Response to Power

Response to Power

In response to those who responded to by last blog on “Power”.

I don’t allow for open responses to my blogs, because being such a nut-job I have a tendency to overreact and react improperly and just plain weirdly.  It other words, it takes me a while to understand.  Just kind of dense that way.  I’m a very tolerant and open-minded person, but I also process criticism and comments very slowly.  I have no idea why.  It just takes me while to understand other people, unless I am looking directly into their face.

That being said, I always welcome responses and the opinions of others.

Now when I said, “The powerful fall – they always fall …”.  I meant it.  But so many people place different values on what is success or even the definition of power.  So the matter of falling becomes academic – or semantics.  (?) The concept being is it based on money (wealth) or control of other peoples’ lives?  Or is it quality of life, a.k.a. happiness. 

Stay with me here. 

Is it possible for a person to live without fear of loosing whatever it is that person has placed at the pinnacle of their own value system?  Let’s say they become extremely wealthy.  Do they live in fear of loosing that wealth?  I would postulate there does not exist an extremely wealthy person who does not live every day in a constant state of anxiety about loosing that wealth.  I have known many, and the paranoia they display on this matter is obvious.  Plus as their wealth builds and as they age, it appears to become worse.  The same thing is true of those who unethically work the system to achieve power over others.

The assumption is made that since they appear to be enjoying this wealth and power that they are de facto happy.  The powerful who do fall – generally – do so in the public eye and we are made aware of that fall simply due to that fact alone.  To be in a position of separation from the common members of a society as in having far greater and thus distinctive wealth or power is to be, almost by definition, in the spotlight – center stage, as it were.  When they fall, they do so in front of everyone.

A view I have had for many years is that, “If you have little to loose, you rarely live in fear of loosing it.”  I would rather have so little of value in my house (domicile) that burglarizing it wouldn’t be worth it to anyone.  Breaking into where I live is obviously – and I mean obviously – not worth breaking (a door, window, etc.  that I then would have to fix) anything.  The same is true of my car and my motorcycle.  Small, cheap, if either one is parked next to any other car or motorcycle; the one next to it is worth more.  I can walk away from any of these possessions and just not think about them.

What does this all mean?  What am I getting at?  What, then, is my definition of falling as it relates to power or wealth?  In short, I would say I am referring to happiness.  To me the loss of the state of happiness is the fall from either of these conditions.  Whether the public at large is aware of it or not.  As the number of body-guards increase, the height of the barbed wire increases and the self imposed isolation becomes greater and greater until the actual quality of life diminishes, the fall becomes a greater and greater likely event. 

We all truly live within our own minds.  That place, the stratification we feel in the deepest parts of our soul can be a true one or it can be a fictional one with which we have replaced reality.  Wealth and power are external and assumed positions based on temporary holdings. And since every life at the end is stripped naked taking nothing at all with it into the void beyond (or whatever – there is no factual evidence for anything else), that which is external and assumed is by direct comparison fictional. 

The swiftest might be able to outrun the wolf, but only as long as they keep running.  If they ever stop running, the wolf (reality) wins.

Thanks for reading - 

Love, dance and do jazz hands.

Dp

http://dalepeterson.us

Power. Or, Pulling the Ladder Up

Power.  Or, Pulling the Ladder Up

The Crow

It is my belief that as soon as any person believes they are powerful, they have become weak.  Or, at least weaker than they were before they allowed their egos to gain that kind of thinking.  The powerful fall – they always fall and often it is more than destructive to just themselves.  All of the yes men and the clingers-on fall with them.  Powerful people, or people who do actually become powerful, do so at the opportunities supplied by the many who allow for that power and the support of those people.  When they fall, the whole pyramid collapses.

This analogy is even more accurate considering that as the pyramid collapses, the capstone – the person at the top – often descends to the bottom and must bear the crushing weight of those who supported their rise.  Be that weight only one of disgust and the dismantling of their former image.

How is it that I can say the always fall?  Clearly that is not, or seems to not, be the case – always.  This is where it becomes important to read all of the words in my opening statement and in the order, and subtlety, of that statement.  The crux, the pivot point, in that statement is in the word believes.  You see, having been a teacher and a professional artist for a half a century, it seems very clear to me – when you stop learning you become weaker.  As soon as a person starts to believe they are at the top of their game, there is a tendency, if not a strong prevalence, to stop learning.

There is also a tendency to stop looking around; that is keeping a strong sense of peripheral vision.  Something I have noticed, and other intellectuals (? – maybe this applies to me, or not) writers, cognitive specialists, etc. have, is that as a person grows through childhood to adulthood their social vision and understanding widens from a narrow tunnel into a broader observation of the people and the world around them.  However, as soon a person acquires, or achieves, a position where they are a long way above those around them, they stop really listening and stop watching what is happening around them. 

The idea being, “I got here because of how special I am – talented, smarter, stronger – so why should I pay attention to what anyone else says or thinks.  I’m right and they’re wrong –that must be obvious.”  This viewpoint ignores the obvious.  “Life is really a line, or a que as the British would say.  And that is that, there is always somebody right behind you.  You may get to the head of the line for a while, but sooner or later you will have to move out of the way, or somebody is going to hit you on the back of the head.

And, if you never look around – or more significantly behind you (forget where you came from) – that hit on the head is going to catch you totally by surprise and really, really hurt. 

To stretch the analogy even further, and really twisting it around a bit, if you climb the ladder and do accomplish the task of pulling the ladder up behind you, you must remember that you now no longer have a way to climb down – should you need to.  You will have to either jump or you’ll get pushed.  And with no ladder, you are going to fall all the way to the ground.  So as some much smarter person than I, once said, “Be kind to everyone as you climb the ladder, because you are going to meet them on your way down.”  However, if you've pulled the ladder up behind you, there will be nobody to help you as you fall.

 Please visit me at http://dalepeterson.us

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**The sculpture piece as shown is @ 20" tall, @ 12" wide.  It is done in ABS filament with a 3D pen.  It is for sale.  (It also glows in the dark.)  More pictures are available on request.  You can contact me by leaving a comment to this blog with your email address.  Or go to my website and email me from there.

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God, Cowboy Hats, Motorcycles

God, Cowboy Hats, Motorcycles

This whole religion thing – globally – has just gotten out of hand.

I suppose I’m religious, at least I think maybe I am sort of a Christian.  If I am, I can’t go for this six foot tall blue-eyed guy a lot of Americans seem to find in the Bible.  That’s just not possible, guys.  Ask ANY anthropologist.  Even supposedly, if he was fair haired and tall and ruggedly handsome, how would he have fit in in an area where almost everybody else was much shorter, dark skinned and had black hair – and almost certainly brown eyes.  He would have kind of stood out and I can’t see the general populace really trusting somebody who, to them, must have looked as much like a space alien as anything else.

Also, I can’t following any kind of a God who goes around smiting and destroying cities and demanding stuff, like sacrifices.. WTF!  If he’s any kind of a God and he wants something he can just poof it into existence – right?  But the main thing here is why all this yammering in today’s world about it. 

Also – why in American western movies are the cowboys’ hats always so new.  I’ve lived in Arizona and Colorado and all of the hot western states.  It’s HOT in the summer and cold as fuck in the winter.  Any hat you might wear is going to get sweat stained, really really sweat stained and dusty and if it ever rains, that kind of wool felt goes all limp and weird looking – plus it’s hot as fuck.  Did I say that; wool felt like that is really hot to wear around in the summer.  Straw is much better.  Then in the winter your ears are just going to totally freeze solid and break off. 

Did Jesus wear a cowboy hat, and if he did was it always new looking?  He did live in the desert … mostly.  Right?  I own several cowboy hats, given as gifts and purchased.  A good cowboy hat is tough!  It might droop when it gets really wet, but you just can’t wear it out.  I’ve had one for nearly fifty years and it’s still tough as nails.  It’s sweat stained – well, just plain stained – all over, but it’s still wearable.  Now that is a cowboy hat a real cowboy would be seen wearing in a real western.

So, I can see God wearing a cowboy hat and it always looking new, but not Jesus or a real cowboy.  Now I don’t know much about horses, but I don’t think you can ride them as flat out hard as cowboys are always doing.  Racing around.  Then there they are out in that scrub desert country and there’s no water and nothing but creosote scrub for the horse to eat.  ??  That’s gotta be why Jesus rode a mule, and slowly.  Or was it a donkey?  Donkeys can eat cactus, maybe even gravel.

I have a dog that will eat limp left over salad.  Why wouldn’t a donkey … gravel … I guess that’s stretching it. 

The Cowboy Era actually lasted only about twenty years, which is not nearly long enough to wear out a real cowboy hat.  It kind of reminds me of the Hippie Era, which only lasted, at most, ten years.  I know.  I was there – I was, or tried to be, a hippie.  1964 to about 1974.  Before “Saturday Night Fever” and John Travolta stomped, or danced, the shit out of Hippiness Cool.  Now I see all these teeny-bopper children trying to be Hippies.  Dope and weed didn’t make a person a Hippie.  It was, in reality, more about being anti-establishment.  With men and long hair and beards and women not wearing bras.  Wearing beards and Dashiki shirts and Indian toe sandals that stained your feet brown.  And being anti-war. 

Can you imagine being anti-war today?  You’d be thrown out of the country.  Or, this country anyway.  Americans are all into war now, not anti-war.  Us hippies had to be drafted into killing people.  Did everything we could to get out of it, including becoming Canadians.  Now young people are volunteering to do it?  That’s a switch in general thinking.  Everybody packing guns.  ??  !!!  ??

Not like it was all good “in the old days”.  It definitely wasn’t.  The country was as divided, and very harshly so, as it is now.  Just different hate going on.  Of course, as hippies, we never wore cowboy hats.  That was kind of a political demarcation.  Mostly we wore bandanas.  A lot of bandanas.  Even the dogs wore bandanas.  Now that I ride a motorcycle, I’m back to wearing bandanas, but I’m no longer seen as a hippie.  Just an old gray bearded guy on a motorcycle.  It’s kind of liberating, actually.

My motorcycle is like my old stained cowboy hat.  It’s got 52,000 miles on it and I’ve never cleaned it – not once.  I’m not really proud of that, but it does surprise me when people tell me “What a beautiful motorcycle.”  Really.  “What a cool cowboy hat.”  Really.

I wonder if God cleans his (her – it’s) motorcycle.

Please visit me at http://dalepeterson.us

For links to my books on Amazon KDP

My YouTube Channel

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**The sculpture piece as shown is 36" tall, @ 16" base.  It is done in ABS filament with a 3D pen.  It is for sale.  (It also glows in the dark.)  More pictures are available on request.  You can contact me by leaving a comment to this blog with your email address.  Or go to my website and email me from there.

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Thinking at the Speed of Light

Thinking at the Speed of Light

[It's about time for a new blog.  I warn you, this one maybe a bit heavy for some.  So, keep any open mind and try to believe I mean it all in a good way.]

So "Thinking at the Speed of Light" is, of course, an exaggeration, but not much of one really.  I have read and studied the bipolar condition – dozens of books, some deeply scientific and medical, others more about people who live with it.  Some, many I should say, have this condition in a far more severe form than I do.  My own diagnosis is fairly light, on the less severe end of the scale.

However, at some point, I always seem to go too far.  There is no mature conscious thought in it.  Something hits the wrong key and something totally inappropriate comes out of my head.  It is not always a particular thing, more often the accumulation of many different things.  This is why I seem to jerk around in fast conversations, stand up at weird times and my voice will begin to quiver, or choke off completely.  It is never my intention to speak inappropriately.

I am not apologizing for my bipolar condition, sometimes I do have to be precise about just what it is and the symptoms and side effects of the medication program I am on to control it.  Friends have said, I am appreciated and cared about, and I believe that.  I do believe it.  However, my brain is still sort of cracked, it will never be “cured”, I deal with it and everything as best I can.  There are and will be times when I may react very “inappropriately” as a means of immediate unthinking self-protection.

It is always very embarrassing for me.  It sticks in my mind, each time, forever.  I feel the judgment of others like needles in my heart.  And occasionally the medications I am on stop working and I have to go through a whole new program of trial and error(s) with new ones.  So just imagine the mostly calm and quiet guy people generally assume is me, and understand just how much willpower and energy it can take for me to maintain that when my brain feels like walnuts being ground up in a Quizinart. 

This is where the thinking at the speed of light comes in to it.  Every time, every single time, I find myself in a conversation I find my mind racing to analyze what is expected of me in order to participate – as a reasonable person.  You see, when discussing books or something intellectual my brain can go into overdrive and somehow I can remember everything I have ever read, the author, the context, sometimes almost the very page on which I read it.  My vocabulary can become Nobel Laureate in nature and people don’t know half the words I am using.  I always have to stop and define or explain things.

At other times I draw a complete blank.  If pushed, I can’t remember my wife’s name.  Where exactly I live.  Even simple words escape me.  The ole noodle just shuts down.  This is usually when the conversation turns to politics.  Somehow politics gets my heart rate going like a rabbit and my brain goes into dumb.  I admit I am a Political Progressive (I don’t like the term Liberal, because all the nut-case neo-cons have made the word Liberal into something that is heard as profane – fuck their hard hearts).  I just don’t think it is possible to fix problems by ignoring them, hating them, blowing them up or shooting them in the head.  I don’t think wars work and I have been in one.

So some subjects, like politics, I have to try and stay away from.  I can handle it at the voting booth, I just can’t handle it in a polite conversation.  Then there is Fundamentalist Religion.  I can take plain Religious Faith, just not the Fundamentalist “The Bible is the only true, literal word of GOD!”  “And everybody better get on board or we’re gonna shoot you for that one too.”  Or, the Muslim Extremists or any of them.  I’ve studied the Bible and the Koran and the Torah and all that Mechezalbub, and the People of Shafram Ifram Apendico wiping out the people of Whoopieduppee because they cut the Lord’s sacrificial chicken in the wrong direction, is just too much bullshit for me.

“Well, it’s in how you interpret  it.”  How can it be literal if you have to interpret it to have it make any sense?  So just to keep all of my deeply religious friends, of whom I have many (and I do love them as friends, from many many years of friendship) I have to keep my mouth shut because my brain won’t stop shouting, “How can you honestly believe that crap!!!)?”  As much as I love them, I respect them, so it leaves me wandering in a murky mental quandary. 

In so many situations, I have to keep all the thoughts flying across my inner mental mind screen, like the subtitles during a foreign movie from moving so fast I can’t properly read them.  It seems like there are twenty or thirty of these moving lines of mental text streaming behind my eyes all the time.  And, often the languages are not always English – or, at least I can’t totally make out what language they are.  I have to pick one and do all I can to focus just on that one.  Laser in on it, if possible.  Blot out, push away somehow, all the others. 

I force myself to swallow down the disrespectful or hurtful words, or random chunks of sentences, that pop into my head as a reaction to some quip or witticism from an acquaintance.  And, there are some people who just revel in making fun of, or attempting to make a fool of other people.  The first thing out of their mouth will be some witty comment on a hat you happen to be wearing, or the fact that you’re trying to park your motorcycle, or your tie is a funky color – something hahha witty.  Swallow down the “Fuck You!”.  Swallow down the “You know I just donated a pair of shoes like yours to the Veterans Thrift.”  No “You should go to a professional Barber, having your dog chew your hair like that, is just not working for you.”

The thing I have come to appreciate is how my religious friends, and even a few who are rather towards the neo-con side of politics is how they – in particular – are unaffected (I say unaffected, when I reveal my disability).  Seriously, the biggest issue seems to be with people who are stuck in the middle – people who haven’t stretched their minds in much of any manner at all.  I find kindness can crop up in the most unlikely places and people and the same thing is true of bigotry and stigma.

So the next time you encounter a person who seems to have a problem relating on the common plain (plane), as you view it, trust that what might be passing through their mind is so far beyond your own comprehension you might give them a little love and understanding.

Please visit me at http://dalepeterson.us

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The Horrible Sin of Smoking?

The Horrible Sin of Smoking?

In my youth – in a galaxy long ago and far, far away – smoking was everywhere.  Everywhere!  When you went to see a Doctor, the Doctor could come in to see you, while still smoking a cigarette!!!  There were ashtrays attached to the walls in the corridors of every public building, including hospitals.  Ashtrays on the tables in the Public Library.  On every desk in every business and on the coffee table in nearly every single home.  The smell of tobacco was so prevalent, everywhere, the only time you noticed it was when it wasn’t there.  Like standing on the south rim of the Grand Canyon, and even then it was very likely the guy standing next to you would be smoking.

When I was in the Army, GI’s would be smoking right at the mess hall table.  I was a smoker and yet, I didn’t like the taste of cigarette smoke in my food.  I would ask the smokers to stop and at least wait until we had eaten.  Frequently I was told, “Go fuck yourself.”  Jeez, stop for ten minutes until we are done eating?  Even at breakfast – cigarette smoke and eggs?  No.  Not a good recipe.  Tastes real bad.  Forget it.  At that time, breakfast was the time to get a good start on the day’s nicotine fix.  Gotta get that nicotine level up – up, up, up.  The breakfast of champions – nicotine and caffeine.  And then hit the can for a good shit.  It did keep you regular.

Really … my mother, who was a Mormon, and Mormons do not smoke or drink, kept a little tray of cigarettes and an ashtray on our coffee table.  My father's business included a number of home parties and socially required events, so the ciggies had to be available.  When I got to college, everyone in the classrooms were usually smoking; always the professor was smoking.  When I started teaching High School in the late 80’s, most of my students were already smokers.  The High School parking lot was always littered with cigarette butts.  When they hung out before and after school in that parking lot, they smoked.  Nobody thought anything about it.  Even noticed, really.

Slowly at first, as we all now recognize, smoking was found to be really bad for a person’s health.  I mean really, really bad.  Where and when a person could smoke began to tighten in on the whole American culture.  At first it was no public buildings, then, with seemingly light-speed, nowhere there were other people.  Second hand smoke was deemed as bad as being on the working end of a cigarette.  Being within the distance of a good rock throw of a smoker was – like – horrible.

When I was teaching High School at a boarding school, students smoked in their rooms.  Now if nicotine is found in their urine, they can get kicked out of the school.

And with all the drug problems, teachers can require a urine test anytime they have a suspicion of drugs or smoking.

I have written about all the exposure of alcohol on television and movies and stuff.  In the old days, actors would be holding a cigarette to make some on-screen use of their hands.  Gotta be doing something with your hands on-screen.  Now, they pour a drinky-poo and dialogue with a shot of booze in their hand.  And we know, for sure, alcohol is also really, really bad for your health – especially if you’re driving a car. 

I just wonder where we are going, what we are saying, when you can walk into a public place with a gun on your hip – bullets are super-di-dooper bad for your health – and yet you can’t have a smoke!  It is seen almost as not as bad to be on a sex offenders list as to be known as a smoker.  At a church I often pass, they have AA meetings.  As you pass by that church, you immediately know when an AA meeting is about to start because there are dozens of people out in front smoking.  Conclusion:  one of the major tools to getting your life back together after you’ve wrecked it with alcohol, is to smoke.  ???  It most places now, even in a bar where the whole purpose is to get drunk, you can’t smoke any more.  ???

Which would you rather have, somebody sitting next you in a coffee shop with a gun on his hip and a pissed off look in his eyes or a smoker?  Who would you rather stand next to at a bus stop, somebody staggering a bit with a can of beer in his hand or a smoker?  Who is more likely to t-bone you in an intersection, a drunk or a smoker (who is not also a drunk)?

Where is the rational here?  Who’s in charge of perceived social sins?  In fact, when and where did the logic of the greater good switch from personal habits that are really stupid to personal habits that are really stupid and broadly destructive?

I’m just sayin’.  ???

Please visit me at http://dalepeterson.us

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