Tannishblog

It’s comforting to note that our grandchildren will be fortunate enough to witness the end of humanity in their lifetimes. On a selfish level, I probably won’t be around to see it, so that’s a small comfort. On another level, it has been a long time coming, this self-extinction, so the sooner the planet is rid of us, the better. The fact that our foreseeable progeny must be witness to the cumulative effects of our species’ greed and shortsightedness is not all that comforting.

What brings on these typically Tannish notions? Today’s Washington Post hosts an article about Canada’s oil boom, which illustrates how profit and greed overcome reason and caution as they strip mine bitumen-laden sand for fuel oil. The process is quite toxic, it seems, with the corporate stance being: “future technologies will be able to clean up our mess.”

Honestly – our inevitable and arguably imminent collapse will be well-earned. Only time will tell if it will be spectacular or not. Take heart that the children of the oil barons will be able to eat their stockpile of stock certificates when food becomes too tainted and all the water unpalatable.

As an afterthought, maybe America is doing the world a favor by killing off mass amounts of humanity quickly. The slow death of planet-poisoning would be cruel in comparison. For some reason strains of an REM song is drifting across my consciousness…

“…It’s the end of the world as we know it…”

Too bad the concept of owning vanity plates for my car is antithetical to Buddhist philosophy. I would get some that read: MEDIT8

Buddhism talks about how the mind is central to our experience; everything we perceive filters through the mind…

(Have I lost you yet? It always amazes me how any mention of Buddhism, in any form glazes the eyes of my theistic friends and relations. Looking into their eyes, I can almost hear their minds shut. However, that’s not what I wanted to write about.)

…Somehow, this obvious truth struck me as a revelation when I first heard it. The teaching then points out how control of the mind, or understanding its workings are important to the mental and physical wellbeing of all. To take the time to watch your own mind work, to note its traps and conditioned responses, to learn how the untamed mind is the “usual suspect” when one is mentally instable – that is the basis for wisdom. From there we can begin to loosen its hold upon us; if you know the trap it there, would you continue to step in it?

Buddhists often mention that the consciousness, or the mind, is like an onion. That it requires peeling before one can view its core. Layer by layer, the practitioner must work from the outer regions inward, cleansing each in turn. Only by removing the outward conditions can we progress; as one predisposition causes another, the unraveling of the structure of the mind’s functioning must be reverse-engineered.

Of course, meditation is the method. Sitting still, without outward distractions highlights the myriad of inner distractions, dialogues we have with ourselves, worries and fantasies that ceaselessly loop throughout our subconscious. We are too used to shouting over our thoughts to notice, they are shouting back. The resulting cacophony can be literally mind-blowing.

Instead sit back, get comfortable. Turn off the lights, or dim them. Turn off your electronics and breathe. Meditation is simple, the basic tool – your breath – is always with you, and so you can do this anywhere. Yet meditation is very profound, ever more so the more one practices. Getting away from the manic motion of modern life is therapeutic, soon you will look for ways to recharge, to calm you mind.

Don’t take my word for it. Try it. Google meditation, read the results, and earnestly try it. You don’t have to tell anyone, it’ll be our secret. Do it for yourself, others will benefit by association. Altruism will emerge naturally. Tame your mind, its been ruling your life for years, isn’t is time to take charge?

Boy its tough changing gears. After a year of Bush bashing, I attempt to expand my subject matter only to encounter writers block. What will we leftist bloggers do if the unthinkable happens – like if we get a Democrat in the White House? That just might put Kos out of business. Certainly After Downing Street’s days are numbered regardless of outcomes.

Wait… Do I hear cheering in the background?

Seriously: What to write when politics is removed from the equation? I could talk about my fabulous kid. You might take that for a day or so. Or write about my cats - ditto. Besides endless omphaloskepsism makes for dwindling audiences, and if I allow myself that vice my readership would fall into the negative numbers. Is that possible?

So here I go, attempting extemporaneous filler in compensation for writers block. Better that than regaling my (one) reader with “What I Did on Memorial Day Weekend.” See? I do care. Because I’ve said most all I can against our current crop of politicians, and because the nation is finally getting the drift of what whiners like me have been up to these past (almost) six years, I try to diversify. It’s almost like a new blog project, an idea that resurfaces time and again.

Maybe I should kick-start IdiotSynchracies. Some would argue that as a more fitting handle for my work, anyway. Hmm…

It seems we’re supposed to get teary-eyed and maudlin over the Memorial Day holiday. Good Americans are to trot out their dusty flags and their threadbare national pride for display. We’ll open our Sunday papers to read OpEds about how free we are and how this directly relates to our fallen soldiers, and - most importantly – how we plebeians should be grateful for the generations of American warriors we’ve bred. In honor of the fallen, we expect to express our gratefulness by shopping, dirtying up our GrillMasters, guzzling bear and watching baseball – all in the sacred name of America.

Let us not forget this weekend that doing so is a right, a freedom. Our neighbors will expect us to act a certain way, say certain things, not to do so risks ostracism or worse. They might sell our phone number to the NSA. Therefore smile and nod to the fellow at his barbecue beyond your fence line, raise your Budweiser to the great red, white and blue and try to forget how this expression of freedom is tainted by enforcement.

Perhaps this is not the time to tear up this page with a rant about the underlying cultural assumptions pertaining to this holiday. I do wish you a restful weekend, so I refrain. Perhaps another day will suffice. Instead, partly because I’m lazy and wish to play a bit myself, I will re-post last years Memorial Day poem as a placeholder for my ranting. No sense not kicking the dead dog, he won’t mind….

Have a safe holiday.

In Memorandum
————————–

Give homage to our precious dead,
All those who do remain.
For policy and rhetoric,
For senseless death, in vain.
For principles and politics,
We send our young to die.
A grieving mother’s tear-stained face,
So plainly wonders why.

Send tribute to our newly lost,
Our love, it cannot die.
Kneel beside their fresh-turned graves,
Beneath the perfect sky.
Question all that brings such pain,
That God and Man forfend.
And send a prayer into the void,
Such folly soon will end.

Pay respects to Ideologues,
Who send your youth to die.
Why kiss the Ring of Priviledge,
To kiss their souls goodbye?
The Evil that is on this Earth,
Resides in any man,
Who sends our young to die for him,
As if that is God’s plan.

To die in the name of Freedom,
Is viewed as lofty praise.
Is politics superior
To the children that we raise?
At what point will we look about,
To see what is insane:
To kill in the name of Freedom,
Devalues what is gained.

I found myself pondering our concepts of power during the commute to work this morning – I have no idea why. The struggle for power affects us all. It is a direct extension of our self-preferential worldview, in which we do anything to promote our will over others. Survival of the Fittest – not necessarily.

Whether you’re a corporate CEO, a CEO President, or “just” the House Majority Leader, power is the game. These examples are obvious, but little people like me do it too. Rudeness to strangers, road rage, all the petty ways to cheat the system from drifting into the intersection in anticipation of the green light to cutting in line at the grocery as all examples of how we force ourselves upon others to their detriment, examples of power over others.

During this morning’s commute, I saw a person who was not winning his personal power game. What caught my eye in the gray morning dimness was the rhythmic flash of his (or hers - I didn’t see the driver) break lights; every seven seconds (I counted) he tapped his breaks for a bit. Too close to the car in front who was traveling at a comfortable five miles over the speed limit, which serves as the typical speed in Chicagoland, the driver was forced by his own need for road dominance to pump the pedal in frustration. No doubt the driver in front of him remained unaware of his distress. My reaction of bemusement found a voice in my utterance of: “What’s your hurry? You’re only going to work.” Indeed, he turned into a row of light industry a half mile further.

Who benefits from this mindless and idiotic behavior? No one does. The first driver remains oblivious, perhaps his default state, and goes about his day. I and possible the others nearby have our various neutral reactions. The real loser is the break-light man, whose own impatience set the stage for a needlessly stressful commute – at six in the morning – which likely will affect the rest of his day. The kicker is he does this to himself!

Such are the mechanics of our uncontrolled, subconscious desire to dominance. Poor guy, I hope we wises up some day.

I’m just now catching up on the latest fiasco in Washington (here, here, and here among others). No doubt you’ve heard by now how Federal agents absconded with documents from the House of Representative office complex and declared them classified, to whisk them off to the inter-dimensional vortex to which only the FBI has the keys.

For once – at least for now – I’m speechless. I can only shake my head as I take in three days of reports on such a blatant infraction of protocol. Is this a crime? I don’t know, but it surely lends me to ask, “What are they hiding?” Rep. Jefferson was a Democrat!

If and when these documents are released, I’m betting that some key pages will be missing. What other reason for the grabbing of them? By the time it’s sorted out, surely some few weeks from now and ample time for tampering of evidence, who would know? It’s damn hard to discern what is not there if one is unaware of its existence initially.

My second reaction, now that my mind is rebooting, is that Bushie doesn’t have to worry about re-election, so the kid gloves are off. Expect his minions to get bolder as the last thousand days of his dictatorship tick away (or is that tick off). Anything goes! It seems that anything will indeed go…

Are you scared yet?

Where I turn my car into and out of the parking lot at work there is a large double billboard. Raised only seven feet off the ground, the larger-than-necessary message has been working is subliminal magic. Mostly the message is uninteresting. I not sure what the left half is promoting; some radio station, I think… The right half is promoting the new Coca Cola Blak coffee drink. For the past two seeks I’ve been looking at the five foot lettering remembering a snippet of my wife’s conversation shortly after returning from New York last month (yes, I actually listen to her). She tasted the stuff and liked it. I’m quite the coffee guy, and never have I enjoyed Pepsi, so my subliminals were primed.

As I turn into the lot at the grocery, I park next to a blue Escort with four whip antennas stuck onto the trunk, each one a different length of curlicue. The steering wheel was covered with a faux leatherette cover with embossed and colored dragons on the sides; the rearview mirror suspended a pair of goggles like you would swim with but looking like it had been injected with steroids, upon which was clipped a CB-like handset microphone. What clinched the image for me was the lone bumper sticker: A white band with the symbol of the US Marines beside this caption – “When it absolutely, positively has to be destroyed overnight.” I thought “what kinds of sociopaths are being bred in the military?” leading me to ponder how these people try to re-assimilate themselves into society or if they ever can fit in again.

Inside the store, I gasped at the six dollars being demanded for four (count ‘em) little 8-ounce bottles of this mysterious nectar. I buy them anyway, satisfied that if I don’t like them, my wife does. I shake my head at the car with ‘tude and continue.

Two miles later, I notice two motorcyclists behind me, an overweight black man of about thirty one a rice rocket, and a skinny white guy of slightly less years – or so I guessed, his helmet with its jaw guard obscured his features - riding a vintage Honda. The black guy didn’t wear a helmet, a sight that causes my brain to label him an FOD (future organ donor). The light we awaited changed and the two cyclists abused the gaps between the four-wheeled machines to their advantage. Sometimes I forget that commuting is a sport of daring-do. This heavily traveled road cuts a swath through a forest preserve. At this point, and the helmet-head looks over his shoulder and pops a wheelie at about 55 MPH in thick traffic. He’s showing off to FOD, who wisely refuses the bait. Two more wheelies ensue, the last while he sits on the gas tank with legs splayed, all within a one mile stretch. Four lanes posted at 40 MPH – just a suggestion, as you know – with no dividing curb. A wipe out then would kill him, helmet or no. I’ll let you guess what crossed my mind then.

For those few aware people, there’s plenty of evidence of Devolution exhibited by humanity: My theory? For thousands of years, humanity became stronger through the natural process of survival against odds. For the past ten millennia or so, we have devolved because we’ve mastered our environment, slaughtered the species that occasionally fed on our young, and remade our world in our image. As time progressed traits that would have been culled in a harsher context are instead passed on, sometimes strengthened or mutated into newer quirks and conditions. The cumulative effect is easily discerned through the multiplicity of the modern human experience. In short – we’re doomed!

Like The Boy Who Cried “Wolf”, the Bush who cried ”Democracy” is getting harder and harder to believe. Prince George was in Chicago yesterday, rehearsing his talking points for the National Restaurant Association, proudly preening progress in Iraq. Today, in my irritability, I cry “Bullshit!”

No doubt, this version of the NRA is more interested in the impact of immigration upon their workforce than in anything happening in the Middle East. True to form, our President uses this occasion to pimp his message rather than face the concerns of the people he’s addressing. According to CNN, this is how”Democracy” looks to Mr. Bush:

· A roadside bomb hit an Iraqi police patrol in the Bayaa neighborhood in southwestern Baghdad at 3 p.m. Monday killing three police commandos and wounding three others, Baghdad police said.

· In northern Baghdad, gunmen assassinated Judge Jumma Abed al-Mamouri in the Hurriya neighborhood at 5 p.m. local time Monday, an official said. Al-Mamouri was working at a civil court in Baghdad, the official added.

· In the Zafaraniya neighborhood in southeastern Baghdad, one civilian was killed and two others were wounded when a car bomb exploded around 11:30 a.m., the official said.
· North of the capital, gunmen killed four civilians in separate incidents in Baquba, a police official said.

· In Musayyib, about 70 kilometers south of Baghdad, four Iraqi police were killed when a roadside bomb struck their vehicle, an official with Hilla police said.

· Iraqi police in Baghdad found nine unidentified bodies in various locations around the capital in the past 24 hours. All the victims had been shot in the head and the bodies showed signs of torture.

In another CNN story, Saddam Hussein is caught chortling in court during the testimony of his brother-in-law, who draws parallels between the ethnic cleansing Hussein is on trial for and the cleansing of insurgents in Falluja by US led forces. Wholesale slaughter looks very much the same no matter whom the perpetrator. This reminds me there usually are two sides to any story, something the MSM is lately rediscovering.

I guess the president is right, sort of; there is progress being made.

“What are you doing this weekend?” my coworker asked. An innocuous comment, social lubricant aimed more to fill the air or to act as a bonding agent. My chiropractor asks: “Do you have any big plans this weekend?” in the same vein, with a hint of bedside manner to foster the illusion that he cares. He does care, inasmuch as his business is involved, and because he’s a kind, well-meaning person. However, I cannot suspend disbelief enough to expect him to remember my response ten minutes later.

To such innocent queries I respond with self-conscious nothings. My coworkers wouldn’t relate to my tendency to do nothing with relish, not planning a list of chores or errands or outings. How could they understand that I play on the computer, write a little for this blog, practice guitar a bit, shun television like the plague it is, do laundry and a few chores, play with the cats, laugh with my wife and daughter, and generally stay off the streets. Even now with the weather finally stable, I only glance at my spider webbed bicycle and return to my computer; I’ll get some sun when neighborhood peer pressure forces me to mow the lawn. To the peripheral people in my life, which is most of them, it’s hard for me to open up; explaining blogging or my passion for hardware and computer gaming – at my age! – would be too much for them. I come off as a bit odd at the best of times, no need to enforce that image.

I used to point people toward this blog. I still carry some business cards - bought online and created with Paint Shop Pro - in my belt pouch, but I refrain from self-promotion more often these days. I’m not ashamed of my ultra-liberal inflammatory writings, I just wish to spare them the discomfort when, upon our next meetings, they squirm a bit should I ask if they like my blog. “Oh, yeah, I’ve read it…” as in past tense, like they’re never going there again. Perhaps they feel obliged to be embarrassed on my behalf?

That’s okay. I’m quite used to my burgeoning oddball status now that I‘ve reached my doddering middle-age. The tendency is to flaunt it, but I still need to function within society – at least until I retire. As I look about in disbelief at what “normal” Americans are into, I shake a pondering head. These virtual pages are filled with my take on that issue…

Too poor to be eccentric, too young to be demented, I fall into the category of mild weirdness. My Buddhist teachings tell me to relax with that, and I do. Buddhism is perhaps another aspect of how little I fit in with my neighbors… In my next life perhaps normality will prevail. I can wait until then.

I’m not supposed to write about politics today. I promised my friend, the Allergic Gardener Leucanthemum, to diversify this blog in an attempt at diminishing the shrillness of repeated Bush-bashing. Notwithstanding the joy of doing so, or the ease – as there is so much to ridicule, the monotony is showing up in my writings.

But – and you knew there was a “but” involved here – I come across an article in Washington Post about the re-emergence of the Religious Left (is that an oxymoron?) As I have mentioned a few times over the past year, the political pendulum is reversing its path, and nothing I’ve found lately illustrates this as clearly as the reorganization of progressive and moderate believers in the New American Battlefield of Political Dominance.

I empathize with a passage on the third page of the article, which sums up my thoughts overall:

Some groups on the religious left are clearly seeking to help the Democratic Party. But the relationship is delicate on both sides.
“If I were the Democrats, the last thing I would do is really try to mobilize these folks as a political force . . . because I think some of this is a real unhappiness with the whole business of politicizing religion,” said Mark Silk, director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.

Perhaps the concept of separation of church and state, so intrinsic to the American dream, is referring to just this sort of political proselytizing. The NeoCons have already set the IRS poking about rival religious groups as to whether their actions in 2004 compromised their right to tax-exempt status. What will happen now? Never mind the fact that the Religious Left have only adopted the tactics the Religious Right have succeeded with for eight years. That is beside the point.

I ask, can there be any good to the marriage of political activism and religion. No matter whose yard you stand in, should those on the other side of the fence wield a holy sword in this political joust?