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Saturday, May 07, 2005
SATURDAY, MAY 7, 2005
Separate Drinking Fountains and
the World to Come
A mere forty years ago you could go down into the south and find separate drinking fountains for blacks and whites. You would find three restrooms in a restaurant - one for white men, one for white women, and one for blacks. We look at this now as absurd. Is there any doubt that forty years from now we will see as absurd the idea that there were people who didn't thinks gays and lesbians should be allowed to marry?
During the 17th century, when they tortured Galileo for saying that the earth revolved around the sun, they did not have enough collective progress built up to see that throughout history, ideas that people held with absolute resolve were later seen to be absurd. But in the 300 years since then, we have witnessed the fall of innumerable obsolete ideas, from the idea that there is nothing wrong with owning slaves to the idea that man could not fly to the idea that the only planets in the cosmos are in our solar system.
We now have enough data to know that history is a story of our most strongly held beliefs falling apart before our very eyes. History is a tale of every generation laughing at their ancestors. Should we not then be wise, and look for the things now for which we will be laughed at later? Could we not forego inestimable suffering if we lived ahead of our time?
One day there will be no war. There will be no nuclear weapons. Gays and lesbians will marry and be embraced by all of society. We ought to begin to help usher in that future, rather than fight it. Many of our most hurtful traditions are destined to go the way of separate drinking fountains. .
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Friday, May 06, 2005
FRIDAY, MAY 6, 2005
The "Struggle"
Imagine if you woke up tomorrow morning and the newspaper headline read, "Bush Commits $30 Billion to Eradicate Global AIDS Mortality by 2006." Or how about this one: "President and Congress Approve $100 Billion Investment to Make All Cars Hydrogen by 2011." Or maybe this: "President Announces National Dream Competition - Teachers Challenged to Build Their Dream Public Education System Plan to Present to Congress." Or maybe this one: "Congress Passes Legislation Providing Free Healthcare to All Children Under 18. President Says He Will Sign."
This is the world that is possible. These are the kinds of headlines we ought to begin to demand we start seeing. Instead of incessant complaint, we need incessant imagination.
There was an AIDS activist who used to write to me all the time who would sign his e-mails, "Yours in the Struggle." It always struck me as pathological. There was some kind of manipulative moral superiority in it. I didn't like it. Instead of looking at changing the world as, "the struggle," as so many on the Left call it, let's start looking at it as "the great possibility," because that has the potential to actually excite people, instead of demoralize them. I want no part of the struggle. I want to be part of a dream.
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Wednesday, May 04, 2005
THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2005
Jennifer Wilbanks
Did you ever feel like you're just not mean enough for this world? This woman in Duluth, Georgia who ran away from her wedding - the town was all set to honor her as some kind of heroine if they found her dead. But they want to burn her at the stake now that they've found her alive, but flawed. We'd rather have people be dead so we can mythologize them as perfect than have them alive and have to face the fact that they, and we, are not.
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WEDNESDAY, MAY 4, 2005
The Tricycle Re-Conceived
Three industrial designers from Purdue came up with this brilliant idea that will shift the paradigm for learning to ride a bicycle forever. It is a tricycle that turns into a bicycle as the rider pedals. It is a great expression of love for all five-year-olds throughout the cosmos. One of the inventors noticed that, "That was the common thing looking back to see if your dad is holding your seat, and having that fear of crashing or falling all the time while you're riding, so we thought if we could make a tricycle kind of bicycle, it would get that burden off the child's shoulders so he or she could focus on trying to learn to ride." Half of inventing something new is caring enough to invent it. What if we cared enough about the environment to invent a car that could be mass-produced at low cost, like the proto-type hydrogen vehicles little inventors out there are working on with no support from the government, that would produce zero harmful emissions and use no fossil fuels? Surely, if three engineers from Purdue can transform the way children learn to ride a bike around the world forever, the mightiest industrial nation on earth can figure out a way to make hydrogen drives 75% smaller, which is all we'd need to make them practical. These three guys from Purdue should be put in charge of the entire U.S. Department of Energy. I tell you if I were President, that's the first thing I'd do - look for the most caring and creative minds in the world and put them in charge of re-inventing everything. I'm totally serious. What a revolution of new invention, progress, and global enthusiasm that would bring to this world of ours. And it would feed on itself. Invention breeds invention. I tell you, we could be living in the most fantastic world if we created a critical mass of people who started to clamor for it.
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Tuesday, May 03, 2005
TUESDAY, MAY 3, 2005
Imperfection
Springsteen gave an amazing show last night. His best line was part of a humorous bit he was doing on evolution vs. creationism - "The President says the jury's still out on evolution. The jury's still out? The jury's still out? Now personally, I think the President really believes in the theory of evolution but he just can't say so." He then went into this primitive song called "Part Man, Part Monkey," that uses his libido as evidence that he descended from the apes. The other possible best line was when he said to this rather strange blonde man in a green shirt in the third row, who would get up and dance this weird dance for every song while the entire rest of the theater was seated, "I think ya better stay in your seat there mister - yer givin' me the heebie jeebies."
Springsteen grew up Catholic and went to Catholic schools. He said he was a little surprised by his own interest in the "Pick a Pope" saga that flooded the airwaves two weeks ago and compared it to interest in an old baseball team - "you know - you don't really root for them anymore, but every once in a while you still want to know how they're doing in the standings."
He has this beautiful new song called, "Jesus Was an Only Son," about Jesus's humanity. He prefaced it by saying that he thought he had all this religion stuff worked out years ago, but now realizes that he won't have it figured out in this lifetime. Definitely the most profound thought of the evening. Gave the whole audience permission not to know, in a world that demands certainty. There's this stunning line in the song where Jesus is telling his mother Mary not to cry for him, but to remember that, "The soul of the universe willed a world and it appeared."
It was a beautiful evening. He creates community wherever he goes because he reminds people of their common fears, struggles, aspirations, and humanity. He's not perfect, and he lets all of his imperfection hang out. And that's what makes all the difference.
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Sunday, May 01, 2005
MONDAY, MAY 2, 2005
Our Common Insincerity
It is more and more becoming my feeling that most of us lack a sense of belonging in this world. Often I feel that I just don't fit in. That I don't belong here. The rat race depresses me. The competition for status saddens me. The measurement of a human being's worth by the car they drive, the salary they're earning, the home they live in, the places to which they travel is wearying. I don't want to live in a world that doesn't care to know who I am beyond my numbers. I don't want to focus on my numbers at the expense of my dreams, just so I will have an identity that plays well at cocktail parties.
I don't want to know how you are perfect. I want to know how you are imperfect. I want to know your pain. When I know your pain I know your humanity. When you show me only your perfection I know not your humanity or my own. More and more I feel that this very malaise which I experience is universal - that we are all tired. That no one really feels that they fit in. It is this commonality that represents our greatest hope for changing the world. If our imperfections - our common fears and longings - our broken hearts - our shattered dreams - could be brought out of the closets in which they hide, then a real conversation could begin. We are being suffocated by our masks.
I read something recently that said that, "nothing is more exhausting than being insincere." The greatest insincerity that confronts us all is the playing of this game - acting as if the standards by which the world judges us really matter to us at all - acting as if we all really like the world as it is, when in fact, most of us feel completely alienated by it.
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SUNDAY, MAY 1, 2005
James Joyce
Happy May Day. I couldn't stand James Joyce in high school, but this excerpt of his from my friend Peter makes me feel that I may not have given him his due:
"Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age."
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