This World

I was thinking, as I got up this morning, about that YouTube clip I posted to Facebook yesterday, a two-minute excerpt from a meeting Bernie Sanders was having in Iowa, where he invited members of the audience to speak from their personal knowledge of what it is like to live on $10,000 or $12,000 a year.

This is not a political posting. You know I love what Sanders stands for and what he is attempting to spark among the people. That’s not what this is about.

A young woman came up to the microphone and spoke of her own on-going experience, and could hardly speak for crying about the shame of always being in debt while working several minimum-wage jobs and having to live with her parents. See it here: http://usuncut.com/politics/incredible-moment-bernie-sanders-rally-iowa-video/

I thought, this morning: Nobody could watch that clip unmoved.

We don’t know anything about the woman, how much of her plight is the result of bad choices, or bad luck, or whatever. But, watching, listening, we do suddenly remember, this is a human being; this is a person, not a statistic, not an abstraction.

Multiply by millions; remember that these millions live in the most productive economy on earth, and remember that it is in no way their fault that the value of every dollar they earn has been consistently chipped away by inflation, giving them invisible pay cuts every single year for their entire life, with no offsetting increase in the number of the depreciated dollars they receive.

My first job after college, I made $6,000 a year as a news reporter. My wife and I lived small, saved HALF of it, and after a year traveled to Europe for six weeks before I went on to grad school. Nobody could do that today. Today, the buying power equivalent of that nominal $6,000 would probably be $40,000. (I’m guessing, of course.) So people are being told to live on the equivalent of $1,500 in 1970. Is it any wonder that people are starving, and that the American dream is dying?

It is an achievement of Senator Sanders – perhaps not the least of his remarkable achievements this remarkable year – to suddenly put the human face back into the economic argument.

You shall know the truth, it says in an old book you may have heard of, and the truth shall make you free.

I was looking out my second-floor window today, looking down at the trucks with blades clearing off the parking lot, and, out the windows on the opposite side of the house, at the trucks clearing the roads.

The city or state clears the roads. If you live in a condominium or apartment complex, probably the management clears the driveways and main access lanes of your parking lot. But chance are, if your car is out in the open, you have to do your own shoveling to get your car clear. If your car is in a garage, chances are you have to shovel to clear the area between the garage and the cleared lanes. And, of course, if you have live in a detached house, nobody is going to clean your driveway but you or someone you pay.

Isn’t that a capsule summary of the division of responsibility between governments and individuals?

Individuals working as individuals couldn’t clean the roads, so what use would their cars be to them? But governments couldn’t clean off everybody’s car or shovel out everybody’s driveway, unless they expanded their workforce by about a hundredfold. (More, probably.)

As in so many seemingly intractable political disputes, the answer is that both poles are somewhat right, until they get carried away to think that their end is the only end.

No government could do everything for us, and we wouldn’t want it to. But individuals in society can’t do everything for themselves without organized civic effort (known as government). Individuals as individuals don’t fight fires, repair downed power lines, provide emergency medical treatment, etc., etc. Individuals accomplish those things by working as part of a team, be it government, for-profit corporation, public utility, or non-profit.

Probably we would do better to remember that there’s something to be said for all parts of the ideological and political spectra, rather than thinking we are holding a stick that has only one end.

Be grateful for the organized efforts that make our lives go as smoothly as they do. Continue to do for yourself what you can. Stay warm.

Not the kind of thing I usually post here, but it does have its application to consciousness. I wrote this earlier today and posted on Facebook.

Why do they hate America?
I know Republicans think they love America — and so do arch-conservatives — but they don’t. They seem to love an idea they have, an image of America that they love. But can you say you love your country when you hate the people in it? If you hate gays, latinos, muslims, blacks, liberals, and everybody whose values you disapprove of, how can you say you love America? If you would rather that the opposition president fail than that his policies succeed in solving America’s problems, how can you love America?
Continue reading Why do they hate America?

Worry has been defined as praying for what we don’t want. Thinking about that, this morning, it struck me that we all – Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives, independents, libertarians, grumpy old men, members of the lunatic fringe, and those who can only be called Untitled But Disgusted – are going about this election business the wrong way, and it’s no wonder nobody is happy.
Ask anybody – ask yourself – what you want for the country – and I’ll make a small bet that the answer will come back couched in negatives.
“I want the government to stop doing [x and such].”
“I want to free us from the power of [the devil du jour].”
“I want us to stop doing [name it], which is ruining [name this too].”
There is one small problem with this! Two small problems.
1) We create our reality – as a society no less than as individuals – by what we magnetize ourselves to. The more you fixate on something, the more of it you get in your life. So what do you suppose happens when we fixate on the national debt, or illegal immigration, or economic domination by an oligarchy, or the lies and crimes of governments and corporations? More of the same.
2) The unconscious mind does not recognize negation. Tell it, “I don’t want more pain,” it hears, “more pain, please.” Tell it, “I can’t stand having X in power,” it says, “I’ll do what I can to be sure X is in power. Anything to oblige.”
And this is exactly what we’re all doing. Just look at any issue- or politics- or ideology-centered posting on facebook. “It’s us against them, and this year they’re better financed and organized than ever. If you don’t want to see X, Y, and Z, you have to join us to fight them, by [fill in your panacea of choice here].”
So what’s the answer? Throw up our hands in despair? Redouble our efforts even though we know they are going to bring us more of what we don’t want most?
No, oddly enough, the answer is simple. What’s more, I’ll bet that in the other parts of your life you do it already. Stop defining your America by what you don’t want it to be, or fear it is becoming. Stop hoping for a future in which the people you disagree with are less prominent, less successful. Instead, HOLD YOUR BEST VISION OF WHAT AMERICA COULD BE.
It’s what I call our “Star Trek” future.
Take a few minutes to formulate what that future will look like – using no negatives. It you find that you can’t do it very easily, you will already have learned something.
What is the America you would like to see?

I got this via Open Culture and decided it should be shared. I am not a whole-hearted fan of Bertrand Russell, but of Bucky Fuller, I am. And the story behind the story is interesting.

Continue reading Bertrand Russell & Buckminster Fuller on Why We Should Spend Less Time Working, and More Time Living & Learning