Benblog

The Protective Father

When my dad was growing up, his grandfather, who had prospered after the depression by having faith in some stock he held on to, paid for all the college educations of all his grandchildren. Was generous whenever my dad went to visit, possibly to all the cousins as well, always giving my dad a $20, back in the 1950's and early 1960's.

He did well, and shared his prosperity, to the benefit of future generations.

Unfortunately, my grandparents squandered their inheritance, spending it instead on ridiculous indulgences, like a custom yacht (which they called a houseboat), and ending up having little left at the end, for themselves or the future.

Maxing out

I'll bet there will be a lot of folks who've never contributed to campaigns before maxing out this year on the Presidential campaign.

This is a shift in the way we allocate the nations resources, and this is a case of things having made a return towards the trajectory of feudalism. We think of Europe sort of monolithically in the Romantic period, which was a fanciful idea of existence even back then.

But we are where we are.

The path could have been less brutal all along, but now we face the choice:

Will we be the generation that brings peace to this world?

That sets us towards a trajectory of joy and love?

Right now, having discovered so intimately that we are not alone through all of these massively changing communications technologies, our initial recoil, limbic brain reaction, can be brought into harmony, a vision sublime realized.

Police and Property

I have no objection to a little law and order - i just don't think we're there yet to have a completely civil society, and  until we do, we need professional order keepers.

It's just the degree to which they are militarized and the degree to which they are controlled by property owners.

If we decide as a society that it is not okay for people to be afraid to walk outside at night anywhere, we prioritize our resources towards the betterment of all.

Conservatives would argue that the costs of such idealism are cost prohibitive, and to some degree they are right. But some of those costs can be removed by better design and more effective systems and practices. Looking at ways of designing better living, rather than giving entirely over to an ideology of either free market or state controlled. A blend of those mechanisms.

Not some complete purchasing parity, but a closer approximation of some equitable distribution of the world's wealth. Should people starve in our times? Do we have some tolerable measure of malaria related deaths? Clitoral mutilation. 50% of whole societies enslaved by laws enacted to enforce power, not liberate.

The path to harmony

Those who insist that a firm hand, a clear boss, a head of family, a patriarch creates order and harmony are right to a certain degree. It is easier with predictable cycles of reward and punishment to control people, but you inhibit their full humanity by forcing trained responses to your will.

True harmony is with respecting one another, struggling through the issues of want and need, scarcity and abundance, in resources, in enjoyment, in whatever manner the partnership manifests.

Children to are part of the implicit divine contract, beings given unto the world for us to cherish, first of all, and guide along their way, so they may know the world with love, not fear.

This does not entail a fairy tale land of no accountability, the fractured fiction of Margaret Mead's islanders, but accountability of being to being, able to recognize and reckon with the self worth and dignity of every other being without robbing that self of the ability to develop into a fuller blossoming of God's love.

Stories I want told

In the humdrum of American politics today, Obama and Edwards are at least great and truthful orators. They really, really believe in the leadership path they wish to steer this country on. And I believe both are sincerely guided on faith.

I think there is an inevitable cynicism inherent in the type of rough and tumble politics the Clinton's have endured. Wouldn't you be more steely eyed than fiery eyed yourself if you were so accustomed to being attacked and maligned, in very personal ways.

The sadness I have is that people do not see the decades coming, the dustbowl of enormous debt accumulating on the backs on the future, for the gilded age of the biographical self.

Our world is moving into a very different era, not necessarily more full of strife than it already is - but with that strife necessitating major changes to the way we live and interact with one another.

A big piece of making a step towards that change will be shifting the focus of our entrepreneurial energy into finding solutions for a sustainable future.

I think we can solve that.

But it will mean significant changes in the military industrial complex upon which so much of our economy relies. We geared up our industrial base for war in WWII, while the rest of the world was having their plants blown to bits on their soil, we geared up well for war, and we never stopped militarizing our economy.

It has become our Keynesian bottle genie, and unfortunately, it's tough to demilitarize an economy without major instability erupting on your own shores, as some of the people shuffled into the military in some cases as a result of the failure of our educational system and economy to provide enough civilian training and opportunity end up having to deal with revamping an educational system and economic system already on the brink of collapse.

The stories of these times will be interesting regardless.

I am hoping someone speaks soon about Iraq being a blunder, and that we are depriving Iraqi's of their freedom by turning their country into a magnet for sectarian violence. We made the quagmire- we can't fix the quagmire by continuing to provide energy to it.

Street Parks

Just realized that one of the things we could do immediately is at least roll out recreational equipment and even supervision (if volunteer mostly) to do Street Parks for at least a two hour time period on school days, and all day when school is out.

Kids can't get to camp - take the camp activities to them.

I would be a low cost way to supplement educational benefits and build community across many race and ethnicities.

It could become the epicenter of better organized neighborhoods of people often marginalized in the political process.

Politics of Revolution

The thing that is problematic with most revolutions is when the revolutionary leaders now have to construct an infrastructure for leadership. In that struggle, many more people die generally than the revolution itself killed, or die slow deaths of attrition, so marginalized in their expression of humanhood are they.

That's the thing I like best about this mini-struggle in the center of the field.

The age old struggle between lordship over others and lordship over self alone plays out.

The lordship with others is what ends up winning out over time, as people learn to listen to one another, and recognize more and more of the neighbors in our selves.

Makes it hard to hate.

And the forces that benefit most from the struggle on other's backs are the ones who benefit most when the masses struggle below, fighting amongst themselves.

Crap farming

I still feel as if someone should wake me up.

First, we elect him.

Then we allow him to ejaculate all over the Constitution. Again. And again. And again.

At least what's her name could take her dress to the cleaners.

Done.

Out of the fire, into the pan

I've realized that I'm relieved, but still generally uneasy.

We are still mortgaging our children's children's world, as if we can feel innocence at the inevitability of decay.

But at least it doesn't feel as if I'm riding on someone else maniacal roller coaster ride. Now, I feel as if I'm at least hanging of the end of a moving tractor trailer.

As a result, I can't enjoy the stolid solitude of sitting by the sidelines, urging on my special soccer players, knowing we will never win. And pat ourselves on the back whenever we just get the ball moving offensively.

We now have a huge whole to run through, as the power dynamics shift, however subtly.

I feel as if I may be one of a handful of people in this country, maybe the only one, who sees the potential and connection between disability rights and faith-based organizing.

These are the types of issues groups, given a base quickly in the next four years, who can determine how the center shifts and maneuvers. If we can make social justice issues ring with such clarity that each party is held accountable by how we treat our most vulnerable, globally, and how we include as many voices in our democratic process as simply stated in our constitution, we can make sure these ideas continue to spread and advance enough that they become part of our shared heritage, the same we we look back at those who worked to end slavery, those who worked to enforce civil rights.

Pyrric victory

As important as it is to celebrate, Bush has still managed to mar our judiciary with his uniquely savage conservativism.

Those wounds will take longer to heal than the damage done to U.S. reputation and credibility abroad.

Worst President ever?

Let's hope.