Be All We Tell You To Be

This is just amazing. I can imagine the recall letters:

Hi, we’ve decided to cut your pay and your benefits as a veteran. But now we’re recalling you back into active service to go and put your ass on the line for our selfish interests in Afghanistan and Iraq. Furthermore, you’ll be protecting all the oil industry contractors from Halliburton, who are all making more than 10 times what you’ll be making. Have a nice day, and may God continue to bless the United Empire of America.

Unbelievable. The fact that we have the largest military in the world, and that we’re shorthanded, speaks volumes.

Presidential puppetry

I’m reading the recent Al Gore speech called “Democracy Itself is in Grave Danger.” It’s a great speech, succinctly and clearly outlining the danger posed to America by the Bushites acquiring too high a concentration of power. One of the key passages:

The Bush administration’s objective of establishing U.S. domination over any potential adversary led to the hubristic, tragic miscalculation of the Iraq war, a painful adventure marked by one disaster after another based on one mistaken assumption after another. But the people who paid the price have been the U.S. soldiers trapped over there and the Iraqis in prison. The top-heavy focus on dominance as a goal for the U.S. role in the world is exactly paralleled in their aspiration for the role of the president to be completely dominant in the constitutional system. Our founders understood even better than Lord Acton the inner meaning of his aphorism that power corrupts and absolutely power corrupts absolutely. The goal of dominance necessitates a focus on power. Ironically, all of their didactic messages about how democracies don’t invade other nations fell on their own deaf ears. The pursuit of dominance in foreign and strategic policy led the Bush administration to ignore the United Nations, do serious damage to our most important alliances in the world, violate international law and risk the hatred of the rest of the world. The seductive exercise of unilateral power has led this president to interpret his powers under the constitution in a way that would have been the worst nightmare of our framers.

This principle of establishing domination over any potential adversary is key to understanding the actions of the US government over the past decade. Midnight Notes has written extensively about this issue. I was, frankly, surprised to see Gore mentioning this.

But it occurs to me that if Gore’s election to the presidency had been permitted to stand, he would never be saying such things. In other words, the office of president inherently seems to prevent its occupants from speaking their truth, espcially political truth. Anyone with half a brain, including Gore, can see the danger of Bush’s actions. And now that he’s not a governmental official, he’s in a position to express these truths.

While ultimately I’m glad Gore is speaking of these things, things that are glaringly obvious to many of us, it is sad that political office seems to entail obfuscation of the truth.

Authenticity and Vulnerability

I’ve been having the most amazing ongoing conversation with a very close friend about the connection between personal/existential authenticity, and emotional vulnerability. First, let me explain what I’m talking about.

Authenticity refers to the notion of being true to yourself, to your feelings, and your desires to be a whole person. Authenticity is not only something to be cultivated in a person, but it is also something that is elusive. It’s an ideal, something that one can strive for, but never perfectly achieve.

Emotional vulnerability is the way in which one can experience negative emotional fallout from unpleasant confrontations. It is especially important for those who show a high degree of empathy; an empath will inherently be much more vulnerable to the emotional energy of others.

So my friend and I are both empaths. We talk about how to deal with it a lot. It occured to me that as we strive for authenticity, we become less vulnerable to negative emotional fallout. This idea is basically an extension of the Socratic notion that “nothing can harm a good person.” A corollary to this idea is that it is better to be authentic, and to speak one’s truth, and deal with the emotional fallout of authenticity than to be inauthentic and deal with the energy blockages that result. Interesting thesis. I’m not 100% sure I believe it, but so far it seems correct to me.

I feel like I have much, much more to say about this, but right now I’m at work. I’ve been interrupted (assuming actually doing my job can be considered interruption… heh) literally a dozen times as I’ve tried to type this, so I’ll save more for later. Interesting thoughts to chew on, nonetheless…

Design Tweak

If you pay attention to this site, you’ll notice that I tweaked the HTML layout a bit. Actually, more accurately, I tweaked the style sheet. I changed the font of the text of each entry from garamond to a free font called ‘Bitstream Vera Sans’, with Verdana as a backup. It’s the same font that everything else on the page was. I also decreased the size of the fonts a bit.

Please leave comments under this entry if you have an opinion about the new look.

The Tide

Just a brief note to say that I’m very encouraged by the direction of public sentiment against the Bush cabal in Washington. Virtually no one I know is for Bush anymore. The prime legacy of the Bush administration, I believe, is that they have brought corruption, greed, and cronyism into the foreground. In other words, a lot of the stuff they pull has been going on for a long time. But with the Bushites, they do it openly for all to see. No wonder the world hates what the American government stands for…

The amount of cognitive dissonance that a Bush supporter has to have — the sheer number of utter contradictions that Bush supporters have to hold in their mind — means that anytime you question one of them, you can actually smell the smoke. Sometimes you can even see the sparks.

I can’t see how Bush can “win” an “election” in November. This does not mean, of course, that he won’t be president again. It will be interesting to watch.

The Winds Get Warmer

It’s been an insanely busy few weeks. I’ve actually had a complaint from one of my faithful readers (!) about the lack of activity on my blog. I imagine the other one will be complaining shortly… ;-)

Last weekend, I went 3 hours up the coast for a small, intimate retreat with some very close friends. It was a bit stressful due to some of the dynamics at work, but all in all a nice weekend.

I climbed my first mountain ever, Acadia Mountain on Mt. Desert Island just off the coast of Ellsworth, Maine. Though it’s a small mountain, it was very cool to go for a nice climb. My legs are, frankly, still recovering, though their weariness has been exacerbated by lots of walking and biking since I got back. It was a very surreal experience; the day we chose to go hiking was cloudy and misty. What could have been a fantastic view of Soames Sound, the inlet that nearly divides the island in two, was a glimpse into the gray abyss of nothingness. It was quite an existential moment actually; it forced us in a sort of mystical way to focus on the immediacy of the mountain itself. The hike itself was short, but somewhat strenuous. It wasn’t just follow-the-uphill-path; there was definitely some climbing involved. It started to rain as we came down, so the rocks were a bit slippery. But we all survived, and went into Bar Harbor afterwards for lunch. My daughter, who would turn 7 2 days after the hike, did very well. She beat me by 28 years, in the age-at-which-we-climb-our-first-mountain category.

Things Quitchy continue to progress. I’m getting better at programming drums, and with Matt’s help, I’m learning to put the drum fills and flourishes in the right spaces around the songs, accenting the vocal lines. I’m quite pleased with how well this is turning out. Forward momentum.

I also met a “virtual” friend for the first time last week. We have a lot in common, we’re both musicians, we’re both setting up sonar-based studios, and we both share a love for prog rock, and an appreciation for our mutual friend and cosmic adventurer Buzz Bakewell.

I’ve also been reconnecting with my wife in a wonderful way. We’re doing good work together, while still managing to find time to play. Our relationship is growing in interesting and magical ways. We’re also getting closer to other people in our community, which continues to amaze and excite me. Yes, I can say with some amount of certainty, my life rocks.

Because I took last weekend off from work, I’ve been working more this week to make up the hours. So my schedule has been insanely busy. It’s funny that in order to carve space in my reality for a vacation, I have to make the time around the vacation very busy. Ah well. So it goes.

I’m not a happy camper either

According to this story on CNN, Colin Powell is “not a happy camper” about the fact that someone lied about the levels of terrorist activity. Originally, they claimed that terrorism was on the decline, which would imply that the ludicrous “war on terror” is somehow being effective.

The fact is, however, that “figures from a corrected report ‘will be up sharply,'” according to State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.

Does anyone else see this as further evidence that this ridiculous “war on terror” is only exacerbating the situation? This is not difficult, folks. I wrote about this in November, 2001. I am far from an expert, but this just seems obvious to me.

a slow fast

Last Friday, for the first time in my life, I fasted. There are many reasons for this. The most immediate is that my wife decided to fast, and asked me if I wanted to join her. But a deeper reason is that I had never done it before in my life. It was only a 24 hour fast, but it felt good. It was surprisingly easy. I felt very good afterwards.

For me, a fast (at least for now) means “no solid food.” I still drink coffee, and I’ve been drinking lots of water, some fruit juice, and broth.

Those who know me will know that I have a complex relationship with food. Indeed, this is one of the prime areas of my own spiritual work over the past few years. I have undone some very bad habits I picked up growing up. But it is a constant struggle for me.

Furthermore, I think fasting will have some good political benefits. It is not difficult for me to imagine a time when food will not be nearly as plentiful for us as it is now. So if I get used to going without food now, it could help down the road. Who knows. I don’t want to get all apocalyptic, much less feed that energy pattern, but fasting for me is a way to attune to those who suffer under the imbalances of capitalist food distribution in the world.

Anyway, this week I decided to extend my fast for 48 hours. So no solid food until tomorrow morning. This is a personal challenge. I’ve never known hunger in my life. This will be the longest I’ve ever gone without food.

Non Liberty

This article details the results of a very interesting experiment involving copyright law enforcement and a text that is in the public domain (John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty:

As part of a recent research project, I posted a section of Mill’s On Liberty on the internet (which is clearly in the public domain), then issued unfounded copyright complaints against it. One internet service provider (ISP) removed the chapter almost immediately. This illustrates the problem with self-censorship procedures, which rely on hidden judgements being made by unaccountable bodies.

Interesting story. This points out yet another flaw with copyright law — which was originally architected to govern print media — as applied to the digital age. As the article explains:

ISPs are acting as judge, jury and private investigator at the same time. They not only have to make a judgement whether a website is illegal or not – they also have to act as a private detective agency, investigating the accusations and deciding on the merits of the evidence they gather. Nevertheless, when an ISP removes content it invokes the cyber equivalent to the death sentence. When an ISP acts it can effectively destroy a business or censor a political campaign, by making access to that website impossible.

I would add to this that the British ISP who removed Mill probably has a policy to instantly remove all copyright claims, regardless of validity, simply because it is cheaper to do so than to investigate all copyright claims.

Who should pay for these investigations? That’s a tough call. Either way, this model of copyright is way too topheavy and unwieldy. It is obsolete.

Someone had to say it

And Greg Palast has the guts to. You can’t really call his article on Ronald Reagan an obituary, precisely. It’s far too bitter. And realistic.

But as I wrote in another forum:

I’m sorry for those close to him and for those who loved him, but I can’t exactly say with good conscience that we lost a great man.

Who knows how history will remember him. I think if you go out far enough into the future, he’ll be remembered as being deeply connected to the process of American global hegemony, neoliberalism, and imperialism. And I can’t see how this will be regarded as a good thing.

But Palast pulls no punches. Again, someone had to say it.