Christmas 2012

Not that I'm a Grinch, but I've always seen Christmas as environmental genocide. People pack the stores to buy imported Asian junk, which they give to their friends and loved ones. It's usually stuff they don't need, and ends up in drawers, closets, or landfills. Once in the landfills, the junk deteriorates, gives off methane gas, and further warms the planet. However, the good part about Christmas is getting to be with loved ones.

As I look back on this past year, there's plenty to be happy about. I love the positive things I'm seeing:

• Trend toward "buy local," humane, and organic farming.
• More solar panels and wind turbines.
• Advances in gay rights.

On the downside, I'm saddened by:

• Continued extreme violence everywhere.
• Our dysfunctional and impotent U.S. Congress.

My hope for 2013 is that we all muster the political will to fix our broken Congress. We can start with:

• Term limits.
• Removing the "personhood" from corporations.
• Removing the lie that cash is "free speech."
• Stopping the gerrymandering.

One ongoing problem in our society is the domination of cults, which promote irrational thinking. The religious cults are perhaps the worst, and should always be met with facts and reason. Most cults have doomsday scenarios, but my future will always be one of hope. I know that people have within them the ability to do the right thing. It's just a matter of shaking off all the stupid memes and cultural baggage, and having the courage to think rationally, even when it flows against the grain.

What entertains me about cultists is that they are so confident that what they believe is "the one right way" that they don't even question it. Perhaps the one positive thing I can do in life is to put cracks in their hard-held beliefs. Just letting them know that everyone doesn't agree with them serves a purpose.

Hurray for the two states that passed gay marriage laws in November. This is a sign of hope. The entire War Against Gays is completely made up from nothing. When people cherry pick verses from the Old Testament to justify their war and hatred, I simply retort by saying, "You either have to accept all of the Old Testament or none of it. God don't like cherry pickers." That would mean you can't eat shrimp and would have to put adulterers to death, plus dozens of other dumb rules.

To all humans, if Christmas means "hope," then I'm all for it. Let us hope for peace, social advancement, and environmental sustainability. 

Photo credit: ~jjjohn~ / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND

Ending the Violence

A consistent theme of my blog is that peacemaking is an essential part of sustainability. The most recent mass shooting of school children in Connecticut is so vile and unthinkable that I'm now wondering if we're going in the opposite direction.

Maybe, overall, we are moving to a more peaceful society, but we seem helpless when it comes to mentally sick, rage-filled humans who want to randomly kill others. As far as the social ills that cause this phenomena, members of the U.S. gun cult are quick to blame video games or the lack of mental health facilities for the problem. In truth, the massacre problem is caused by a collection of social failures, including the easy accessibility of brutally deadly firearms.

While I have no qualm with rifles used for hunting or target competition, I do think a handgun purchase should include a rigorous background check and mental health screening. Extended magazine clips, silencers, and semi-automatic weapons should be outlawed.

Unfortunately, the NRA has forced the door open on deadly firearms for so long that it's necessary for many to own a gun just to have protection against criminals. Often, legal guns are stolen and enter the evil underworld, where they are used to commit crimes.

I imagine one day some PR hack at NRA headquarters had a brilliant idea. "Let's just start a campaign to say that more guns are needed to protect us from all the guns." This policy, which is wonderful for gun manufacturers, is simply a violent race to the bottom. So, the suggestion here is that if you gave everyone in the U.S. a gun, we would have a safer country. And let's have guns at churches and schools to protect us from the wackos who indiscriminately murder. But then the bad guys will start getting bigger, more powerful guns, so the good guys will need to get more deadly weapons. When the U.S. economy starts seriously melting down and people become hungry and desperate, what is going to happen then?

Solution

The only solution I can see to this madness is to change the culture and our attitudes toward violence. People who are at-risk need to be better identified and given help. Often, just a little love or attention can keep someone from going down a bad path. The violence in the media and in video games needs to be shunned. And those who boast about their gun collections need to be shunned as well by the more peaceful members of society. The memes and cultural ideas that we have about violence simply needs to shift.

Christianity

Ahhhh, excuse me but I have read the New Testament several times and Christianity seems like a pretty pacifist religion to me. Of course, in the Old Testament, God was a more butt-kicking, violent being, but he suddenly gets warm and fuzzy in the gospels. Yet, some of the biggest pro-gun advocates I know are also very Christian. This tells me two things: First, you really don't have faith that your deity will protect you, and, secondly, you are cherry-picking what you want to follow in the Bible.  In regards to the people waving a Bible in one hand and a gun in another, your credibility is lost with me.

Oh, and I need to comment on the crazy things religious people have said since the shootings. I've heard things like "it's because we took God out of the schools," or "it's because of gay marriage, abortion, and our turning away from God." It never enters their mind that the problem could be the easy accessibility to assault weapons, or the NRA's ability to control Congress. No, that has nothing to do with it — God is simply PISSED at us because Jim and John got married.

The Hope for Common Sense

I watched part of the NRA press conference given by the organization's CEO, Wayne LaPierre. The organization has become so brazen and delusional that it's mind-boggling. Essentially, the NRA is wanting us to have an armed guard at every school in the nation to protect our children from the very policies that the NRA promotes.

The NRA is a powerful organization now, but I think as these mass murders continue there will be more anti-gun advocates, and eventually organizations promoting peace and reasonable gun laws will break the back of the NRA. My hope, as with everything else, is that good will simply overwhelm and overtake evil and violence.

Conclusion

Now that I'm totally disgusted with the NRA's Mr. LaPierre I am going to start giving money to the Brady Campaign. I do not know how we are going to move to a truly peaceful society because it appears that we are going in the opposite direction. But if we could trade guns for hugs and love, I know that would go a long way. Handguns simply have one function — killing. They have no place is a peace-loving society.

I have only personally known one person in all my life who was murdered. As it turns out, he was murdered with his own gun. I'm sure he felt his guns would protect him, but in his case things didn't work out as expected.


Photo credit: h.koppdelaney / Foter / CC BY-ND

Reflections of A Madman

Luz Adriana Villa A. / Foter / CC BY

I have no complaints in life and I have received some wonderful, unexpected blessings. I still yearn to put my life to good use by doing some great accomplishment, but I remain burnt out.

If I were to do something great I'd probably go through the same routine that I did in 1997. I would sit down and say to myself, "What is the one issue where I can make the greatest impact with my life." At the time I determined it would be "human overpopulation," so I set out on a course to flatten the growth curve. I started a statewide coalition and we had meetings, tabling events, hosted forums, visited schools, and travelled around giving presentations. Fifteen years later I'm still at it. This year, I've done one tabling event and given three Powerpoint presentations on population. You know, I still enjoy it. I mainly love hanging out with the intellectual people in these groups. These are the people who give me hope and energize me.

Until I figure out what to do I feel that at least I can put myself to good use by making the lives of others a little less miserable. I try to do this daily with little kind comments to people at stores and restaurants, by making calls and sending cards to the sick, and by just trying to lift others up.

Most importantly, I am dedicated to peacemaking. When there is conflict I do what I can to make peace between the opposing parties. This is often difficult because sometimes one side will do something really crappy, and in their perception they are completely in the right, and they show no willingness to compromise. Often, these types of people don't realize they are being the antagonist. In their eyes they are completely innocent and everyone else is at fault.

Split
Our entire nation is divided between the angry white people on one side and the people of color and granola-eating hippies on the other side. Our country is divided into two distinct camps and every issue or incident in the news is viewed completely differently. When President Obama visits Middle Eastern nations one side calls him a "peacemaker" and the other side labels him a "sellout" and "weak." Obviously, that whole "blessed are the peacemakers" thing got flushed down the toilet.

Admittedly, I do lean a little liberal and a little libertarian, but I will always hold an olive branch and reach out to my brothers and sisters across the aisle. Not really. Actually, I'm sick of their shit. But I will at least hear them out and try to figure out where they are coming from on various issues.

Onward Bound
So, I'm still looking for that one issue, perhaps environmental or social, that will energize my passion and get me excited and going again. So far, I don't know what it is. I've become totally cynical, jaded, untrusting, and perpetually melancholy. I actually like living in a state of mild depression because it feels good. I did some acting in school and it's fun "acting" happy and cheerful on the outside, when, on the inside, I'm thinking, "I'll actually be glad when this three act play is over and I can get back to what I was doing for billions of years — making stars."

But I do feel that I have one last calling left. I am eating right and exercising and keeping myself in good physical condition for when the time comes. I am standing "on deck" and waiting for destiny to call me as I enter the final phase of my life.

I am human 3,004,232,541. I am a small speck in a massive see of humanity. We seem to be a wildly successful species, but our Planet is too small to handle our exploding population and destructive ways. Maybe I will simply go over the waterfall to extinction like everyone else, or maybe I'll be able to slow down the inevitable by a few years. Who really knows.