Amazing to read and discuss about this situation with the shooting at Fort Hood in Texas. General American sentiment seems to dismiss the reality of how difficult it must be to be a Muslim in the US army today. Statements of the prejudicial treatment he received – keyed car, 'camel jockey get out', diapers in his car with claims it should be his headdress? This is a man that decided to go into the military – for whatever reasons – and should have been afforded the respect of that commitment. It also needs to be said that he committed at a time when the military didn't seem so solely focused on issues that could be seen to fall on religious or ideological lines as could be seen today.
These wars, and American society as a whole, have been and are showing Islam as a culprit – as these prejudicial acts show. There are people that viewed his religious situation as a problem, and this I believe is where the problem comes from. If the military was more 'open minded' (yes, I did just say that), perhaps a Muslim man would have felt more welcome in this institution. But the military doesn't care about individuals or their religion, sexual preference, etc. It just wants to create soldiers willing to do what the country's leaders deem to be necessary. Yet this inflexibility and the cultural hostility that is growing in America made a well qualified man feel uncomfortable enough to lash out and kill. And all the official statements can be made that anyone wants, but we should all know full well that the military is stretched, looking for numbers, and was not going to be trying to release a Arab-American psychiatrist at a time like today, or that the people he spoke to from within this military would even pretend to be sympathetic to his concerns. The bottom line is they don't care, and they are taught not to care – An Army of One.
The fact of the matter is that today we have another front on the war-on-terror opening up. This man was a part of 'us', part of America, yet he was pushed out and ended up 'fighting' in virtual cohesion with the 'other side'. And the victims, the dead soldiers, are not any different than others from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, they are casualties of this war. People need to recognize that these wars are bigger than tanks and troops on the ground, and each person in the world fights their part of it every day. It is about ideology and culture – both of which are wholly individual and subjective – and our individual actions to every person we see. In provoking an attack like this through verbal provocation or subtle antagonizing messages we are fighting a battle. Which side do your actions place you on? Do you need to be on a side?
There are no cookie cutters and no past victories to learn from in this type of warfare. In a world where the individual is solely taught to focus on themselves, yet while the system simultaneously tries to thoroughly group and categorize us all away, it is very difficult to factor in individuals and their variances. This man was a person with ideas, beliefs, and issues to be heard. Yet no one was listening with any intent on truly helping or including him and/or his concerns into the system. This type of front has been around forever yet seems to never be realized by people. It must be fought by us all, all the time. The key to it is to realize just as any war, their will be both attacks and retaliations, and their will be casualties. Enough individuals fired insults, and enough institutional rigidities and insensitivities where thrown around that a retaliation was made – and one that cost people their lives. The person that keyed his car, the diaper person, the camel jockey person, are wholly responsible by being the ones that fired the first shots, thus causing this man's retaliated. So lets think about where we stand in this 'war' every time we open our mouths. Do you want to fight for one 'side' or the other, or do you want to be a conscientious objector and/or peacemaker?
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. And despite what we were taught as kids, while sticks and stones may break bones, words can break PEOPLE... and there is no retaliation proportional or equivalent to this type of damage – a broken wo/man has no limits as to what they are capable of. So think, every time you say something, A, will I break something, and B, am I ready for the retaliation if something does break?
Monday, November 9, 2009
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Maddeningly Unaware
Awareness is a word that presently lives 'within the box'. Defined, it means: having knowledge; conscious; cognizant, or informed; alert; knowledgeable; sophisticated. To me, an even more illuminating analogy of how it relates to our lives is from the sports and video game world. “Madden” is an American football video game mimicking the top professional league in the US, the NFL. Every team and player in the NFL has their own likeness in the game. Each one is based on the perceived skills of each individual's real life capabilities. This is broken down into a number of different categories, speed, strength, agility, acceleration, toughness, catching, carrying the ball, tackling ability, breaking tackles, throwing power, kicking power, etc. All of which are more or less important for each player depending on their position. But perhaps one of, if not the most important, category is 'awareness'. Speed is not so important for a quarterback who throws the ball nor is 'carrying' for a linebacker who rarely touches the ball, or tackling for offensive players such as a running backs and wide receivers never really asked to stop anyone. 'Awareness' is the one key component of a player's overall grade that greatly affects every player in the game. It is a measure basically of how aware they are of everything going on around them during the course of the game. It is pretty much the only mental indicator in the game and has run throughout the Madden series (now on number 20), and it encompasses a general player's cognitive ability to play the game. Speed, strength, etc. are all important, but awareness is about a players mental ability to be in the right place at the right time, or to even know how to get onto the field of play.
But think of this in our own lives. Imagine if we were all given 'awareness' ratings. Who is it that would assign them? And how much 'awareness' must they have? It is one thing in a specific sport like American football. These players are judged on 16 to 20 games a year and on the specifics of the game by a few people sitting in a room assessing their skills. There is a finite amount of knowledge in and of the sport and it is fairly obvious in these game situations. The people that make the ratings in the game just watch every game (and I'm sure Google the players to find articles that might express 'awareness' capabilities) and grade out each player on all the categories. If they are seen to make mental mistakes, they lack experience, do the wrong thing, run the wrong route or blow an assignment then their awareness ratings would drop. So in this type of game this is somewhat evident – it is their 'awareness' in relation to this one sport. It is not an intelligence meter, or an experience meter, but it is something that includes these perceived characteristics.
So what about in our lives? How would we measure our 'awareness' and who would do it? I mean firstly, 'life' is not a finitely defined game with specific rules. It is an open container ready to be filled with the undefinable intricacies of our individual lives. But it seems to me that if we decided to undertake a judgment like this, we would end up judging our 'awareness' on a very simplified scale based on strict views and 'rules' of society. What would be the highest rating? And how would you judge it? common sense? book smarts? age/experience? The people that where given the task of grading us all would most likely come up with a criteria based on categories: education, life experience, travel, criminality, promotions, etc. They would base everything on a person's ability to navigate and work within the confines of the legal and social scenarios that their immediate world entails. But is this really a good way to measure 'awareness' of our world and 'life'?
The fact of the matter is that we really don't have a clue about our world, but our definition would lie strictly within the confines of what it is that we do (think) we actually 'know'. And this here is where the issue lies. Having 'awareness' of our world would actually be coming to understand that we don't really know much of anything. Does a person recognize and know where the power resting above them hails from. Who or what it is that controls them and their existence. Is it of this world, another? How are we to know? People claim god, some claim politicians, others corporations, the list would be infinite. But that is the point, our awareness of our true lives is minimal. Yet on the sliding scale we would think to grade ourselves on, someone would certainly get a 99 (0-99 scale). Some Nobel prize winning economist or professor for sure. But really, is it that just because they have a great knowledge of the world that we have shown ourselves does that mean they really know anything of time, space, crossing the street, etc?
And what of us, the average people? Do we really know anything? After all, we do not even know anything about the known world that sits in front of our eyes. What is the global percentage of children that will starve this year? How many people live in poverty? What about even your locale area, what are towns like outside of your normal area of usage? What is the poverty level in your town? But those are statistical things not to be felt, smelled, or tasted – think about food; what is in the food you eat? Read the ingredients, do you know what everything is and where it comes from? Do you know about the company that manufactures the product, the ingredients in it or the individual that grew it? What type of agricultural products went into it? If it is meat, was it fed with animal byproducts (usually pig shit), was it doused with pesticides or other chemicals? Is it in-fact bad to eat chemicals? Your clothes, your cars, your friends, your lives. How much do we really know about any of it. We go to a store, we pick up a product based on its appearance or maybe even simply our mother's preference, and we buy it and use it, and buy it and use it. Maybe we switch if something else catches our eye or it doesn't work exactly as we think it should. But do we really know if the person that made our shirt was 9 years old and working 14 hour days and the product was then shipped thousands of miles, or if it was locally produced and/or under respectable working conditions. Do we even care? What are 'respectable' working conditions?
So many people simply want a cheap price for something functional. But again that is the point. We are not aware of the lives we live. We grow up with an ingrained list of awareness priorities. Emotional security, nutritional security, physical security, etc. The thing is though that in the world we live in so much of this comes down to financial security as this is the key to be able to to achieve the others given our current socio-economic system. But this line of thought is not the point I'm trying to make here, the point is that this type of prioritizing has left us mostly disinterested in the rest of the world as it actually surrounds us. Yes, of course there are some that choose to research and learn some of these things (of course this information is only available as it is interpreted and presented by others). Even so, how would these people fare on the 'awareness' scale. Would a local hippie type that knows all there is to know about food and clothing production and where/how the things intricate to their lives are obtained be measured highly on this scale? Unlikely. It would be the academic, not the local hippie buying local and organic and showering every other day. This person is not seen as 'aware' but perhaps as an outlier. Yet they know a great deal of how things seem to work, and perhaps it is exactly their disengagement with society that grants them a level of awareness that even the smartest of academics can't have.
The world is a tricky place that we know virtually nothing about. This is the key to life. We do not know as a civilization, let alone as individuals. We each must learn to recognize our inabilities (and our world's), and at least attempt to rectify our own disinterest and unknowing of the known world. Frankly, we are not aware of anything – foreign or domestic. We do not know how people dance in Thailand, cook in Africa, or view the world in Venezuela. And actually, we probably don't even know how people across the river or in the next town celebrate their birthdays and holidays, or even how the family next door eats dinner. Fact is, we actually have no 'awareness' of life as a whole to make a measurement of, but even if we attempted to on our own sliding and distorted scale, we would all grossly fail as we are all grossly unaware of our lives.
But think of this in our own lives. Imagine if we were all given 'awareness' ratings. Who is it that would assign them? And how much 'awareness' must they have? It is one thing in a specific sport like American football. These players are judged on 16 to 20 games a year and on the specifics of the game by a few people sitting in a room assessing their skills. There is a finite amount of knowledge in and of the sport and it is fairly obvious in these game situations. The people that make the ratings in the game just watch every game (and I'm sure Google the players to find articles that might express 'awareness' capabilities) and grade out each player on all the categories. If they are seen to make mental mistakes, they lack experience, do the wrong thing, run the wrong route or blow an assignment then their awareness ratings would drop. So in this type of game this is somewhat evident – it is their 'awareness' in relation to this one sport. It is not an intelligence meter, or an experience meter, but it is something that includes these perceived characteristics.
So what about in our lives? How would we measure our 'awareness' and who would do it? I mean firstly, 'life' is not a finitely defined game with specific rules. It is an open container ready to be filled with the undefinable intricacies of our individual lives. But it seems to me that if we decided to undertake a judgment like this, we would end up judging our 'awareness' on a very simplified scale based on strict views and 'rules' of society. What would be the highest rating? And how would you judge it? common sense? book smarts? age/experience? The people that where given the task of grading us all would most likely come up with a criteria based on categories: education, life experience, travel, criminality, promotions, etc. They would base everything on a person's ability to navigate and work within the confines of the legal and social scenarios that their immediate world entails. But is this really a good way to measure 'awareness' of our world and 'life'?
The fact of the matter is that we really don't have a clue about our world, but our definition would lie strictly within the confines of what it is that we do (think) we actually 'know'. And this here is where the issue lies. Having 'awareness' of our world would actually be coming to understand that we don't really know much of anything. Does a person recognize and know where the power resting above them hails from. Who or what it is that controls them and their existence. Is it of this world, another? How are we to know? People claim god, some claim politicians, others corporations, the list would be infinite. But that is the point, our awareness of our true lives is minimal. Yet on the sliding scale we would think to grade ourselves on, someone would certainly get a 99 (0-99 scale). Some Nobel prize winning economist or professor for sure. But really, is it that just because they have a great knowledge of the world that we have shown ourselves does that mean they really know anything of time, space, crossing the street, etc?
And what of us, the average people? Do we really know anything? After all, we do not even know anything about the known world that sits in front of our eyes. What is the global percentage of children that will starve this year? How many people live in poverty? What about even your locale area, what are towns like outside of your normal area of usage? What is the poverty level in your town? But those are statistical things not to be felt, smelled, or tasted – think about food; what is in the food you eat? Read the ingredients, do you know what everything is and where it comes from? Do you know about the company that manufactures the product, the ingredients in it or the individual that grew it? What type of agricultural products went into it? If it is meat, was it fed with animal byproducts (usually pig shit), was it doused with pesticides or other chemicals? Is it in-fact bad to eat chemicals? Your clothes, your cars, your friends, your lives. How much do we really know about any of it. We go to a store, we pick up a product based on its appearance or maybe even simply our mother's preference, and we buy it and use it, and buy it and use it. Maybe we switch if something else catches our eye or it doesn't work exactly as we think it should. But do we really know if the person that made our shirt was 9 years old and working 14 hour days and the product was then shipped thousands of miles, or if it was locally produced and/or under respectable working conditions. Do we even care? What are 'respectable' working conditions?
So many people simply want a cheap price for something functional. But again that is the point. We are not aware of the lives we live. We grow up with an ingrained list of awareness priorities. Emotional security, nutritional security, physical security, etc. The thing is though that in the world we live in so much of this comes down to financial security as this is the key to be able to to achieve the others given our current socio-economic system. But this line of thought is not the point I'm trying to make here, the point is that this type of prioritizing has left us mostly disinterested in the rest of the world as it actually surrounds us. Yes, of course there are some that choose to research and learn some of these things (of course this information is only available as it is interpreted and presented by others). Even so, how would these people fare on the 'awareness' scale. Would a local hippie type that knows all there is to know about food and clothing production and where/how the things intricate to their lives are obtained be measured highly on this scale? Unlikely. It would be the academic, not the local hippie buying local and organic and showering every other day. This person is not seen as 'aware' but perhaps as an outlier. Yet they know a great deal of how things seem to work, and perhaps it is exactly their disengagement with society that grants them a level of awareness that even the smartest of academics can't have.
The world is a tricky place that we know virtually nothing about. This is the key to life. We do not know as a civilization, let alone as individuals. We each must learn to recognize our inabilities (and our world's), and at least attempt to rectify our own disinterest and unknowing of the known world. Frankly, we are not aware of anything – foreign or domestic. We do not know how people dance in Thailand, cook in Africa, or view the world in Venezuela. And actually, we probably don't even know how people across the river or in the next town celebrate their birthdays and holidays, or even how the family next door eats dinner. Fact is, we actually have no 'awareness' of life as a whole to make a measurement of, but even if we attempted to on our own sliding and distorted scale, we would all grossly fail as we are all grossly unaware of our lives.
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