Opinion (P.S. Iran has no real defenses)
Now that we live in a world of misinformation and media manipulation, I am scarred of my neighbors. I'm not scared because I think they consciously want to harm me, but because they don't pay attention to what's harming us all. The information age has brought vital information to our feet and what do we watch on T.V.: American Gladiators and Fox News.
I'd be a liar if I said I didn't watch American Gladiators last night, I did, it was awesome. But I also read a bit of Howard Zinn and listened to several presidential campaigns on Youtube. This wasn't hard to do, I got just as much enjoyment out of the latter as I did the former, but there was one unique difference. Zinn and the speeches gave no clear endings and gladiators did.
We have grown lazy in America. It's not that we aren't willing to work but that we aren't willing to be complex, to be unsafe. Bush's speeches are more like American Gladiators that Zinn or a presidential debate, they try to create good versus evil and they give an certain ending. The problem with this is: most things in life don't have certain outcomes! When he calls education "No Child Left Behind" and says it will solve the system, he leaves out the fact education doesn't end, it is chaotic and nonlinear, not solvable.
It's not all him and I hate that sometimes I blame Bush for everything, he is just a figure head and a wall to fling poo onto. The truth is that it is most people, myself included, all want what we want and don't care how it comes. We want a job that pays us $50,000, so we take it with a company that makes plastic things or sells plastic things. We don't ask where the plastic comes from, how it is made, what happens to where the oil was and what effect it will have 100 years in the future because the idea of $50,000 a year feels safe. The truth is that if the world cut off our food supply we'd all be eating a fraction of the food we have now. If the oil wells dried up we'd all be stranded from our loved ones and our jobs. There is less safety in the mundane than there is in middle east. At least Arabs haven't changed the way they live their lives so drastically they can't recognise themselves of a hundred years ago.
What is the solution? I'm not too sure. I think it doesn't come from religion or government though. I think it might come from accepting things as they are and not always to trying to perfect them. In accepting that today we go without so tomorrow we might not have to. I think it comes from self sacrifice and yearning for a simpler society more in harmony with the natural world, but what do I know, I'm only a contestant against the big bad gladiators.
Humanista
(P.S. I would love to read editorials from others...)
I'd be a liar if I said I didn't watch American Gladiators last night, I did, it was awesome. But I also read a bit of Howard Zinn and listened to several presidential campaigns on Youtube. This wasn't hard to do, I got just as much enjoyment out of the latter as I did the former, but there was one unique difference. Zinn and the speeches gave no clear endings and gladiators did.
We have grown lazy in America. It's not that we aren't willing to work but that we aren't willing to be complex, to be unsafe. Bush's speeches are more like American Gladiators that Zinn or a presidential debate, they try to create good versus evil and they give an certain ending. The problem with this is: most things in life don't have certain outcomes! When he calls education "No Child Left Behind" and says it will solve the system, he leaves out the fact education doesn't end, it is chaotic and nonlinear, not solvable.
It's not all him and I hate that sometimes I blame Bush for everything, he is just a figure head and a wall to fling poo onto. The truth is that it is most people, myself included, all want what we want and don't care how it comes. We want a job that pays us $50,000, so we take it with a company that makes plastic things or sells plastic things. We don't ask where the plastic comes from, how it is made, what happens to where the oil was and what effect it will have 100 years in the future because the idea of $50,000 a year feels safe. The truth is that if the world cut off our food supply we'd all be eating a fraction of the food we have now. If the oil wells dried up we'd all be stranded from our loved ones and our jobs. There is less safety in the mundane than there is in middle east. At least Arabs haven't changed the way they live their lives so drastically they can't recognise themselves of a hundred years ago.
What is the solution? I'm not too sure. I think it doesn't come from religion or government though. I think it might come from accepting things as they are and not always to trying to perfect them. In accepting that today we go without so tomorrow we might not have to. I think it comes from self sacrifice and yearning for a simpler society more in harmony with the natural world, but what do I know, I'm only a contestant against the big bad gladiators.
Humanista
(P.S. I would love to read editorials from others...)
posted by friars | Monday, January 07, 2008
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