Jul 26, 2012

Hope is for the Lazy: The Challenge of Our Dead World by Robert Jensen.



 
In 2005, I preached on the ecological crisis in a sermon I titled “Hope is for the Weak: The Challenge of a Broken World.” Looking back, I realize that I had been far too upbeat and optimistic, probably trying too hard to be liked. Today I want to correct that. Hence, my updated title: “Hope is for the Lazy: The Challenge of Our Dead World.” Let’s start with two of the three important changes. 

First, to be a hope-monger or a hope-peddler today is not just a sign of weakness but also of laziness, and sloth is one of the seven deadly sins. Don’t forget that, as good Christians, we try to avoid those.Second, our world is not broken, it is dead. We are alive, if we chose to be, but the hierarchical systems of exploitation that structure the world in which we live -- patriarchy, capitalism, nationalism, white supremacy, and the industrial model -- all are dead. It’s not just that they cannot be reformed, but that they cannot, and should not, be revived. The death-worship at the heart of those ideologies is exhausting us and the world, and the systems are running down. That means we have to create new systems, and in that monumental task, the odds are against us. What we need is not naïve hope but whatever it is that lies beyond naiveté, beyond hope.

If this sounds depressing, blame Wendell Berry. He got me going on this. 

In every sermon I’ve preached at St. Andrew’s, I have quoted Berry, and I will do that extensively this morning. This is the first verse from one of his Sabbath poems :


It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old,
for hope must not depend on feeling good
and there is the dream of loneliness at absolute midnight.
You also have withdrawn belief in the present reality
of the future, which surely will surprise us,
and hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction
any more than by wishing. But stop dithering.
The young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them?
Tell them at least what you say to yourself.


This is what I say to myself: The systems of our world are dead. Our world is a dead world. If we are to live, we have to believe in something beyond hope. 

By “beyond hope,” I’m not talking about heaven, about a magical realm beyond our material existence. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I will continue to assume that Earth is not a waiting room. We shouldn’t distract ourselves by looking to someplace up there, somewhere above or beyond, something that we pray is just around the corner. 

I’m also not talking about living in domed cities or blasting off to another planet. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I will continue to assume that we aren’t going to invent our way out of our core problems. We are here for the duration, playing the hand we have always played, with no extra aces up our sleeve.

So, ignore the desperate claims of the religious fundamentalists and the technological fundamentalists. Their fantastic futures are based on fantasies of innocence. We have sinned. We have desecrated the places where we live. We have been guilty of weaknesses and laziness. We are not innocent. Let’s deal with it.

Let’s start by dealing with the news on Earth about the Earth, the ecological news: It’s bad and getting worse. Think of those dsytopic futures from science fiction, the scary futures that movie directors conjure up. It looks like that kind of future is coming faster than we expected, looking meaner and uglier than we anticipated. Scientists these days are talking about tipping points and planetary boundaries, about how human activity is pushing the planet beyond its limits and making it increasing unlikely that the ecosphere can continue to support human life as we know it. Paleoecologist Anthony Barnosky of the University of California-Berkeley and 21 colleagues warn that humans likely are forcing a planetary-scale critical transition “with the potential to transform Earth rapidly and irreversibly into a state unknown in human experience.” That means that “the biological resources we take for granted at present may be subject to rapid and unpredictable transformations within a few human generations.”

That means that we’re in trouble. The authors conclude with a simple set of recommendations:

[A]verting a planetary-scale critical transition demands global cooperation to stem current global-scale anthropogenic forcings. This will require reducing world population growth and per-capita resource use; rapidly increasing the proportion of the world’s energy budget that is supplied by sources other than fossil fuels while also becoming more efficient in using fossil fuels when they provide the only option; increasing the efficiency of existing means of food production and distribution instead of converting new areas or relying on wild species to feed people; and enhancing efforts to manage as reservoirs of biodiversity and ecosystem services, both in the terrestrial and marine realms, the parts of Earth’s surface that are not already dominated by humans. 

To take seriously even that short list of fairly limited tasks, a significant portion of the population would have to agree with the scientific assessment of our situation, and then we all would have to summon the moral and political will to radically change the way we live. If we could do all that, we might have a chance to minimize the damage. If. 

Simon Fraser University biologist Arne Mooers, a co-author on that study who specializes in biodiversity, says the odds are very high that the next global state change will be extremely disruptive to our civilizations: “In a nutshell, humans have not done anything really important to stave off the worst because the social structures for doing something just aren’t there. My colleagues who study climate-induced changes through the Earth’s history are more than pretty worried. In fact, some are terrified.”


It would be easy to look at all this and conclude there is no hope. That would be easy because it’s the most rational assessment. If that seems harsh, well, life can be, and often is, harsh. As ecologists like to remind us, nature does not negotiate. Nature sets limits. For those who prefer sports metaphors, nature bats last. 

Avoiding reality because it is harsh is not a winning strategy. We are not going to win by praying for deliverance by the hand of God or waiting for deliverance through the wizardry of gadgets. Religion and technology, understood historically and used wisely, are both important tools to help us cope. But religious and technological fundamentalists are weak and lazy, because they spin fanciful stories about how we can magically avoid a reckoning with the human capacity for desecration.
There may, in fact, not be a winning strategy available to us at this point in history. But we have an obligation to assess the strategies available, and work at the ones that make the most sense. That is how we make a credible claim to being human. We don’t become fully human through winning. We embrace our humanity by acting out of our deepest moral principles to care for each other and care for the larger living world, even if failure is likely, even if failure is inevitable.

To borrow from James Baldwin, “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”  That line is from an essay titled “As Much Truth as One Can Bear,” about the struggles of artists to help a society, such as white-supremacist America, face the depth of its pathology. Baldwin, writing with a focus on relationships between humans, suggested that a great writer attempts “to tell as much of the truth as one can bear, and then a little more.” In our relationship to the larger living world, our task is slightly different: To tell as much of the truth as one can bear, and then all the rest of the truth, whether we can bear it or not.

To repeat one of those hard-to-bear truths: Nature doesn’t negotiate. Nature sets limits. Nature bats last. If we don’t want to be accused of weakness or laziness, we have to face not only the truth we can bear, but all of the truth, which is too much to ask us to bear. Here’s how Berry describes the unbearable truth in that same Sabbath poem:

Because we have not made our lives to fit
our places, the forests are ruined, the fields eroded,
the streams polluted, the mountains overturned.

Our lives do not fit our places. We are out of place. Modern high-energy/high-technology industrial life not only has desecrated the world, it has left us out of place, out of touch with ourselves and each other. Berry reminds us that place and identity are connected: “You can’t know who you are if you don’t know where you are.” Modern high-energy/high-technology industrial life disconnects us from where we are.

As much as I would like to ignore all this, I can’t go very long without being reminded of these realities. One day last month, as I was reading the day’s news and feeling one step closer to despair, I summed up that feeling in a note written quickly to some of my closest friends (on Facebook):

We treat women’s bodies like objects to be fucked and men’s bodies like machines to be worked. We treat the whole world like a mine or a garbage dump. The economic system assumes you care only about yourself. The political system gives the most to the people who have the most. We clamor for any amusement or chemical that takes our minds off the horror. And then we wonder why things aren’t going well. Things aren’t going well because we are living in systems that put us at odds with each other and with the larger living world. What are we to do about that? The first step is to tell the truth. Not just the truth we can bear, but all of the truth. 

Part of that truth is our own complicity. Note the third change from my previous title: From “a Broken World” to “Our Dead World.” This world that we have made is ours, it belongs in some way to all of us as a species, and we have to be responsible for our part in it. When I posted that note, some people objected to the use of “we” in that quick description of the state of the world. Lots of nice progressive folk want to disavow responsibility for the dead world, laying off the blame. Certainly some people are more blameworthy than others for the specific sins committed in this world. But for the central sin that defines the modern world -- the human capacity for desecration -- we all have to answer. As the scholar and activist Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel put it, “Few are guilty, but all are responsible.”
 
The truth is too much to bear, but we have no choice but to bear it: The world in which we live is dead. The world in which we live has been destroyed by social, political, and economic systems that are based on, and celebrate, exploitation and hierarchy. The world defined by those systems cannot be saved. When people push aside this truth and insist that we stay positive and focus on solutions, they typically mean “solutions” that don’t hint at any challenge to these fundamental systems. That means, of course, the solutions are likely to generate more problems. Those kinds of solutions are, in the long run, problems themselves. In the service of being “pragmatic” and “results-oriented” and “mature,” we contribute to the culture’s denial of reality. I repeat: Denying reality is not the basis for a winning strategy.

Tell as much truth as you can bear, and then face all the rest of the truth. If we place our hope in the systems that created this world, our hope will betray us, and then we will betray each other and those who come after us. We will betray the children, and their children, as long as there are children. 

There is always hope, but it is hope that lies beyond these systems, beyond the world as it is structured today. To be truly hopeful is to speak about a different world structured by different systems. To be truly hopeful is to risk irrelevance when engaged in polite conversation in mainstream America. Irrelevance, in these situations, is a virtue. Our chance of saving ourselves depends on enough people willing to be irrelevant soon enough.

Now, this would be a perfect place to pause and play the preacher. After such stern warnings, preachers reach into their magic bag of Scripture and pull out the Good News. They find an upbeat ending. They send people out into the world with hope. 

Remember, I’m the substitute today. I am not a preacher. I don’t have to play that game.
Rather than reaching for Scripture, I want to return to Baldwin and then to Berry.
In his meditation on the role of writers, Baldwin offered a challenge that can be applied to us all:

We are the generation that must throw everything into the endeavor to remake America [and, I would say, the world] into what we say we want it to be. Without this endeavor, we will perish. However immoral or subversive this may sound to some, it is the writer who must always remember that morality, if it is to remain or become morality, must be perpetually examined, cracked, changed, made new. He must remember, however powerful the many who would rather forget, that life is the only touchstone and that life is dangerous, and that without the joyful acceptance of this danger, there can never be any safety for anyone, ever, anywhere.


There is a lot riding on whether we have the courage and the strength to accept that danger, joyfully. Don’t take my harsh assessment, and the grief that must accompany it, to be a rejection of joy. The two, grief and joy, are not mutually exclusive but, in fact, rely on each other, and define the human condition. As Berry puts it, we live on “the human estate of grief and joy.”
The balancing of the two is the beginning of a hope beyond hope, the willingness not only to embrace that danger but to find joy in it. Our world is dead, but we are alive. No matter how dark the world grows, there is a light within. That is the message of Christianity, the message of all faith. That is the message with which Berry ends that Sabbath poem, and it is with those words that I conclude this morning: 

Found your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.
Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground
underfoot. Be lighted by the light that falls
freely upon it after the darkness of the nights
and the darkness of our ignorance and madness.
Let it be lighted also by the light that is within you,
which is the light of imagination. By it you see
the likeness of people in other places to yourself
in your place. It lights invariably the need for care
toward other people, other creatures, in other places
as you would ask them for care toward your place and you.
No place at last is better than the world. The world
is no better than its places. Its places at last
are no better than their people while their people
continue in them. When the people make
dark the light within them, the world darkens.


[This is an edited version of a sermon delivered July 8, 2012, at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, TX. http://www.staopen.com/. Audio is online at http://www.staopen.com/podcast/2012/jensen7_8_2012.mp3.]


OneLove

:::MME:::

Jul 25, 2012

Gimme a Beat!




This short clip was taken from the Focus Forward Film series & it's narrated by one of the most knowledgeable music historians around, Nelson George. Here we get a quick tour of the history and popularity of the TR-808 drum machine—known for short as the 808. Many will recall Kanye West's classic 808 & The Heartbreak - the 808 is the TR-808 mentioned in this clip. It is still used by many producers today in spite of the fact that it has not been manufactured since 1984. Without it, most techno and house music genres would have never been born, including Baltimore Club music, which originally sampled and put 808 drums under Chicago House music.


OneLove


:::MME:::

Jul 24, 2012

Musings



OneLove


:::MME:::

Lies, Damned Lies & Statistics






I am constantly amazed at the gullibility of some people, especially when it comes to economic & political matters. Many continue to swallow the tainted punch served by a mainstream media bent on keeping folks from thinking for themselves. The following is taken from Paul Buchheit's article about the rich  which is quite enlightening. Buchheit observes the three bullshit claims that many believe to be true -


1) Higher taxes on the rich will hurt small businesses and discourage job creators

According to a  recent Treasury analysis, only 2.5% of small businesses would face higher taxes from the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. It was also noted that job creation does not come from the people with money as many tend to believe.. Over 90% of the assets owned by millionaires are held in a combination of low-risk investments (bonds and cash), the stock market, real estate, and personal business accounts. Angel investing (capital provided by affluent individuals for business start-ups) accounted for less than 1% of the investable assets of high net worth individuals in North America in 2011. The Mendelsohn Affluent Survey agreed that the very rich spend less than two percent of their money on new business startups. The Wall Street Journal noted, in way of confirmation, that the extra wealth created by the Bush tax cuts led to the “worst track record for jobs in recorded history.”

2) Individual initiative is all you need for success.

President Obama was criticized for a speech which included these words: “If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own…when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.” ‘Together’ is the word that winner-take-all conservatives seem to forget. Even the richest and arguably most successful American, Bill Gates, owes most of his good fortune to the thousands of software and hardware designers who shaped the technological industry over a half-century or more. A careful analysis of his rise shows that he had luck, networking skills, and a timely sense of opportunism, even to the point of taking the work of competitors and adapting it as his own. Gates was preceded by numerous illustrious Americans who are considered individual innovators when in fact they used their skills to build upon the work of others. On the day that Alexander Graham Bell filed for a patent for his telephone, electrical engineer Elisha Gray was filing an intent to patent a similar device. Both had built upon the work of Antonio Meucci, who didn’t have the fee to file for a patent. Thomas Edison’s incandescent light bulb was the culmination of almost 40 years of work by other fellow light bulb developers. Samuel Morse, Eli Whitney, the Wright brothers, and Edison had, as eloquently stated by Jared Diamond, “capable predecessors…and made their improvements at a time when society was capable of using their product.” If anything, it’s harder than ever today to ascend through the ranks on one’s own. As summarized in the Pew research report ”Pursuing the American Dream,” only 4% of those starting out in the bottom quintile make it to the top quintile as adults, “confirming that the ‘rags-to-riches’ story is more often found in Hollywood than in reality.”

3) A booming stock market is good for all of us

The news reports would have us believe that happy days are here again when the stock market goes up. But as the market rises, most Americans are getting a smaller slice of the pie. In a recent Newsweek article, author Daniel Gross gushed that “The stock market has doubled since March 2009, while corporate profits and exports have surged to records.” But the richest 10% of Americans own over 80% of the stock market. What Mr. Gross referred to as the “democratization of the stock market is actually, as demonstrated by economist Edward Wolff, a distribution of financial wealth among just the richest 5% of Americans, those earning an average of $500,000 per year. Thanks in good part to a meager 15% capital gains tax, the richest 400 taxpayers DOUBLED their income and nearly HALVED their tax rates in just seven years (2001-2007). So dramatic is the effect that anyone making more than $34,500 a year in salary and wages is taxed at a higher rate than an individual with millions in capital gains. There’s yet more to the madness. The stock market has grown much faster than the GDP over the past century, which means that this special tax rate is being given to people who already own most of the unearned income that keeps expanding faster than the productiveness of real workers.

And one fading illusion: People in the highest class are people of high class.

Scientific American and Psychological Science have both reported that wealthier people are more focused on self, and have less empathy for people unlike themselves.This sense of self-interest, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and other sources, promotes wrongdoing and unethical behavior.Can’t help but think about bankers and hedge fund managers.


Stay alert & watch your money!

OneLove

:::MME:::

Jul 22, 2012

Poet's Nook: "the poor are no longer with us" by Marge Piercy

 


No one’s poor any longer. Listen
to politicians. They mourn the middle
class which is shrinking as we watch
in the mirror. The poor have been

discarded already into the oblivion
pail of not to be spoken words.
They are as lepers were treated once,
to be shipped off to fortified islands

of the mind to rot quietly. If
poverty is a disease, quarantine
its victims. If it’s a social problem
imprison them behind high walls.

Maybe its genetic: how often they
catch easily preventable diseases.
Feed them fast garbage and they’ll
die before their care can cost you,

of heart attacks, stroke. Provide
cheap guns and they’ll kill each
other well out of your sight.
Ghettos are such dangerous places.

Give them schools that teach
them how stupid they are. But
always pretend they don’t exist
because they don’t buy enough,

spend enough, give you bribes
or contributions. No ads target
their feeble credit. They are not
real people like corporations.

OneLove

:::MME:::

Reality and the Extended Mind




PART 2



OneLove

:::MME:::

Jul 21, 2012

Black Swan Event: The LIBOR Fiasco


According to Wikipedia, a black swan event is a metaphor that describes an event that is a surprise (to the observer), has a major impact, and after the fact is often inappropriately rationalized with the benefit of hindsight. When I fist learned of the LIBOR (London InterBank Offered Rate) scandal, I initially thought "business as usual - these fat cats know how to rob & steal under the cloak of night & know full well that the politicians they have bought & the media they have hijacked will deflect attention away to other events that don't carry as much weight". After digging some more into this fiasco, I shuddered at the global implications. Keep your eye on this one, folks. You may want to check out these other sources about LIBOR to get up to speed:









Stay alert

OneLove

:::MME:::




Jul 18, 2012

Poet's Nook: "What Is There Beyond Knowing?" by Mary Oliver

"What is there beyond knowing that keeps calling to me? 
I can't turn in any direction but it's there. 
I don't mean the leaves' grip and shine
 or even the thrush's silk song, 
but the far-off fires, for example, of the stars,
 heaven's slowly turning theater of light, 
or the wind playful with its breath;
or time that's always rushing forward, 
or standing still in the same- what shall I say- moment.
What I know I could put into a pack
as if it were bread and cheese,
and carry it on one shoulder,
important and honorable, but so small!
While everything else continues, unexplained and unexplainable.
 How wonderful it is to follow a thought quietly to its logical end.
I have done this a few times.
But mostly I just stand in the dark field,
in the middle of the world, breathing in and out.
 Life so far doesn't have any other name
but breath and light, wind and rain.
If there's a temple, I haven't found it yet.
I simply go on drifting, in the heaven of the grass
and the weeds."

Jul 17, 2012

A Journey Through The Abyss


(Chris Hayes makes some excellent points in his new book, Twilight of the Elites, which I highly recommend. How did America become so jacked up? Chris Hayes breaks it down like this:
America's ruling class sucks. Behind the destruction they have wrought, he pinpoints the sinister pattern: A group of status-obsessed, powerful people who parasitically feed on some combination of short-sighted groupthink, deception, self-dealing, fraud, smugness and self-delusion. And in virtually every case, they escaped accountability......Although I didn't agree with everything in the book, it is nonetheless a very insightful read).


OneLove


:::MME:::

Jul 16, 2012

You Can't Be Neutral On A Moving Train: Howard Zinn's Personal History of Our Times


"I see this as the central issue of our time: how to find a substitute for war in human ingenuity, imagination, courage, sacrifice, patience."
~Howard Zinn

Stay alert..

OneLove

:::MME:::

Jul 15, 2012

Lianne La Havas In Concert


Lianne La Havas blows me away! I wrote about her a couple of months ago (see On The Rise: Lianne La Havas), but I just came across this 30 minute concert she did for BBC6 which was simply outstanding. I don't know too many singers who can sing with such perfection in a live setting (you lip-syncers need to take notes!) Added to her obvious talent is her unpretentious charm which comes across so clearly on this set. World, get ready for Lianne!

OneLove


:::MME:::

Jul 14, 2012

Of Shills & Sharks



When Mitt Romney addressed the NAACP the other day, I really didn't expect much outside of the typical sloganeering to curry favor with an electorate historically known to vote Democratic. That he was booed for attacking Obamacare (which incidentally is a carbon-copy of his health care bill he presented in Massachusetts), teachers unions, etc was to be expected from a largely African-American audience, but surely he too had to expect it (in spite of the fact that the GOP paid & flew in African-American supporters to cheer him on). Symbolically, Romney went on stage, faced his audience, unzipped his pants & took a whizz on them. It was a calculated move meant to excite his own deep-pocketed backers & trailer park supporters. And if that wasn't bad enough, this clown went to the bottom of that ol' reliable race-bucket of stereotypes & unleashed this affront the day after:
When I mentioned I am going to get rid of Obamacare, they weren’t happy, I didn’t get the same response. That’s O.K, I want people to know what I stand for and if I don’t stand for what they want, go vote for someone else, that’s just fine…
But I hope people understand this, your friends who like Obamacare, you remind them of this, if they want more stuff from government tell them to go vote for the other guy — more free stuff.


He had no intention on bridging the divide between most nonwhite Americans and political conservatives. He doesn't feel it's necessary, it appears. So why the hell is this guy running for President? Somebody - anybody - enlighten a brother. My suspicion is Romney realizes something most folks are not aware of: American democracy has been bought, hook, line & f***ing sinker. That is the only explanation I can think of as he  seems confident that he can win an election with nonwhite support. It seems he's emboldened by all the big money coming his way which is worrying the Obama camp: "This is no joke. If we can't keep the money race close, it becomes that much harder to win in November," Obama campaign's chief operating officer Ann Marie Habershaw wrote in an email to supporters, titled "We Could Lose If This Continues." Yes folks, Citizens United sealed the deal & your vote really doesn't carry as much weight as it used to.


Now back to that free lunch mark he made. This ticked me off big time!

As far as free lunches go, we of course just witnessed the biggest government handout in history, one that Romney himself endorsed. 4.5 trillion dollars in bailout money already disbursed, trillions more still at risk in guarantees and loans, sixteen trillion dollars in emergency lending from the Federal Reserve, two trillion in quantitative easing, etc. etc. All of this money went to Romney’s crooked pencil dicks in the Wall Street banks that for years helped Romney take over companies with mountains of borrowed cash. Now, after these banks crashed, executives at those same firms used those public funds to pay themselves massive salaries, which is exactly the opposite of “helping those who need help,” if you’re keeping score.

I can't stand a hypocrite, maaan! The thug in me just wants to knock his lights out. That aside, what kind of political instincts does this guy have? Appealing to trailer park white folks in the worst way is a harebrained move that may swing white voters his way, but will that unite the country should he win the November election? I see a more troubled nation if he wins. The guy is a total nut who seems to have a heart of stone & worrisome personality that borders on the psychopathic.

The choice is yours.


OneLove


:::MME:::

Jul 12, 2012

Poet's Nook: "A Brave And Startling Truth" by Maya Angelou







We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth
And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms

***

 We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear

When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.
OneLove
:::MME:::

Frank Ocean Kicks A Hornet's Nest

This is probably one of the most anticipated releases in a long time - all the more so since the crazy buzz surrounding Frank Ocean's sexuality (he admitted to his bisexuality).  I have to give the brother his props - this admission takes steely courage in the face of a world coarsened with homophobia, ignorance & cruelty. As a heterosexual male, I never really had an issue with other people's sexuality - live & let live is what I've always maintained, as long as mutual respect is upheld. It always struck me as primitive the way people react to difference. Why do some people cling so tenaciously to their prejudices, crouched in their fears? And who is anyone to judge another for that matter? What if your own child admitted that he/she was gay/bisexual? Would you love him/her any less? I doubt it. And don't bring God into the conversation, please. The mystery of God is just that- a mystery. This is the conversation Frank Ocean has started through his craft & it's a damn good thing! Michael Eric Dyson hit it on the head recently - check it out...
Ocean's lyrics speak volumes to his depth & maturity as they crackle & pop with intelligence & panache. Take the cut Bad Religion, for example, with lines like-“This unrequited love, to me it's nothing but a one-man cult/And cyanide in my styrofoam cup”. Here Ocean begins an impromptu therapy session with a cabbie reflecting on the paradoxical nature of love & finding himself in a place too deep for his own liking which he shuns -  “unrequited” love delivers for him the unbidden desire:suicide. Ocean brilliantly weaves the infamous Jonestown group suicide into this piece as he finds love to be similar to cyanide-laced punch - a ticket to death in his hands alone. He performed this cut on the Jimmy Fallon show the other night which was quite stunning with The Roots & a string orchestra providing the nuanced emotional textures...
Forget the controversy surrounding his sexuality - this is brilliant music which is a rarity nowadays in the Pop/R&B scene. As a rambunctious heterosexual male, I have no hangups & give much respect for folks like Frank Ocean who decided to deal with the world on his own terms - the way it should be. The problem is not with gays, bisexuals, transgendered or whatever folks choose to call themselves - the problem is with us, the heterosexual majority. Hopefully Frank Ocean's music & daring will foster more engaging conversations that can lead to a better understanding & tolerance of our brothers & sisters who choose to love in a different way.  Great album! (At the time of this writing Channel Orange is still the top-selling album in the iTunes music store) Evolve...   OneLove   :::MME:::

Jul 11, 2012

Truth Hurts, Lies Kill : The Real Truth of Wars




(Excellent speech by Dr Dahlia Wasfi. She knows her stuff!)


OneLove


:::MME:::

The War On Kids





(See Chanda Whitfield's excellent essay School Scam, Johnathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities  (which is broken down to its main points on this link) & some great quotes from Paulo Freire's classic Pedadgogy Of The Oppressed)


Stay alert

OneLove

:::MME:::







Jul 10, 2012

Stranger Than Fiction II

(The Subatomic Boson Particle)



To paraphrase Dickens, we are living in the best of times& the worst of times, in an age of wisdom &an age of foolishness, an epoch of belief & an epoch of incredulity, a season of Light & a season of Darkness, a spring of hope & a winter of despair, we have everything before us, we have nothing before us. The speed of change & innovation within the realm of science/technology is mind-boggling. Although much of this amazing stuff has been/will be used for good, much of it will not  - in the name of "national security", it will be/has been used  against our best interests. Time reveals....

Here are a few items that caught my eye recently:


(1) Spray-on Battery: Rice University researchers have come up with a way to spray-paint a lithium-ion battery onto pretty much any smooth surface- from glass to glazed ceramic tiles - to charge up any appliance/device.
(2)Microscopic Machines That Could Produce Medicine Directly Inside Your Body: Tiny implantable capsules  embedded with genetic instructions to produce drug-building proteins. Is this the future of medicine? It looks that way..
(3) Higgs Boson - Perhaps the greatest discovery in decades according to many top scientists.
(4) The Pentagon's Narrative Networks -Just when you think that nothing can top the last shady privacy infringement you read about, something else invariably does.This is very deep stuff, folks. Thought crimes is just around the corner.....
(5) Thoughts Decoded To Words That Can Be Read & Heard by Computer  - Well, there goes the neighborhood! With this technology advancing to hand-held gadgets, I need to patent a stylish tin foil skull cap because everybody is gonna need one to deflect the RF signals trying to read their thoughts.
(6) Human Beings As Batteries - Remember that scene from The Matrix where humans were being harvested for power for machines? 
(7)  Smart Phones That See Through Walls - Pretty damn devilish. Hopefully this will not be for commercial use as our rights to privacy are already going down a slippery slope. 
(8)Electronic Evolution: Research Show Robots Forming Human-like Societies 
-If these bots get the idea of overrunning human societies, may I suggest this......
(9)Motion-Sensing Gloves Could Let Deaf People Speak Aloud, Through Your Cellphone
-The barrier has been broken! This is fantastic!
(10) NASA Sails To The Outer Limits -  As of July 5th 2012, a total of 777 exoplanets have been discovered. Could any of them harbor life?
(11) New Chemical Makes Teeth Cavity-Proof - (...hear that Steve Buscemi?)

See also Stranger Than Fiction 1 

OneLove

:::MME:::

The Dying Art of Friendship


Grab a cup of coffee:
image
Dine out at your favorite restaurant:
image
Spend some time at the museum:
image
Meet at a popular diner:
image
Relax at the beach:
image
Go to a game:
image
Going out on a date:
image
Take a drive around town:
image
From “Is the Web Driving Us Mad?” Thedailybeast.com/newsweek


OneLove

:::MME:::

Jul 5, 2012

To Be Young, Gifted & Black




A few days ago I read an article in the Huffington Post entitled, Child Prodigies: 20 Astounding Young Wunderkinds From Around The Globe, and I gotta say, it was disappointingly one-sided - not one black child prodigy was represented! What a slap in the face, but the piece underscored for me something very sinister about racism/ethnocentrism in the 21st century: It is more often than not subtle & implicit. Anyone reading this article would be quietly directed towards the notion that being black & gifted  cannot be empirically substantiated. Implicit racism is sustained by these mythologies percolating through the cultural landscape & the saddest part of it is the victims of such a travesty oftentimes believe this crap & pass it on from generation to generation. Black genius has been historically rejected, omitted & denied in the Western hemisphere - it just does not fit into the dreamy ideological/ethnohistorical  framework that has lulled so many to sleep. The fact that African immigrants, for example, are the most successful immigrant group in the US, will not be known to most. The Asian "model minority" is still the dominant, though inaccurate, narrative.

Below are some of the child/teen prodigies that should have been mentioned in the article. They're out there doing their thing, defying persistent stereotypes & shooting for the stars....























OneLove


:::MME:::

Musings







Nature scraps, nature pictures and images for orkut, myspace, blogs, forums





 


 

Make your own Bible. 

Select and collect all the words and sentences that
in all your readings have been to you like the
blast of a trumpet.


–Ralph Waldo Emerson



OneLove


:::MME::: 

Jul 2, 2012

A Note On Voluntary Slavery

 


(SOURCE)

Incredibly, the above graphic isn't an exaggeration. There are people in this situation right now where each payment to their credit card company leaves them owing more. Only in the last few years has the government moved to stop banks from putting people in this cycle of infinite repayment (where the interest and fees are more than the monthly payments).

How was this ever legal?

Well, in the late 70s, the US Supreme Court ended the federal predatory lending laws, and the credit card economy was born.

Banks issued cards to anyone and everyone, often charging 24.99% interest (or higher, cash advances often collect 29.99%) and adding on an assortment of fees hidden in the fine print. This appears to be a good deal for the card holder, as the monthly payment is very low. Specifically, it was often 2% of the balance, an amount that would either have the card holder paying back their debt many times over or, in the worst cases, never paying it back at all (especially once unexpected fees were thrown in).


As wages for middle and low income Americans stagnated in the 90's and manufacturing jobs went overseas, much of the growth in consumer spending came in the form of goods bought with credit cards. Thirty years after that Supreme Court decision, the average American card holder owes $10,679 on their cards. About 80% of American families have at least one card. Combined they owe about a trillion dollars, but will pay back far, far more.

In 2005 the government stepped in and "encouraged" credit cards companies to raise their minimum payments to something that would actually pay off the debt in the card holder's lifetime. They were not, however, actually required to comply.

More recently the Obama administration signed into law new regulations that will supposedly require credit card companies to operate in a less overtly evil way.

If you have a credit card, for the love of God, pay more than the freaking minimum.






:::MME:::

The New Corporation

  The New Corporation ​is a 2020 documentary directed by Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan, law professor at the University of British Columb...