Category: Society (Page 4 of 5)

A quick thought inspired by a simple picture

September 16, 2010 / tomgrasso

I realize that part of man’s slide into the abyss began the moment he made food a “commodity”. When that which is so freely given to us by the universe is made into something only those with money can enjoy we have lost something. When the difference between life and death hang in the balance and some have the power to decide we have lost our way.

Not sure if we will ever get it right before the dawning of the New Earth but perhaps it is one but one sign of that sunrise. When food is no longer bought or sold but given and taken freely we enjoy the first glimpses of light. When we don’t eat beyond being full, take only what we need and give all that we have perhaps the day has begun.

To us all that find peace in wanting may we soon find suffering in the desire.

9/11/2001

September 11, 2010 / tomgrasso

Today I honor those who acted unselfishly in the service of others on 9/11/2001 (and all days) by acting unselfishly in the service of others. I will follow their example by not becoming a slave to fear but by demonstrating bravery, by not seeking protection but by providing it, and by not discriminating in who can grab my outstretched hand. Each act of terror allows for moments of bravery. Each act of chaos allows for moments of order. Each act of selfishness allows for moments of unspeakable selflessness. Each act of fear and anger allows for those moments when the eternal flame of love can warm the soul.

The question will always be in our human existence, “To which end to I seek to serve?”

Video games and our children

July 23, 2010 / tomgrasso

My wife and I got into a discussion about the use of electronics by our children, ostensibly due to my youngest daughter’s upcoming birthday and my desire to buy her an iPod touch. Well, not actually what “old timers” would call a discussion, we were texting each other from about 45 miles away, which is very ironic given the topic. Veronica was against the idea, understandably given what is going on with kids and electronics in the world today. It seems wherever you go you can see a young child or teen with some form of electronics (sometimes running into walls while walking), and it is easy to see why any parent would be reluctant to introduce such mind-numbing distractions. Not to mention the costs of getting that broken nose fixed, most people today are oblivious to the world around them when using electronics, with rubbernecking at an accident on the highway replaced with texting about it and good sound family discussion being replaced with texting and an occasional grunt when asked “how was your day dear?” So I get it. How on earth could any parent buy their 6-year old an electronic device that captures their attention better than any explosion could?

Yet, how can you not?

My goal here was not to gift a device that would be used as a new-age version of a pacifier. It would not be turned over to my 6-year old with the intention of allowing it to absorb her mind like the sponge we have seen so often. It would not be to hand it to her at dinner so she could ignore her family. It would not be used in a way that would allow her to miss the world between points A and points B. It would not be used in place of good, sound parenting to teach the boundaries of living in our society. Rather, I see it as a way to teach exactly all of those things and allow good parenting to occur. When I see a person of any age (myself included) so engrossed in their electronic device that they cannot tell you what they had for dinner five minutes ago it does cause the cursory shaking of my head. When I see a man across the restaurant texting away while his wife is telling him about her day only to realize that the “man” is a mirror I completely understand where my wife is coming from. When I see a kid so engrossed in a video game at the dinner table that she can’t even eat her dinner I get it. Hold on a second…

…what did you say dear? Sorry, I was typing on my computer. Sweetie, you there? I guess she’ll text me.

Anyway, my goal in getting the iPod touch was multifarious (a fancy word I learned on my computer). First, I think she would love the games I put on it. Second, a kid today without a great working knowledge of modern electronics can’t set up my home entertainment system for free, which is a travesty in any household (of course the trick would be getting them away from their games long enough to do the work). Third, it would allow us to parent her and teach her boundaries when using the iPod, something that was certainly not available to us considering my parents would still view pocket calculators as “those new fangled contraptions”. What I see in kids and adults today isn’t the fault of the technology, but the fault of parents or of those who are responsible to teach boundaries. You know, boundaries? “Don’t put your hand on the stove Michael”, or “Don’t climb on the table Gianna”, or “Tom, blah blah blah blah” (I am, after all, still typing on my computer). It isn’t the kid’s or the technology’s fault when that kid is handed a video game at dinner and allowed to play with it throughout the entire dinner without ever coming up for air. It isn’t the kid’s fault that you have to call them 50 times because they can’t hear anything but the beeps coming from the screen. It isn’t the kid’s fault that they miss the entire world around them because the are trying to get Mario to a new universe. It isn’t the kids fault he loves to write on his computer (I think I just heard something about the need to evacuate…nah, that must have been the PS3 game going on in the living room).

The fault lies solely on the shoulders of those whose job it is to be parents. It’s the fact that we aren’t teaching and that we aren’t parenting that causes kids to walk into walls. So, my fear is that when my daughter gets to the age my wife deems appropriate for such games, she will not have the necessary skills to put the damn thing down to enjoy what matters (or to learn that getting to Level 1,000,443 does not) nor the knowledge that what those around her are trying to say is more important that Mario jumping to an alternative universe. I can almost hear the arguments now between two stubborn females…one not understanding the beauty of the game and the other not understanding the beauty of the world around her as the veil of Nintendo cascades down upon the world she used to see. So I believe we teach her now so that when the veil does come down around her she can easily blow it to one side to see beyond it, even if Micheal and I would certainly get a kick out of the “female” discussion. I guess the question still is in me that wasn’t really addressed in the discussion (I reread the texts and I am SURE it wasn’t). How can we teach her the place this technology should have in her life if we don’t get her the technology and introduce it into her life? If we don’t, she will only learn from the examples of her peers, something that scares me more than any iPod ever will.

The man in the mirror is laughing at me right now. Damn him and his judgmental ways. I had better go now before my wife unplugs the compu…

The views expressed here are not indicative of any one person or set of events. Any resemblance to real events is either coincidental or simply in your own mind. Get over it, if this angers you, you probably need to talk to the person in the mirror. ALWAYS READ THE FINE PRINT!!

Our Government doesn’t represent the people?

December 29, 2009 / tomgrasso

It was stated during an internet discussion by a libertarian friend of mine that the government does not represent the people, but rather bankers and the very wealthy. Below is my response:

It does represent the people, a people who have no interest in it whatsoever. You never do go quite far enough in what really is the cause in government. Sure, the bankers and wealthy have a foothold, but that is only because the PEOPLE have allowed them to. WE vote for two parties only, WE vote for incumbents entrenched in the bureaucracy, WE keep the status quo status quo.

So, the bankers take advantage of our laziness…you can’t blame the dog for eating the scraps that fall on the floor can you?

I have a feeling you like to blast the current status quo because you fear the truth, that unless this society takes control we are lost, and in order to take control there has to be something that wakes them, and in order to be awakened they have to accept their blame for all that has happened up into that very moment. These things won’t happen in this society…it has gotten too fat and too invested in the status quo. Even you are invested in this status quo, because without it you simply would not exist as you like…an “enemy” of the “enemy”.

So…in order for this society to wake up, two things must happen. First, YOU must wake up as an individual (you think you are now because you believe you “know” things that everyone else is blind to, but you aren’t because you blame the wrong things). Without you waking yourself up, you will never be part of the solution.

Second, this society must suffer. It is the only thing that wakes us up. All of these government programs are the beginning to that suffering that was destined the first time government employed someone to protect you, or instituted committees that regulated how you could build, or what you could build. The eventual suffering we will face is destined as we repeat the history other societies have created…it is a foregone conclusion.

I simply wish it to be me that suffers for the mistakes I have made and not my children. I don’t want to pass this mistake on to them. I want to teach them from MY example of suffering how to live, how to be, and how to become wise beyond this insanity. Teaching them does not include blaming others for the mistake…it involves taking responsibility for self and working toward your sense of higher cause. It means being the example, not talking about it.

So, I hope to expedite the course of suffering so that it may be me who bears the brunt, not them. Let health care reign, let meaningless wars be fought, let’s keep trying to kill an idea with a bullet or bomb, let’s dump more and more into an antiquated war machine, let’s worry about the meaningless distractions created for us so that we may never look at the heart of our existence. Tiger Woods cheats on his wife…front page news; 50 million people in the US can’t afford the right amount of food doesn’t even get an honorable mention.

I just want us to hurry up. I don’t have much time yet and I don’t want to pass this on to our children. They are the ones who need to rebuild the house of cards we have built…only this time with brick.

An Answer to the Question: “How has America gotten to this point where debauchery and decadence rules the day?”

December 17, 2009 / tomgrasso

We have gotten to this point because neither side is right, neither side has the answer, neither side is the moral righteous. And the more they think they do, the less they are right. The more they attempt to inflict themselves on others, the more they do the opposite of what they intended.

Both ideologies (conservative and liberal) have created in our society a population that cannot think on its own, cannot act without being told in some way to act, and have created in their minds the notion that someone somewhere must tell them what is right and what is wrong. This has happened in every society…every civilization has fallen for nearly the same cause…and we are no different. Our fall just seems faster because we think we are right and have the resources to continue the delusion.

We have not imparted WISDOM into our society. We may KNOW a lot (and even that is questionable), but we never truly learn how to think on our own. Our schools teach us what to think about a subject, our parents teach us how to live an what to think in their image, and we never fully learn to develop WISDOM. So, we keep on repeating the same mistakes over and over again while actually working to convince others to make them with us. And if they question us on the mistakes we label them, make fun of them, and humiliate them into some corner of our society we do not wish to hear.

Those who believe they are right from the outset may never understand this. Everyone not like them is wrong. I say we are both wrong. The minute you have to live like me or me like you we are both wrong. The minute I seek to inflict who I am on you through the collective I am wrong. The minute I blame you and not me for the ills of society I am wrong. The minute I point my finger I am wrong. The second I do not consider me I am wrong. The minute I open my mouth without action to follow I am wrong.

The minute I need not speak but through action may be the first time I have ever been right.

An important thing to remember is that decadence is only decadence to YOU. You define it for yourself and then seek to make it so for everyone else. In this exercise, we have forgotten how to let others BE. So, we make them wrong and classify them as “less” than we are and in turn make everything about them wrong. This is one silly practice, and because of it we have created a society that can no longer be itself without thinking itself “decadent” if it doesn’t act just like those who have defined it.

I would venture a guess that if we stopped classifying all of this meaningless garbage we would find that we really aren’t all that bad. We tend to focus on meaningless drivel that does not deserve attention while allowing the meaningful parts of our existence flounder. It is this focus, or lack of it, that is undermining our society because it undermines the individuals who make up that society.

As it will. When you are the richest nation on earth with the most debt and the most toys, you tend to lose focus. “Things” become the most important aspect of life, money becomes the focus, and you are willing to do just about anything to acquire things and make money. You have, at that point, sacrificed who you are for who you think you are. You have become the illusion.

The only cure is to wake up. This requires deep inward focus and attention to self. Your ego has created a word you use often, “selfish”, and made it bad so that you never wish to focus on self. Focusing on “self” makes you bad, whereas diving into the worlds of others makes you “concerned”, and “good”.

I ask you one question, what has all of the desire to make all of that not you exactly like you accomplished? It seems to me that all of your desire to make the world like you has done nothing but given you the false impression that the world is falling apart because of its failure to be like you. That is your mistake, not the world’s.

About Rangel and Reich’s comments regarding white workers…

January 23, 2009 / tomgrasso

I thought about this…and came to one logical conclusion. First, I don’t find it correct in any way, shape or form to segregate people for any reason whatsoever. However, when I hear my white brothers and sisters complain as if they have just had a toenail removed without anesthetic I can only say that I feel not one ounce of sympathy. My response to them simply begins with a question:

How does it feel?

All of the fear, anger and hostility you feel when a government official actually EXCLUDES you from something need not be anything but a lesson. Discrimination is bad. Treating someone as an unequal just because of their skin color is horrible. Earmarking money that is designed to exclude a race is abhorrent. Creating policies around skin tone is ludicrous. Lumping people who will revel in the spoils of power by race is wrong.

Now we get it. Now we simply know how it feels.

Perhaps this feeling we have now will better serve us in the future when we are serving drinks at a banker’s convention and there are only a handful of whites in the room. Perhaps this feeling we have now will serve us better when a black man turns us down for a job we know we are qualified for, only to leave the building and not see one white face in the crowd except for the janitor. Maybe we will get it when colleges don’t take our applications and the black man wants to eliminate quotas. Maybe now we will question the righteousness of our getting paid less than the black man for the same job. Perhaps we will wonder why there are so many more white men in prison than black men, and yes perhaps we will even blame the black man for our problems.

We may remember when we had the ability to cause change in such a consciousness. We will remember the opportunities we have squandered to end color as a means of advancement or repression. We may even shed a tear at the understanding we could have ended it all by just not making others have to work for such equality. Perhaps we will then understand that equality is not work unless there is inequality in our hearts. and the only way to truly be equal is to have such blind love in our hearts.

And perhaps there is opportunity in it all. Perhaps our own Dr. Martin Luther King will emerge; someone who rises above his God-given condition to preach peace and love and non-violence as a way to achieve greatness. Perhaps we will feel anger when he is gunned down by a black man with a sniper rifle. Perhaps in our sadness as seeing such waste we will learn hatred above all else.

Perhaps we will now have the opportunity to face down water cannons aimed at us by black firefighters. Perhaps now we get the opportunity to stand up to the black man’s German Sheppard as they gouge holes in our legs. Perhaps now we can walk arm in arm with some blacks who seek equality into the Washington Mall to hear a speech that changes our lives.

Perhaps now we will get our chance not to surrender our seat to a black man on a bus, or can look to take a beating from a white cop just for walking down the street at night.

And even perhaps we will want to be reimbursed for the injustice. True, our culture never was enslaved at the whips and chains of others, but bondage takes so many forms it is impossible to tell the difference. Maybe at this moment we could begin to understand what pain our history has inflicted, how our refusal to understand such pain only creates more of it. At how our lack of remorse, lack of caring, and lack of a sense of justice only creates more and more pain in those this history has caused so much pain.

Perhaps we will vote for the political party that seems to want to assist us in our condition, even while those different than us not sharing in our despotism will rail against that assistance as furthering our demise. Perhaps the pains in our stomachs and the cries of our children will makes us a slave to such programs, another form of bondage that transcends the physical and now delves into a desperate sense of spiritual dependence.

But wait, I am full of it. Just another liberal in a long line preaching guilt and earmarks, socialism and falsehood. Such is what your mind MUST tell you, or else this could just all make way too much sense. YOU NEED TO DISAGREE, because you are not there yet, you do not understand the sting of it all. Those of us who have never felt the tinge of pain at the hands of the whip or the coldness of the steel of bondage can never understand things from such a perspective.

So, let’s just cry some more about what Reich and Rangel said. Let’s whine about it, and be all offended by it. We haven’t faced an ounce of the pain and suffering we have caused, so I feel no sympathy at all for my own kind. An old friend once said to me “karma’s a bitch”, and we can only hope it doesn’t pay us nearly what we are owed.

The Apology of the Masses

August 11, 2008 / tomgrasso

I read recently where the Episcopal Church has issued an apology for its “involvement in the slave trade.” This has caused a reaction of many types across our land, so much so that I gave some thought to the issue and how we handle it as a nation.

For more information, visit Episcopal Church to apologize for slavery – USATODAY.com.

One of the most defiant challenges to such an act has come from some on the “conservative” side, offering that we were not alive during slavery nor are any slaves alive and therefore do not owe anyone an apology. It is not difficult to see their point, there are no slaves currently alive in the literal sense of the word in the United States, nor are there any slave holders still living in the literal sense of the word. Therefore, who owes who what?

What isn’t being seen is that such an apology is not personal, it does not come bleeding from your heart onto our collective Main Street. What it does is address a very dark time in our history, possibly one of our darkest periods in the human cause, in a way that should be constructive for all involved. Our collective bodies apologize to a collective group of people still haunted by the institution of slavery, and along with that sincere gesture of regret comes a promise that we will not stand by and allow it to happen again.

I also read discussions that mention that slavery is “in our past”, and should be left there. True enough, slavery is in our past, but it is also true that the remnants of slavery still exist in the consciousness of some Americans – on both sides. In a society that often dwells on its past, whether it be honoring our war veterans on Memorial Day (a day named in the practice of remembering the past), or on honoring some of our best leaders with special days, Americans tend to dwell on history. American History is taught in our schools, and in those lessons we are taught such things as the the Declaration of Independence, where it clearly states that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” So yes, we as a collective certainly identify with the glorious triumphs of World War II, the resiliency of Valley Forge, and the bravery of Normandy; so should identify with the darker sides of our history. Just as will memorialize our greatness, we should seek redemption in our failures. Just as we learn from our moments of glory, we should learn from our moments of inhumanity. And just as we offer thanks to those who made us great, we should offer condolences to those who suffered under our flawed character.

Similarly, just as we do not pay a stipend to those whose ancestors died and stood steadfast on Bunker Hill, we do not offer reparations to those whose ancestors died and stood helpless under the whip of American ignorance. Yet we do not hide our head in shame because of such actions, for both the payment and the shame attest to a complicity not ours to endure. Rather, we simply say we are sorry, and vow to all who grace our land with their existence, that we will live and die to ensure their security under such a premise:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.“

It shall surely be in the present that we find such greatness, not in the past, nor in the future. It is how we hold to such ideal now that make us who and what we are. Those words should guide our collective actions, and hide our individual bias. Those words are the Testament to the American soul, the sentence that states clearly the cause of American greatness. It was not a single person who made us great, nor was it a single political party, or a single ideology, it was the equality we gave to all, the rights we saw as not ours to give or interfere with. It was not the description of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that made us who we were, but the allowance of the individual to create and explore his own definition.

We were great because we just allowed greatness to happen. To lose such a thing is to lose who we are, and to lose who we are is simply to no longer be great.

My Jihad

July 17, 2008 / tomgrasso

To stand on the sidelines
Not to fight for something unAmerican
Is truly the most patriotic of duties.

To stand idly by
And to not kill someone not your enemy
Is truly the most honorable action.

To take that 20 footer and still find love in your heart
That is the most human of actions.
Even if it seems more and more unlike the humans you know.

To be but a glimmer of peace
In a nation striving for anything but
Is God’s clear commandment for us all.

To love thy neighbor
Although thy neighbor is an ass
Is what all that of God has taught.

To seek for love as your neighbors lob bombs
Does not make one less honorable than those who lob them
It is the most honorable of work.

So, while you master war
I will master peace, in the essence of that which made me
In that I will fight until I die.

9/11

July 11, 2008 / tomgrasso

One day
Buildings fall
The world suffers.

The Essence of Privacy

July 11, 2008 / tomgrasso

It has been asked where my priorities are, so maybe it is only fair to answer.

I believe more in the individual than in the collective. The individual can surmount more adversity, solve more problems, address more issues than can any collective mind ever created. Our nation was not made great by its collective, but by extraordinary individuals who worked on behalf of the collective. Whether it was the handful of individuals who founded this nation, or each individual at Valley Forge who endured great hardship on behalf of a collective, or the individuals who rose above the collective to repel tyranny during World War II, it has always been the individual who has made this nation great…not the other way around.

We ceased to think as individuals in the early part of the 20th century. Many writers reflecting the times wrote about this loss of the individual, and they predicted a troubling time in America as a result. They were, unfortunately, correct.

The counter-culture of the 1960’s sought to bring back the individual, but it too was ruined by a sense of the collective. Today, we can’t think for ourselves without first running our thoughts through the collective mindset in ourselves, Republicans must think like Republicans, Democrats like Democrats, union rank and file must think alike, police officers who see wrongdoing in their collective cannot speak out against it, and as a nation you either agree with the collective or you are not part of the collective. You can no longer be American while disagreeing with it.

In other words, you cannot be an individual anymore. You cannot think thoughts based on something beyond collective thought. You cannot act in opposition with the collective. You must live like a drone on an island of drones if you want to survive.

Or else the ATF will burn your building down and kill you all. Maybe the FBI is listening in to your phone calls. Maybe Google and even this forum report your every move to some super-secret agency posing as an internet service provider.

The issue of privacy is an individual one. Privacy is simply the act of one acting as in individual away from the collective. It is one of the last bastions of individuality left in our nation, and it is under attack. It is under attack by big business interested in tracking your every move. It is under attack by a government using fear to make you feel as if this attack somehow serves you well. Collectives like religions have a long history of attacking the individual, at some points killing a person rather than let them not be like the collective. It is even under attack within yourself as some struggle with how they feel versus how they are supposed to feel.

It is simply up to you as individuals to determine how much of yourself you are willing to give away. Either you can stay tied to the binds of materialism which is the essence of such loss, or you can reject it all and move forward as yourself. You can either identify with a collective or you can choose not to. Ultimately in that decision comes an air of responsibility, one that you cannot pass off.