Wow this has been a real bad week for us Americans I tell you. Though what hurts me more than the total failure of healthcare reform has got to be the sneaking in an extension of the Patriot Act yet again. What you didnt heart about it? Well, surprise it was tacked on to the ass end of the defense appropriations bill and approved quietly because our congressional representatives do not believe in constitutional protections, civil rights, or civil liberty. We're at war our soldiers dieing, our captives tortured, our phones bugged, our email searched, our blogs indexed, our liberties worn down to a smooth numb like a river stone. Yet we move forward heads down, every news channel riveted on what Tiger woods does with his penis, not looking around trying like hell not to upset the status quoe or offend thy neighbor, even when thy neighbor steals our paper. Im just so damn disappointed I cant even write about it.
Much like the so called healthcare reform. If we as a people learn nothing else from this experience we're so patiently watching unfold before us like the fledgling magician at a kids party, is this one simple lesson. Our elected “leaders” (and I use the term as loose as a goose” have no interest in responding to anything that we want, or that is in our best interest. They don't like us, they don't care about us, they find us a nuisance that they have to manage and provide the perception of appeasement so we'll wander off back to where we came for sedated with crumbs and empty promises, carefully crafted rhetoric polished like a shining diamond and just as worthless.
How many more examples do we need to finally believe that they, as an organization are a complete failure and do nothing to enrich our lives but only act in their own self interest, that of their lobbyists, and of course their post-congressional carriers as consultants to whatever. 90% of the unites states blindly believe in god with not a single shred of evidence ever presented yet time and time again on national television we swallow bold face lies, ½ truths, fear mongering and quantifiable actions that effect our very own every day lives in the negative and never once do anything about it including turning our backs on these people and voting them out of office, calling them on their shit or god for bid, holding them accountable for their failures. Is personal responsibility such a diluted and obscure trait in society today that we cant even manage to hold our elected officials accountable for their actions?
Now that's a scary prospect. What has come of our society that our own inherent conditioning to blame an intangible for injustice and corruption is so absolute than when you actually do have a proven and unmistakable cause for a negative effect we can not bring ourselves to hold them accountable either? It would definitely explain how bush got reelected, it would also explain how mass murderers escape the death chamber because mommy didn't breast feed you and daddy kicked your ass. I speak of this often in my personal life about those who have betrayed me and how Ive cast them out of my sphere of love and light and I get a lot of shit for it. My value system dictates that I care not for intentions, motivations or justification for how you behave in life. I measure each individual I interact with or comes to my attention solely on their actions. Nothing more, and I really am that simple.
You can be a total asshole for 25 years, and one day you wake up and start being kind, generous or simply not an asshole, I will take you at new direction and respond to you appropriately. That's not to say I wont remember that you were an asshole for 25 years and take my time with buying into the new you. But I will give you the benefit of the doubt and say to myself.. “self, he did alright by them today, maybe he's not such a bad dude anymore....” But when you go and pull some shit, treat someone like shit, be mean and disrespectful, the badge wears on. I will keep my distance and hold you accountable for your choices. Because your actions are choices.
I dont believe your feelings make you do anything, I dont believe habits are permanent, I dont believe freewill is ever forfeit. Each and every day you choose to be the person you are though the actions you take throughout the day. Its completely up to you whether or not those actions are a positive force on the world, or a negative. Once you come to understand that its a choice to call someone a hurtful name, steal their bicycle or wear them down with negative energy, then you become aware of your own influence in the world. You adopt a sense of personal responsibility and through that, a morality of what behavior you find acceptable in yourself, and conversely in others. The fortitude in which you hold yourself to this morality, most importantly when its hard is what defines your character. Existing as a person of character who lives with code of morality is living with integrity. The greatest gift you can ever give yourself is integrity, as its one of the very few things that no one can ever corrupt or take from you.
Those without it will fear you for it, threaten you and otherwise challenge you. They will try to tarnish your armor of integrity not because you're wrong or you're misguided but because it reveals to them their own personal short comings and generates within them a foreboding sense of shame. This of course is a very uncomfortable sensation especially when experienced though the subconscious. Motivating people to make choices that in hindsight even to themselves inspires regret and self reflection. Had they a sense of personal responsibility, that would take this as a lesson and grow from it, and then themselves begin to develop a morality. But it takes great strength to look yourself in the eye and find yourself wanting. Courage and perseverance to not flinch, but rather make an alternate choice, a harder choice now a little more self aware at the ability to fail on the road less traveled.
Many perceive me to be a pessimist, but I retain that I'm the greatest optimist. For when I look at the world around me I see with naked eyes, evil, corruption, hate, greed and anger and do not flinch. I do not hide from the sour truths that I experience and endure breathing in its foul stench and washing its bitter taste across my pallet to fully experience it for what it is. I chew it with vigor to understand its texture and substance adding its subtle nuance and prominent flavors to my mental database of experience thereby expanding my wisdom. I will choke on its subsistence until I swallow and then as this honest morsel of life passes to my gullet I see the opportunity in the choices that we made that created this putrid beef and hope that the next time the circumstance present themselves, different choices will be made, people will change and the next empiricism will be more tolerable than the last.
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