Circus of Values

I recently unfriended someone on Facebook. Not because of any thing they did to me specifically, but because of the political content they post on their wall with mechanical regularity. Yes, they are staunchly conservative. Yes, I consider myself "liberal" on a number of issues.

But stopping to think about the meaning of those two designators gave me pause. Recently, "conservative" and "Republican" have become interchangeable, as have "Democrat" and "Liberal". But those two parties are not strictly one sided. I am by no means the first or the last to say this, but our two party system is literally a bowl of shit looking itself in the mirror. By co-opting the terms, the parties have managed to gain followers from the all important "swing vote"or people who tend to favor votes to one side but are BY NO MEANS ENTIRELY LIBERAL OR CONSERVATIVE.

You can't vote in a presidential election if you're not registered as a Democrat or a Republican. But by associating with those parties, you also associate yourself with all the stereotypes and baggage inherent to your chosen party. The vocal minority becomes the standard caricature and the rest just go along with it because they agree with the majority of those beliefs. This is how you end up with one side refusing to execute a mass murderer because of "human rights"and the other side ranting about how Obama is a nazi muslim spy who wants to ship people off to internment camps. In these people's minds there is no middle ground. But the rest of us make up that middle ground. And we need to be heard again, if only to prevent the extremists of both sides from eliminating mutual diplomacy.

The meaning of the word "liberal" intends to illustrate receptiveness to new ideas, openness, wide mindedness, accepting of change. Conservative, on the other hand, invokes pragmatism, solidarity, integrity, and staunch position. Both can be good and bad. The american independence movement was made almost entirely of liberals, who were fed up with being treated like a resource and wanted to enact change. The American Indians were most certainly conservative, in that their status quo, their way of life, was under threat of massive change and they refused to accept it.

The "liberal media"is a redundant term. Media SHOULD be liberal, because media is one of the most important ways society can communicate. Communication changes, and a media that refuses to change along with society becomes repressive and obsolete. It's not hard to recognize in today's world. Institutions based on monitoring or regulation, such as the economy or environmental agencies, should tend towards conservative practices on upholding the established laws. If those laws become obsolete, or easily circumvented, then change must occur to return to a conservative baseline.

People shouldn't have to pick between two bloated, crumbling ruins to live in. You can build a dwelling that will fit you and you alone with bricks you select by hand, to fit your own beliefs.

And unless people are throwing their bricks at you, no one needs to take issue with the kind of bricks others use.

Greetings, earthling.

Words have power. Both positive and negative. With a few carefully selected words, you could turn a stranger into a friend, a friend into an enemy, an enemy into a love. All it takes is an understanding of people's motives and wants and needs, and your own. Compassion, social awareness, selflessness. Yes, words have power. But there's one word that is potentially the most powerful.

"Hi."

Hello. Hi. What's up. Any form of casual greeting.

The way our society is structured today is based around social contract, that is, the implicit agreement to behave appropriately in social settings, and follow unwritten social mores. However, this has translated and grown into a general isolation and indifference towards those not known to you. A person can live in New York City, and pass by thousands of people a day, yet still be completely alone, isolated, and friendless, until they hear a word.

"Hello."

It breaks the isolation, the metaphorical shell created by the policy of "keep to yourself". Hello can lead to many things, or nothing, but the base power of it lies.in the fact that it represents acknowledgement. Confirmation of the fact that you exist, you are not alone, and someone is choosing to acknowledge that for whatever reason. Many of my friendships have started because I said "Hello" and then kicked off a conversation. Even just that, "Hello" and a smile or a wink, can mean the world to someone who rarely receives even that.

Cracked Christ

I was walking back from the Javits Center the other day, and I passed by a school with this statue out front. It was covered by this heavy plastic barrier, which already had a hole in it, visible in the picture. Made me stop and think for a minute.

Now, I am not in the least bit religious. In fact, I’d say I’m somewhat anti religion. A belief system based on adhering to ethics in return for reward (the promise of eternal life) seems ideologically and spiritually less sound than an ethics system based on doing the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do. Selflessness without the need for a metaphysical carrot to be dangled ahead of you.

I wonder how a religion, or many religions, that are based at their core on a fundamental dogma of love, tolerance, and understanding can systemically be co-opted by certain causes. In doing so, turning the faithful into absurdist strawman caricatures of themselves without realizing what they are perpetuating. How Christians who believe in the sanctity of life paradoxically bomb abortion clinics, or how Muslims, whose Koran actually states that the prophet Muhammad was the last of a series of godly prophets that included Jesus, and that Allah, Yahweh, and God are the same entity, commit mass murder in the name of their faith. A faith that advocates love and understanding.

Faith is a powerful tool. It’s something that at once is both beautiful and horrifying. Beautiful because it is one of those exemplary human traits that allow an individual to persevere through adversity, even when all other sources of motivation have been sucked dry. It can also spur entire groups of people to go commit heinous acts, not pausing to consider if their actions are just and ethical on an objective standpoint, but confidently and even joyfully if they are assured that such acts prove their faith and guarantee them high standing in whatever they believe.

That something that once stood for the very concept of peace and tolerance can come to represent the hatred, anger, and self delusion of those who claim to venerate it, to the point where it must be protected behind a thick barrier for fear of what those who oppose it might do, is one of the fundamental rots of corruption that is underlying the surface of our world today.