A Tribute to Jon Stewart

The reason why I loved Jon Stewart so much, why I became even more enticed to watch the show after I learned about deconstruction and critical analysis, is because people like him can teach us a lot.

They can teach us we do not have so many differences between us.

My first lessons of it came from Gene Roddenberry, and a show that still makes me a kid whenever I watch it.

Jon Stewart though turned this lesson into a strong and immemorial lesson, straight from camera three. J

I, and many people, have a great thanks to give to him. He introduced us to the concept of vigilance, because as I have said before, you cannot change people, you cannot do much to change the world, you are never going to change Human Nature, and you will be lucky to truly change your community.

You can easily change a perspective though.

When you change the paradigm, you can change how people approach a problem, and how they decide to live together.

I have friends who are staunch conservatives, and die-hard communists. I have friends who pray five times a day and friends who I might have to one day report for trying to dig tunnels under a church to steal the alter (NOTE: Please do not do this guys…I have zero experience with getting someone off for that one legally and I am not sure I am that good). I have friends who love “America” and friends who hate “America”. I have friends who probably want everything to be solved with an explosion, and friends who abhor the mere thought of any violence. I have friends who think Humanity is doomed, and friends who cannot wait to join me on the UFS Enterprise.

My friends, much like me, are pretty weird. J

Those of us who remain friends though, who still talk to each other, and at least one from each of these groups remains, stay friends because we can see through Stewart’s metaphorical commentary about bovine excrement.

We see what we believe as a measure of who we are because of what we personally understand. We know that many of our decisions are more a matter of what has happened, and has not happened, in our lives. We do not look at each other with eyes of judicial condemnation and providential decree.

To me, my Sunni, Shi’a, Catholic, Protestant, Atheist, Agnostic, Jewish, and Hindu friends are all incredibly ethical and upright people. I find them exceptional on the whole. I do not see any of them as lesser or greater because of what they believe. Much like how I see no difference between my Continental, Conservative, Labour, Apathetic, Socialist, Liberal, Anarchist, Theocratic, Libertarian, and Communist friends.

They know me, I know them.

I look at them as people, not as ideologies.

Perhaps that is some form of bovine excrement, but I find it to be in the innocuous category.

It is innocuous to propose that we can learn to live together.

It is disastrous to genuinely believe, in your heart and soul, we are doomed to forever be ensconced in cruelty and discrimination.

I find it almost provincial that Stewart signed off seventy years from the moment when the perhaps most iconic of the great crimes against Humanity occurred.

I find this so interesting because if I am correct than we can use it as measure, a mark of how far we have come, or regressed.

I know a lot about history, and I recall no commentator or critic so well known as Stewart in the 1950s and 1960s. You could say Edward Murrow did a lot, and was a very influential figure, but Stewart I feel is beyond professional and non-professional, reporting and satire.

Stewart to me, and many, taught us how to begin approaching a topic, and why the ludicrous loopholes and detours many a commentator and newscaster make are so debilitating to good conversation.

And yes, you do need to be taught that.

Before we merely assumed people would “mature”, but no one really did. It was simply a “simpler” world, and by that I mean communities and restrictions were rigid and rather absolute. Yet we have emerged from a very powerful century, for good or ill, will the ability to now people a click away from seeing one another and from learning practically anything.

This is an evolution in our cultural capacity that demands a similar moral and mental evolution, and we have, to this point, failed rather fully to make any such advance.

We are the product, whether we enjoy it or not, of being the losers for the first 4.6 billion years of Earth history. Even upon our culminating step to Homo sapiens as a proper species, we were more often the hunted, not the hunter, and what few things we did hunt, it becomes more and more evident that we were not particularly good at it.

We have programming that does not run on the current model of civilisation we have available to us.

The schematics for the operating system are very much available, but we do need to choose to use it to make something greater than we have.

People who teach you to look at something from a critical perspective, be they Jon Stewart or Big Bird, matter to your development.

They matter because the “club” that is acceptability is slowly a dying illusion. Why I put America in parentheses before is because I do not believe there are rational people who hate a landmass (dirt bothers me sometimes but what can I say, I grew fond of it) and I certainly do not think that a rational creature could ever hate an entire group of people for the actions and extremes of a minor percentage of that group.

Sure sociopaths can, but not rational, fair, ethical people.

Some of my friends hate the idea of America as this club for a specific set of people, and by that the main group of lunatics mean a Caucasian confederacy of gun-wielding, intellectually resigned amoralists who are more concerned of the interest yield on their CD than fair trade agreements, and who of course draw a god concept from the Latin Deus.

I hate this idea too.

I do not want “America” to be a club, because I find our soul too grand to be so pathetic.

You cannot start with the idea “all Men are created equal” and two hundred fifty years later be arguing about whether or not anyone gave two rats about who gets marriage benefits and who does not.

The two concepts are not able to coexist.

In that sense, I notice what most of my friends, and myself included, rage against is hypocrisy.

If you only want your country to have medicine that is fine – admit it.

If you are glad your country makes trillion every year because it sells things that go boom that is fine – admit it.

If you could not care less about someone different from you in some pathetically visual or expression-based fashion that is fine – admit it.

Now you say, ‘But then I will look like a huge douche bag and people will not accept me because it is not illogical to say that if that is how I act towards one person there is little to stop me being that way with everyone.’, then I would say, you are correct.

Sadly though, you probably will still get elected. Considering that we are not as morally and ethically evolved as we may pride ourselves to be, you might even get a medal and/or raise (not at all referencing Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump…not at all…).

In the main, yes, we do understand that thoughts like this make descent into inhumanity far too easy and accessible, but I also fail to see how we are making it so that this line of thinking stops altogether.

Stewart, and people like him, show us that there are ways to begin this process, and I hope Humanity does grow into itself to see the extremes are very rare.

In the end, there really are only four questions of which you can only be one side of the argument or the other.

Can Humanity govern itself, with equal representation for everyone?

Is value for a Human essential or extraordinary to the individual person?

Is every Human life an equal value, deserving of equal provision?

Are Humans an indelible product of our evolution, or can we condition ourselves out of analytical infancy?

My friends who continue to talk to me, I notice, answer these questions very similar to how I do (Yes., Essential., Yes., We can condition ourselves.), and I think most people have enough faith in themselves that they would answer the same.

The real excrement occurs when we know the answer to these questions, but we act in ways that demonstrates the opposite line of thought.

Whether we trick ourselves, or we fall back into bad habits when we act contrary to our ability to fairly assess these issues, honestly is not an important issue.

The important issue is whether or not we can accept lessons from great teachers to be more analytical, to not give in to our programming, to stop thinking we all belong to some exclusive and important “club”, to grow a tad of humility, and most importantly, to realise we are far more akin to one another than the peripheral and simplistic environs would have us believe.

Yes, this will be very difficult.

We need to do it though.

We need to challenge ourselves to see that once we know the answers to these questions that there is no divine or destined preponderance of events to get us to where we need to be in order to truly flourish.

Survival we have down – if that is all you are looking for, congratulations.

I look for more, and people like Jon Stewart teach us that vigilance is the preliminary activity in how we can achieve more for ourselves, and each other.

One final time Mr. Stewart, I thank you with a debt I cannot repay, and may you always be well, remembering that you are always a teacher to more than you may have ever known.

Live long, and prosper. 

A Set of Thoughts on Feelings and Relationships

I am a teacher.

I love my job.

I may have done things most people would call absurd, astounding, and adventurous, but in the top three things I will think of more and more often as I note my own approaching sunset because of how essential they are to who I am, two involved being a teacher.

If I were forced to dissect what ignites my passion and soul completely, it has a lot to do with something that happened earlier last week, that really changed a post I was going to make about a very general concept – and yes, it has changed the tone of my commentary considerably.

I was going to enjoin towards a very blunt and unreceptive attitude to be taken with the ‘I deserve things’ and the ‘You need to be selfish’ and the ‘Power of happiness is in merely choosing’ cesspool that infects this planet.

Epicurus died millennia ago – if you going to be so unoriginal that you steal something relative in age to The Iliad, can I offer instead the phrases ‘Then we must do no harm.’ and ‘Do to Others as you would have them do unto you.’ because at least those act like there exists something more important than how often you can make yourself orgasm in a day.

I do very much dislike these people and this ideology. I have always assumed this is why I often come across as a conservative-minded person, as my rhetoric does sound very teleological, provincial, pedantic, and “moral-focused”. Maybe I should read more about how to make yourself sound like you do not suck, and I will read Bibi’s autobiography. ;-)

While I am not much of a moralist, I have negative amounts of acceptance to any relativity argument when it comes to value and the core of existence. I cannot fathom the logic, nor the rationale to such a ludicrous concept that reality and the engagement of all things is self-centred. Ayn Rand made comments like this, and if you genuinely believe, ever, that an inhumane act can be elucidated and even vindicated in light of the “self-referential outcome” then you are a sociopath.

You should be locked up for your own good, and the good of the universe.

You are dangerous.

And if you want to know why you are dangerous, rather than a lengthy essay I was beginning to rather enjoy scripting, if only out of my sense of duty to Humanity and enjoyment of pestering buffoons, I can sum up your flaw in one sentence.

You might be of decent sense when it comes to moments where someone’s life is in danger, but you are going to one day, by your direct action or involuntarily, make someone believe their value is cheapened because of who they are, and they may never be able to ignore that.

If you think that is not your problem, then you are a fool.

Whether we like it or not, this is the only planet we can inhabit as of current, and we need to manage each other and ourselves, fairly, in hopes, in dreams, in needs, in desires, in wants, and we need to do it here. There is no sign that anything is coming to save us from ourselves.

And if you are one of the people who like a movie getting spoiled, I will ruin this one for you: there is nothing and no one that can save us from ourselves, and there never was, and there never will be.

I am not conservative-minded. I believe everyone on this Earth should have everything they need, and I do mean everything. A home, a job, an education, a fair and conscious social community and commitment, Freedom of Association, representation before judgment, mercy in condemnation, Freedom of Expression.

I do not think anyone should ever even need to ask for these things; in asking, they have already paid too much.

I believe we should all be willing to help each and give to each other these incredibly general aspects of life. Perhaps more in-depth Provision does need to be arranged by more accounted processes. I would not begrudge that.

Yet there is no reason, and has never been any reason, why children go hungry at night, why elderly feel insecure, why I get medical treatment because of my zip code, and why someone is afraid to simply say what they feel most properly describes who they are because they know the merciless crusade that will be hounded against them for the mere utterance.

I have fought many a battles because I believe this so fully.

I, at no point, believe Humanity has “earned” these things. Forgive me if I seem to echo the Isidore and Aquinas I was once force-fed, but what could ever be done to “earn” such grandeur of existence?

What did we ever do as a species to be granted the very fact that we are an exceptional miracle in and of itself?

We evolved from colonial prokaryotes in primordial oose, to become an entity that can do more than consume and fellate. That is a true miracle, but I cannot genuinely bring myself to feel the transition was either inevitable or earned.

Whether it was or not, and one of my previous comments, that being your involuntary hurt of Others, would both be very difficult concepts to ever fully grasp and metre-out. I only ask that we begin a stage in our cultural evolution of reflection and analysis, with focus on how we are connected and moved by one another.

Look at something that has moved you. A phrase, a picture, go watch the movie, think of the gravestone, listen to the song.

You feel something deeper than mere survival in this memory. You feel connection.

We are by our birth connected to each other, and not merely genetically. We yearn to exist with one another, in good conscious and with fair assess. We often want this more for ourselves than others, but we want it nonetheless. We did not earn a love of this – it is simply who we are.

Value is simply in the fact that we exist – there is no evaluation board or accrediting agency that gives you a seal of approval that finally you are of any worth.

Especially for Caucasian people, when would we get that seal? After we saved thirty people in our life? The clothes we buy, the food we eat, the guns we sell, the cars we drive, and the communities we build to wall us off have cost the lives of hundreds in almost every corner of this world. And I am probably only talking about this month in saying the phrase ‘hundreds’.

How many lives do the owners of Nike^® “owe” back before they are worthy again of being thought of as Human?

Believe me when I say, they are in debt. They owe a great deal. They might never repay what they owe. Yet they do not owe anyone anything for their individual value to remain intact, whole, essential, and affirmed, as it has been all their lives.

They matter. You matter. Nothing made that True, and nothing can make it “truer”.

Once, someone may have made you question that. I would give anything if I could take that back. The only price I could ever be bought for would be if I could erase that moment from every memory, of everyone, forever.

It is important. It does matter.

You matter.

You do not get to act like you are special because of this though.

This issue is now closed, but do not think it prevails you exceptional right to be special.

I wanted to shove this concept of value and the true material that exists in us, accentuating and affirming the drive we have to believing that we are of value, down the throat of every self-serving prick who would view with clean conscience as despondence and drudgery occurs every day, regardless of intent or merit.

Then I had a chance to put my money where my mouth is.

I really I hope I did as well as my ideals make it seem I would too.

Little kids really can be the best some days. They can remind us of moments before we allowed our eccentricities and preconceptions to guide us more than the simple desire to enjoy ourselves and to try whatever we can imagine possible.

I do not want to get into a debate over when and why that process occurs, but often I wonder how much help the transition really is. Discuss that on your own time.

I am not used to teaching young children. I usually teach collegiate or collegiate-guided students. Being a graduate-level chemist, it should not baffle anyone why my more common age range is closer to eighteen than eight.

I would be lying though to say this experience has been anything less than one of the best choices I ever made, and if I had to specify how I say that the third best part of who I am is that I got to teach special education children, these kids might be the group I have come to admire the most.

My second, third, and fourth graders are a true joy to my life. More than anything, they are funny and laugh at everything – reminds me of my own sensibility towards maturity.

This is the age when questions and the answers to those questions start to matter and remain with them for the rest of their lives. I do not need philosophical treatises for that – psychologists have done extensive work to show it is true.

One of the many things we might remember first about that time is our first crush.

I remember mine a little too well – she was my best friend. She’s even my first memory. I love her – I always will. Maybe one day I will have enough of self-spite to give up all the hate I have to finally see her grave. I am not sure I will stop hating myself for long enough though and I probably would not even known where to start…point being, this did not end well.

I am not trying to say everyone’s first real attempt to understand emotional attachment has to be spectacular. I have a feeling most, when people look back on it, would say they remember their childhood fondly, or at least on good terms, even a first crush. I think I am the exception, and I am very willing to admit that is probably my issue more than any fault of anything considering my current age, emotional and mental development level, and my general psychological maturity, or lack thereof.

Yet sometimes we can help people see what it is all worth, even those of us with less than stellar records, and while it is unlikely that we get this chance with peers, mainly out of our own stubbornness, children can be really helped.

Short end to a long introduction, a fourth grader is in love with me.

Oh goodie…

Being a young male (and believe me, I am the only thing with a Y-chromosome in this place) I was told bluntly how to deal with this as apparently it was a definite to happen: Do not deal with this.

From the simplest perspective, this is definitely a good method.

Face it, most kids have a crush on their teachers because the teacher is someone different. I am sure if I ate potatoes and corn for seven years, even lima beans would appear candy-like.

Then you eat those lima beans twice…never mind, the potatoes were by no means killing me. Starch me up!

Of course you do not really acknowledge a grade school crush, because no matter how mature it is, it is a grade school crush. Perhaps the real big piece of advice, if I write it all the way out, comes with this clause: So long as the student does not directly try to act upon and insert themselves into your life, crushes will go away, so better to just not deal with it.

This is correct. How many times in our own lives did we have a small crush on someone and we never verbalised anything past fantasy thoughts, and the feelings and fantasy eventually just went away?  Even kids stray from that kind of confrontation.

My problem occurred when it got verbalised, and I had to acknowledge that the “radius of audible interaction” included about two dozen people, including another teacher or two.

I was only partially awkward about it by the way – go me!

I was not mad of course – dumbfounded most accurately describes how I felt. Yet I did know, not at all to my liking, that I was going to have to do the extra work in assuring that I could still work with the student, and that boundaries could be properly set. 

Like I said, it is so much better when not verbalised.

Of course I did everything I was supposed to and in my personal opinion I supplied to right answer to the question ‘Do you want to be the one to talk to the student?’ of which I can assure, I would never say anything other than an affirmative.

In case you wonder if I was awkward before, I am sure I did a bang up job here too.

The conversation always begins with asking the student to reiterate what was said or done in their own words. I admit, I feel sorry for the person who ends up with this student one day in life. They are not only tough, but rightly brilliant and manipulative.

 I can see why they were attracted to me. ;-)

After that comes the “adult time” where you do our best to put the meaning of certain phrases, actions, or relations in context for appropriate social interactions. Considering I was in the room, I am sure NOTHING of expertise was present, just to set the record straight.

I often wonder how much of this ever penetrates the mind of any child.

I never cared much for adults talking when I was a kid. By eight I was already well aware that most adults were my intellectual and ethical inferiors, and I admittedly took no end in joy of tormenting them with every possibility. I would like to believe most kids look more fondly on the words of adults, but I am not sure even they believe words we known are moot in comparison to the issue at hand.

I do hope something got across, because I do not want to be the one who is going to be the deciding factor for good development in this child’s life. Lord knows, that does not bode well for the student.

I added my piece.

I talked about what care and affection meant to me.

I talked about how I cared for the student, but in the same way I cared for every student, and every person.

I talked about how I had flown across two continents to help my friend just because they asked for help. I talked about how I worried about everything and anything when I thought my daughter was in trouble. I talked about the sacrifices I had made for people I barely knew, and to the extent I had gone even for them.

I talked about knowing you will never get anything back from relationships and from friendships, but caring more about the person, inherent and worthy, than anything else. Even yourself.

I said how anyone who truly cared for me would see that my care for everyone on this planet, even those who probably could not mind me less, was my most important care.

I talked about how if you truly wish to care for someone, you need to believe in their greatest care too, because you need to be able to understand one another.

I talked about how understanding me, as I am, means you understand I may never treat anyone any different, or be impartially in relation to any person.

I hope I broke her heart as easy as you can.

Perhaps I am pedantic and a little too idealistic for my own good, but I did not teach anyone some stupid nonsense about ‘You will know when it is right.’ or ‘You just need to wait to understand.’ or, the worst possible, ‘You just do not get it yet.’

I am sure if you asked the student, they would tell you they get it.

I do not mean to give full credence to a childish crush – I mean to say it is a stage of development. It should not be criminalised. Childhood cannot be overlooked. It is the preparation for adulthood.

We need to treat it as such.

I should sit down and talk about how I feel, and what it means to me – that is what adults should do.

I respect every person enough to say the full extent of my feelings.

I do not like most people. I find the normal human concerns so pathetic, drone, and inconsiderate that the overall conceit makes me sick to my stomach.

As I said, I do not believe we have “earned” a thing, and the way people value themselves and each other worries me to no end.

I may leave this life, much sooner than I want, believe me, but I am not okay with this being how I leave. I have lived a life where I have never believed I was wanted – I refuse to accept this fate for most people.

Someone who loved me would need to accept that as my greatest care, and be willing to live with me on that term.

Whatever that meant to me or asked of me was unimportant. I knew a long time ago I could be more than my moments of loneliness.

I can be someone who decides to make moments for others, even if I will always be shaky making them for myself.

If you call this Other-focused, fine to your perspective, but I have always known my relationship to my 7 billion wide family, and I have never believed more than the notion that if something can inspire love within you, whatever it is, it deserves to be protected and remembered.

I want this to of course be more than action – I want this to be a paradigm. Priorities are what change people, and if we look at relationships as ways we truly live with each other, and help express the value in each other, rather than “own” each other or get what we want, I truly think a better world can come from those thoughts.

I hope I convinced the student of one thing I said more than any:

You do matter to me. I would do anything I could to always be there. I would do that for anyone. I cannot be just for one person. I help everyone. I want you to be happy, and I promise that only if everyone is happy, can you even hope to be happy. I will always think of and be there when you need me. I would do that for anyone. You can do that too.

So, did I do well? No idea.

I hope this is more to the student than just another learning moment. I hope the student believes me, and wants all relationships to mirror this goal. I hope everyone does the same.

I know at the end I was given a hug and thanks for being “…the best person I know.”

Yeah…I cried. Hard.

Yet again, I fear my students did more for me than I them.

With any luck I hope I started someone down a road of caring more for the involuntary, the unconsidered possibilities you generate when people can believe you care. I hope I made an impression of some worthwhile meaning to human life and what love really can be.

At very minimum, I feel like I set a good standard about how to demonstrate a proper way for the first person one person loved can love them back, and they will hopefully always believe that in a way that is more affirming and fulfilling than mere comfort.

Even if in all 25 years, that is all I did right, at least I did one thing right. 

Disagreement: Demand and Design

The world we have been learning to understand has left us with some unsettling numbers to qualify.

120: The maximum length of heliocentric years that cardiac muscles can manage to maintain previous to nigh complete dysfunction.

5: The percent of the universe that contains every major atomic particle that has a similar structure to us. Also, coincidentally, the number of atoms that form the major organic structure through a moderate variation of interactions to create the system by which the chemical reaction we are can be made to work.

0.00000000001: The percent of the universe covered by light in one year of travel.

We are finite, insignificant, myopic.

I do not feel these are qualities that are necessarily the fault or culpable acts of any specific aspect of what or who we are. I believe in our wonder and amazement we find ourselves, if only in momentary meandering, yearning for a more complete view of all that is about us. Our near-sighted default has proliferated from a universe design where humanity composed the central aspect of everything, with the core of all action processing about us, aligned to our desires.

We cannot alter that we are a minimal part of the universe. The composition of the universe is the culmination of billions of years of the alternative mechanism whereby energy and matter reorganise in a grand and elegant fashion. We barely comprehend that it works, much less how it works. We are in the grand scheme insignificant not by choice but by coincidence. It just so happens most of the universe does not work the way we do.

I suppose I find it strange that the two aspects for which we should feel so little shame for, our destined deterioration and our inalterable insignificance, we feel are so very pitiful.

We are the result of the lesser side-product from an enantiomeric excess that caused an unfavourable back-reaction, which made us as the least amount of many various side-products of this unwanted secondary reaction. Shortly, we are the universe’s lesser product, a mistaken transformation in this great chemical reaction mechanism that is our existence. Accidental is our adequation.

We should not be discouraged by this.

Our place is laudable, not laughable. Our delusional preconception and precondition of our own worth being essential before we even discuss the rest of the universe is the pathetic piece to this panorama, not that we have to share the universe.

We share part of a miraculous elegance that we can partially manipulate and hopefully unravel. Obscurity is what our birth transplants to us, but it need not transpire forever.

It will though, so long as we allow it to remain that conception of considerations and ideals must lead to a world of deleterious disagreement as one of the most common aspects of our species.

A species where common is crime will neither survive nor prosper.

We must not walk in fear of one another if we are to grow past our obscurity. We remain obscure more due to the reality that we obsess over our position and its essential quality to everything, for this is the worst mistake we can make.

We must be ready to disagree as motion towards greater understanding and consider the possibility of many forms of perception. We have each other – this must begin to at minimum satisfy us. Clearly as of now, it does not.

We are living in a time when intellectual and conceptual purity is a legitimate directive of major social groups, and this cannot be promoted. A man once said that ideological “peace” with other conceptions corrupts – he is the man we know for building some “great” wall, often with the bodies of his workers.

We need to assess this mindset as appalling, not appealing.

We cannot confuse dissent with disloyalty, much less disagreement.

Our loyalty must now, and for any hope of true survival, be to each other. We must begin to believe in one another and turn from darker thoughts. There is nothing out there to save us from ourselves. The fervent hatreds that we so frivolously spur forth must extinguish as quickly as they ignite. We can no longer desire mastery of anything more than our own faculties. We can no longer look up for our salvation or down towards despair; we must look to the left and right towards those who can work with us to promote the most profitable patterns of our personalities.

More than any prescription, we must end the accredited and acceptable view of all things that value is based on a compensation system. Perhaps it is necessary that some aspects of life must fluctuate from a conceit of one person’s “work” as “better” than another. Yet this must become marginalised and specific to that causality alone. This ideal cannot stand in our view of self worth.

A poison, a noisome nuisance has beguiled us in our willingness to value ourselves and Others. We view disagreement and fairly made distrust as despicable. Are the oppressed and disheartened supposed to wait forever before someone allows them to speak their mind? How can we look at the world as it is and say that our method of going forward with eyes near-sighted and linearly-directed, and be proud? There is very little to be proud of here. We have lost so many good hearts to exhaustion because the very notion that they could disagree with “established order” was a crime in itself.

We cannot allow this to occur. We cannot be afraid of arguments. Most of all, we cannot be afraid of one another.

We must not walk in fear of one another, and so long as we remember that we are not descended ideologically from the fearful, perhaps we can take heart to live up to promise of our pedigree.

What pedigree is that? It is whatever you become the moment you read the words “all Men are created Equal” and this ideal alone becomes the core of your every heartbeat. That is our birth right, as the birth right of all Mankind. It is not the property or the rightful inheritance of any one person or group of people.

The reality that what is most important is a world where equality and fair participation with each other must be our only true goal has been unleashed from Pandora’s urn-like gift. It is now up to us to make that ideal human.

We must rise to this greater ideal. We must begin with acknowledging that we will disagree. We must accept that we all have different concerns, considerations, and conditions. I truly believe everyone on Earth having a house to live in would amply affect society. Some disagree with me. I am willing to hear their ideas, so long as they have ideas.

We cannot ignore or deny simply based on our distaste. So much of disagreement and inaction in our world today is simply because we do not want to do what is staring us in the eye. We must grow beyond this. This, before any decision, must be our focus. We must not rely on the belief of our destined ascension, or the “inevitability” of human nature changing. In twelve thousand years we have changed very little.

We need to evolve socially, in a way we may have never imagined possible.

This must occur if we are to survive our trials and our terrors. There is more about us to challenge us than we have dealt with, but it can be overcome. We need each other though. We need our human family to be with our goal of improvement.

In this I hope to make my overall goal clear before a series of rather blunt posts that may generate criticism.

I do not want any one person to rule the world, me most especially. I do not want every social institution destroyed and thousands sacrificed for “order”. I want what we have to come into question. More importantly, I want us to actually answer these questions, no matter how painful the answers are. We must flesh this out, and when we have finally found a place we all can agree upon, I want us to drive forward, for each other towards a belief in equality, in fairness, in decency, in dedication.

I want the words ‘Humanity matters: all of us.’ to have meaning in words, actions, minds, and hearts. And if we think one another monsters for simple aspects of trying to flesh out an argument and finding an aspect to disagree upon as the disqualifying offence for someone’s worth, then we are doomed to far worse fates than oblivion. 

Communal Conscience

I have a very good friend. I do not get to see my friend often but the times when we get to converse, even over email, I enjoy rather notably. My friend is intuitive, insightful, inviting, intriguing and inquisitive. My friend is one of the best writers I have ever met, and exudes true passion for telling stories that I find to be rather enjoyable and while at times trite, meaningful in their relation to how people would most likely actually react. I have commented many a time on repetition in the human chronicle, but I find little to disregard in his repetition, in part my bias, in part my adequate assessment that the work is well written and insightful in parts. I have read both of my friend’s books, many of various magazine and newspaper articles and some excerpts of what may or may not get published one day. I find the books to be very intriguing additions to the literary world and provide a perspective that is relatively lacking in any culture, in spite of the flare we might give to the publication of an “immigrant’s perspective”. 

I would say, if someone was so artless to ask, that my friend was a “good American” by what I feel most people mean when they say that phrase. He likes the United States more than any other country I have heard him speak of. He believes that our system of management is a good perspective of governance. While critical, he feels that our labour perspective is made for entrepreneurial people and claims to enjoy the benefits of it as much as anyone else. He pays his taxes, he votes, he signs petitions and writes editorials when he feels the need, he contributes as best he can to his local community trying to befriend everyone equally. 

I think my friend is a good person. I think he cares about something passionately and goes about utilizing his capacities and concerns in a way that is not deleterious to others. I am not sure why the concept of being a decent human being cannot be equated with being a “good American”, although according to most people, I would argue, it is. 

I am not sure what the true distinction is. We are, whether we like it or not, humans first and foremost. After that I would argue is the distinction of how many X-chromosomes we have. After that is the question of whether we are either democratically minded or not. The first two are simple aspects of being alive as we are, and the third is a prospect of a person’s considerations of whether people can develop a good sense of community or not.

Unlike most democratically-minded people I acknowledge my doubt that people can be such well versed creatures in community. I have seen some of the most intelligent and fair-minded people turn themselves into voracious volunteers of the vocation to vilify Others for the vain purpose of having the veracity of their own viewpoint affirmed. I cannot with good conscience call that a community, where convenience and conceit outweigh the presence of another person. I suppose it is an improvement over nomadic cave society, but I do not compare apples to oranges – I am a real scientist. 

My point is that I should be the one, if any, labelled as a “bad American” because while I would calm myself democratically-minded I am in many ways hostile to the conception of the way the societal enterprise has construed these things in America. I am uninspired by the politics, the philosophy, the paranoia, the delusional sense of importance, and the predominant measure of value that is apparently etched in stone it be so magnanimous. 

I am by nature a critical and deconstructionist person. I find social structures to be debilitating and deleterious by nature. I often make a snide remark of them in order to get an edge in a conversation when I know it will rile someone and I take little penchant in “feeling” as though I “belong”. This is not to say I have ever designed to destroy or debilitate a community, but I am by no means a happy participant every day, and my consistent critiques would most likely draw more groans than gasps or greetings at this point. 

I, if I could, would change the very face and nature of all human society. 

My friend would most likely keep American society for about 85% of what it currently is, and genuinely believes it to be the superior and stimulating culture of the world. 

Yet there is a problem for this concept of who should be asked to stand in photo-opt moments with political candidates, who people want writing their mission statement, and who should be seen as a better member of the society in general.

I was born in Clifton Park, New York. My friend was born in Tehran, Iran. I was raised Roman Catholic. My friend remains a devout Shiite Muslim. 

I brought up what we are to make a contrast. I and my friend are both human. I and my friend have one X-chromosome. From what I can see, whether or not either of us is better for any social group then depends upon how closely minded we are to the core ideals of that group. 

My friend is more closely related to the core values of American society than I am. He should be the one people see as a good American. The reason people do not I assume has to do with three things: his accent, his religion, and his slightly tanner skin appearance.

I am not sure which has the strongest influence on people’s mindsets, but it is honestly sickening no matter how I parcel that out. 

I very much believe in the Right of Association. If anyone wants to be a member of a group, they need only agree in full with the core values of that group and they should have every right to associate with that group. Would I condone that for those groups who encourage and promote violence? I would say no, but then I would exclude nearly every major world power. 

Clearly my answer is no. I acknowledge I speak of Rights and of a humanity that does not define itself by such simple boundaries and associations, including violence. Idealistic or delusional, either way, the core value of my mindset is that someone should not be kept from participation because they have other personal convictions, simply because it appears as though those beliefs would conflict with how a group “views” itself. 

I bring this up now for really only one reason: people with both letters after their names have been elected who have publicly stated that my friend is a bad American, some even saying he is not American.

Aside from a little thing called a Passport which would prove the latter of the two conceptions wrong, I find it appalling that these people are even running, much less winning. 

My friend should not have to write an editorial response to a congressional member declaring a ‘War on Islam’. My friend should not have to feel as though his prayer calendar determines his worth to his society. My friend should not have face a critic who has already given him a failing grade based on inconsequential evidence.

Christianity has a rather high number of anti-government implications as well, arguably more extreme than Islam. Judaism dedicates a portion of their theological writings as more or less a warning against having a “Jewish king and state”. Buddhism is another shining example of how “important” any state is compared to its tenants. Yet it is Islam that is the only problem? 

My bother with all this is an answer to the question ‘So what did you think about the Midterm Elections?’ My answer is simple: nine out of ten of the buffoons we all supposedly dislike so much that their approval rating has been equivalent to my shoe size were re-elected to continue representing us. I cannot say it is good or bad or even that it is surprising, just frustrating.

My real issue though came from comments from someone face-to-face and also a paraphrase of what I heard from many “news” reporters about why the Midterm Elections were so important. Their thoughts being ‘Is it not great that we can elect people to fix our problems from other parties and unlike other countries we settle it there?’

What country are you referring to exactly when you make this statement?

Last I checked most of the world is not in civil strife because of political reasons. The places that are, I would like to remind that America had a very nice helping hand in creating that volatile situation, as did almost every European country, because we all feel as though we have a right to play chess with the planet. 

Just to actually hit the comment, how exactly will this “new” Congress “fix our problems”? This is the Congress that is going to make it so women and men get paid equal? This is the Congress that will stop wasting time with legislation trying to impinge on basic rights of people, some from forty years ago, some from four years ago, when they know such legislation will never be accepted? This is the Congress that is going to say marriage is marriage, no matter who it is with? This is the Congress that is going to make it so people are paid fairly for a day of work? This is the Congress that will penalize companies for lying about their stock revenues and utilizing slave labour internationally and breaking unions? This is the Congress that will stop militarizing this society and make it into one where people can actually believe their safety is the prime concern? 

Here, I will hush distempered breaths – no, this is not that Congress. Stop thinking it is. 

This is not to say I was elated or that I thought the world was perfect two years ago. I thought little of the elections four years ago. I made some votes I am not pleased with now from six years ago. I can even remember a vote or two eight years ago that frankly, I am rather disappointed I made. I am not angry at politics, I am angry at what the political process has become. 

I am disappointed and sickened that these people who hold up as our representatives say things like “[Homosexuality] is just a sickness, we know that.” or “If that (war) is what [all Muslims] want, that is what they will get.” or “I think [equal pay] is something that is overblown.” they get elected. 

‘So what, you want our representatives to actually say things that do not sound disgusting and actually think about what they say?’

YES I DO! WHY IS THAT SUCH A HIGH BAR TO PASS?

 I cannot ask every politician to have a science degree (I would not want my profession belittled so anyway) but if you are going to represent me and make decisions about the future of scientific education and research in this country then open up a book, call an actual scientist, and learn what is actually happening.

I cannot ask every politician to understand what it is like to have two children and then the father leaves you, and because your secretarial job makes $2,000 more dollars than some archaic definition of “need” allots you do not “deserve” help. I can ask them that if they represent me to actually try and understand that the vast majority of those people are not trying to scam or scheme anyone, and that like most humans they are just trying to get by. In other words, I can ask them to treat people as people first, stereotypes second.

I cannot ask every politician to see how a belief and structure of community makes someone feel alive. I cannot ask them to know how it feels to be loved and accepted and take comfort in a group that they fear for some reason. I cannot ask them to know the pain of leaving their home, coming to a place half-way around the world, starting over from nothing and doing so because you genuinely believe in the community you are trying to join, only to have members who represent that community reject you. I cannot ask them to know. 

Yet it sickens me that I need to ask them to care. 

My distaste has nothing to do with my political party or my ideals. My distaste is because Republican and Democrat have been elected ignoring these simple essential aspects of good governance and decent human qualities. 

It is not the colour of the party we elect that speaks of who we are.

It is the content of what the members of our Congress and our electorates in general feel they have the right to forget, neglect and ignore simply because it is easy that speaks of who we are.

When that ignorance includes the exclusion and vehement disapproval of good people, of what I would call good Americans, simply because of personal distaste, I am unsure how I am supposed to ever be happy, proud or feel accomplished, red, blue, white, black, green, purple, indigo, aquamarine, or any other party colour that wins an election.

Things I Do Not Understand, Part IX

Things I Do Not Understand, Part IX – Well that certainly was not very religious of you...but it might be philosophical. But is that religious? Are we talking about theology, or theogony? I think I got confused...

I will simply say that doing these can at times be far grander than a measure of worry for the future of intellectual interests. Oh no, it is a straight up nightmare. 

This time, I just want to go over a ridiculous sense of attack I have to question out of a duty to intellectual interaction. No I do not speak of the “war” on a certain festivity, and by festivity I mean the largest, most powerful and recognizable cultural event in human history. I speak of those who are shelling and sniping the good people of that ever so popular philosophy known as Christianity. And yes I said philosophy because:

“Christianity is not a religion. It is a philosophy.”

First and foremost, this is neither my quote nor my opinion. Christianity is religion: I am rather certain squirrels of the Rainwater Glades National Park are aware of this. 

I am aware that usually I would not extend the observational essay into a long and drawn assessment as to what these two phrases, those being ‘religion’ and ‘philosophy’ mean in both denotation and connotation. I will not lie in saying that part of why I chose this topic was because the very expanse of the argument means everyone has an opinion, so instead of providing some detailed deconstruction I can instead defer to each individual direction, having derived from most people I have met a deep conviction that most people would agree with me, not the source I quote. 

The reality of this is then not any deconstructionist argument, because frankly I would win that argument too. I do not think we need to delve too deeply into the core argument per what the deconstructed essence of philosophy and religion is. I will in this case defer to Jon Stewart’s possibly perfect reason what the difference is between philosophy and religion. In reference to a comparison Stewart makes between Socrates of Athens (philosophy) and Jesus of Nazareth (religion) noting that although there are many similarities between the two of them:

“[After their executions]...one of them got better.”

I ponder most people can note this. I think a realistic retinue might also include the fact that if you ask ten people on the street who Jesus of Nazareth “was” all ten of them would get it right, whilst that same crowd I think I am being generous saying five would know Socrates, but that is a marketing strategy not a component of religion and philosophy. 

The reality is that while I could deconstruct everything Stewart said and the very real components to the spread and formation of religion as the whole and philosophy in the main, I would like to believe most people do know the difference.

Then again, considering the type of personalities saying they are not different is worrisome, since (and in many cases I have the urge to use the qualifier ‘unfortunately’) public ear is trained on some of these people. 

What I am most concerned with is not this issue in general though, it is my concerns over when we as a People forgot (since apparently we did) that what you believe and what you associate with says ABSOLUTELY N O T H I N G about you as a person. 

I find this a most irritating problem with music and movie fans. I suppose I find this because movies and music are far more mainstream than theatre and literature fans, where my two major concerns lie, but I truly cannot comprehend the phrase ‘Oh that song/movie/character/whatever some moron can associate themselves with is so me.’ 

This is my major problem, because this is a legitimate issue. Let me set the record straight:

NOTHING IN THIS UNIVERSE WAS EVER MADE FOR YOU, YOU STUPID, INCOMPETENT, CHILDISH, SELFISH, SELF-OBSESSED, INURRED, HOPEESSS, USELESS, IRRITATING AND INCOMPREHENSIBLE WASTE OF OXYGEN, NITROGEN AND CARBON DIOXIDE EXCHANGE.

Are we honestly this stupid? This is a serious question. We cannot really believe that in the infinite possibilities of all that Existence, the presential reality about us was stationed and cordoned off for us. 

Are we truly this insecure?

Do we really need for someone to be so willing to do things ‘for us’, to be made ‘for us’, to consider everything ‘for us’ that without this delusion we would in every sense of the phrase collapse into sheer nothingness of self and begin eating our own faeces?

Just because we are the ones who currently make up a group, populated a collection of individuals, tend the activity of something to our ideals, does not, now or ever, mean it was made ‘for us’.

Mainly, two incredible assumptions are made regarding this line of reasoning. 

The first, and sadly why I had to bring this topic into the issue in the first place, comes from the flawed concept of a universal ‘working’ designed for our presential betterment. I will not make judgment in any form on the topic, but if we as a People are truly so pathetically childish that we “need” the universe to work in our favour and for our benefit than, and I do in all honesty mean what I say, either stay in your parents’ basement your whole life or go excise your right to jump off a cliff without a parachute right now, as those are the only two ways you will ever be able to manage the world with something that could be mistaken for maturity. 

All I comment on is the fact that this line of thinking is incredibly immature and self-serving; this does not necessarily make it wrong, but from my travels, I have tended to notice that thoughts with traction along these lanes drift towards the more inhibited and unnecessary lines of living.

The second assumption is that whoever is involved in the mechanism of process in any of these things, entertainment, organizations, philosophy, religion, culture, society, Laws, is creating any of it with you or even the notion of ‘Humanity’ in mind. No offense to the brilliance of all the people I just implicated, but I find the second piece of my sarcasm inducing thought process to be even more unrealistic than the first. At least the first is an applicable way for us to delude ourselves, as no one could ever technically prove you correct or faulty. Delusion works best when your glasses have mud covering them, and in the question of ‘From whence does it come?’ there will only ever be a murky picture, at best. 

This second assumption is so ludicrous it actually makes me enjoin to try and get choking stupid people made into Public Policy. Just to make the easiest case I will pick on music and you can extend my argument, so I seriously ask, how do you seriously believe a song is “so you”? 

Again, do you think the song writer was thinking about you? Do you think that because an emotion is evoked per your response system that it was designed to do that? Do you seriously think that circumstances led to ‘that exact song’ coming on the radio when it did because “it got me through the day”? Seriously, are you that self-obsessed and deluded?

Now what this has to with the festivities and the “philosophy” comment is this notion that people believe things are for them. People believe Christmas is “for them”, and so they should be able to do whatever they want with it. People believe an organization is “for them” and they should be able to do whatever they want with it. 

I think in many ways this is why most people hate their jobs in life, as there the line between what you want and what is going to get done has a very clear mechanism for being transgressed or I suppose the word interchanged might work well too, and the line is itself very black and white, as there are real world implications behind why something can or cannot happen.

Donald Trump is not going to make his Casino Managers take up a policy that does not reek of misogyny, because, and I do with every ounce of me vomit in my mouth at this reality, it is bad for business, and in the corporate universe, the bottom line is THE line. 

People like the free play of the faculties they have with those things they chose because there are no limits. The only true limit is how many people you can get to agree with you or more realistically how many people you can get to put up with you being overbearingly annoying. And yes, this IS the reality. 

I can safely say most of my Muslim and Hindu friends do not care one way or the other whether or not someone mistakenly says ‘Merry Christmas’ to them. Quoting one of the ones I respect the most:

They thought of including me in a time they find special; I find that flattering and I thank them for warm wishes.

Now this is a woman of truly incomprehensible stature and I admire her for the fact that I can expect this type of response from her, you know a response that proves she is Human. 

At the same time, I am certain she does not approve, or would not as I do not know if this has ever happened to her, to be forced to go to a Christmas Party, or participate in the Office Christmas Special. Some people may not mind and go for the inebriation and leave it at that (...not that I would fit in this group or anything...) but some people do not want to go to these things.

I have often compared it to going to family functions because there are parts of your family functions that you do not want to do. On that, let me make my point clear: You should be present at what you attend, or simply do not attend. If you do not want to be somewhere, then do not go. And for anyone who said ‘Oh, easy for you to say.’ actually no, it is not easy, because stupid people who put far too much into this type of ridiculous nothingness, and there are a lot more of them then there are of me, complain, and complain, and complain...that when you are not invested the way they are invested you ‘Do not care.’ 

Wow, that was cute – I suppose you know exactly what I am thinking right now? Oh you do not have a clue, you cannot truly understand my perception of it because my identifying marks could never adequately be explained to you? Wow, I am shocked to learn...

My point overall can be surmised in this: If you want to celebrate something, enjoy something, engage something, live with something, so long as it is consensual and you are not hurting anyone in the process (this therefore ends 91.8% of all such current interactions of the human race with Others and with what we like) I am always going to be fine with it because that is your business, and frankly I could not care or concern less with what you do on your own time. 

However, even if 99.9% of all the Universe agreed with you, there is 0.1% that does not, and I do not advocate that you need to change your whole existence for them, but you are not allowed to force them into a position where they have to administer to you and pay attention to your wants and do things the way you want. 

You want to be left to your own devices, fine. 

Leave everyone else to theirs.

 

What you chose to believe in does not model what you are. How you feel that belief “allows” you to prance and pound upon someone else’s feelings and beliefs different from your own are the model of what you are. 

And fair warning, just because one “person” you think you follow once said ‘I came not to bring peace but the sword’ (and this works for quite a few ironically enough) is not precisely what I would call ‘model citizenship'. 

Learning to live under the Social Contract in part means we all have to learn to mature and accept that what we have and what we want is secondary to the upkeep of how the processing mechanism of our communities work, should they adequately be preserving and enhancing our humanity. 

If you want to ‘Do it my way’ so bad, great - here is a lighter and a tent. I will be here placing bets on how long you last.