Pulling Punches

There was once a time in my life where I believed in treating all creatures of this earth with good will. Never slap a fly, never kill a spider, and never judge another human. 

The more I've lived life and observed nature as well as human nature, I've come to the conclusion that I was wrong. For every spider Ive allowed to escape without consequences, I awake with a new spider bite, just as if I were to give a homeless man twenty dollars, he'd likely go spend it on something other than food or clothing. 

The good will of humans towards other humans is not in itself detrimental towards mankind as a whole. A human choosing to be a vegetarian or vegan makes no positive or negative difference in the overall spectrum of life and death of animals. However, if a human in times without electricity, transportation, and reliable means of food were to choose not to eat meat entirely because it felt that it was inhumane to do so, the human race would likely not exist. Why? Before supermarkets and fast food, meat was a year round source of carbohydrates and protein. If we were to have evolved as a herbivore we might be more similar to a Panda now, who's inability to adapt to the dwindling bamboo resource has caused it to be threatened by extinction.

Sensitivity towards other living creatures is essential to sustainable life on earth. You shouldn't over consume any resource (I'm talking to you Pandas) if you hope to continue existence, but at the same time you cannot be blind to reality. Sometimes animals have to eat other animals. If those animals are intelligent enough, they learn to develop an adequate defense against predators.

There has been, in recent years, a movement toward acceptance and treating everyone as equals which, again, is not all bad. But living in a world where you can't be honest about the way things are and make a reasonable judgement on someone based on how they dress, what their belief system is, and if they are conscious enough to take care of themselves physically, is asking for the snake to bite you.

Should you hate a Muslim because they have a different belief than you? No! But you can look at a Muslim in comparison to an atheist and conclude the Muslim is more likely to strap a bomb to their chest and blow up a building. Should you hate someone because of their skin color? Absolutely not! But you can look at someone with sagging pants, a grill in their mouth, a chain around their neck and an all red outfit, and conclude that based on their upbringing, they most likely have a different sense of morality than you.

Just because you make assumptions, doesn't mean they're true, but no ones ever been a fool to logically play the odds in life.

It isn't popular to say in a world where everyone wants to be offended by everything, but if you're afraid to point out that Shabrille can't get a job because he doesn't speak proper English and can't pull his pants up for a job interview, he is much less likely to figure it out on his own. If you can't tell Billy Bob with two teeth and overalls that he's never going to leave his small Podunk town because he can't say his alphabet in the right order, he's probably going to die of alcoholism or mouth cancer before the age of seventy. If you can't tell Desiree that she's never going to get skinny as long as she eats fast food twice a day and drinks Dr. Pepper for breakfast lunch and dinner in between her pack of cigarettes she digs into once an hour, she's much more likely to die of heart disease in her fifties. If you pay your twenty-two year old son who lives in the loft upstairs one hundred dollars a week to take the trash out, he might have a harder time kicking the heroin addiction.

It may seem a little cruel, but they don't have the saying 'it is what it is' for no reason, because generally, it is. And if you're afraid to point out the obvious because you don't want to be considered a bully or one of the overused terms circulating social media now (fatshamer, islamaphobic, transphobic, homophobic, racist, misogynist, etc., etc.) then you are doomed to be stuck in a society with a consistent elephant in the room. If you can't adapt on an individual level to survive, then you won't survive. Basic Darwanism.

Does that mean call out every religious person, fat person, ignorant redneck or thug? Of course not, but it isn't ok to shy away from the truth in defense of someone's feelings either. The best conduit for growth is truth. Sometimes the best opportunity to objectively look at yourself and your flaws is when your heart is broken, and sometimes destruction is the best catalyst for growth. Nothing rejuvenates a landscape like a catastrophic fire, and it's ok to strike fire in the hearts of the complacent. 

It's ok to be honest. It's ok to be realistic. It's ok to be blunt. And it's ok to still have compassion for other people's circumstances while being all of those things. And if you kill the spider, it's not always because you hate it or fear it, it's because in real life there are no handouts. In real life your kindness towards the spider will result in you being bit nine times out of ten. For your own protection, it might be in your best interest to kill it before it bites you.

Advocacy for social justice causes are a distraction from the real hard truths of life on earth and beyond, and while compassion may not be a detriment to society, distraction from reality is. If a society cant hold a standard for truth and honesty on an individual level, how can it on a cultural level? If you are dishonest in the reality of circumstances ( such as the Ferguson police shooting), then you are indirectly advocating a lack of honesty on all levels, from your children, your friends, your significant other, and even your own government.

John Lennon was not entirely correct to say 'all you need is love,' because, as best stated by Henry David Thoreau, "Rather than money, fame, or love, give me truth." And truth will be the starting point for a positive change in humanity. 

Drugs and Fairytales

To what extent would you sacrifice your own comfort to protect another's liberty?

Everyone has heard the tale of the princess and the frog. Beautiful princess kisses slimy toad, slimy toad turns into Prince Charming, both find love together and ride off into the sunset to live happily ever after. 

This same idea has been embedded into the fabric of nearly every single children's film, nearly all romance films, nearly all pop and country music, and even into our schools. The idea that there is some magical world where the beautiful girl meets the handsome prince and everything else is history.

Well I hate to be the bearer of bad news but... That world doesn't exist... 

As much as we'd like to believe there aren't people strung out on meth begging for pocket change on the street corner, the reality is there are, and even though anyone with two eyes and the ability to observe the standard metropolitan area can see that, some people still think putting troubled addicts in big boy timeout somehow solves the rampant addiction problem in our society. We've all seen divorce, adultery and domestic violence, yet somehow there are still plenty of women between the ages of alive and dead that are making out with slimy, scaly amphibians, hoping they'll turn into a prince.

The idea that a grown adult can be told by another grown adult that is neither their parent nor employer that he or she cannot partake in whatever they want as long as it has no physical effect on someone else is absurd. Not only is it entirely contradictory to what America has been made out to be, but it enables an ongoing, nonproductive money pit for American tax dollars that could easily be allocated to more impactful and reasonable areas. (Like national debt... Or maybe drug addiction rehabilitation.)

When you are able to separate your idea of a comfortable utopia where there is no crime, every princess has her Prince Charming, everyone is equal, has two kids, a dog, and a modest suburban home with a white picket fence, your ability to make conscious, rational, adult decisions generally becomes second nature. When you observe the ongoing 'War On Drugs' in America, you're observing a blatant ongoing war on human liberty and right to choose. Taking away the freedom of nine people because one isn't responsible in their decision making is illogical. 

Go to any McDonalds in the country and you're likely to see an obese person feeding their kids the remains of under exercised, over genetically engineered mutant cows with a side of previously frozen, fried and processed potatoes doused in table salt for dinner. Should it be illegal to eat junk food? And if it were illegal to eat junk food, would it really keep people from doing it?

The fundamental common ground between liberals and conservatives (really all people) is that they do not want to be told what they can and cannot do, but they also have no issue with telling other adults what they can or cannot do. At what point do we realize that the more we allow the government to impede on people with different lifestyles right to choose, the more our right to choose is impeded on? At what point do we realize that this "War On Drugs" is never ending and more resembles an addiction than a war? Maybe this illusion that punishing people with addictions fixes the core issue is just that... an illusion. 

Anytime there is a money pit as deep as the "War On Drugs", it is worth asking the question; who benefits from this war? I still have crackhead neighbors. The national debt certainly isn't. The three year old kid who is growing up without a dad because he is in prison for selling illegal drugs is damn sure not gaining anything from it. 

Is it drug cartels? Is it the pharmaceutical industry? "Terrorists!" (In a G.W. Bush voice.) I know one thing, it isn't the American people. Is it just a coincidence that the originator of this war (Ronald Reagan) was a career actor turned president? 

It's very possible the same people feeding you this illusion are the same people telling you if you kiss the frog he becomes a prince...

If you aren't a drug addict, it's hard to understand one. If you aren't a homosexual, it's hard to make sense of a homosexual. If you aren't religious, it's hard to see things from a religious persons point of view. But to me the most unique trait human beings have that no other species known to man has is elevated consciousness. With that you have the ability to step outside of yourself and your own comfort zone and stand up for the rights of others even when you don't understand. We are perfectly capable of stepping outside ourselves and our own personal standards for living enough to allow other people the right to choose their own path, but have a hard time doing it when it doesn't effect us directly. 

Maybe it's time to really evaluate what it means to be free. Do you even want freedom? If so, the question must be asked: to what extent would you sacrifice your own comfort to protect another's liberty?

Generational Accountability

So often I hear from older people and younger people alike that 'kids these days' are entitled and lazy. That they think everything should be handed to them and have no respect for the system. While I recognize there is an amble amount of truth to that generalization, I also recognize that I am a part of that demonized generation, and I'm not sold that it is all in bad taste.

Since long before my open eyes graced this earth, a United States political system that allowed two options for highly regarded political office jobs has failed us. In the current presidential race, we have a lot of the same.

As I speak to an older man about the recent republican primary debates, he says something that I've heard from my elders and peers alike for far too often. "As long as we get a Republican in office, it doesn't matter who wins." Or as it is more commonly stated, "I just vote for the lesser of two evils."

While the logic behind this is not baseless, it plays into all of our current and past dilemmas as a society. I'll explain;

From the moment you can perceive that you are an American citizen, you're told tales of Columbus finding the Americas while searching for a trade route. You're told of how the United States was founded on the lines of religious liberty and freedom from political tyranny. You're told that you live in the most powerful and independent democracy on the planet and that everyone has a chance to be whomever they want and do it however they want, within the confines of the laws.

As you get older, you begin to realize that every individual has a different perspective of what this freedom entails. Each individual, while likely having a naturally unique opinion on how they are to be governed (or in my case, not governed) tends to be occupied by either the Right or Left Wing majority, best (or worst) represented by the two major political parties; the Republicans and Democrats.

Your whole childhood you are taught to believe that you have to fall in line with either of these two parties, the right running on a more conservative, capitalistic, nationalistic, religious pandering platform- the left running on a more socialistic, utopian idealistic, secular, environmental friendly, equality pandering platform. (Notice the usage of the word pandering)

We are taught to buy in to the illusion that if we fall in to any of those broad ideas, we are either a Republican or Democrat, depending on which side of the aisle the particular idea is backed by. 

Then comes the real issue; what if someone strongly believes something on each side? Better yet, what happens when a particular politician shares a large portion of your core beliefs, and maybe even the core beliefs of the majority of Americans, but is not a member of one of the two major political parties?

The answer is simple, your chosen political representative will be denied a voice before he or she can even use it on a widely publicized stage. In order to even be in the political eye, the politicians that go against the Right/Left grain must conform to either or, in the process sacrificing their true beliefs and overall integrity to please said party.

Which brings me to my point....

If you were to take a newborn baby and tell them there are only two types of food to choose from their whole entire life, they would always choose the better of the two. If you were to present the child with two different types of shit to eat, the child would likely choose the one that tasted less like shit. Would that make the food not shit?

From the beginning until the end of our brief existence on this earth, these are the choices we have, the shit on the Right and the shit on the Left, or at least that's what we are led to believe.

When I hear an elderly man tell me that kids in my generation are ungrateful and entitled, my first thought is; 'maybe it's because we are tired of eating shit!'

Those accountable for the corrupt monopolized politics in a democracy are not the corrupt politicians, but the people who elect them. The citizens who sacrifice their personal integrity to elect a government official who has no integrity are the ones responsible for the shit my generation is being fed. 

If you have a problem with a generation that you brought up and you coddled, maybe you should have stood up for your fellow countrymans liberty from the beginning instead of falling in line like generations before you and then blaming the current generation for your naivety. And remember, in twenty years when you are dead this generation will be the one with the votes, so maybe instead of criticizing them you should be leading them to not make the same naive mistakes as you. Maybe you should show them how to differentiate the shit from the ice cream so when they are in your position, they can choose the ice cream instead.

The beauty of a democracy is that your vote buys your government, not the other way around. The more you eat the shit, the more it's fed to you. And after all, you are what you eat.