Happy Days after the fall of Post Modernism

Nobody can truly be happy any more. Some people accumulate great wealth and do a great many good things with it, but there must be some unhappiness that drives them to do good. Maybe it is possible that there are poor, dumb people out there who have everything they need and are happy. They can only be relatively happy for there must be little annoyances, drama, and/or loneliness in every body's life. No in the postmodern world that we live in happiness is just a construct of a previous era like 'truth'. It is not something that can be truly attained. In fact there is no longer reason to believe that it is something to be obtained, or that it is even an 'it' at all. Happiness is a feeling with which we identify, but some of us have become aware that our use of grammar implies a lot about subject and object. That is to say we pose happiness as some kind of goal, at least I know I do, and we ignore the fact that we can only identify happiness as a feeling, but we cannot know when we are going to find ourselves in that state, and we certainly do not know how to put our selves permanently in a state of happiness. Still we say it is what we want. Misery can become a constant state of being in a way. Humans can suffer to the point where the slightest bit of good news can never outweigh the overwhelming problems at hand. This is the indifference of nature at times, but it is also the problem that the thinkers of the enlightenment and all of modern society set out to solve. The problem of poverty. And it has not been solved, and has only gotten worse to where we have a global 'Dickensian-ism' of sorts currently on our hands. Without poverty happiness might become something that holds weight again. It might be a reachable goal. Unfortunately there has yet to be a truly sustainable solution to poverty. Because of this impoverished mind set our whole race is rapidly becoming extinct along with millions of others. What I am saying here is that whatever it is that has made us unable to care for all of humanity has become an entity that is now destroying our planet. Obama is not facing his 'Katrina' in the gulf of Mexico, but rather his '9-11'. There is not a great evil out there that is perpetuated by some individuals, at least not in nature's view. We can sight specific incidents like the one in the gulf as the problem. But what leads to creating the system that allows such a disaster to happen. No I think we have to all take blame for what is happening to the world because this is the only productive way to move towards sustainability as a culture. Right now I pose that we work towards this goal of happiness with soft eyes and humility. This is a serious incremental approach to a problem that has never been solved and we should not expect this approach to appease nature, or be what we hope it could be, but I applaud any attempts to really work on a global community in the true sense of the words.

I want to say "Yes" more often, but I have to be somewhat consistant.

Beyond Good and Evil -UC Berkeley edition

What to talk about today. Mike Huchabee? Nah. I am more concerned about my future employment than anything else. I do have a service job and have held about half a dozen service jobs in my life, but now I have a degree and I want more. Its kinda funny that most of the students (at least in my department) would show interest in these human rights/equal rights/advocate for democracy type jobs, but now that we have to go to work and think of our own livelihoods the whole do-good er/UC Berkeley spirit of fairness goes out the window. My whole time at Cal I tried to point out that we, Americans at least, are capitalists and therefore should probably watch out for the anti-capitalist rhetoric that spouts out of the mouths of almost every student under the age of twenty-five. It is not that I am conservative or establishmentarian or libertarian or anything like that, I am just conscious and aware of where I am and who I am. That is to say I see no point in talking about a revolution that will take down our system and leave the country in chaos because we are no where near that scenario in real life. And even more important is the fact that if we want to have any power in this global neocapitalist environment we must have money! This is a fact. Why do you think Move-On .org and other effective organizations on the left are always looking for donations. Rhetoric alone will not topple the empire. Believe me I know for I was a rhetoric major. I cannot speak for the graduating students who feel financially secure enough to not worry about their future. Maybe these people can buy the freedom that they need to live an idealistic life. If that is the case more power to them, but recognize that we cannot all be free. I had fortunately lost a lot of my idealistic views by the time I returned to college to finish my undergrad. Now I am keeping an open mind and really trying to pick my battles so that I do not end up using all of my intelligence and energy on trying to live out an ideology that will most certainly not work out in this complicated and ever changing world. Think about that all you hippies. You are about to become yuppies and you may be surprised at how easy the transition can be. You shouldn't be shocked about your shallowness, for nobody could really expect to live up to the ideals of the average Berkeley student. Nobody can be that good.

Gulf Oil Spilt

I dont know if I should continue to follow the news. Politics and the environmental movement have come together in a really ugly way with the problem unsolved. I do not doubt that a battle on behalf of the public is brewing. But I dont know why I bother to give these political opinions and declarations. I do think I can call a political winner almost every time and I would put my money where my mouth is. Still as a human it is all horrible and none of it is new. The Apocalypse does not look like 2012 nor the bible's version. It is slow and ongoing and started in the beginning ( and it shows itself at times in ways that horrify us all.) I guess I gotta talk about something.

Gaza Blockade

So it looks like Israel is going to loosen the blockade on the Gaza strip. I guess even the Israeli government has had to admit that it is inhumane. What is surprising is how long it took them to come to this decision. The price of Israeli security seemed to outweigh the prospect of starving an entire city of its people's most basic of needs. I just hope the Gazans can now repair their sewage plant. I do not like to weigh in on who is worse the Palestinians or the Israelis, but I can say without a doubt that it is wrong to force people to live in their own sewage war or not. The health of the planet is a concern of mine, and when people are forced to watch their entire environment rendered toxic and unusable that is a crime. A crime in India and a crime in Israel.

Rant and Rave

I was wondering why I found the two people rehearsing their ballroom dancing in front of the music library so irritating. It was not just that they were bad, but they were arrogant as well. Rehearsing in public means the public has a right to be entertained. But these two obviously only care about impressing teachers or a class. Basically they are not doing it for the right reasons. Not in my mind.

Ear Training

Nightly Business report on PBS last night reported on a study done some time back which showed that humans were more likely to prefer what is familiar to them as opposed to what is new. They were saying that people tend to only buy stock that is familiar to them. They also said that this is why people prefer to hear hits on the oldies and classic rock stations all across America. That is true to a certain extent. People everywhere train their ears to prefer certain sounds over others. Its usually subconscious but it happens to everyone. Do yo like country? yes or no. Everyone should know the answer to this question. When it comes to 'classic rock' stations, they have consolidated all over the country and are more homogeneous as opposed to the times when fm radio was a new and experimental way to play music.
Now consider this: A new song comes on the radio and I like it. It gets played more and more and that is good because I like it. But then it gets played more and more and even more and when you think it cannot go on it gets played again until it is totally played. Then I can't stand the song even when it is good. Maybe at that point I discover that music and sound is more about moods then about what's good or hip or available for mass consumption daily for free. Now in the computer age we are get to the point where we can make our own music collections more accessible by using the shuffle mode. This I believe is a good invention. I like to have 1.5 thousand songs that can be categorized and broken into more and more easy to find segments. Its hard with the records I have. But I have to say I would rather have both than one or the other.

What is this blog about

Blogs to me are places where people can voice honest opinions over the internet. That's great, but they obviously have a larger effect on news and ploitics than a simple bulliten board would. The internet is the church door. Unfortunately not everybody realises this and people post all sorts of hateful, offensive, and false information. So that is the situation as it is. I try very hard not to come across as a flaming leftist while at the same time I do not want to turn the left off. Nor do I want to be neutral. I just like to think that what I think and believe cannot be placed into existing catagories. I hope I am right.
As for this blog I like to take on the news of the world, but I also want to make room for truly important topics like Mad Men, the Simpsons, and the comedy of David Cross. And I realise nobody has been reading these posts, but I will continue to present things as if they are to be posted on the church doors. A virtual secular church, but a church none the less.

Israel and Gaza

I am predicting that despite the horrible international press Israel continues to receive due to the incident with the Gaza relief ships, they will continue to keep the harsh embargo in play. The reason for this has to do with the fact that Israel is in a constant state of vigilance. Its not just because of the Hamas doctrine to destroy Israel, though this is why the embargo started. It is because they believe that their Arab neighbors weather they say so or not, do not want them there and if they let their guard down the natives will push them into the sea. Its the same thing that has been going on since the inception of Israel. When Helen Thomas made that remark she probably knew what the consequences would be. She was dismissed as a xenophobe, but what other solutions have been proposed? Relations between the two countries have deteriorated since the Clinton years and there is no sign of peace to come. What the activists did was useful for before this the only people that talked about the embargo were academics like Noam Chompsky. But Israel will weigh not only their future existence, but their current existence against the breaking of International laws and pick the former. They have done it before and will do it again.

Wikileaks and Whistleblowers

I watched "collateral murder" and I think every American should see it. People get hung up on picking sides on both the right and the left when it comes to this kind of thing. Here is what I think: Private Manning was not being unpatriotic by releasing this video to the public, and Assange is not crossing any lines. If this was about the Viet Nam war then there would not be so much objection to the truth on the battle field. But this is about a current war and the behavior of our country right now. That is too much for some people to accept. I do not think that these particular soldiers should be punished either, for the film really reflects an attitude that we all carry responsibility for. We do not live in an age where one side is morally correct either. America is a machine with a fierce military component that has no sympathy for the weak and powerless. Our actions and attitudes in our everyday lives contribute to what happens out there no matter what we think we believe. Assange did our country a favor, for the world will blame us, the American people, for this mess, and this video explains why. We are becoming monsters and nobody seems to care. Instead the news media argues over weather or not the Reuters reporter's camera looks like a gun in the grainy film. But what strikes a chord with me is the wrath that our military technology can bring down on a body and how unemotional we are when it comes to operating such weaponry.