Psychedelic Rainbow Peace Sign

By: Top Pun - May 17th, 2012  Filed under: Gay, Peace, Peace Signs, Top Pun Design Commentaries Add Comment

Black Light Party 7–Psychedelic 60s PEACE SIGN BUTTON

Black Light Party 7 Psychedelic Rainbow Peace Sign

Black Light Party 7–Psychedelic 60s PEACE SIGN BUTTON

This cool design is linked to a button, but other great Top Pun products like T-shirts, bumper stickers, mugs, caps, key chains, magnets, posters, and sticker sheets can be accessed by scrolling down the product page.

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This psychedelic rainbow peace sign is way cool regardless of your sexual orientation.  Nonetheless, for gay folks and their straight allies, this cool peace sign design is a total winner.  If you don’t like this peace sign, chances are you are a total whiner — just saying.

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Support the Police, Beat Yourself Up

By: Top Pun - May 16th, 2012  Filed under: Top Pun Design Commentaries Add Comment

Support the Police Beat Yourself Up – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

Support the Police Beat Yourself Up Psychedelic Rainbow Peace Sign

Support the Police Beat Yourself Up – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

This cool design is linked to a button, but other great Top Pun products like T-shirts, bumper stickers, mugs, caps, key chains, magnets, posters, and sticker sheets can be accessed by scrolling down the product page.

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This design goes out to all those Occupy Wall Street protesters everywhere!  I like this cool design because of the obvious incongruity of juxtaposing supporting the police and beating oneself up.  While the police are part of the 99%, they are also tools for the 1% to enforce, typically selectively enforce, laws that will protect the power of the 1%.  Dealing with nonviolent protesters is not something for which the police are typically well-trained. Police routinely rely on militaristic methods for crowd control and social control.  Police brutality and abuse is a natural outgrowth of this approach.  Presumptively having the law on their side, as the enforcers of laws, police can shield themselves from accountability and overreact to peaceful demonstrators.  Fortunately, one of the purposes of nonviolent demonstrators is to expose the inherent violence in the system, and the front lines of this is often law enforcement and the military.  Of course, when police overreact and use violence to quell peaceful demonstrations, denial of doing anything wrong, a refusal to be accountable for one’s actions is typically the first response.  This only highlights the gap between the immense responsibility that police have to behave well and the reality that the socially sanctioned possessors of violence can get away with violence much easier.  Suggesting that a protester beat themselves up preemptively is a way to highlight the farcical notion of the purity of law enforcement and violence to control other people.  Rather than law enforcement officers receiving harsher punishments for “unnecessary” violence, it is rare to see police prosecuted successfully for such misbehavior.  Maybe we should expect that such misbehaving police should regulate themselves, and that they should beat themselves up!

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The Poor Have Suffered Enough

By: Top Pun - April 25th, 2012  Filed under: Health, Political and Philosophical Musings, Top Pun Design Commentaries Add Comment

The Poor Have Suffered Enough-POLITICAL BUTTON

The Poor Have Suffered Enough Psychedelic Rainbow Peace Sign

The Poor Have Suffered Enough-POLITICAL BUTTON

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To even have to say that the poor have suffered enough saddens me.  I would have to rate compassion as one of the top characteristics of what it means to be human.  Unfortunately, the predilection to cause or allow to continue suffering as a way of learning seems to be commonplace.  I’ll be the first one to say that you can learn a lot from suffering.  If you smacked me in the side of the head with a 2 x 4, I suspect that I would probably learn something.  However, that is a crappy reason for smacking somebody on the side of the head with a 2 x 4!  Suffering happens.  I suspect that enough suffering happens that we don’t need to cause it, get in the way of alleviating it, or ignore it for there to be plenty of raw experience of suffering to learn the particular lessons that suffering has to teach.  Like many things in life, I suspect that our attraction to suffering as a means to teach people is closely related to our desire to control other people.  Compassion short-circuits the desire to control other people through suffering, because compassion links others’ suffering to our own suffering.  I think that most people would agree that wanting suffering for oneself is not healthy.  Unfortunately, many fewer people would agree that wanting suffering or others is not healthy.  The idea that people should suffer for their own good is commonplace.  I think this actually means that other people should suffer for our own concept of what is good.  But, how can suffering be not good for ourselves yet good for others?  It strikes me that lack of compassion is the true poverty.  Although quite conveniently, many people might even be willing to tolerate that as long as it doesn’t involve financial poverty.  The simple reality is that many people would gladly trade their spiritual health for financial health.  When asked the proverbial question, “your money or your life?” most people would probably have to think about it for a while.  However, I don’t want to get caught in the either/or thinking that spiritual health is necessarily in conflict with financial well-being.  If we took care of first things first, our spiritual health, which is a communal project, treating one another with love and respect, then we should experience community in such a way that our financial well-being is not threatened.  There is plenty of resources on the planet for the need of all.  There are not enough resources on the planet for the greed of all!  Now, in the rough-and-tumble world that we live in, I believe that those who are spiritually healthy do not generally end up materially wealthy.  I believe that this is due to the simple fact that spiritually healthy people, that is compassionate people, do not commandeer a lot of material resources for themselves in a world where people are starving to death and don’t have the basic necessities of life.  It seems inescapable to me that the only way to get around this reality is to somehow believe that poor people deserve to suffer.  Thus, I pose the simple statement, the poor have suffered enough.  I’d like to think that this is not a question, but a fact.

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I’d Give My Right Arm for No Arms

By: Top Pun - April 17th, 2012  Filed under: Anti-War, Top Pun Design Commentaries Add Comment

I’d Give My Right Arm for No Arms (bomb graphic) – FUNNY ANTI-WAR BUTTON

Id Give My Right Arm for No Arms Psychedelic Rainbow Peace Sign

I’d Give My Right Arm for No Arms (bomb graphic) – FUNNY ANTI-WAR BUTTON

This cool design is linked to a button, but other great Top Pun products like T-shirts, bumper stickers, mugs, caps, key chains, magnets, posters, and sticker sheets can be accessed by scrolling down the product page.

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This design is a really bad pun for a really good cause.  The phrase I’d give my right arm for… paints a rather dramatic picture of what one is willing to sacrifice for something.  Of course, this design carries it even one more dramatic step farther, implying that one might even be willing to give up both one’s left and right arm to end up with no arms if that means disarmament, both literally and figuratively!  I find much inspiration in people who are willing to put some skin in the game.  I find all the more inspiration in people who are willing to put some bone and sinew in the game as well!  What would you be willing to sacrifice for no arms?

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In Politics Stupidity Is Not a Handicap

By: Top Pun - April 16th, 2012  Filed under: Peace, Political and Philosophical Musings, Top Pun Design Commentaries Add Comment

In Politics Stupidity Is Not a Handicap–FUNNY PEACE QUOTE BUTTON

Peace Quote Peace Sign 58 Psychedelic Rainbow Peace Sign

In Politics Stupidity Is Not a Handicap–FUNNY PEACE QUOTE BUTTON

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This funny quote from Napoleon Bonaparte  is particularly funny since Napoleon certainly had many encounters with all types of politicians, so he should know.  While I don’t think that intelligence is necessarily associated with politics, I think that a deficiency of certain types of wisdom is widespread.  Politics is fraught with expediency and compromise.  This marginalizes other ways of living and relating to one another.  Ironically, the quest to triangulate thousands of expedient compromises, even with the intent to preserve and enhance human life, invariably degrades our collective humanity and individual worth in relation to the body politic.   This is another case of vainly seeking to achieve certain ends by means incompatible with those ends.  This necessarily disconnects the natural order of things, that means and ends are connected; and when the connection between means and ends is severed, the meta-message is that life (or politics) doesn’t make sense and that sensible solutions to community problems are irrelevant.  This state of affairs continues because sensibility is not the primary concern, rather, it is power.  Power can be wielded sensibly, but power has the “privilege” of operating insensibly, according to its own whim or interest.  One does not have to have intelligence to wield power, therefore stupidity is not a handicap in politics, the wielding of power in relation to others.  A wisdom that views means and ends as inseparable needs to face the difficult work of forging a way that is far less expedient.  If we didn’t negotiate away (compromise) human rights regularly, then large-scale human endeavors would require an even larger scale of work necessary to preserve human rights.  This is a primary reason why I see anarchism and its critique of large-scale enterprises as so important to understanding the large-scale dehumanizing forces in Western civilization.  If we were committed to healthy human relationships, we would not engage in large-scale enterprises which run over human rights.  Of course, this is seen as impracticable or unattainable; thus, the pervasive sense that individuals or small groups cannot make a difference.  This fatalism is a logical read of the logic inherent in these larger systems.  The systems do NOT value you.  That’s because valuing you has been so compromised out of the system.  People become means, not ends.  Invariably, when people are treated as means rather than ends, they are treated meanly, like so much building material in the dreams of others who wield more power.  For better or worse, the only way out of this seems to be the masses rising up with their own inherent power derived from their will and consent and overthrow the dehumanizing powers that be.  Now, this takes more than wisdom; this requires courage!  I encourage you to rage against the machine.  I encourage you to live in ways that inspire others to fully live and not compromise themselves as they internalize and model so well the compromising of others inherent in modern politics.  To live free is not a guarantee that you “win” (as in the conventional wisdom), but to center your living around the fact that being free is winning.  Live free or die.  The second comes to all of us.  The first is optional.

 

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Direction Headed

By: Top Pun - April 13th, 2012  Filed under: Health, Peace, Political and Philosophical Musings, Top Pun Design Commentaries Add Comment

If Do Not Change Direction End Up Where Headed–PEACE QUOTE BUTTON

Peace Quote 48 Psychedelic Rainbow Peace Sign

If Do Not Change Direction End Up Where Headed–PEACE QUOTE BUTTON

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This is a great Chinese proverb.  Its simplicity and inescapable logic is a powerful way to break us out of inertial thinking.  Western civilization and its fixation on rationality (which ironically brings about irrational consequences), walks right into the inescapable logic of this proverb.  One of the many dangers in life is being desensitized to the negative aspects of the status quo.  Since we tend to rationalize whatever situation or behavior we are experiencing, and, in this respect, reality has a conservative bent, meaning a tendency or a bias towards maintaining what is already in existence and resisting a different course than wherever we happen to be headed.  I’m amazed at the powerful force that cognitive dissonance plays in the human psyche.  As a former health educator and having some training in human behavior, I was surprised to learn that the seemingly obvious assertion that behavior follows knowledge is actually largely backwards.  While knowledge may very well be a necessary component of a particular behavior, it is typically far from sufficient.  More typically, we engage in a behavior and then do what is necessary to align our thinking, attitudes and feelings with that behavior.  This makes sense if you reflect on the relative difficulty of changing behavior versus thinking.  It is usually easier to rationalize than actually make a behavioral change from whatever present course we are on.  So, cognitive dissonance serves as a psychic energy-saving mechanism by aligning a less difficult process in the face of a more difficult behavior or situation.  Of course, the way we think feeds back into our behavior.  Nonetheless, there is some mystical reality to acting on faith, when and where one may sense that a particular behavior may be better than a current one, but one can’t muster the psychic resources to first change one’s larger set of thoughts, attitudes and feelings, before giving the change in behavior a try.   I have heard counselors and therapists marvel at clients who struggled with many issues related to their thinking, attitudes and feelings, and found help on this front to be unhelpful, until taking the advice of “fake it till you make it;” then, found that when they changed their behavior everything else just “magically” fell into place (and, of course, the helper often received little credit for what seemed like stupid advice at the beginning).  Back to the concept of inertia, I’m reminded of the saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.  Both of these sayings or proverbs imply that the past present and future are connected – duh!  While this may seem oddly oversimplified, it may just remind the reader that we can change the future by changing the present, just as we can assure more of the same by not changing our present course.  If you want something different, try something different.

One last reflection on thinking and behavior change.  Trying to figure out which comes first, thinking or behavior change, is sort of like asking which came first, the chicken or the egg.  For example, what needs to change for someone to actually take the advice of “fake it till you make it?” — a hurdle that may reap a quantum leap of change.   Of course, this can very well involve thoughts and attitudes.  So, maybe you shouldn’t try any of this behavior change mumbo jumbo (that’s reverse psychology by the way…)

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Army of One

By: Top Pun - April 11th, 2012  Filed under: Anti-War, Top Pun Design Commentaries Add Comment

Army of One – I’d Settle for That – FUNNY ANTI-WAR BUTTON

Army of One Id Settle for That Psychedelic Rainbow Peace Sign

Army of One – I’d Settle for That – FUNNY ANTI-WAR BUTTON

This cool design is linked to a button, but other great Top Pun products like T-shirts, bumper stickers, mugs, caps, key chains, magnets, posters, and sticker sheets can be accessed by scrolling down the product page.

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This antiwar design is a take off on the army slogan touting the apparent power of an Army of one.  This seems to play on some steroidal individualism, which is a little ironic since the Army is hardly a bastion of individualism.  This parody is actually based on taking the slogan literally.  Wouldn’t it be great if they were just one person in the army rather than millions?  I’d certainly settle for that!  Of course, the compromising attitude of such a statement indicating that one is just settling, adds to the power of the parody.

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Yin Yang

By: Top Pun - April 10th, 2012  Filed under: Peace, Political and Philosophical Musings, Top Pun Design Commentaries Add Comment

PEACE SYMBOL: Yin Yang Symbol 2–BUTTON

Yin Yang Symbol 2 Psychedelic Rainbow Peace Sign

PEACE SYMBOL: Yin Yang Symbol 2–BUTTON

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You just have to love the yin yang symbol!  The concept of yin and yang is one of the central concepts in Eastern philosophy, a symbol of the Tao.  The idea of complementariness and interdependence of opposites is essential to understanding life and achieving balance.  Western civilization tends to look toward absolutes and focuses on one or the other side of opposites, that which is considered good.  This is perhaps the foundation of Western imperialism, which presumes an absolute good and then enforces it on the rest of the world.  Imperialism also feeds off demonizing the opposite.  What I find fascinating about complementariness and the interdependence of opposites that seems to naturally give rise to a transcendence of apparent opposites.  Western philosophy includes the idea of some kind of synthesis arising from dialectical conditions, though I think that Westerners tend to reduce this simply to some third absolute rather than what I think is more appropriate mystical other. I am eternally fascinated with the proposition of loving one’s enemies, and I find is perhaps the most challenging practical manifestation of the Tao.  My favorite simple story to illustrate this is about a farmer and his skepticism about being able to determine whether something is good or bad.  The farmer has a valuable horse which runs away, to which his neighbor comments, “that is bad.”  The farmer declares that he is not sure whether it’s good or bad.  The horse returned to the farm with a herd of wild horses.  The farmer’s neighbor comments, “this is good.”  The farmer declares that he is not sure whether it’s good or bad.  The farmer’s son, while trying to train one of the wild horses, is thrown from the horse and breaks his leg.  The farmer’s neighbor comments, “this is bad.”  The farmer declares that is not sure whether it’s good or bad.  The farmer’s nation declares war against the neighboring nation and as the gathering army passes through his province, they conscript many young men along the way; the farmer’s son is not conscripted since his leg is broken.  The farmer’s neighbor comments, “this is good.”   The farmer declares that he is not sure whether it’s good or bad.  Of course, this sequence of events can transpire forever.  I don’t think that such a story an argument against whether good or bad exist, rather it reinforces a deeper wisdom that require some skepticism about affixing unmovable labels of good or bad on any given situation.  What strikes me as the deeper truth is that bad situations can be redeemed and bring about good, and that there is a shadow to good situations that can degrade into bad.  Appreciating and aligning oneself with this flow seems to be the purpose of the Tao.  Of course the first line of the Tao Te Ching, is that the way that can be described is not the way.  Then, ironically, the Tao Te Ching does it’s best to try to describe the way.  Such is the paradox inherent in reality.  This is probably a good reason why a more abstract symbol is appropriate for reflecting the Tao than words.  Sometimes silence is the best.  Or, like I like to say, sometimes buttoning up says it best!

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Hate Free Zone

By: Top Pun - April 9th, 2012  Filed under: Gay, Top Pun Design Commentaries Add Comment

Hate Free Zone – Pink Triangle (Rainbow Heart) – Gay Pride Rainbow Store BUTTON

Hate Free Zone Pink Triangle Psychedelic Rainbow Peace Sign

Hate Free Zone – Pink Triangle (Rainbow Heart) – Gay Pride Rainbow Store BUTTON

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This simple design with a pink triangle declares a hate free zone.  Of course, the pink triangle signifies gay pride which is a reclaiming and redemptive response to the evil and hateful symbol that was used by the Nazis to mark persons as homosexuals in society and in concentration camps.  Some folks, typically religious folks, say that they can condemn people such as homosexuals without hating them, and in fact, love them while condemning them.  I think that this is a tricky a nuanced position the ultimate comes down to one big rationalization: we have the right to condemn others.  This rationalization comes easy because it’s hard to imagine a society with its many orders and stratifications that is not built somehow on condemning one another in one way or the other.  From a religious perspective, I think this boils down to one’s conception of hell.  Many religious folks believe that God condemns people to eternal damnation in some form of hell.  Gladly, I am not one of those folks.  I believe that hell is a totally human creation that completely misrepresents an all-loving and unconditionally loving God.  Hell is a convenient notion to justify one’s own hate and fear of others, and have a justifiable place to condemn those we dislike.  Don’t get me wrong, I believe in hell.  I just believe in hell on earth.  Not the Earth is necessarily a hellish place, but humans certainly do have a capacity to create hell on earth, and there’s more than enough of it to go around. It’s hard to imagine why God would have to add to the hells we’ve created.  I find it quite ironic that John 3:16, probably the most quoted biblical scripture on the planet, is immediately followed, in verse 17, about how Jesus’ purpose on this planet is not to condemn the world but to save it.  Maybe these two things are actually tied together; perhaps salvation is living in the reign of non-judgment and being free from condemning others and what I believe to be the necessary hate and fear that comes with that. Unfortunately, hate and fear are much easier to sell.  Thus, the difficult job and challenge of religion is to demonstrate non-judgment in such a profound way that we don’t have to “sell” it, because we’ve already paid for it with our lives, or how we live our lives.  I think Jesus freed us from fear of death, not from being persecuted unto death.  Both hate and love have a cost to them.  I supposed  the only real question is which of them is worth paying for.

 

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Will Work for Change

By: Top Pun - April 5th, 2012  Filed under: About Top Pun, Top Pun Design Commentaries Add Comment

Will Work for Change-POLITICAL BUTTON

Will Work for Change Psychedelic Rainbow Peace Sign

Will Work for Change-POLITICAL BUTTON

This cool design is linked to a button, but other great Top Pun products like T-shirts, bumper stickers, mugs, caps, key chains, magnets, posters, and sticker sheets can be accessed by scrolling down the product page.

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I like this simple design because it has two meanings for the price of one.  Hopefully, the obvious meaning is that one will work for social change.  However, the other meaning, that one will work for a mere pittance, is a backhanded commentary on low wages and the all too common inability to earn a living wage for one’s labors.  What may be less obvious, is how I combine these two things in my own life.  First, I will gladly work for social change and social justice.  Secondly, living my life in a simple fashion, which I typically call living low to the ground, allows me the freedom of working for social change, while minimizing the worries of wage slavery, the difficulty of earning enough money for a decent living.  The simple fact is that the less money you spend and the less you consume, the less money you need to live.  Friends occasionally ask me, “How’s the button business.”  I am likely to respond something like, “it depends on what metric you might measure that by.”  The most important metric, the one that I judge my success and my business’ success is “I LOVE MY LIFE!”  The rest is details.

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What Are Conservatives Conserving?

By: Top Pun - April 4th, 2012  Filed under: Political and Philosophical Musings, Top Pun Design Commentaries Add Comment

What Exactly Are Conservatives Conserving (Earth) POLITICAL BUTTON

What Exactly Are Conservatives Conserving Psychedelic Rainbow Peace Sign

What Exactly Are Conservatives Conserving (Earth) POLITICAL BUTTON

This cool design is linked to a button, but other great Top Pun products like T-shirts, bumper stickers, mugs, caps, key chains, magnets, posters, and sticker sheets can be accessed by scrolling down the product page.

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What exactly are conservatives conserving?  This is a great question!  Of course, I love the play on the similar root of the words conservative and conserving.  Conservatives love talking about freedom.  However it seems that if we listen to conservatives we would be free to live in a world that is being consumed by all of its so-called free human beings, and all these human beings would be competing to no end against one another.  Sounds like a crappy version of freedom to me.   Freedom without understanding and honoring the limits of the natural world seems to me to be simply a license to ignorantly destroy the planet and all of its inhabitants.  Of course, the shared reality of the natural world, if it is going to be protected for the benefit of humanity, must put demands and limitations on human freedom.  Human beings, though seen as the pinnacle of reality by many, are certainly not exempt from the feedback or karma that the rest of reality causes in response to our actions.  Oftentimes, when I hear conservative speaking of freedom, it sounds to me like some immature fantasy of being free from anything and everything (or anyone).  However, I believe that true human wisdom lies in discerning what we should do, not simply what we can do (or get away with).  Reality gives plenty of good feedback about what we actually can’t do, so the obsession with freedom seems to me to be a sort of moot question.  Like the existentialist philosopher John Paul Sartre says, “we are condemned to be free.”  Freedom actually isn’t even a choice; we are born free.  Certainly, living in community with other human beings is a complicated and difficult thing.  However, it strikes me as foolish to ignore or greatly discount all the great things that we get from community as somehow too fuzzy or somehow reducible to some  individualistic form of math (the whole equals the sum of the parts, not more) that need rely only on some “invisible hand” to do the difficult and messy work of creating and maintaining a healthy and functional community.  In the end, it seems to me that what conservatives are conserving is the right to be selfish – more of an excuse than a human right.  Then, to get out of this amoral or evil conundrum, they claim that selfishness is the highest form of selflessness or benefit to the common good.  I suppose it’s very difficult to argue against an ideology that creates both its central tenet in its exact opposite.  Let them eat cake and keep their cake to.  What could be more conserving than that?

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POEM: Financial Wizardry

By: Top Pun - March 31st, 2012  Filed under: Political and Philosophical Musings, Top Pun Design Commentaries Add Comment

Steal from one
You are called a thief
Steal from many
You are called a financial wizard

I like this short poem because it plays with the idea of how we interpret personal or individual acts versus impersonal and large-scale actions.  This poem fits the same format and tone as:  kill one and they call it murder, kill many and they call it foreign policy.  Each of these highlights the apparent bias that we have against individual or personal harmful acts, and our apparent bias in favor of impersonal and distance actions.  On the one hand, this makes sense since you can more easily see and connect the dots to the harmfulness of someone stealing directly from you in person, or assaulting you in person.  Yet, on the other hand, by stealing little bits from many, many people in an impersonal fashion and across great distances, Western civilization has frequently decided to term this financial wizardry or good foreign policy protecting our national interest.  It seems to me that much of the so-called success of Western civilization has been a drive toward maximizing impersonal and large-scale relationships to avoid accountability.  However, beyond avoiding accountability, such crimes actually become laudable and bring many benefits, such as wealth, control, and status.  An alternative to this facet of Western civilization would be to move toward and value more highly personal, local, and more organic human relationships.  Some of us might call this anarchism, the free association of individuals to come together and determine their common destiny.  This concept of anarchism is less about individualism than is about maintaining the ability to forge a common destiny, mediated by a shared reality.  Community is necessary since we have a shared reality.  This type of anarchism is democratic, but is skeptical of so-called representation by others, and favors direct democracy where people represent themselves.  This poem is a quick way to highlight the dangerously wrong direction that scale and impersonality or dehumanization can bring.  My own view is that if we don’t humanize so-called civilization, then so-called civilization will dehumanize us.  Most importantly, a humane world will not need a lot of financial wizards.

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Reality Television: Poverty Grows

By: Top Pun - March 30th, 2012  Filed under: Political and Philosophical Musings, Top Pun Design Commentaries Add Comment

Reality Television: Poverty Grows – POLITICAL BUTTON

38 Reality Television Poverty Psychedelic Rainbow Peace Sign

Reality Television: Poverty Grows – POLITICAL BUTTON

This cool design is linked to a button, but other great Top Pun products like T-shirts, bumper stickers, mugs, caps, key chains, magnets, posters, and sticker sheets can be accessed by scrolling down the product page.

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While many seem obsessed with reality television, it seems that many more important realities are being overlooked.  I’m amazed by Western civilization’s capacity to distract.  I would hope that the chasm between reality television and reality would be something that most people could discern; though my optimism may be showing through.  While this is disturbing enough, I find myself increasingly surreal state when we propose one thing and live truly do the opposite, and then had the audacity to call these opposite the same.  Now I’m a fan of paradoxes as much, probably even more, than the next guy, but holding fast to literal contradictions seem to be an unnecessary grasping of the absurd.  Let me offer an example.  The above design references the reality that poverty grows.  This can be taken as one half of the proverbial the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.  However, poverty is not something that we can discuss in polite company in America.  For instance, Pres. Obama in his State of the Union address this year was the first president since Harry Truman to not even use the word poverty in his State of the Union address.  Now, this might not be so unusual if we were in a period of expansive economic growth and poverty was receiving, but, alas, we are in the worst economic recession since the Great Depression, and poverty is growing.  But, let’s back up to our most recent period of apparent untrammeled economic growth.  Democrats like to call them the Clinton years.  I can’t help but notice that the same Clinton cronies that Obama hired to get us out of the most recent economic crisis are exactly the same people who led us into the crisis.  But back to Clinton.  One of the so-called crowning achievements of the William Jefferson Clinton presidency was his so-called welfare reform, which I prefer to call welfare deform.  Here is where holding fast to a literal contradiction comes into play.  President Clinton used the language of reducing poverty as the ultimate goal of his proposed welfare reform.  In other words, the ultimate success of this policy was supposed to be measured by how much it lifted people out of poverty.  However, virtually every analysis of the policy from left to right, governmental and nongovernmental, concluded that Clinton’s welfare reform legislation would result in more poor people, more poverty.  And sure enough, more people were pushed into poverty.  Unfortunately, a new measure, perhaps actually the original measure, was how many people were on welfare rolls.  This actually went down.  Surprise, surprise!  When poor people received less help, they became more poor.  Oh yeah, that idea that generous Americans and the church folk would feed, house, transport, tutor, and provide jobs for poor Americans without government involvement turned out to be a pipe dream. Wow, and I didn’t have to mention the Bush administration, one or two, Papa or Junior.

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Force Attracts Men of Low Morality

By: Top Pun - March 29th, 2012  Filed under: Peace, Top Pun Design Commentaries Add Comment

Force Always Attracts Men of Low Morality–PEACE QUOTE BUTTON

Peace Quote 39 Psychedelic Rainbow Peace Sign

Force Always Attracts Men of Low Morality–PEACE QUOTE BUTTON

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Albert Einstein is recognized as perhaps one of the greatest geniuses that ever lived regarding physics.  However, few people realize that Albert Einstein was also a great genius of metaphysics, or spiritual physics if you will.  This simple rule that force always attracts men of low morality can be a powerful organizing principle in how we relate to the world.  What if we realized, truly realized, that the world of command-and-control, the world of the military and security apparatuses, did not attract the so-called best and the brightest, but attracts those of low morality.  While Einstein certainly devoted the better part of his life to understanding physics, his number one extracurricular activity was to work for peace and the uplifting of all humanity.  Of course, these types of activities typically don’t make the history books, if for none other than the simple reason that history books only deal with great persons in history with a few paragraphs at most.  However, dealing with issues of morality in our culture seems strangely avoided.  This seems to be entwined with the Western civilization worldview that science is objective and all is science, that is reductionistic science.  We simply don’t know what to do with subjectivity, of which morality is one of the more obvious subjects.  Is it any wonder that Western civilization can be strikingly amoral?  So-called Western civilization has nearly perfected the ability to neuter any productive conversations about subjectivity or morality.  Oddly, this is probably viewed as a highly moral position.  You’ve got to love the irony!  Well, back to Einstein.  I like to think that his commitment and fascination to humanity springs forth from the essential truths that he reflected and meditated upon in physics.  I believe that all things are connected, and that this is a profound truth that underlies both physics and metaphysics.  I would hope that very few would object to the premise that all things are connected, as this is profoundly interwoven in the assumptions of any science.  The problem that many people shy away from, of course, are those connections that could be called subjective between humans and the rest of reality.  In the end, I guess my point is that many would view of what Einstein as a prototypical scientist.  If this view is based in any reality, we should pay attention to the fact that Einstein concerned himself with the nature of humanity that cannot directly be put under the proverbial microscope.  While Einstein is perhaps the best example, and he is the most well-known, there are many examples of theoretical physicists who have  immersed themselves in and accepted a mystical reality that cannot be fully explored with traditional hard science.  Yes, Einstein was a softy – a really smart softly.

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Blessed are the Peacemakers

By: Top Pun - March 27th, 2012  Filed under: Anti-War, Peace, Political and Philosophical Musings, Top Pun Design Commentaries Add Comment

Blessed Are the Peacemakers – Jesus Quote–BUTTON

Peace Quote 19 Psychedelic Rainbow Peace Sign

Blessed Are the Peacemakers – Matthew 5:9 – Jesus–BUTTON

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This quote from Jesus from Matthew 5:9 is probably one of the most famous and well-known Jesus quotes from the Bible.  Though, however common the phrase blessed are the peacemakers is, you’d be hard-pressed to figure that Christians took this seriously, given how many Christians are in the military, in many a nation (often opposing nations), and how much counsel and comfort is given to those manning, and occasionally womaning, military enterprises.  Of course, many Christians would argue that war-making is a form of peacemaking.  I think that this was a popular argument in 1984.  Or, well, it’s a real job creator for theologians to figure a way out of loving our enemies, and allowing us to kill those that we hate.  This is one of those areas where I find that Christianity gets seriously in the way of following Jesus.  Many people do not realize that in the early Christian church, pacifism was the prevailing norm.  Refusing military conscription was a common form of martyrdom in the early Christian church.  Of course, later, when Christianity cozied up to the state, particularly in the fourth century when Constantine made Christianity the state religion, Christianity mysteriously came up with new ways to justify warring on its enemies.  This co-option into the ways of the world is as common as it is unjustified.  Just reflect on Jesus’ words for a moment.  Really, what blessings do we see reaped by the peacemakers?  In worldly wisdom, these so-called blessings are secondhand fodder for the weak, the lowly pacifist.  I don’t think that it was a mistake that Jesus’ words recorded here as part of the beatitudes, added for emphasis that peacemakers would be called the children of God!  he was trying to make a point!  This is a title reserved for the blessed peacemakers in Jesus’ list of who is blessed.  Most people stop reading the beatitudes soon after this because they are insane enough to suggest that those who are persecuted for righteousness sake are also blessed.  I also like to Luke version which mentions as one of the woes as all people speaking well of you, for this is what our ancestors did in speaking of the false prophets.  It seems that a common thread of the many rationalizations I believe stray from Jesus true message concerns avoiding a cost for our actions.  Some days I just wish that we had a courageous Messiah that spoke boldly and prophetically to the powers that be in this world, and they wouldn’t back down, even to the point of death by the cruelest means.  I can tell you one thing: they didn’t need to torture Jesus to get the truth from him.  However, the fact that Jesus was willing to put some skin in the game, all of his skin, speaks truth deeply.  Like they say, talk is cheap.  What would you be willing to sacrifice for peace?  And what blessings would you reap from this?

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Any Jackass Can Kick Barn Down, Takes a Carpenter to Build

By: Top Pun - March 26th, 2012  Filed under: Peace, Political and Philosophical Musings, Top Pun Design Commentaries Add Comment

Any Jackass Can Kick a Barn Down Takes a Carpenter to Build–PEACE QUOTE BUTTON

Peace Quote 6 Psychedelic Rainbow Peace Sign

Any Jackass Can Kick a Barn Down Takes a Carpenter to Build–PEACE QUOTE BUTTON

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Destroying stuff is a lot easier than building stuff up.  Ironically, this seems to give a certain power to people who destroy or threaten to destroy stuff.  Since destroying stuff is easier than building stuff up, there seems to be a certain efficiency, or competitive advantage if you will, to be a destroyer or terrorizer of destroying. While I don’t care much for this apparent bias that seems to favor the stupid and the violent on our planet, it seems to be a reality with which we must deal.  Nonetheless, this reality also points to the value, and even sacredness, of those things which are both vulnerable and treasured.  There seems to me to be a reality that is way beyond our ability to change that is good and beneficent.  I think it is this deeper reality that has hardwired us for hope.  Still, it is difficult not to have one’s attention distracted from this deeper reality when there seems to be plenty of stupid and violent behaviors to go around.  I think that building and protecting those things in life which are both vulnerable and treasured is the most important battleground for humanity.  Then, the real question becomes am I going to vote with my humanity for building up things of real value, or am I going to use the power vested in me by being human to destroy or threatening to destroy that which is built by others in order to get my own way, whatever that maybe.  So, we need to pick sides.  Do you want to be on the side of the jackasses, or do you want to be on the side of the carpenters?  I hope that this answer is an easy one to nail.

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Real Test of Power to Prevent War

By: Top Pun - March 19th, 2012  Filed under: Anti-War, Peace, Top Pun Design Commentaries Add Comment

PEACE QUOTE: Real Test of Power to Prevent War–PEACE SIGN BUTTON

Peace Quote Peace Sign 127 Psychedelic Rainbow Peace Sign

PEACE QUOTE: Real Test of Power to Prevent War–PEACE SIGN BUTTON

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This peace quote reverses the typical notions of power.  Power is typically viewed as the ability to make things happen.  That is certainly true in the context of the capacity to make war.  However, the power to exert brute force and coercion is very different from the type of moral force is needed to build and sustain peace.  Morality, in its essence, is about restraint.  By contrast, amorality is simply having no restraint or limits on one’s actions.   Thus, when comparing the capacity to make war versus the capacity to prevent war, or to create peace, these concepts of power tend to clash.  War is hardly an exercise in restraint.  While war may require a lot of discipline in many respects, it requires unleashing incredible brute force that by its very nature cannot be controlled.  One simply has to recognize the reality that for every combatant killed in wartime, approximately ten non-combatant are killed.  Clearly, war is not a precise surgical procedure, despite all the talk about smart bombs and laser guided systems.

As the United States is beating the drums of war against Iran, there is talk about the right thing to do, the moral thing to do.  Of course, most of this talk is couched in terms of all the evil, bad, or immoral things that some other parties are doing.  Sort of by default, morality is imputed on people who oppose such evil doings and evil doers.  Unfortunately, what is lost in the mix, mostly of lies, is that morality is more about restraining one’s own behavior than about restraining another’s behavior.  By losing our focus on our own behavior, we can drift dangerously close to the unaccountability needed in order to wage war.  If you think war-making requires restraint and discipline, try peacemaking and loving your enemies.  The difficult task of taking personal responsibility for one’s behavior both as an individual and as a citizen of a nation can be costly.  However, there seems to be an  inertia in the human condition that defaults to blaming others for one’s own problems, and shifting the cost of relating to one another as human beings to other people that we see at fault.  Even if I have a relationship with someone where a conflict or “problem” is 20% mine and 80% theirs, this does not relieve me of being accountable for my 20%.  Rather than taking care of our own moral business and accountability, we often feel justified in focusing the blame and the full costs of the conflict onto those we see as enemies.  It is impossible to successfully wage war without demonizing one’s enemies.  This is the only way to justify killing a combatant.  This is definitely the only way to justify killing non-combatant.   Show me a nation that can create peace in the face of potential war and I will show you the most morally powerful nation on earth.

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Risk Taking in War and Peace

By: Top Pun - March 16th, 2012  Filed under: Anti-War, Peace, Top Pun Design Commentaries Add Comment

PEACE QUOTE: Risks Making War Risks to Secure Peace–PEACE SIGN BUTTON

Peace Quote Peace Sign 132 Psychedelic Rainbow Peace Sign

PEACE QUOTE: Risks Making War Risks to Secure Peace–PEACE SIGN BUTTON

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This simple peace or antiwar quote challenges our thinking by asking a question about what we are willing to risk or invest in securing peace.  Everyone seems to understand that war is costly.  However, oddly, many people seem to think that peace should just happen.  Though, this might be true, if we just dis-invested from war, but this would involve great risk and sacrifices that I would simply call taking risks to secure peace.  Either way peace takes work!   The status quo, which is solidly in the war camp, is what will continue to happen if we do not change the way we do things.  This involves a cost, a high cost, the cost of war.  This is a choice, just as much as making a conscious choice to take the risks to secure peace.  As quoted elsewhere, war is costly, peace is priceless.  I hope this peace and antiwar quote stimulates some meditation upon what price you are willing to pay help secure peace on this precious planet, for all of its inhabitants human and otherwise.

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Proud Ally

By: Top Pun - March 14th, 2012  Filed under: Gay, Top Pun Design Commentaries Add Comment

Proud Ally BUTTON

Proud Ally Psychedelic Rainbow Peace Sign

Proud Ally BUTTON

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This design speaks for itself.  I treasure solidarity with those struggling for freedom and equality.  I know what I am, what are you?

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After Each War Little Less Democracy to Save

By: Top Pun - March 10th, 2012  Filed under: Anti-War, Top Pun Design Commentaries Add Comment

After Each War Little Less Democracy to Save–ANTI-WAR QUOTE BUTTON

Anti War Quote 3 Psychedelic Rainbow Peace Sign

After Each War Little Less Democracy to Save–ANTI-WAR QUOTE BUTTON

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This antiwar quote pretty much speaks for itself.  You can’t create democracy through the barrel of a gun.  The relationship between war and democracy is yet another serious straying from the right relationship between means and ends.  War has the means and war has the ends, but war is profoundly undemocratic, actually anti-democratic.  There is something profoundly contradictory in telling entire nations, entire peoples, that they should be able to participate in democracy, but only if they choose certain things that we like.  Some people may strain to make the connection between war and democracy by claiming that we have to go to war to protect our democracy that is threatened by people, usually much of the way around the world.  If we are forced to kill people halfway around the world to protect our own national interest, then I would posit that such a national interest extends far beyond democracy into imperialism.  If the only way we can have democracy is by preventing democracy by most of the world that I think that we should relinquish any title to being democratic.  War degrades democracy.  I vote for peace.  What do you vote for?

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