Saturday, October 15, 2016

How Do You Keep Going?

How Do You Keep Going?

I have a million other things to do, but I must take a minute and ask, “How does a person keep going, when everything that comprises their overall situation seems to be going to hell in a handbasket?”

We are in a situation as a species, where we simply cannot continue to function as these distinct groups; i.e. Nations, Races, Religions, Genders, Political Factions, etc..  Our own ingenuity, inventiveness, basically evolution has brought us to a place where anyone can be just about anywhere on this weird rock in rotation around a burning ball of gas, can be in constant contact, including visually, with anyone else on the same rock.  I have a brother who lives in Australia.  I have gone there for a visit and it took nearly 36 hours of extremely exhausting travel to get there.  And, that is because we can now travel across an ocean that would have taken years just about one hundred years ago (okay, maybe 150 years ago), in less than a day.

That was 20 years ago.  Now I can hit one button, with one finger, on a device I can hold in one hand and be basically on his back porch with him and we can drink a glass of wine and watch the Australian fruit-bats fly overhead together.  He can be right there with me when I am riding my motorcycle in Virginia and see just what I am seeing – as I am riding.  I have attended business meetings with people in Minneapolis, San Francisco and Beijing; not from Minneapolis, San Francisco and Beijing, but each of us en locus (in those places!).  We see each other, converse in real time and exchanged important documents, altered, edited and voted on final drafts in real time.

I have seen a new device advertised that is capable of translating any language, on the fly, into any other language and is the size of a standard hearing aide.  While this may not be quite ready for International Marketing, you just know it will be, and soon. 

I have six grandchildren.  I am Caucasian (full blooded as far as I know).  NONE of my grandchildren are.  In one generation we have become a Rainbow Family.  As a High School teacher for 30 years, I have seen my general student class make-up change from mostly white to just about an even split and the last few years to kids who were multi-racial.  Many of them a mix within two generations of multi-colors and ethnicities.  I had one student whose mother was a French Black woman married to an Arabic man who had parents who were Asian, Black and White jumbled all together.  His mother was Catholic, his father was Muslim and one of his grandparents was Jewish.  This ten-year old spoke five languages, two dialects of Egyptian, played the piano and the violin and was a member of the “Pi 100 Club”.  He was great kid.  He was one of several with nearly this kind of family.

I just don’t see how it is possible to stand in one place anymore and not realize that you can instantly be anywhere else on the whole planet, at least in perception, and believe that there can exist an US and THEM. 
I had to retire from teaching because my own responsibilities went from writing one basic report on each of three three-month grading periods and attaching a letter grade for each student to – an on-line report on each student after every class.  And to do so within the ten minute change period between classes or receive a reprimand.  To do this and clean up and prepare for each successive class and then do all the prep for the next day after work (?), well, the stress became just too much. 

And, I know I am not alone with this kind of daily work stress.  The general global daily stress load for every single human has quadrupled, by my own observation, within my lifetime.  In Developed Nations every single action by every single human can be, and often is, observed by every other human in those places.  It is digitally recorded and stored in-the-cloud for fucking forever!  Currently, in today’s world, if you are born in just a reasonably Developed Nation, you had better never fuck up (sorry for the language) EVER!  From birth! 

Hospitals, by law in this country, used to take a footprint of the right foot of every infant born and stick it on your Birth Certificate.  That was it.  A single copy of a hand type-written document, signed by Doctor and parents, with a little black ink footprint.  The only proof you existed.  When you turned 16 you could get a Social Security card with a number on it and a Driver’s License.  The Driver’s License didn’t even have your picture, or anything on it, when I was sixteen.  When you needed to prove you were who you said you were, you just showed your Driver’s License and said you were who this limp cardboard card said you were.  And the response was always, “Okay”.  I am 5’ 7”, my brother is 6’ 2”.  We have the same last name.  I could have flipped out his card and unless they bothered to read the tiny, tiny print, nobody would know!!!

When I was in College I got in and out of Canada AND Mexico, by walking across the border … !  If I was stopped I could have shown any kind of card that said I was George Washington (!) born in 1725 and nobody would have really questioned it.  Of course, now they take a DNA sample, record it in about a thousand databases and you can be identified with 99% accuracy with a dab from the inside of your mouth.  Or a hair follicle.  Soon by a single skin cell left on any surface, anywhere, at any time.  GEEZE! 

All in all, even if the population doubles (which would not be a good thing actually) every human could be instantly located, almost instantly, almost anywhere, at any time.  And, their identity be 100% established, instantly.   WE have become a single beehive, with a single identity and truly a single purpose – to survive.  The sooner as a Global Population, we recognize this as nearly fact … or soon to be a fact, the better our chances of not going down the dinosaur route. 

So as a species, humans become one mind in billions of separate bodies.  However, Free Will will always exist, as long as we are not actually physically co-joined (which is not only impossible, but would be a logistical nightmare).  How would we get on and off the subway?  Or decide on what to restaurant to go to – since part of us would already be there?  It would be a problem.   And since, Free Will would still exist, things like religion and indigenous cultural differences would still exist.  With language ceasing to be a barrier, and language has been the actual greatest barrier for the length of our existence as a species, we are just going to have to learn to be tolerant and get along. 

There really IS no other way to avoid an apocalypse.  We have the capacity to also instantly kill each other by the millions in thousands of absolutely horrible ways.  You never feel the urge to take out your family and true friends, so that is what WE have to become; accept each other as Family.

That’s it, really.  That’s the ONLY way forward and out of the conundrum we find ourselves in. 



Saturday, October 8, 2016

Crows: Vol. 2 - Not In My House!

Crows: Vol. 2 - Not In My House!

“A murder of crows” refers to a group, a crowd, a bunch of, crows.  These linguistic tricks of English with pluralities I find very intriguing.  Why, is a “herd” of cows and a “pride” of lions and stuff like that?  To me crows are really fascinating animals; supposedly one of the smartest birds, even smarter than … say … dogs … (although dogs are not birds – I do know that) Whatever.  So considering their intelligence, their personalities are very curious.  Hence, I use their iconic nature to make isolated and interesting evidences. 


- Why does the American political party, that emancipated slaves, want to reinstate that same condition?  Return to the Founding Fathers thinking?  The only citizens, according to the U.S. Constitution, in 1776, allowed to vote were white men who owned property??!!!??

- The Maori people of New Zealand are large framed people, as I understand.  Or, very large of stature.  The largest American, by and large (get it, ha-ha), would be the men at like 5’10” and let’s say around 190 to 210 lbs. on the average.  So how did we get so big?  As big as the average male Maori, but not due to genetics?  I sit in my local coffee shop and one after the other, they come in and these Americans are yuge!  I mean like massive!  Men and women.  I drive a two-door Toyota Yaris.  I could not give a ride to these persons.  They could not get into my vehicle!!  One of the reasons I rarely lock the doors – there is hardly an American who could get in it, in order to steal it.

- The Philly Cheese Steak is the gourmet signature meal of the City of Brotherly Love.  First you take red beef, full of stockyard hormones, antibiotics and fat, and then you put American cheese, a basically artificial non-food food product, full of weird ingredients, including red and yellow food dyes – known to cause cancer – melted all over the whole mess.  It’s like a heart attack with arterial chocking cholesterol on top.  Yum!

- Apparently Canada is about to euthanize, gas – get rid of – kill – a big bunch of stray dogs.  Public health issues and safety, or something.  I predict a ton of Americans will rush to their rescue.  And, for some reason we can’t help out humans who are war refugees – including several hundred thousand children!  Worried about terrorism.  Hmmm … if a human is like eight years old and hasn’t had a full meal in about two years, weighs maybe 85 lbs. or less (probably less) and can barely walk across a room, how is this child going to commit any kind of an act of terrorism?  What are they going to do, throw handfuls (handsfull) of gravel at people big enough to kill them by sitting on their chest? 

- Hate; - what do you do if you get stuck somewhere in an emergency and the only person who stops to help you is somebody from some group you have decided you hate? 
Caveat; - what if you decided not to hate anybody?  Wouldn’t that be easier?
Caveat 2; - what if you forgot that you had decided to hate a person, and they did something really nice for you, something that you really needed help with and then later remembered, “WhoopsI, I was supposed to hate that person.” ?

- I have decided that I am going to be civil to everyone – even Republicans!  In general I am civil to everyone anyway, but it’s going to take a lot of effort not to loose it with the … no, I’m not going to say it.  Everybody gets a smile.

- Drivers – I don’t think most drivers, here in the USA anyway, notice it, but despite all the warnings about using cell phones while driving, is totally ubiquitous.  Now, if it were a national requirement that everybody must ride a bicycle in their normal everyday life for – say – three months, before being allowed to drive on the highway, I doubt there would be as many distracted drivers – trying their best to kill everybody else.  Or, they could substitute a European style motor scooter or even a motorcycle.  Any mode of self directed type of wheeled vehicle, where they do not have seat belts, air-bags, crush-zones and two to three tons of steel and plastic and shatter-proof glass surrounding them.  Enough close calls with idiots on their phones, eating, music way too loud, drinking beer and turning around to talk to another idiot in the back seat and just maybe they would focus a bit more when they are captaining their own tank in the middle of the rest of us.
Yes, music too loud – when I’m next to some person at a stoplight and I can feel the vibration of their crappy rap or country western noise up through my feet straddling a 600 lbs. bike – it’s too fucking loud.

- If “disco” is dead, why have so many contemporary movies chosen to use it as background soundtracks?

- The 90’s were incredible and I feel sorry for those of you who missed it.  And I have sympathy for all those who prepped for the fall of humanity when it flipped to the year 2000.  I was a large school’s Director of Technology and we didn’t have a single computer even hiccough, let alone crash.  What a bunch of pussies.  We knew it was coming, we adjusted for it, prepared and – blip – nothin’ happened.  Now Nov. 8th this year has me concerned, even more than Y2K.