Three Pillars

People often ask me how to fix it.

You complain about how bad it is, they say, so what's the answer?

There is no answer. Just different ways to pose and explore new questions.

But there is an answer, one pretty much everyone knows. Three pillars.

Three Pods, A ThousandSeeds

1) Enable people
2) Charge what resources are worth
3) Use taxation to shape private and public behaviour

Enable people with stability - enough to eat, safe shelter, opportunities to learn.

Charge for resources. When corporations come begging for cheap resources, bargain and negotiate so their profits are not at our expense. Price according to the usefulness of use, the cost to produce.

Establish tax rules that significantly and deliberately encourage private sector employers, private citizens and neighbourhoods to adopt community-strengthening behaviours.

The answer is: implement the three pillars. That is the job of government.

Unless you ask our government, in which case they would tell you it most certainly is not.

So, who's job is it?

Being Me

I need my space

It's not easy being me.

It's not that hard, either, as long as I overlook that most humans can only handle me in small doses.

As long as I accept the highs and lows and I told you so's.

I think I must be hard to take in large doses.

I think I must seem confoundingly arbitrary in my whims.

I think I must grate on the nerves of the serious

while making the easy-going uneasy with my uptight pent-uped-ness.

I think I must be hard to follow, hard to swallow.

It's not easy being me

but who else would I rather be?

not a soul. 

(I am perfect.)

Eye See Me (June, 2013)

Where the **** are my robots? (or, Aim)

Okay, 2013, I've gotta ask this again: Where the **** are my robots?

We quarks had a grand master plan. We were going to build a world were we can live a combined sentient experience of pleasure. Sure, there would be work along the way, but in the end, every human experience would be heaven on earth. Literally.

What we didn't bargain for is Hell. Hell on Earth. Because it's here, too. There is meaning in having to go through hell to get to heaven.

Every human that's ever lived on this planet has worked hard to survive. And every generation of humans has contributed to the knowledge and capabilities that keep us on the path to widespread heaven. Unfortunately, the sentients in charge got their heaven, and they decided the purpose of all this human work was to keep their heaven getting more heavenly. They used power to decide they had no responsibility to the rest of the humans on the planet. They didn't actively try to make everything better for everyone. They weren't content with having only extravagantly more than the masses. They didn't try to reduce the workload, they piled it on.

If we're doomed by speed of replication, the best we can do is to try to slow down acceleration.

What is wrong with a world where humans are paid a living wage to do exactly what they care about doing, every day, while robots do the work? Why shouldn't that be a more valid goal, in fact, than speeding up the slow-drip of public resources into private hands?

Forget jobs as the means to feed and house a population. Pay people to be alive and contribute their unique gifts. Create environments for them to learn and explore what we know of the world in the context of what calls them.

How can we afford to do that? By focusing our resource use through creative resource pricing and taxation approaches that put power back in the hands of smaller entities. And by getting robots to do what they do best, and humans suck at  - boring, repetitive work.

2013, we are behind the times. We're still letting ourselves be fooled and fueled by old understanding. If we're going to believe in fairy tales, believe in mine - we can each live a happy, fulfilled life on this planet. It's possible. We just have to aim for it and build the ant hill grain by grain, generation by generation. It's aiming that represents our current challenge.

Wait, no. It's believing.

Fighting For...?

Warrior's Eye

I can't get behind fighting for beliefs. Beliefs are patterns to organize perceptions into a concept of reality that a person can live within. They can't be foisted on other people with other perceptions.

I can't get behind fighting for truth. Truth is a phantom that appears to have substance until you try to touch it, make it real - then, it dissipates, pops up somewhere else. The human brain is not a fine enough instrument to comprehend truth.

I can't get behind fighting. Fighting implies win/lose, us/them, either/or. 

If not fighting, what is this war about?

This is not a war of ideology. It is not a war of beliefs, or truth. It is a war on people. A war on the animal that is a person. It's a colonization from inside bodies, a colonization of a physical animal, with particular properties, towards particular ends. Does any ant know the secrets of The Hill? Does any ant understand she is on a planet, floating in space? Do we know we are on a galaxy, floating in eternity?

We are animals trying to live like angels. Lately, we are animals trying to live like robots. Machines. We place the needs of Life below the needs of Production. And we put the needs of Production below the needs of Profit. And we put the needs of even Profit below the needs of Power. And thus, Power runs the show.

I vote for Love to run the show. I realize her name is not even on the ballot. But this is a write-in. By popular demand. I want Love to run the show.

Can I fight for Love? That's the kicker - there is no such thing as fighting for Love. I need to love for Love. I need to create pockets and spaces for her reserves, spread her where I can, plow and seed the fields where her roots might get strangled. 

Whatever that means. 

(it doesn't feel nearly as satisfying as a good, clean fight)

The Centre of the Universe

The Centre of the Universe

The Centre of the Universe

is everywhere I look

(an embrace to know)

Here

is where I am. 

Missing Something

I always thought it was me. I must be missing something. I think I honestly believed that everyone was coming from a place of good hearted intention. That this whole separation of business and relationship, the politicization and bureacuratization that inevitably accompanies change, was being run by reasonable, educated people with everyone's best interests at heart.

I believed that, and I was not without evidence. But as each shard of evidence was stripped away before my eyes, because it was "good for business," I found myself floundering to understand the context of decision making if everyone had everyone's best interest at heart. So I did what I always do - I studied the environment. I did an MBA. I'm proud to say I graduated with the highest GPA in my graduating class across all MBA programs.

And I came to understand that I hadn't misunderstood at all. Something had gone off kilter and it didn't have everyone's best interest at heart, just some people's. That's exactly how it is, attempts to obfuscate and mitigate aside. We somehow came to think that we are only responsible for our half of the negotiation, when the reality for people on the ground is very, very different from that. We try to run our systems for what we wish humans were or what we want them to be, rather than for what they are. We use humans as machines in a massive-scale machine called The Economy, and we treat them like scrap when we're done with them. The same goes for all the natural resources our governments and large, multi-national corporations collude to exploit.

It's just like that.

When I was a small child, I saw road construction, and noticed some ducks nearby. I remember realizing that the ducks' home was being destroyed. I asked my mother.

"Oh, they'll just move somewhere else," was her reply. Even then, I knew that couldn't always be the answer, that eventually they'd have nowhere to go. Even then I wondered if it wasn't, somehow...wrong, to put human needs so far in first place.

I didn't need an MBA to tell me. I already knew.

Now that I know what I've always known...what do I do now?

Covering

I admit it. I'm bothered when I see Muslim women with their heads covered. It feels like it offends the core of my being. And why should it? Why should their choice make any difference to me, any more than gay marriage should matter to straight people?

Here's the take (however incomplete) that drives me to discomfort.

Men see women's sexuality as a threat. They know that even their strongest resolutions have trouble standing up against the promise of sex, a "woman's wiles". It's how they're built, from a purely "body" perspective. It's their achilles heel, a weakness they share with our ancient ancestors. Men get distracted by thoughts of sex. Biological, beyond reason, beyond will. It's a primal power that many have not even mastered, as displayed through violence, displays of anger, jealousy, and yes, catcalling and harassing women. Seeing women's pretty hair, round breasts, bum cheeks, etc. distracts men from their purpose, whatever that is. If they haven't taught themselves to look beyond it, to find the humanity and connect in a non-sexual space, being asked to do so can be very difficult.

Some men expect women to cover for their weakness. They expect women to keep their own power diminished, their sexuality hidden, so the men won't be offended by the reminder that women hold power over them. They expect women to take responsibility for men's sexuality and lack of control over it by removing the temptation, regardless of how headgear or burkhas affect the woman's human life experience.

Seeing women covered only reminds me of how weak men can be.

It reminds me that entire factions of people regard men's lack of control as women's problem. It reminds me of how far we have to go before a woman's human experience is as important in the world as a man's. How far we are from the social equality that peace demands. It reminds me that power over is not the same as power to.

I wonder if women are doing men a favour by covering themselves. Perhaps they pity the men for their weakness, take pity on them by downplaying their sexuality and reinforcing the men's sense of power. In that case, the practice is condescending at best.

Or maybe women cover because they don't want to be seen in a sexual way. Because they are sick and tired (read: I am sick and tired) of being ogled, of not being taken seriously, of being seen as a woman first and human second, of worrying whether a man's sexuality has been triggered by their very presence. Maybe covering is a way to take back power, to say, you may not look at my body in a sexual way. Look at my eyes, that is all you can see and all you need to see. If this is the case, it's still giving men very little credit.

I have experienced conversations with many, many men who did not let my woman-ness interfere with our discourse. I know they are capable of putting aside the biological imperative. I know they can talk with me, aware that my body is female, and let that awareness sink and fade away by giving attention to the work we are doing together, the conversation we are having as humans together on Earth at the same moment and place. That is their responsibility. I expect it from them, and every day, men deliver. They are masters of themselves. They are not so weak, when they choose.

So then it comes back to a God. Did a God tell women that we have to cover ourselves? Some say yes, some say no. I have trouble believing that anything as immense as a God would get into the details of such things, and if a God did, it was probably in response to the men's weakness more than the women's modesty. In fact, if a God did specifically say women had to cover, I think that God should change Her/His mind, and I'd like the chance to be heard if that God is taking any class action hearings on the matter. I don't choose to obey, even if I believed, because I don't accept that it's my responsibility to diminish my woman-ness in order to achieve equal consideration.

I've talked with several amazing Muslim women, some of whom cover, and some who don't. I've worked to try to understand. Largely, they tell me, the choice is culturally comfortable. It's like if I moved to California and suddenly everyone was pressuring me to wear a bikini. I am not comfortable being that close to naked. They are not comfortable being as close to naked as I am in my everyday clothes and uncovered hair. As a bonus, covering meets their cultural and religious norms. They cover because they choose to. I do understand that.

I just don't like it. And I don't like that I don't like it, but, here I am.

Serious Business

Life is serious business
It’s dog-eat-dog out there
There’s no time for lallygagging
Tongue wagging
Dancing.

Life is serious business.
But I say, 2013, that it doesn’t need to be.

We can live in a la-di-da paradise world where people cooperate in peace and harmony, mediating their problems with reason and compassion, where every human life pursues its path to glory and all the shit jobs are done by robots.

So now all the serious people are ready to stop reading. Fairy tale worlds are not for grownups. There are harsh realities, tangled complexities, power and human nature to contend with. Global warming, economic recession, unemployment, environmental destruction, religious fundamentalism, vampires…wait, not vampires. Unless you really think about it.

Life’s consumptive nature does pose interesting challenges to the pursuit of a pure heart (the primary goal Hollywood has spelled out for us). Food, water, oxygen, belonging, sunshine – our bodily needs, and the basic insecurity to life they create on an hourly basis, rot away trust, breed fear and enslave us to the powers of evil men.

Evil men. I’ll say it, and I’ll say it again, because this might not be a fairy tale but we are, each and every one of us, bit players in the stories that real human beings are creating. Except when we’re not. But I’ll get to that.

Let’s start again.

Have you noticed how stressed out everyone is? How busy? Do you see the scared-rabbit look in their eyes when you ask them how they are? People are secretly wigging out, all over the place, under the pressure of stress.

Stress comes from the necessity for consumption. We are consuming creatures. Chomp, chomp, chomp. Which breeds mistrust, which…wait, we’re back to the Evil Men. Damn.

Well, there it is. We could spend all day explaining how they got evil, how they are a byproduct of the socio-economic bla bla bla, but here is the truth: some people see their lives as a quest to accumulate private ownership of as much of the earth’s resources as they possibly can, even if it means taking the entire down planet with them.

Many don’t even know they are evil. The reality where they live has its own laws of nature, which disallow any argument that presumes collective responsibility. What makes them dangerous is the limitations on their thinking parameters, and their devotion to a particular gambling ring we call the stock market. No, wait. What makes them dangerous is that they control most of the world’s resources. Right. The stuff of a good apocalypse story.

For whatever reasons, these naïve, Evil Men are as blind to inherent collective responsibility as a colour-blind person might be to blue. They cannot see beyond the rules of the game they define. They are disabled, deficient, lacking in the collective sense. Many now realize this and are seeking relief through donation and charity. I believe they can be taught how to value more than they do today. Even the most far gone sufferers. I believe it’s possible, over time, over generations, in 200 years, in a thousand.

By chipping away, throwing pebbles, making little cracks in the armour. Then rushing in with collective will. We win the way all the great fantasy underdogs win, with spirit and valour and fine guerrilla tactics. We open up spaces for love to rehabilitate. First we turn the ship back in the direction that values collective responsibility, then we haggle over the hows and whats. Right now, we’re pointed straight for the waterfall drop.

Deliberation

When governments pass more policy that only enables inequality, I hear some people wonder how they can be so blind. They point to the research that shows all the social ills associated with inequality. They wonder if the government is unaware, or stupid. They expect that governments want to do the right thing but have the wrong ideas about how to go about that.

This expectation has failed the test of experience.

What is becoming increasingly clear to me is that a select few powerful people, none of them anyone any of us think, have made a decision to increase inequality. They have used power and influence to do so through social and economic policy.

Increasing inequality actually makes sense from a long-term perspective. It turns out, people are much more concerned with the little inequalities between us and our neighbours than with the big inequalities that let some fly private jets while others can't afford a bus ticket across town. In fact, the more gradation there is among people - that is, middle and lower economic classes mingling together in town squares, schools and walmarts - the unhappier people are. In the long run, it's probably better for humans to live in two distinct socio-economic classes - rulers and populous. People are happier in poverty if they are all in poverty together.

Increasing inequality makes sense, because it will lead to the larger-scale level of happiness rising. Right?

Except.

Except that we have made every human on this planet a beggar from the moment they are born. No longer can a person choose to leave and make their way. Every square inch is guarded and protected by bullies, with set rules and strong enforcement. We are born slaves to these pre-existing conditions of the Earth. Each birth does not inherit a new chance to make whatever they can of their lives with existing resources. Those resources are owned. So the promise of life becomes a compromise, a lie, from birth, in a way that it was not for our ancestors. And the Owners force this condition on the rest of the planet, claiming its resources and animals as spoils for safely passing them from hand to hand through generations. Different Owners, but one guiding idea of Owership.

So it's basically a matter, at this point, of how we will be kept at the bottom. We are the chattel. That's the tied-up-tight of the world by 2013, and it's only going to get tighter and meaner if we stay on course with current government policies. We are resources like the oil. Except, there's an infinite number of us. We just keep churning more out, until we aren't sure what to do with all of them anymore so we invent a new kind of gum for them to manufacture to give the illusion they are "earning" their keep.

It's ingenious - first, tell the human resources that they are not allowed to hunt, grow or make their own food but must buy it. The same with shelter, water, etc. Then, make it their responsibility to convince an Owner to pay them for some effort on their part, and to pay an Owner for a place to live, food to eat, etc. Make it impossible for any human to live on this planet without the sanction of Owners. Literally. Impossible to be alive without their sanction.

In the past, Owners in North America were able to convince governments to give them public resources for free, by promising to share the profits through paying jobs - "keeping" the population. They maintained a close enough track between available jobs and available labour that governments were fooled into believing that jobs were the appropriate way to feed and house a growing population.  Robots and computers will soon make light work of the heavy burden the Owners have placed on us. Owners will not need these human machines, which are so expensive and unreliable. Luckily for them, Owners have no legal reciprocal responsibility to the people whose resources they used for free. Governments reversed course on that direction decades ago in favour of allowing the quality of life for The Many to drift significantly from what rapid-fire human innovation makes possible for The Few.

What happens when the majority of the population no longer qualify for private sector employment? When only the Elite and their children have the resources to make the grade? (hint: we're already there, all over North America). The Owners say, well, they will just suffer and die, that's not our problem. The Governments say that they are not responsible for babysitting people, and abdicate their responsibility as they abdicated the responsibility to trade our resources for appropriate recompense. It will only take a generation or three before the weak get weeded out and the ones left are so focused on survival that they will do anything for peace.

Great excess is only possible at extremes.

Unfortunately for us, there's nowhere left to go now that the globe is so full of humans. When we don't like the way things are tied up, there's no new world to strive in, no more chances to take except within the web constructed around us. If that web is based on principles of meanness, "everyone for myself-ness," the conditions at the bottom will remain deplorable, and more of us will be there.

The Owners don't care. At the tip you are last to go under.

They probably even believe that increasing inequality will lead to more happiness in future generations. They now know, as you and I do, that the level of decadence we currently enjoy in North America cannot be sustained with current technologies on current resources for every human alive on the planet. In an ideal state, they hope to concentrate resources in a way that promotes innovation to that next disruptive shift (quantum?) that will make it possible. But in the meantime, they need to lower the population's expectations of what their life should be, while dangling the hope of what it could be. It's reached new heights, this campaign.

These long-term visionaries believe what I have not accepted: that every human life cannot matter equally under current conditions on Earth.

Or, quite possibly, no one has thought about any of this, orchestrated anything, decided on any direction. The "natural flow" of human spirit into the technical depth we've achieved just accidentally leads us to increase our population while decreasing its quality of life, rather than using our resources and know-how to make at least basic life sustenance available to all.

Quite possibly, it's all just a big muck of too many selfish people making selfish and/or stupid decisions. Like when the playdough gets mixed up and turns all these ugly shades of grey. There's no untangling that mess.

I'm not sure whether I'm more disturbed imagining deliberation or accident.

Job Postings

Against the Grain

Job postings depress me.

We identify a stack of expectations that most people cannot completely fulfill. We want someone who excels at team work and collaboration, but is comfortable working independently. We want a person who shows initiative but understands how to work within the necessary confines of bureaucracy. We want a super-star who won't outshine anyone or step on anyone's toes, while executing with precision and efficiency on limited resources. And we want this amazing person to do these fifty-two hard things that we have identified need doing, precisely in the way we want them done, to the metrics we have established.

Does anything seem off to you here? Maybe it's just me. But we are talking about people, aren't we? People. Human, creative, spiritual, loving, compassionate, playful, mistake-prone, bright, curious, ambitious, flawed and bumble-lovable people. The creatures who dominate this planet Earth. Those people?

The animals who want to live like angels, but enslave themselves to satisfy primitive chemical-based desires.

Is this really the best way for the only-known Keepers of the Consciousness of the Universes to spend their days? Getting ready to be the person we want to hire, then being it? Wouldn't we be better to help people  do what they love and are good at, to serve each other and the planet?

Why have we enslaved the entire human race to a limited, cruel and exacting set of ideas about what human society should be doing?

Just asking.

Particle or Wave (a Maverick post)

I'm trying to read Stephen Hawking's Brief History of Time (which, I'm sorry to say, is not particularly brief). I smiled at his pride in the Forward, that he had made this information so accessible. Mr. Hawking is so beyond my complexity that he may not be able to comprehend the simplicity of my mind. I keep thinking I'm following his train of thought, when suddenly, he says "of course..." or "but obviously..." and I realize I'm just seeing the ghost of that train, some steam it left behind.

Maverick tried to explain about particles and waves. He said:

There are no drops in the ocean, just water. Drops get created when the water is temporarily broken up, separated, by an external force, like wind or a whale's tail. Energy is expended, and a drop is isolated. Or energy is expended and a wave is isolated. It’s still water, regardless of the temporary shape taken by isolating a part. It's still ocean.

Um, okay. 

Is the drop more isolated than the wave? 

...I don't know. 

Don't be lazy.

Fine. I guess it's...a less powerful being. It has less chance of causing other exchanges of energy, other actions. It doesn't have the whole ocean under it, pushing it. The wave's not really separate, it's attached, while the drop is not touching any other water, it's just...collected on itself, sitting there, waiting for something to happen to it. 


So, my girl, are you a drop or a wave?

Hey! I thought we were talking about science!

We are. 

Impatient with Despair

I spent years ignoring, fighting, pushing down and hiding my deep despair.

It's not who I am. I am not just that. I have so much love, so much hope, so much joy, so much beauty in my life every single day.

And I have despair. Or sorrow? Whatever. I can be fine, going along just fine, and something will trigger it. A news story (so many lately), a song on the radio...really, almost any of the common signs of the patriarchy, the war machine, the rape culture, the commercial control, the shallow and brutal nature of my species. The human species.

Yesterday, feeling great. This morning, I woke up and I knew SHE was in the room with me.

Over the last few years, I've worked hard to allow myself to process the sadness out, like feces. Like birth, is a nicer analogy. The cramps that my body interprets from the flow of what is. But I have to say, when I felt Despair in my room with me today, I didn't want to. I didn't want to let it flow. I didn't want to let it wash over me. I didn't want to feel it at all.

I felt angry with it for existing. I felt angry with all the legitimate, valid reasons why I could live my entire life feeling despair every second, if I let myself pay attention to that. Yes, there are reasons to hope, to exalt, to celebrate, when you look. But they don't erase the horror of humanity's utter failure to grow up. That's always there too, a wedge. And I'm sick of processing it while so many of my species just harden the casings on their hearts and make themselves bullet-proof to it, instead of trying to change it. I'm sick of it existing and having reasons to exist. I'm sick of it marring my life experience, which otherwise is amazing.

The Positivers will have you just re-focus your mind. But to me that is selfish and self-serving, an emergency measure to keep you on track but ultimately, not a fix. The Change-The-Worlders will have you channel it into largely unappreciated, unsupported and potentially alienating action. I can (and do) take action, sure, to some extent, but once in awhile it's hard to ignore how futile, isolated and up-hill my individual efforts feel. In the end, I often feel more diminished than uplifted when I review how very ineffective I am. Even people who agree with me don't ally with me. I feel alone in a crowd.

I don't want to give Despair this morning of mine, yet it won't let me do anything else. I know it will pass. I tell myself the cliches that hold some truth. I remind myself that a pile of sand is a million individual grains that can be moved one at a time. I remind myself of the progress of the past 200 years and what's possible in 200 more. But really, when she arrives, Despair does an amazing job of cutting these thought exercises to their bones, and building up a far more likely society of increasing human brutality, coldness, cynicism. She takes over my body, mind and spirit until I can process her out with movement, with breath, with tears, with sleep. Like a virus, a parasite, a blood-born disease. She takes all my energy to process her OUT.

I don't want to use the methods I've developed for moving Sorrow through, any more than I want to talk with the telemarketers who interrupt my day. I don't want to engage with her at all. I don't want her to have any reason to exist. I want to believe the world is good, progress is towards compassion, and living my life fully will make a difference. I want that belief to not feel so deluded in light of evidence that stacks up on the opposite side. I want humanity to be better.

I'm bored with despair. I'm sick of it. I've lost my patience for it.

Despair, and anger with despair. Great combo.

But you know what manages anger? Only love.

(I'd better fill myself up)

It's not hard

It's not hard to watch another person fail and dissect why their failure is their fault.

It's not hard to observe another's weakness and decide they are weak.

It's not hard to assume you would do better when you don't see yourself likely to have to prove that.

It's not hard to let your behind-the-scenes words tear down another's being based on shallow evidence.

It's not hard to hate a person who does and says hateful things.

I was taught to take pride only in accomplishments that mean something, pride in doing what's hard. Why do so many humans tie up their pride in judging other people, when nothing could be easier?

We all know what's hard. I don't need to preach compassion. But then, maybe I do. Maybe we all do.

Enough.

When men are in the position of having their lives, social status and the very condition and health of their body compromised, then they can get their say. When the medical community figures out how to produce children without enslaving my body into the process, then men can have some input. Until then, it's really none of their business. When men understand what it means to have something shoved inside their body against their will, perhaps they can decide whether that's still valid humour. Until then, they have no right to their jokes.

Women must have autonomy over our bodies. We are not holes for penises that happen to be attached to bodies. We are not incubators for male seeds. We are full-fledged human spirits who happen to have been born into female bodies, the same way men happen to have been born into male bodies. We deserve the right to control our own bodies and decide who gets to be inside, whether it's a man or a baby, whether we're asleep or awake, whether we're scantily clad or wearing burqas. The men who demand their own freedom would never put up with the level of scrutiny and control that many of those same men want to impose on women.

It seems to me that many of the world's men don't understand that we are even the same kind of creature. They are human. We are the females of their species, somehow less human, there for their use and control like all other resources that the largely male Power Mongers take and abuse. They see our pain as less than their pain, our joy as less than their joy. Some see it as slightly less, other assume it's another experience altogether, not quite as human as their human experience.

Being a woman is not less. In many ways, the female human experience is more - on the whole, women get and give more love, we create life in our bodies, we have the strength to endure our sub-class status and still believe, in our hearts, in our own humanity.

I've had it with meaningless, derogatory debate. I've had it with cultures that insist on patriarchy. I've had it.

Humanity, the jury's still out.

There Must Be A Name For That

Overload

There Must Be A Name For That

A mind well trained to reach for heart
reminders of gratitude and sweet relief
steeped in hope-enlivened acceptance.

Yet still endless dishes confound gratitude
joy dragged through laundry's soiled folds.
Clutter rings my ears raw while
muddy floors grate sand into the open wound that was
my patience.

I long only to chase fluttering moments of spontaneous happiness!

Where are my robots, 2013?

The Syndrome

Life Lessons On the Road

When I find people unfathomable, when they insist on closing off, when they just do dumb things, I try to remind myself that they can't help it. They suffer from Human Corporeal Syndrome (HCS), likely exacerbated by negative environmental stimuli. HCS impacts cognitive and relational abilities, resulting in error-prone judgement, limited perspective and imprecise communication. People with this syndrome are generally capable of loving, thoughtful and generous behaviour, but when symptoms present, they experience difficulty accessing these areas of the brain. Sufferers may sometimes exhibit erratic, unreasonable and even aggressive behaviour. Symptoms may occur at any time without warning, but appear with greater frequency and intensity in the presence of excess stress, anger, frustration, hunger, and especially fatigue. Symptoms may improve or worsen over time, depending primarily on lifestyle changes. Approximately 100% of humans suffer with HCS. A cure has not been found. 

Dear Stephen Colbert

Dear Stephen Colbert,

I wonder, sometimes, what it must be like to be you. I envy your amazing skill, shake my head in awe that you pull it off, night after night. I imagine the behind-the-scenes scampering that must go into producing a high-calibre show in 24 hours, and hit those bang-on lines fast enough for prime time. I wonder how much of that daily stress you own yourself, how much is done for you. I’m intensely curious.

But even more, I wonder what it’s like to live a double life. To be a husband and father, not-quite-normal but wealthy-normal, and to be Stephen Colbert, cult icon, voice of reason and showman for millions of people each day. It makes my paltry contributions to consciousness-raising seem small, I’ll tell you. But at what cost? And is it worth it?

I hear you, lately, putting those questions out there. You’ve got the payment, you don’t owe anyone anything. It’s hard work, being a voice, changing the world one day at a time. What if it is killing your spirit? What if you’re caught up in a tornado of your own making, trapped in a Jeckyll/Hyde nightmare that reality twists from your dreams? If I were you, I might be wondering if it isn’t time to shut that whole thing down.

From those to whom much is given, more is expected. If you grew up Catholic, as did I, you understand that the balance of the universe depends on your choices, every day, to keep your soul clean. Even if, like me, you eschewed religion and even god, you would know this is true like gravity is true, regardless of belief. We are responsible by simple virtue of being alive, awake and privileged. We owe.

You may wonder what it’s like to stay in stealth mode, and I can tell you it has its own frustrations and challenges, ones I daily imagine the easy bulldozer of celebrity would clear away tout de suite. But it’s calm here, as long as I don’t worry about missed opportunities and impending bankruptcy. I do my work every day, surprising anyone who meets my eyes, throwing little pebbles to crack the armor on the stubbornly restricted. I resist judgment and encourage care. I rail against injustice and simple, selfish viewpoints.

I write my little stories, dream my giant dreams, and love my family and myself with all the energy I save up from denying the world more of my time. I take pictures and paint pictures, listen to people and make their stories real by mixing them together. It’s a good life. But my count is low. I won’t settle all my soul debt in this lifetime with one-at-a-time piecemeal approach like this. Your debt may be bigger, but your count is stellar, your influence great. I envy that.

All this to say, what you do next can change everything. You can take this cusp we’re on and help us ride the rim. Thank you for putting out in the world each day. What you share, create, question and push matters.

Best wishes,
Cheryl

STAND UP FOR A MINIMUM

It's about time Humanity stopped acting like a whiney teenager, clinging to the easy ways of childhood and resisting the growing demands of responsibility with angst.

Here's the tough talk someone, somewhere along the way gives to most of us: living with other people carries certain responsibilities.

Enough with haggling about how much responsibility you should have. Reality is reality. If life were fair, a whole lot of things would be different. Some people have to do more, pay more, be more than others, and that's just the way it is. Some people get a free ride, one way or another. Who cares? Suck it up, buttercup. It's not about what's "fair" or "right" from our miniscule perspectives, what we "should" be doing. It's about something very basic - a life. Each one.

Not a life without pain. Not a life without suffering or loss or difficulty - there is no such thing. But, there is no reason on Earth, with all humankind has accomplished, why every single human could not inherit, as birthright, at least basic safe shelter, hygiene, and access to the necessities of life.

There is not one reason on Earth that this is impossible. Wait, there is. One reason. People suck.

That's the only reason. We don't want to do it. We don't want to announce, with one large, Human voice, that we are going to set the minimum at basic safe shelter, hygiene, and access to the necessities of life.

The cynics say, why SHOULD I be responsible for other people's failure to thrive? Fools. We are responsible. We are just not taking responsibility. Should has nothing to do with it. Quit worrying about whether we should have to, and accept that the human community owes itself at least this much.

The bleeding hearts say, survival is not good enough, what about DIGNITY? Fools. All over the Earth, Dignity is so far away you can't even see the bus station to get there from here. Quite wasting time and insist on the minimum floor, instead of rejecting it. Don't stop there, by all means - fight for your beliefs. But accept the minimum as a first step.

We don't want to stand up for the minimum, for all sorts of interweaving reasons that have nothing to do with whether Kara dies of thirst today. We don't want to, so we don't.

If we wanted to, we would say it loud and clear. We would engage a ten-year study into the ways to make it happen. We would establish short and long-range plans. We would guess what it would cost, and insist that our economic system provide that through a combination of pricing for resources, fair wages, human life-cycle benefits (pensions and family requirements included) and public infrastructure. We would embark on a fifty-year planetary goal of making it happen. Or a hundred year. Or a thousand year.

And we would do it.

But we won't. And that is why people suck.

Why humans don't trust each other

We can’t trust each other because we suck.

I don’t mean as a species, although that also holds. I mean you. Personally. You suck.

And me. And my grandma and Mother Teresa and everyone ever. Somewhere, somehow, hidden or visible, despised or embraced, each one of us sucks in our own special way.

But it gets better.

Not only do we suck, but we also judge.

I don’t mean as a species. You. Judge. You judge. Yes you do. Me, too. Even the judgment that you are not judgmental is a judgement. Even my judgment that you are, and your judgment of my judgment.

We are a judging species. It’s one of our keys to survival.

We judge every single input our brain receives, the first and largely unconscious judgement being to notice or not notice something, someone or somesense. Every time someone tells us, shows us or accidentally lets us see a little of how they suck, we judge them. Yes, you do. Yes, I do. Our judgement happens like a reflex. We can decide to ignore that unfair judgment, act on that wise judgment, pretend we never judged and move on. We do that all the time. But that doesn’t mean there was no judge. Somewhere, somehow, every single day each of us judges other people.

Judging is our fundamental process of living – taking in data, categorizing and prioritizing it, and responding to it to ensure our continued survival. We judge that data against an every-growing, ever-blending, ever-foggy memory database of experiences, trying to determine whether whatever we’ve noticed will harm us, help us, or leave us unchanged. Driving too fast, too slow, at the limit. Coffee too strong, too mild, just right. Clothes too skanky, too fancy, too worn, not matching, ill-fitting, out-of-style, plain. Liar. Bitch. Classy. Friendly. Trustworthy. Hot. Fat. Gay. Religious. Teacher. Vetran. Dangerous. Safe. Stupid. Right. Wrong. Judge judge judge judge judge.

Even if we notice, dismiss and get beyond our unhelpful judgments in relation to other people, most of us will live this whole lifetime maintaining a constant, running tally of how much we suck in relation to the rest of the people in our vicinity. We use myriad unconscious and conscious rating scales. Prettier than me or not. Fatter than me or not. Smarter than me or not. More accomplished? Less learned? Taller? Richer? No matter how we try to turn it off, no matter how low we get that volume, there’s always at least a little squeak of knowing that I suck and hoping I don’t suck more than other people, since that would threaten my very acceptance in the tribe if I ever let my guard down and let anyone see how I suck. Which I won't do.

We all want to believe maybe it’s okay that we suck, since everyone sucks, but we know it’s only okay with judgey humans if we don’t suck a lot more or less than them.

So anyway, you just KNOW that SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE is going to judge you, since not everyone is enlightened. Thus, we can’t trust anyone until we know how they suck, and we can’t let them see how we suck until we trust them. You can see why we go so slowly, most of the time. You can see why relationships are hard. We so often let each other down, because we suck and we judge.

Combine judgement with sucking and we get insecurity. Insecurity is a root cause for many of society's ills.

Combine insecurity with power and we grow cruelty.
Combine insecurity with loss and we grow despair.
Combine insecurity with winning and we grow egotism.
Combine insecurity with fear and we grow desperation.
Combine insecurity with outrage and we grow radicalism.
Combine insecurity with spirituality and we grow religion.
Combine insecurity with love and we grow trust.

Trust. We can’t trust each other. We test each other constantly because deeply we long to trust and be trusted, though we know (you know, I know, she knows, they know) that we don’t deserve trust since we SUCK, and we can’t trust even the best person because they will JUDGE US and plus, being untrustworthy may actually be the way they SUCK.

But we can try to love each other in spite of the judgement, in spite of not quite trusting them or ourselves. Maybe someday even instead of. We will fail, because we suck, but we can try, because we don't JUST suck. We also shine with the beauty that is humanity encompassed in our singular, unrepeatable, utterly unique experience and perspective. So we can try, every day, to love each other and to shine, and maybe to suck a bit less. That's what we can do.

Because friends, the alternative sucks. Trust me.

Answers

Watching the reflection

Looking, waiting, hoping, seeking, wishing for, demanding, aching for, begging for 

Answers

When suddenly I realize

I have been looking at their reflection all along

that's what Questions are. 

Blunderer

Poise

A letter home (dictated)

I am a blunderer. Translating meaning into understanding confounds me. Intention transmitted to human receptors through language seems subject to endless distorting filtration. I cannot predict all the synapses and pathways in place for a given human, built through trial and error, experience and patterns, joy and pain, that might distort, filter or pollute one wrong word before the transmission even reaches central processing. I'm meant to convey reassurance without condescension, support without pressure, expression without overwhelming, response without reaction, understanding without judgement, love without expectation, all through external words, tone, and body appearance. I cannot know the map my words will follow once they enter the brain through the auditory nerves, yet I will be judged by the way in which my message is received, not just how I deliver it. No wonder these creatures cannot live together in peace. They already struggle to overcome evolutionary fight or flight programming, and they lack even the basic telepathic abilities that might support common understanding and empathy. Which is why story remains so important.

Humanity is a story-based species that has chosen social and economic paths to deny its own story, deny its members their stories, and treat story as inferior to a limited understanding of "fact."  Story has been relegated to low priority, entertainment or "spare time." Humans punish themselves by denying legitimacy to what they most love. Children love comics and hate lines, yet they teach children with lines. Adults love play and hate work, and yet they structure their society to maximize work.  So sad.

Humans have forgotten that the only truth is story, and story captures our collective truth. People are drawn to story because it provided the means by which they learned to live together in the first place, the means by which they became the dominant species on this planet. Story creates a collective telepathy to compensate for the lost sense of oneness, the way a blind animal's hearing might improve.

Can humans develop their sense of oneness without the mess religion has made of it? I still think so. Or at least, I haven't stopped hoping. And blundering my way through.

Love,
Me.

Unjust Justice

I am biting back tears of frustration. My heart-rate has sped up. I'm flailing my arms in impotent rage.

A woman gave birth in her jail cell. Doesn't sound so bad? How about this. She screamed in agony for nine hours with a breech birth that should have been a C-Section while guards moved her to seclusion so they wouldn't need to listen, and a nurse told her she had indigestion. She wasn't examined, her dilation wasn't observed, no doctor was called, and she was left to suffer. Her son's feet were coming out of her before anyone decided to call an ambulance. The only reason we are even hearing about it is that the woman in question happens to have a mother who still gives a sh*t, which many prisoners would not have, and the Elizabeth Fry Society stepped in to help with a complaint.

I've given birth, twice, in "ideal" conditions. My births were "easy." And I remember the overwhelmingness of the pain, the desperation I felt near the end. What this woman suffered is torture, no better than waterboarding or attaching electrodes to testicles - worse, actually, since they put her life and an innocent life at significant risk in addition to inflicting unnecessary pain and hardship on an already difficult medical issue. The people responsible were not only irresponsible, but deliberately, willfully neglectful. One might even say cruel, pending investigation.

The problem is prison. It dehumanizes caretakers and victims (aka prisoners) alike. We need a comprehensive mental health system to support those who cannot, for whatever reasons, live within the laws of civil society. Prisons don't work. They don't correct, rehabilitate or support. They make people LESS likely to become law-abiding citizens, and they destroy the humanity of people who work as guards, nurses and other roles within them. They create dependent, resentful humans out of people who were already struggling to participate in society. And they create conditions under which abuse is not only possible, but highly likely.

This is one example. Just one of thousands. People are not treated as people. We allow this, every day, and support it through our tax dollars. Stephen Harper is entrenching us even further into this world of incarceration that does not support the goals of rehabilitation. It makes me crazy, mad enough to spit, until I collapse into resignation that HUMANS SUCK and this species will never rise above its nastiest nature. Because most people won't care at all.

And the government response? An investigation, yes, but the statement I heard on CBC was basically, "we're sorry, of course, but these things happen." They don't just happen. They are the result of an entire system of injustice at the tail end of our "justice" system, one that makes nurses deaf to cries, makes guards insensitive to human needs, and reduces humans to mere vessels into which punishment can be poured.

It makes me sick.

http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Woman+gives+birth+baby+Ottawa+jail+cell+after+guards+allegedly+ignore+pleas+help+with+video/7374437/story.html

An Open Letter to Barack Obama

(photo from Salon)

Dear Barack Obama,

I'm sorry you had a lousy debate. That totally sucks.

You have done more in ten years than most of us could do in ten lifetimes. The thing about people is, no matter how much you do, they will expect more. People expect you to be amazing, all the time, and they will suck everything good right out of you. That's their nature. You had to know that going in, so hopefully you let it slide by now.

Maybe you want to take a minute to remember the big picture. You are a creature of light inhabiting a body, and in this mattering you have become the crux of a decision the Human Species is making about how we want to live together on this planet. You carry the torch of those who stood before and said that every person has an equal share in both responsibility and bounty; that the economic system is meant to support families, not the other way around. You stand for the children and not-yet-arrived who want to live together in a someday-world where no one suffers poverty or discrimination. You are the focal point for this thinking, even when you don't uphold it, even when you twist it to suit what you see as necessary, even when you let your humanity overcome your divinity. Because there is only one alternative, the alternative that says we are entitled to nothing, not even to sovereignty over our own bodies, while Power consolidates at the top of the economic spectrum.

When you allow the debate to be minimized to immediate details, the real debate becomes obscured, trees masking forest. You lose the chance to establish the most important conversation, the one that tries to answer two questions: what is the minimum we owe each other, and what is the maximum anyone should control? There are no easy answers, as you know better than any other human alive on the planet today. That's why we need a real debate. You have another chance. You can be the hero who comes out swinging and wins the day by reminding everyone what really matters.

You have taken on a giant responsibility and more still is asked of you. It must be tempting to look at Bill Clinton and Al Gore, and wish you were gallivanting around spouting big ideas instead of fighting in the mud pit for the right to keep the weight you hold for all of us. I hope you meditate. I hope you do yoga. I hope you have a hardwired connection to the divine that lights and sustains you. I hope you sleep well. I hope you laugh with your wife and daughters. I love you.

You carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. What a life!

Congratulations and Best Wishes,
Cheryl

Fearsome

I am a fearsome creature.

You may respond: oh, no, you’re not fearsome! and you will probably think you are reassuring me.

I am fearsome. I’m not unhappy about it. I am heartbroken that you’re afraid of me.

(which makes me turn my eyes away before I have to see it)

You may respond: well, yes, sometimes you’re fearsome, but you’re amazing in other ways! and you will probably think you are reassuring me.

I am fearsome. I’m not ashamed. You value what I bring in my contained smallness despite my inability to always hide my bigness. That is love in part. Thank you for it.

You may respond: but I see how hard you try, you’re getting better! and you will probably think you are reassuring me.

I’m not trying to fix it. All the time and energy I expend mitigating my overwhelmingness is for your benefit. I find it distracting and draining. 

I would rather spin my glory with loud voice and unmistakable force than get better at stepping daintily between the lines. I would rather be wind fire magnetic power if I trusted you to handle me, massive me, clumsy me, dark burning me, bright glowing me as I show up when I don’t protect you from me.

You can stand rock-strong amidst my gusts. You can bask lion-lazy in my shine. You can ride hawk-joyful on my roiling currents. I can be rock and lion and hawk for your weather. We can dance with love when we trust each other’s strength. When we trust our own.

I am fearsome and I am strong. I mean you no harm and I want no protection from you. I can protect myself. Can you?

Dragonfly

Dragonfly fly high 

fly high dragonfly 

dragonfly fly high to the sky

Take my dreams dragonfly 

steal them softly with a sigh 

untangle and unwind them from the lies

Dragonfly fly high 

fly high dragonfly 

I may gasp and I may cry dragonfly

Dreams are caught up in my soul 

I don’t want to let them go 

as life becomes a series of goodbyes

Fly high dragonfly

flitterzippy lovely guy

swiftly dash beyond my reach dragonfly

Fly my dreams away from me 

let my heart begin to breathe 

dragonfly fly them high fly them high.

Can you help them greet the sun 

searing heat can make them one 

can you bring them to the rainbow-dappled hills?

Can you share them your delight 

at this unexpected flight 

can you fill them with pure life affirming will?

Fly my dreams away from me

let them flourish let them be

let them transform in the sky dragonfly

Infuse them in the clouds 
up where they can thunder loud 
let them rain back down upon me 
wash my eyes

What is the past?

Hope Shoots

I picked every choice I live with, and each made its own sense in its time.

Gnarled and cut but solid roots
Reaching still for the sun with green hope shoots

What is the past to me?

Only the way I got here.

The Laughing Master

Play Recedes with Adulthood

If you're not aware, I host all sorts of characters in the spare corners of my mind.  


I’m currently hosting an ancient martial arts Master. He resents being stuck with a low-talent beginner, especially a woman. He says I’m no fun, pent up, and not a natural. In retaliation, I point out that he must have earned me, so he should be grateful for the opportunity to learn what I have to teach. He harrumphs. 

He was the Laughing Master, he shares, though the only humour he’s ever shown me has been at my expense. One thing's for sure: he's pretty serious about being ridiculous. 

MAKE NOISE! The Master decrees. I do not want to make noise. He prefers a deep, throaty Kiai, a death growl that isn’t, which sounds to me only like a silly girl trying to imitate a man’s sound. He wants me to yowl, howl, hiss and growl to add power to my strikes. (I feel like an idiot.)

MAKE FACES! The Master demands. Wide eyes, screwed up nose, teeth bared, nostrils flared – comic faces, extreme and grotesque. Appear slightly mad, he insists. When you make unexpected sounds and distracting faces, you take your opponent off-balance. You separate his energy. Your face is a frightening, changing mask, an integral part of your strike. Let the strike make the face. (I have no idea what that means.)

LAUGH! The Master commands. You find it funny to be forced to fight. It is funny! Laugh like it’s your privilege to be alive in a body in motion. It is your privilege! Your laugh creates anxiety for an opponent. What is she laughing at? Why is she not afraid? The aggressor loses focus. Laugh when you achieve a strike, laugh when you miss. Laugh when you win and when you writhe on the floor. Liberate your laughter, child. (I anxiously giggle.) 

I wish I could give him what he wants. I try. He's right - I am pent up. I'm working on loosening the screws I tightened for years with all my might. I'm trying to re-learn how to be playful with my own body. In the meantime, I suggest, he will just have to find me funny. The Master replies that when I can find myself funny, perhaps I will progress. Until then, he deadpans, fake it.

I’m sure he’s right. I force myself to smile in the mirror. And begin again.

Made My Day (another Bad Mom post)

A piece of advice. Don't ever take your 5 and 6 year old children with you swimsuit shopping. Swimsuit shopping is torture enough. And yet, today, I made the attempt.


Children don't keep their promises, even when you buy them a hotdog for lunch and bait them with a lollypop in the car and buy them a snack-sized Carmel Corn to share after nap (if they have a good nap and stay in their rooms at least an hour). Children are physically unable to prevent themselves from groaning and moaning, whining and complaining, pinching each other, touching things they shouldn't, begging for this ORDEAL to END, can't we just go HOME? While I search, end of season, through the dregs of swimsuits to find something that will hide the stuff I most want to hide and show off my precious assets. In my size and not hideously floral. 


You can imagine me, now, children in tow, at the Mall, my very very least favourite place to go other than WalMart, with a single bathing suit in my hand, the one possible fit, and then we can go home oh please please fit, just look halfway decent and I will BUY you, please! Calling: children, stay with me, children, with me, keep your hands off that, slow down, come back please, guys, you are giving me a hard time, please don't try my patience more, come on, hold my hand, thank you. Now may be a good time to mention that we have been to three other stores already. 


My son asks me, Mom, do you LIKE kids? 


He asks stuff like that with a sly little smirk, like a bratty enlightened master putting me through my paces. He makes a sport of reading me and feeding me back to myself. I don't call it mindreading, more like intention reading. He loves me enough to pay that much attention, so I try not to let on when I feel defensive. He knows anyway. 


I dodge. I say, I like you guys. 


Yeah, he says, but do you like KIDS? Like, other kids? 


Well, I say, I like some kids, but I don't know very many kids. I'm not really a kid kind of person, a person who would spend all day with lots of kids, but I like you guys, and I'm glad I'm with you. 


We enter a strange maze of the smallest possible box-like change rooms imagined by man (and you know it was a man). Certainly no place for me to wrangle a swimsuit without elbowing small faces. I ask them to wait in the hall. I point to a mirrored corner. I say, amuse yourself making faces in the mirror, don't leave this spot, wait here. Maybe sing a song so I can hear you. He says, nah, I don't want to sing.


She insists on coming in with me. I tell her, if you come in, you're staying in. It's tight in here. She's already squeezed herself beside me. She whines like a puppy and holds her hands like puppy paws. She tilts her head to one side. She stays. 


I try to strip without crushing her. I ball my clothes in a heap at my feet. I call out, Whatcha doing out there? No reply. I try again, already reaching for my clothes. HEY! What are you up to? This time he replies.


Nothing. Just looking. He's close. Okay, stay by the mirrors, right? 


Right.


I can hear that he's totally nowhere near the mirrors. He's in the last change stall. There were no other customers when we came in, but there might be now. I call out, don't get in the stalls! Please, go stand by the mirrors! I add "please" to soften the impatience which leaks through my best defenses into my Tone. I don't think it helps. 


I call again, Are you by the mirrors? YES! Okay, I'm just asking. 

I'm completely undressed and examining the leg-holes on my swimsuit find. Little Girl reaches for the barely-locked door.

"Do NOT open that door," I boom at her, already at the high-alert stage on first warning. She's not used to that, so I startle her into obeying for 3 seconds. I start struggling into the spandex "belly tucker" suction-suit and have it halfway up my thighs when she reaches for the door again.

STOP! Do NOT open that door. She looks up at me lazily, her finger on the trigger.


It's just for a second, she assures me. I'll close it really quick. My eyes widen and my head shakes side to side. No. No you won't. You will leave the door CLOSED. I'm kind of hissing to avoid yelling. Clearly an unhappy voice.

Now, the whine. I don't WANT to stay in here!

Her hand hasn't moved. I try to tell her it won't be much longer, but she's too busy groaning and rolling her head from side to side in frustration, eyes to the back of her head.

"Well, you will stay here anyway. Maybe you should have stayed out there when I asked you to. But you wanted to be here, so now you are here and you will stay here until I am finished and I hate this suit..." I peter off. DO. NOT. TALK. YOUR. THOUGHTS. OUT. LOUD. STOP. breathe. 

I put a stranglehold on my frustrated inner being, thrashing around ready to lash her tail. breathe.

Then I hear it:

Excuse me?

A woman, slightly tentative. Oh no. What is he doing? What has he done? Did he peek in on her? Is he still out there?

"Um, yes?" I ask, nervous.

And she says:

I just wanted to say that you're a really good mother.

My brain does a quick once-over on the last five minutes. Not my moments of shining glory. The booming. The hissing. The whining. And yet.

I stammer my thanks. She doesn't stop.

Your kids are really well behaved, and you pay attention to them, and...I just want to say that you're a good mother. 

I thank her again, embarrassed, half-dressed, in my stall-cell. Tears sting my eyes. My heart, which has been tightly closed and protecting itself throughout the Mall Mission, remembers to beat warm. I have no idea what to say. 


My daughter asks, What did she say? 


She said I'm a good mom, I tell her, trying not to sound surprised. Isn't that nice of her? 


Like "nice" describes it. 


Who is she? my daughter asks. And I find myself saying something I never would have expected to come out of my mouth. I say, maybe she's an angel who just goes around making people's days better. She made my day.  


We burst from our confinement to find my son making faces in the mirror. I look for the woman, but the three faces that turn my way are tired, bored and a little hostile, like, what are YOU looking at, lady?


I give them each a smile anyway. 

Dear Jon Stewart (and Marco Rubio by proxy)

Dear Jon Stewart (and Marco Rubio, by proxy),

Even though I'm Canadian, I watched your interview with Senator Marco Rubio four times. I have struggled for several years to understand why smart people with similar goals see economic issues from different universes. Why does so much of what Senator Rubio says make sense to me, while I fundamentally know his approach will destroy what I love about freedom.

You said, “you’ve removed spending from value.” Ah, ha! A light began to bubble into the murk.

Senator Rubio said, “the economy must grow, we agree on that.” BOOM! That's when I understood - he sees the economy as Ever-Rising Dough.

When I was a kid, there was a popular phenomenon where housewives would pass each other the ever-rising dough. Basically, you can take this ball of dough, feed it every day as it grows, split it up, make your own loaf of goodness, and pass the other four loaves-worth along to other lucky housewives. The original dough just keeps reproducing itself in household after household. It's like free bread! If you don't count the stuff you have to add to it every day to keep it alive, the time and effort of remembering and doing it, and the hassle of making your own bread.

In any case, what Senator Rubio suggests is that the Economy is Ever-Rising Dough, so he's telling us to feed it. Public Resources feed it - low wages, low taxes, low-cost natural resources. Grow the dough. But does he feel that the public should receive a fair portion in return for their investment?

Capitalism provides a partnership in which initial resources (dough) are provided by the Public (Housewife #1) to a private citizen or corporation (Housewives #2, 3 and 4). The resources are transformed into value (four loaves worth of dough) by private citizens.

In Capitalism, however, the goal is no longer to feed ourselves with free bread. The goal is to sell the bread for a profit. In this model, the created value is provided to all citizens at a price the market will bear. The sale of value provides revenues to split among the private citizens involved in the transformation to value - the shareholders who backed the venture financially, the employees who did all the work, and the suppliers and distributors. Those private citizens can then use their share to purchase created value, in a virtuous cycle.

Of course, if no public resources had been provided in the first place, the virtuous cycle could not begin. In order for a virtuous cycle to begin, someone needs to put something in and take nothing out - someone needs to make the starter-dough. So the publicly-owned resources were put in, and "The Economy" was created - dough plus what we put into it every day.

There is only one economy. In a town that is running out of flour, yeast, sugar, salt and water, that dough is the only dough we have. It has two key stakeholders:  Public Citizens who collectively own all Public Resources, and Private Citizens, who are the same people as Public Citizens, but playing a different economic role by contributing to value creation through investment or direct effort. Public Resources consist of everything that exists within the boundary-lines of the territory citizens live on together - for example, a township, country, province or reservation. All land, water and other natural resources, as well as the time and labour capabilities of humans living there, represent Public Resources.

My thoughts aren't new, but perhaps now is a moment to re-iterate. It is becoming increasingly clear that governments the world over and at every level do not extract an adequate price in exchange for resources, if they want to advance a goal of steady overall improvement in the quality of life for most citizens. Because governments have sold resources cheaply, they have depleted public citizens’ commonly held resources, including their time and health, without replacing those resources in revenues.

Cut-throat competition among governments creates a false race to the bottom price for everything from electronics to wheat, to human time. This system serves no one except those who own and accumulate Private Resources. Worse, it is inhernetly unsustainable since the true costs of production and distribution are higher than the revenues received, yet the transformations still earn profit. Those costs are externalized outside Corporations, where they land on governments (representing Public Citizens) and, ultimately, on Private Citizens, in order that Private Resources can be accumulated. Yet, Governments have done very little to ensure those Private Resources get reinvested into the economy as a whole. Quite the opposite.

Governments have made a deal with private corporations to indenture all citizens.

By giving public citizens’ share of the resources away, governments create an environment where each private citizen must submit their body, mind, labour and time to a larger system that is controlled by private interests, as a cost of participating in the society in which they are born. This larger system is meant to drive innovation and the transformation of resources into value in human lives, but has instead been accumulating the value into the Private Resources of a small percentage of people, primarily through speculation and the provision of cheaply produced mass preferences, rather than humanity-serving production.

As more of the total economy moves from public ownership to private ownership over time through the transfer of under-valued resources, governments continue depleting our public resources, leaving most people dependent on obtaining and keeping a job in order to meet their basic needs, even while corporations are directed by shareholders to divest themselves of paid employees as fast as possible.

The need to begin the virtuous cycle with cheap/free resources and labour was met long ago. The public sector is in no position now to be feeding the starter-dough. It may be time for corporations and shareholders to feed it, by paying the true cost of value creation and extrating less profit. Not no profit, just the right amount. If resources are valued appropriately, it's true that many businesses could not be sustainable. They are not sustainable. Maybe we should be making only products that can earn a profit when the true value of resources is included, if we really want a free-market economy to work.  So businesses won't be encouraged to take the lazy way out and make 79 kinds of gum instead of solving real problems.

The economy (aka the Private Sector) cannot grow without being fed by diminishing public resources, or by using those resources more effectively (getting more value for fewer resources), or by creating or bringing in new resources (mining minerals from meteors, alchemy, some quantum magic). 

In the absence of adding resources into the earth system, we have only one finite-sized economy. We can shift the balance between public and private ownership within the single economy, but it will only ever be as big as the potential value of the world’s resources. As long as governments continue to undercut each other and sell resources to private interests at a loss, competition is a joke. Nothing is "valued" at its actual value. Everything is too cheap, including our time, the most precious thing on earth.


The practice of low-cost/no-cost resource provision, including incredibly poor return on human hours, continues. Governments continue dragging us into a destructive cycle by competing with each other. It’s like not letting go of the kite soon enough. The moment has come and gone to catch the wind. We keep running, holding on, and now comes the big JERK back.

Can we take another run at this, work together to catch the wind?


A U.S. Republican argues that lower taxes and cheap resources for corporations allow corporations to include more people in the creation of value (ie. “create jobs”) which spurs the private-sector economy and reduces the government’s responsibility to people. As Sen. Marco Rubio said, when you lower corporate taxes, they create jobs and “you’ve got yourself a tax payer.”

What that means to me is:  let corporations have the public resources cheaply, and they will distribute them to the people as they see fit, by extracting labour that they need, in order to innovate for the human race (or in this case, the U.S.A.). This would make sense to me if corporations didn't extract a high percentage of the value created from previously public resources (trees, water, energy, land, human time, human labour) into very few hands through low pay for citizens who are now dependent on participating in the labour force in order to meet their own needs. U.S. Republicans seem content with the idea of private interests controlling the resources of the country in a type of benevolent dictatorship, arbitrated by the free market (which strikes me as letting the kids vote for candy every supper).

From my seat in Canada, U.S. Democrats, on the other hand, seem to say that government must gain back the value of the cut-rate resources through taxation in order to help with quality of life, since that is the only way the government can raise funds if the government is selling resources below the actual value. Even Democrats do not, however, seem to question the practice of giving resources away. Competition with other governments depletes the world's resources, but seems the only path considered.

In the meantime, employee Stakeholders are not treated as equal, investing humans, but instead as indentured labour that has no choice but to work for the company’s interests for their livelihood (and lucky to have a job). Corporations, by law, focus on only select groups of stakeholders, keeping “costs” down through labour reductions and below-Living Wages in order to move more of the pie (or dough) to small groups of senior leaders and shareholders. Labour is treated as a cost of transforming  value, but the private citizens who provide the labour using their time are actually investors, creating an ongoing benefit that accrues solely to the employer and far exceeds the pay received. Even so, employees are not entitled to any portion of the profits in exchange for their risk and investment in the value creation, beyond meager pay for an hour of labour. This is not a system of cooperation, because it exploits human “resources” in just the same way as it exploits our other resources. We have a system that exploits one group of stakeholders for the benefit of another and calls it economic growth by relegating those stakeholders to the category of "cost." We have a system that equates human labour with machine labour.  

Governments must regulate and administer the inputs and outputs from businesses, but they are not the ones who will grow the private-sector economy. The only real way the private sector economy can grow is if the private sector innovates in ways that increase our natural resources, reduce our dependence on them, or do more with less. They need to create value without using as much stuff. Period. Any other "growth" is just moving resources to the U.S. sub-economy at the expense of other countries, or moving their value from public to private hands. The resources of our planet are currently finite - nothing’s coming in, nothing’s going out. So growing the economy means finding ways of using what we have better so more people can participate in high-quality lives. Anything else is just a fancy shuffle.

Government is responsible for the quality of life of its citizens. Governments expect citizens to provide for themselves but have not provided people with adequate return on investments from the trade of our natural resources. For the private-sector economy to thrive, it currently feeds off the public's teat through low wages and taxes, instead of mining minerals from asteroids or investing in smart cars and innovative distribution. If the economy (aka Private Sector) grows, it does so by shrinking what is commonly owned because that’s easier and less risky than innovating. That’s what we encourage with our current taxation and regulatory approaches.

I believe every human is born entitled to their share of the earth. I think we all deserve a share that allows us to participate in achieving a high quality of life. That's the point of the ever-rising dough, and it's the only way it will work - put in, pay forward, put in, pay forward. For generations to come. We can't have our dough and eat it, too, Marco Rubio. There is only one economy and we all share it.

Love,
Cheryl