Category: Philosophy

Sometimes it all seems futile.  I teach and teach and teach, wondering if one day, even some day soon, I will get the opportunity to talk about the things which really matter, about the way the world is and how to make it better for some of us who could use the improvement.

Then I run into someone who puts me back to square one, wondering if anything I have taught has survived…or how many other people are out there who feel the same way as the culprit.

So what do I do?  Go back to the beginning and start anew?  Maybe with some variation on the theme?  

What else is there?

Waiting.

I should be good at it by now.  I have decades of experience.

The time floats on, those minutes fly by

You wanna go, but just you try, guy

You wanna see her

You wanna see her, oh yeah

So you wait, you wait and wait

Girl don’t come

In my case, “you want to be her” were the words in my ears…for years and years and years.  But the words have often been slightly wrong.

So the waiting goes on.

Keep waiting.  Our hopes and dreams will be fulfilled…some day.

Someday soon.  Just you wait.

She arose silently from her bed and walked to the bathroom.  She stopped to stare at herself in the mirror.

Sh was old.  Sometimes she wondered how that had happen, but she had been aware that she was not aging all that gracefully for quite a few years.  Daily stress can do that to a person.

So can 44 years of being on testosterone.

Now, even 17 years later, the effects of that were still there in the face that looked back..  Nothing was going to undo that…except maybe thousands of dollars of facial reconstruction.  That was money she would never have.  So she made do with the rationalization that she hadn’t wanted to stop recognizing herself anyway.

And nothing was going to change the fact that she was 6’4″ tall.

First they came for the K word.  But I didn’t mind.  The few people I knew who were Jewish were nice enough and knew their place in the world and they didn’t bother me, so I didn’t need to bother them.

Then they came for the N word.  Again, my humor didn’t include blackface and anyway I thought jokes based on the stereotyping of black people were vulgar.

When they came for the C word, I got pissed.  And then someone told me it wasn’t just the C-word, that there were other words that women objected to just as much.    

My whole comedy game relied on me calling people c**ts and b**ches and pu**ies.

It seems to happen periodically, but with unfixed period.  Sometimes my thoughts are in too much of a jumble to make much sense out of them.  I took a look through the past year’s columns and discovered at least three occasions in which this happened in 2008.  Each time I still managed to cobble something together anyway:

March 28:  Thought Salad

May 2:  Mixed Veggies

Sep 5:  Stone Soup

Hence, I guess, the name of this edition.  Hopefully there is some of the meat required as part of that hobo dish.

The ingredients:  identity, privilege, memories, creativity, pain.  Not necessarily in that order…and sometimes in combination.

… go to http://www.change.org/ideas/br… , go to the “browse ideas by cause” box, and scroll down to “education” … anyway, I can’t quite figure out why the top three ideas are getting the votes they’re getting.

At any rate, I would like to recommend a vote for the proposal currently in 5th place — “Replace No Child Left Behind With a Strong Education Policy.”

UPDATE: we need 278 more votes…  

UPDATE #2: Ballot closed, we lost.  Go team Esperanto!

Since we are nearing the end of a Presidential administration, it behooves us to take stock of what has happened over the past eight years.  One of the most important intellectual developments to have accompanied the Bush administration is the significant expansion of the literature on “noble lies,” as promoted by the cabal of neoconservatives in the Bush cabinet through their intellectual mentor, the political philosopher Leo Strauss.  This will be a diary exploring Strauss, “noble lies,” and the function such lies supposedly perform in our political culture.  I conclude by asking why “noble lies” are really necessary anymore.  Do we need them to protect ourselves from the truth about abrupt climate change?

(crossposted at Big Orange)

The pope has spoken.

Who am I to disagree?

Being one of those who are determined to be as dangerous as global warming, who the hell am I to disagree?

Cross posted at The Big Orange

I was reading the diary by Kestrel9000  a minute ago and was reminded again of the tragic realities that much of humanity is suffering through.  We continue to survive under the system of worldwide corporate oppression where human beings are regarded only as variables of their profit equations, and if your place on their spreadsheets is determined to be of no value to them, you are allowed to be starved, ignored, exploited for political gain, and blamed for your own condition. Your lands and resources will be stolen, at best you can look forward to a life of abject poverty and isolation from your cultural history, subjugated to your corporate overlords profit margins, and cast away like a worn out shoe when they have exacted every penny they can from you and your people. Perhaps people will wake up and see that the line between Corporations and Governments no longer exists in any meaningful way. They are one and the same.

Perhaps a look at the wisdom of the elders is in order.

When all the trees have been cut down,

when all the animals have been hunted,

when all the waters are polluted,

when all the air is unsafe to breathe,

only then will you discover you cannot eat money.

Cree Prophecy