Transition Choices

Slow food and slow thinking apparently have nothing in common. But do fast food and the fast life have parallels? Somehow the extremes seem to make ends meet, or in this economy and lifestyle of convenience we pretend we are getting by, making it and living successfully when actually we are out of balance and achieving a culture of narcissism that has very little to do with democracy.

How do we gain from our most recent national concerns and  mistakes?  I believe we begin by looking at our neighborhoods, the people right next to us, the food/nourishment that is available to us in our back yards. We start with using our abilities to think, to reason, to have compassion. If we do think, then perhaps we can find simple ways in which classism and racism are not fostered in our actions. We can make friends with a variety of people perhaps if we reach outside our routines, our norms. We can understand how much we don’t know about our own back yards. We can redefine the meaning and circumference of what we own and what we take care of.

I was driving up my driveway with my teenage son. We saw a diamond head snake crossing our path. This was a rare sighting. To date, I had only seen small harmless green garden snakes in my yard. My son was driving and instead of running the poisonous creature over, we stopped the car and stared. My son got out of the car and poked the snake with a long stick and it slithered away into a gully of deep grasses. Do we always have to kill what may harm us? Sometimes. Sometimes we can be curious, alert and aware of the dangers that are lurking. I don’t hate snakes. I am very cautious because some snakes are poisonous. In this case, I had a good reason for my caution and was very respectful.

What are the poisons we have in our neighborhoods? The pesticide truck that randomly sprays for mosquitoes, the water pipes that are old and untended, the inability to walk safely down a street because no sidewalks accommodate pedestrians are all examples of why we need to pay attention.  I am sure there are more issues like how folks don’t communicate within their own families, what people may or may not eat for dinner, and for some whether or not they may lose the house where they are living. I am not sure of the immediate solutions to even the most  basic problems. I do know that people have solutions when we apply ourselves.

I remember I was joining a local charity organization to volunteer. This group was a bunch of white women who were out to do good in the world. I knew I needed to get to know my community and this group presented a volunteer opportunity to me. So I joined. I will never forget the day we had an orientation and  initiation. I was in a car with five other women and we had supposedly finished with our activities and were headed back to our respective homes. The gal right behind me in the back seat, piped up- “How come we have to help those nappy haired ne’er do well kids?” My own nappy hair on the back of my neck stood up. I slowly  and emphatically turned around in my seat and glared at her with my ARE YOU CRAZY look.  I turned and faced forward and in a low mean voice growled, “We are meant to volunteer and be of service. I didn’t sign up to exclude people.” That year, I stayed in that club. I thought my vote would cancel hers out. I was wrong. There are plenty more of her in that club than there are of me. I should have stopped my affiliation on the spot. How do you deal with prejudice? When was the last time you saw discrimination occur? How does prejudice shape your world?

No one knows what it means to truly have a social conscience with no backlash. So we go to meetings.  After all the excuses, after all the tripe from the last regime we will still settle for manipulation, cream puffery and suppression.  So why try to make a meaningful contribution in business and build healthy relationships? Why not just complain, be pseudo intellectual about the suavely sophisticated way in which our brains work overtime. And  do nothing but complain so we can mentally masturbate and DO NOTHING about change. Let’s just hold on to what little we have left after all that has been taken from us.  Let’s use our extravagant self-deception, low levels of courage, lack of self confidence, and do nothing. Let’s enhance the problem of the zombie economy. We can stay jobless and we can cry in our soured milk. And brag about how bad, BAD is in our experience of life. Sorry I feel like yelling. I am tired of dysfunction.

We need a new Woodstock,  a Woodstock that is sober and vitally alive with just mud, bands and hippie love proliferating a new attitude. Did Burning man really ignite our burning quest for  new thinking? We need authentic process community.  Instead we have facebook and twitter. Not everything can be expressed in a 140 characters or less.  I am fed up with cryptic messages that do not express true desire, stimulate our capacity for deepening our humanity, or generate the love for solutions. I am tired of people who are willing to settle for less. Instead of doing more with less, people are just settling for less.  My tears, my anger and my frustration stem from the lack of integrated, fulfilling, and empowered common people that truly want to improve life, and strive for happiness.

Do you know what I think the best thing we’ve done in a long time is? We elected Obama.  But  we are still snarky little blue dog democrats repeating our past ignorance with a vengeance. We don’t know how to transition smoothly. We don’t keep making choices that are conscious and have hours of front porch debate. We are still in the trough of alcoholic stupor, and I don’t think we will ever get out. Maybe it’s because we don’t want to get out, break out, become actualized.

It’s my party and I will cry if I want to…What era do we want to examine to help us understand our current social de-evolution? We have looked at Rome, Byzantium administrations we have reverted to Victorian era sublimation of women, we have mixed church and state, and we have orchestrated the McCarthy era via Karl Rove. And wonders of wonders the ice caps are melting and yet we don’t use technology as the means to a real democracy. We make stupid, sarcastic, do nothing advertisements on facebook, and play silly games that produce no results for our betterment. We need real process community. At the very least, we need the ability to start asking what real process community is.

Get humble people and work toward self-improvement. And I mean with a humility that is not staged. Humility that comes from a depth of self examination and self LOVE. So go forth be loving,  extend simple kindnesses, tell the truth, and keep your heart. Remember friendship is the reason for the meeting, remember the deeper meaning of your daily slog of work, put into perspective that all the hurt, the anger is a part of how we forget we even have a community. Let our collective memories bear the fruit of change, change that comes once we’ve released the pain, and taken small simple steps that strengthen our spirit and our resolve.

So Dead. What if America has already died? We are all celebrating Obama Nation and yet the true colors of what has happened and what we are birthing is not self evident. Our neighbors both nationally, locally and internationally are strangers. We think we know the Russians? We think we know what is going on next door? Have you talked to the person sitting right next to you lately?

When we do talk, to what end are we processing? In terms of processing I don’t mean Velveeta cheese or a chemical unit of measurement, or anything to do with industrialization to me process means self reflection, time for inner growth, personal development in terms of soul and spiritual development, creating a better world through the use of good will. Process oriented community is a way of orienting our group ethic toward a better whole. A self help group therapy process is not exactly process oriented community. But it’s a start. Having a goal, work within a group, work within the self and positive outcomes that are mutually beneficial is another start.  If that is therapy then give me some widespread manna, mayonnaise or grease for the whole self.

A sandwich of epic proportions we have already experienced through tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes, wall street, the mortgage crisis, modern day nuclear living, the middle East, biotech breakthroughs, and traffic-heavy commutes.   Heavy traffic on the web is desirable but we human beings are not in favorable position of liking ourselves, each other and/or our environment. So what gives? Why do we have to live in a world of mass hysteria, financial ruin, Earth by climatic change and preprogrammed lies? Maybe that is why process oriented community is important. We need outlets to deal with this stuff and make desirable changes in a democratic way.

By democracy I mean decision by consensus and not the cheap rendition of democracy that gets doled out to us. Here we are in the midst of revolution and facebook is our vehicle of liberation? Twitter by faith and paint by numbers does not extrapolate talent.  A seventh grade introduction to hallways and class room changing is a similar example of look at me while I wave and go by, see all my friends, see who knows me, see me  and all that I am worth- reminds me of Kmart underwear embroidered with the names of the days of the week. A cheap rendition of nasty. My yellow Tuesday is covering my twat of indifference.  Is that all our collective self worth means to us?  The worthless rebuttal of change is beset by our current facebook advocacy of community.  The new sexy laden with overwork, overuse and generally played out is smitten with store closings, suburban austerity, and weasel underpants with nobody inside them.

In my wildest dreams, people have integrity and work together in a vibrant, non-sublimated, democratic forum. Depth of human emotion, candor of intelligence, and beauty of soul are valued in society and supported by tools and technology that are authentically in the service of social good and not just marketed as such. Dreams are easy but the real work is yet to be done.

From Neo Nazis to gun stock piling rednecks to the recent death of my father, I have lately felt more like being an ostrich than a humble person. The military is recruiting skinheads because of the low recruitment rates. That is like recruiting child prostitutes to advertise to pedophiles. Frankly all the fear that has been infused in our daily living is taking its toll. The death of my father is relatively positive in light of  potential race violence.

Herb believed in celebrating our lives and always talked about a party he wanted to have while he was dying or after he had passed on.  Recently, I was down in the Virgin Islands. We told stories and prayed, laughed and invited friends over to help us fulfill our father’s wishes. Herb has had Alzheimer’s for the last ten years and really had to have full time care in the last seven. So his departing has been long, and actually serene. He was not a hard guy to basically get along with even with the progression of  Alzheimer’s.

My grief has come in waves of emotions. With the heartfelt loss, I have had to question even further what we are doing in the way of social evolution. All the encounter groups, self-growth that proliferated in the sixties, seventies and eighties has just turned into “alternatives,” and spiritual directives that are experienced organically. Community as I knew and loved it through my family has been passed over for suburban greed, and manifest destiny.  And now the new hopelessness, and austerity are making the fat woman sing the circus tune of Britney Spears, Karl Rove, and Sotomayer’s scrutiny. And in the middle of the mayhem, a long day’s journey into light as my father makes his way to the deep end. Send prayers, laughter, hugs and well, anything that doesn’t have to do with hate, guns, and roses. I prefer the sublime to subprime, the supernatural to the ultimatum.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad!

Covert communications, binge thinking, overbloated discretionary funds, Neo Nazis hate politics; where does the dysfunction begin? We don’t have functional families. We have families seeking fun, fun and more sun stunted by their own myopia of consequences, and immune to credit card debt yet on their way to wage slavery. After all, with the subprime debacle and loss of opportunity, you don’t need prison bars to be imprisoned.  Paroxysms of truth occur spontaneously interrupting the flow of corrupt humor just long enough to be similar to a grade B movie and the Joker from Batman. Heath Ledger won an Academy Award, in a grade B movie. The unbearable lightness of being comes with too much solar radiation, and  makes our modern day Gotham City a veritable playground for inept personal power.

Seeking compassion for the homeless? Remembering innocence as a thing of sacred yet subjugated to subway sacrifice? How do we move forward as a community of like minded, one world guiltless potato chips? Do I look like a modern day saint, or just a person who would rather open my window with the best and shout, “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

If the sneer of civilized veneer is creepily familiar, then perhaps the gestalt of my dream is more apt. I dreamt about an art installation that was set under bars of wrought iron, that contained busts, a crypt of ashes and alabaster dedicated to the best thinkers of our time. Busts of thinkers behind bars.  Cheers!

Recovery isn’t just austerity masked as  distorted self perception. Recovery takes time, discipline, and a willingness to be truly humble. Not humbleness as a response to Brad Pitt’s elevation of Hurricane Katrina victims to Hollywood martyrdom. What is Hollywood martyrdom? Cheese cloth on a streaker. The devastation in New Orleans, Mississippi was real and misunderstood.

When all the pain is said and done, here we are leaning on our crutches and moving forward as the walking wounded of the 21st Century. Or are you one of the few who recognizes the complexity of our problems, still puts in a good days work, paid or unpaid and actually is one of the lucky ones who get a good night’s rest? How many people work on their cynicism, and come out born again humanists?  I count myself among the blessed unpaid, I left sainthood at the door of my eclectic spirituality long ago, and I don’t count on the government bailing me out. My humanist status is still in process, or progress if you don’t count the zombies, vampires and unfriended friends on facebook.

The new facebook makeover is disconcerting. Just how is facebook an effective social media for small business? Where is the merit for real social evolution?  Once again our “neighborhood” is being shaped by economic competitiveness without a conscious. This time frame is not a simple transition. For us lay morons we are expected to merely comply and fall into the next best herd mentality like good evangelical bloggers that we are.

David Sedaris has the “Me Talk Pretty One Day” thing correct. As a community we can’t be deeply honest, committed to a greater good, and restricted to one-liners about our lives. Twittering poetically about bail-outs does not create lasting results. Have you noticed the gap between blogging sites with specific topics like mommy, technology, news, etc and a facebook experience?  As I remember, facebook, and myspace were initially dating sites-the virtual pick up scene for twenty-somethings. What are the ground rules for online communities forming good communication skills and emotional cohesion? The predicted breakdown of  our larger institutions has happened, our need for community is as great as it ever will be. How do we evolve our communication so there is an inclusive way to build rapport and strengthen our humanity?  I grew up in the sixties with therapists for parents. Self-responsibility and community integration were not just ideals, these values made up the lifestyle of people endeavoring in the self-growth frontiers of the sixties. There has to be a way to foster more than idealism when the need is so strong.

Sometimes I feel like a lone wolf foraging for nourishment amongst the jackals of Greed, Corruption, and the monster of Government Take-Over  all of which predominate in between  our daily “snores” of  news. How much of a chance does the next generation actually have of gaining an edge in amongst this type of cultural malignancy?

My friends are still doing their daily routines of work and play. My kids are still in school. We are working and attempting to build a better tomorrow. Anger? Rage? Guillotines of  flamboyant hair, stupidity, disruption and anarchy best describes our collective fog.  Now let’s vote on the most effective way to channel our anger. Please. We need to be at the forefront of crowd-sourcing, so we are the Cowboys, Cowgirls of tomorrow instead of the bleating beasties.

The action plan is obvious. Keep humble. Be accountable for actions, thoughts, and communications. Make extreme honesty as important as extreme makeovers, extreme sports and extreme dessert. Be informed. Be willing to accept that life is hard and by our kindnesses we make a difference. Reach out with heartfelt compassion to friends, associates, strangers even when its not convenient. Try to understand what heartfelt compassion can mean at any given moment. Be disciplined about living simple truths.

It’s the fascination of ugly/beautiful, ancient/modern, scarred/whole that helps us see beyond our denial. We have to connect what we have been to what we might be and continue with our upward beat. We are made in Japan. We are the unruly United States. We don’t define ourselves in our confidence or in a populist faith. We act upon a simple manifesto of global intelligence that evolves sometimes slowly, sometimes in nanoseconds, sometimes not over time but in the curve back unto itself.

I knew a horsewoman who chose a blind mare for the babies she could produce. I felt sympathy for the mare.  The mare was more than just a birthing machine.  If you ride her, then you have to be her eyes. We have to be more than we know we are because it is what is demanded of us. It’s not a pseudo, psychedelic tent revival of  “togetherisms” but an understanding of our ecosystems and cost containment that matter most.

We have leadership that perhaps at times is only “leadershop.” Obama is still shopping around for what is actually going to work.  Even with the bank failures, the mortgage crisis, the securities fraud we have our voice and we are alive and kicking.  My grandmother said to my mother “there is a lot of living in dying.” Digression and progression are on the same spectrum. So are we moving forward or backwards? We do have a choice about how we, the people of the globe, should proceed.

My family celebrated at a local Chinese restaurant the other day. My older son ridiculed me as I read the fortune out loud. Sometimes the simplest thing is to act. My fortune cookie was wrapped in plastic. Sometimes I think that our fortunes are wrapped in plastic too. The culture of what comes next is guaranteed by our shopping malls to be lacking in originality and rubber stamped by patriotic gun fervor. The mix of lament, the colors of nostalgia, the shame of no conscience and overused authority with underused discipline is quite a lot of garbage handed to us in a McDonald’s bag of middle class frugality. Maybe the fortune cookie was right. Sometimes the simplest thing is to act. What can we do, individually and collectively, to break out of this plastic prison?

Can we still see the beauty in each other? Do we move with poesis and intention? Or has the paranoia and hairsplitting fundamentalism prevailed and shaped our provincialism to such a degree we are stuck with a future of mendicants?

How do we interrupt this pattern and enroll new behaviors? How do we reinvent ourselves with authenticity and humility? We choose our new fabric of beauty from misused, unused, and overused discards. We attempt new things, new ways of being that aren’t new at all but infused with respect.

I was informed by the newspaper today that biotechnology is the new answer. We think we see so we ride the horse in the direction it’s going, even if its a blind mare that is sought for what she can produce and not where she can lead us.  Perhaps even with the current blindness we need to be leading ourselves and walking alongside the power structure as empowered individuals not besotted with a gene pool of better answers and coerced solutions.

Here we are at the cocktail party where popularity and politics are woven with deconstructionism at its best. We are aging “Frenemies,” the bastard term for our inability to be authentic. After wearing high heels and dancing backwards, we have forgotten our allegiance to seeking meaning and fostering introspection. We are the new feminists of the next generation. We walk toward our career goals with high heeled determination ( future back problems, knee traumas, and a wicked view of sex). We think introspection has something to do with Buddhism and perhaps addiction recovery. Throw in a few chants, maybe an altar to “my own reflection” and with a snap of the finger, we have a diva like ability to instantly and magically re-invent ourselves as urban shaman-women. My problem with my “liberal” cohorts, is that they really resemble Republicans and don’t know it. Just because you rebel in the opposite direction to the problem, doesn’t mean you solved the problem. You are the same problem, just the opposite side. How can more provincial thinking dressed up in hippie drag address the deeper need? More denial does not a guru make.

How do we still recognize our problems, engage in solutions to our problems without becoming overwhelmed by our problems? How do we say “fuck you” to the current lack of humanitarian effort and part with the ways of the past?  How can we say “fuck you” without hurting ourselves in the process?  Anger can be a healthy way to draw a boundary. Anger is a signal that something is wrong.  A certain level of questioning and rebellion can be healthy. Cohesive action is the best way to solve a problem and really make a difference. Hippies, you know how to philosophically connect your own body with the body politic and the body of the Earth. How do we seek and participate in a positive social movement? We have voted for Obama. This election is the first action that Americans have taken in a long time to saving our bacon. This is the first action but it cannot be the last action lest we fail. We are the people who will make our future. True change comes from within. It takes guts, spirit, and a lot of effort to foster cohesion amongst our families, our communities and to better ourselves as a nation. This is our destiny.

This is my own experience of personal change and growth. It takes a searing dedication to reveal self denial and to make behavioral changes to foster new pathways of health. This is the only way that we can truly heal ourselves from the horror of the past eight years and not just swing the pendulum in the other direction. Let’s get started.

Being a humanitarian, a humanist, an altruistic person is typically reserved for church goers (or the saints among us), peace prize winners, not the guy or gal with a laptop. We’ve seen that Obama’s efforts via the web had a positive impact on his campaign. Most students these days, are graduating into a future of virtual office, and web design, social networking and digital communication. The Baby Boomer’s versus the X gen, the Y gen and the next gen in overall ability to organize, capitalize and reinvent their ghost.

So how do we express our empathy, our compassion and our strengths in a way that is both liberating, cohesive and supportive? Why does it matter? After being ravaged by the Bush regime, we are a fringe population, reinventing our motivations, inspirations, and aspirations as a collective. We have a leader who is more of a people person, more of a real human being than we as a collective are used to experiencing. Obama can’t do it all. So we the folks behind the scenes, inside the laptops and in the line at the grocery stores must begin to step into this newness, this experience of no fear, and courageously be better than we have been entrained to be. When was the last time you went to a party and unmasked your gentleness? When did you last release some unbridled enthusiasm for group synergy? How do you demonstrate trust in your fellow human beings on a daily basis? When was the last time you did not feel the pressure to conform at a cocktail party? When does high heels and lipstick become an emblem of social theater and only an emblem?

How do we grow healthy socially, politically, and environmentally?

As a group, we haven’t reinforced our collective abilities to support one another in our kindnesses. Our etiquette is lacking. Our social skills have been subjugated to military strategy and force of strength. It is a hardship to convey a warm, fuzzy funny via email. Facebook is a one-upmanship of busyness.  We, as a nation, haven’t emphasized people to people skills in the last eight years. Competition is the new, the next, the asset most valued and yet hyper-competition is undermining the strength of our highly prized individuality. Too much competition becomes the bite of lack; lack in self-esteem,  lack of confidence. It underlies the weakening of social morays. Compassion and honesty should be the back bone of interpersonal growth and interconnectedness amongst peers. Competition should be a motivational strategy for self improvement and not a weapon for tearing others down.