Brought to you by: Alcohol, American tourists in Europe, frustration, dualist perspectives, and unjustified generalizations.
If you are an American male or female citizen reading this post, I would like you to reach down into your pants and touch your proverbial balls. Do you feel something? Good. Now stop being such god damn pussies (so to speak). I’m tired of hearing all the Americans in Europe bitching about how the US sucks, how president Bush is an idiot, and how everything in America is going downhill. No shit! It’s wonderful you came to this profound realization seven years too late. And to clarify, the current conditions we are dealing with aren’t a result of the Bush presidency, but the general decline of society in the US over the past few decades. Of course, that would require some actual insight by some of you, which at times seems too much to ask for. But I’m going off on a tangent.
I write to tell you that there’s hope. This isn’t the manufactured, rhetorical hope that Obama is spouting nor is it the blind and wishful hope that other institutions have been peddling for centuries. I’m talking about jumping off the “America sucks” band wagon, thinking progressively, and actually doing something. Criticizing the United States at this point in time is like being critical and concerned with Britney Spears. Everyone knows something needs to change, so get off your asses and do something about it. Do something in whatever area interests you, whether it is law, movies, acting, dancing, cooking, just do something in your own little way. Stop counting on someone else, grab your nuts, and act.
As the Zen demon once said:
Now! Now! Now! Now! Now! Now! Now! Now! Now!
July 18, 2008 at 2:17 am
Love to you, Knight.
I agree wholeheartedly. I don’t think that this problem is America-centric, it’s global.
It seems to me that the general process of problem-solution is as thus:
identification of problem
search for a solution /aim/
solution found, putting it to practice /will/
solution reached (release)
Stopping at any point before the last one is a dead-end. Most people, when seeing the state of the world at large, the political spectacle, or the well-being of the whole, only reach point 1 – the identification of the problem, and keep on increasing their knowledge of point number 1, never moving past it. This is very very painful and frustrating, but it is only a reality tunnel, a view of how things appear to be, rather than how they are. That doesn’t mean that the identification of the problem is wrong, but it almost certainly means that the implications are flexible.
The only solution (of the grand, all-reaching kind) I have found to work permanently and for everyone is self-work – this usually has spiritual implications (ie. drastic self-change). Depending on who you craft (find) yourself to be, that is the change that you will create around you, quite inevitably.
So while a lawyer or a therapist who is chooses to do good may cause some ripples in the pond, the implications of his actions are also flexible, whereas someone who takes the way of self-realization lights up another pathway for others to follow, which has very concrete and inflexible implications.
I guess, what I am trying to argue here is: start with yourself, the rest follows of its own accord.
NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW (damn, the zen demon gets everywhere)
July 18, 2008 at 2:24 am
My biggest problem with material, outword-facing activity is that there are too many points to choose – there are too many areas to choose from and all of them seemingly require attention.
I wouldn’t know where to go first, self-work makes more sense.
Also, even if my identification of what is wrong is correct, how do I know that through facing it I will do good?
One thing I am certain of, I wouldn’t concentrate on the political setting. I see much far-reaching obstacles and more globalised phenomena in the years to come.
An interesting account can be found here:
http://uroboros.wordpress.com/