Aug 27 2009

Meta: What do you hope for?

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

     I write today to honor the loss of those who came before us, and not only the greatest among us but also the names we will never know, those who were dear to only a few, but just as important to what our nation is today, and what it should be in the future.

    So I ask you, my fellow Dharma Bums, what is it you hope for?

    And by that I not only mean what you seek to accomplish through blogging or in politics, but also what you hope to achieve in your personal lives, what you hope the world becomes through your work here on earth, and what you hope to leave after you are gone.

   I have always been a political creature. Myu mother’s brother was a self proclaimed socialist, and under his guidance I began to read voraciously the works of the greats, Orwell, Thoreau, Knut Hamsen, J.R.R. Tolkien, Chaucer, Dumas, more names than I can recall. Reading has never been a hobby for me, it has been part of my life’s work. It has shaped the man I am today, and while reading the work of the many talented writers here I have found much to be joyful for, and much food for thought.

   I always wanted to be a writer, or a teacher, or a journalist. That is my hope.

   Now I find myself settling at times, and simply hoping to find decent work that can earn a decent wage.

   But I do not lose hope. I am a fool, in that regard.

   In my writing/blogging, what have you, I hope share ideas, to learn, and to teach. I hope to meet like minded people and people who disagree with my views, in order to learn more, for, if we never hear that which we diod not think ourselves, how are we to learn?

   With that in mind I have read many things I disagree with, vehemently at times, passively at others. I have read Ayn Rand, Mein Kampf, Machiavelli and Newt Gingrich.

   Often I have read work that I thought I would disagree with at the end, only to find myself em[powered by what I thought I would not agree with, such as the works of Karl Marx, Adam Smith, barry Goldwater and others who I thought I would certainly oppose, only to find that I agreed more than I would have believed I would.

   Politically, my issue is Accountability. Accountability for the class war, the super rich and the Corporations they serve.

   Accountability for the power elite, the Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s, the Sanford’s and Ensign’s, the Baucus’s and Ross’s and the others of their ilk.

   I champion the powerless and disenfranchised, the fight for equality and civil rights, not because they effect me so personally, often they do not, but because I see how many people they do effect, and the injustice that is borne when it should not be so.

   I have been accused of siding with the unpopular decision for the sole sake of doing so. I admit freely to it. It is the unpopular speech that needs the most protection, the minority that must be fully protected if we are to pretend to be a nation of equality under the law, and not equality under who has the most dollars.

   I hope.

   I hope to create a better world. I see a nation of so many opportunities, and yet so much injustice. I see a people of such brilliance and grace, and yet we are mired in povery and division, and in hate, when we should be in love, united, and not divided.

   I hope to help create such a world, a world of peace and love, a world of equality, both legally and economically, where none go sick or hungry, where all my have a home and a hope and a dream they can work towards achieving.

   I am a champion of many issues because there are many issues that need someone to fight for.

   This nation and it’s people are worth fighting for, worth dying for.

   Many people can be divided into two groups, those that see others as less than they, and those who hope to see equality in all of us.

   That is the fight we see today. Hate vs Love. Empathy vs Disdain. Hope vs. Fear.

   I have much that I fight for, because there is much worth fighting for.

   So, I sk you, my dearest comrades, my fellow Dharma Bums, what do you hope for, what do you fight for, and what do you think is worth dying for.

   I am eager to learn as much as I can, and to share whatever you will have of me.

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  2. It’s why I struggle with the idea of a vanguard party.  Locke weighs heavily upon my political philosophy (amongst others).  Somewhere out on the internet (I think it’s Time), there was an article where they brought together a bunch of futurologists to come up with how the US will become no longer the US.  It was interesting.  They also had an interactive where you could choose how you thought  the US would end up.  Needless to say, I went with socialist revolution type stuff.  At the end, they gave a summary that said I’d be one to sign up for world government.

    That’s BS, of course.  The goal is to have no government (the whithering away of the state).  Which shows that whoever put together the interactive doesn’t know their Marx.

  3. They back down and not end America this fall with bio-weapon swine flu shots.

    • Edger on August 27, 2009 at 02:16
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    and the utter obliteration of wingnuttia and christofascism, and another renaissance of reason that putting them in prison would mean.

    Human progress is as present as night and day, an omnipotent and omnipresent force that cannot and has never been defeated. Many interests have tried to halt this unstoppable momentum, only to realize that the greatness of humanity pushes us forward as a species. It may be contained for a small time, yet over and over again progress continues its unrelenting drive onward, toward greater liberalism and independence of thought, toward increased humanism, education and world concern.

    Just as Earth has continued to change and evolve during its long, four-billion year old existence, never halting its progress, just as flora and fauna evolve according to their environments and circumstances, adjusting to survive and changing in order to thrive, and just as humanity once left the African jungles and savannas for the great Diaspora to all corners of the globe, giving rise to eventual civilization, so then progressive thought continues guiding us forward through centuries and decades, making extinct mechanisms and thoughts no longer accepted, useful or beneficial to the great majority of a society’s citizens.

    It is human progress, that catapulting boulder flying at the apex of our skies, that has led America and much of the world to where we are today, away from the corrosive grip Christianity, religion and its minions once had over our individuality, our free-thought and our independence, away from the reign of kings and queens, away from the world of accepted slavery, feudalism and apartheid, and away from the male paternalism and uneducated fantasy we were once imprisoned by. It is progress, more than anything else, which has guided us away from dark ages and unenlightened existence, away from ingrained barbarism and primitiveness.

    [snip]

    What the enemies of progress fail to see is that America has from its inception been a nation of evolution, its society and culture progressing according to its environment and ever-changing face. America has succeeded because of progressive thought, because it always sought to move ahead, not regress back. The Founding Fathers could never envisage what was to come, much like we cannot see what the future holds, yet the greatness of this nation is that progress has guided us in time, through dark days and cold nights, leading its glowing candle of light to the vivacity of today, with incredible diversity, talent and potential.

    This, the enemies of progress fail to understand, and is why they will fail, just as they always do, to rein in the unstoppable freight train named progress.

    …

    For what is history but progress, always advancing, rarely retreating, always seeking answers according to our collective intelligence and quest for knowledge. Human civilization is advancement, an evolution of society that, though at times might find itself sequestered, never fails to defeat the forces of regressive thought. Over and over again, since the dawn of human existence, progress and backwardness have fought in open hostility, battling for human civilization. Every time, progress has been victorious.

    –Manuel Valenzuela: The Inevitable Triumph of Progressive Thought


  5. and leave a ripple when I pass.

    To quit feeling so lonely.

    That is all.

  6. …more people take this advice


  7. is that I leave this country and our world a better place than the one I inherited.

    My hope is that we humans will respect each other and recognize that all life on earth is precious. My hope is that we will recognize that we have to change to address a changing climate of our own making and that the climate apocalypse that is predicted by some will never be allowed to happen.

    On a personal level, I hope I am one day, a grandfather and healthy enough to enjoy being one.

    • Robyn on August 27, 2009 at 04:28
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    …when I can actually rest, a time when I can do what I want to do rather than what I feel compelled to do, a time when I can create for the fun of being creative rather than in order to be productive at a job.

    In short, I wish for a meaningful retirement.  Unfortunately it seems to be more elusive the older I get.

  9. Or what do I realistically hope for?  

    So much grey in there.

    For really hoping…I’d go with the anarchist utopia thing.  

    I have no hope the US will ever be a better place.

    I therefore hope the rest of the world can be.

    I have no intention of ever returning.  

  10. the simpler my hopes become.  In fact, they are rapidly reducing down to “first do no harm”.

    In my life I have “made a difference”, albiet at the level of local politics.  I had a cause.  I helped make it happen through determination and hard work.  And the consequences of getting exactly what I believed was “the right thing” were decidedly unexpected. And not altogether positive.

    I helped save some good schools and affordable family neighborhoods from redevelopment bulldozers … and drove home prices through the roof BECAUSE they remained great family neighborhoods with good schools. The working class people I was saving the neighborhoods for mostly can’t afford to live here anymore.  And is that a pisser or what?

    So now I spend a lot of time thinking about unintended consequences.  For example, some folks here want to legalize marijuana, and, perhaps, other drugs.  Generally I tend to agree that needs to be done.  But it would not be without negative consequences.  And some of those conseqences might be quite serious.

    For example, I can envision this chain of events:  marijuana is legalized.  Big Pharma moves to monopolize growth and distribution.  They buy laws to that effect (and they will, of course they will).  They jack prices into the stratosphere, making illegal drugs once more profitable and the reduced-traffic competition between the cartels will be even more bloody.  Rinse, repeat.

    Plus, users will have the anti-smoking industry and health fanatics coming down on their necks like a ton of bricks.

    I have no clue how to prevent either of those possible consequences, but they should be taken into account.  

     

    • banger on August 27, 2009 at 18:24
    • #

    to the beauty that is in every moment at least occasionally. When we forget our inner narrative and just become pure awareness we have found what Jesus calls the Kingdom of Heaven. Once people get a glimpse of that I think they are less likely to want to hurt other people and other beings.  

  12. Courage.

    • Joy B. on August 28, 2009 at 16:25
    • #

    …that something of my observations, my hard-earned knowledge, my quest to learn might be a spark to help free another soul someday. We all live in “interesting times,” always. There’s not much to be done about that, things are designed to be thus. It’s just a learning experience and we’re all just passing through on our way to St. Elsewhere.

    And I hope St. Elsewhere doesn’t turn out to be back here again. Because if that happens, I will be seriously pissed.

  14. anything or one that asks me to kill or be killed is usually not something I won’t support especially nationalism. The only ‘ism’ I like would be Buddhism. Working and dreaming for a world where common good is not considered socialism, fighting for progress social progress that needs to catch up to technical progress. The world is dualistic but we don’t have any balance going we’re operating on lizard brain right now. I guess the concept of equality and peace and the end of the limiting belief that we don’t have enough, and that scarcity is the natural order. I guess work for and dream of a real democracy one where were not jerked around by fears we create ourselves. Maybe I am a socialist, but nah, I’m also an anarchist who thinks governments are all doomed as they trade in power.          

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