Watching commercials on American TV is a look into the leisure psyche corrupted to the highest degree so far. It's emasculating to imagine having so much time and money that someone gives a shit about a barely perceptible difference in the shade of blue they want to paint their nursery. I guarantee the baby doesn't give a shit. And, on round two, the elegance of your closet, with its back-lighting and opulence and scope of the closet, the impeccable spacing on the huge shoe rack. And the most troubling aspect is that it's not only seen as normal, but as a completely legitimate achievement worthy of working toward, a real sign of success.
Here's a list of things that are all better uses of our time and money than agonizing over color patterns for baby's room or expanding the sartorial and mahogany finish on the trim of your boudoir. Stop being so damned selfish, self-centered, narcissistic, short-sighted, parochial, sheep-like. If you have the disposable income that has you looking for such useless things to hiring a shopper to help you select between luxury vehicles, think a little about your legacy... (your obit) "His discerning tastes was clear having selected the Lincoln MKZ over the Cadillac XT1..." or "Was able to help several thousand low income students get advanced degrees in science and healthcare"
1. Creating art
2. Ensuring a comfortable hospice experience for members of your community
3. Providing time mentoring troubled teens at the local high school
4. Coordinating small business support for women in economically depressed demographics
5. Supporting an effort to remove historically racist monuments in Jim Crow hold-outs down south
6. Giving grants to support urban gardens
7. Fighting for basic science research funding
8. Electing officials who recognize income inequality is unhealthy for sustained economic strength
9. Giving time and money to further local investigative journalism which shines light on corruption, the poison of faith in government
10. Advocating for medical research for rare diseases which big pharma is happy to ignore because of the low expected ROI for treatment option
11. Developing scholarship programs for poor, talented students who aspire to vocations requiring advanced degrees
12. Work to incentivize doctors and nurses to reside in rural areas where medical care suffers
13. Send money to Doctors Without Borders
14. Fund independent documentary films that expose exploitative industries like sex trafficking and high energy collusion
15. Organize resistance to intolerant and bigoted institutions, corporations and other organizations
16. Illuminate the dark underbelly of hate groups
17. Petition the local school boards or fund their programs to provide opportunities to troubled students
18. Make high art available to minimum wage workers through sponsorship and ticket distribution
19. Host a political action group to research and discuss candidates for local and state offices
20. Entreat local cable companies to improve their programs to provide low-cost internet to low-income families
21. Take weekend road trips with your kids and visit and discuss blighted neighborhoods and gated communities
22. Join venture capitalists to support education apps.
23. Donate to Wikipedia
24. Rent out your extra room at low cost to students attending the local college
25. Institute a tech/engineering retraining to people in obsolete industries, like coal mining
26. Facilitate athletic and bodily-kinesthetic activities for senior housing facilities
Thursday, May 25, 2017
Monday, May 22, 2017
False :Pride to Real Progress
Reading an article about Richard Spencer and the roots of his politics... It makes me wonder if or how we could exorcise that limited perspective on society (race-centric). Until we can treat our historical ills and come closer to curing our past misdeeds, transcending them and our* current zeitgeist is but a dream. Understanding the interplaying dynamics (among our psychology, history, education, economics, et al.) of today is an important start.
When a person has no tangible accomplishments to their name, nothing they have created, orchestrated, designed and built through their own devices, there's a tendency in most to glom on to something they're close to and feel they can be proud of. They name drop, they amplify lackluster achievements, they pretend they're something they're not. Out of this same low esteem comes racial identity. They have at least one characteristic with which they can claim as a source of pride -- the accomplishments of ancestors or racemates.
For an oppressed race, and there are many, being able to point to real contributions made by their race can be legitimate in countering oppression because it brings to mind and lays bare the reality that any individual of every race is worthy (and this can be important for both members and non-members of that race). For the dominant race, attaching to the accomplishments of racemates explicitly as the dominant race does the opposite -- highlights their history of oppression. Naturally the writers of history are going to recall and remember all their glorious past and forget or even coopt the accomplishments of history's underdogs.
A healthier approach for all, when we're eventually ready, would be to expand the identity beyond race, faction or country to its logical conclusion. Human. The one glaring benefit to this is it allows anyone from any race to take pride in furthering society for all (in whatever fashionable definition of furthering we might collectively choose). Those with pathological needs to be better than others (for all the reasons that disability might arise) will, of course, be unable to see the world at large in those more objective terms, and how we combat that shortcoming will have to be part of any bettering path forward.
This ethnocentric tendency may be the root attraction I have to scientific thinking. It has greater respect for repeatable, testable facts (reality) than any other school of thought we've yet designed. Adding to that a spiritual respect for the life and legitimacy of the individual, and we have a powerful secular basis for good living. One that does its best to use what we know so far (with the striving to add to our real understanding of all of nature) to serve the future of humanity in the most positive way we can, whatever our best vision of positive is that we can muster.
*"our" meaning that mentality in which it seems a healthy plurality of humanity lead their (mostly) unexamined and unchallenged lives.
When a person has no tangible accomplishments to their name, nothing they have created, orchestrated, designed and built through their own devices, there's a tendency in most to glom on to something they're close to and feel they can be proud of. They name drop, they amplify lackluster achievements, they pretend they're something they're not. Out of this same low esteem comes racial identity. They have at least one characteristic with which they can claim as a source of pride -- the accomplishments of ancestors or racemates.
For an oppressed race, and there are many, being able to point to real contributions made by their race can be legitimate in countering oppression because it brings to mind and lays bare the reality that any individual of every race is worthy (and this can be important for both members and non-members of that race). For the dominant race, attaching to the accomplishments of racemates explicitly as the dominant race does the opposite -- highlights their history of oppression. Naturally the writers of history are going to recall and remember all their glorious past and forget or even coopt the accomplishments of history's underdogs.
A healthier approach for all, when we're eventually ready, would be to expand the identity beyond race, faction or country to its logical conclusion. Human. The one glaring benefit to this is it allows anyone from any race to take pride in furthering society for all (in whatever fashionable definition of furthering we might collectively choose). Those with pathological needs to be better than others (for all the reasons that disability might arise) will, of course, be unable to see the world at large in those more objective terms, and how we combat that shortcoming will have to be part of any bettering path forward.
This ethnocentric tendency may be the root attraction I have to scientific thinking. It has greater respect for repeatable, testable facts (reality) than any other school of thought we've yet designed. Adding to that a spiritual respect for the life and legitimacy of the individual, and we have a powerful secular basis for good living. One that does its best to use what we know so far (with the striving to add to our real understanding of all of nature) to serve the future of humanity in the most positive way we can, whatever our best vision of positive is that we can muster.
*"our" meaning that mentality in which it seems a healthy plurality of humanity lead their (mostly) unexamined and unchallenged lives.
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