Saturday, December 16, 2006

Why do We Care more About Shopping Then the People We are Buying For

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Well the holidays are coming up and that may or may not be a good thing in your book. Whether it is the distraction from the normal routine or the hanging out with people we feel we are forced to. From the trappings of our jobs to the trappings of our consumeristic world.

I wanted to pose some questions to us all. Why do we feel such a strong impulse to pay (usually more than we can truly afford) on gifts for the holiday season? What insane impulse have we that sends us to the malls in ever increasing numbers to spiral our personal finance out of control? At what point in time did humans equate money with love, trust, togetherness, and the religious nature of the holiday season?

If we look at the nativity story, a desperately poor family moving the about-ready-to-give-birth wife on the back of a donkey, so romantically sealed in our Western conception of heaven, hell, god, debacle, truth and sacrifice. A pregnant woman about to give birth on the back of a donkey, picture some of the people at the mall as you shop and maybe you will come to your senses. I find it a little strange when I picture the fact that the new born was placed in an animal's food dish and no one says anything about it, there are no gasps from the congregation (most bedecked in their best clothes, solely for the purpose to impress at this, the birth our their divine being) there are no cries of anguish from the parishioners when it is revealed that Joseph didn't give baby Jesus the newest Playstaion (whatever number we are on now). In fact there is no mention of the fact that no gifts were exchanged between the holy family at all. Sure, sure, settle-down, I know, I remember. The gold, frankincense and myrrh. OK here is the paydirt, the big stuff. These are the Santa’s presents if you know what I mean. Is this why we feel we have to give gifts at all? Some rich eccentrics gave the baby Jesus expensive gifts and now we, 2000 years later, rack our minds with feelings of insecurity, uncertainty, inadequacy, the need to spend more money to prove we love someone. So we take these expensive gifts that a couple men could afford and try to duplicate their lofty prices with our expenditure. The monetary price value of our gifts is what concerns people most. How about giving our most precious gift of all, our time. Truly, time, is the one thing we can give that when it comes down to it, our loved ones really want and we probably don't get enough of.

This consumer avalanche is out of control in America as well as the West in general. But picture this if you remember, when, after 9/11, America had such a prime time to truly look into self, do some soul searching. To look at what specifically about the US do other people not like (not to change it for that reason but just as an exercise of self-analysis). But what should the president at the time say to what America needs to do. "Go shopping." What??? That is it. Just continue down the road of buying 99% of unneeded crap and keep doing it. Wow, that's easy enough! I felt truly angered at such a trite suggestion and even more angered when America excepted that as a good suggestion.

Anyhow...Here is a very cool Jacob Needleman interview about money and its place in the soul/essence of people today, quite excellent, The meaning of money in the 21st Century. Also there is a wonderful radio broadcast that I find most relevant due to the fact that it seems no one else discusses these concepts in such a wonderful way. Speaking of Faith on NPR. This particular episode "Money and Moral Balance", I listened to about a week before I wrote this post but it got me thinking some...

I mean, religion doesn't hold a higher than thou place in my heart but a definite place for sure, a place that I try to fill with more knowledge and more understanding. The figureheads of religions would have wanted it that way for sure, wouldn't they have. I do think that we lack most of the better elements of religions on a daily basis. If we truly turned the other cheek, where would we be? If we loved others as ourselves, wouldn't earth be better than it is? I may be what I have read that the author Par Lagerkvist had called himself, a religious atheist. I take that to mean he had no true belief in god but a certain and tangible respect for the various creeds and practices of people, that he saw what religions can do for people when used correctly for good, to build the human spirit and not do tear each other down and lay asunder. His stories have a very strong moral element to them.

Well, I want to wish you all happy holidays and remember that love is more meaningful than anything we can physically hold. Also, a special wish for peace and love to my friends that can't be with all the people they want to be this holiday season.

Stay true to yourself.

Josh

Saturday, November 25, 2006

Bank of America is 'Ahole' in 'One'

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A friend of mine brought this video to my scrutinizing eye. I think this is a huge and prime example of how subtle the nuances of taking beauty and shifting it to corporate/personal gain and how we don’t even step back to blink at what we are witnesses to. This video isn't just bad, I think there is something deeper here. Are we to believe that the real song and their message are working on the same level...they are not.



As one can see in this video he has taken U2's song 'One' and changed the lyrics. Many people find this acceptable to do, (think of Weird Al). But what makes this so much of an example is with sheer gall and audacity he presumes to set forth, that his motives and principles can be superceeded and layed atop of this song. I would say that the song 'One' is about searching to come together, everyone, in a love that is beyond boundaries. To work for relationships even when we haven’t been treated the best by the ones we love but if we believe in love we can work through differences and problems. The lyrics to the real song.

One
Is it getting better
Or do you feel the same
Will it make it easier on you now
You got someone to blame
You say...

One love
One life
When it's one need
In the night
One love
We get to share it
Leaves you baby if you
Don't care for it

Did I disappoint you
Or leave a bad taste in your mouth
You act like you never had love
And you want me to go without
Well it's...

Too late
Tonight
To drag the past out into the light
We're one, but we're not the same
We get to
Carry each other
Carry each other
One...

Have you come here for forgiveness
Have you come to raise the dead
Have you come here to play Jesus
To the lepers in your head

Did I ask too much
More than a lot
You gave me nothing
Now it's all I got
We're one
But we're not the same
Well we
Hurt each other
Then we do it again
You say
Love is a temple
Love a higher law
Love is a temple
Love the higher law
You ask me to enter
But then you make me crawl
And I can't be holding on
To what you got
When all you got is hurt

One love
One blood
One life
You got to do what you should
One life
With each other
Sisters
Brothers
One life
But we're not the same
We get to
Carry each other
Carry each other

One...life

One


This exec (if you listen closely to his lyrics) believes that the corporate growth of Bank of America is akin to the same meaning as the original message. You can see how he sings it, with passion, that he really believes that his message is good and valuable. Things like having only one credit card with Bank of America on it. This is such a high goal for the world, one that all the employees should be proud to work towards. Merging not two people in a relationship trying to be able to give love and receive it (sometimes harder) but that the merger of two huge banks into an even larger monstrosity is almost the same. I recognize that this dude probably didn't think of his new rendition of this song in the terms I am laying before you but he was meant to impress the attendees with a little entertainment.

HOW ABOUT SINGING THE REAL SONG!!!!

I mean are the employees of Bank of America so heartless and devoid of any sense of reality or relationships that they couldn't focus for 5 minutes in introspection at the seminar. I guess not. They need to be entertained by a joke of a song to help reaffirm that their life's mission through Bank of America is more palatable and even can be traced to the original meaning of the song 'One'. Wouldn’t it make the world a little better if companies wanted to embolden their employees to create more well rounded lives? You may be thinking that this is a far stretch from the truth but I would have to beg to differ. I think we are just not in tune with the subtleties of the inundation of media and corporate propaganda that we experience on a daily level. We normally just think we don't hear or think we block it out. How many times have children seen commercials on TV by the time they are 10?

How many commercials for 'fun' breakfast cereal and other products advertised directly to them that drive their parents crazy when shopping? We grow up in this environment and think it is just normal.

That is my main point, I guess.

As you can see the audience of the song enjoyed it so much as to give a standing ovation. Can that be true!!! Or are they more concerned with appearance? To not get the execs pissed? Are they whimpering humans like most of us (including me) that accept the schlock offered as acceptable. We are the ones that make this world and if we allow this kind of crap, like most of the crap we do allow and turn on and tune into, to be the recipients of standing ovations, where are we going? Maybe this is too much, what I am talking about, but think for a minute how many worthwhile and human dignity assisting things is there for us to be doing.

One last critique for their performance, they should have done it in drag.

Keep on keeping on.

Josh

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

How Much Does Our Leadership Cost

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Well Rumsfeld is gone and that seems to be good news. The Repububli-cons and Deceptocracts are still locked in their spinning and swirling deathmatch of flipflop. Over the past 100 years or so the two major parties in the United States have switched agendas almost. Maybe this is due to each trying to grab some of the other's cookies or better yet, tricking people into giving their cookies to them. However it truly be, they have most assuredly shifted political ideals. I am not saying that I don't think the Democrats have more to offer or that my concept of government isn't more akin to theirs (because it is) and that I am not most glad at the control-shift in both houses. What truly, I think, is strange, is the fact that the Repub leadership is very radical, more radical than most people who claim to be of them. I believe that this is the case from something I will now call the 'gimme factor'. This factor is when the radical Repubs run in elections they promise to give money to those that vote for them, not a bribe persay but because of tax cuts. But what amount is this? A pittance! Average Joe got like $200 bucks and not that I can't use $200 bucks and especially now but seriously that is nothing. It is like a pacifier to allow them to give "Big Oil" $14 billion during their most lucrative and profitable year. So average Joe sees and hears about this and thinks, "Well I was able to get myself further in debt with my money". Actually he doesn't think this, it just happens. American consumerism almost mandates that he spend it and he will on something nonessential and expensive and I would almost bet $200 that if you asked most people what they spent that money on they just wouldn't know.

I would highly recommend people to see 'Private Warriors'. It is a Frontline episode that set out to find how much of the unaccounted for billions dumped into Iraq profiteers' pockets could be uncovered. There are many Frontline episodes that can just be streamed from their site. More than 30,000 'mercenaries' are working for the US in Iraq and fall under no one's jurisdiction. They face NO LEGAL REPERCUSSIONS OF ANY SORT FROM ANYONE. It is highly absurd! It really makes me think that the Bush government has employed these people in hopes of keeping US military casualties lower for simple P.R. reasons and has opted to not fully address the situation in Iraq but to orchestrate huge contracts for friends and the control of the region. You may say that the US doesn't have control and that would be true but NO ONE else has control and the US has a huge footing there and will for a long time. No one else can simply take the oil or stop the US from using it or protecting it. As you will see in that Frontline, it is almost in the interest of Haliburton for war to continue and for them to keep fortifying conceptually outdated bases for the troops.

I have just started reading Henry Miller's Sexus which I am certain will be great like most of his other books. I actually have already read Plexus which is the second book in that trilogy 'Rosy crucifixion' simply because it was the only Henry Miller book in the main Montreal library in English. That was great as well.

Keep churning.
Josh

Monday, November 06, 2006

The Birth of My Blog

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Well, here I go. I figured that by creating this blog it would help add content plus keeping the writing skills and juices flowing. I intend to put anything from thought to poems and stories here.

First thing : What art means to me.

There aren't many things in this existence that actually do much for me. From getting heated up by what American Idol (which I don't get heated up by) does for this world to how much gay-hooker-sex, gay-hating ministers can have. What does anything actually mean? There is so much wasted time, effort and money on creating crap for people to buy and for deflecting people's observations away from meaningful interaction and engagement. Humans seem that the easiest way and the shortest line from point Apathy to point Beneficent is never taken and if so started on, we get a few feet then crawl on to our easy-street chair and fully recline that beast into a lethargic-recline that we think has the bouquet of wine. I am not a dreary anti-human, against all of our odoriferous activities but someone that knows we can do more and has a definite hope in the human. A good quote is from Gramsci, "pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will."

Art is something that can help us analyze ourselves, to help us understand our predicament of life. The smallest value that art has is how it can help future generations see what we are in our own time. And this is the smallest benefit! Art has to be pursued whether or not there is actually any appreciation for it. I keep in mind the one person that may like my art and they are stationed on spacestation 12. Still yet to be built! People get caught up into the instant acceptance of their art and many people that I know have fallen away from art to engage their lives' efforts into money and comfort. Money and comfort are needed to a certain level but NOT to the level that our 'freedom' allows. Or nearly to the level that media and other humans claim it to be necessary. Luxury is our new god in this world and we mostly take what we have, for granted and simply want more. Throughout history art hasn't really (if ever) been fully accepted in an artist's lifetime. So stay the course and do something of value. If your art isn't accepted don't give in, just give more. There are other careers that are of a highly useful level but some of those useful jobs (doctor, councilor, lawyer) just to name a few, do have areas that can and do pay. They often have a set road to take to obtain a living. Art is one of those things that by its nature needs us to push our environment to a higher goal. Higher than money for sure.

Next thing :

I have picked up again The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rilke. It is already a decade since I last read it and the concept of that time seems so meaningless since 10 years scarcely seems to have been possible to have passed. The book has a different attitude than I remember but what I did keep in mind was its beauty. He has a wonderful way of showing the human as he tries to understand where and how he fits in to this life.

Well, keep coming back there will be more.