Inauguration of Barack Obama

I watched Barack Obama’s inauguration this morning, and I was glad to see him finally become the President of the United States. It’s true what they say, today is a historic day. Yes, America has finally elected its first black president. Well, he is actually half white. It’s strange how that half isn’t portrayed as significantly as his other half. And it’s even stranger, at least in my opinion, that a Harvard graduate and a Senator is still judged by his race and not his character by so many people in America. It seems like the whole world has embraced him and his message, but people here at home, the people that Obama wants to help, remain ignorant and hateful. It’s not even completely their fault. The sins of the father remain with the son. Hate is something we teach and pass on. Children soak up everything, the good and the bad. Maybe if every parent in America taught their kids that it doesn’t matter where you’re from, or what you look like, but instead that we should all be judged on the person we choose to be, then it wouldn’t be such a big deal for a half black man to be president. I don’t think having a black man as president is what made today great. Having a competent and charismatic man as president made today historic. The American people chose a man who is worthy to be their leader (by a narrower margin in the popular vote than I had expected). Judgments of race will continue to interfere with our innate abilities of reason and compassion as long as we consider it a factor in the character of a person. My point here is, let’s just drop the whole race thing. It’s only a big deal as long as we keep making it one. I hope that Barack Obama will be able to do some good during his term as president. I have a good feeling that he will. At the same time, I think most of our country’s problems are beyond the scope of one man to fix, even one in his position. The economy is a wreck, and I don’t think it’s because of a few bad or greedy men. It’s because of a destructive philosophy. The philosophy that each of us is not accountable for acting with moral responsibility. I think people generally know what’s right and what’s wrong. It’s wrong for one man to make a million dollars in a day, while a million men make one dollar in a day. But we don’t teach kids about moral responsibility to ensure our society’s collective wealth in the forms of good health and happiness. We teach them trigonometry and how to write an essay and then set them off in a world that passes you by if you don’t have money. I think to fix America, and the whole world really, we first need to think differently. We need to teach people how to think differently, in ways that will lead to growth, health, safety, and advancement, not hatred and regression to human vices. So this election is not just a new start for the White House. Let’s not put all our hopes on Barack Obama, it’s too much to ask of one man. Change will not come so easily. Let’s instead put our hopes on our ability to be selfless, moral, and productive.

We're All on Drugs

Believe it or not, nearly all of us are on drugs. One of the dictionary.com definitions of “drug” is “any article, other than food, intended to affect the structure or any function of the body of humans or other animals.” The Webster’s Concise Desk Dictionary defines it as a “substance which affects the nerves, and which can be habit forming.” The distinction we make between good drugs (the ones you get from the pharmacy) and bad drugs (the ones you get from your friends) is artificial. A drug is something which affects the body, the mind and the consciousness of a person. Of course the pharmaceutical industry will do it’s best to sugarcoat the compounds that they’ve synthesized in labs by putting them in pretty boxes and stamping them with an FDA approved logo, making you feel like it’s ok to put a manmade chemical substance in to your body, when you most likely don’t understand how it works. Don’t you ever wonder why there are so many side effects that come with these supposedly safe drugs? It’s because they aren’t found in nature and our bodies are not specifically built to deal with them. They can induce certain effects, but at what cost? We’re essentially giving our body something that it’s never seen before in the thousands of years that human beings have been around. And though the human body is amazing at taking care of itself, when it has to deal with something particularly nasty you might get some fatigue, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, rashes, fever, and much more. But I suppose since it comes in a nice box it must be safe. Even if it doesn’t come in a box, plastic container, or Ziploc bag it can still be a drug. Caffeine is a drug. Doesn’t it affect the way you function? Nicotine is a drug. Paint and marker fumes are drugs. TV can be a drug, porn can be a drug. Can’t you get hooked on them? When someone sits in front of a TV for hours every day and lets their body melt away into pudding we don’t think of it as badly as we do someone who drinks every night and wears out their liver. In reality, both are harmful addictions, to different extents of course.

I wonder if some of the harder illegal drugs out there (I’m thinking of cocaine or maybe heroin) were legally marketed in small, fairly safe doses by pharmaceutical companies, with all the warnings and labels that were required, if we would still be so scared of them? There are tons of people addicted to legal drugs, like painkillers, so why don’t we ban them? Interestingly enough, most illegal drugs today started out being perfectly legal – cocaine, amphetamines, marijuana, they were all legal in the past, until people starting abusing them. So why don’t we ban the newer drugs that people are abusing today? Why is Vicodin still on the market when kids on college campuses all across America are taking them just for fun? By criminalizing the “bad” drugs and marketing their “good” drugs, pharmaceutical companies have set up an extremely profitable situation for themselves. Everyone has aches and pains, if not more serious health troubles, and the first people we turn to for help are our doctors, who prescribe pills made by a corporation. The fact that they’re made by a corporation should be enough of a worry. A corporation is a money-making institution, not a public health advocate. Corporations from all different areas of business have been known to cut morality and safety if it can raise profits. If they really were moral and concerned for our safety, they wouldn’t release and market a drug that had side effects like vision abnormalities and heart attack (these are for Viagra by the way). They would keep working and improving compounds until they found something that worked and was virtually safe. Unfortunately, they might go out of business before creating even one such compound, because it’s hard to parallel in a lab what nature has been working on for millions of years. I guess my point here is, anything that you put into your body that is not natural and healthy is ultimately not good for you. What’s important is what effects a drug has on us and the people around us, and how those effects are achieved. Whether something is legal or illegal is a manmade and generally biased distinction. And lastly, marijuana should be legal for medical purposes in every state. Think about it, what sounds like a safer way of easing someone’s pain – ingesting a compound that grows naturally in a plant and has been used by people for its healing properties for thousands of years, or swallowing a pill that contains a compound synthesized by some chemists in a lab which is highly addictive and has undesirable side effects? We really need to get over our social prejudice about marijuana. It’s not that big of a deal.

What the Hell is Wrong with TV?

I watched a show called “What Would You Do?” where they set people up in these strange and awkward scenarios and then see how they react. Like staging a date where the guy slips a white powder into his date’s drink while she’s in the bathroom, making sure that someone else at the bar sees, then waiting to see if that person says anything. Sure it’s hilarious to us, watching from our little couches while we munch on snacks, but there’s a big problem here. We’re getting amusement out of other people’s discomfort. We enjoy seeing people’s emotions get played with, that little kid inside us likes poking and pissing people off. What the hell is wrong with TV, the media, and all of us as a society? We’re so used to this stuff that we don’t even realize how bad it is. Isn’t almost every reality show the same? You sit on your ass and watch other people get played with as if they were in some weird, twisted game. They cry, they fight, they get scared, but all we do is sit there and watch to see what happens next. Ironically, we’re watching someone else living their life, while we sit and waste away ours. This is largely our fault, by the way. They only show what people watch. Once the networks can’t make money through advertising, the show is dead. Of course the people who start these things are to blame as well. They know what they’re doing, and they don’t care if the quality of programming falls, let alone if what they show on TV is dumbing people down more and more every year. It’s all about profits, and what makes money makes it on the screen. If we didn’t watch that useless nonsense and demanded something better, at least slightly intellectual, we could probably get it. But why bother? It’s so much easier to shut off your brain, watch reality shows on MTV and pretend like you don’t know that there is something horribly wrong with what you’re watching. (There’s a great article answering the question of “why bother?” by Michael Pollan. You can read it here: http://www.michaelpollan.com/article.php?id=92)

I’m not innocent of this either. I’ve been on winter break from school for about a month now, and have wasted far too much time in front of the TV. I’ve quit the death box cold turkey in the past, staying away for over six months. I feel like it may be time for another stop. It seems I’ve relapsed. But regardless of what we’re watching, we can all do with less TV. Not even because there are more useful things to do with our time or any of the other things your parents will tell you. People can spend their time any way they want. But we shouldn’t watch TV because it’s not real. The world you see on that screen has very little to do with the world you see off it. It’s a fabricated world, and the more you try to make yourself or your life resemble the world on the screen, the more you stop being yourself and start becoming exactly what they hope you’ll be. A follower who’ll watch the shows, buy the products, read the magazines, go to the movies, buy the clothes, the makeup, the sunglasses, and most importantly, make them some money. Actually not some, a lot of money. And by “they,” I mean the people who really run these things. The five major corporations controlling nearly all aspects of the media: Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, Bertelsmann, and News Corp. Together, these five dominate over TV, newspapers, magazines, books and more. (This information comes from The New Media Monopoly by Ben H. Bagdikian, a great book on the history and nature of the media). I don’t know many details on this issue, and some may have changed since the book was published in 2004, but it doesn’t affect the point I’m hoping to make. Very few people are controlling a giant that influences millions. How can we trust them? I don’t think we can and I don’t think we should. Let’s all turn off the tube, and I bet that our opinion of it will drastically change.

A Poem about Everyday Life

I sometimes wonder
If things are meant to happen.
Who would we be
Without seemingly unimportant events?
Someone else.

This is a world of details.
The slightest touch sends a shiver.
The slightest glance tells it all.
The slightest thought changes everything.

They say we are different.
We are.
We have notions of happiness, of equality.
But we choose not to pursue them.
Our creations hold us back.
So abandon them.

We are born with everything we need.
Don't believe them
When they say you need more.

Long bouts of numbness
Interrupted by feeling.
Is this the life we were meant to have?
Don't believe them
When they tell you it is.

Why Fight?

This is part of a paper I wrote on terrorism and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). Just some ideas on how to make things better. It probably doesn't mean much and I don't know how realistic it is, but I think it's good to think about this kind of stuff once in a while.

To end all terrorist activity would mean to end resistance and revolt, which is an impossibility. Until we live in Huxley’s “Brave New World”, not everyone will agree or conform to the status quo. Terrorism, or at least many of its characteristics, has been around as long as people have thought differently. Reducing the violence and unnecessary bloodshed, as with the ELF, is certainly possible. One step in the right direction would be for our governments to stop interfering with the lives of people they have no right to influence. The notion that white, Christian Europe is the best in physiology and religion, and that its values need to be spread at all cost, has led to much resentment. Colonization, the killing and using of native peoples around the world, and the present-day political meddling that exists can all be cited as sources for hatred towards Europe and the United States. In fact, white, Christian Europe may well be the largest terrorist organization there is, with a history going back centuries. When we let people run their countries and live their lives however they choose – including religion and political system – we will decrease much of the world’s terrorism.

Furthermore, the global political community will have to promote listening to all people and groups, as well as get rid of all the routine and red tape that hinders action. But all the work cannot be left to the government; the people need to become better-informed and better-involved in the political community, looking beyond their own front lawns to matters that affect the billions of others across the globe. From one perspective, terrorist organizations are pushed towards violence by a global community who will only pay attention if bombs go off. If terrorist groups weren’t immediately criminalized and were instead first heard, some violence and death could be prevented. I believe it unrealistically optimistic to think that all violence, revolt, clashes in ideology, and all the other issues associated with terrorism will ever cease to exist. I do consider improvement quite realistic, however, through such means as listening and not forcing our lifestyles and values onto others. It seems odd that such simple concepts are so difficult to follow, and that they are not at the top of our priorities. Many factors have led to the disconnected lifestyle much of the Western world is now living. We are often disconnected from our local community, our global community, and the natural world. Though we often look to others for change and for the solutions to our problems, we must not forget that change requires a strong foundation. When each person is more attentive, involved, and empathetic, much of our violence – the wildfire of the human condition – will seem to us silly and barbaric.

Something I'm Working On

Here's a song I made up on guitar. It still needs some work, hope you like it.

Corruption in Congo

I've been reading a book about the Congo for a class, called In The Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz. The former leader of the Congo, Mobutu, is an interesting man to study. He came from a small tribe, not considered one of the better or more advanced of the many tribes that exist in Congo. Regardless, his excellent people skills carried him to the top. Most who met him were impressed with his charisma and intelligence, and there was no reason to think that eventually putting the country in his hands would not be beneficial. He started a leader of the people , but unfortunately ended a leader of thieves.

He wanted the Congo's colonizer and oppressor, the tiny European nation of Belgium, to end their destructive leeching and allow the third largest African nation to begin its own path. It's odd to think of how a nation that's 6200 km away and close to 77 times smaller than the Democratic Republic of Congo, (information from CIA World Factbook), can assert such crippling dominance. Mobutu wanted a Congo that ran itself. Even after Belgium had officially withdrawn, they along with other foreign nations, still ran much of the country's economy and controlled most of it's wealth. So Mobutu decided to basically kick out all foreign business (he was known not to be very savvy nor very interested in economics). You know when someone kicks you in the back of your knee and you just drop, that's basically what Mobutu did to the Congolese economy.

Practically no foreign investment came in after that point. Why would companies risk putting their money in a country with such high risk and instability? There was an abundance of natural resources, there still is, but it's useless without the money and manpower needed to get it. From this point on, or from earlier perhaps, things quickly went downhill. Mobutu stole more and more money from the country, coming up with clever ways to hide it. He ended up with 8 billion dollars in Swiss bank accounts. He was not the only government official to steal, of course, it was regular and expected soon enough. He did set the standard and did lead by example, however wrong that example may have been.

The country suffered, and he prospered. So how does a charismatic and intelligent man who wishes to bring his nation out of the slums end up a thief who pushes it further down? It seems a long process, but it shows itself over and over again in history. Perhaps the systems we live in, capitalism, inevitably brings out greed and hinders philanthropy in us. Lord Acton apparently got it right when he said, "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely."