Archive for July, 2008

the end of the innocence

Published on July 22, 2008 in alethia/truth, allagei/change, echos/sound, oikonomika/economics, politik/politics, techni/art and zoe/life. 2 Comments

Photo by djwhelan. Essay by Bob Lefsetz: July 3, 2008

They said life would never be the same after 9/11.

But somehow it was.

Sure, the government kept telling us to be aware of terrorist attacks, but despite some anthrax being mailed around in the weeks after the Twin Towers fell, nothing ever happened. Sure, we ultimately had to take off our shoes as we went through airport security, but life was surprisingly just like it had always been. Citizens shopped as our President urged them to. Kids went to school, parents bought SUVs and life wasn’t much different than it was in the nineties.

Until a couple of months ago. When gasoline suddenly spiked. When suddenly a jaunt to buy a quart of milk, to rent a DVD, was no longer a mindless decision, but something to be debated. Was it worth the cost of the gas?

We’ve been living in ignorance for far too long. Thinking some men in white robes were looking out for us. But they just turned out to be profiteers, paying lip service to bettering society, but really only interested in lining their pockets. Now, to be an average citizen is to contemplate one’s future. One’s economic future. No one’s worrying about whether a bomb is going to hit their city, rather whether they’ll have enough money to put food on the table.

The airlines are collapsing. Even Toyota took a hit, while GM heads toward possible bankruptcy. America’s fate may no longer be intertwined with the world’s largest car manufacturer, but if your corporate institutions are struggling, the effect is felt by people who don’t even own an automobile.

We no longer produce the steel in our cars, our clothes are made overseas and it seems the only thing we make is money. And, our financial institutions are not even that good at that. Bear Stearns had to be rescued for the good of the overall economy. While we were out fighting terror, making the world safe for democracy, we lost a bunch of our freedoms and America lost a great deal of its power.

China owns not only many of our buildings, but a ton of our debt. Our fate is inextricably hooked to this eastern country. They could bring our economy to its knees instantly. And, for all our efforts in the Middle East, Iraq is still not secure and Afghanistan is in turmoil. But what hurts most is the American people. Without pensions and health care. With more bills than money.

It’s almost beyond blame. We’re in a quagmire. The only question is how to get out. Whether to stay the course or try something new. Then, the man standing for change abruptly changes his positions and we feel that the only people looking out for ourselves is us.

Drink that beer, eat that hot dog, enjoy that parade. Have a good Fourth. But know that finally, everything truly is different. Whether it be natural disasters caused by global warming or the inability to afford a cross-country trip. The American way of life has taken a hit.

We’re all in this together. That inner city gang member is not far removed from the person flying in the private jet. No one is immune. We’re all members of society. How do we change for the better?

I don’t know.

But it’s time we started speaking the truth.

I’d hope the politicians could achieve this.

But the politicians always follow the artists. The artist, unencumbered, speaking from his heart, leads the way.

In the name of lifestyle, in the name of riches, our musical artists have abdicated their responsibility. And somehow the blame has been put upon the public, for stealing their wares, denying the fat cats their profits. The movie studios abolished reality long ago, and the television outlets have manufactured a false reality to sell to a numb public, just looking for a little release.

It’s palpable. Something’s changed. And there’s no easy solution. Gas is not going back down to three dollars a gallon, never mind two. There’s a cloud over our everyday activities. And we’ve got no confidence positive change is in the wind, never mind achievable. They tell us to party like it’s 1999, but those days are long gone.

Driving home from the doctor in the fading heat of a long summer day I heard Don Henley’s “The End Of The Innocence” on the radio. I remembered 1989, when the record was ubiquitous. When MTV still played videos and everybody with an established career sold millions of albums. When my wife left our home behind. In the shock of that event, the only thing that soothed me was music. I drove around pushing the button, longing to hear “The End Of The Innocence”, longing to feel rooted, connected to something.

I don’t need a bigger house. I don’t need two dollar a gallon gas. I jus need to feel connected, to feel that I’m not crazy, that other people are freaked out too, are shocked at what’s happened to our country. I need the musicians to speak the collective truth. To put words and sounds to what we feel. To point us in the proper direction. Because I’m lost.

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ben stein on the military

Published on July 21, 2008 in alethia/truth, dikastis/justice, epilogei/choice, politik/politics and zoe/life. 2 Comments

While I Swim at Home, Our Combatants Fight On
by Ben Stein (from NewsMax Magazine June 2008, Pg. 34)

THERE IS A MAGNIFICENT SCENE IN BLADE RUNNER, MY FAVORITE postwar movie, in which Rutger Hauer, who plays a replicant, a human-looking robot, prepares to die. He tells his possibly human pursuer, Harrison Ford, that he has seen amazing things in his short life far out in outer space, and then he folds himself up and says, “Time to die.”

As I get older, at a breakneck pace, I often think of the most beautiful, magnificent sights I have seen. The night sky in Santa Cruz, California, where I lay on a picnic bench and watched more stars than I had ever seen. It was a perfect moment of peace. I think of the Upper Priest Lake in Bonner County, Idaho, a lake three miles long, totally as nature made it eons ago, surrounded by forests and mountains, the Canada border a stone’s throw away, immense eagles soaring overhead, with only one other guest, a young man windsurfing along the placid waters. And people say there is no God?

Then I think of my German Shorthaired Pointers lying in each others’ paws as they sleep on the bed next to me. And I think of my saintly wife, with her perfect profile, reading in bed next to me, and I think of how lucky I was to find my soul’s perfect companions — my wife and my hounds.

But there is something I find even more amazing, even more moving: the sights of young men and women in the uniforms of the United States military, the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, the Coast Guard, the Reserves, and the Guard. It isn’t just that they look great in their uniforms and their tall, straight posture.

No, what is amazing to me, and a spectacular sight, is that these are human beings with the same wishes and dreams for a long, peaceful, fulfilled life as you and I have. But they have offered up their young lives and their bodies and their health and their peace of mind and their very sanity — and that of their families — to go out and fight for my worthless, selfish life and comfort.

I sit at home. I swim in my pool. I play with my dogs. I make fresh Alaskan salmon for my wife on the grill. Then I check my stocks and then I go to sleep with the loves of my life as the air conditioning and the electric blanket and the mattress keep me perfectly comfortable.

They — the military in combat — sleep in ditches if they can sleep at all. They get their legs blown off. They have permanent brain damage. They go to eternity before their time. They live with the fear of torture if they are captured by the terrorists. They leave their children behind. They miss years at a time of their babies growing up. Their wives — the true backbone of the nation — keep the family together while the soldiers keep the perimeter of terror far from our hearths.

And for this, they are paid modest wages, at best. They lose their families all too often. They live in extreme discomfort. They are treated like commodities to be moved on a chessboard of global struggle.

Imagine, just imagine, what it is like to be in combat! Imagine the smartest people on the planet, the Germans and the Japanese, armed with the best weapons man can devise, trying to kill our fathers and grandfathers while they struggled in mud and snow and hail and freezing rain. And then the war ends and we drive in cars with tail fins, and they who once tossed grenades at Japanese pillboxes now coach the high-school tennis team, and combat is just a nightmare. Imagine that while we complain about the stock market and how expensive gasoline is, they fight it out with terrorists who use retarded children as suicide bombers and have no such thing as conscience.

Then they come home and see that there is no mention of them in the news, that the media cares only about deranged movie stars and recording artists and how much people weigh. They, the soldiers, marines, sailors, pilots, guard, Coast Guard, reserves, are invisible and alone.

Then, the combat stars go back to fight again, and we continue to worry about interest rates.

God help us. God bless them, the thin pillars on which all of mankind’s tomorrows’ hopes rest, the most glorious sight on heaven and earth. They should be the first thoughts in our prayers every moment of every day. They are the real miracles.

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feedblitz’n

Published on July 15, 2008 in allagei/change, epilogei/choice, glossa/language and techni/art. 0 Comments

Hey everyone!

Thanks for hangin’ with me while I tried out a new blog delivery service, Feedblitz.

As of this posting, though, I’m going to ask you for permission to continue sending you emails (read: this is the last one you’ll receive, unless you subscribe).

I have no intention of keeping you on a mailing list you don’t feel like you signed up for; and although I know you all wanted to keep tabs on my writing, this might not have exactly been what you expected!

I truly hope you’ll stay subscribed. In order to do that, please click here or visit my blog and click the envelope in the upper right corner under my picture.

Thanks for reading!

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lite-brites, sisyphus, and expecting the best

Published on July 2, 2008 in allagei/change, ecclesia/church, epilogei/choice, koinonia/community and zoe/life. 6 Comments

When in a position of leadership, how much does a leader’s lack of faith in a subordinate actually create their downfall? Is there some kind of derivative of a self-fulfilling prophecy that happens here?

Or, to put it another way, will I, as a leader, only ever get as much as I expect out of the folks I try to lead? Is there some kind of projected glass ceiling of progress or productivity that I fabricate over their heads?

Conversely, can a leader’s unwavering belief in a person actually help propel them towards success?

It seems plausible that this would be the case; I personally have seen a variety of situations when it appears as though a protege simply needs someone else to believe in them… and, perhaps most, to believe in them even when they can’t believe in themselves.

I am hopefully always learning more about myself. It is one of my constant projects: to figure out why I act the way I do. One thing I have learned is that I’m so confined within my own skin that it’s often a Sisyphean battle to even understand WHAT I’m doing half the time, as most of my movements have become completely rote programming. But every once in awhile something breaks through, and a light bulb turns on.

I imagine I’m like one of those Lite-Brite machines from the 80’s… eventually — just maybe, someday — I can light up enough LED’s to actually get a complete picture of me.

At the church I work with, we’re currently looking for a person to take over our kids ministries. I’ve learned that I have an overwhelming tendency to be extremely optimistic when it comes to people (i.e. I always think they can accomplish great things, often more then they may even think), but at the same time I’ve learned that such a myopic view of only seeing “potential” and not necessarily “reality” can also have a dangerous edge. I know how crucial it is to have the “right people on the bus” and that making a hasty decision on the front end is a very costly error, in more ways than just financially.

But as we look to add people to our staff, or to grow the participants we already have for that matter, isn’t it more dangerous to set expectations too low, instead of too high?

In any kind of relational setting, be it an organization or a friendship or a marriage, isn’t there just something about the complete audacity of hope (to quote that other guy); hope that each person involved can change and grow and become more than they currently are?

Isn’t there just something grand about always looking for the best in people instead of expecting the worst?

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