As Martin Luther King Day approaches this year, I was struck by the timelessness and timeliness of this MLK quote: Cowardice asks, “Is it safe?” Expediency asks, “Is it politic?” Vanity asks, “Is it popular?” But Conscience asks, “Is it right?”
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Cowardice asks, “Is it safe?” Expediency asks, “Is it politic?” Vanity asks, “Is it popular?” But Conscience asks, “Is it right?”
POEM: Breath of Fresh Heir Each mourning Brings that which is light Though wanting to rest As the whirled spins under my feet I am Still Razed Too my feat Standing on Perhaps a singular word Mysteriously helled Together In God-ordained gravity Until that thirst Breath of fresh heir As awe is knew This poem is about coming out of […]...
When I was a child I crapped in my pants Today I am a king in the world Now I make others crap in their pants This is the indigestible truth Of too much power That cannot be changed Even by changing kings
Few people disagree that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Still, most people will gladly accept a little corruption, if it is backed by a little power swinging their way. Of course, corruption seems much worse if we are on the short end of it! Power is not distributed equally among humans, and those privileged to possess it, routinely wield it for their own advantage. Whether through unconscious bias and egocentricity or just plain selfishness, imbalances of power in human relationships leads to corruption. Even with good intentions, those with greater power end up molding the world into their image, at the expense of the reality of other people’s lives which are disproportionately discounted. Who of us would not want the magic wand of power to mold the world to fit our ways?
Relinquishing power is not common, and might even be considered foolish by conventional wisdom. The point is not to relinquish any and all power. The point is not to have substantially more power than others. This is rooted in recognizing that power differentials lead to human corruption; or, perhaps better put, lead to a corruption of human community. In fact, relinquishing power in order to help establish a more healthy balance of power in human relationships is a form of exercising power. This form of exercising power witnesses to an understanding of a higher power present in reality, that more egalitarian balances or power produces better humans and human community. The sad truth is that most people have more faith in fascism or other forms of concentrated power than they do in egalitarian human relationships. This is almost universally true when those with lots of power are aligned with our own particular interests. Even better yet if I am the benevolent dictator!
Large power imbalances typically result from and are maintained by violence. A relative surplus of power quite predictably leads to a lazy humanity perpetuated by force, routinely re-“making” humanity in the mold of those wielding the power. The purview of power is expediency, playing into our bias for our own ease rather than than often difficult work of building healthy human community. The natural ascendency of the masses rooted in their common and democratic (in the sense of majoritarian) everyday reality can only be put down by large power differentials driven by elites. Historically, there have been numerous rationalizations by elites to justify their minority rule over the masses. None of these rationalizations can stand as they are founded on the bankruptcy of violence. Violence is not persuasion; it is overwhelming force. Violence is what people rely on when reasonable persuasion fails. Of course, violence is persuasive in the sense that any human act carries with it the power of modeling how humans should act. However, violence does not lend itself to reasonable human relationships. Violence is the lowest form of community. It should be no surprise that violence leads to more violence. I actually like surprises! If we meet violence with non-violence, there can be some really cool surprises made possible. If we want something more than violence, the inevitable outcome of large power differentials, then we need to do something else. We can do better.
The defense department denies killing civilians The state department denies human rights abuses by trade partners The department of energy denies that nuclear power is anything but safe The criminal justice system denies institutional racism The department of departments denies that it exists There is no news here An anonymous spokesman representing an undisclosed list of clients Could neither confirm nor deny their uselessness Beholden to flights of fancy Carry on Pink elephants trampling conspiracy theorists Straw men unable to eat crow Permitting no one to fly straight Barring exceptional pork The fun is over A barrel Of monkeys denying evolution Where GOP is a measle-y typo Read “take things literally” A premeditated shot in the dark Where there is no higher power Emanating from the chamber of commerce Pinko pachyderms never herd from Any rarer would be bloody Hell, the stakes are high Raised by vampires Unable to reflect on their own Fratricide from dawn to dust Sucking out the life Granting only that They feel our payin’ Attention Exacting compensation for every notice Dispatching captives with unmanned missives Droning on In their priest-like duties Until the masses are free Like a cancer An endless growth Of pulp fiction And mind-numbing doublespeak As we press release From labor camps Yet another Birth of a nation And its following deportments: REDACTED Censors monitoring your every move So your posterity is theirs And the war on terror Only coming to an end When know more Freedom to deny
POEM: Running Like Chickens With Their Heads Cut Off
Have you ever looked a chicken in the eyes? Most of us city folk probably never have Where are you? Chickens can look quite different in the city Just the same Their bodies run around Like death will catch up with them if they slow down Their heads flit about Ensnared by nothing at all Abiding mirror fax of life Who has got one’s back? Missing only you, won’s greatest faux Possessed by a vacancy That will soon enough be dismissed Wading for something more Unable to see what’s beneath their own feat Where we are grounded Still, six feet is better than two When it’s not yours! As if one May fly! To live but for one day Today Even four proves oddly better Fore what can thou dust do, in turn? Don’t you see?! Chickens re-member!? They are almost everywhere Though they are practically invisible where I live So I am bound to run into more than a few Even more so if you cross to the other side Just, please, don’t bother asking me why I must Have chickens Incite me To a whirl Without Chickens Running about With their heads Just being Cut off Like trafficking enflesh
I wrote this poem a while back, but thought that it might be a good poem for the month of May, given the reference to the short-lived May fly. Nonetheless, this poem fits on a long-standing theme, particularly for those living in Western civilization, of busyness and not being present in the moment. Like many of my poems, you may have to read it several times, because it involves a lot of puns and multiple meanings depending on how you read various phrases. It’s difficult for me to comment on longer poems, because I end up commenting way, way longer than the poem itself. Sometimes I like to leave the poems to speak for themselves. Still, I think it’s probably comment on one strain in this poem. The phrase: Still, six feet is better than two is a reference to being buried 6 feet underground and a reference to a chicken with its head cut off lying on the ground looking at the 6 feet of three other chickens and taking some small comfort that it is not their two feet that they see in their last moment of life. Also, this is an allusion to the apparent ease at which we will trade other people’s lives for our own. If you find this somewhat morbid, then take some comfort in the line: Even four proves oddly better. In our fixation on the quantitative in our culture, it might seem odd that four is actually better than six. However, the four refers to two sets of feet and a pair of chickens or people. This refers to the comfort that we find in companionship with one another. This value of companionship strikes a sharp contrast to the hurried busyness that tramples our presence of any given moment, and rushes by authentic relationships with others. In this crazy world, which may seem dangerous and short at times, especially if you are chicken, companionship and solidarity may prove to be the reason or purpose in our lives. I guess the message is: pay attention to the people around you. Oh yeah, you may want to pay attention to the chickens around you as well.
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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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In Politics Stupidity Is Not a Handicap
In Politics Stupidity Is Not a Handicap–FUNNY PEACE QUOTE BUTTON
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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