Tag: Politics

“Expect Much of Yourself (and Little of Others)” Lent #8

February 21, 2013 / Tom

So read the message out of the fortune cookie I just devoured. The result was the same as is often the case when random messages hit my eyes and I began pondering the meanings of such a message in my own life. Just as I often do, I will share my musings with the hope that you don’t hate me too much as a result.

That in itself is my expecting little of you. Yes, I can count with much sorrow the numbers of people who have stopped being my friend because of my attitudes about things. For instance, there are my former friends who are Catholic who first decided to leave my company because of my attitude about the Church (I’ll spare you the gory details in the hopes that more fruit doesn’t drop from my tree). I lost more when I decided to abandon that cult (uh oh) for a more stable and, for me, truer belief system.

I’ll admit I didn’t expect their reaction. After all, Jesus preached about tolerance and love so I expected those who followed his message to tolerate me following my own path. I expected them to smile, preach to me for a bit about how I could be “saved”, and then just consider the good things about me that they liked in the first place. After all, they couldn’t have just liked me because I ate a wafer while pretending it was a body, drank some wine while pretending it was blood, and gave my hard-earned money to an organization that is among the wealthiest in the world to support priests who actually lived better than some in their own congregation. They couldn’t suddenly dislike me because I found “God” in the woods while finding little of Her in the ornate garnishments of an overly large building they referred to as “God’s house”. Or could they?

Before you get all crazy about my tone and my choice of words, understand that I was not always this blunt in expressing my beliefs. I used to take a sensitive, tactful path toward explaining myself when asked. I would watch my words while expressing myself compassionately and lovingly only to find that the very idea that “one of them” could “reject Jesus” was enough to have me thrown out on the street. I would explain that I loved the message of Jesus. I loved the idea of living compassionately and without bias, often in poverty while washing the feet of my servants (I didn’t have any, so that part was easy). I loved giving of myself, of eating with those considered sinners within my society, and surrendering to the Universe (using the word “Universe” instead of “God” somehow instantly turns you into a hippie new-ager going straight to hell. I now wear the moniker with pride.)

Well, I no longer watch my words when discussing religion, particularly the Catholic church and generally Christianity. I usually begin to lose my cool right around the “well Muslims blow up things” that invariably falls freely from the mouths of most Christians I talk to about the history of Christianity. I whip out my “guns” (facts) and begin shooting “bullets” (the truth). Mostly, those Christians I talk to quickly don their own bullet (truth) proof vest (the Bible) until they can retreat into the world of silence and “excommunication” through the mechanism of being offended. It’s an interesting mechanism.

I then lost a whole bunch of “friends” when I decided to experience the vegan/vegetarian lifestyle. It seems that if you decide the killing of animals and the physical effects the practice of carnivorism has on your body is not for you, you suddenly become an unwelcome insect in some circles. I, frankly, had no idea my choice would have this effect. Now, I realize that most of us who decide to adopt this lifestyle can get a bit “preachy”, but understand that when you begin to experience the wonderful effects of a plant-based diet you want everyone you love to know about it. I’m a giving guy mostly and it felt like I had found some secret to feeling great. I had never felt so alive and vibrant then when I was vegan. Why would I not want to share that awesome feeling with those I care about?

That is a mistake when it comes to health. You need to shut up, and you need to simply feel great all on your own it seems. People seem to love their unhealthy lifestyles, and regardless of how much they may love you they will quickly turn if you try to take away their meat, their processed foods, and their poisonous fast food lifestyle. I have since become mostly vegetarian as I’ve recently decided to give some meats a try to see if it helps me.

The truth? Adding meats to my diet has made me a physical wreck. My joints now ache. I feel tired. I feel stuffed and I am gaining some weight. Secretly (if you don’t want to know skip to the next paragraph) every nagging ailment that had bothered me before I made the switch to vegetarianism has returned in force as if they were waiting for me to “slip up”. So, I have made a decision to go back to vegetarianism at the very least and veganism whenever possible. While I, and others, may be experts in lying to themselves, our bodies refuse to lie to us. My body tells me to stop eating the meat and return to the greens and veggies that made me feel more alive than I have in my entire life. Pain is a voice of the body telling us that something is wrong. Fatigue is telling us we are doing something that is making us tired. The only thing that I have changed is the adding of meat so I figure that has to be the reason. So, I simply cut it out and see if that is truly the reason. If my body returns back to its former feeling I know I have found an answer; my own “fountain of youth”.

This time I won’t preach unless specifically asked. I will go about my business and not say a word to anyone unless they ask. I don’t care how great I feel or how bad they feel. They are free to poison themselves as much as they want just as I am free to seek health in a way my experience has taught brings it to me.

The next destruction of some of my friendships was the gun control debate. Man, people truly love their instruments of killing. I used to be one of them, so I understand the addictive qualities of maximum firepower and the warm feeling one finds in the false sense of security. Still, I never expected to be challenged as I have. I even had one former friend tell me that we need to protect the easy access to guns despite our kids dying because knife violence would increase. Now this type of reasoning will get me out of my shell pretty easily. See, the visions of bullet-riddled kids in a classroom simply does not allow for the idea of rising knife violence to enter into my mind. I simply cannot look at the facts surrounding gun violence and forgive it because someone may use a knife instead. Perhaps it is that thing we all call “common sense” that has infected my brain. I just hope it is contagious.

As you can see, I can posses an acerbic wit at times. I can be very blunt and very “acidic” in my delivery on certain topics. I have found this tact works best for me. See, it gets my point across to those who would put on a fake smile, a fake “Jesus saves” button on their lapel while putting their fake arm around me in friendship. I can disagree with my friends without discarding them. I don’t love their opinions, or their beliefs, I love them. So discarding any one of my friends for some idea they may have (there are exceptions to this rule; priest-like people who would harm young children is one example) is ludicrous.

That is me expecting a lot of myself. I have had to learn, however, to expect little of others. Yes, I am sure that they believe they are doing the same and simply not tolerating my heresy and liberalism. I get it. Yet for every friend that disappears in the fog of differing beliefs I find one that is tolerant, truly compassionate and worthy of my trust. Still, it is the expectation that is the crippling injury here.

I have learned that the reason for my acerbic wit and blunt delivery is similar to the idea in farming of “thinning the crop”. A farmer will go through his crop and purposely knock fruit off the trees in order to increase the quality of the remaining fruit. I have no doubt that my methodology is doing the same thing. I am making room for quality fruit by getting rid of the excess. I am attracting people who think like me and, in the process, finding that great minds truly do think alike (ahem, yes that is a laugh you hear in my arrogance). Yes it is easier to feed the hungry when I am partnered with those who want to feed people in a healthy way and not those who want to argue about what red meat to give them. Yes it is easier to dance this dance when we are all listening to the same song.

Yet I rarely take the easy way out so I will continue to allow anyone who disagrees with me to argue their point. I won’t shun you (unless you act in a priestly way while harming young children, for example) and I won’t deny you. You will be my friend, and you will be in my heart. I love your perspective because even as I debate the point with you I am challenging my own views through you and learning. Even as my pig-headed and stubborn self is debating you I am challenging everything and learning in the process. Why would I not love you for all of your effort?

Finally, there is a Lent 2-7 in my drafts folder. I didn’t post them because they are about the Christopher Dorner escapade and I feared losing even more friends over my feelings there. Plus, I am in the process of combining those masterpieces into one large journalistic piece (journalism today being op-ed pieces with facts strewn in there somewhere). I will call that “Lent 2-7” when I am done just to prove that I have kept my Lenten vow. Yes, it would be the first time in my life that I truly stuck to my Lenten promise.

Gun Control is an Act of Love

December 15, 2012 / Tom

Remorse. Sadness. Grief. Disbelief.

And anger. I can’t forget about the anger regardless of how much I want to.

Those are just some of the very human emotions that overwhelmed me as listened to the news about the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut. Just some of them. To list them all would create something unreadable.

As I sat on I-95 near Philadelphia heading home from a long day at the office, I wept openly. Visions of my own children danced in my head. Visions of children everywhere flooded my mind. Those smiling faces, those wondering minds, those innocent souls. I could hear the banter flowing through those classrooms on what should have been just another Friday as children transformed into students eagerly anticipating a holiday season. I could imagine parents not unlike myself rushing around that morning, trying to get their children ready for a school day while trying to get themselves ready for a busy day at work. I could imagine parents who, had they known this would be the last time they would see their babies, may have forsaken all worldly endeavors for those final few moments of complete presence in lives they had a large part in creating.

Yes, our worldly endeavors seem a bit silly in those moments when we are faced with the loss of innocence and the finality of death. The Eagles losing yet another game is forgotten. The need to make end-of-year sales numbers seems meaningless when the idea of a tiny casket flashes across your mind. The arguments between lovers becomes very unimportant when the knowledge that one day you will not be with her and that one day physical and intellectual separation will be permanent. In truth, very little seems important when faced with mortality, particularly when it is the mortality of our children, our innocence, our posterity.

We fear permanence even more than we fear impermanence. The only thing that is permanent in our human experience is death, and we seem to fear that more than we fear anything else. It rattles us, not only because we don’t know what is coming afterward, but because it is so final. We not only fear our own deaths, we fear the death of our loved ones. Yet, it wasn’t death that found me weeping on a busy highway during rush hour, it was the death of innocence and of promise. It was knowing that each and every one of those children senselessly killed likely had no idea of what death was. It was knowing that each and every one of those sweet angels was left relatively unprotected despite deserving our fiercest shelter. It was knowing the fear they must have felt, and it was in feeling the ultimate betrayal as the shooter did the Devil’s work. How utterly devoid of compassion he must have been; how much hatred he must have held on to. It is quite unimaginable to, fortunately, the vast majority of us.

Now, I’d rather not focus on the man who destroyed so much in such a small period of time. Instead, I want to focus on the reaction many of us had to his horrifying actions. Many of us found love overflowing from our eyes. We found compassion pouring out of us. We found empathy, sympathy, and new-found purpose in each tiny droplet of salty water that made its way into air. We found that piece of ourselves that sometimes gets lost in the hustle and bustle of the illusion in which we “live”. We discovered a piece of truth in the lie, and will hold on to that truth at least for a little while. We will hug our lovers tighter tonight. We will be more present with our children. We will be more present with ourselves.

So, when I am asked “why?” I know what to say. I have no idea why a 20-year old man would lose his grip on his own humanity and divinity. Yet, those children did not die in vain if we, even for one second, pause to be more present in our lives and in our loves. Those children did not die in vain if the final words I say to my own loves is “I love you”. This understanding gives the very thing I can’t understand some understanding. It gives the senseless some meaning. It gives those of us who are doubting some sense of hope. That’s “why” my friends. So, get to it and don’t let those beautiful souls leave our consciousness while we have a chance to make good on the very thing that makes us who we are.

Make love like you have never made love before. Embrace each other like it is the last time you will feel those arms around you. Absorb the “daddy” and “mommy” moments fully as if they will be the last. Don’t live in fear of the end, embrace it and make it meaningful in your daily experience. Don’t go to bed angry with those you love. Don’t do anything that will sour your epithet. Don’t hug anger, hug love and don’t let go. Fight for it. Feel it. And cherish every moment you get to share it.

Love, laugh and live fully. Help others love, laugh and live fully. Let’s get rid of the need for instruments of death in our lives. Let’s cherish life and the living more than we cherish material things. Start saying “no” to your boss and “yes” to your family. Get high if you want. Whatever. Just start fucking living.

This is not an admonition to you. This is an admonition to me that I simply want to share with you. You are free to do as you please. Me, I want to have no regrets at the end of the last day I share with someone. I want to know I lived it all fully, even the bitter moments, and that in the end I’ve loved more fully than I’ve feared.

I am sure that soon enough we will see the smiling faces of those beautiful babies flashing across our televisions and computer screens. We will hear wonderful stories of victims, their families, and their own unique promise. We will cry again at the sight of young, smiling faces and we will make resolutions to end lunacy and seek love as our shelter. We will live, even for an instant, in the warm and loving embrace of knowing ourselves as more than money, more than ideology, and more than nationality. We will find our own promise and potential before settling back into our very human roles of forgetful man as the memory of those smiling faces fades.

I will also remember that the killer himself was once one of those smiling faces, and I will wonder what drove him to such darkness. I will wonder because I don’t want any other child to lose that part of himself that makes him both human and loving divinity. We all deserve our own sense of innocence, and it is time we start treating our children like they remind us of our own innocence and freedom. Children are not afterthoughts, they are not nuisances that keep us from work or our favorite reality shows. They are not weapons, and they are not punching bags. They are wonderful creations that we had some part in, and as such deserve not just the best of who we are as individuals, but also the best of who we are as a society. We owe it to them to pass laws that ensure that it is far less likely that they will be staring down the barrel of a firearm as they cry for a mommy and daddy who aren’t there to protect them.

Yes, I am done being on the fence about gun control. I’m done seeing the “right to bear arms” as equally important to the right of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Those children lost their rights to life. They lost their rights to liberty. They lost their rights to happiness as a madman pulled the trigger over and over again of a weapon he had the right to own. Gun control is not about the erosion of American rights, it is about the guarantee of them. So, fuck you, fuck your need to own a semi-automatic rifle and multiple handguns. You only have two hands, and I doubt Nancy Lanza could have shot both handguns while handling a semi-automatic rifle in the process.

Face it, 27 people, including 20 innocent school children, could have been alive today if our government and We the People had the balls to get rid of guns as a “right” and, instead, made it impossible to get them. End the War on Drugs, that failed social experiment that only ensures more of us spend time in jail than ever before, and begin the War on Guns. Empty our prisons of drug users and fill them with gun owners who fail to see that they have absolutely no reason to own firearms if no one else does.

See, Nancy Lanza was not going to go hunting. She obviously did not find protection in the guns she owned as her son gunned her down. In fact, the guns she owned ended up killing her, so I’m sure if given a Mulligan she’d probably take them back even without a refund. I’m sure she loved the children in her class, so I doubt she felt the Second Amendment worth the lives of 20 of them as well as 6 of her colleagues. I doubt as she faced her end she thought of Charlton Heston and his famous “out of my cold, dead fingers” pronouncement.

I will not use the term “rest in peace” for those children and brave adults who died on December 14^th in Connecticut. That’s offensive to the very nature of the crime committed against them. Rather, we should have been blessing them with a “live in peace” on December 13^th. We should have ensured their safety then, not given it lips service now. Prayers and love and compassion are meaningless to them now, but how much could it have meant to them Thursday? Yeah, that’s what I mean. Tomorrow is too late. Now is what matters.

And for Pete’s sake let’s stop being married to an ideal written 250 years ago in a document that was meant to be changed when necessary. It is necessary now, more than ever, to rid ourselves of the scourge of firearms in this nation. Our children deserve it, and we, as loving, caring, and intelligent adults need to ensure we protect them within a society that demands change. Yes, our society is demanding change. That is evident in the gun violence that is destroying us from within.

It is so evident that all we need to is review the gun violence over the last 10 years and ask, “how is that Second Amendment working out for you?” I’d say not at all. It’s time to move beyond the ideas that violence is the answer (that isn’t really working out for us either) and toward something a little harder to do but much more rewarding (as Gandhi and the independent India he helped give birth to without firing ONE SINGLE SHOT proved). I love Gandhi and his example because he was a tiny, diminutive man who successfully rebelled against a world superpower without ever owning a gun. It’s time we follow that example and bury Charlton Heston’s somewhere far away where we never need look at it again.

For now, I will follow other people who are crying, praying and empathizing with those victims of gun violence who decided to follow the pursuit of happiness rather than the right to bear arms and were shot in the process. Yet I will not let this fire within me be buried with those victims. Instead, I will use it to work toward ensuring that we create no other victims for the stupidity of a few who love the power of shooting something so dearly. It’s time to end the lunacy, and never forget those who died for nothing more than an ideal.

Freedom is Not Free (Gun Control is Still Control)

July 23, 2012 / Tom

“We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.”
Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

The tragedy in Colorado has surely renewed the debate over gun control and Second Amendment rights. It is also surely going to further divide a nation already fractured to its core. As typical on social issues such as this, I am lost in a sea of what I feel/want versus what I know to be true. Things like this are never easy, and such things often exercise our minds versus our values and should, if we exercise these things carefully and with awareness, leave us with a resolution to adhere to our values. Character demands nothing less.

As true with my attitude on abortion rights (I am pro-life but believe everyone has the right and should have the freedom to decide for themselves) my views on gun control often inspire a reactionary event in those I know, love and/or discuss with. I would shrink from the discussion if it were not so important in our national discourse. My personality and my character simply does not allow me to hide in the shadows. That being said, I am nothing more than some anonymous blogger who loves people and values life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as inalienable rights bestowed upon us all by our Creator.

I feel a distinct and immutable sadness over the death, suffering and destruction created in Aurora. Tears well up inside me as I empathize with those who have lost a loved on to such a heinous act. My heart bleeds for those who were injured. My soul prays for healing and yes, it even prays for forgiveness for the person who created caused it all. Yes, I wish him healing and love as surely as I wish it on the victims. If that offends you, I am sorry.

I am no longer a man prone to violence, and I see it as the lowest frequency of human vibration. I see violence as fear’s lowest low, the moment when our human minds become their weakest, and our hearts lose their hold on the smaller part of us. In that light, I cannot react to violence with violence and expect the world to become a better place for my existence. I must find the strength, resolve and love in my heart not to beat you down but to find a way to lift you up when I feel you have done me wrong.

That is my way. It may not be yours, and I have found it take great resolve and strength to act in accordance with that vision even in the most benign of circumstance let alone in an event like the tragedy in Aurora. I struggle with adhering to this vision daily and certainly know the strength it takes to not react in fear’s grip when it is so easy to do so given our societal instruction from birth. I understand that we are taught “an eye for an eye” from birth, and that “domestication” creates in us a reactionary personality that feels the need to do something when we feel a wrong has been done. Sometimes stillness should be the answer, but we weren’t raised that way as a collective and certainly were never taught how to exercise that restraint. That “domestication” often makes hypocrites out of even the most peaceful and well-meaning among us.

Control is Control and Control is Oppression

To me, it is this simple. The mechanism by which a deranged human being carries out his fantasies is not the issue. A man bent on killing others will find a way to carry out is will regardless of what weapon we put in his hand. One such example was at the Happy Land Social Club, where an angry boyfriend used gasoline to kill 87 people. A difference here is that there is no “right” to gasoline, a gas can, or matches. The Oklahoma City bombing was caused by fertilizer and fuel oil. You simply do not need a gun to carry out acts of terror, vengeance or anger on other people.

So, while I personally see no need for anyone to have an assault rifle, I can’t inflict my attitude on those who do. As a vegetarian, I see no reason for people to kill Bambi at all, let alone with an AK-47. I read somewhere that about 13,000-14,000 a year, far greater than those who are killed by assault weapons every year. While speeding is against the law in the United States, I have heard no one propose that we take cars away from those who speed. They may lose their driver’s license after about umpteen tickets, but they still have their car. Guess what, there is no “right to own a car” written in the Constitution anywhere either.

While this argument may sound silly to you, the idea of punishing law-abiding citizens whose pursuit of happiness involves owning a Uzi because of the handful of deaths committed every year at the hands of assault weapon owners is just as silly to me. If they want to own a Uzi, fine, they should be free to own one. As long as they don’t shoot up innocent people as a result. People should be free to make choices for themselves.

Attitude is a dangerous thing, especially when some try to force others to adhere to their own. Gun control is not about controlling guns, it is about controlling others. It’s about keeping them from doing as they wish and distorting the Constitution to fit that attitude. The Second Amendment is not about bearing arms as part of a “well-regulated” militia, it is about ensuring that the People can both keep a well-regulated militia as well as ensuring the right to bears arms is not infringed upon by the Federal Government (study Tench Cox and the opinions of the delegates on the Second Amendment). Both things, the militias and the right to bear arms, were a direct result of real fears of our founding fathers pertaining to tyranny. They wanted to ensure that the government could not keep the citizenry from both militarizing and protecting itself from a government.

“Another source of power in government is a military force. But this, to be efficient, must be superior to any force that exists among the people, or which they can command; for otherwise this force would be annihilated, on the first exercise of acts of oppression. Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive.”
Noah Webster (1758-1843)

This was a predominant fear, particularly of those who fought against the European monarchies and tyrannies. Understand that many Americans did not want a strong central government just for this reason. There was a real fear that everything they fought for against England would be lost by creating a government that could usurp the power from the People. The Second Amendment was considered, debated, and approved under that auspice; the People can fight back whenever the government becomes too tyrannical.

So this isn’t about Bambi, or Aurora, or Columbine. It is about the real fact that we have a right, liked or not by all, to keep and bear arms in this nation. That right exists more clearly than the right to abortion, the Separation between Church and state as well as many other “principals” many of us hold dear.

Freedom is Not Free

The price of freedom isn’t always about currency. It is not always about fighting foreign dictators or evil empires. It’s not always about liberating the oppressed. Sometimes the supreme sacrifice made in the honor of freedom is found in movie theaters, in schools, in dark alleys, or on college campuses. Sometimes those who die for freedom are not part of a well-trained military unit, but our neighbors, friends, husbands, wives, and children. It sucks to say this, in fact it pains me greatly to say this, but we can’t honor those who have died for freedom by eroding that freedom out of fear just because we don’t happen to like something.

Yes, my attitude may be dramatically different had I lost someone close in Aurora. Anger does that to a reasoning mind. Sometimes we have to allow cooler heads to make decisions for us when in the throes of an angry reaction. I sincerely want the person who did this to be punished for his crimes, but I don’t want to punish everyone for them too. I don’t want to allow this government to take any freedom away from you, from me, or from anyone else. I simply don’t trust it enough.

I realize this may create some angry reactions. Understand that it is very hard for me to not only take this position, but stick to it. Stick to it I will if only because I am sick of being told what I can and can’t do because of the attitudes of others. I have to wear my seatbelt (I always wear it anyway, it is the have to I dislike) for instance. Hey, if I want to drive down the road without my seatbelt and suddenly wear my windshield as a necklace that’s on me. And for the love of all that’s holy don’t tell me about the monetary costs created by those who don’t wear their seatbelts. Freedom is not free, and sometimes we pay a monetary price to allow others to exercise their own.

I pray we can have intelligent, wise and controlled public debate on this issue. To me, freedom is the issue here, and what we are willing to sacrifice in the quest for a false sense of security that will never exist.

Peace.

The Debt Ceiling Crisis – A Lesson In Spirituality

July 29, 2011 / tomgrasso

While others are digging in to the ideological positions I have been simply watching. While some are calling each other names and suggesting that the “sky is falling” I have been stuck in observation mode simply taking it all in.

Now that ends. I have seen enough.

I am left rather exasperated by the shear infantile behavior of our political leaders and pundits stuck in their ideological camps. The are rolling around in their ideas of what is “right” like swine rolling around the mud in their pigsties. It’s like watching elementary school bullies pick on each other until one goes home crying. It simply is insanity at its worst.

For instance, allow me to paraphrase a conversation recently overheard on Capitol Hill:

The Hobbit (Source http://www.shockya.com)

Sen. McCain: “Tea Party members are like hobbits.”

Congressman Rand Paul: “Oh yeah, but you’re a troll.”

Sen. McCain: “This is the kind of crack political thinking that turned Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell into GOP Senate nominees.”

Um, excuse me kids, but don’t you have a job to do? While I may agree with McCain, wasn’t he the one who gave us all Sarah Palin? I mean isn’t there something I heard once about those in glass houses throwing stones? You betcha!

Now I don’t want to belabor the points that ideologues have presented countless times already on the issue. Between the endless news stories, tweets, Facebook updates, and forum posts I have read it is very clear to me. The points everyone is raising aren’t the cure, they are part of the problem here. Things like the debt crisis are not problems, they are a symptom of a much larger disease.

The Diagnosis

“Calling Dr. Moe, Dr. Larry, Dr. Shemp” (Source Amazon.com)

We are infected hopelessly in a condition I term “human stupidioitis”. When I first used that term, I realized that I was saying “human stupid-eee-oh-itis”, but now realize that I was missing a consonant there. It should be “human stupid-idiot-itis” since that’s exactly what it is. We have become a species so addicted to our own ideas that we have redefined the entirety of the universe according to the ideas we have created of what it is. We have created God into an image of man, we have created pollution as “good”, we have created social responsibility as “redistribution of wealth” and we have created greed as a “gauge of success” (just to name a few).

I will leave it “human stupid-eee-oh-itis” for now. It just sounds so much more “medical” since it is nearly impossible to spell and to say correctly.

What is This Condition?

Modern man became what he thinks he is (notice the italics) today largely because of his frontal lobe (sorry opposable thumbs, but you aren’t the main reason we dominate the Earth). Our frontal lobes have allowed us to do all kinds of things, from pondering “what am I?” to finding cures for medical conditions to finally realizing that there is no money in a cure while riches await in the treatment. Our frontal lobes have created not only our abilities to save each other, but to kill each other. Yes, our frontal lobes have helped us truly understand what we think we are, and have given us ideas not only on who we are

Now, where did I leave my wallet?

but also on who everyone else should be.

Therein lies the root of the disease. The frontal lobe, to me, is an “idea creator”. I bet we didn’t have one when residing in Eden. In fact, we were so “idea-less” that it took a snake to have one for us and once Adam and Eve ate of the apple “wham-oh!!” there it was. It seems our first idea, if you believe the story of Genesis, was that our genitals were horrible and needed to be covered. So we covered them. It’s been all downhill from there.

In fact, I believe that if we all took off our clothes right now we would all be back in Eden. Just kidding…

I was recently asked what I believed the crux of the Bible was. I stated that when I shed all ideas that were given to me by my family, friends, acquaintances, clergy, teachers, and books I was left with only one idea that made sense to me.

“The entire Bible has only one moral, and that is that human ideas are harmful while acceptance to what is brings to you to God.”

I was thoroughly ridiculed on that one. I had made the statement to a group of Christians on an internet forum I frequent. It was probably the wrong group to suggest that the Bible was not anything other than pure, unadulterated fact. It turned out to be yet another idea that just smacked me in the face.

When you look at each and every event composing the debt crisis, it seems to mirror every other human crisis in history. When you look at it simply and without your own ideas you are left with one incontestable truth. We suffer from a disease of the mind and ideas are its tumors. Tumors that the mind has become reliant on not only for a sense of identity but also for the creation of what is commonly called “truth”. This truth, however, lacks any sense of the present moment. It only knows the present through the past. In this state of the disease, the present simply cannot exist without the past and therefore cannot stand on its own. Oddly enough, this condition is not dependent on the individual’s past for life, it also uses the past of everyone else. We call this condition, ironically enough, “conditioning”.

The Cure

I’d love to tell the world what the cure is. However, I have learned from my friends in the pharmaceutical world that there is no money in the cure, only in the treatment. In addition, I obviously have no idea how to cure the pain of ideas. So allow me to render you a treatment and hope that you will pay me for it. (Yes, I am laughing, and hope you are too. If not, email me and I will send you a Paypal link.)

Allow me to admit that I realize how idiotic I must sound here. First, I am presenting an idea (or several) about how harmful ideas are. Second, I am suggesting that I have no cure, but can provide a treatment. I have not evolved spiritually enough to follow the wise words of the Tao: “Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.” Understandably I am torn on the prognosis as well as my inability to shut up about the disease.

Treatment #1 – Suffering

Most of us avoid suffering like the plague. Well, we think we do anyway. In fact, most of us are the creators of the conditions that create suffering even as we do our best to avoid the suffering itself. We simply ask for it and then feign ignorance when it falls on us like a brick.

In the case of our debt crisis, we have overspent our revenues for at least the last 10 years. We have ASKED for the debt crisis, and then act not only surprised that we have one but amazed at the consequences. Now, while most of us want to blame our political leaders, I don’t. I blame ME. Why? Well, I am part of the citizenry that has elected those bozos. They are in place with their ideas and tactics because I have put them there (“I” is collective here).

We have overspent our revenue. We have asked for debt under the incorrect assumption that governments MUST operate in the red. Both political parties (ideas) have done had their hand in this cookie jar, and neither seems to willing to end the insanity. They are, however, all too willing to end the other guy’s insanity. The easier of the two, healing thyself, is avoided in favor of the more difficult healing of thy neighbor. It’s a worldwide problem, and not one I can see as easily cured without the complete and utter collapse of governments, economies and cultures.

This will create suffering because of our unobstructed attachment to all human ideas. The suffering will lead to an understanding that allows Treatment #2 to be successful.

Treatment #2 – Removal of the Tumors

Meditation – The Surgery

If the mind is the patient, and ideas are the tumors, then meditation is the surgery necessary to separate the tumors from the patient. Ideas themselves will always be a part of the human mind much like pathogens are always part of the human body, but when we become unattached to those ideas we become free from the disease. It’s not that the tumors themselves won’t be floating around in our minds, it’s just that we won’t let them take hold and we won’t allow our minds to feed off them. They will vanish and have little effect on our present moments.

The treatments themselves are quite successful, at least they have been for me. Even the ideas I present here are not firmly fixed in my thoughts, they are experiences. Sharing experiences will always have much more truth for me than the sharing of ideas will. The more present the experience is the more truth I find in it. Because I can let go of this idea at any time experience provides me with a different one, I am not rooted in that idea and therefore am not “sick” with it. I can let it go at any time, or not depending on the experience of the present moment.

Prognosis

The doctor states that the patient is critical but that there are glimmers of hope. The world’s consciousness is shifting, and the collective enlightenment is near. When I was a young boy, I would often see the Urban Jesus (my name for him) with a sign that said “Repent, the End is Near”. An idea evolved within me that suggested that “repentance is the end”. Then I learned that “repentance” involves guilt, shame, remorse” and all kinds of things that made (and make) little sense to me spiritually, so I dove into the idea of repentance as it relates to my human experience. Now, through my experience, I realize that repentance is the Treatment #1 raised above, with forgiveness being Treatment #2. It has been my experience that you will not heal without first being injured and then forgiving the injury. Repentance is the suffering necessary to recognize the tumor, and forgiveness is the surgery that removes it. You cannot truly heal without going through both treatments.

So, we will eventually suffer for our “human stupidioitis” so that we can recognize the tumors. We will then have to forgive ourselves and heal. Perhaps the suffering will create an immunity to the disease, but so far that hasn’t been the case. I keep hoping that this will be the fever that gets us to the cure, but realize that we are so busy treating the symptom that the cause just keeps festering within us.

The good news here is that you can self-medicate and be cured.