2011
Disconnect
I’m going to make this post intentionally short and sweet, because I’m about to piss off a lot of people with my personal view on something. But you know what? At least I have it, and I’m willing to state it.
I feel ashamed.
Tonight my twitter, my Facebook, my circle of social contact is spammed with the messages of cheer that a single individual has been martyred. Sure, okay, he did bad things, really terrible things. I’m not denying that in the least, there are some insanely powerful people out there doing stupid things with their power and causing countries and people worlds and worlds of hurt. But let me lay something out there for you:
A life, no matter whose life, is something worth respecting.
I almost laughed when I saw people who are devout in their religious beliefs cheering at the death of another human being. Did your book and faith not tell you that’s wrong? From my works in theology, even a simple person like myself knows it’s wrong to wish death upon someone… and yet here they are, doing it blindly, as though to scream out “Amurica, fuck yea”… But this isn’t even a religious argument. It’s simply a moral one…
Hell, if anything, you should be more afraid. A simple history lesson will tell you that every time an evil is defeated, a bigger, more bad evil is just around the corner.
Maybe I’ll make some people upset with this, maybe I’ll make some people mad. But if I make just one person think before they jump on the bandwagon, then my work here is done. Who knows, maybe now we’ll actually fix what’s been broken within our own borders during this “war”… I can only hope.
(Sub-note: I want to make it extremely clear before even one person suggests otherwise of my statements. I completely support our troops, I believe each person over there made their choice, and I support that decision with 100% of the person that I am. I just don’t believe the ends justified the means. How many sons were lost so that people could sit at home for a brief moment and believe that one less boogy man exists in the world? How many? Imagine if it were your husband/wife/son/daughter/father/mother/neighbor/friend.)
Earth Hour… Tonight.
As I sit here quietly relaxing my late night away, thinking about how in a few brief hours my counter to the right of this post will go below the double-digit mark in terms of days remaining before my trip, listening to one of my favourite online radio stations, I’m reminded of something… Today is Earth Hour. But the question I have to raise to myself is, how many people who I know even know about it? Or know what it stands for.
For the last 3 years, I’ve been increasingly active in Earth Hour, which is to say I’ve shut my lights off and encouraged others to do so. It’s really a simple concept: for one hour, one day of the year, you shut down your electrical hold on the planet. You don’t have to go anywhere special, you don’t have to do anything above and beyond, you just have to kill your power for at least an hour. And let me tell you, it’s actually quite enjoyable…
See, for all that I am a technology based person, the things that matter the most are the ones that I do when unplugged. Spending time with someone, spending time sitting there drinking a wonderful drink and scribbling in a notepad, getting away from the electric world and going camping. And that’s just the start of the list. It’s ironic to me that I send this message in a completely electric medium, but the simple fact of the matter is, the more people get away from technology in their lives from time to time, the happier we are. We sleep better, we dream better, we smile more, and most importantly, we see so many things that we often just let slip past us.
This year, the good people at Earth Hour are encouraging people to take steps beyond the 60 minute mark. You’ll see their logo listed as “60+” everywhere, and it’s a statement of more than just extending the time of darkness, but doing things that will have an effect on your entire year. Personally? I’m going to support the businesses that are doing amazing things to make a difference in our world by getting us away from our dependence on petroleum. Some examples? Coca-Cola and Pepsi have both already designed and begun implementing bottles for their products that are made from plant-based materials. This is huge if you’ve ever stopped to consider how many of these bottles (despite the efforts of the recyclers on the planet) end up in land fills. There are so many other companies making strides like this that are going to have lasting and positive changes to our planet, and my resolution for planet Earth this year is to support them at every available opportunity.
The question is, what are you going to do?
2010
Humanity is lost in pursuit of greed…
Today I have officially lost all faith in the future of humanity on this planet. Times are tough, and I know that all to well, but I put my faith in the thought that certain lines would never be crossed by the people of this nation, and that faith was misplaced. Allow me to link to you the sources of my anger.
No pay, no spray: Firefighters let home burn
Firefighters watch as home burns to the ground
Go head, take the time to read thru them, I’ll wait…
Okay, now that you’ve caught up with me… WHAT THE HELL? Maybe I grew up in a different time, maybe I was different because I honestly believed in the Boy Scout “Do a good deed daily”, but seriously, why would any legislation allow a house to burn down of one of their people? I’m not angry at the firefighters, they had their hands tied in my humble opinion, but the people in charge? I sit here and calmly wish harm to come to them for allowing this crap to happen.
We’re all humans, and the only reason our species has survived for as long as it has is because we help each other. Sure, it might not all be heroics, giving someone a jump-start with their car here, letting the little old woman behind me in the grocery line go ahead of me, holding the door open for someone there. But it’s called being a human being… doing for others without any thought about what they’ve done for you. It bothers me greatly that in this families time of great need, they were abandoned over something as petty as a $75 fee.
Moreover, a fee, for an emergency service? I’m a tax payer, and that’s what I’m told these monies go towards ensuring. Sure, I know that if I need an ambulance ride somewhere, I’ll have to pay for it, but I’ll be billed that after the fact, it’s not like I’m pre-paying it. They’ll still get me to the hospital in their lifesaving way, and make sure that I’m taken care of. What happens on the other end isn’t even on their mind, and I take a great amount of peace in that. Hell, if this county in question had a “If the fire department is called out to your house, you will be billed a $75 fee”, I could stomach that a hell of a lot more. But to just have it ignored… to have it completely set aside… until the neighbor’s yard caught fire as a result? That’s something that just has me at a complete loss. I do not understand it, nor will I ever, and I hope the family sues the shit out of that county, and wins. They deserve something when they’ve lost everything.
So there is no peace in the world…
Sorry for the melodramatic intro, but I couldn’t think of a more fitting title to what I’m going to talk about today. As many of you have probably heard by now, there was a bombing in London. I’ve been reading up on it as I get the chance, visiting sites like News.Com’s Coverage and Times Online for multiple viewpoints into this catastrophe, and in the end, the only feeling going thru my head is one of sickness. Let me explain.
I keep asking myself one very basic question (that is the bane of every parent ever on the planet)… “Why?” Why would an organization do something like this? Why would someone want to bomb innocent people? Why choose London of all places? Why Why Why Why Why? And then I started needing to fill in the answers to those questions which were driving me mad… And I came to a quick, and decisive reality. Yes, the group responsible had a reason for it. Will we ever truly understand it the way they do? No. But let here’s what I realized that might help out others with these many “why” questions…
A) London is a central hub for a great many things on the world wide stage. And in the eyes of some organization who would be out to cause panic, what better location in Europe than probably one of its most flaunted cities. This comes as no real surprise to me that it would have been chosen as the target, especially seeing how other attacks (namely the a certain one on September 11th) were targeted not at the most strategic places, but at the most boasted locations.
B) For many many years, Britain effectively controlled a great many countries around the world as part of their empire. So what do we have as a result of this? Odds are very good there are many small groups out there who hold a deep seeded hatred towards the Isle for this. I mean lets not beat around the bush here people… The queen of England was the empress of India! She never even went there… This can’t be expected to sit very well with people of a region. Sure, over time feelings would have been suppressed, but things like that are not simply forgotten. Hell, there are still religious wars going on over things that happened over 2000 years ago. It’s amazing how long the memory of a culture is.
C) When it comes to allies, Britain makes no question in anyones mind that they’ve got close ties with the United States, and for all intensive purposes, the USA is probably one of the most loathed countries on the face of the planet by many fundamentalist groups. But they couldn’t attack the USA again directly, that’d just be summed up to a “copy-cat” group, or some other trivial thing. So they chose to target one of the countries the USA calls friend. Am I saying that they this attack was indirectly aimed at the USA, and that they had no reason for attacking Britain on its own? No. I’m simply pointing out the relationship that does indeed exist, and crossed my mind… Believe me when I say, I don’t think this attack had anything to do with the USA, I’m just attempting to cover all bases.
So now you’ve heard my mind attempting to figure it out. These statements are still being worked thru in my head, and in the end, I doubt I’ll ever fully understand the reasoning behind it. However, I can say this with the utmost of certainty:
“To all those out there who were affected by this tragedy, I pass on my deepest thoughts and hopes for the safety of your friends, family, and loved ones. May you and yours make it out with as little of loss as possible, and whatever loss you do suffer, know that there are people out in the world who are mourning with you. You are not alone.”
