Tuesday, December 13, 2005

 

Coping with NPR and World News

Ok, here’s another part of my life. Driving to work every weekday morning, listening to National Public Radio, and trying to integrate a sense of outrage at the world events into my day. The planet, and especially its self-appointed figurehead the United States, is so messed up at times that it can make you crazy. It’s crazy making I say! So what you gonna do?

This morning, the things that set me off were:

The trade imbalance = the high cost of low price! When are people going to learn that the highway to hell is paved with lowest bidders? Buy in your watershed!

The execution of Stanley Tucci Williams = if a former gang member, now children's story writing peace advocate, nominated 5 times for Nobel Peace Prize (Bush was nominated only once) doesn't qualify for a reformed life worth keeping, then who will? We're not even talking setting him free here, just let him live in prison and keep writing peace books. But he's black, he's a convict, and the governor who wouldn't stop the execution is a cool white guy who only played a terminator in the movies, so I guess the lines were clear enough to those in power?

Global Warming = the Canadian Prime minister practically begging the United States to sign on to help stop the destruction of our planet, but the Bush administration, helming the most polluting and fragile - needy and needed - consumer nation on the planet, still prefers to think that more not less business as usual will magically solve every problem. Tax cuts for the rich, welfare cuts for the poor! If he wants to help the economy, wouldn't tax cuts for the poor who need to buy things every day pump more money into the consumer economy faster than rich white guys already sitting on their piles of cash and long-term investments?

Stuff like that, pushes me over the edge... (remember this is an edgy blog, views from the edge and all that, you know)

Sometimes I just want to make a speech from the top of America (oops, sorry Canada and Mexico and others, I meant just the United States) and say to the rest of the world, HELP! WE STILL LOVE YOU! Please remember that we're such a good country of good people. We've simply been hijacked by the blind and the greedy, don't forget the revolution within!

But then I remember the scandals and crap that other countries also get into, and I realize oh yeah, it's the fear-driven trouble-makers in every nation and every era that have gotten us into these messes. Probably the same reincarnating bad apples over and over. Reminding us we all need to monitor the fear-driven behaviors in ourselves. Judge not lest ye be judged, I create my own reality, let the dead bury the dead, don't have a cow man. So I seek not to damn anyone, as would damn my damned damning fundamentalist isolationist compatriots... oops... did it again.... om shanti om...

Of course, I love it when NPR has good news, which isn't often enough, because they may be more intelligent but in their own way they aren't less sensational than any other news outlet. I loved one show I heard about Portland Oregon, how that progressive city, now Kyoto compliant, proved that economic gains can go hand in hand with global warming reductions. How? By better urban planning, more mass transport, more recycling, more alternative energy sources, more anti-pollution industries, more nature tourism, more support of people and quality of life... the list goes on. All good things come together. Of course that's true, how else would anything exist? Nature is a symphony of symbiosis, get with the program man!

Ok, here's my vision of the future. I'm not just a raving ______ after all (lunatic, liberal, curmudgeon, mystic, new age misanthrope, idealist, you fill in the blank). I'm pragmatic and spiritual, qualities which frankly go together after all. Everyone comprehends this sooner or later.

Someday soon, all the people who live by domination (that's the art of taking, bullying, neglecting, and non-cooperating) will hit a dead end. The world's problems will be too big, and their minds will be too small. Panic, paralysis, not the end of the world but the end of the world-enders. That's when the meek will inherit the earth. No, not with the return of Jesus on a spaceship, but by the return of a real humanity (which may yet be associated with Jesus in the spaceship). We've got billions of people on this planet who are not part of the dominating power elite (for want of a better term), and these billions are not just a burden of hungry mouths either. Hello, we're talking human beings, the jewels of planet Earth's creation here! Billions of humans with superior hearts and minds are going to step forward. Not super-humans, just superb humans, like you and me and everyone. People who already have been saving the planet, they just don't make the headlines, society hasn't reached that tipping point of recognition yet. But people - ordinary, spiritual, bridge-building, hope seeing people - do have the ability and willingness to solve all the problems in the world today. Think global, act local, grassroots, channeled solutions, great minds think alike, caring, loving, with a willingness, an insistence, to save the planet now and forever.

Yeah I know it's generalized and idealist, but it's just one blog entry for one day, you know? Give me a break.

Mark my words, the salvation of humanity by humanity has already happened countless times on smaller scales, and it's going to happen more obviously globally soon, and well before it's "too late", and certainly before Jesus has to return in His spaceship to judge all the sinners in the apocalyptic frustrated frightened fundamentalist imagination.

So stayed tuned to World Events, and keep integrating that which outrages you, until you touch the hope again.

This has been Carl, broadcasting from the UFO with the Jesus Buddha*, over and out

(* it's symbolic, dude. The UFO is your Soul and God, Jesus is your human spirit. Reclaim your religious heritage, have fun with it, don't let the fundamentalists sour you to your own mythic mystic human full potential!)

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