SteveY's thoughts on...

Nation’s Mood at Lowest Level in Two Years, Poll Shows - NYTimes.com

Amid rising gas prices, stubborn unemployment and a cacophonous debate in Washington over the federal government’s ability to meet its future obligations, the poll presents stark evidence that the slow, if unsteady, gains in public confidence earlier this year that a recovery was under way are now all but gone.

via www.nytimes.com

This goes very well w/my 3 part essay series I'll show you how and where.

 

By costantly up and downgrading our expectations we are being worn down slowly but surely. Combine that with the degrading of our nutritional food source through GMO's we become, or feel like we are becoming overwhelmed. Overwhelmed to the point of feeling useless, or what's the point? Add to this the constant belittlement of religion the total inability to satisfy the demands of a God or set of rules impossible to satisfywe become immobilized responding to external stimuli we think we can control such as drugs, people, economics, politics, wars, etc. etc. Becoming useless physically, mentally and to those who prescribe to such things spritually too because God has foresaken us too.  This is how the constant daily bombardment of of our economic and personal impodence wears us down to the point of depressive anxiety we feel we can no longer control.  Hence we slowly give up more and more freedoms for the sake of security we never in our wildest dreams thought we'd give up. The FEAR of being personally impodent in our own lives can be cured by one thing only.  The feeling of security, take away the healthy natural forms of feeling secure leaving us the unhealthy form such as drugs, sex, moral degredation leaving a false sense of control and security until we find out they are false and what comes to the rescue? Government! We can and will judicicially mandate security! Incomes tyranny and the like. The problem is now so overblown that only the elite minded people can fix the problem, right? Hence the imposition of drastic measures like

Agenda 21

The U.N. Plan for Your "Sustainable" Community

.  Wrong, wrong, WRONG! Go to www.askvox.com Agenda21.

My next essay will be about agenda 21 and what we can do about it short of war.

 

 

Thinking... Stream of Consciousness

    This is my latest realization besides that "there is nothing in life a little wine and garlic won't cure" (Italian Proverb), and that is, I think the same as the definition of a stream of consciousness. It was first depicted by an author who's name escapes me right now in 1775 and is essentially small segments of thought or writing pretty much disconnected from each other that then make up a stream of consciousness that does eventually end up somewhere making up a whole. Kind of like my blog is doing I guess. When I heard this defined on the radio on a talk show, talk about a light going off in my head. Wow! I thought I was unique somehow or maybe just "losing it", but people actually work hard at trying to think and write along these lines and here it is, natural for me! Which is why sometimes I find it hard to formulate a cohesive picture in my explanations of things, especially myself, to others. I don't see myself as a whole, I see myself as a stream of connected, separate things, not necessarily interrelated, that make up the whole. Or at least the picture I'm trying to project at the moment. I hope I've described this okay because this was a real revelation to me and I'd like to share it in that same vein. Sometimes I feel like my brain is all over the place and (besides those rare moments it actually is) it's not really. That is just the way I assimilate data to work with it. Very piecemeal and not necessarily in order. I'll put this definition in to help elucidate my thoughts on this a little more. 

    In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode that seeks to portray an individual's point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character's thought processes, either in a loose interior monologue, or in connection to his or her actions.

    Stream-of-consciousness writing is usually regarded as a special form of interior monologue and is characterized by associative leaps in syntax and punctuation that can make the prose difficult to follow. Stream of consciousness and interior monologue are distinguished from dramatic monologue, where the speaker is addressing an audience or a third person, and is used chiefly in poetry or drama. In stream of consciousness, the speaker's thought processes are more often depicted as overheard in the mind (or addressed to oneself); it is primarily a fictional device. 

    This doesn't exactly put it together totally but you get the idea I'm sure. I really thought this was good stuff so I thought I'd share. Sometimes we think we're alone in a particular thought and we really aren't!  

Ciao for now.

 

Necessary Evils? (Balance...)

 (This was an old blog from another site and time I re-posted here..  After re-reading it I see it needs much in the way of fleshing out.  A subject I will come back to for sure.)   

    What are Necessary Evils? Some are obvious like anger, fear, pain, etc. Why? Because they tend to keep one alive, warn of coming or impending problems. But what of other things? Yes, this is summarily objective but there are probably more similarities than you think and what does ones considered "Necessary Evils" tell someone about oneself? Or, may tell you about yourself?  Lets take Death (which I’ve seen more than my share): usually it’s considered necessary because it’s inevitable but, without it, would there be any appreciation for life? Or take Love: it is a really an unexplainable, phenomenal emotion to experience but doesn’t end without awesome pain, hurt, loss or emotional devastation. In other words things always balance out. So is Balance a Necessary Evil? Off the cuff we/I say yes” but what do I naturally try to do. Why, balance the “good” stuff or the “necessities" of life? So it is essentially trying to balance only half of what my life is comprised. Balancing the better parts of my life/emotions/feelings and avoiding the worse parts. The pleasurable vs. the painful. I only wrote a couple Necessary Evils as examples but when I sat and wrote it out in sequence adding more and more, and thought about it some more is when I came up with this insight. I naturally wrote only the unpleasant things as Necessary Evils. Thinking about it was when I realized there were two sides of this coin. Everything is naturally balanced with both good and evil sides. It is when I try and side step the evil that I get hurt the most. Upon looking at what I wrote I realized what, why and how I ended up with the certain prejudices and opinions about things I had and the astonishing thing about this realization is, I saw it from the opposite point of view that I generally hold. Thus expanding my awareness of the necessity of good, evil and balance. The necessity of Necessary Evils is what actually makes life worth living. Not only that, but they are unavoidable and the more I try and set a blind eye toward the evil in the world/self/people the more I am plagued with it’s ramifications. How about you?

With that, you have a sparkling day now! 

Closed...

There is a lot of rhetoric today about closures. The Gov't will close if we don't..., this or that company will close if we don't..., the world will end if we don't raise taxes..., the church will cease to exist if we don't..., the bank will foreclose if you don't... and on and on.

It's a beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon and I decided to take a stroll. I was going to go toward the beach area I usually go to and detoured toward downtown instead. A biker thing was going on and the streets were strewn with loud obnoxious gorgeous pieces of machinery built by nothing less than artist extraordinaries in their perspective areas of artistic endeavors. And of course a few of the places these artists would frequent were open for business.  Namely biker bars. Fun and highly entertaining if that's your thing but frankly the allure of the American biker bar wore off for me in my early to mid twenties if I ever really had an allure toward the tawdry essence of impending violence at all.  So I continued on my walk only to find nearly everything, including places that had Sunday specials for the past decade or two CLOSED. If you were looking for anything but a local gin mill you were as they say "shit out of luck". This was between three and six o'clock on a Sunday afternoon. Now I could have gone to the "Burbs" to a Wall-Mart or a Bed and Bath but I was downtown USA on a Sunday and there was nothing but dead air and the occasional panhandler. With the price of gas reaching five dollars a gallon what are we to do on a Sunday afternoon. Stay home? Essentially locked in to the prisons of our own making. Living life vicariously through the idiot box or the internet. Don't get me wrong, they have their place in today's society for sure. But what about going out and experiencing life. Taking part in a Sundays afternoon of activities. It seemed like there were three choices, one, get cocked at a local gin mill with the locals, or two, indulge in the multimedia fantasy of my choice. Or three, "God forbid" start on the "Honey Do" list.  

Think about what is going on in our world today,  Our choices are slowly but surely being eroded.  It's starting with the fear of a lack of security, coupled with a dwindling amount of disposable income to to anything with.  Throw in the multitude of regulations, taxes, do's, don'ts, fines, and it starts to become overwhelming.  Like those two little girls out west who were selling lemonade and were closed down because she didn't have a city permit to do so. "It was a bad day."

I'm writing about this because I think it is indicative of where society as a whole is going. Or I should say being herded. CLOSED down. I personally am big on News and Education so I can spend many a productive hour on the Internet browsing FTP sites for archived articles of all sorts, kinds and facts. Today though, I wanted interpersonal communication, to "be with" people. Not just ethereally attached, but to talk, laugh, engage.  It wasn't to be.  Normally I'm happy with my quick intimacies over the internet and then getting on with my day. So in my own way I guess I've contributed to this problem of the "Brick and Mortar" world being CLOSED.  Have you noticed how many trailers, clips and "shorts" people are watching today as compared to movies and documentaries? Is this reminiscent of the attention span of the average American adult?  Isn't it interesting, even if you can get a few people together to watch a movie, how everyone talks during the movie and shuts up and listens to the commercials!?!  Do commercials have some sort of intrinsic social value I am missing. Pink Floyd comes to mind "ten years have got behind me,   no one told me when to run,   I missed the star-ting gun".  I what seemed so far away and only for the insanely gullible in George Orwell's 1984 really becoming a reality?  Did you know that 41 schools don't require cursive anymore  few tots may know how to sign their name by the time they graduate from high school. Dumb down education is becoming as popular as "Trickle-Up" Poverty: The New Economics of Barack Obama. 

I've been quiet on my blogs and my writing as of late because I too have become overwhelmed and just didn't know where to start. I feel very strongly that we are being duped in a way noone seems to see.  We are arguing over money. Think about Domestic disputes. It's always boiling down to money, NOT whatever the real issue is.  Well that is exactly what is happening in our country today. The Gov't may close Friday!!!  Oh, by the way you can no longer pack your own kids lunch.  The spending is out of control, you may not get Social Security, Mommy, did you know Radiation is good for you? anyone exposed to excess radiation from the nuclear power plants is now probably much less likely to get cancer."

Our minds are what is systematically being closed. This is by design. The things/the crisis used to overwhelm are very real threats, very real concerns, That is what makes this so dangerous. Behind these very real problems are the real threats. This is what has been taking up so much space in my head and heart. How to express it was weighing heavily on my mind. Yes, people are coming around and waking up. I only fear it is to little to late. What people are being fed to focus on are NOT the real issues. The real issues are the dumbing down of our societal minds as a whole. The Genetic Modification of our food source to help facilitate the dumbing down process which brings me to the subject of my next blog which is the facilitation of Agenda 21. Agenda 21 The U.N. Plan for Your "Sustainable" Community