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12.18.2004
Saturday, December 18, 2004
Here's a good one. There's a photo in the L.A. Times today of a cow being airlifted to safety from an island on which it had become trapped weeks ago when water levels rose. Apparently the cow lost 150 pounds. What goes through a cow's mind on its first trip above the earth dangling from a helicopter rescue line? The story then says that, despite the weight loss, the bovine is "expected to recover." Presumably so it can be slaughtered in a few weeks to make hamburger. Now I like a good hamburger as much as the next person, so I don't mean to pass any moral judgment on the makers of hamburgers or the rescuers of stranded cows who eat them. But it points out a basic hypocrisy that we have yet to reconcile. It seems to me we ought to stop passing moral judgment on carnivores, on the one hand, and, if we truly feel compassion for cows in a tight spot, we ought to find more humane ways to slaughter them. I visited a meat packing plant once and it ain't pretty. It's like most things in life - we pass off the dirty work to someone else and then judge them for the inhumane way they do the dirty work. Personally, I think we ought to all have to slaughter a cow once in our lives, both as a way of honoring the cows, and setting our moral megaphones straight.
Sorry, it was the best I could do for a Saturday morning.
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Friday, December 17, 2004
U.S. troop deaths in Iraq are tucked further and further from the front page each day. Not news anymore. On day one every American death was a page one story, and Iraqi deaths were relegated to the back of the main news bus. Now the Iraqi deaths aren't even reported. This is how Vietnam got as far down the road as it did. This is how we acclamate ourselves to insanity. This is the brainwashing of the herd. Hah. And they called est a cult.
Why is it that people seeking a spiritual or metaphysical answer together are called a cult, and people seeking a violent answer together are called normal? Probably because violence is what people really want. There is so much uncommunicated, unexamined anger in our interiors. If we don't give expression to it in the exterior, in the form of war and murder and violenece, we'd actually have to confront it at its real source. So we pretend that it's out there. Then of course, even that becomes unpleasant, because it is at odds with our religious beliefs and illusions of civility, so we stuff it in the back of the newspaper, or worse, let it fall right off the pages altogether.
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12.17.2004
Thursday, December 16, 2004
I have now had my Toyota Prius for about six months. I have averaged 42.41 miles per gallon;
I have driven 6,125.6 miles, or 1,020.9 miles per month;
Gas prices have ranged from a high of $2.60 per gallon to a low of $2.10 per gallon for regular;
I have spent a total of $338.62 on gas, which is $56.43 per month;
If I were still driving the SUV I had, which got under 14 miles per gallon and required premium fuel, I would have spent $1,094 on gas, or at least $185 per month;
I have used 144 gallons of gas. My old SUV would have used 437 gallons;
My fuel cost is about 5.5 cents per mile. It would have been about 18 cents per mile with my old SUV;
I average about 50 mpg on the highway. If I were to make a 3,300 mile trip across America I would use 66 gallons of gas and spend about $147.84 on gas at current prices. My old SUV, on the other hand, would have used 236 gallons at a cost of $589.
Imagine if you multiplied these savings by the entire nation. The power of ideas, like a hybrid engine, are amazing to me.
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Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Whenever you wonder why human beings do things that seem completely irrational, check your assumptions. Why is there war when everyone wants peace? Maybe everyone doesn't really want peace. Why is there hunger when everyone wishes every child could be fed? Maybe everyone doesn't want every child to be fed. If we were to create a world in which there were peace and every child were fed, it would fly in the face of everything we hold to be impossible. If impossibility is unmasked for what it really is - a lie - then that means I have to face the ultimate lie - namely, that it is impossible for me to be truly happy. We don't want to face this, becasue we have grown comfortable with our unhappiness.
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12.14.2004
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
Nothing is more powerful than an idea. To shake up the world with a new horizon - to change peoples' perspective with groundbreaking new thought - to challenge the system in every way - to risk ridicule and exile because you have dared to confront the inertia of the status quo - this is to live. Along with this, you must develop a thick skin. It must be OK with you that no one ever know it was your idea. It must be OK with you that others take credit for it. No hero would ever trade the credit that others took from him for the reward of being himself. Your reward is to live in the skin of one who exploits their full human potential and to know the unspeakbale jopy that comes with witnessing your own beauty and your own impact. Your reward is the sight of others living differently because you have lived. Your reward is salvation from the constriction of a life that never really dared to dare, and never lived to live.
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12.13.2004
Monday, December 13, 2004
These are the headlines in the main news of the L.A. Times today:
"U.S. Options Few in Feud With Iran"
"El Salvador Comes to Grips With Gangs"
"Ukraine Resumes Inquiry Into Poisoning"
"5 Israelie Troops Die as Militants Set Off Underground Bomb..."
"Europeans Assail U.S. Approach on Iran"
"Bomb Kills 15 in Busy South Phillipine Market"
"8 U.S. Troops Killed in Action, Most in Battleground Province"
"Soldiers Say Rules of Conduct Unclear"
"Reliable Poland is Feeling Like an Ally Scorned"
"Exodus of Staff Hobbles the FBI"
And on top of that mid-day came news that the State of California plans to kill Scott Peterson for his killing his wife and unborn child.
Does this all sound to you like a world that's working, or does it sound more like a world that isn't working at all? And if it isn't working at all, then why do we keep doing the same things, over and over again, expecting it to change? Why do we keep electing the same kind of leaders? Don't kid yourself with the notion that you wanted John Kerry for President and that that would change all of this. We accept mediocrity. We are afraid to elect someone who would transform things - those people always sound too radical for us - so we stay close to what we know and call it different (John Kerry, for example) - we subjugate our real dreams in order to look normal in the eyes of those around us, lest they start calling us radicals too. God forbid.
Today's headlines are normal. They reflect a world that wants thing to stay basically the same, because everyone ferars change. People would rather have destruction because it is familiar to them than joy because it isn't.
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12.12.2004
Sunday, December 12, 2004
How do you measure your failures and your successes? Do you measure them by the same yardstick as the world around us, or do you measure them by the degree to which they stand for a noble principle? Do you measure them by the money in your bank account, or by the account of your integrity? The one who risks their money, their prestige, their title, and who loses it all, but remains true to their integrity - who refuses to trade truth for stature - this is the truly successful person. And so society has success and failure all wrong. In a society that values net worth above all else, the man who lacks any creativity or ingenuity, but who rises by stealing the ideas of another, or the woman who gets ahead by destroying someone else, instead of creating something on her own, is measured a success, merely because he or she has "won." But what have they won? In any society that values honor and contribution, the likes of these are anathema.
Many is the person who has purchased their material wealth with the failure of their integrity. Many is the person who has risen in prestige by their failure to honor their own truth. Many is the failure that society calls a success, and many the success that society looks upon as failure.
Measure yourself by your own integrity - and let society's yardstick be damned.
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Saturday, December 11, 2004
"Far better to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows no victory, nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt
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