Start the Fire

As we rant against the system that means to turn our lives into a VISA statement, we have to all face the fact that we are the system. Change, real change, will not come through the political system, but will only come about as the outcome of some crisis: real or created. With the control of the media and all sources of communication controlled by those that benefit from the current system the odds of any change improving our lives is limited. Yes, we will have better toothpastes, and more porno options to placate our base desires, but the there will be little change that satisfies the human heart, that brings us closer together. Socializing with friends and family keeps us out of the malls, restaurants, bars, and box stores. The human family keeps us away from the consumer family: Uncle Facebook, and Aunt McDonald's. Revolution can come but it will require us to step out of our houses into the streets and demand change. The odds of that happening are zero. Those that benefit from the system will not allow change. The Tea Party, as an example, was a corporate effort to keep us isolated, to keep us afraid, to make us not see government or our higher existence as a possibility. The only possibility is consumerism and slavery to the system that benefits the few at the expense of the many. The few are millions and millions and the many are billions of people around the world some here, but most over there in place we don't care about. Starvation in Africa so we can have mobile phones is fine so long as we aren't bothered with their plight. Slave labor in China is fine so long as I can get cheap shoes and flat screen TV. Change will only come about if the city is burning. The city will not burn so long as we care more about empty, consumer happiness and care nothing about the reality of billions of other people. Start the fire!!

Purchase a Chinese Factory Worker

I have decided to go direct, and purchase one or two Chinese people that will make all of the stuff I need. I am willing to pay them $5,000 per year each to make all of my shit plus the cost of materials. With this $5,000 they can work with other Chinese to develop an alternative economy based upon connections with individual consumers. This would be similar to the adoption of a child in Africa but the Chinese worker actually does something for you so that you can reach your consumer objectives.

Destroy the Machine -- Destroy the Store

We have to destroy the system that enslaves us to be consumers rather than citizens: members of a community. And on the opposite side, and with the same, but worse result, we have enslaved the producers that sit "chained" to their workbenches producing the consumer goods (shit) we have come to believe we need to consume. Our economic system does not want us (consumers and producers) to be a community loyal to fellow human beings, but rather a collection of human beings loyal to a particular brand or spectacle such as the super bowl, world cup, or academy awards. We consumers are tied to goods by our psychological need to belong, to compete, based upon the goods we purchase. This is the easy side of the equation, because the producers are there because if they are not they will be beaten, imprisoned, shot if they do not conform. We consumers are not shot if we don't buy but we are removed from society. We are no longer people living together in a community, but rather economic entities with varying abilities to consume what we no longer produce. This system is unsustainable. How can we have consumption without production? How do we face the fact that millions, billions of our fellows must be enslaved, imprisoned, starved if they do not conform to our world of consumption.

Have a nice day

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

2011 to 2012

Another year is about to pass under the wheel and, as is the custom, it's time to reflect on what happened over the past year. A lot of people died--people close to me as well as public figures. The shocking death of a friend at age 54 and the death of my father-in-law a much admired man of 84 who was still working at his print shop. When death comes to those close to us we can't help but reflect upon what we are doing with our own lives and compare them to those that have passed. Christopher Hitchens, a writer I enjoyed very much, died at age 62. Death. Death is what waits for all of us, which is bad enough, but on top of that we don't know how much longer we have. That is one of the conditions of life: we are here for reasons that remain a mystery and then we return to the place from which we came. We are here a short time and we squander so much of that time thinking of yesterday or dreaming about tomorrow not spending enough time in the moment. Balance, that is what needs to be the focus. But what about passion? There has to be some passion in life, some passion that drives to a purpose, that fills our hearts with desire for more time, more time to finish something that has been started. What is my passion? Where is my passion?

Years ago I painted and it was something that seemed to click in me, but then I stopped because I started a few things I didn't have the skills to complete: a self-portrait and a scene from my living room. Funny. Those are the things that stopped my painting. That's me all over. If there is a challenge I just say fuck it. I need to change that "fuck it" into "do it." Who has ever gotten anywhere in life by saying "fuck it" when things got difficult? When I tried to get work at Microsoft I went through nearly 50 seperate interviews and I never gave up until I succeeded. I need to pring that same drive to something else. How about bringing it to the actual work I am now doing for Microsoft? Yes, there is that, but I need to have something outside of work that excites me, that makes me feel I am doing something meaningful even if that thing is just a painting, a poem, a short story. My life is flashing before my eyes and I haven't done anything. So much waste. So much doing nothing. What do I want to do with the, if I am extremely lucky, remaining 20 productive years of my life. I am 49 and the next 20 years will put me at 69! If I am lucky I will be reasonably sharp and able to focus during those 20 years, but if I something happens, some health issue, then those 20 years could be a nightmare. I have 20 years left and let's face it they are the 20 years at the end of my life. What the hell did I do with the time from 22 to 42? Those should have been the best years of my life, but thinking back I feel I wasted them. I need a plan to get something meaningful done over the next 20 years. I need to earn money so I can have the leisure to enjoy life and develpe some project, and then I need the energy to dedicate to something. What do I want to do with my remaining years?

Success

Choose to succeed by taking the actions that will lead to positive outcomes.

Change Comes to My World

After doing little for too long my payment to society is overdue. I accepted a "consulting" position with a large software company in Redmond, Washington that was described as marketing project management, but after three months of frantically running around scheduling meetings, attending meetings, taking notes, adjusting invite lists, providing various updates, and generally running in place constantly, I have decided, with some strong encouragement from my mangers, not to continue the contract. It was a sad admission that I was unable to do the work at the level they required. While this is a cause for some embarrassment as I like to think of myself as someone that can do anything if I only focus my mind, I am also relieved to be done with the work. Half of me wishes I could have done the job, but the other, greater half, is glad I am not the type of person that could superficially engage with so many things while feeling I never really did anything.

I am probably too old to still have this fantasy that I will find well compensated work that will be challenging, fulfilling, well compensated, and, and this is the killer: enjoyable. That is the fantasy. Enjoyable work? Is it even possible. Work, is like the party that is fun until someone tells you that you can't leave. Something can be fun until you realize you have to do it.

Now what? I will be out of work shortly which would not be horrible if I was single with no responsibilities, but I have a wife, mortgage, and a 19 year old in college. I am 48, and I still have no idea what I want to do with my life. My days are mingled with thoughts of literary, intellectual success, but I have never done anything to justify those fantasies. Yes, I read and try to cultivate my mind, but with little success. I am lazy and more interested in frenetic wandering from thing to thing as if my mind is a string of hyperlinks. Hyperlinks are perfect for me because I have never been able to focus on one thing for any length of time. What is wrong with me? Somehow I have managed to construct a good life, but somehow, given my work ethic and dependency upon luck, it's completely undeserved. Have I, through my work, earned everything I have managed to accumulate? No, it's undeserved and based more upon luck than my actual contribution to any organization. My work history is one of working for a few months, doing well, and then destroying everything. I think I would be better off taking on a series of 3 to 4 month jobs that don't require much attention, but pay well. That's not going to happen. I am at a crucial point in my life given my age and income needs. At this point, I am feeling a little lost wondering what I can do to recover.


Is this an opportunity for something better to happen? I better start buying lotto tickets again.

He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.

Douglas Adams

Resistance to Change

Life is the continual adaptation of self to the changing conditions within ones environment. The self, both consciously and unconsciously, wants to maintain its dignity in the face of the humiliating circumstances thrust upon it. The self must alter its story to meet these changes. When successful, life goes on and there are no issues, but when the self is unable to adapt, by altering itself to meet the new reality, conflict ensues with the result being depression or some other mental break. When a society as a whole, or in distinct sections, faces change and is unable to adapt resistance will occur. Members of a society facing change, seeing their relative positions diminish, seeing others advance while they sink into lower and lower positions, will become angry and resist the challenge of adaptation. Groups of people will resist change and attempt to reverse course. At its worst, this leads to a complete breakdown of society and the development of a new one such as, for example, in Nazi Germany or, on a lesser level, the 1960’s in the United States. Societies can, if functioning properly, evolve without a dramatic break with the past, but if that society is not capable of change there can be a sudden violent break that will give birth to a new order that is often more terrible than the old. Of course, the violent break can also occur when a society attempts to resist change and preserve some fantasy of the past by creating an artificial society based upon myth.

Not all change for the individual or society leads to a dramatic break with the past or conversely some destructive resistance to that change. On the individual level, most change is accepted and worked through as part of the natural process of life. Societal changes forced by economics, immigration, or government also generally occur without a major break with the past because change is gradual. Life, if lived fully, is a series of adaptions to changing conditions both externally and internally. A child experiences a revolutionary change when it is born and continues to face revolutionary changes that repeatedly break it with the past. How those changes are managed by the child and the parent set a pattern for how the developing person will deal with change in the future. Birth, separation, school, relationships starting and ending, rites of passage such as graduation from high school and college are all changes the normal individual confronts and passes through with little or no drama. The healthy individual moves through life adapting to changing circumstances by either accepting or resisting.

The Legend of Raspberry-Almond Scone

Man’s attempt to create order in his life, by making security the primary measure of his daily needs, leads to a life lived in fear of change, in fear of the unknown. The greatest threat to mankind’s advancement is the mortgage and the career. No great discovery, no great art, no great endeavor was ever undertaken by a man with a mortgage and a steady job with a promotion two years away. The propertied class loves and despises the mortgage because it creates both a stable society for them to rule over, but also one that deprives them of their rents and thus greater wealth and power over the masses. The greatest profits can be made from those with little, and the least from those with much. No one with a mortgage throws a cobblestone through a shop window and demands equality, no one with a mortgage goes on a 12 day debauch. The free man, the unafraid man, does not demand bread and charity, he demands equality and cheap beer.

With those musings in mind, I have decided to start writing the children’s book I have talked about for years: The Legend of Raspberry-Almond Scone.

Wasting Time, Wasting My Life

Why is it so easy to form bad habits and so difficult to form good ones, ones that add to our lives rather than take away from them. I am 24 days into the new decade and I haven't yet managed to develope a single good habit that will move me closer to achieving a goal. I am still wasting too much of my time doing things that add nothing to my life. Today I spent at least 5 hours screwing around on YouTube when I should have been looking for additional work, exercising, or doing something to improve my skills. Even writing on this blog would have been better because at least I would be thinking rather than just looking at a bunch of inane videos. I did exercise today, and I did finish another book even if it was a pure work of fiction; it's something. What I need to work at things that are going to improve my life even if they are impractical, but watching things others have done is a waste of my precious time. Wasting time is an addiction. I am addicted to wasting time as if I don't care about my life. I need to snap out of this and do something, anything to challenge my brain and accomplish something.