BIG RED C

okay, listen up guys — i've called this meeting to make some important and very exciting announcements about our company! as you know, we have pretty well dominated the local market here, to the point of saturation, and the books look good! profits are at record levels thanks to your vigorous and unflagging efforts to expand the business into every nook and cranny within delivery distance of our production facility. so we've been doing some planning. bob, here, in new markets, has come up with a whole network of connections that we intend to deploy to cover the entire kingdom — map, please — look at that! we're going everywhere! now what i need from you folks is courage, ambition and absolute belief in the mission. who will be the first to step forward and volunteer to go out and set up these new facilities? we've got the plan, you've got the opportunity. who are the boldest, most dynamic members of my team? who wants to help us make it real? and don't talk to me about risk — there is always risk! look back, remember our early days. how many were defeated? how many gave up? it was tough going. we nearly got wiped out, but a few of us hung on, we dug in our heels and refused to give up. and little by little we prevailed. we won this territory but it was a hard-fought victory, and a lot of us didn't make it. never mind — the thing is, those brave few pioneers paved the way for all the good times we've all enjoyed, all the rewards that follow success.
but wait! there's more! we not only have new network plans, we not only have new corporate branding — did i mention the new logo? — the marketing guys have come up with a whole new name! from now on — now look at this— we are BIG RED C! BIG RED C! don't you love it?! BIG C for commitment, BIG C for control, BIG C for conquest, BIG C for corporation, BIG C for corruption, BIG C for cancer! and don't anybody talk to me about metastasizing, that's a dirty word. we're just doing our job.

INJUSTICE

what animated Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr and many other leaders of social movements around the world in recent times also animated many fine writers of the period, including Albert Camus, Walt Whitman, Henry Thoreau and others. it was injustice and it is still the main problem humanity has failed to address.

achieving social justice is the only conceivable path to peace within and between nations. capitalism, which has produced much material security in the industrialized world and has improved the lives of many people, is unfortunately based on inequality and it is therefore profoundly unjust and antidemocratic at its root. to speak of capitalist democracy is an oxymoron. the only democracy that could conceivably be entitled to the name is social democracy, which puts people ahead of capital at the centre of the state.

this social definition of democracy excludes communism and all other forms of insular centralized rule not answerable to the entire citizenry it seeks to govern. it excludes military action, invasion and threats of invasion, it excludes intimidation, destruction and murder of any people for any reason anywhere on earth, whether motivated by religious fervour or greed or for control of others who may be perceived as threats, or for any purpose whatever.

the use of intimidation, destruction and murder to achieve political ends is the dictionary definition of terrorism. armies, mostly state armies, have done most of the killing of humans on this planet and continue to do so. they are the large-scale terrorists so often ignored in discussions about terrorism and defence against it.

war is an almost uniquely human activity but it does not define us. war is not the reason there are seven billion humans alive today. cooperation, much more than the too-lauded competition that so often leads to conflict, is the real strength of human society. it is cooperation which has permitted human ascendance on the planet and it needs to be broadened to a final inclusiveness that encompasses all people everywhere. we need to permit the United Nations to evolve into a world-scale government of social democracy as a final highest-level force for cohesion and justice on this isolated and insulated little orb of ours.

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO

the NPR is mostly about politics, and that turns out to be, sadly, mostly american politics, which is unfortunately important in the present state of the world, but it is not often interesting. also, it ignores a reality that a great many people in the world, perhaps even the majority of people, observe when they look out their windows — the fact that it is peaceful out there. the danger in the media focus is that if we continue to hear only of strife, privation, power and other imbalances we may wind up living out our lives in a kind of make-believe setting that ignores a great part of the real world, the part which would make us more hopeful for our progeny and more willing to work for improvement ourselves. 

we are learning about ourselves, about animal life and all life, about our planet and the cosmos, at an unprecedented rate which like the cosmic expansion is accelerating. the fact that we will have to drag along in our wake the (genetically programmed) reluctant ultra-conservatives among us should not blind us to the speed we have reached in our species-long quest to satisfy our curiosity about everything we see. the work done and being done now deserves to be savoured and saved and built upon, and someday it may finally become an important focus of our public culture. balance would improve us all — including the NPR.

HOW SIMPLE, HOW IGNORANT

i used to think it was kind of lame for people to take meds to solve personality and emotional disorders, until i came to know well some people who really seemed to thrive only after the right meds were discovered for them. i read much about brain architecture and chemistry then, much that was new, really just learned since the advent of fMRI studies and personality genetics, until it finally dawned on me one day that the only reason i had used to think people shouldn't take meds was because i didn't need them. how simple. how ignorant.

i am afraid that the same kind of ignorance is rife in the political debates of today. the right wing types who think it is bad to help people in need are mostly just the types who — for reasons that may not be to their personal credit, but speak more to their situation — misunderstand why they themselves don't need any help, or fail to see how much help they in fact have already been given, and so strive to deny help to those who truly do need it.

sometimes our own experience can provide us very clear insights and sometimes our own experience is misunderstood by us. and when we project that misunderstood experience onto others whose lives we don't really intimately know, the mistakes we make are not useful, and the consequences of our misunderstanding can be tragic.

WHAT PEOPLE DO

not many people would like to be controlled by intimidation, not many people would like to have their possessions and their homes destroyed, not many people would like to be the victims of assault and murder, in fact when we find people who actually wish for these things to happen to themselves we consider them psychotic and try to help them improve their mental condition. why then do we not consider the people who perpetrate these crimes psychotic as well?

much of this modern world is operating on the basis of intimidation, destruction and murder — that is what armies do — and much excusing is done for it in the quest for global domination by the people who wish to dominate others in order to better secure comfort for themselves. in such a world comfort and security are never actually possible for anyone and it never will be possible until people broaden their interest to include comfort and security for all. 

i remember during the Iraq invasion how the Bush regime loudly proclaimed they were bringing freedom to the Iraqi people, but wouldn't the first freedom any society requires be freedom from invasion?

SPENDING WISELY

i listened to a canadian radio program this saturday morning, amazed. it was just listing ad nauseam all the most successful manufacturers and merchandisers of commodity products, sort of like listing the best hockey scores or football bowl winners of all time. i am still surprised that intelligent people i know listen to this program every week. i don't get it. the most successful manufacturers, retailers, advertisers in terms of sales — what do they have to teach me of any value? 

there is important information being generated every day about the cosmos, about life, animal life, human life, about the material universe, what it consists of and how it works, how we work, how best we can solve our very real and critical problems, problems that prevent us from finding justice and peace and security for now and the future, of how best we can prevent the destruction of the ecosystem of earth, including ourselves, and still provide for our needs in an equitable and sustainable way. and yet people find time to learn instead which clever marketers sell the most beer.

there is barely enough time to get on with it, without wasting most of it in useless production and consumption, not only of products, but of ideas. there are only so many thoughts in an hour, hours in a day and days in a life. time is the currency. it is what you are spending every day, and you will run out.      

i had a motto when i was younger — never wake sleeping people. now i think maybe that was wrong — maybe the most important thing one can do in this life is just exactly that — try to wake people from such trivial diversion. 

the final infidelity is to think it doesn't matter what you do.