saving the world for the kids

somewhat of a manifesto.

I am typically a responsible consumer, buy local and recycle and such. But, recently I realized that I don’t do nearly enough. I always believe I have at least as much integrity as the average guy, but I have always known that I can never do enough. This feeling was inspired by any one of the several recent violent acts and, if I am not lucky, will probably inspire someone to want to kill me for being too much of a hippie or whatever misconceptions people have.

Not the tragic act itself, but the discussions following the Connecticut school shooting made me, more than usual, see that people are lost. And I am not even talking about whoever the fool that did the act. No one knows what is going on, much less how to do anything about it. People wanna talk about various things that are the problem, such as guns being the problem. People wanna talk about tv, video games, rap music, hell even Mike Huckabee blamed it on god, or the lack of god, in our daily lives. In short, people blame problems and focus that blame onto things they don’t understand, yet feel they can still somehow change. Forget any of the arguments so far and recall that the way bucks get passed is by people blaming, which invariably gets nothing accomplished. Society stalls. Maybe even keeps a more tense atmosphere, more likely to keep people frustrated and driving them to do extreme things. Expecting a democracy to solve social ills is democrazy. Society can't even get to second base with all the change that continually happens in government. Once we get someone elected, someone else starts to push them out and then a few short years later all the change that was accomplished is then reversed. Since at least the 70s, we've just been having back and forth discussions about the same crap and society is no better off. Meanwhile, since Vietnam, ugly warfare has become the norm. No one talks much about how that influences people. People want to say that Japan doesn't have guns, so there is no violence. I say those people haven't lived in Japan. That country has historically been extremely violent, with guns hardly ever being a factor in the violence. Now that Japan hasn't been at foreign war in 80 years, people are suddenly more peaceful. You can withdraw $3000 from an ATM on payday and walk straight to the bar in the roughest part of Osaka and not feel in any danger then or when waling home drunk at 2AM. I haven’t read anyone yet talking any realistic measures to try to stop these violent modern American insane things from happening.

We live in society in which people get pissed when others lie to them, but then we all turn around and do something misleading to someone else. That’s called staying ahead. But what puts you ahead of the human race, brings the human race down in general. The highest paid trash-talking player brings his team down and helps them lose. We humans need to be more honest, and humble, especially with ourselves. We have to understand that we are the problem. Modern society = modern problems. Simply put.

Think about the difference between when a person lives a simple vs. complex life. Most people know that things left simple and less dramatic make for a more peaceful existence, but more people still tend to make their lives unnecessarily complex.

We have a society where everyone is always trying to tell someone what to do, but really bad at taking advice. A democracy is not necessarily just an allowance for everyone to be their own authoritarian. And certainly government structures that have been in place for as long as the human race are ingrained into us from birth. But modern society has become so numb to mistreatment that it has damaged our psyche, creating our “modern problems.” I feel safe in assuming people are of a mutual understanding that the rate of incomprehensible acts on an extreme level has been accelerating rather rapidly. I will work to a couple examples of modern problems, but start with the main thing. Some junk dealer sold mother nature a lot of meth. She’s totally tweaked out.

Why hasn’t anyone stopped to think about the environment that has created horrible minds and actions; the social environment and the natural, and how these two are interchangeably connected?

People don’t even care about themselves. Beyond that, they don’t care about the world they must live in and keeping it clean and respecting natural law. How are people supposed to care about others? For every person outraged by the actions around the country these past 2 months, can you look back and say you have cared enough about yourself, your health, and been active enough in the community? I am saying that caring about yourself must come first before you can possibly care about someone else. In this, Americans are severely deficient.

Each individual person doesn’t do enough. The government doesn’t do enough. Corporations do the exact opposite of good enough.

Think about this? Soda. Tastes great. Refreshing. Relaxing. A nice treat right? Pepsi and Coca-Cola are two (though not to overly pick on them, because there are definitely many as bad or worse) companies hugely responsible with everything that is wrong in the world. To start with, they contaminate all the land around their processing plants to such a great extent that many third world towns have no clean drinking water. And the problem is likely worse than merely drinking water. But then they take this artificial drink, which is a corrosive agent and full of all kinds of things our diets don’t need, and put it into a toxic container made with plastic lined in some ungodly cancerous material. Not to mention how much the air was polluted to make the plastic container, and will be further polluted (in the optimistic case of the ten percent that will be recycled) and melted down, burned into the air again. The winners free to enjoy the product, run into other smaller problems like diabetic symptoms and obesity. So, in most practical terms, you have a company responsible for polluting water and air and our bodies. We should be outraged. Instead, we drink this crap on a ridiculous level.

How many other companies destroy the world on such a level? Hospitals have achieved a lot of success through the use of plastics. Yet, for every one person saved by the hospital, how many life forms die because of the convenient equipment? I worked in a 60 bed psychiatric facility that threw away the equivalent of a semi trailer full of garbage every week. This only begs the question, how much do real hospitals throw away? Where does it all go? At that rate, it can’t be an overstatement to say that all the hospitals in Oregon throw away enough to cover the state in at least one coat of garbage every year.

Consider the hurricanes that have ravaged the East and South. It’s taken a huge toll on most coastal communities. But mother nature is untamable, right? Well, yes and no. There is a such thing as karma, whether you are religious or not. Hurricanes, by their purpose, are heat seekers. Tropical storms that form in the ocean get bigger partially in response to their need to cool off the land. So, when there is a city crammed with 50 million people living in miles and miles of concrete, steel and glass jungles with no trees or grass, that has got to get pretty damn hot. So if a hurricane is trying to act as a fireman putting out the flames, it is most likely going for the epicenter of the burning. That is why so many hurricanes go so far inland and only seem to hit hardest in urban centers. It’s a natural act, but still a metaphor for something created. Every action has a consequence. Something always acts as an equalizer whether in our daily lives or in the weather.

Is it any wonder that without clean air, pure food, or any semblance of responsible living, that neurons are wired all backwards and people can’t act right? And then, with modern pharmaceutical and insurance companies, who can get real mental help? Those just aggravate problems even more. Why in god's name do we still give kids Ritalin? With such a harmful environment, it should be no wonder that craziness happens. That’s the response, the fighting back, the equalization. But what can we do? Just keep being shocked and angry. No. Ask questions. How much does that hospital throw away? How much do you throw away? There are ways to make pain less. Start making a difference today. Complaining about particulars, like how hard it would be to do this or that, doesn’t do anything. It’s not right to cut down all the trees on the mountain and then apply for government aid when a landslide takes your house out.

In Oregon, we have a 5-cent bottle/can return deposit. It’s a joke! That was a good start, in 1974, when 5 cents meant a little more than it does now. For 5 cents, people are just as likely to throw the stuff away. Give them some incentive. Charge $1. I realize consumers would throw a hissy fit, but something has got to wake people up. If you had to pay $1 per container, wouldn’t that make you think twice about whether you picked up that extra 24-pack of soda you don’t really need? Wouldn’t that make you care more about taking back the recycling to get your dollar back? And charge that for every container. Not just for all drinks, but for all containers, period. You buy a plastic jug of laundry detergent, pay $1 deposit. A jug like that could justify a $10 deposit. If you knew you had to pay $10, wouldn’t you take your own container to pick up the laundry detergent? I realize that there are cons and reasons to brush off such ideas, but the world is running out of time for excuses. Something drastic needs to be done soon. We have passed the point of discussion and friendly debates and petty shows of concern. Billions of plastic laundry containers in landfills or burned into the air every year are not a very good start. We need to have people bringing their own container to purchase laundry soap and other products, not just trying to remember to bring bags to carry everything out. Yeah, sure, it’s great to not want to use that extra plastic bag, but what’s the point in worrying about the straw that broke the camel’s back, in comparison to everything inside the bag? (Note: as I am writing this, I hear a news report that Concord, MA has outlawed plastic bottles!)

I’ve been thinking about how I want to eliminate the use of plastic and styrofoam from my consumption. Funny, but the first thing I realize is that it will be harder for me to drink soda, but doesn’t affect my ability to drink beer. Beer comes in glass and cans. Not that those are perfect either, but just to consider some start… The fact that beer is in better packaging seems appropriate on a hierarchical level because soda, consumed at the same rate, is more harmful than alcohol to a person’s health. Then I look at the price of beer. I think it’s gotten more expensive, especially over the last 2-3 years. And from what I have been told, there is keg tax legislation in the works to make beer much more expensive. Sounds backwards, considering I can still find two liters of soda for not much more than a dollar. As it stands now, I can go to the convenience store and buy a six pack of quality crafted local beer in glass bottles for $8-$10. In the same state, I can also go to an arena for a concert or sporting event and buy one single small plastic cup of cheap mass produced watered down beer from 2000 miles away for the same price as the above six pack. Does that not seem backwards? On every level of daily life, you can find the same thing. Everything is just backwards at a very fundamental level. And don't even get me started about inflation and why American has a worse problem than the rest of the world.

One example of modern society creating problems is in that impossible to assess quality of integrity. It’s like humility. If you got it, you don’t talk about it. But I do try to imagine the concept of integrity several times per day and ask myself, “Why am I doing this?” And I imagine myself on the receiving end of the transaction. Nowadays, the modern business model doesn’t really seem to care enough to self-reflect. Everything from insurance to fast food or anything online is about convenience, and about the bottom dollar. Not just for the consumer, but for the merchant as well. I wasn’t around in the first half of the 20th century, but from what I have heard, things didn’t used to be this way. Things used to be about providing a quality service or product. You didn’t do a job cheaply. The merchant didn’t make things that would break by next year, so that the customer had to buy the new, expensive version 6.0. Things were built to last. And people had pride in that. Now people want to just take the money and run. As if karma doesn’t come back to haunt us. If a job is done cheaply, that just made the quality of life cheaper. What is that extra buck you made a minute faster worth now? It’s not just ripping one person off, and having to live with a monkey on your back. It’s about the cumulative effect on yourself and society. Like the difference between laws that cops enforce and laws that mother nature enforces. Which one is more important? Yet, which one do people care more about?

Natural laws vs government laws:
Coveting thy neighbors car, cell phone, wife, and whatever else, is so natural to every person’s way of thinking. Whether we want to admit it or not, we all are trying to keep pace with someone else. If people can’t get past lusting after other’s material possessions, how do we ever expect people to care about what cops or politicians say? The first act is much more dangerous than the second. Who should be scared of jail or a fine more than a jealous fit of rage or other irrational acts of desire and passion? Then consider that one is personally capable of controlling in the first instance moreso than the second. With the law, people are totally helpless. What the authorities say is what happens. Even if a cop were acting unscrupulously, what he says the judge is still going to respect more than the perpetrator. But there is so much lawbreaking going on these days that no one is afraid of human laws. Cops seem to be so overwhelmed with fighting crime that they have to let a lot of stuff get past them and set their priorities. It is clear no one has any respect for laws when I see half the drivers in town talking on their cell phone.

What’s a law or a policy supposed to do? Supposed to create order, stop one party from exacting change on another. So, you can build walls, such as a fence to keep Mexicans out of the United States. You can put metal detectors in schools to keep guns out. But does this work? Is it even worth trying or does it just create a worse situation? When all you’re doing in either case is dangling a carrot in front of a rabbit, maybe it’s best to let the rabbit lie. The most irritating people don’t have to “win” an argument. They just try to get you riled up. So, to win those battles, we just don’t respond or respond in a way that undermines their attempts to affect us emotionally. A wall and army at the Mexican border can only serve to further drain the economy. If 100 million Mexicans want into the United States, there isn’t anything we can do to stop them. The Berlin Wall didn’t keep communism in Eastern Europe. The Great Wall of China is so big you can see it from space, but it still didn’t keep the Mongols from conquering China. The lesson these places learned was that, when you build a wall, it just makes people on the outside want in more. The same to be said for policing guns in schools. You can put in a metal detector, persecute villains, whatever steps you want to take. But it only makes the game more appealing. Whether it’s a nation flaunting their wealth in the face of misery, or whether it’s a person showing their emotions instead of a poker face. In both cases, society leaves itself vulnerable. People get concerned with all the wrong issues and then get duped on things that really matter most.

And besides, even if a person wanted to be honorable, there are too many laws to even keep track of, so how would someone know to care if they’re breaking a law? Every minute we are breaking some law. There’s laws against everything. And for all the laws we have, they sure aren’t helping create much order. We can trace these kinds of things back to the beginning of time and the nature of the illusion of democracy and the concept that people have control of their lives, even though it is apparent that a large number people are not capable of controlling themselves. And the ones who are often are too busy trying to control other people to be expected to control themselves. Instead of human nature’s perpetual catch 22, here’s an example of age-old practice in modern problems…
(As I wrote this next piece, out came the story of Sean Payton’s contract extension with the New Orleans Saints to become the highest paid coach in football. For real? This dude gets suspended for the entire year because he ran a bounty hunting operation on opposing players and what the suspension means is that he gets a yearlong vacation before he gets to start making over $8 million per year. Roger Goodell, you're scum.)

Why don’t have any system to penalize celebrities? These people are completely out of control, even the ones who have an appearance of respectability. Most every actor or athlete has a charge of at least one of: domestic violence, sexual assault, drug conviction, driving under the influence, improper use of firearms, and the list goes on. And what kind of punishment do they get? At most, some prison time and/or a fine. With very few exceptions, they always come back. (Even crappy players like Tammarick Vanover did.) A slap on the wrist is what they collectively get. And these cases are the ones the media spends most time on. In the end, it promotes their brand. They become even more noteworthy. And they still get to make millions of dollars. (Even if all of that goes to pay debts – at least they get to pay their big debts.) If I get charged with any such crimes, I’d be fired without a second thought. Yet some people can get fired, only for that to open the door to get a better job. People love to see Robert Downey more now than before he was drug addled alley cat. The more of an idiot Charlie Sheen or Tom Cruise or Mel Gibson are, the more relevant they are in the Enquirer. They stay rich and get to keep acting like kids. What does this mean to society overall? What does this teach people? Does it teach people that it pays to be accountable? Or do people find it more rewarding to live the exciting life? Unless the owner/agent releases a bad athlete/actor from duty, and that is followed by the league/union/studio banning the performer from participation, then there is really no consequence to any actions. The bosses need to be faced with fines equal to that they pay to hire the entertainer, so then even out the ridiculousness, then maybe a serious example would be set on several levels. The cumulative, exponential effect on society seems needed. The major flaw in this thinking arises with leagues like the NBA and NFL, where it is obvious that the main problems start from the top.

Nevertheless, people need to be more accountable. Notice I say people need to be more accountable. Not, as the message of the last lesson, people need to hold others to accountability. People have to start with themselves, if it can ever be expected that the human race in general could do so. Who among us can say that we’ve done enough? And what is required for accountability but integrity? And how can we judge integrity within others or ourselves?

Over and over I can see places where I would ideally want a law, but then I see how much laws are interpreted in the favor of the people doing favors for the prosecutors. We just need fewer laws. Not to keep harping on people’s inability to know or care, but when people can’t even get the finer laws like natural laws and the ten commandments right, then there is no ability to follow a more abstract system that requires they also pay a lot of taxes as well? Instead, a tragedy happens and we have people start talking about more laws, as if more restrictions are going to keep a man sane. In Washington and Colorado, marijuana was supposedly legalized. A lot of people think that was a good thing. I guess it was. It was 74 years too late, but still… It’s just a tiny step. A big step would be, say, legalize marijuana nationally and exonerate every person convicted of marijuana related crimes. But that would be too extreme to expect. Even our “liberal” president works harder than anyone in fighting the war against weed. And besides, it took until 2012 for the windfall on gay rights. At that rate of public reason, we have another 200 years before the president can freely admit to inhaling or not hypocritically enforce the law against someone else. Because for every one law that it takes a century to get past, we have established thousands of new laws that don’t do anything except raise more money that the government is going to waste anyway.

I readily admit that various drugs work to various levels on different people and stuff like marijuana may work well for some people and can be very harmful for others. This is true, but for every person there is something that gets them where they need to be, feel how they need to feel, whether its weed, or soda, or mountain climbing, or whatever you have to do. Why can one way of getting to this level be more acceptable than another? Successful people have their way legitimized through laws. Unsuccessful people get arrested. Some get both. Few get neither. Everyone must participate because that is the fuel for the race. If you just go back to 1937 and let anybody choose what they want, then they won’t need to overindulge in the next thing that doesn’t work well and probably just makes them more psychotic. Legalize it, don’t criticize it.

And speaking of gay rights, why can’t people shut up about gay marriage and otherwise discriminating the way people want to live their lives, be it from what they eat, to how they talk, what they watch on tv, and all kinds of gossipy talk. What if someone targeted you because it was illegal to be heterosexual? There are people that learn to have the opposite feeling simply because you hated something, and you felt that for whatever reason. And that shit doesn’t feel good. And it doesn’t contribute positively to society. Do you like it when other people talk about you or tell you what you should do in your own private life? We can’t progress as a society if we’re busy hating other people for whatever reason, whether it’s their skin color, body parts, or if they voted for the guy you loathe. When does any of this ever change? [br]Remember when we used to not let black people play in the “big leagues?” Black and Latino baseball players had to play in the Negro Leagues. Eventually, through the stressful, racist 50s, they integrated into the big leagues. We progressed right? Well, we currently have professional women leagues in soccer and basketball. That’s called segregation! The same damn problem still exists! What the hell have we learned or changed? The “whatever” reason is the bigger piece we need to change about ourselves, to make a good impression on the overall situation. We can only control our own actions (barely) without needing to try to control others, or even be productive if we are busy being worried about others. We must focus on our own lives and respect others lives and trust others in their abilities to live responsibly (whatever it takes to do so). Instead of still fighting a race war, or class war, we need to be using the laws we do have fairly across the board.

It turns out to be a joke if I say, “penalize lawyers, lawmakers and rich people.” But it’s funny in a sad but true way to the proletariat. I mean, people can only get on top by ripping someone else off, right? The whole yin yang? In order for me to have one dollar, someone had to part with a dollar. Man, when you get a whole lot of money on your side of the fence, there starts to be a lot less for people on the other side, with a growing number of mouths to feed and a maximum number of natural resources consumed to do so. That seems like a volatile situation. Accountability needs to come at any point when people start to feel ripped off. It all goes back to integrity and holding yourself accountable. We used to have ways to keep high ranking people in check. They were called unions. But then big business started shacking up with the government. Then the unions and the media came over for a big orgy. Things haven’t been the same since. Just like we didn’t learn anything about segregation, we didn’t respect workers rights. The “authorities” are out of control and full of lies. They can deny it all day long, but that really gets people pissed off. And that disrespect of people filters down to all levels of society, including your kid that broke into your gun cabinet before he went to school.

How does society pull off a change on that level? Let’s penalize the people that decide our fates! (This is why I live my life close to independence of money. Money is a cruel vortex to fall into.) We need penalties for harming the earth to any degree. Not just littering on the highway or peeing in the reservoir. Do corporations get penalized for pollution? Technically yes, but if they have a great accountant and move to the right country that is WTO friendly they can probably work a polluting situation into a tax break. And on more personal levels, if we want laws against drugs, why wouldn’t we want laws against fast food? Laws against Sysco, Monsanto, Con-Agra, the WTO, etc, etc? Modern farming, as it’s corporate scheming, has basically co-opted our agricultural system and tried to control our diets and mother nature. Not smart. Not responsible. Not accountable, especially when you purposefully try to cover up actions to get a break. Own up! These people become the government. They wouldn’t penalize their own kind. So we can eat fast food, drink soda, smoke cigarettes and lay around watching tv, but we have to be 21 to drink a beer and can’t smoke a joint? Marijuana, as it is harvested much more purely, without the tars and resins put into commercial tobacco is a viable medical benefit, whereas tobacco kills. Yet, which one is legal? Soda, again, drank at the same quantity as alcohol, is way way worse for your health, yet we sell soda in vending machines. We give it to kids freely. Diabetes, obesity. Yeah, our country really fucking cares about its people, doesn’t it?

There is so much that is just backwards. For instance, people can be turned off by the fact I used a four letter word than stop and think, “You know? I’d be really pissed off too, if I thought about how much I allow myself open to being ripped off.”

How about a law against voting for a republican or democrat? When was the last time either one of these parties did something good besides for their own cronies? This isn’t about competence, or intentions, or theories. No matter how you feel about government process or which party you support, you can’t deny that the question of disingenuous political actions is always being asked at any point. And it’s certainly a sign of a corrupt, rigged system when the major parties refuse to debate outside competition, i.e. third parties. Why wouldn’t we want to hear meaningful questions being asked by more different viewpoints? When we have a society so backwards, and we allow it, we allow tragedies to occur. Who should I blame, the dealer or the user? In general, I think the minion carries the operation, so I will blame the user, in this case the voter. Have you ever been intimidated into voting for one person for this reason or that? Have you ever voted on something without really knowing very deeply which side you were voting for? Have you ever voted with the belief that there was a such thing as differing levels of evil? You thought you at least voted for the lesser of the two evils. As if there were only two forms of evil and as if either evil wasn’t still evil. There is no varying degree of evil.

But radical steps don’t work well with humans. Humans need change to be induced slowly. The only problem is that, with slow change, more things go wrong faster than we can get around to fixing one thing. Like, how is the government supposed to get anything meaningful done when they meet less often than Oregon kids go to school and are generally busy filibustering, ie loafing off taking recess, than actually being as productive as the benefits of their job produce? By this point in history, problems have exponentially outgrown the resolutions, saying that the human race doesn’t have time for slow change anymore. When it comes to industrial technology and modern convenience, we accept change at a rapid pace and humans continue to drive the planet closer to extinction at a pace our conservative values can’t turn around fast enough.

It’s much easier blame problems on god, or lackthereof, or guns, or tv, or video games, or rock and roll, or whatever other else can’t answer back. That’s superb. Blaming something on an inanimate object sounds useful. Americans love to pass the buck. And how sadistic to take the good word and change it in to your own political agenda. What about the people who use God to further hate and harm? Hitler did it. Fred Phelps does it. Every religious zealot also does it. What about all the churches that don’t allow people to use contraceptives or have abortions? Over-crowding isn’t even a talking point right now. Try counting the cost of kids born out of an irresponsible situation. They likely will have issues of their own that tax the economical structure of society at very basic levels. So, when a baby is born into poverty to parents that never had their heads screwed on straight to begin with, who can’t learn how to take care of their kids, there goes the future of everyone’s social security! I’m not saying that I support abortion or that some people don’t deserve to be born. I concretely believe that every person who is born has the same rights to life. But I am also saying that there are a good number of parents that have no business having children when they can’t even take care of themselves. So all in one fell swoop, the church allows over-crowding, while we continue to tear up the eco-system and social security system. Sounds useful. And that’s just in the birth process. That’s just the beginning of life right there. There are a whole other 80 years (if you’re lucky) to see it get worse. So, a lot of babies (at exponential costs to the earth), and you expect me to believe that’s God’s plan? Maybe if God is anything like Dali.

Excuse me for expecting that a few rotten apples are going to regret growing in up in their environment and feel like they have nothing to live for. Like mother nature, they will fight back, they will be the equalizer. It’s a great environment for violent bacteria to grow. And this isn’t even to say that the offspring of a certain trait will be predictable. The result on society may be seen through someone else entirely. It’s just the idea that one bad lesson results in one bad action. Besides all of that, how powerful are people supposed to feel about making positive change in the world when they have people telling them it’s all part of God’s plan? Talk about feeling helpless. What’s the point?

I seriously wonder if I can live to be 80 years old before the human race is done. If that’s funny, it’s still in a sad but true way. Our civilization seems to need impending doomsday scenarios all the time, much more frequently (with immediacy) than in the past. If those don’t come, they’ll create some. Why do people always have to think they are living in the most important time period in history? Why has it become so vogue to think we are living at the end of times? Maybe because people are starting to feel it more and more. The main point being, if you can have even a halfway serious discussion about the world coming to end, there is a problem on some level that people have never dealt with before. To seriously talk about the world might be done in 40 or 50 years, even if you turn out to be wrong, still is a bad deal because it must be pretty damn close. Are people feeling pre-apocalyptic tension? Is that what’s driving them to irrational acts? If I am not careful, I will start to sound like Mike Huckabee.

80 years is significant. John Lennon lived only half that number of years. Because he cared. The Kennedys, Martin Luther King only lived half that. Because they cared. Like the celebrities mentioned before, our society has a good track record of punishing people for doing good things and letting people run scot free for doing bad things. These people didn’t get to be the true leaders they needed to be, yet for some reason Charles Manson does get to be 80 years old. The message here is that it pays to be bad. Kids learn these lessons, not because hateful talk against “bad” people affects them, but because they notice the actions more than words. They notice the results and how to be coy.
How else do we reward bad people? Start with CEO salaries! How else do we punish good people? Start with minimum wage! We can’t even pay a decent minimum wage, say $15 per hour. I figure that is about what it costs to scrape by but have a little extra to put away. In other words, $15 to be able to stay a quarter step ahead, and hopefully be lucky enough to take a vacation after a few years. But in states that have a high minimum wage, we still barely even pay half that! How is anybody supposed to raise a family on $8.80? That’s the biggest reason we have for seeing irrational acts happen. Remember how you can only have nice green grass on one side of the fence at the expense of having the rain cloud in your own neighborhood. Do you not see how pointless it is to have a death penalty if people like Charles Manson are still alive?!?! You might as well have gotten rid of the death penalty for good because it doesn’t work. And the other ways we kill people we don’t like, in courts and with other financial advantages. Society is so fundamentally rotten at the roots. We just know (true or not) that we are at the breaking point of human society and feel pretty helpless. People are so greedy and selfish and reckless, every last damn one of us. Nobody cares enough. Nobody sacrifices enough. We are all guilty for what happened in Connecticut. If we can’t be sorry when we hurt someone else or advantageously use someone, we can’t hurt when something bad happens to someone else.

Say you are in your car at a traffic light texting and you get rear ended because you didn’t realize the light was green. If no one saw you texting, would you report that to the police? I doubt people’s overall sincerity at this. If it’s going to save you thousands of dollars, since you can pin the accident on the poor sucker that hit you because he expected you would go on the green light, then he has to pay to fix your car. Is that right? If you even could convince yourself that you would do the right thing in that instance, there are still many similar things you would do to be sly. This is what I mean about integrity and owning up. People just ain’t no good. They seek out advantages at every turn and no one unscrupulous act is more honorable than another.

So don’t listen to me because it hurts to hear. Don’t listen to me because I have an extreme opinion, a minority opinion. Keep following what you do because 100 million people believe it. After all, that’s a democracy right? 100 million can’t be wrong. For sure. But most people can be stupid. A 100 million can be brainwashed by HDTV, Newsweek and other modern weapons at other’s will and coersion, guilt tripped into supporting a flawed system, which only supports a few at the top. More successful people don’t work harder, they work smarter. So if they can get people to do the hard work, the dirty work, they can convince people it is for their own good. 100 million can be told what is right. So, keep believing you are following the right way, that you are asking the right questions, that you are the righteous one. With that, keep being shocked and pained when violence happens and gets worse and worse everyday. Because it will. As long as each person alive isn’t trying to do enough to make the world better, the world will keep getting worse. As long as every person isn’t living responsibly, consuming responsibly, etc. there will be wastelands.

This earth has an extreme problem when it comes to population vs. available resources. If you don’t believe there is a problem with over-production, over-consumption, over-population, over-pollution, then there is little discussion to be had. If you don’t believe that you are contributing to these problems, then there is not much discussion. If you are offended by the thought of that, then you are missing the point. The point is that people, in general, are so selfish, they can’t see how destructive they are. Throwing away a plastic bottle seems pretty innocent, especially if you are responsible most of the time or in other areas of life. The point is that people need to be more selfless and shouldering the burden, feeling guilty. The point is that we can do very little about others, but we can do a very lot about ourselves. And that is what affects others the most.

I am not saying you have to be an environmentalist. I don’t even think I am. But I am saying that if you don’t care about such things, it’s hypocritical to care about things like psychotic human violence. One problem necessarily contributes to the other.

But, alas, the ranting ends. It is more destructive than productive to bash every person on earth for every problem they have. I need to work on myself being responsible. Suffice it to say, until you change your issues and be honest with yourself in your daily life, then none of the other talk that you can’t do anything about matters. Until we stop listening to “we can’t ______,” or “we can’t ______” and realize that yes, we can, then we gain some power, to which we can exact some change. Since that change only comes from within, I have my own rules to follow. My own new year’s resolutions.