The powers that be...

“Certain groups like G-77 are not happy when a few people make decisions,” Sergio Serra, Brazil’s senior climate negotiator said. “It’s not an inclusive exercise. Perhaps it can’t be.”

Only in this system my friend, only in this system...

Personal Wars

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?

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.

Breathing through the wrong skin...

So did you ever wonder why it is that we know that if you put a frog in regular temperature water and then start to boil it that it will not jump out of the pot but slowly boil to death?  Well it’s simple.  Because someone thought it would be interesting to boil a frog in a pot.  I have a fundamental issue with this.  Now I understand there is a general argument for the fair and ethical treatment of animals and that is a well documented principle followed by many, and personified by the organization PETA.  So this is no revolutionary ideal.  But the average person is simply thinking about respecting animals and not hurting them.  Maybe they just love their animal and think all should be treated with respect or maybe it is that they have a holistic principle that entails that animals and humans are equal (or at least should be treated equally).  This is a fair start in regards to why the above treatment should not be done.  The bottom line is that an animal’s life is no more or less important than a human beings life.

As human beings – the dominant species on the planet – we collectively believe that we can do as we wish with the world and those in it.  There is no amount of respect, responsibility, or civilization in humanity as a whole.  This does not stop at mere animals, our closest relative, but goes further to all living – and perhaps non-living things – on this earth.  I always find it amusing to hear a vegetarian say that they are against the killing of animals and thus they do not eat meat, but they have no problem with the cutting, killing, and eating of plants.  What is the difference?  Only in our mind is there something different between the two.  We can break down the world in different species, but the problem then arises when we consciously and subconsciously rank them as too order of importance.  People have no problem killing a spider, or a bug of some sort.  “icky” little creatures that inspire fear in many.  So we just kill them.  This is wrong.  I mean it goes without saying that we live in one ecosystem that balances itself through the lives and non-lives of all mater and things in it.  Everything has its place and its role.  Remove something and perhaps something else will step into that role – but at what cost?  And is it sustainable?  This line of inquiry is again simple and obvious for people to grasp, yet this rationale does not seem to be doing the trick as people don’t follow it.

Ultimately, this all comes back to our everyday ‘ranking’ system of importance in the world.  By doing this we are claiming that we as human beings are ‘better’ than other things in the world.  It is odd that if you ask a number of people are they better than another person – I mean 'inherently' and wholly prior to development and socialization (i.e. One person feeling better than a black person because they are white).  A great deal (and hopefully a huge majority) of people would not claim that they are intrinsically better than another human being, but what if you asked them: are you better than a spider, a cockroach, a monkey, what about an amoeba?  I don’t think most people would get past laughing to actually truly answer the question.  It is taken for granted that human beings are the ‘higher’ species on the planet and that we can control – and deserve to control – the rest of the world simply due to our dominant abilities.  But where is the responsibility in this situation (after all 'with great power, comes great responsibility”), where is the civility?  I keep coming back to the idea of civilization.  But I truly believe that this is encompassed in the ability to rise above basic animal instincts, to dismiss the desires to do as you wish, to dominate others, and to act in the greater good of humanity and the world in a 'civilized' manner.

What does this mean though?  “The greater good of humanity and the world.”   People don’t tend to be able to put things in context, to see beyond the world directly in front of their face.  Is this because we are inherently shallow as human beings or because we just have not been socialized or taught to see holistically and/or in terms of the world as it exists itself?  I would say it is because this is not what we are taught to do.  I remember early in a graduate program one professor challenging my depth of thinking on one issue and pushed me to take my thinking wholly and completely outside the box and to creatively go beyond the simple object in front of me.  It hit like a light switch, and all of a sudden I saw things differently.  Why would it be that only I would be the one to experience such a thing and to see things in this context.  I learned this, as many others have.  It is just that we – as a collective social whole – have not been presented with and taught to see contextually in this respect.

We must rise above the narrow view of here and now, and understand that ‘here and now’ are much broader than we generally imagine today.  Only by seeing the world collectively/wholly together and respecting it collectively/wholly together – bugs, plants, animals, bacteria, dirt, etc – can we attempt to show the world, and all it entails, the mutual love that it deserves.

Equally Unequal

Why is it that we talk of wanting equality, yet still use it primarily only as it suits us?  Hopefully I do not have to explain my stances on equality in all aspects of life – including gender – more than my blog already posits – but I will state again at the beginning of this that I truly and wholly believe in the equality of all.  However, I find it amusing that we as people – despite claiming the same ideals – do not in fact hold ourselves strictly to this.

Let us take male female interaction.  Women should be treated equally in the work world, unfortunately they are not.  They still make less money than men in similar positions – a travesty.  This trend is certainly lessening, and this can give us hope.  In life and culture the equal rights movement has come a long way.  Fifty years ago the general stereotypes put women at home, and men as the primary 'breadwinner'.  Women cooked and cleaned, raised children, and did 'woman's work'.  There were cultural roles, taboos, and places that women were not allowed to enter (and I should say that a great deal of the non-western world is still very sadly like this).  Luckily emancipation has decreased some barriers in the West, and at the same time opportunities have greatly increased.  Men are in the kitchen, cooking, cleaning, and doing other work once looked at as for 'women'.  Western culture – young culture and 'progressive' culture specifically – has embraced equality like this.  Yet why is it that some women, while truly benefiting from this and even pushing for it, still insist upon a man asking them out?  That a man should pay for their dinner or their drink?  I can understand these things 50, 100 years ago, etc strictly along pragmatic lines.  If a women didn't have a job, or culturally it was unacceptable for them to 'ask' a man to do something in public, things can be understood.  Yet how is it that today, in 2009 a progressive women would expect a man to pay for her?  If both are equal, neither one predisposed to being 'barefoot and pregnant', then why must these old stereotypes remain?  If women want equality, then they can not pick and choose which parts they want, just as minorities can not either, and men should not pick and choose what powers to give up.  If someone wants equality in the work place, you need to take it at home or out.  Think of it like this.  Gender does not exist.  You walk out of your house and there are two people there.  They are not man or woman, they are two people.  They both (in an ideal world) have the same opportunities, they both bring equally important perspectives and experiences in life to the table.  They both should be there under their own accord, and should be willing to accept each other on completely equal standards.  If women want to go back to having men pay for them, they should be willing to go back to being barefoot and pregnant, just as if men want to go back to dominating relationships, they need to be prepared to give up a females income for the home.

The bottom line is that unfortunately our culture is founded upon inequality.  This is obviously a bad thing, and something we are trying to move away from.  Yet we are doing it selectively and hypocritically in many senses.  Luckily (for inequality only) our economic conditions have quickly put us in a place where we have to find more equality economically whether we want to or not as it has become so tough now to live a life on one income today – let alone one income for a whole family.

So lets do this.  Lets look at everyone as equal (I mean we should have been doing this from the beginning of time anyway).  Men, stop being threatened by strong powerful women – face it, that individual can do things you can't, and perhaps some would even argue that biologically women as a whole can do some specific things better than men (this of course is claimed visa versa as well).  And Women, realize that you should not be beholden to any man.  You have every right to do as you please, as if on an equal playing field – live as you please.  Any interaction is simply about two people coming to the table – not man, not women – two people.

Challenging Love

I just thought of a sports analogy that is ignored in 'real' life (I know this blog is fairly anti-competitive, and this point does not want to take anything away from that stance, so bare with this point please).  In order for someone or something to be the best this status must be proven regularly, repeatedly, and sustained.  This is a simple logical truth regarding competition and ranking.  This point being said, think about what it takes not to rank oneself against others but merely to challenge one's own self.

What is it that makes us sharper?  In sports it is said that you can only get better by challenging yourself, you get better by going against the best.  Challenging yourself daily, or perhaps repeatedly, is the only way to hone, develop, and maintain a skill-set.  I could go on for days about how it is these moments that challenge us that confirm our resolve, make us 'better', stronger, more convicted, etc.  It is essential to keep pushing ourselves or striving to be better if we want to expect consistent of greater things of ourselves and to try to live up to these expectations.  Sports, business, life.  Challenge yourself and your strengths show through and new strengths you didn't know you had come about.  A diamond is created by pressure.  Heard that before?

Now take this line of thought and apply it to relationships.  We get involved in relationships, yet we don't challenge them.  We don't truly test them.  It is only in the face of temptation that a true relationship is tested.  You will not love something that you haven't struggled with or fought for.  But it is not about fighting, it is about testing yourself, challenging yourself.  Why don't we do this as a culture?  It is not viewed as appropriate to spend time with another person if you are involved in a relationship.  There is fear, hesitation, worry.  But why?  Why are we so hesitant to find out if the one we are with is really where we want to be?  We get upset about 'cheating', yet there is plenty of doubt – both scientific and practical – as to whether humans are wholly monogamous creatures.  Society has created a culture that values, rewards, and expects a settling of us into monogamous relationships (case in point legal rewards for marriage, tax breaks, etc.).  What would biology say about this?  Are we not here simply to procreate the species?

This being said, 'wo/man' is said to be a social being and need human to human compassion and caring.  So where is the happy medium?  To me, I think it is about testing oneself, and one's relationships.  If you are involved with someone, don't you want them to know they want to be with you?  Why are they not challenging themselves daily? Weekly? Monthly? Yearly? Etc?  The more people you spend time with the more you realize what you want in life.  To me, I think we should all be looking at things openly.  Life should be about two things.  Honesty, and following what one thinks is the right thing and thus wants to do.  (yes, again this can be seen to conflict with other posts – but it does not.  If society constructs individuals to think more inclusively about society and beyond themselves, then their desires will reflect more of the stuff I have been talking about in other posts).  In relationships, it seems that we end up committing and staying together out of a subconscious belief in duty and responsibility, yet more realistically mostly in failure (as the divorce rates keep rising).  I believe relationships should be about openness, and a contextual understanding that allows us all to realize that we want people to be involved with us because they ultimately want to, not because they have to.  How many people have been or are in relationships that feel confining, or entrapping?  Most people have been at some point, yet could they spend time with other people to either be reaffirmed, or to find a better option?  It is so common to go away and miss someone, or to spend time with someone else, and realize that ultimately the time apart simply shows that you are fine where you are.  “The simple thought of her means more to me than another's presence.”  Good quote, but how do you know until you have been both away and in another's presence?

As a society, we need to open ourselves to being more friendly, more open, and more experimentative.  Nothing is known without trying to know it.  And yet what is the best way to learn, is it by doing it or by not doing it?  I think it takes both.  Just as no athlete will ever reach their peak training on their own, so is the case with human's and relationships.  We will never truly find our place without constant challenge to our current place – both in presence and absence.  Learning through failure is just as important – if not more so – than learning through success.