We’re all Austrians now…

 — Ron Paul, during post-Iowa Caucus speech

Much has been written about Ron Paul’s “honesty” and adherence to libertarian ideology since he has surged (somewhat) in the reality show/ clown care debacle also known as the Republican Primary. Paul is kookier than a Laoruche fan on crack, but that doesn’t mean shit these days. Two major influences on Paul are Ayn Rand, the cult figure, former Hollywood hack-turned-novelist, and Austrian economist, Frederick von Hayek. American libertarianism would be unthinkable without Ayn Rand’s influence. Even an establishment conservative like Rush Limbaugh has occasionally shown signs of having been influenced by Rand’s ideas, albeit indirectly, through second or third-hand sources. His attempt to defend the “greed” of the eighties borrows heavily from Rand. Before Rand, only a handful of iconoclasts and other eccentrics would have dared defend greed in public.

Rand’s followers, who often come off as cultists (as do Ron Paul fanatics) attempt to paint her philosophy as grounded in logic and reason, but nothing could be further from the truth. Her understanding of the mechanics of the human brain, or the role of emotions, for example, has nothing to do with modern science or empirical research.

When I was growing up, reading Alisa Zino’yevna (aka Ayn Rand) was almost a family tradition. It was necessary reading in our household. My father would often give each one of us something to read and then we would have to discuss it critically. He also encouraged me to read Walt Whitman and other American transcendentalists — which was probably the antithesis of Rand’s “objectivism.” Looking back, I see he was trying to show me how to think critically — how to hold two opposing ideas at once and come away with something of value and original.

I think Rand appeals to young people because it is a philosophy mired in the lower levels of moral reasoning. It appeals to young people because it addresses an immature, self-centered slice of life. In fact, previous posts of mine have been a refutation of Rand’s “philosophy.” Her epistemology has been taken apart by others, no need to revisit that here. I mention Rand today because she connects to the first part of my series on the history of humankind’s struggle to define freedom.

By the 1950s, both fascism and its antithesis, communism, had redefined freedom, but largely failed to deliver anything resembling freedom when implemented by the likes of Stalin and Mussolini. A ramped up Cold War with the Soviet Union was being waged and the biggest thing then was the Red Scare (communists were the Muslims in the 1950s) and the threat of nuclear war. Unbelievably, people were actually buying “bunkers” to protect themselves from radioactive fallout in those days. Today, we’re bombing innocent people in bunkers in far off lands.

In the 1950s, both Rand and Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek proposed a new vision of freedom. Their freedom was more of a negative type freedom. They asserted that self-interest controlled all human behavior, and the only true measure of what was best for individuals were their belongings or what they were attempting to accumulate. This “market” of getting and hoarding, acted out simultaneously by millions of people in a society as complex and huge as the United States, for example, produced hundreds of millions of individual “decisions” every moment. Hayek suggested there existed a force of nature, the product and consequences of all these individual buying and selling behaviors, which he called the “free market.” At the same time, Ayn Rand’s hugely popular novels, the Fountainhead and her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, championed a philosophy of greed and an enlightened self-interest similar to von Hayek’s.

Freedom was being redefined.

Instead of being a collaborative effort, the result of a society working together to provide for the basic needs of the individual, the family, and society, freedom was now being reconceptualized as the individual’s ability and right to act in his or her total freedom for selfish self-fulfillment, regardless of the consequences to others (within certain limitations). Freedom was a negative force in the worldview of von Hayek, his student Milton Friedman (father of the Chicago School of libertarian economics), and Ayn Rand’s objectivism. This freedom was more of a freedom “from” than a freedom “to”: freedom from social obligation, freedom from taxation; freedom from government assistance or protection (now perceived as “interference” or “serfdom”); freedom to consider one’s needs and wants, because if each individual followed his selfish desires, the mass of individuals acting in concert in a “free market” would result in a utopia.

Shades of Thomas Friedman! The world is flat, burn the fuckin’ olive tree and hock the goddamned Lexus!

This vision claims to be the true vision of a free world. Its creators claimed that a world where government limited nothing but violence and all markets were free — market here meaning the behavior of individuals or collectives of individuals (corporations) — had never before been attempted. Their opponents, progressives and liberals, pointed out that their system had in fact been tried many times throughout history, and was the history of every civilization of the most chaotic eras (feudal times comes to mind). Lacking a true social contract and interdependence, these societies were characterized by physical and economic violence. In this social schematic, those most willing and able to plunder would rise to the top of the economic heap. In the past, they were rightfully called robber barons and today are diagnosed as sociopaths.

In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, think tanks funded by wealthy individuals and multinational corporations joined forces with subservient politicians to win the “battle of ideas.” Greed, combined with a blind belief in free markets, was their dogma. This movement brought into power both the feeble-minded Ronald Reagan in the US and Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom. Reagan would oversee the greatest redistribution of wealth and the destruction of Labor. Both Thatcher and Reagan would turn government into a force against labor, both busting powerful unions in their respective countries. Both “freed” markets by dropping tariffs and undoing regulations. In both instances, industry fled both countries, to wherever labor was cheapest, and the middle class was rudely bent over and fucked without so much as a kiss.

This new economic religion would be put into operation in Chile with disastrous results. Poverty and wealth gaps would increase dramatically and the privatization of the social security system threw even more people into abject poverty. Of course, a few bankers, industrialists, and politicians became wealthy.

After the downfall of the Soviet Union, Milton Friedman’s “Chicago Boys,” not satisfied with the failures their policies created in Chile, would apply this system with equally disastrous results in Russia. Undaunted and in need of a new country to experiment on, they found a series of willing dupes starting with the inept Ronald Reagan on through to George W. Bush, whose entire cabinet was made up of people who shared the von Hayek/ Rand worldview. The result, as we all have seen, has been a failure of historic proportions. Well-paying jobs were replaced with jobs whose only requirement was that workers ask the question, “Do you want fries with that?”and with social mobility dropping and wealth gaps increasing to levels not seen for over a hundred years.

This is where we are living today and there are people still demanding we continue on this road to serfdom.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

The post Ron Paul and the Downsizing of Freedom appeared first on Madness & Reality.

Not too long ago the answer to this question may have been vastly different depending on the race of the person answering but these days the answer is more often in the affirmative.

You need only be brown or poor for this to be a fact of your life. It’s an unfortunate reality.

I can imagine it must have been a rude awakening to non-minorities to find out how often and to what degree the police violate citizen rights. The police so all type of things including setting innocent people up for arrest, or by planting evidence to make a case ‘stick’ or by lying on the stand to cover up systematic ineptitude, laziness and every isms you can name.

We all know what the phrase “The Blue Wall of Silence” means.

Thanks to current news reporting, our increased access to communication and the frequency in which inconsistencies come to light we all had the pleasure of getting to know that our judicial is merely a reality show. Certain players pull the strings and control how the ending turns out; what we do doesn’t really matter.

We now have evidence that our procedures are flawed at best. We know that we are merely lucky to avoid the abomination of having life as you know it snatched from under you.

The United States Justice System is rumored to be blind which is implied to mean our system is without bias.

However, there are those who would come to the conclusion that our blind justice is a metaphor for blatant disregard. There is a a quiet neglect of the requirements of the system to follow the rules of the system that “we the people” put in place. We foolishly allow our government to present this broken thing as the Bible and verse of the ways in which we will conduct ourselves as a just people.

We use our justice system to measure our superiority to other countries.

Is Justice Really Blind?

You can ask Troy Davis his opinion of how the US Justice System has treated him.

That is if you can get to him before they put him to death on September 21st for a crime that he may or may not have committed.

Considering the fact that he is to be put to death in a week I know that you may presume that his guilt is ”beyond a reasonable doubt’.

Absolution is a requirement before putting a man to death; those are the rules.

If you have ever seen, heard, or been the innocent victim of a blight in the criminal justice system than you are already aware that your legal rights, your freedom and your liberty are a direct result of you not having yet been found guilty.

People make mistakes in life; sometimes people know people that aren’t good for them. Life is a crazy place to live. My legal professor always said, “the truth is in the details”, research and the consideration of evidence will tell you the story.

But what of the evidence and innocence when our judicial system is willing and able to create criminal cases out of thin air and ignore evidence in favor of charging forward for a ‘win’?

We must all take a step back and question the validity of a system that lurches forward whether there is sufficient gas or not.

The cost of being at the wrong place at the wrong time should not be paid with a human life when there have been over 100 cases found of wrongful conviction for inmates sitting on death row across the nation. Innocent men sat behind bars and killers went free.

If more than 100 innocent people have been convicted of crimes that they did not commit then how do we stand by while Troy David provides information in support of his innocence, yet no one chooses to consider it.

How do we not fear for our own freedom and right to due process when the case that convicted this man was built on tissue thin theory and recanting eye witnesses who complained of police coercion?

How do we not fear a court system based on process over procedure when it could cost us our life?

Some will argue that a few innocent lives lost in favor of killing many other people who DID commit heinous crimes is a small price to pay for a safer society.

Society is no safer for any of us when the possibility of coincidence is all that is needed to cause an innocent person to somehow find themselves sitting on death row.

We applaud Republican candidates that brag over their execution numbers.

We demand stricter laws and applaud the police for finding a suspect and making an air tight case; we applaud our politicians who strut in front of us like a Hollywood Action heros.

We applaud all that is the illusion of our Constitutional rights yet Troy Davis knows the date and time of his death for a crime that in all probability did not commit.

The “land of the free” is anything but for poor and disenfranchised among us.

When the eyes of justice are blind we all risk becoming victims with no eye witness.

The post Troy Davis: Justice Is Truly Blind When We Choose to Shut Our Eyes appeared first on Madness & Reality.

Fascism should be more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power. — Giovanni Gentile

Happy Labor Day, and I hope that you have had an opportunity to gather with friends and family to observe the many that died in order to make fair wages, the 40-hour week hour week, and vacations a reality.

Not familiar with the history of labor struggles? That’s OK, our Corporate Media and their bland whores — the well-paid, hair-sprayed teleprompt readers — would never focus on such a history. No, I don’t blame you for forgetting about Labor and its impact on our lives. After all, there’s much more important stuff to think about.

The history of Labor in the USA is one that is rarely ever discussed and until recently, you would be hard put to find any historical documentation on the history of Labor. There is a good reason for this: it’s not a very pretty history. For those of us of a conservative orientation mouthing empty clichés about the “good ole days,” well, Bubba, they weren’t so good.

Not unless you consider child labor, or the lack of responsible overview in the workplace, as good. One school teacher, Samuel Yellin, wanted to teach Labor history to his high school students but was unable to find a textbook, so he wrote his own, American Labor Struggles. Until Howard Zinn and others who would come after, this was the only book that documented the history of the US government’s and Big Business’ vile response to the Labor movement.

One of the more heinous of episodes in the history of Labor struggles, The Ludlow Massacre (click here for a more in-depth treatment), reads like something out of the history of a fascist state — which is what corporatization (rule by corporations) is, in fact. When I first read this as part of a deal I made with my then high school-aged son, I was shocked that such things, with all our lip service to individual freedom and fairness, happened in the United States:

On April 20, 1914, 20 innocent men, women, and children were killed in the Ludlow Massacre. For some time, coal miners in Colorado and other western states had been trying to join the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) for years. They were bitterly opposed by the coal operators, led by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company.

As a result, for their striking, the miners and their families had been evicted from their company-owned houses and had set up a tent colony on public property. The ensuing massacre was a carefully planned attack on the tent colony by Colorado militiamen, coal company guards, and thugs hired as private detectives and strikebreakers. They shot and burned to death 20 people, including a dozen women and small children. Later, investigations would reveal that the tents were intentionally set on fire. The miners had dug foxholes in the tents so the women and children could avoid the bullets that the corporate-hired thugs would randomly shoot through the tent colony. The women and children were found dead, huddled together at the bottoms of their tents.

The Baldwin Felts Detective Agency had been brought in to suppress the Colorado miners. They brought with them an armored car mounted with a machine gun (the Death Special, they called it) that roamed the area spraying bullets. The day of the massacre (April 20^th), the miners were celebrating Greek Easter. At 10:00 AM, the militia ringed the camp and began firing into the tents upon a signal from the commander, Lt. Karl E. Lindenfelter. Not one of the perpetrators of the slaughter was ever punished, but scores of miners and their leaders were arrested and black-balled from the coal industry.

A  monument erected by the UMWA stands today in Ludlow, Colorado in remembrance of the brave and innocent souls who died for freedom and human dignity.

Today, people enjoy taking potshots at Unions. Much of this is the result of a media controlled by the very forces that opposes unionization; some of it is the result of bonehead actions taken the union leaders themselves. However, the only thing standing between you (if you’re not a CEO) and complete servitude are unions, which is why conservatives abhor the Labor Movement.

I find it hard to write about individual improvement when there is so much denial going on in our country. To stay quiet during times of atrocity is to be complicit in its crimes. This is true of almost anyone who lived in Nazi Germany. Most of those people weren’t evil, they simply didn’t act. Like us today in the USA, there was too much to do, they were too busy, going about the time-consuming activities of daily living, to speak out. So after they came to get the butcher, then the teacher, and finally the neighbor, there was no one around to help when the same forces came for them because there was no one left to speak out against the evil.

In the past, people have asked me to write about actions we can take to improve things. That comes later. Before we can act, we must become aware. I write in the hopes that even one person can gain some awareness. Mass movements of social change are founded in this notion of enlightening one mind at a time. History shows us, as Margaret Meade observed many years ago: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” The fact remains that the same mindset that is the cause of the problem can never be used to bring about a solution. Solutions require a change of mind, an evolution of the individual and collective consciousness.

I will leave you with the words of someone who was a lot better at this than I will ever hope to be:

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” Edward R. Murrow said in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.”

Remember to give thanks to all those men, women, and children who had the fuckin’ cojones to lay down their lives for their convictions so that we could enjoy better lives.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

The post Labor Struggles: The Ludlow Massacre appeared first on Madness & Reality.

A public union employee, a tea party activist, and a CEO are sitting at a table with a plate of a dozen cookies in the middle of it. The CEO takes 11 cookies, turns to the tea partier and says, ‘Watch out for that union guy. He wants a piece of your cookie.’

I was raised to believe in the American Dream. I believed that if I worked hard enough, if I was smart enough, if I got good grades in school, went to a decent college, played by the rules, and worked really really hard, that I could grab at least a measure of that American dream. When I was a child, I was assured that the depth of American ingenuity and expertise would save us all and that we would become an enlightened society pursuing the further reaches of human nature with the increase of leisure time, as technology and human evolution converged to create a more noble model of society. A great society preoccupied with eradicating poverty, hunger, and disease.

I believed in an American future in which we would conquer space, where solutions for previously untreatable diseases were right around the corner. I was assured that the tension between technological innovation and the environmental havoc it sometimes caused would be resolved.

I believed in this dream because so many people were actually out there on the frontlines fighting to ensure such a society. Everywhere people were engaged in critically questioning the status quo. People of color, women, and people of different sexual orientation were fighting and challenging the oppressive institutionalized systems that kept us from becoming a greater whole. And in spite of all the conflict, there was the real sense of hope in that people were doing more than talking about it — we were all somehow engaged in ensuring the American Dream for all people.

When I was a child, I was assured that we would develop viable alternative energy sources. Lies. A cure for cancer. Lies. I was told of a future wherein people — for the first time in human history — could commit the bulk of their lives for their intellectual, spiritual, and material benefit. Lies.

Welcome to the future, my friends. I live in a city where it is illegal to be black or brown. Here the color of your skin, not your grades, determination, or educational attainment, matters most. Today, being smart is considered elitist. Worst of all, today you work longer hours for less money — if you’re fortunate enough to be working at all. You’re less likely to be able to have access to decent health care, if you have any health care options.

Welcome to the future, it is now — a future of disappointment. And the only reason you haven’t noticed is because you’re too busy jerking off to the latest online celebrity sex tape or watching “reality” shows of “celebrities” whose talents apparently have more to do with sucking NBA cock than being able to actually sing or dance. Or perhaps you’re too busy watching American Idol or Snowdrift Snookie’s latest idiotic political pronouncements. Either way, we’re amusing ourselves to death.

For the past few weeks, regular, working-class people in Wisconsin have been staging mass protests in numbers that dwarf anything the Pee Farters — with their access to billionaire dollars — could only dream of. Sustained, mass protests fighting for the right to bargain collectively, arguably one of the main reasons we ever had a middle class of any worth in this country.

Sadly, the “libruhl” media (inexplicably owned by a handful of multinational corporations) has effectively ignored, misinterpreted, or downplayed this moment in history. God forbid some dimwit neocon Medicare recipient farts at a town hall meeting and the same quiescent media will stampede over itself to cover it, dissect its fragrance ad nauseum, and pontificate endlessly on its meaning.

The major economic theory of the past 30 years, the trickle down theory, is not just a cruel hoax, but most of the good industrial jobs have left the country, and the middle class has been disemboweled. There is no free time. You’re fortunate if you can get a job whose major requirement is knowing how to ask, “Want fries with that?”

Still, while you and I struggle to make ends meet, living lives of quiet desperation, the wealthiest Americans have quintupled their net worth, even in the midst of an economic disaster that only a fool would label a recession.

Here is the American Dream of the future today: no jobs, no prospects, no leverage, no short-term solutions, no long-term plans, no big ideas to save us. While the bottom four-fifths struggle to stay afloat, and the upper one-fifth cautiously tread water, the top 1 percent continue to accumulate wealth at a rate not seen since the Gilded Age.

In the future of today, CEOs earn monster salaries, corporations receive taxpayer welfare, and we have half the U.S. Congress boasting of being millionaires. Meanwhile, medical liabilities bankrupt the rest of us at record levels, one person in ten is out of work, and food stamp usage sets new records every month.

Even with near-record unemployment, the Department of Commerce reported in November 2010 that U.S. companies just had their best quarter… ever. Businesses recorded profits at an annual rate of $1.66 trillion in the third quarter of 2010, which is the highest rate (in non-inflation-adjusted figures) since the government began keeping records more than 60 years ago.

Shrinking incomes, fewer jobs… but bigger corporate profits. Not a good sign. Somehow, many of you have been convinced that the answer is doing more of the same: give more to the rich and we’ll all benefit from the resultant odiferous trickle down. What’s obvious is that the rich are not only dedicated to hanging on to what they have (duh!) but also committed to accumulating more, gets maybe a yawn from the dumb-down, apathetic American voter. In fact, our country’s concentration of wealth is worse than Egypt.

This is nothing but class warfare and when you try to show, whether through charts and graphs or real-life examples, that the system is rigged in favor of the wealthy and powerful, you’re labeled as unpatriotic, a socialist and/ or communist. What often happens is that, instead of yelling back, “Hell, yes, we’re talking fucking class warfare!” liberals usually fell over themselves in apology, vehemently denying the accusation. They react as if talking about class warfare is tantamount to treason. Center-right politicians like Obama get spooked and fall in line, saying “Look, Eddie, we can’t do social engineering through the tax code. And there’s no reason to declare class warfare.” It’s pathetic.

The wealth gap has become so alarming that even billionaires like Warren Buffett acknowledge that the Bush-era tax cuts should be allowed to expire. In fact, Buffett contends, the wealthiest Americans should pay even more in taxes. The people in Wisconsin, representative of the majority of Americans, that bottom 4/5 who are barely keeping afloat, are now fighting this fight and it barely registers a yawn from many of you.

Someone suckered us along the way. The future we bought into was great until we fell asleep and woke up to find that at some points the future becomes the present, and the fact that it was once the future doesn’t mean it’s all fucked up once it arrives.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

The post Excavating the Future: Pitting Private & Public Sector Workers Against Each Other appeared first on Madness & Reality.

What I find interesting when confronted by “holy rollers” is that it always comes down to this: I’m going to hell for daring to challenge their beliefs. It is common for someone to state unequivocably that (for my sake) I had better be right, because (presumably) God is gonna have his vengeance on my blaspheming ass! LOL! It has been my experience that “true believers” are more interested in defending dogma rather than actually living what they purport to believe. If you’re a Christian and you find satisfaction in your belief that your God will sentence me to a hereafter of eternal damnation, then what kind of Christian are you?

Beliefs can be a ma’fucca some times… SMDH

Personally, I do a “belief spring cleaning” at least once a year as a matter of habit. What that means is that I regularly taken an inventory of my beliefs and dump the ones that have no real foundation. Now, this is no easy feat. Over the years, I have had to throw away some really cherished beliefs. One such belief was my belief in me! I used to believe that “Eddie” existed, but when I sat down to look for “Eddie,” I couldn’t find him. What I found instead, when I looked closely while suspending my belief, was an on-going process — a series of beliefs — that I cobbled together to create this entity we’ve all agreed to call “Eddie” (as well as some other choice names). In fact, what I found was an amalgam of defense mechanisms, beliefs, fears, personality quirks, that if you ran it really fast, looked like what I consider my personality — or “Eddie.” It’s a lot like a film. A film gives the viewer the illusion of movement and substance because the individual frames move at a very fast rate through the projector.

But when I sat down and slowed down, suspended my belief system, what I saw wasn’t “Eddie,” but a bunch of different components that added up to what I call my personality or “Eddie.”

At first that was a fucked up revelation. How could it be that I don’t exist?!! I must be seeing things wrong, I surmised to myself, so I began researching this. After all, I had worked very hard and was very much attached to the “Eddie” I had created.

But nowhere could I find the basis of Eddie. The brain/ mind has no specific function that creates a personality — an “Eddie.” There’s no central processing area in the brain responsible for “Eddie.” It’s all made up! At first, this was a very scary revelation. I mean, how will “Eddie” go to heaven if there is no “Eddie”? But then, upon further reflection, I realized that this kinda/ sorta liberated me. I mean if “Eddie” was something I made up as a way to cope with life, then that meant I didn’t have to defend myself as much. “Eddie” was a story I made up in order to explain shit, but it wasn’t really who I was. Sure, I use the construct “Eddie” for stuff like paying the rent and crossing the street, but “Eddie” is still just a story, a movie I made up.

And that’s how I lost “Eddie.” Or my belief in it.

Another belief I lost early on was the hand-me-down belief in a God that lived in the sky somewhere and who either punished or rewarded you according to your behavior. That one was a lot easier than losing “Eddie.” I realized that belief in Divine Hierarchy that needed to be petitioned in order to curry favor was pretty much juvenile to me. And that shit about the world being created in seven days? Yeah right! I lost that one when I was about seven or eight years old (and got in trouble for it!). And why he gotta be a man?!! What’s up with that? Why can’t God look like Halle Berry?!! What I came to experience and realize was that we’re all part of the Divine Spark, that God isn’t somewhere out there, but here inside of me (and everyone else). And some day, even that belief will be discarded!

Any hand-me-down belief system is a subtle appeal to your deepest fears and longings. It’s like a parasite that wraps itself around your mind — almost like a demonic possession.

Don’t get me wrong, certain belief systems contain important truths, questions, and sometimes they even contain answers. Yet, at a very deep level, they are not your truths, questions, or answers. An unquestioned belief system is like eating free bread, it only masks the real hunger we have for spiritual fulfillment. This basic human hunger can only be satisfied by our own efforts, by the planting and cultivation of our questions, by the harvesting of our own answers, and by coming to our own truths. Only then will you earn the right to live consciously, mindfully, and call yourself truly alive.

Blind faith is, well… blind.

Hand-me-down beliefs are a lot like spiritual handouts: easy junk-food offered to us by outdated belief systems and thought constellations that keep us dependent on the spiritual dole, rendering us incapable of fending for ourselves, incapable of becoming who we really are. If we, in our thirst for spirituality, agree to drink the syrupy-sweet Kool-Aid of guilt, shame, and fear those in control serve us, we will live as zombies — alive but dead.

Face it, most belief systems are the rotted remains of what one person did in deliberation and mindfulness for themselves. Will you be content to live on the rotted meat of their long-lost labors?

The unexamined life is a second-hand life. It is second hand because it is dependent on other things for meaning. Take away the hand-me-down beliefs, and you take away meaning. An examined life is meaningful because it is the examination and personal exploration that gives it meaning and grants dignity. Do you really believe in or want off-the-shelf, one-size fits-all truths, or are you going to make your own?

The choice has always been yours.

Love,

Eddie

The post Sunday Sermon [Fundamentalism]: Gimme Some of that Old Time Hand-Me-Down Religion! appeared first on Madness & Reality.

I have written before that’s there’s a potential upside to the current class war aka “The Economic Crisis.” Namely, what people of color have experienced for centuries as a group many whites now are experiencing as solitary and alienated individuals. Chris Rock’s observation that a white person would never trade skins with a black person has some merit, and truth be told, various groups of white Americans might feel as sense of belonging, that the system looks out for them. However, today more than ever, individually they suffer the stings of corporate indifference almost like anyone else. At a group level, a white man might identify with a white, male, Christian president, for example (though that’s not true today). But how much does that identification mean when on the unemployment line or when a HMO refuses to allow possible life-saving technology? Every American is a unit of labor. This labor is owned by corporations. Each individual may dispose his or her labor as he or she wishes, but ultimately the employer owes the laborer nothing. In a very real way, this fact can potentially unite the historical experience of people of color and the new day dawning on the rest of our nation. It can, but we are pitted against one another. Even poor or oppressed whites can look further down and find (false) refuge in the knowledge that the faces at the bottom of the well are often black and brown. I am attempting to understand, by looking at inequality, the unique challenges that we all face in contemporary America. I want to understand how we can free ourselves from the chains that bind us in this dysfunctional and horrific dance of death and hatred. While these chains are more easily recognized in the experience of people of color, they are also the same chains that shackle us all. Some of us are looking at social change in fear. We view the reality of a black president as a threat somehow. Some of us see a Latina Supreme Court justice and fear that our freedoms will be taken away. We see that our religious beliefs will not be enforced on others and we seethe with self-righteous indignation and hatred. It’s an irrational fear with far-reaching and potentially catastrophic consequences. It even compels some of us to kill and maim. Today, I am not looking to advance a particular dogma or socio-political agenda. I am not looking to socialist, Marxist, or capitalistic experiments as an answer to our social and economic problems. Rather, I want to look directly into the maws of capitalism to see if there’s a way to survive the onslaught. I stand at the intersection of knowledge and action. Rebellion is the primary movement of knowledge. Violence and oppression rob us of the ability to understand. Without understanding, there can be no growth, no evolution, no recognition of Truth, and no tomorrow — only an endless reverberation of gray todays. If we refuse to look at and understand the restraints placed on all of us by history, economics, self-image, the media, politics, and the misuse of technology, we will never be free. The alternative to knowledge and action is ignorance and enslavement. The shackles I speak of threaten to enslave everyone in America and therefore, concern us all. When the logical consequence of a popular and mass ideology is murder, perpetual war, environmental rape, and oppression, we are mired in a crisis that may compel us to become the first species to make ourselves extinct. Alternatively, we also stand at the precipice of what can be one of the greatest evolutionary leaps in our shared history. At every stage of growth, there is both the potential for destruction and the potential for transformative collective change. We all play a part in that choice…
Love,EddieI usually blog here

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