Democracy: Bought and Paid For.

The idea of reciprocity is as old as the idea of a social code. It is in our nature as people to help those who have helped us. This is as true for people borrowing sugar from a neighbour as it is for the politicians taking huge campaign contributions from the rich and powerful. Campaign financing gives birth to lobbyists. They will get you re-elected if you promise to look the other way. It is bribery and fraud and the way government works.

1)      No country for poor men: as it stands now, a candidate must either be independently wealthy or backed by huge interests to get elected into any office much less the presidency. Millions of dollars is what is needed to have your voice heard, however whose voice are they using when it is bought and paid for. It is a voice that is free to promise the world to get elected as long as that voice has no intent of actually implementing what it has stood for. All people of talent and vision have no chance of getting elected because they can neither afford nor get backed to run in the first place.

2)      Scratchy scratchy: Say I am a father who campaigns to my family that huge birthday parties would be had by all if I am allowed to be Dad. Now when the birthday rolls around I am not there because I am down the street helping Bob with his kid’s big party because Bob helped me buy my house. Is that going to seem fair to my family? Did I do the right thing? No, but hey I had to pay back the favour. I have in fact lied to the people who put me in the role of Dad to pay back the person who holds something over me.

Now imagine I am a senator and I ran on the promise that I would create jobs in my constituency by having infrastructure built. I build the infrastructure but use a bid from a business that contributed to my campaign but is in another state. So I supplied the infrastructure (birthday party) however I am not creating jobs for my state but for a company (Bobs’ kid) . The laws of reciprocity and you owe me can work no other way.

As long as our choice of leaders are dictated, not by the best ideas but, by and for the best lined pocket then we will keep getting more of the same.  Money corrupts the very idea of a true democracy because those who take feel the need to give. However, what if they didn’t have to take?

What if elections were won on ideas and not glitz and broken promises?

What if the ideas of the candidate were summed up in a platform letter and then distributed to all voters where they will emphasize their record and their beliefs and it is on that alone where the populous made their decisions?

What if huge contributions were seen as the bribery they are?

As it stands now, no candidates will meet all their campaign promises because they will never be allowed to! They are controlled puppets who have to sell their voices to get heard and their souls to get elected.

Your thoughts?

Democracy is Dying

To sell freedom for the masses is the only attempt they have of creating the mirage of America. Politics in the USA has become nothing more than a spin doctored truth that is for sale and leaves all ignorant. We lap up the conventions as if they are saying something new and prove our partisanship by which “news station” we watch. I was thinking on that point this AM while having my morning coffee and I thought, “if we are supposed to be gifted with a free press and that press is supposed to inform us of fact on the ground, then how can we have different facts depending on the station we watch?”

The harsh truth is that the news today is a gambit of unintelligent propaganda meant to indoctrinate and not educate. Truth is seen through the ideas of media moguls who pay the bills and therefore create the news. If you are a conservative and that is the truth you want, you watch Fox. If you are Liberal and that is your truth you watch MSNBC. If you are in need of no news of consequence you watch CNN. Truth is not in what actually happens in the world but how they tell you it happened and why it is the other sides fault. There are three Truths as I see them in this election that are doing nothing but perpetuate ignorance and destroying the political landscape of the country. They are as follows:

1)      Individual thought is dead: The idea of any political leader standing for the people in his/her constituency is laughable. The people that are going into office are not interested in you but the party. The fear of being seen crossing the isle and working with the other side is tantamount to treason (especially for republicans). They will be lambasted, given no backing in the next election and will eventually be replaced with some automaton that will toe the party line. I say this because for the last 2 years the congress has been plugged with a wall that will not allow anything to pass. They don’t care if they are doing, or not doing, what the COUNTRY needs but only care about what the party needs. At the end of the day, this does not create jobs, educate children, are help people at all. They stymie the needs of the people for their own job security.

2)      The twisted truth: We spend way too much time tied to these news outlets with their spin doctors telling us what we want to hear and not what is said. The campaigns message has not changed and they are just speaking to what they have been saying for months. However, what they say does not matter. What the reporters say they said and how they twist it to the stations philosophy is what matters. So the corporations are spending Billions to Lie to us and we lap up the partisan-soup. Republicans and Democrats are all American and while the country falls apart around them, they fight as to whose fault it is and have no interest in fixing it. A bridge or jobs are not created by arguing WHO IS RIGHT, they are created by leaving the politics of division at the door and doing WHAT IS RIGHT.

3)      The political spectacle: The amount of money that is pouring into this race is to me staggering. There are real people suffering in the country and houses being repossessed and children starving. But who REALLY cares right? Over the primaries and the general election there are Billions spent getting the person into office, or I should say Party into office. All the stump speeches are the same and all the news stations say what their owners and supporters want them to say, so why is there speech after speech after speech saying nothing new. If you want to know what the person running stands for, read the party election platform. All the info is there. Watch a speech but the whole speech, not the snippets the news wants you to see. Make a decision and Vote. This reminds me of the movie Gladiator when Russell Crowe’s character looks at the audience and screams, “ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED”. These news stations are not informing the electorate but infotaining them. Give the money to those that are suffering in real life, please.

As I said, media is twisting and creating truth and the partisan divide is becoming a wall that will never be able to be traversed. In the end, American’s suffer while their leaders are stumping for the camera and not for your well being. An informed electorate is the backbone of a democracy. So get informed by research and looking for information that is true and not this partisan tripe.

Quantity in the Unquantifiable.

I have a beautiful beach where I live. My question is, since I can’t count each grain of sand, does that beach stop existing? I realize that some would say that is a pedestrian argument and of course it exists because we can see it.

I can not see someone’s headache so does that mean that it does not exist? Of course it does because they are in pain.

I can’t “see” God healing others so does that mean He isn’t?

Here is how I see it:

We seek simplicity to describe everything. We seek answers we do not comprehend to explain fact. We study doctrine to explain all. We only realize misunderstanding through damage. We have whole faith in answers written somewhere. We build on the mistakes of our predecessors and feel the answer is now found, much like our predecessors claimed.

This view I am describing is the worldly view of some non believers and how surprising is it that it sounds identical to the ideas some people have of faith. So therefore, are we not all chasing unicorns?

The idea of praying for those who are ill is ridiculous in the eyes of some. To reach into your heart and to trust god is akin to holding your breath while drowning. Good start but pointless in the end.

They say, “God can’t heal.” But I say, “Really?”

Is awareness not healing?

Is His work on my tendency to envy not healing?

Is my realization that I am not the superiority not healing?

Is empathy and love for those who suffer not healing?

Is the fact that he took me, as I was,  reached in and opened my eyes to my gifts and released in me an idea that my needs are not paramount, no healing there? He heals.

Just a thought. Your thoughts?

Polemics: Us vs Them.

When someone imagines the conversations between Believers and Atheists, they tend to cringe and look for popcorn and a good seat to watch the show. The conversation, however, is not the issue; it is the tenor of the conversation that sets divides. Whether a believer of God or a non-believer is not the issue, but the reactions we have towards each other that is the issue.

Polemics has a way of creating an environment where the other side is completely wrong because you hold the trump card. Polemics denies rational and pure discussions of opinions layered behind rightness. Atheists I have spoken to have the same “trump cards” that they play when the conversation of faith arises (and I used to play the same cards before God found my heart). Faith sucks because of the crusades (BAAM), and the inquisition (SLAP) and the intolerance of Homosexuals (SLUG) and a myriad of other one-punches that they have defined their opposition on. Conversely, I have heard people of faith use the same tactics. You are just a sinner (PUNCH), if only you knew what I know (POP), and my favourite, well you are going to burn in Hell (SLAM). All are polemic; all are condescending; and useless in my eyes.

Neither side can exist on the platform that the other side is ignorant, stupid, close-minded, or worst of all, a sum of all we disagree with about the other viewpoint. Not all Christians believe that homosexuals are people to be disenfranchised and belittled, just as not all atheists see Darwinism as fact. It is the action of grouping people as “others” that allow for us to lump all into one. We don’t see the individual person but the label.

So I stand here,

God is not flawed but humans are.

God is not flawed but what we do in his name can be.

Therefore, I must say to all the atheists I know and talk to, that the God I believe in is beautiful, perfect and always present. But religion is not always those things and it is our brokenness as humans that have allowed us to hurt others in His name.  Religion is man made, whereas God made man.

I want to see the person and not the label. I would love to be able to have conversations on beliefs and opinions that are not clouded in reactions and dogma.

Let us sit and talk while playing cards; no Trump allowed.

Globalization: Good for All?

The word Globalization has such a nice ring to it. It carries with a thought of oneness, of joy, and of all nations holding hands around a camp fire singing songs and having marshmallows while talking of how we could not love until we, as a human race, came together under this umbrella of oneness, trust, and mutual happiness. However, let’s look closer at the faces of our new friends around the fire. Their smiles look forced and their happiness a vial for all the cameras and media outlets there to relish in the moment and to send the pictures of happiness back home to us westerners. Therefore, for all the westerners, I want to paint a picture as to what is behind those forced smiles.

Imagine if you will you have some land. It is not the perfect land but it is yours and you are happy. Now, imagine if a company came in and said it would get you financing to improve your land and what is on it. They make you want what other countries have and though you have not needed it for years, you want it now because to have things is important. Furthermore, they promise you health care and financial security in this new fangled vision of your land. Sounds good, let’s sign up.

Now the fun begins, the loaning agency makes you use a contractor that is not of your land and therefore the money and economic prosperity leaves with every pay check. The contractor never really finishes the job and leaves a mess; however you must keep paying the loan even though the work was not done. The financer’s offer a solution to your problem and that is to start using the natural resources as a way of making money and paying back the loan. So you get your family and start toiling in your backyard trying to harvest these resources so you can make enough money to pay back the crushing loan that has left an unfinished mess in your yard. Now, you are limited in the methods you can use to extract the resource and can not possible compete on the global market against the highly subsidized resource rackets in the western world. Therefore, the price you get is lower and after paying off your loan payments you are left with 12 cents an hour pay.

Now you are going to the store to feed your family and you realize that food prices have sky rocketed because your neighbour down the road has made the same deal with the financers. You realize that what is left of your food and resource supplies are being fed to other countries at affordable rates for them but leaving nothing for you.

Now you go to your well to get some water after a hungry and exhausting day at 12 cents an hour and you learn that the leader of your land was forced to sell all the water to a company to continue making the payments and therefore you have to pay for it now; but hey, the pop is cheaper so you drink that.

So this is how you got to the campfire, waiving for the cameras and trying to put a good show on while holding the hands of the people that have ruined your land and economy for generations after you. All this is being taken in by the westerners who say, “ look at them and how happy the are, I am happy because I just got all the stuff I need to survive at an alarmingly great price at the store, 10 shirts for 12 dollars, amazing.” And they never look to see the truth on your faces because your forced smile mimics their own in so many ways.

In the west we would call that Fraud (charges would be laid if the person was not super rich), predatory lending (though we don’t really charge people for that anymore), human rights violations (again charges are optional), contractual dishonesty thus voiding the contract (wait no to that as well). So I guess the people of the west better grab some marshmallows and start stretching our dancing muscles because our apathy of what is being done in the name of Globalization is coming to your town soon.

Ice Cream is Now Called Steak

If I were to open a restaurant and call it a steakhouse but serve only soft serve ice cream I would be out of business. However, if I were a multimedia outlet worth billions and could redefine the meaning of steak to include ice cream I would be OK. Ice cream may be easier to chew but steak gives us sustenance. Furthermore, this sustenance is being clouded by two Phenomenon call “Political Correctness” and the new “Media Correctness”.

Political correctness is a major cause of indifference. Make people too scared to say anything and they will eventually say nothing. Freedom of speech has been destroyed by a media that wants to make waves and attract viewers by slamming anyone who dares to speak, and crucifying them as intolerant and evil. However, in doing this they have created intolerance in everybody. This leads to over analysis of every thought and a crushing stress as to whether or not to speak. Furthermore, this is capable of being controlled as the taboo of the month is unleashed: The new thing that dare not be mentioned. We are so scared to think freely, much less talk freely, that we have become automatons to imposed suppression. But now there is a new form of “correctness”.

The new wave of suppression is dangerous because it lends itself to exclusion. “Media correctness” is when the media anchors, supposedly there to protect and inform the populous, are too scared to talk about what is happening because of advertising dollars or more importantly who owns the station. Anchors get fired for reporting the truth, like Dan Rather for reporting on George Bushes absence in the National Guard during Vietnam. Bill Maher getting fired for being politically incorrect on a show called Politically Incorrect. Where are we as a people if we are not informed? Ignorant.

We are ignorant if not informed and ignorance can be moulded by the powers that be. We are being “infotained” with ongoing coverage of Tom and Kate’s divorce (ICE CREAM) but not informed as to the plight of real people suffering (STEAK). There is a reason that people are going to Jon Stewart and Stephan Colbert for their news; though comedy, at least there is truth in it. I could watch 12 hours of Fox or CNN and learn nothing and that is very disturbing. Those networks have become partisan soap operas and the scarey thing is the still are allowed to call themselves news outlets. But I guess the word NEWS can be redefined like the word STEAK.

Ice Cream tastes great, but I can live on steak. Your Thoughts?

The Neverending Race

We are all struggling to meet the myriad of stresses that exist in our lives. We are overwhelmed and therefore blinded. Think of it this way, race horses wear blinders so they can see what’s ahead but not what’s around them. They drive forward as if the horses right beside are not there. We are earning blinders with every purchase we make and every omitted question we have, and the companies and governments are riding on our backs and whipping us towards the finish line of supposed relief. The CEOS of banks and industry are in the stands cheering for us, and as we drive ahead they bet on, and relish in, our failure.

Ahead of us in this race are: wants and desires, self identification through possessions, and all the other little carrots that keep us staring straight.

However, to increase our focus we fail to realize that they are narrowing the race track and making us push harder to achieve victory over the failure of not being important. We stomp on the other horses (friends, colleagues, and fellow people in general) in an attempt to “get ours”. To get what the commercials and media say we deserve.

But it is not over,  the have also muddied the track to slow our progress with payments we must make to stay in the race: mortgages, hydro payments, heating, phone, internet, TV, mobile, car payments, car insurance, gas, increasing price of food, clothes, I could go on and on. This muddying makes us work so hard that we forget that there is more than the race in this world. We don’t even see the other horses slogging next to us towards the finish line on an ever changing race track.

In turn, we seem like a group of automatons that are driving down the track. We rarely think of why we are racing or who we are stepping on. We must win because without money and success there is no respect, and with no respect there is no power, and with no power these days, there is no point: Leaving us all to seem apathetic. However…

We are not apathetic because we don’t care; we seem apathetic because we are too damn tired. We are too damn overwhelmed. We are struggling to survive in a race that has no intention of ever ending.

It is brilliant really on their part. Make us hate ourselves for not having enough, and hate our neighbours for having too much.

I want to stop struggling, and I want to stop identifying my worth on such worthless chattel. I want to think freely and care again. Most of all, I want stop racing: A race of futility and self corruption. I want to see past the blinders and stop to eat some grass in peace.

What are your thoughts? Are we racing for a purpose?

 

God vs Science: A Losing Battle For All.

Some people are born with an innate ability to think and cognate. Others with the ability to work with their hands and fix almost anything, others can solve problems that are abstract and complex, while yet others can possess a drive for love and understanding that draws other people to them like flies to honey. My point is that neurotransmitters, and synaptic firing, and conditioned responses do not explain any of this to a certainty that would be considered significant in a coffeehouse chat much less the ever revered statistical significance of science. Now I want to make my position very plain so the understanding of my point is clear. I am not writing this as a Christian bashing science or as a scientist bashing faith. I am writing this to say that the two points of view are not mutually exclusive and that is the divide.

Imagine if you have a dollar bill ( a bill representing the views of a culture). On one side there is the scientific ideal, the other is faith. Some scientists don’t want to accept the faith side of the bill and some people who believe in God do not want to see the science side of the bill. Here is the issue; without both sides having currency than the bill is just a useless piece of paper and a culture divides holding nothing.

In my mind all the advances science has made about the brain makes it more and more likely that there has to be a higher power at play. On the other hand, the quest for scientific understanding of the human mind, and the world, is not an affront to God. If anything this persistent need to find the answers is exactly the power God has placed in humanity’s mental capacity. So why then do we need to control the answer? Why is the scientist’s work a threat to God and why is there being a God a threat to scientists work?

There are scientists that do what they know they can before they think if they should, and bad stuff happens. On the flip side there are faithful people that abuse that power to the detriment of those who believe, and again bad stuff happens. However, that is not indicative of all and to err is human and we are all very capable of the fall, and we do fall often. Science increases our understanding in every area of life and maybe we can understand God’s great work, in the creation of humanity and the world, through this medium.

Being taught in society that the two are mutually exclusive and that to be a scientist is to believe in no God or to be a person of God is to fight science is a battle that leaves us holding paper, not currency.

A cause is manmade but faith is divine. Should we not be happy that through the scientist’s work we see how truly complex God’s creation really is?

Your thoughts?

Time’s Echo

Waves crash on a distant shore,

Remaining silent over fleeting miles.

However I stand amongst the piercing past,

Trapped in the evolving ever present before.

 

Past lives overwhelm the waves of the mind,

Paths not taken lead to thoughts of possibility.

The shimmering present is drowned in the abyss that was,

A future not attainable but obsessed to find.

 

Dripping disdain for for all that is,

In great reverence for all that never was.

Dipping our toes in the water of our shore,

while visioning the the other side with undiscovered  bliss.

 

Time elapses at varied rates of progression,

What is ahead is seen through eyes of oppression.

The past expands with beauty and grace,

The present hides in the eyes of disgrace.

 

Waves licking the docks of our decisions,

Kissing the boards of regret and lost greatness.

The water exposes the cracks with precision,

Slowly eroding the stability of today.

 

Captivated by the waves crashing on that distant shore,

Pictures of love and joy from before.

Though encased in the present so calm and mild,

Peace is squandered with fantasy like a child.

 

Comfort causes confusion of righteousness,

A blight on the hearts of all.

Blind to the beauty forever surrounding,

Expectations and derision builds prisons so tall.

 

Embrace what IS with conscious grace,

For the path ahead you should never replace.

With delusions of how perfect life could have been,

For the what “ifs” tend to have a glorious sheen.

 

Leave behind the pasts distant calls,

And take heed of those closterphobic walls.

For the elations you miss in today’s lapping waves,

Continues the curse of being yesterday’s slave.

 

Andrew Vogelsang

Life’s Boxes

Surrounded by the musty smell of life,

Hope lay in boxes dispersed through your soul.

bitterness towards everything drips from your strife,

As impediments to you minds view of your deserved goal.

 

Those boxes contain all the worlds great wrongs,

How you suffered at the hands of all that is.

For the only fairness can exist in the minds future songs,

Not in the presents crushing abuse of your rightful bliss.

 

Staring melancholy at the future ahead,

How can purpose exist in a room of the dead .

Oppression and blame finds root in everything said,

I must escape this world’s imposed dread.

 

So I look to a future of what should be,

One existing in new eyes and places to see.

Once I finally get there all I am will be well,

A long-awaited relief from my current cell.

 

The world soon will be serene and full of grace,

Just and fun the antithesis of this place.

People will be kind and open to love me,

The way no one here seems capable to be.

 

However this thought is infused with fault,

like finding a wound and dousing it with salt.

I tell you that future elation is not out there to see,

It is in that room and forever lost if you flee.

 

Hatred and disdain are something allowed to accrue,

Festering unnoticed and unspoken for ages.

Life will have burdens no matter how new,

Charlatans hide in the cloaks of sages.

 

Accept in contemplation the room you are in,

Avoid looking outward to clarify your distaste.

The minds crevasses are easily filled with blame,

But that musty smell is one you have allowed to remain.

 

Salvation lies in each dusty bin,

Lament in openness every past sin.

Learn from your actions either right or wrong,

Because the only thing of value is your own inward song.

 

Leave thoughts of future and purity within,

As a mythical place you have never been.

Embrace your past and your role you did play,

For happiness is a choice not some future clear day.

 

Andrew Vogelsang