folks pretty much don’t qualify as real Greenies because we’re not young enough to have tunnel vision any more, we can’t see things as black and white so easily. Life has taught us painful lesson by painful lesson how unrealistic that is. We older folks - at least those of us who have moved beyond the flower power years - have been around long enough to know first hand that everything is connected to everything, and that disenfranchising anyone or disallowing anything isn’t going to solve any problems. Tunnel vision isn’t wrong, it’s just so very limited as to throw everything out of kilter when acted on.
The innocent ignorance of tunnel vision is not going to go away, so it’s up to us old folks to fix things - if only we ourselves would pay attention to our own elders. Answers for today’s problems won’t be Green, won’t even necessarily be in what we know ourselves here at this time today. The big answers for the questions facing humanity and for the planet are going to be found in the wisdom of the ages, of our own elders. I don’t think they will be Green.
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