This photo always makes me think of this time of year for some reason. It's on the wall above my desk.
There is so much to be thankful for. Thankful is not enough. Gratitude. Abundance. Abundant. Gratitude.
I can't help but think that we've somehow gotten it all wrong. Being thankful is good yes. But is abundance and the horn of plenty in life something to be celebrated - when so many are having such a difficult time on this planet?
I can't help but keep thinking the holiday might be rendered more meaningful as a holiday to fast...not feast. A holiday to give to those who are hungry right now. Those who can't afford a luxurious turkey dinner with all the trimmings.
I can't help but wonder. Is this guilt that I'm feeling as a side-dish with my gratitude in this life? Or is the the salty sting of shame? Next year I may choose to go without - and volunteer at a homeless shelter.
Once again, National Tango Day (Argentina, and globally), December 11, has come and gone without fanfare, at least with regard to this humble blogger. Not just yesterday, but last year as well - not a peep. I just couldn't pull anything out of my proverbial fedora, couldn't come up with anything of any value myself. I Googled around, feebly, looking for an official website, announcement, press release, something, anything to post to mark the day.
But nothing. Nothing came. I pondered this day for a week or so, my computer calendar popping up with a reminder each day, but still nothing.
There is the "Global Milonga" event that uses December 11 - ostensibly in celebration of the National Tango Day or Day of Tango or Dia del Tango - but their mission appears to be more globally oriented, calling attention to the environment, "celebrating Tango's ability to unite and transform" - with this year's theme being to planting trees in the ravaged and struggling country of Haiti.
A good and noble cause, but not what I was looking for.
We had planned to go to a milonga last night, after a very small dinner party with a close friend. I figgered that would be my own little celebration, my own private acknowledgment of the day, to dance a little tango with my love in my arms in honor of this love my tango. But it was not meant to be. Chopin played on a grand piano, with a glass of vino tinto trumps tango. Every time.
So, this morning, booting myself up on Facebook, I was pleased when I read Alberto Paz' piece honoring the day. I couldn't have even come close to anything like this, and Alberto was gracious enough to allow me to re-post it here in its entirety.
I love the natural and innate flow of the Universe, of tango, of this blog, of my life. Everything always seems to come together, falling into place as it was meant to, as it wants to, as it has to. Natural and without force, guided by love and friends and friendship and good, well intentioned energy. The world is as it should be. Mostly. But that, my friends, is the subject of another post, and as usual, I am digressing.
Based out of my childhood home of New Orleans, Louisiana, Alberto is well known for his Planet Tango website and greatly appreciated for his tango lyrics translations, now at Letras de Tango. He's also coming back strong after a serious health scare. We were all worried about him, and the word is he's feeling much better and feeling strong enough to dance again. I'll speak for all of us and extend well wishes to him (and to Valorie) in his continued recovery. They have both been to hell and back - a big Texas hug from me.
So, without further ado, and thanks again Alberto, and take good care of that ticker...
When The Tango Became Music Posted by Alberto Paz on Sunday, December 12, 2010 at 12:21am
Nearing the end of the first thirty years of the twentieth century, every orchestra sounded more or less the same way as if the original sound born out of many sounds had become a long road to musical boredom. Along the way had traveled the heroic itinerant trios that perched on the corners of tough neighborhoods, the artistic innovation that brought the incorporation of the bandoneon, and the legendary quartets.
To be fair, every ensemble had a leader and everyone attempted to add a bit of his own personal touch, but in general, the styles of the orchestras were so similar that it was hard to tell apart the works of Vicente Greco, Juan Maglio Pacho, Roberto Firpo, Francisco Canaro or Augusto Berto.
Julio De Caro, whose birthday on December 11 contributed to the designation of the date as National Day of Tango in Buenos Aires, broke ranks with the traditional style and led a genuine opening into renovation, a revolution that saved the tango from oblivion. Yet, De Caro did not discard what others had done before. His typical sextet gave new life to some of the greatest creations of Eduardo Arolas and Agustin Bardi.
They amalgamated into a genial coexistence with the new found beauty of the romantic melodies emanating from the creative muse of Juan Carlos Cobian, Osvaldo Fresedo, and Enrique Delfino.
During the early days of the twentieth century very few people stayed in school beyond the third grade and illiteracy in Buenos Aires was very high. Thus the music of the tangos of that period suited very well the simply minds of the audiences. When mandatory public school was established, the popular culture grew up and the music of the tanguitos of Arolas began to be insufficient for the larger intellectual capacity of the new audiences.
This generational change of guard led the Argentine Tango to a musical evolution that paralleled the cultural evolution of the porteño. The sounds of a changing Tango continued to be Tango, much in the same way that an educated porteño continued being a porteño.
History has appointed Julio De Caro, the supreme priest of the major renovation vanguard that took place in the mid 1920’s. The word vanguard had been used mostly in military lingo to identify what is up front, at the leading edge of the battlefield. With the stellar appearance of Julio De Caro, the history of the Tango was divided in two major hemispheres, the pre and post De Caro era. At the helm of the renovation, the sexteto tipico lead by Julio De Caro paved the way for the vanguardistas who continued to advance, faithful to their commitment to always be ahead of the rest.
The concepts and style which have become known as integral parts of the Decarean school, have constituted a standard by which all instrumental renovation of the Tango has been measured, both in terms of authenticity and naturalness. In very simple terms, the Decarean concept was to embellish the melody of the Tango.
In his memoirs, Julio De Caro remembers the time when, as a third violin for one of Cobian’s recording sessions, he found a section of one of the Tangos to be very poor. With no time to write a new arrangement, De Caro decided to add a counterpoint with the intention of embellishing the melody. This addition had very good acceptance but as Cobian found out about the daring modification that De Caro had done, he admonished him reminding him about who was the boss.
This reprimand in lieu of a praise was enough for 24 year-old De Caro to leave the Cobian sextet. He took with him bandoneon players Pedro Maffia and Luis Petrucelli, called upon his brother Francisco to play the piano, drafted Leopoldo Thompson (the inventor of the canyengue sound effect) to play the bass and brought yet another brother, Emilio as a second violin.
Historian Luis Adolfo Sierra has written perhaps one of the most celebrated hyperbole about the De Caro tendencies, “the harmonic accompaniment of the piano, the phrasing and variations of the bandoneons, the counterpoint of the violin knitting melodies of pleasant contrast with the central theme, plus the piano and bandoneon solos expressed with a harmonic and sonorous richness never heard before then, are some of the most valuable contributions that those real innovators introduced in the execution of the Tango.”
Jose Gobello says that what it is most recognizable of the De Caro sextet, is the intention to synthesize the insolence with the romanticism, the rusticity of the outskirts with the refinement from the conservatories. While Julio was best represented by the cheeky twist in (listen to Mala Junta), his brother Francisco embodied the romantic flair of (listen to Flores Negras).
Thanks to Julio De Caro the destiny of the Tango was also in the music, not just in the dance or the singing.
Matthew Taylor explores the meaning of 21st century enlightenment, how the idea might help us meet the challenges we face today...in a cool animated video...
A little something I ran across whilst Googling to find out the percentage of the U.S. population [6% of world population] versus the the percentage of world energy resources we use [40%]...I'll need to double check, but I think we are a smaller percentage now, and use a larger percentage of resources...these figures were from 1978...gotta run...
The Haudenosaunee Message to the Western World
from Basic Call to Consciousness
The Haudenosaunee, or the Six Nations Iriquois Confederacy, has existed on this land since the beginning of human memory. Our culture is among the most ancient continuosly existing cultures in the world.
In the beginning, we were told that the human beings who walk about on the Earth have been provided with all the things necessary of life. We were instructed to carry a love for one another, and to show a great respect for all the beings of this Earth. We are shown that our life exists with the tree life, that our well-being depends on the well-being of the vegetable Life, that we are close relatives of the four-legged beings. In our ways, spiritual consciousness is the highest form of politics....
The original instructions direct that we who walk about on the Earth are to express a great respect, an affection, and a gratitude toward all the spirits which create and support Life. We give a greeting and thanksgiving to the many supporters of our own lives-the corn, beans, squash, the winds, the sun. When people cease to respect and express gratitude for these many things, then all life will be destroyed, and human life on this planet will come to an end....
Our essential message to the world is a basic call to consciousness. The destruction of the Native cultures and people is the same process which has destroyed and is destroying life on this planet. The technologies and social systems which have destroyed the animal and the plant life are also destroying the Native people. And the process is Western Civilization....
The processes of colonialism and imperialism which have affected the Haudenosaunee are but a microcosm of the processes affecting the world. The system of reservations employed against our people is a microcosm of the system of exploitation used against the whole world. Since the time of Marco Polo, the West has been refining a process that has mystified the peoples of the Earth.
The majority of the world does not find its roots in Western culture or traditions. The majority of the world finds its roots in the Natural World, and it is the Natural World, and the traditions of the Natural World, which must prevail if we are to develop truly free and egalitarian societies.
It is necessary, at this time, that we begin a process of critical analysis of the West's historical processes, to seek out the actual nature of the roots of the exploitative and oppressive conditions which are forced upon humanity. At the same time, as we gain understanding of those processes, we must reinterpret that history to the people of the world. It is the people of the West, ultimately, who are the most oppressed and exploited. They are burdened by the weight of centuries of racism, sexism, and ignorance which has rendered their people insensitive to the true nature of their lives.
We must all consciously and continuously challenge every model, every program, and every process that the West tries to force upon us. Paulo Friere wrote, in his book, the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, that it is the nature of the oppressed to imitate the oppressor, and by such actions try to gain relief from the oppressive condition. We must learn to resist that response to oppression.
The people who are living on this planet need to break with the narrow concept of human liberation, and begin to see liberation as something which needs to be extended to the whole of the Natural World. What is needed is the liberation of all the things that support Life-the air, the waters, the trees-all the things which support the sacred web of Life.
We feel that the Native peoples of the Western Hemisphere can continue to contribute to the survival potential of the human species. The majority of our peoples still live in accordance with the traditions which find their roots in the Mother Earth. But the Native peoples have need of a forum in which our voice can be heard. And we need alliances with the other peoples of the world to assist in our struggle to regain and maintain our ancestral lands and to protect the Way of Life we follow.
We know that this is a very difficult task. Many nation states may feel threatened by the position that the protection and liberation of Natural World peoples and cultures represents, a progressive direction which must be integrated into the political strategies of people who seek to uphold the dignity of Man. But that position is growing in strength, and it represents a necessary strategy in the evolution of progressive thought.
The traditional Native peoples hold the key to the reversal of the processes in Western Civilization which threaten unimaginable future suffering and destruction. Spiritualism is the highest form of political consciousness. And we, the Native peoples of the Western Hemisphere, are among the world's surviving proprietors of that kind of consciousness. We are here to impart that message.
Taken from:
A Basic Call to Consciousness, Akwesasne Notes, Mohawk Nation, 1978 (revised edition, 1981, third printing 1986).
The whole book is available on line at cinetopia.net, what follows is a summary of the book, numbers refer to page numbers in the book.
1 Male and female leaders chosen from clans, must be by unanimous vote. Leaders must possess both political and spiritual integrity. They are chosen for life, but can be removed for acting against the will of the people. "It is the belief of our people that all elements of the Natural World were created for the benefit of all living things and that we, as humans, are one of the weakest of the whole Creation, since we are totally dependent on the whole Creation for our survival."
8 Governments formed to establish tranquility. Not just law and order, but peace. Peace blends power, reason, and righteousness. People with the purest and most unselfish minds can have righteousness - when they put their minds and emotions in harmony with the flow of the universe and the intentions of the Good Mind or the Great Creator. Toss out thoughts of prejudice, privilege, or superiority. Recognize that Creation is intended for the benefit of all equally.
Reason is used to settle complicated issues without the use of force. Force should only be used in defense against force. 9 Power to enact true peace is the product of a unified people on the path of righteousness and reason. Five nations joined together, and their separate lands were joined, to eliminate hunting disputes. 10 Peacemaker assigned people to clans, and their relationships were so close that they didn't marry others in the same clan of another nation.
11 They created advanced participatory democracy, not representative. Peoples and individuals were recognized. So were folks who were not members of the host nation - as long as they observed the rules of non-aggression and didn't try to create factionalism among the people.
47 People in Six Nations saw that vertical hierarchy creates conflicts, so they organized society to avoid it. Lands were held in common to avoid conflict. Anyone who entered Haudenosaunee land was guaranteed safety. Universal rules about the taking of game. 48 Haudenosaunee have long term perspective, which sees modern man as an infant - the elders see the young child is committing incredibly destructive folly. 49 We believe that all living things are spiritual beings. We walk about with great respect, for the Earth is a very sacred place.
50 Euros began domesticating, herding, and breeding animals. Previously, humans depended on the reproductive powers of nature - now they took this power themselves. 51 First came pottery kilns, then ovens that could smelt metals. Iron used for tools to cut trees, made into charcoal, to make metals. Iron plow, pulled by domesticated horses. Fewer people needed on the land, displaced - rise of cities, trade, the end of the European forest. 52 Western civilization is on a death path, and this culture has no viable answers.
53 It is typically the nature of the oppressed to imitate the oppressor. We must continuously challenge and resist every program and process of the oppressors. 54 The Haudenosaunee constitution - the Great Law of Peace, is the oldest functioning document in the world, which contains freedom of speech and religion, the rights of women, separation of powers, checks and balances. Colonists learned this stuff from natives.
57 "The dispossession of the Native people was accomplished by the Europeans in the bloodiest and most brutal chapter of human history. They were acts committed, seemingly, by a people without conscience or standards of behavior." US and Canadian governments continue to deny genocide. 64 Euros stimulated conflicts between natives. Natives got into fur trade, out of necessity, to get guns to protect themselves. 65 Missionaries sent in, carrying message, splitting off individuals from families, families from villages, villages from nations, one by one. 74 Colonizers tell political histories - King Dudley conquered Smithtown in 1600. Way more important is techno history - agriculture, domestication, irrigation.
75 "The current crisis which the world is facing is not difficult for people to understand. In the Western Hemisphere, the United States with six percent of the world's population, uses 40 percent of the world's energy resources. The world's supply of fossil fuels is finite, and it is estimated that within 30 years, at the present rate of consumption, the peoples of the world will begin to run out of some of those sources of energy, especially petroleum and natural gas. As the planet begins to run short of cheap energy, it is predictable that the world market economy will suffer and the people of the world who are dependent on that economy will suffer likewise. The reality of world population growth is placed beside the reality of the current relationship of energy resources and food production, it becomes obvious that worldwide famine is a real possibility."
77 Liberation movements don't understand the problem - the need to become independent of the world economy. It doesn't matter if Death Corp or the People's Revolutionary Cooperative grows the sugar - export crops don't meet the needs of the indigenous population.
"It will be obvious to many non-Western peoples that it is the renewable quality of earth's ecosystem which makes life possible for humans beings on this planet, and that if anything is sacred, if anything determines both quality and future possibility of life for our species on this planet, it is the renewable quality of life."
78 "The renewable quality - the sacredness of every living thing, that which connects human beings to the place which they inhabit - the quality is the single most liberating aspect of our environment. Life is renewable and all the things which support life are renewable, and they are renewed by a spiritual element that connects us to reality and the manifestation of an eagle or a mountain snowfall - that consciousness was the first thing which was destroyed by the colonizers."
"Many of our communities are struggling against colonialism in all of its forms. We have established food coops, survival schools, alternative technology projects, adult education programs, agricultural projects, crafts programs, and serious efforts at cultural revitalization are underway." (published in Akwesasne Notes,"Rooseveltown:New York", 1978).
Out of many, one. This Latin phrase is the unofficial motto of The United States of America. Originally it was based on the thirteen colonies becoming one country. Now it seems to mean the many peoples of the U.S., of the entire world really, all coming together as one. The melting pot theory. "Can't we all just get along?" kinda thing.
This post stems from a recurring memory over the past several months - perhaps even a year. A recurring memory of something forgotten. Someone forgotten. Not so much a memory but a nagging "the damn thing keeps popping into my head and I keep trying to remember but to no avail" kinda thing. All the while, it was right here buried in the archives of this blog - posted almost two years ago in June of 2008.
Yesterday, I Googled for almost an hour - "photographer who illustrates large quantities" ... "photographs that conceptualize large values" ... and many variations ... illustrative ... photograph/s/er/y ... "how much in a millon/billion/trillion?".
I was beginning to get frustrated, drawing upon nothing, not getting big numbers, not getting any meaningful returns in my searches. I almost gave up. (I wish I could remember the successful search string, but I can't now.)
I found the post from before a few minutes ago - on whim entering his name to search my blog. And there it was. Chris Jordan.
Chris Jordan. A UT [University of Texas] alum - UT, right here in Austin. Small world.
So Chris is an activist artist. Or activist photographer. Or activist/artist/photographer. He lets the image tell the story. He lets the viewer begin to get their head around the numbers that his images represent. The numbers they represent, and the world issue that they represent.
In this case, his 2009 work titled "E Pluribus Unum" is a five story high (I would say 4 stories) 45 foot x 45 foot mandala. That's 13.7 meters x 13.7 meters. The lines of the mandala are actually the names of 1,000,000 [one million] "organizations around the world that are devoted to peace, environmental stewardship, social justice, and the preservation of diverse and indigenous culture". In 10 point font.
If you were able to cut out all the names and lay them end to end, they would stretch 27 miles, or 142,560 feet or 43km. In 10 point font.
Lots of organizations - the total number is unknown. Jordan's work is based on Paul Hawken's estimation [in his book "Blessed Unrest" on the "movement movement"] that there are between one million and two million such organizations. Paul Hawken is named as a collaborator on the piece.
Chris Jordan is prolific. The TED talk I posted two years ago in 2008 was titled "Picturing Excess", and is based, I think, on his project "Running the Numbers :: An American Self-Portrait".
He came out with "Running the Numbers II :: Portraits of Global Mass Culture" in 2009. He has one from 2005 on Hurricane Katrina's aftermath titled "In Katrina's Wake :: Portraits of Loss from an Unnatural Disaster". And "Intolerable Beauty :: Portraits of American Mass Consumption 2003-2005".
They are all on his website at www.chrisjordan.com. I would have given the individual links to each work, but his website is not set up that way. You'll have to go clicking and reading and viewing on your own.
The post I did before was on his TED Talk - the "Picturing Excess" one. I included this quote which I lifted from the lecture:
"I have this fear that we aren't feeling enough in our culture today . There is this kind of anesthesia in America at the moment. We've lost our sense of outrage, our anger, and our grief about what is going on in our culture right now, what is going on in our country, the atrocities that are going on in our names around the world....they've gone missing, these feelings have gone missing..." [Chris Jordan]
Here it is - from February of 2008:
Be sure to check out his website and look at the all of the "Running the Numbers" works.
Here is the E Pluribus Unum work:
E pluribus unum. We are many, but we are one. Many peoples. Many nations. Many beliefs. Many forms of governance. We are one with the earth, and we have only one earth.
Until we start acting like it, acting like we have to take care of this planet we all live on - until we do that - we're in trouble. Once we do that, well, that's when the hard work begins.
What would the Earth look like if you took all of today's demographics and applied them to only 100 people (instead of 6,808,615,758, as of today) - on the planet or in a village...?
Sometimes, the obvious is lost in a "can't see the forest for the trees" scenario. Maybe not the obvious, but the obvious boiled down to something the human brain can truly comprehend. All it takes is one person to present the numbers, or the situation, or whatever, in a slightly different and creative way, and BINGO!
Description: "The text the originated this movie was published on May 29, 1990 with the title "State of the Village Report", and it was written by Donella Meadows, who passed away in February 2000. Nowadays Sustainability Institute, through Donella's Foundation, carries on her ieas and projects. The Miniature Earth project was first published in 2001, since then more than 2 million people have seen this website.
The statistics have been updated based on specialized publications, and mainly reports on the World's population provided by different resources, like UN publications, PBR.org and others. Bear in mind that these are only statistics, and consequently changes might occur after a few months or only after years.
Please see them only as a tendency, and not as accurate."
Piano Song By: Yann Tiersen - Comptine d'un autre été Beginning/Ending song by: Celtic Women- You Raise me up.
I've been seeing and hearing bits and pieces about 350.org here and there, but now I'm keyed in on their website. They are the organizers behind October 24th being "International Day of Climate Action".
It appears that their mission is to go beyond mere action, and build a movement. Sounds like my kinda organization. Big-picture-thinking-there-is-no-box-kinda-folks.
Easy Like Water is a feature documentary about floating schools, solar power, and the fate of the earth.
In Bangladesh, solar-powered floating schools are turning the front lines of climate change into a community of learning. As the water steals the land, one man's vision (Architect Mohammed Rezwan) is re-casting the rising rivers as channels of communication, and transforming peoples lives.
For me, stories like this give me hope that humanity can rise above the floodwaters of petty squabbling and full blown military action, eschew the politics of power for the power of the sun and the wind, and eventually find that the profits of lives and lifetimes lived are about community and family and friends, art and music and creativity, literature and education, and not about capital gains and living the luxe life. Human endeavor is not about money.
I, for one, remained convinced that capital gains and profiteering remain the root source of the largest environmental challenge this planet and its occupants will ever face. I hope that three billion of us can figure that out very soon, for then, the tides will change. Spread the word my friends.
Come to think of it, see if you can get the documentary shown in your community. Here is the trailer.
This morning, I happened across this on the bookshelves in my office - I bought it a while back, but haven't yet read it. "The Long Emergency - Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century"
"If you give a damn, you should read this book." - THE INDEPENDENT
"This is a frightening and important book." - TIME OUT CHICAGO
"It used to be that only environmentalists and paranoids warned about the world running out of oil and the future it could bring: crashing economies, resource wars, social breakdown, agony at the pump. Not anymore...America's dependence on oil is too pervasive to undo quickly, [Kunstler] warns...In the meantime, we'll have our hands full dealing with...the soaring temperatures, rising sea levels and mega-droughts brought by global climate change. Not long ago, a Jeremiah like Kunstler would have been dismissed as a kook...As brilliant as it is baleful...and we disregard it at our peril." - THE WASHINGTON POST
"What sets The Long Emergency apart...is its comprehensive sweep - its powerful integration of science and technology, economics and finance, international politics and social change, along with a fascinating attempt to peer into a chaotic future. Kunstler is such a compelling and sometimes eloquent writer that it is hard to put the book down." - AMERICAN SCIENTIST
"Funny, irreverent, and blunt." - THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Also note that Kunstler has a new book out - titled "World Made by Hand - A novel of America's post-oil future". I'll have to get my hands on that one.
Here's a TED talk from Architect William McDonough on infinite, or cradle-to-cradle design. In it, he says the "design strategy" for humanity should be this:
"Our goal is a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy and just world, with clean air, water, soil and power - economically, equitably, ecologically and elegantly enjoyed."
Sounds good to me.
I had heard something about China burning up ALL their coal and using ALL their topsoil, simply to produce (clay) bricks build shelter to house their growing population.
I guess this is where it came from. It looks like McDonough and his team have developed and implemented a viable workaround - and moved the farm land to the roofs of the city.
It appears some of us are moving in the right direction, we just need to pick up the pace.
The Great Correction, as in the inverse of the Great Depression, as in "course correction", as in "paradigm shift". I'm still on the subject of the Vanity Fair (April 2009) article "Rethinking the American Dream", written by David Kamp.
I've finished reading the article, and I cannot express how important I think this piece is. Every man and woman and young adult aged 16 and over should read this article and begin talking about it on a daily basis.
It is only through acknowledging that a problem exists - a very large scale problem in the way we Americans think - and then talking about potential solutions to the problem, can we begin to solve it.
Here is another excerpt from the article that is a verbatim account of what I have been telling my closest friends (and ex-wives) for thirty years now - that the American Dream is flawed in its view that in each successive year, life should be better. Better job; or same job only better; more money; better car; better house; or better the current house; better vacations; better toys; better kitchen faucet; better, fancier, more provincial door mat. Better, more, faster. Each quarter, each fiscal or calendar year, each generation, we kids and our kids and their kids. More is never enough.
It is our current and trending catastrophic reality that we live in a finite world with finite resources. We are currently banging up against the inevitable ceiling of those limitations in the basic building blocks of life - water, food, shelter. The basic premises of the problem are that we are simultaneously over-populated and under-resourced. In a word, unsustainable. Our current way of life is not sustainable in the long term.
I repeat, our current way of life is not sustainable in the long term.
We all know this to be true.
Most of us are deluding ourselves that in a year or two, things will be back to "normal", and that we can go on in our individual pursuits of the American Dream - building wealth, gaining assets or at least equity. I believe that the old, resource hogging, unsustainable way of life is gone forever. I may be offering this on the leading edge of this new wave, this paradigm shift, five or ten or fifteen years too early, but the change is coming. The time to change, or at least to begin the process of change, is now. The time to acknowledge that there is a problem is now. We can no longer afford to keep our heads in the proverbial sand.
Many of us are thinking it. We have been feeling it for five or ten or fifteen years or longer. People are (or were) more successful, but are more stressed out and less happy. But everyone is afraid to talk about it. There is a fear of being branded un-American or un-patriotic or downright crazy. Let's get it out in the open and start dealing with it in a positive, proactive, forward thinking way.
Let's reinvent the wheel. Think outside the box? B.S. There is no box anymore. Think, and so shall ye be. Supposedly Jesus said that. We all need to think about how it can be. How it wants to be. How it should be. Not just re-think, but completely reinvent the American Dream. The New American Dream. A new way of life for the new century, starting with us, but for the entire planet. We need to manifest a new reality.
We put men on the moon and sent exploratory vehicles to Mars and beyond. We uncovered the secret of the atom and the quark. Decoding DNA, cellular biology and cures for diseases, and on and on. We are capable of great things. Obviously, in the past we have screwed the pooch in many, many ways. I would offer that when it is in the pursuit of profit and self-interest (or national interest), it always backfires on us. I would offer that when it is motivated by love and the common good and what is right, it can never fail. We can do this.
It should not be based on profit. It should be based on love, compassion and understanding. It should be based on the common good. It should be based on (from the article) the "freedom from want, not the freedom to want". It should be based on sustainability. It should be based on technological innovation and good science. It should be based on social responsibility to our fellow man and to our planet both. I am confident we can reinvent our civilization. It may take one hundred years, or more, but I am confident and hopeful that intelligence and love can triumph over ignorance and ignoring the problem because it is the comfortable thing to do. I am confident. I am full of hope. We don't have a choice. This has to be done. Starting now.
It's interesting that this all gelled for me on this day of renewal and rebirth - Easter Sunday 2009. I have to admit I wasn't paying attention during Easter services at St. Mark's today. (I go to church once or twice a year...) I was daydreaming, looking up at the flying buttresses and delicate arches and fine millwork, hand-hewn from walnut timber by German craftsmen in 1870 or so. I was gazing at the intricacies and vibrant color of the stained glass windows and contemplating the beauty of what man can accomplish in this world. When I awoke from my tampiquen~a and cheese enchilada induced two-hour Sunday afternoon nap, my sweetie and I threw the rubber stick to the dog. I finished reading the article, and then started this post - it is probably the fastest I have ever written a post of any merit. I had to get this out. Forgive me in advance if it's dis-jointed or generally funky prose. It flew off my fingertips as it spilled from my heart and mind - largely unedited but for a few typos.
Renovatio - Latin for "rebirth". "Renovatio", or "The New American Dream"? I'm trying to think of a name for a new blog. "The Great Correction"? Suggestions are welcome.
Oh, here is that excerpt:
"And what about the outmoded proposition that each successive generation in the United States must live better than the one that preceded it? While this idea is still crucial to families struggling in poverty and to immigrants who've arrived here in search of a better life than that they left behind, it's no longer applicable to an American middle class that lives more comfortably than any version that came before it. (Was this not one of the cautionary messages of the most thoughtful movie of 2008, WALL-E?) I'm no champion of downward mobility, but the time has come to consider the idea of simple continuity: the perpetuation of a contented, sustainable middle-class way of life, where the standard of living remains happily constant from one generation to the next."
Stealing Ghandi's words, we must BE the change we wish to see in the world. We must BE the example for all humanity. We must walk the talk. We must. We must.
Here is the link to the article again: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/04/american-dream200904 Please read it. Please forward it to everyone you know and ask them to forward it to everyone they know. This really needs to become the new national dialog. Please, please purty please.
Lastly, credit where credit is due. "The Great Correction" came from Eliza Gilkyson's song of the same name. But the real credit goes to my cool, hip, girlfriend who immediately told me about the song when I was struggling with the words for what to call this post. She is my inspiration and my muse.
Lyrics here:
down on the corner of ruin and grace I’m growin weary of the human race hold my lamp up in everyone’s face lookin for an honest man everyone tied to the turnin wheel everyone hidin from the things they feel well the truth’s so hard it just don’t seem real the shadow across this land people round here don’t know what it means to suffer at the hands of our american dreams they turn their backs on the grisly scenes traced to the privileged sons they got their god they got their guns got their armies and the chosen ones but we’ll all be burnin in the same big sun when the great correction comes down through the ages lovers of the mystery been sayin people let your love light shine poets and sages all throughout history say the light burns brightest in the darkest times it’s the bitter end we’ve come down to the eye of the needle that we gotta get through but the end could be the start of something new when the great correction comes down through the ages…. down to the wire runnin out of time still got hope in this heart of mine but the future waits on the horizon line for our daughters and our sons I don’t know where this train’s bound whole lotta people tryin to turn it around gonna shout til the walls come tumblin down and the great correction comes don’t let me down when the great correction comes
Great (and very, very scary for this elitist) Newsweek article by Sam Harris...thanks Nancy!
"...an over-the-brink, Rapture-ready extremist? Palin seems as though she might be the real McCoy..."
"I believe that with the nomination of Sarah Palin for the vice presidency, the silliness of our politics has finally put our nation at risk."
We have all now witnessed apparently sentient human beings, once provoked by a reporter's microphone, saying things like, "I'm voting for Sarah because she's a mom. She knows what it's like to be a mom." Such sentiments suggest an uncanny (and, one fears, especially American) detachment from the real problems of today. The next administration must immediately confront issues like nuclear proliferation, ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and covert wars elsewhere), global climate change, a convulsing economy, Russian belligerence, the rise of China, emerging epidemics, Islamism on a hundred fronts, a defunct United Nations, the deterioration of American schools, failures of energy, infrastructure and Internet security … the list is long, and Sarah Palin does not seem competent even to rank these items in order of importance, much less address any one of them.
Something I didn't know, and somehow ran across looking up the annual average rainfall for Nevada...yes, the men who moil for gold do strange things in the land of the midnight sun...but the strangest I ever did see, was that night on the marge of Lac la Barge...
But I digress. I truly do think the heat is baking my brain cells sometimes. Augusto is back in Guatemala. I'm working alone for a time, talking to myself now, and self 1 is not being very nice to self 2. He keeps calling me "retardo" and "dickweed". It was 98 degrees today. The heat index, based on the level of the pools of liquid sweat in my shoes, had to have been 108. I gauge the heat and humidity levels by the "squish" "squish" sound when I walk.
But I digress.
The federal poverty level (income) for a household of one person is $10,600 per year. Add $3,600 per person in the household. A family of three is considered at the poverty level with an annual income of $17,600.
The numbers I knew. I thought it was around $15k or $20k or so. What surprised me is the number of people below the poverty line in the U.S. Almost 37 MILLION! About 25 million are white, 9 million are black, the rest are "other" or overlapping multi-racial duplicates. These are 2005 figures. Back in 1975, it was around 25 million.
THIRTY SEVEN MILLION PEOPLE in the U.S....out of 260 million total...that's 14%...amazing...sad...
And that doesn't even take into account all of the homeless people...almost 1 million in any given week...around 3 million "experience" homelessness at least temporarily during a given year...
Excuse my french, but what a fucked, fucked, fucked-up world we live in my friends.
Apparently, the U.N. and the U.S. stood by as the genocide occurred in Darfur, Sudan. The reason? Sudan is China's primary supplier of oil. We wouldn't want to upset the balance of the oil supply, now would we? (This is my own oversimplification. I'm sure the issues there are extremely complex, but still, this smacks of something very, very wrong.)
The cleansing of the non-Arab populace has been happening since 2005. I'm as guilty/ignorant as the next guy. I've heard about it (very little) in the media, but never investigated until I watched the documentary.
What can we do? What should we do? What can I do as an individual? What do we do when the priorities of our government do not match our own? The electoral/political process is too slow and too fucked up anyway. The system is broken. We need some vehicle to effect rapid response within our government. Some way to just say no - with teeth. Some way to get the attention of our leaders. Shouldn't we be able to go straight to the top? To the President? Isn't that where the buck stops?
Is it because "the public sucks" as George Carlin said? Do we really just not care? Are we more worried about NASCAR, beauty pageants, fantasy football, and sneakers with lights in them to care? Are we more worried about our super-duper self-propelled lawn mower, our new swimming pool, our latest capital gain, being upside down in our mortgage, our new GUCCI/Prada/LV handbag? The new Dolce & Gabbana shoes?
Hundreds of thousands of people have died in Darfur. Our priorities are all wrong, and we are paying for it. Our souls are paying for it.
There's no trailer on YouTube, but here is a Q&A session with the director.
"I have this fear that we aren't feeling enough in our culture today . There is this kind of anaesthesia in America at the moment. We've lost our sense of outrage, our anger, and our grief about what is going on in our culture right now, what is going on in our country, the atrocities that are going on in our names around the world....they've gone missing, these feelings have gone missing..."
Here's a little something tending toward the profound on this fine Saturday afternoon...
