Haiti and Hope

Just my rambling again, but many of the problems brought on by the earthquake can be solved in a relative cinch if everyone had the right hearts and minds.

3 months for temporary shelter and a year for transitional shelter in Haiti is the reported plan for recovery. How quickly this would all be left to emotional trauma, jarring memories and fodder for historians if we and they all worked together, instead of thinking about the self. I mean, nothing can allay the shock of the massive death toll for the communities, but I’m talking about getting the country’s infrastructure back to what may even be a better existential basis than there was before the earthquake.

And by “thinking about the self”, I mean the people who see items in a dilapidated apartment or destroyed store and hurt other people to get it for themselves instead of sharing the items. I’m talking about the profit and non-profit organizations from every country who swarm to Haiti by the hundreds (good thing) and compete with each other to do services for Haitian residents to get their names in the media, using up time to argue amongst each other instead of helping (bad thing). I mean the government arguing amongst themselves to see who will head the rescue effort and draw up a plan, instead of collaboratively drawing up a plan and just sending whoever is equipped to whatever function to work.

A friend at my church who works in engineering told me one chilly night of the different ways companies build foundations for buildings to stand up. He told me of there being a way to put something like wheels under a building, so when in a natural disaster, the building can just roll back and forth across the land. Or, engineers can put something like a spring under the building, so that when there is an earthquake, the spring can absorb the shock and leave the building intact for the most part. These things can prevent large disasters like the one Haiti has now, but they are costly and mainly given to contracts and projects that can afford them. Anybody with a heart and 7th grade education can see that these things should be standards that go into the construction of buildings in places such as Haiti, India, the U.S. west coast, wherever.

The Haitian government, particularly Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, is saying that they need emergency short-term relief. Housing for the people, safe water to drink and wash in and food. But looters who are still in this competitive mind set, who put three things our pastor talked about last Sunday (Take, First, Do)¹ as their primary motives of action, antagonize the healing process and make things worse.

Besides flying into the Dominican Republic and taking available roads into Jacmel and possibly Port-Au-Prince, what can we do about Haiti from here? We can donate money and supplies. Of course now, there is negligence in that area as well. Money/supplies can sometimes takes years to get to the designated causes. In the meanwhile, things keep decaying. And even when the money gets to wherever, it is seldom fully spent on what it’s supposed to be spent on, in addition to the fact that only a part of the whole sum actually shows up. So things only get half done. Roads are relaid but not sealed. Areas of debris are just left to rot. And no one, for some reason, can account for where the other chunk of money has gone. Sending the money in text, or giving it to representatives of organizations on the street asking for it is great, but I think we should also begin to find ways to see if the cause or organization is holding itself accountable to the promised tasks (somewhere or other, I imagine someone is reminded of Obama with that last sentence).

Whenever there is a disaster, people rush to find out ways to secure their own wealth, which puts national/global/communal security at risk. But I think that, the less you think about yourself, the quicker you will be restored.

Notes:
1) Just take what you want; Me first; Do something just to keep busy

Forced on the Dole

Yesterday, I was talking to one of my bosses, a man of Hong Kong descent who drives from New Jersey to get here in the Lower East Side and manage employees. We began to, or I should say he began to, talk to me about a salesperson’s survival in the individual business we worked for.

The salespeople have a quota, a certain amount of sales that have to be made every month to be considered a worthy salesperson. I think, the (hypothetically) worst salesperson in there sells enough merchandise to make $50,000 – $55,000. To the impoverished and modest of heart, this would be a delicious annual earning [or maybe, just to me]………but it is not quota. There are (in reality) salespeople in there that make six-digit earnings, and others somewhat under that, and under, down to the 50’s. The mid-section of that whole spectrum would be the quota. If after a certain amount of months you rank in the bottom level, a manager takes you into their office to issue you a warning about staying on the bottom ranks, and urges you to be aggressive in attacking customers and forcing money out of their pockets for the sake of your sales increasing. If after another few months your sales do not increase, you’ll be “back out on the dole” as The Streets would say.

Of course, the problem here with the boss’s (who explicitly stated he’s only concerned with money and numbers, as is the person who runs the company) is that this shallow idealism crashes with reality and causes victims inevitably. Only about 10 – 12 customers come into the store per day. Half of those, if even that low of a number, go past the “window shopper” phase and actually buy some of the merchandise. The other half usually are returning stuff or canceling purchases. So, the salespeople, which number about 10, are structurally setup to step on each other for those 5 customers. Systematically, someone is forced to not make the cut for the next round. This kind of working environment is good………no, never good……..valid in a financially prospering nation where someone who doesn’t became some scavenger Spartan salesperson and just wants to make a living can fall and find another job somewhat quickly. Or more easily than they would in this economy, where forcing there to be employees for the cutting floor is ridiculous and anxiety-building.

There was a blog post on the Fox News website about how employers are swamped with hundreds or even thousands of resumes from people answering job posts that those employers put out¹. Some companies have resorted to having programs on the computer that search for keywords in resumes and select those, then throw the rest out. One of the comments written on the post railed about how people who e-mailed applications were losers and that real people should be out networking with big wigs for opportunities. They railed on to say that people that thought things should just be handed to them had a really “false sense of entitlement”. And while I left whoever that was to figure out that this isn’t late 1930’s Germany, I started to think that if people aren’t entitled to a living (shelter, food, works), then this would mean that they’re entitled to being left out on the street to starve and have no input on anything. No voice or action. And if we’re to think that they’re not entitled to anything, we can deduct from this belief the subsequent one that there are people who are born to be meaningless to society. But I digress.

These kinds of beliefs and economic systems are setup for those who enjoy destroying other people’s living to make their own. I think it’s pretty obvious that this needs to change, but I feel like people are so used to things being this way that the word “change” frightens and unravels them, regardless of the fact that they know it would be for the better. Bloody hell, the creature of comfort will always be worse than the civilized person of revolt.

Notes:
1) Why put out an internet post asking people to apply for a job, and then ignore them when they do? Jobs are scarce. If there is an open one and you ask people to apply for it, how many did you think you would get? If you don’t want people to e-mail or fax you their resume, why ask for it that way? Just to see who can get creative with getting your attention? Since when is the job hunt turned into “American Idol”?

Civilsexuality or God and Gays

I think it’s one thing be against people of a certain social type, quite another to deny them their rights. One article I’ve read from the Huffington Post considers that gay marriage shouldn’t even be considered a subject up for democratic vote, on par with requiring Congress to vote on whether Jehovah’s Witnesses are allowed to stand at train stations or go door to door and peddle their “The End is Nigh” pamphlets. You may not like it, but it is a fundamental civil right.

It is pretty stupid and actually not any of anyone’s business as to whether people of the same sex want to get married or not. Even considering it as a sin, how is this even close to being a top priority for healing the world? Will Wall Street re-crash and bankers’ greed recharge if we do not stop gay marriages? Will an influx of gay marriages produce another Hurricane Katrina? Do gay people become part of Al-Qaeda if they marry? Was the Swine Flu produced by homosexuals marrying? You can go ahead and consider yourself officially retarded if it takes you more than a microsecond to answer these questions correctly. I don’t see why gun control isn’t front and center of every news briefing and political blog post, especially after Seung-Hui Cho’s free and flowing access to weapons of swift destruction and his war-path at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007. I don’t see legal and federal fights over the mistreatment and torture of animals at farms that kill them and put them on your plate¹. No, these things are fought in the smallest of media arenas. But, if you stroke the male-dominated society’s libido wrong, then it’s an all out war against you on every T.V., radio, website and book.

I guess then, labeling myself a Christian, I’m charged with the task of stating what Christ thinks about all this. Since no one can possibly and absolutely know this, I’m tasked to state what I think He thinks. Yes, you can sit there and point to each and every verse that says homosexuality is a sin or that it’s wrong for a man and a man to do this, that and the next thing. But this is text in a book that has started to physically exist since the 2nd century, passed through more hands than there are words in the book itself, has had just as many translations by people with a variety of biases, all of which were ping-ponged back through God knows how many languages and cultures who all thought they truly knew what the parables and narratives meant for their historical contexts, etc. A comprehensive person would understand that it can be a bit difficult to take something at face value when considering this (homosexuality meaning man and boy? Rape, like in prison? Sexual abuse? Can gay men be together and just not have sex?). I have not done enough studies to presume a particular context behind what the Bible means by man on man relationships, so I cannot explicitly tell you what Christ thinks.

I can definitely tell you what He isn’t thinking, though.

He isn’t thinking of making laws like the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill proposed by David “Asshole” Bahati in October 2009. If this law were to be passed in Uganda, authorities would be allowed to arrest people doing public displays of same-sex affection, along with people who have HIV or have sexually been with people under 18, and put them to death or life-imprisonment. Since Uganda seems to be ran by people who are frightened of their own sexual confusion, they are trying hard to gain a good majority of support for the bill by painting the picture of gay people as tongue-wagging monstrosities that ride the streets and countrysides in trucks, scooping up fresh kids by the bundles for fresh molestation. I mean, death or jail because a person kissed another of the same-sex in public? Because it’s “against the order of nature²”? Can we say Holocaust? Can we say Neo-Genocide? Can we say Satanic-level persecution? Violent oppression? Corrupt and evil authority? Can we see Christ shaking His head and slapping his forehead saying “Nooo, no, that is not what is meant!”

A long time ago (as I’ve related to you, Amanda), I watched a T.V. special on MTV about a young man who talked about his experience with a particular church as a gay man. If I remember correctly, the church he attended was always kind and genial with him for however long he used to go. One day, he decided to confess to a pastor of his that he was gay. I forget the detailed account after this, but the church arrived at the solution of applying electro-shock therapy to the young man to “cure” him of his homosexuality. They took him to a back room in the church and strapped him down to a table. They attached some sort of apparatus to his penis. Then, they would show him pictures of gay porn, and everytime he got aroused from it, they’d send a severely damaging voltage amount through his genitals. They repeated this process, upping the voltage number everytime he was charged to come back for being “cured” through this “therapy”. The young man walked and talked to the MTV camera about this, stating that after that whole ordeal, he now suffered random blackouts even seizures.
Christ. Is. Not. Thinking. This.

Come on, people. It’s good to be devoted to a Will higher than your own, but to not think for yourself is to say that God made you into a hollow-shelled nothingness. Is to say that He made you for nothing. There is clearly no real logic or justice or God in stripping people from any orientation of their rights or life. Lest you send the message that He created their lives for no reason as well. Although He may be hurt or angered by their actions, God takes pride in all of His creations. Regardless of where they put their genitals. Just take a gander again at this clip and ask yourself who the social monster truly is: a homosexual or the woman in this video?

Notes:
1) In saying this, my own hypocrisy must be noted, as I am a huge fan of cheeseburgers and sausage and bacon. But I am trying to make the transition over to less meat. Much less. Or perhaps finding companies that get their meat from farms that wait for the animals to naturally die before putting Bar-B-Que sauce on them.
2) How so? How natural is it for a man/woman to force themselves to be with a woman/man when they clearly want to be with another man/woman? And if there’s a specific way that nature looks, how come all of these other things outside of that specific way keep naturally happening?

Indecisive Filler

A month. It’s been a month and some change since I’ve posted something on this blog. And not for any reason other than a lack of things to write about. So here, take some rambling.

In a thin fabric of everyday routine, reality likes to punch through with the sharp end of a knife. I was driving home the other day from Astoria back to the Bronx, having just got off the Queensboro Bridge and heading towards FDR Drive, when piercing red and blue flashes start to dance throughout my windows out of nowhere. I routinely just move to the side, since this usually just means that they want to drive up ahead of me, but the reality was that the lights were for me. Policemen show up, knock on my closed window, ask me for my license and registration. I can only pull out the license; registration is somewhere or other in hermitage. They go back to their squad car, lights still blasting through the darkness in my car, and then come back and give me a ticket because the brake light is out. This was annoying, as the brake light had went out weeks ago and then mysteriously started to work again ever since. So it decided to go back out and be a problem in the one moment a pair of cops would notice. This was both annoying and a relief: annoying because they could’ve simply slapped my palm and said “replace your light, bee-yotch”, and a relief because too much “Law and Order”/”CSI: Miami”/”Criminal Minds” made me suspect that they may find some random dead body in my trunk or that they were serial killers posing as cops who enjoyed pulling people over and then shooting them to tidbits.

The following Thursday, Obama decides to show up at the United States Military Academy in West Point and disappointingly announced/explained that he’ll be sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Some of his more popular fan and supporters, including Michael Moore, Oliver Stone and even the reknown former Weather Underground member, college professor and colleague Bill Ayers have spoken out against him. Against this, I should say. I’m at a crossroads about the whole thing. I mean, he made it a specific point to not be like Bush, but now I’ve read reports about him protecting Bush’s policy for illegal wiretapping (when he said he wouldn’t), not closing Guantanamo Bay (which he said he’d close it first thing), not being too active on protecting gays in the military (when he said he’d ban the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy), and making compromises with conservatives on Health Care. And now, his Afghan War.

I don’t know all of the super deep details about it. He says that we are to go over there and quiet-down-now the Taliban. If we don’t, they will plot and scheme and blow us all up again. But when won’t they plot and scheme and blow us up? The libs are saying that he’s continuing Bush and making a terrible decision of going to war in the light of just having received the Nobel Peace Prize. Some say that this is his Vietnam War. He made it one of his key points to come into office and not be this war president, but he’s already going back on promises, although he did also say from the beginning that he would be making some choices we would not agree with. Also, he did set a time limit and a very fine objective to defend the Afghans (alongside Pakistan) and train Afghan soldiers to defend themselves, in opposition to the Texas Fascist who just wanted to “blow s**t up” and his disciples McPain and Stale-lin who wanted to be at war for 100 years¹. This makes sense to me, but at the same time, the whole thing seems like a lost cause and Obamsky really needs to start attending to matters in his homeland.

I imagine the “reality” that may hit many people who campaigned hard for him is that all politicians are the same in office, the difference is just in how they campaign themselves during election time. But this obviously isn’t true either. Doubting everything and everyone is just as stupid as believing everything and everyone, even if you have the experience of being tired of being betrayed by people you have faith in. Obama did help to qualm Russian beef with us left over from the Cold War, as well as signing the Matthew Shepard Act into law; two things I’m sure Bush would’ve used to wipe himself with after using the bathroom. 3 years left. We’ll see the reality of how he carries himself. Meanwhile, excuse me while I tend to this traffic ticket.

Notes:
1) John McCain and Sarah Palin. McCain once said that it would be fine with him if the United States military stayed in Iraq for 100 years. Go google it yourself.

Cultural Rupture

I thought I had become racist. For a second.

A Hispanic woman who did not have extensive English or seeming of much wealth (for lack of a better description) came into my store the other day and I immediately knew she wasn’t going to buy anything. I thought this conclusion came from me starting to breed that terrible mental illness known as racism. But It wasn’t. Of course, I work in a linens-and-furniture retail store and it’s my job to attend to customers in the store as soon as I see them and attempt to sell them merchandise….and I did. She told me she was looking for a circular dining table and we started on our pre-determined path of no fruition. I showed her all that we have, each piece individually costing as much as open heart surgery, and last but not least, the cheapest round table we had, the quality of which matched the price. She, of course, left without buying anything and I stood asking myself why her race was able to tell me that this would happen ahead of time. The answer ended up being that it’s a dynamic consequence of the fact that our store is in a neighborhood that can barely afford anything we sell.

If I had to guess, the President of the company picked the location of this store, a lower class Hispanic neighborhood in the South Bronx, because renting the property would be cheap. It’s built over a sewer which odorously makes itself known to anyone who walks inside. It’s built next to a river that’s so polluted the fish would have better chances of survival if people fed them opium everyday. There are as many rats in the store as there are customers and employees combined. Cheap electric and heating bills. Cheap water bills. All to upkeep a franchise made for the economic class that lives in the Hamptons, Long Island, Manhattan and New Rochelle, while keeping money in the capitalist’s pocket. Makes perfect sense to someone who just considers their own pockets in their decisions. And why should anyone be considerate of anything else when making decisions? Years ago, a decision like this wouldn’t have made any difference in whether the President of the store made his millions or not.

Circa 1999, citizens of the neighborhood were able to afford all of the ridiculously priced things the linens-and-furniture was selling. Italian sheet sets flew off the racks. Classy handmade chandeliers were pulled off the ceiling almost as soon as they were hung. Brand name leather sofas were bought up like iPhones. Two years later, a couple of planes consecutively crashed into the Twin Towers, making an economic vacuum that sucked loads of cash right out of American (and international, subsequently) circulation. A certain Texas-bred Fascist used the media, anger and sentiment over this to direct the country towards more violence. And the war started, with him spending $80,000,000 of taxpayers money per month on this. Then concepts like bad mortgages and housing bubbles bursting started coming into reality. And now here we are. The company is not making any real money, because it’s still busy trying to force high prices down people’s throats.

I’ve heard billions of complaints from customers about the smell of the sewer over which the building is built. Billions of inquiries as to whether the neighborhood is safe to walk through. Plenty of people who can’t make it to the store before closing time because they live and work in Long Island or Manhattan or New Rochelle and then have to travel to the Bronx to shop (without a car). Economically, if we cater to these areas, shouldn’t the store be located there? If we are stationed in the Bronx, shouldn’t the merchandise be affordable to Bronx residents? Then we’d have customers. Even people with money are complaining that things are too expensive, although this could be because they think everything in life should be cheap, regardless of the fact that it’s not really doing them any real damage to purchase things at the prices that are already there.

I originally questioned whether placing this business in poor neighborhood was right or wrong. A co-worker says that question really doesn’t apply to the situation at all since there really isn’t any obligation to the community you enter. I say that you have no business being in the community unless you’re supporting it somehow or are not really affecting it in any major way. Of course, selling furniture and bed sheets is not about any moral obligation at all, but I also don’t see the point of entering a culture without positively adding to it. We could talk about the company hiring local residents so that a few more of them would have some income, but that isn’t even the case.

The co-worker said that you cannot put your beliefs on other people, and that free will should not be violated. So, the company is free to posit itself wherever and run however it likes. This is true, but when you have this as the basis for all other thoughts, it leaves all kinds of room for immoral activity. People who mow down forests to setup corporations and test products on animals and “constitutionally bare arms” that end up in high school shootings solely have the free will argument behind all they do. If the world is to heal somehow, good ideas need to be guiding those actions. Only thinking about how you would materially benefit is never a good idea.

Gender/Family Roles: The Death of the Spirit

The reason why crime still persists, not enough people allowed to be heroes.

So, at my job, one co-worker was telling me and some others about how strange he found the bond between two of his friends to be. They were in a relationship, and he was absolutely boggled at the fact that they still considered themselves to be together, but were not having sex. “What are they doing???” he exclaimed with a shrug. “They been goin’ out all that time, and they ain’t f*** not once?? Nah, if I’m dating a woman, she gonna give me some he** or somethin’. If we ain’t fu***n’, what am I there for?” Me and someone else tried explaining to him that perhaps they weren’t ready for that yet, or that it’s possible that in this day and age, some people still do just enjoy each other’s company. “What the hell are you talkin’ about? What am I hangin’ out with her for if she ain’t givin’ me no pu**y”

Some of you might be focused on the fact that he thought all of what he was referring to absolutely had to happen in a designated deadline of spending time with a woman. But I will say that that is no here or there, only because it’s just one of a list of things some people of each gender still strictly expects from the other.

I was just talking arguing with an old friend over dinner a couple of days ago about the gender specific things she wanted in her own future family. The husband is being charged with throwing money at the house from his job as a construction worker/businessman/one-man army that’s hired to destroy all socialist/communist nations and making himself dumb and muscle-bound in order to be a man (I’m totally exaggerating, she just said she was looking for someone to “protect and provide”). She as a wife would stop having an actual job and would instead stay at home to play with the kids, scrub the floors, cook dinner and be on demand to do what my unwitting co-worker was asking for in the first paragraph of this post (she really just said she’d be taking care of the house and child for a little while [but even after that stage of child-care is done, she'd only return to a "woman-friendly" job]). She, of course, slathered this shallow vision for herself with “I want a marriage founded on God, which is an indestructible foundation”. Ok, I agree with the foundation part, but what she’s describing is the annihilation of any kind of presence of a spirit in that home. What the co-worker shows is a complete negligence of humanity altogether.

Wars, depression, serial killing, famine, and 10 billion other rote forms of destruction to this world that I could list all persist partially because there really isn’t enough people looking at past their own biological makeup for potential for solution-building. They’re too busy sacrificing that potential to attend to infinitesimal-scale things in their own home or listening to jackasses like the Batman in the comic panel above and actually deeming it sensible ideology. Even in people who claim to be progressive, there is this illogical and toxic focus on what role this or that man/woman/alien/cat should be playing. Thus, I will venture forth and say that God is absent from this.

The strength and spirit of Christ was not in the title “Mary’s son“¹ or “Jew” or even “Man” for that matter. It was in the title “Carpenter”, “Teacher”, “Prophet” and “Son of Man (server of the community)”. It is in these roles that he worked fervently to be. He fostered his 12 confidants on the basis of their titles as “Disciples”, not “Men”. He disliked what the Pharisees represented as “Teachers of the Law”.

Thus, the answer to who we truly are, the places where are souls get their expression, does not lie in “man”, “woman”, “wife”, “husband”, “black dude”, “homosexual”, “parent”, “Iraqi”. They lie in the titles “astronaut”, “writer”, “teacher”, “janitor”, “dancer”. There is not a checklist of things you add to a relationship as a woman or a man, but there sure is a journey you can take someone on or go into as a preacher, a musician, a social worker, an origami folder, an environmentalist or fireman. These titles coming together in a relationship are where the Foundation of God can be found and the spirit thrives.

Notes:
1) Go ahead, click on the link in the words “Mary’s Son” above and tell me what you think of it. There’s more than one example of Christ following something bigger than himself and not simply his own bloodline.

Don’t Stunt*

So, this is very basic stuff. Save your money. But, upon thinking of Matthew 6 25-34, it seems to me that the act seeps much more in to the person existentially than I thought. However, in all reality, I wanted to post some new thoughts on the blog. So, if this is old hat, or boring hippie stuff, feel free to go somewhere else. Also, this is written through the eyes of a very cynical and sarcastic person. Thus, many things will be exaggerated to make points.

—————————————————————————————————————-

I’ve been wondering how the hell people are able to travel to London, Africa, Mars, Saturn and other solar systems on their spare time without a single piece of copper to their name. I’ve read of novelists (actually just two, “Shantaram”’s Gregory David Roberts, who was an Australian criminal and probably hitched every plane or boat ride he got, and one of my favorite authors, Roberto Bolaño) who have been all over the world while being stark-raving poor. Everyone assumes it’s in the drive to get more money. To get a higher paying job. To rob more banks per week or hack a few more checking accounts. Win more hands at the AC or LV crap tables. Play more lottery tickets. Sell more silly, insubstantial hip-hop songs for download to the Sidekick/Facebook teen ignorance-is-bliss masses. But the ability to travel or live an enjoyable life doesn’t necessarily come from getting more money, but spending less of the amount you already receive.

A job isn’t disqualified as a good job because it doesn’t pay you enough. I mean, with this pending, you can get a second one or marry rich (I joke. Don’t do that). But if you’ve found your niche in the labor world, I’d highly advise against leaving it for any reason other than it not being your niche anymore. Nowadays, your job is the primary source of survival, and if you found one that you like and is about something good, that is an occupation you should grip with the strength of The Hulk. Yes, there is a lot of people who are just glad to have a job…..or at least they say they are. But even they are picky at what they want to do. I know people at the absolute bottom of the barrel that do not just do any piece of labor handed to them, even when it seems like they may be good at it. A luxurious lifestyle of choice is infused in all of us. Even the homeless and poor refuse food they don’t want, although there’s obviously something to be said about this².

Anyway, I think that the solution to this is a revolt against economic entities that try to corner society’s needs and then charges top dollar for it. Against corporations and companies that do their best to employ the most amount of labor for the least amount of money. And that is to throw the luxurious lifestyle away.

I was thinking in terms of being able to depend less and less on that job as time passes, as well as you developing a strength of spirit and mind over the urges of the flesh.

A luxurious lifestyle can consist simply of being able to buy a huge bottle of alcohol every two days, or taking a taxi everywhere you go (I’m sorry, this is not a wasteful practice I understand, so it will get the label of ’stupid’ from me). Or upkeeping the rims and soundsystem on your Lincoln Navigator, making the value of your car skyrocket over the cost of your house or child (I joke). Of course, you can keep this lifestyle if you’re rich and can afford to pay $10,000 for customized Snickers bars. Per day. Per meal even. But this easily permeates everything in your life, and pretty soon you won’t think of/do anything for yourself, which explains many of the upper-class figures you see on T.V., devoid of basic wisdoms such as tying your own shoes and knowing what a Native American or Chicken of the Sea is. You create your own prison of comfort in many ways. You stay where you are. You keep doing what you keep doing, thinking what you keep thinking. You do not grow. Even if you go somewhere else foreign, it’s only with the presupposition that there is personal space for you to keep being you.

Christ says not to worry about the clothes on your back or if food will come. Others will tell you that this means to just throw yourself out into the world and be reckless with your own resources and don’t worry. Just go outside and do what is that you do and, if you have a faith, a huge Caucasian hand will smack you with a box of millions and say “here you go!” to replenish your filthy lifestyle, and then leave. Others will also tell you that it goes against logic or faith to worry. Technically, it may go against faith, but this is as expected. A being who is omnipotent would expect you to be this way exactly. I think the message is, if you are doing what you’re supposed to be doing, investing some of your time in what you’re supposed to be investing in, good fruit will come. Be focused on the grace and talents God has given you, the culture of sustainability, of community, and others things that will appear in the “The More You Know” advertisements on NBC, and our wealth, particularly in the spiritual aspect but in others as well, will grow. Forget the $5 frappuchino every other day and just get a regular coffee. Forget eating out every week and eat out every other week. Just stop buying sneakers or shoes if your closet already has at least 12 pair that you haven’t worn yet (there is no good reason at all why someone would keep this up. NO good reason). At the same time, pursue the opportunity to be something in the world.

Notes:
*Reference to the song “Stunt 101″ by the rap group G-Unit.
1) I am not at all saying that this is some sort of excuse to not attend to them. If anything, we should learn some sort of discernment concerning this. I was “dissed” two Sundays ago when I offered a woman on the street food and she looked at me like I was asking if I could probe her brain for Iraqi government secrets, then said “no thanks” and immediately went back to sleep. Regardless of how poor or down someone is, we must still respect their choices. Also, just because someone is without a job doesn’t mean they should just take whatever is handed to them. Makes no sense to work at something that is absolute, downright torture. Or demeaning. I cannot blame anyone for wanting to keep their dignity over surviving. I can be ok with judging someone who tosses away morals in order to make a living.

Technology = Spirit?

A week or two back while at work, the screen on my G1 broke. It’s an slide open-and-close phone, as you would see if you clicked on the link I provided in the G1 phrase in the previous sentence. I’m not really sure what happened, nor would it be important. When it was closed, the phone would freeze. I’d have to turn it off and back on in the open position to get it to operate: a situation that immediately called for a replacement. I felt a sharp despair.

Although I’m not socially networking 24/7, I felt thrust out of all important loops in life because I no longer (really) had access to Twitter and Facebook on my phone. At least until the 3 to 5 business days passed before receiving the replacement unit. I tried to tell myself that not being able to see the address of whoever’s birthday party/barmitzvah/goat-sacrifice event I had that night was a justifiable reason to be genuinely pissed that my phone died, but it was of no use. I was immaturely angry and felt helpless. I started to ponder what this suggests about our generation, or today’s world, especially in the light of T-Mobile representatives rotely telling me “yeah, I hate when that happens, too. You feel like you’ve lost your whole life. Let’s get that fixed as soon as possible.” I thought that the beginning of all those hyper sci-fi worlds we’ve read of in Philip K. Dick narratives and Neal Stephenson writings has very much arrived.  Meaning that everything that has even the slightest importance in worldly matters will only fill space on the internet, and will be as tangible as you imagine them to be as you stab the keys on your computer’s keyboard.

Anything that we have to affirm in this world will continually/ultimately be filtered through a wall post, or someone else’s MP3s on our homepage, or comments on someone’s status or a tagged picture. I’m sure the technological avenues will continue to develop. But, speaking as a person who is not a fan of live interaction with people, there is something to be said for it……….

Survival or Life………

Afore named practice, perfectly captured.

Matthew 6:25-34

Very interesting. A bit more depressing and angering, but still interesting I guess.

Currently, the newspapers tell me the filthy Repubs are fighting and protesting Obama over him wanting to use Universal Health Care, tax medium and large employers who do not provide health care to their employees, and use a single payer health care system¹, due to it seeming quite “socialist” in structure. People are purportedly protesting at town halls, outdoor meetings and the like. The liberals are angry with the concessions he’s proposing or actually making, I don’t remember which.

Meanwhile, at my job, I had a conversation with my idiot Communist Eastern European manager. During a sale we’re to have, she expressed that she wished employees were forced to work from some ungodly hour in the morning until 8 or 9 at night, always standing and running around to force customers to buy merchandise they obviously can’t afford, without breaks or anything in between.

I told her what she said was disturbing. She said “my problem” was that I don’t go after every opportunity to make money, not aggressive enough, because of morals or whatever (her words). I’m supposed to be all about² survival. All this from a woman who needs help just pulling paper from copy machine jams, and has had more complaints from customers than I can count. All this to me, who probably has been working here before she learned how to spell the term “labor laws”, who has never been greedy or aggressive about sales and does just fine.

I told her her problem is that she thinks we’re all supposed to be a bunch of bloodthirsty creatures clawing at each other’s throats for every possible 2 cent sale we could force out of people. She says that’s not true, and then tells me to forget what she said and just do whatever I want, which is basically the opposite of everything she wants me to do. I said ok, getting on that right away.

Everybody wants to survive (to kick others aside to make sure they have enough money for keeping up appearances), but no one wants to live (to help each other). I’d bet money that you’d find this paradigm at the root of each and every single problem in the world.

1) A system where money is taken from our taxes, collected by the government or some public administrative service, and distributed nationally amongst the doctors. This is instead of the doctors relying on the patients directly to make their salaries.

2) You do need to survive, but the struggle for individual survival should never take precedence over living your life (which for the idiots, does not simply mean just breathing, but affirming your being).

Individually Individualized Individualism

¹³“When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say the Son of Man is?’ ¹⁴They replied, ’some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ ¹⁵‘But what about you?’ he asked. ‘Who do you say I am?’ ¹⁶Simon Peter answered. ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.’ ¹⁷Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in Heaven.

–Matthew 16: 13-17

“You critics like to criticize,
but couldn’t visualize,
individual’s lives
through a criminal’s eyes,”

–Eminem¹

So, I am once again reminded of a general rejecting ethic of individualism in society and in my church. A little while back, I wrote about a woman I went on a few dates with who claimed to be individualist, but was not this at all. And even in my church, though the majority of the congregation² means well and does indeed welcome other people’s presences and participation in events and services (their hearts are correct), there is a tiny, tiny piece of group mentality that still, by nature, rejects assertions/notions that seem to stray too far from what Christ is about. Please note that I said “seem to”…..to them, that is.

There is also this infesting phenomena of cliques, groups of people that work (consciously or subconsciously) towards being socially exclusive, forming in the church. Understandably, the church is located in Manhattan, a city completely symbolic of what I’ve described in Note 2. And so, being surrounded by an infinite number of things strange and new³, it would be relief to find people that are from the same background and singular culture as you are and to stick with them for comfort. Perhaps the run-off stream of emotion from this is the fear of judgment or persecution or mockery or condescendence they’d receive from putting themselves out there to people of cultures that are different. Perhaps they’ve been hurt in the past or have pieces of personal history that they believe would bring public shame or mockery. Whatever it is, their situation is obviously lacking the notion of God’s glory and Grace, key elements in individualism. In addition, the church administration is working for the place to be of inclusivity that welcomes people of all viewpoints and emotions, and the cliques hurt this goal directly.

But I digress. If secular readers have not flipped to another web page by now, I thank you for you time. So far, it appears to me when the general person thinks of individualism, they picture either the inconsiderate, destructive capitalist who just goes around stomping, stealing and cutting through everyone else possessions to make a large stash of their own (for a great visual of this, play “BioShock” on the XBox 360. Or look at George Bush). Or they picture the noisy, emo anarchist who works to blow ideals into ash for the sole purpose of causing discomfort, confusion, despair or even pain. Now, while these caricatures unfortunately do exist, it is ridiculous to paint this picture on each and every single person who wants to use a bit of your resources for another end⁴ or to cause you to look back at yourself and ask questions. The rational individualist does these things for good reason or to good ends.

The point of individualism is to go against the mind that treats every man, woman, Black, Chinese or Australian with the same broad stroke of human application. To end the monumentally absurd notion that what applies for one white man, one Indian woman, one black boy, one purple alien, etc. applies for all of that biological breed. ⁵ Individualism recognizes in each and every single person their talents, struggles, grief, complexes, and guides them to a better place based on those elements.

Somebody could argue: “well, if this is done according to this person, and that is done according to that person, and everyone is just doing their own thing, how would there be any unified whole to progress?” But just because each and every individual existential case is recognized and supported doesn’t mean that there can’t be a transcending whole that people adhere to. Individualism recognizes the key talents in each person that adds to that whole. So, the first person can focus on the fact that 50 Cent’s lyrical skill is that of a drunk baby sheep with autism. The second person could argue that selling C.D.s with nothing on them but Bill O’Reilly ⁶ listing hundreds of ways in which people can kill themselves with homemade poison would probably do better for the sake of Hip-Hop as a culture than what 50 Cent is doing. The unified whole they both contribute to is the fact that 50 Cent has no business on anyone’s television, radio, wall, movie screen or mind.

Up there in the book of Matthew, Simon Peter was glorified because he came to know God himself, and not through a bunch of images and concepts that other men told him. He didn’t tell him to talk to the most voluminous or popular group that worships Me and make sure you do things the way they do it. He said He was proud that Simon came to know God himself. We should all be doing the same, and respecting and learning from each other what the other has “come to know”. Perfect world peace or whatever will not come immediately after adopting this approach, but there will then be a tangible welcoming community.

Notes:
1) The point is, he painted the picture of a group of people who could place themselves in other people’s shoes. You can take or leave the “criminal” part.
2) This is not necessarily their fault. I, myself must always remember that they come from a more culturally traditional and homogenous background and atmosphere where values and emotions and thoughts are handed to you by elders to have. Where as I was raised in the city, a thriving thing that is culturally varied by hundreds or even thousands of shades, and values and emotions and thoughts are ascertained through self-discovery.
3) Another difference: the rural person is usually encouraged to stay away from the “strange and new”, while the urban person knows that if there is to be peace in the Metropolis, the strange and new must be embraced.
4) I speak of the NGOs or the Non-Profits who want to use your money to preserve a particular arctic area or rainforest or species, or perhaps campaign in Civil Rights.
5) In addition to the note in my last post, this ethic could also be argued as part of the basis for violent insurrections, revolts and school shootings.
6) Right-wing political commentator, author, T.V. show host, and all-around waste of time.