Personal Responsibility

 
5/4/96

 
You will start to understand how alien the concept of personal responsibility has become in America if you take some time to examine a new ladder. There are so many warnings and disclaimers plastered on the thing that it made me wonder about the target audience. Anyone that doesn’t instinctively grasp the basic principles of ladder operation and safety probably doesn' t do much reading. But we know that the real reason those stickers are on there is all about the modern plague visited upon us by lawyers: liability.

Liable, a; legally bound, as to make good any loss or damage that occurs in a transaction; answerable; responsible. Webster’s, 1961

Liability is a good thing. My right to swing my fist ends at your nose. The perversion of this basic concept into a source of income instead of a code of conduct is appalling to me, and is peculiarly American. I thought about this as I climbed the incredibly narrow and friable steps of a pyramid in the state-administered park Coba in Mexico. If it was in the USA, you wouldn’t be able to see the pyramid for the signs warning you away.

Traveling in other countries points out another symptom of our sickness. Litter. You don’t see any. Cleaning up after yourself is a basic tenant of civilization, and requires an understanding of personal responsibility. I live in Key West, one of the most beautiful places in the world. Locals and tourists alike just toss their trash out of the windows of their cars, in front of you, me, and a disbelieving universe, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The mangrove thickets along the roads in the water are full of this shit. A surreal event drove the awareness of the complete collapse of personal responsibility deep and painfully into my brain. Melody, theloveofmylife, and I were walking our dog by Bayview park one night. I noticed an idling car with two women in it over by the school, but I didn’t think much about it until I looked back and saw them dragging a mattress (!) out and begin wedging it between a signpost and a telephone pole. In disbelief, I shouted: What The Hell Are You DOING! One yelled out as she climbed nonchalantly back into the car: They’ll pick it up. Off they went.

Now this in itself is not an earth shattering event, but start adding up the symptoms, and the disease becomes clear. We live in a culture where the first response people give when you tell them you’ve been injured in any way is: man, I’d retire on the money you can get out of them, like you won the lottery or inherited a tidy sum from Aunt Gertrude. A society that assumes that they are liable, they will clean up after us, they owe us if we hurt ourselves falling off a ladder. The question is: who is this they ? My answer is Pogo’s; We have met the enemy, and they is us.

Another Liberal Conspiracy?

 
6/4/96

 
I read an article by columnist Francis Mancini in the op-ed section of the Miami Herald on 6/3/96. His cries of conspiracy have joined with the howls of the rest of the conservative pack, blood smell in their nostrils as they seek to savage another treed liberal, but his column had a unique twist. He seemed to be proposing an affirmative action program of hiring conservatives by academia and the media. This trend of stealing each other’s platforms and ideals while calling them your own makes me wanna bang Republican and Democratic heads together. As if things aren’t Orwellian enough, no one seems to stand for anything longer than the next sound-bite opportunity. But I digress...what really annoyed me was that he totally missed the point of the statistics he so carefully collected, which show a huge Democratic majority in two organizations; the humanities and social science faculty at Cornell University, and The American Society of Newspaper Editors. This proves, he maintains, that there is no diversity of opinion in our schools and news organizations, and the situation should be rectified immediately by hiring more conservatives to balance things out.

Now, I agree with Mark Twain that there’s “lies, damn lies, and statistics”, especially considering the absurdly small sampling base he uses as “proof”, but Francis’ ducks are in a row and probably doing a conga line: I also believe there is a liberal bias in the media and academia. Unlike the conservatives and “religious” fanatics of the Faaarrr Right, I don’t see a diabolical conspiracy or Democratic witches’ secret covens passing judgment on hapless Republicans applying for teaching and newsroom jobs. It seems to me that there is probably a dearth of Republicans applying for said positions. Why? Lousy pay, long hours of grueling work, and the dim hope of discovering and passing on what you believe is truth and knowledge. In other words, a touch of idealism and a lack of fixation on the bottom line are job requirements. I don’t believe these are qualities exclusive to liberal Democrats, but hey...statistics are truth distilled into numerical form, aren’t they, Francis?

BRANDED!

 
11/17/96

Christian Fundamentalists believe that in the Final Days, you will be unable to buy or sell anything without bearing the Mark of the Beast. Generally, they believe this will take some form of the number 666 tattooed or implanted on your person by minions of the Anti-Christ. This belief is so strong that most government agencies and businesses have made an effort not to use these numbers for ID purposes, sort of like not having a 13th floor in a building, to keep from being deluged by protests. This fear is exploited by those who benefit most by keeping people stoked full of hate and anger, and has become part of an elaborate package of Black Helicopters, concentration camp construction, coded instructions on road signs for UN invaders, a Secret World Government, and much, much more. Hell, for all I know, they may be right. Everyone is entitled to their beliefs. But, I believe they’re overlooking a sinister fait accompli that, incredibly, is so omni-present that few even notice it. Indeed, it forms a surprisingly large part of many economies, and I believe that if the total numbers were available, we would be dumbfounded. And very suspicious.

It’s a conspiracy that the great Machiavellian schemers of history would scarce believe possible, because the technology of mass manipulation of reality is just getting under way. It’s an art-form of degradation and stupidity, pornographic and tasteless. Ghengis Kahn, PT Barnum, Jim Bakker...any conqueror or huckster would bow their head and weep tears of admiration. Jefferson, Lincoln, King, Ghandi, or any other believer in freedom and human dignity would gnash their teeth and weep tears of an entirely different sort. I know, I know... these are bold, fearsome statements against something that seems so ordinary, so trivial, so... harmless. The T-shirt.

But think about it...every sort of business, agency, organization, event, product, slogan, religion, and cause has millions of walking billboards who have happily, even competitively, PAID for the privilege of wearing their advertisements. In my opinion, it doesn’t get any stranger than this, folks. How this monstrous con was pulled off is beyond me... hmmm, let's see, maybe there’s something in Revelations about this...

Heaven's Gate

Tuesday, April 08, 1997 12:38 AM

Great Expectations

December 24, 1998

Neil Armstrong's first Lunar step was a topic of conversation the other day, and the usual "where were you" question came up. I allowed that I remembered what I was up to, but I also remembered not being very excited about it. It's not that I had no interest in space. By that time I had completely devoured our small town library's collection of science fiction literature. When I was even younger, I routinely built control panels out of cardboard boxes and Christmas lights, drew spaceships in my schoolbooks, and dreamed about robots. I was fully convinced that we were well on our way to the stars, and that moon landings were just a small first step. I expected to witness those wondrous wheel-shaped space stations, sprawling moon bases, and bustling Mars colonies first hand as I passed through the solar system on my way into the velvety depths of interstellar space. By that time, cars would fly all month on a single uranium pellet, people would wear silvery, crested outfits, and mealtime would consist of a small bowl of pills. This I knew would be true by that far off time 1990, certainly no later than 2000, unless World War III or alien invasion intervened.

The other night, , I drove down Maloney Ave. in my trusty gasoline powered 1986 Toyota mini-truck, and I looked at the pocked concrete, tangled clutter of service wiring up above, and trash blowing down the street and compared the sights to my youthful vision of Human Glory. It occurred to me that if you squinted, it would look much the same as a street in the 20's or 30's, except not as clean. And this is Key West, (well, Stock Island), which bills itself as paradise. I felt a sudden surge of bitterness and disappointment. We still depend on the wheel for transportation and information storage... and space colonies, indeed the whole space program, are withering on the vine. Our "culture" is nothing more than regurgitated and recycled ideas... there's nothing new on TV or at the Multiplex, just the same old crap with more blood and swearing, and comedy is reduced to the latest catch-phrase. The most creative stuff I see is used in CAR COMMERCIALS for chrissake. Music... What passes for "new music" is based on samples, which by nature is static and lifeless, not to mention derivative, and EVERY song no matter what the "genre" uses the same 60's James Brown Funky Drummer groove BOOM baah CHUCK ahhh BOOM BOOM ba CHUCKA CHUCKA ... I expect, and I'm not kidding here, that this ^&%$^&%$# rythym will show up on a # 1 Country Hit... mark my words. In fact, MTV might as well be broadcasting from the 60's and 70's... ain't nothin' new there. Come on, the 60's are gone, Hip Hop is over 20 years old, "dance" music is a lead-footed-4-square-beat-to-the-measure march to Hell and boredom... MAKE SOMETHING NEW DAMMIT.

I hate to say it, but Science Fiction is all but dead too. The TV shows are still using the same plots pioneered by the original Star Trek, Outer Limits, and Twilight Zone. And no-one can seem to write a single book these days... no, you gotta pad the story into a trilogy at least, even though one book would have been more than enough to present the typical recycled idea. Worst of all are the movies. With so many millions being spent on eye-candy, you'd think that they could spend a few hundred grand and buy the best screenwriters possible. The screenplays look like high school crap. Absolutely pathetic. Maybe there aren't any decent screenwriters left... they've all given up trying to sell good work and shot themselves or gone home to Minnesota and gotten jobs that offer a modicum of respect.

Ahem. All I can say it's a drag living through the low spots in the cultural cycle... things will swing up again someday... I may even live to see weightless dancers gyrating in 3 dimensions to a type of music I can't even conceive of. I have Great Expectations...

Save What?

September 16, 1999

Early this summer, Melody and I went hiking in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. I believed that I was doing myself good, what with the strenuous exercise and clean mountain air... thought the ache deep in my lungs after the first day was simply a flat-lander's adjustment to several thousand feet of altitude. Maybe the dead trees all over the place should have tipped me off, but I assumed gypsy moths were passing through. I was dumbfounded to overhear a park ranger tell someone a pollution alert was up, and that the infirm and asthmatic should stay indoors.

Well folks, it looks like we've done it. We're choking in our own shit, and I'm not just talking about defective sewage disposal closing some Keys beaches... we've taken this show global, and we are in deep denial that there's even a problem. For instance, did you ever wonder why all car commercials show a wonderful new automobile with, at most, a few other shiny vehicles in a pristine natural environment, not in it's normal habitat of smog and traffic choked "freeways"? It's the Big Lie, and we're buying it, along with vast numbers of Industrial Revolution throwback SUVs called Navigators, Explorers, Outbacks, Deathstars, ad naseum.

How can we be this gullible and stupid? Why do we accept these powerful fantasy images and deny the terrifying and absurd reality that we're killing ourselves? I'm no psychologist, but I do know we're acting like drug addicts, denying our self destruction to the end. Petroleum junkies if you like, held in thrall by monstrous gangs of pushers... our government and the oil companies. Or just greedy, self centered and short-sighted not-too-far-descendants of apes. Or blessed beings fallen from Eden with an evil puppet-master named Lucifer pulling our strings. Maybe space aliens are controlling us so we are "terra-forming" the planet for their particular climatic requirements. It doesn't matter how or why, because anything you or I believe is not going to change things. The whole world is emulating America's social and industrial model. We are going down.

We could stopper this swirling drain if we IMMEDIATELY: stopped using oil and switched to clean power alternatives; practiced world-wide safe sex and birth control; built energy efficient and clean homes, industries, farms, and vehicles; used antibiotics only when necessary; devoted our military budgets to education, medicine, and the utilization and exploration of off-planet resources; seek spiritual enlightenment for the whole world...

Yeah, right.

We're doomed.

I can't help but wonder what might have happened if at the beginning of the environmental movement these ad agencies that weave such marvelous images had been on board. And the REAL message that is relevant to us was hammered on home. It's not about saving the whales. It's not about saving the rainforest. It's not even about saving the planet. Our lovely world was once a molten ball of substances far more toxic than we can make. Countless forms of life and ecological structures have come and gone. The Earth is not fragile. We are.