The Illusion of Democracy

The question which must be asked is, “Is democracy an illusion?” But how do we answer this question, is there a way to validate the ideal of democracy which does not betray its own definition. Let us examine the definition of democracy: a political system in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who can elect people to represent them.

Ultimately, I must reject this definition of democracy as it is simply factious, for numerous reasons. Let’s breakdown this definition: “the supreme power lies in a body of citizens,” yes, this is a general statement, on purpose. What does a “body” truly consist of, what numerical value must be attained in order to achieve a true body of citizens. Since there is no numerical data given as to what constitutes body, we must assume that the number of “elected” officials is simply the true body. A true body would be the collective of all citizens in the country, but this, again, is not viable. The “body” is reduced and stratified through race, class, and, was up until 86 years ago, by gender. So, in these terms, the body effectively was made up of educated-wealthy-white-males, and, dare I imply this, still is. The aristocracy which founded the nation, as James Madison called the peasantry of the nation, “the great beast”, never intended the populous to be involved in its politics. And, initially, this was a relatively easy to control: by standards of landed gentry and wealth. The governmental idealist philosophy was set astray before it could even begin to develop. As the country developed, measures to control “democracy” became increasingly subversive, as well as outwardly oppressive, as has been witnessed through elections over the last 100 years. It is still those with a stake in the economic well-being of the nation whose decisions matter the most (wealthy-white-industrial-capitalists). What has changed?

The connotations of democracy inexorably link it to economics as well: freedom of choice, where to expend capital and in what fashion, and expansion of capital. This is a dangerous connection to make: this connection completely invalidates what ideals are left in the democratic philosophy, as it leads to biases based on class, race, gender, and nationalism, effectively lending weight to those that fit the ideals of the current economic philosophy of the state. However, since the democratic system expunges those whose voices they deem do not matter, this union is perfectly acceptable and harmonizes.

How does one change this system? It seems perpetually cyclic. Perhaps it is time we come to the realization that there are two options afforded to the populous at this point:

1) Bury our heads in the sand and pretend your consciousness and vote still make a difference and matter. (These things do not matter, as has been proven well in the last two elections with both parties under-handed and loathsome debauchery)

2) Destroy the entire system: revolutionary overhaul. This is the only viable option left in a system that knowingly and willingly abandons the people’s will.

We must embrace this notion. And, let us be “real” for a moment, there is no such thing as a non-violent movement. This is not strictly violence in the physical sense, which I think is the by-product or side-effect of ideological violence. Let me explain this idea: we all have “borders” of ideology/thought/intelligence which create perceptions of “world” and “society”. When new ideas/thoughts/intelligence are introduced into our mental framework, there must be an expanding of our “borders”, whether one is rejecting or accepting this information. In this boundary expansion, violence occurs as the ideas/thoughts/intelligence transgresses and infiltrates the original boundary of one’s own framework. So, in essence, a “non-violent” revolution is completely false. And, if the necessary revolution wasn’t violent, then it is simply passive compliance, which will affect nothing in the end result.

We can no longer abide by governmental system whose prejudice involves a fair majority of the population (white-industrial-capitalists), whose bureaucratic indulgence limits the choices the inhabitants of the country can do to change the system, to create and demand effective change (the limitations of a two party system owned by same person: capitalism), and whose complete ignorance and blatant disregard for democratic country should ban them from attempting to reinstate it elsewhere. Dismantle the Electoral College; if the populous decides whom the leader should be, then there is no reason to undermine it with this “safety valve”, ensuring the “chosen one”, the one who best embodies the concerns of those “that matter”. Allow FAIR elections to be held, do not allow government to discriminate based on race and class, establish equal voting rights.

Of course we would have to change the national conscious and societal mechanisms and relationships to accomplish any of this. That, I believe, is impossible; it is too fully ingrained to see anything other than desperate image of a hero with a rifle in one hand and two golden scales, perfectly balanced, in the other. Democracy: now you see it, now you don't.

Man's Desire for Money and Power: A Natural Gravitation?

The question is interesting and profound. My wife, incredible woman and genius she is, asked me what my thoughts were on this very question yesterday while on our walk. I wanted to answer definitely and with no room for argument, the one which I always feel around me when I envision and observe people and their behaviors, but I wanted to think about this too. I am not proud to say I have not thought any more about it; however, I am willing to lay out the argument as I see it here before you, to the reader and my lovely wife, so it may be picked apart and your own conclusions can be formed. Perhaps we may start a dialogue and arrive at some compromise or conclusion, though those of you who took notes on the last week, would know that no matter what we conclude, there is no single answer which can satisfy the meaning we are deliberately trying to make.

But before we begin, I would like to make mention of the image at the top of the page. For any of you out there that actually knew what that symbol was, I’m proud of you. For those of you who thought I would put up a senseless image which bore no relevancy to our discussion, shame on you. The image is called Mandala. Here is the definition, which may or may not be correct as I have to take this website’s word for it. www.mandala-universe.com

“Mandala in Sanskrit means sacred circle. The use of mandalas is rooted in historical practices from many different spiritual traditions. Mandala traditions are derived from direct experience of truth and have always been used as a means of turning inward to investigate the mind and to discover the inner truth about our essential nature.” (Emphasis mine)

Additionally, there is a second meaning, also intimately mystic and mysterious and bound to the nature of self-discovery which has to be represented here although, it must be noted, I chose this symbol for its first meaning, this unfortunately came along with it, though it still can hold water to the theme of this topic, it is certainly on another level.

"In the Indian Hindu Tantric tradition, the Mandala symbol for enlightenment and ultimate healing is called the SRI YANTRA. SRI YANTRA represents the unfolding of the universe both within you and without. These two processes—the inner journey and the outward unfolding—alternate eternally in a process known as manifest-unmanifest, or the entire creative process consisting of emanation, dissolution, absorption, and then emanation again.

SRI YANTRA, a revealed symbol, is the frozen mantra vibratory pattern created when the sacred sound of Aum is properly intoned by a yogi. AUM as atomic vibration is the active sound principle of creation, which brings thought into form through vibration. At another level Sri Yantra represents the return to one's center---through the star gate of the spiritual eye into silent source--- Absolute Consciousness or Beingness. "

(Note if you have trouble reading this portion, please enlarge the text on your browser: go to “View”, go to “Text Size”.)

On with the show. The question: does Man naturally gravitate toward money and power? Here is how I will answer this question: no, I do not believe Man (women and men), just so we are not confused whom I am speaking about, because, and this is a slight digression from the point, this world is still quite patriarchal, whether we choose to believe this or not, and do want this question to be viewed as only pertaining to men, since it is still the dominant perception that Men will be the ones to accumulate the tangible money and the intangible power, naturally gravitate toward and attempt to accumulate money and power.

Reasons: Money and Power are socially constructed ideals and artifacts, and because of this, after centuries and centuries of “Social Darwinism”, that is, those who followed the trend survived and reproduced, these social constructs became the key to survival and goal. Look here’s the thing: there is no single point in time we, in this case I mean “I” because I am not nearly smart enough to know everything about everything, can isolate to illustrate this was the magical revolution in human psychological evolution. What I can offer as evidence is Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality”. Rousseau offer hundreds of complex scenarios in this discourse, but ultimately, within the first pages of his argument offers his explanation: the moment someone claimed, ‘this is mine’, is the moment inequality started. There was a have and a have not. Inequality. When this occurred, who knows? But, if you really want to be honest about it, it is this point which set forth in motion the desperate chase for money and power among Man.

My contention is these are learned behaviors and social mechanisms, as the advent of inequality blossomed into greater social institutions, such as placing value on items, a barter and trade system, kingdoms, chiefdoms, hierarchies of power. Along the way there had to have been an individual not blessed by nature, as there lies Man’s first inequality, our genetics, who decided the only way to level the playing field is to accumulate “possessions” and obtain these possessions through an item which would carry value. The argument from here on out becomes muddled and over-wrought with scenarios: strong vs. weak, intelligent vs. not-intelligent, eventually leading us to the argument institutionalism vs. Nature.

My point may be muddled, so I will put it squarely out there: Nature starts inequality in men, this cannot be helped and is taken as a given, as our base. However, I believe Man works in unison to achieve survival, converging and optimizing all talents, strengths, and weaknesses. Since “power” and “money” are constructed ideals of Man, as to their ever-shifting meanings and what these things constitute, they are inherently learned behaviors in societies. At one point there was an individual who constructed different ideals of “survival” and equated this with possessions. There starts the inequality we know today. The moment someone said, “This is mine.” Man then begins to create societies which balance the new equation of possessions = power. And we snowball further and further.

I am interested in anyone’s point of view on this question: does Man naturally gravitate toward money and power? I have offered my hypothesis to you. You can choose to accept or not.

Post-Modernism, Post-Colonialism, and Deconstruction:

Alternate Realities

These types of analytical measures and/or philosophical systems always intrigued and continue to intrigue me. Not only do these systems and philosophies offer me a new way to consider the world and the multiple ways in which it is constructed, it reveals intricate details about the society we occupy now by deconstructing it, tearing it apart, and attempting to get it root causalities, but more than that, to show how several factors, some that may not even be related to what is being deconstructed, affect the formation and construction of what we are analyzing. It simply tells us this world is complex, it tells us things cannot be labeled as easily as we label; it tells us things are not as they seem, it tells us social constructions are onions and layers can be peeled away without ever fully seeing the true nature of that social mechanism.

Mostly I like what these philosophies have to say about the self and meaning, but before I speak to that, perhaps we should define these terms? Again, I do not claim to know this 100 percent; however, I know enough that I’m not simply dangerous and careless with the knowledge. With that said, let’s begin:

Post-Modernism: a movement in literature, art, mathematics, sociology, and other academia progressing from the Modernist movement. It focuses on technology and production, viewing the world in Capitalist/Marxist terms: Colonial and Post-Colonial. It’s about disrupting order and power systems of control, even disrupting meaning itself, understanding that “meaning” has no meaning at all and is derived from referential things to shape and give it meaning. It’s about deconstructing. That’s natural enough right? Very linear. There are several tenants of this movement, but I only want to focus on a couple on for this blog, which focus on the literary-side of the house:

1) The idea that the self is fragmented and is continually fragmented, or has no self-identification. The self is NEVER whole and we are continually understanding things about our own nature as well as the others around us. That is an important idea because it allows alternate realities to emerge within history; essentially, there can be no “one voice” to which history is told and written.

2) The idea of self-reflection of narrator’s in our stories, ideas of subjectivity. Objectivity and omniscient narrator’s become to narrow and do not allow other histories to become infused with the telling of the story, the history. Something many readers take for granted is the idea that their narrator’s reflect on situations he/she/it are put in within the novel and are self-reflective about their own actions.

3) The idea of blurring and intermingling. This is used in blurring genres such as poetry and prose, which we find a great deal of in the 1950’s and 1960’s in literature, but is also used to blur social distinctions and boundaries. Again this is incredibly important because it questions those boundaries as real, which we all question at one point in our lives. Are there really boundaries of separation between social class, race, cultures?



All of this is said above to say the following: we cannot accept the world for what it is and how it functions without breaking it down. Of course there is blind faith in things, such as religion or love, but we can break those down as well into systems of power, why and how relationships between men and women are the way they are, why and how religion functions within society. And, perhaps, when you have gone far enough, come to a point, maybe where I am today, analyzed hundreds of relationships between Capitalism, Colonialism, Marxism, invention of the Middle-Class, sustaining of the Middle-Class, Political discourse, Feminism, Misogyny, war at what costs, peace at what costs, and realize that setting classifications, creating order where there really is none, is really pointless. It’s not that it has stopped me from creating order in certain ways, but I am careful about things, I am investigative, looking for relationships and factors and influences behind what I want to classify as “this” or “that” and why I am creating this certain relationship.

At the end of they day, Nature has order. Nature has its own systems ecologically, atomically, and you can take that to mean there will always be order and uniformity in some manner. It is the person who looks into nature’s order, attempting to access a system within a system, who will lose control, lose power. Go far enough, and nothing has order, nothing has meaning, which is exactly the point: all our social assumptions and interactions and classifications are invalid. If the self is always changing, always fragmented and searching for identity, then you cannot know yourself, ever. How can you define what structures there should be between people, between race, between class, between gender, between countries, between cultures? And, going further, how can there be only one reality, one history, tell the story and define what is real and what is not?

Something to think about today.

The Militarization of Children

Two weeks later and I find the time for another post, and this one has some flavor to it as well. Perhaps it will cross some generational lines: reaching the young, the adult, the mid-lifer, and the old. But on with the show: I found myself flipping through a magazine dedicated to the X-Box gaming system a few days ago at work, which is not unusual as I work at a technology company. I found several ads in the magazine for war simulation games: Tom Clancy's "Ghost Recon", Tom Clancy’s “Splinter Cell”, "Call to Duty 2", "Quake 4", which is Sci-Fi, but characters use military structure and the premise they are saving the world from some great evil, some new game called “Mass Effect”, which is also a Sci-Fi game based on military structure and saving the world from a terrible evil, and some game that I cannot remember the name of but was sponsored by the United States Army, claiming it was their official game, which I found incredibly scary.

It was quite disturbing to me to find these ads, to find them so numerous in one magazine, magazines which young adults and adults alike are reading. It brought me to the consensus that children, young adults, and adults are slowly being inundated to a military lifestyle, desensitized to war and the things that accompany it, and are being corralled into finding war heroic, necessary, and glamorous. It’s underhanded and slimy psychology: they are training children, probably as early as ages 8-10, to learn how to take orders, as I’m sure these games shout at the children that their company is being slaughtered on a distant hill by enemy mortar fire and things of that nature, or they are standing on a blown-out rooftop in some urban setting playing the role of the sniper, the scope trained on your target’s face, ready to watch it invert and turn into a gaping hole when you squeeze the trigger gently. So they learn to react to people shouting at them, commanding them to do things, they are not thinking for themselves on some level; they learn to accept killing someone, watching patiently for methodical killing. And as a quick digression, the hardest thing for a sniper to do is pull the trigger. Snipers see every minute detail on the target’s face, every bulge and detail on their target’s body, they track and wait for their target for days at a time, and they gather a sense of knowingness and kinship with their targets. Conversely, we are training our young children/young adults to deal with this in simulated scenarios, training their minds to kill without hesitation which takes snipers, even though they are psychologically tested and approved for these positions because of their willingness to forgo this hesitation, months to fully get over the feeling, and children can do this without so much as blinking, perhaps with a smile stretched across their small faces.

Here’s the caveat: they are thinking, as they have to maneuver their character, and possibly an entire squad, through the level to accomplish objectives, but they are moving and thinking from the game’s instructions, curving their thought processes to think a certain way and react in certain ways, like a soldier would. These children, possibly your children, are “little soldiers”. These are not necessarily teaching them what is right and what is wrong, their senses of justice and injustice, what means of force is necessary and unnecessary, but it is certainly imbedding itself in these children’s minds, affecting their decision making down the road. And, folks, that’s honest. You, the reader can deny this if you like, claim that parenting and nurturing skills can curb this, or even prevent this, but you are simply being foolish. I, myself, am not a parent, but I have taught young adults for several years and I have been witness to peer pressure, witness to what is going on “behind the curtain” where parental and authority figures have no insight: parental powers are no match for the world that surrounds them. The world teaches in real-time lessons; parents can only guide them to the right roads and hope their children make the most of it.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is Ender’s Game. If you have not read the novel by Orson Scott Card, I suggest you do. The Department of Defense is reenacting this, especially when you have a game sponsored by the United States Army, my god, how clear does it have to be? Desensitized to war, to violence, to killing a fellow human being for grand objectives which are only illusions anyway, they are creating the next generation of soldiers. They are creating new enlistees with every player, with every little girl or boy who picks up their High-Definition Weapon, points it at the “bad guy”, and puts rounds down range into this person’s body. At this point, I wonder do I really have to say anymore? Does the reader understand where I have gone and where I am going with this? Maybe. But just so we are clear: STOP THE MILITARIZATION OF THE YOUTH.

2242 and Counting

I never intended this blog to be political; I created it to talk out loud about things I have thought about, things I think about in order to raise larger questions, in order for people to start dialoguing and conversing with one another. And, after the news this weekend, about Woodruff and the coverage which ensued, I find myself stewing and thinking about the war, again. And, maybe it's time I got personal with the blog too, providing insight into who is writing this.

I am a veteran of OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom). I was there with a medical unit on the outskirts of Baghdad and have seen the many who comprise (and who are not included) in total casualty count. Those who know me know I am completely against this occupation and this war. They know my reasons and thinking. I stopped watching the television journalism in college because they had nothing to say, there was no real investigation going on except to espouse further the governmental and party lines (democrat and republican alike). It made me nauseous to watch and lurid knowing people accepted everything without question. It took great effort to deny my political urges in this blog, up to this moment, because I am a political person with strong and deviating opinions about policy, economics, class, and conflict. I don’t tow lines period. I never have, I never will. It’s a fact about myself I’ve come to accept. There are those out there whom can follow blindly, relate everything to themselves in a centric way, which is to say, “As long as it does not affect me personally, I will not take an interest in it.” I cannot. Whether we choose to admit this to ourselves or not, the world is inter-subjective and inter-connected: one life affects and ripples through all lives. Enough digression.

Bob Woodruff. Why are we so concerned? To be frank, I could not care less. Where is the concern raised for 2242 others no longer with us? This man has topped the headlines throughout the country, and for what, doing his job? Bob isn’t even dead, so he isn’t even considered in 2242. He’s just injured, a casualty, and there is a whole separate list of the maimed, why don’t media organizations talk about that? If Bob doesn’t make it, then what, will the media turn on the hand that feeds them? Will they then start doing exposé pieces on what’s really going on in Iraq and start putting chinks in the armor of this incredibly corrupt government? Going further, if Bob is getting this treatment on the news, why not every single soldier who has been injured? Would it become too much for the mindless sheeple to stomach? Would people start demanding real answers and real solutions and not just listening and swallowing what that old fucking hack Don Rumsfeld talks about: modular forces in the Middle East, and the necessity of troops there is for the stability of the country, turning the military guerrilla warfare tactics and specialists and lessening the need for support unit: essentially turning the United States Military into one huge band of Spec Ops?

Not until an exposé is done on every single soldier who has been injured or slain in this “skirmish”, will I accept Bob Woodruff as legitimate and news worthy. Stop allowing the media to decide for you what you will hear, what you will see, what it is you should care about and how you will care about it. For those of you in the media, or a working cog in the media, and have taken offense, know I don’t feel remorse for a single word I’ve written. If it upsets you, or you feel I’m not justified or validated, tough shit. Change your ways: be a muckraker, dig into something which means something, and report some truth, not just the varying side of truth which happens to put money in your hand. Fuck Rupert Murdoch and his heavy-handed dictatorship of a news model. All it takes is ONE person to stand-up and do something meaningful, be that person. And, as for Bob, take care and good luck, if you make it out maybe you’ll have something meaningful to say.

The Soundtrack Of Your Life

It seems as though I always land on this topic; however, there is a good reason for it this time: someone very dear to me raised a question about music and its influence over a decisions one makes, "Could the sound of that music possibly change your decision or merely reinforce?" (http://www.mindracewithin.blogspot.com/)

And, well, that's what I aim to investigate, briefly, before I indulge in the Top Ten Soundtrack of my life, which, make no mistake about it, will not be easy, as there are literally thousands of songs and tracks to choose from. And, after the last post, I really needed something light to write about.

The question is meaningful, and though the originator of the question chooses not to answer it, I believe they (yes, I'm using an anonymous pronoun as to not genderize and sway opinion of the person who asked the question) knew the answer to this question, at least what was true to their mind, but passed it off as digression. With that said, here's my two cents: the mind is more mysterious and cunning than we give it credit for. I know we like to believe we control ourselves and our mind, and, for the majority of the time, we do. We tell our mind to make us stand up, to shoot electrical currents through our bodies; the nervous system reacts, and our bodies move. We tell ourselves to eat, or not eat, to move our optical nerves across a screen and interpret strange sticks of curvature and straightness into words into meaning. These measures we can control, of course, this all depends on socialization as well, which I cannot go into here because it shifts the discussion to a socio-political arena, and I promised myself it wouldn't happen today.

The measures we cannot control are fairly obvious: sleep/dreams and the subconscious. I include this in the answering of the question because I believe this is where the origination of conscious acts arrive from, the subconscious. What this means: your actions are all premeditated on some level; you were going to act in a certain fashion before you actually acted, and your actions throughout the course of the day led you to arrive each premeditated action. So, the music you chose when you were feeling a certain way, merely reinforces the feeling you had chosen before you even knew you chose it. Does this make sense? Argue if you like, but you know I'm right.

Now, down to the nitty-gritty, the Top Ten Soundtrack of my life: (in no particular order, just as they came into my head, after premeditated deliberation)

1. The Talking Heads: Naive Melody (This Must Be The Place)
2. Bob Dylan/Grateful Dead (Fall Out From the Phil Zone): Visions of Johanna
3. Bob Dylan: Subterranean Homesick Blues/Leopard-Skin-Pill Box-Hat/A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall
4. Eric Clapton: Wonderful Tonight and Lay Down Sally (All from the Slow Hand Album so it counts)
5. Bob Marley: War/Jammin'
6. Phish: Maze/Reba/Simple/Mike's Song/Strange Design (pick any live version you want: dynamite)
7. Miles Davis: So What
8. John Coltrane: A Few Of My Favorite Things
9. Grateful Dead: DarkStar/The Other One/It Must Have Been the Roses/Black-Throated Wind/Cosmic Charlie/Throwin' Stones/Unbroken Chain (too many more to continue)
10. Dave Matthews: #41/Minarets/Crush/Lover Lay Down

I realize this is cheating, but for a music lover, it's impossible to choose just ten songs. I chose ten artists, which I thought was more than fair.

Getting Older: Peace or War?

I know it has been a while since I rapped about anything reasonably serious here for quite some time. It's not to say that critiquing music and its influential control over how we, as a society, think and feel about situations we are in isn't important, because it is. But, it's important like the way you take vitamins. I'll leave the poetic mystery in that, because, sometimes, it's all you can to make something beautiful without ruining the road leading to it.

So, I'm getting older and my life is different at 26 than it was at 20. It's this difference I began to think about on a road trip I took a week ago: financial security vs. Societal-Cultural-Global issues. I suppose, for me, it comes down to privilege and how I am using that privilege. It helps that I was born white, it helps my father gained affluence throughout his life, which in turn, gave me affluence: I went to a better grade schools as a child, went to better high schools, and got into a good university. The cycle moves forward and upward, the cycle of white privilege.

Rather than digress about myself, because I just typed a couple of paragraphs and realized it could go on forever, it's best to just get on with the point, which is this: as we get older we have to root for America's dominance in the world market. I would like to dissect "dominance" because the word is large and general; we have to place our faith in markets (stock, real estate, commodities) and capitalization of our world in general. We have to root for war and destruction because these are sure-fire methods which stimulate economy to grow exponentially. We have to root for our cultural dominance to blossom in the third world, second world, and other first world countries. Thus far, I belive the progress we have made is impressive, and soon every country in the world will care about the most inane and ridiculous bullshit happening in Hollywood, everyone will be wearing Calvin Klein, and watching reality television. Which always puzzles me as to why reality televsion caught on, is real-reality not fantasic enough? In what other reality can you get a promotion, lose your left leg, total your car, find someone to love, get divorced, overthrow a government, send aid in the form of peanut butter and Pop-Tarts, and slaughter a thousand peasants fighting the militaristic government newly put in place all in the same day? Do we really need hyper-reality, where the consequences are drastic, where outcomes are spectacular, and you have very little involvement personally? Just look around you, seems like things are heading this way now. Is this illusion and escape necessary? (Enough digression)

When these countries open themselves up to our lifestyle(s), the dams release for our corporations to dive in and capture up those newly emerging markets, raising their stock. And, as soon as these corporations have raised their values enough, they'll slash their workforce (shutdown plants/move operations to third world nations) and jump out the window with all the money and resources and products in the bag. And as a shareholder you have to be happy because their stock continues to progress. We don't have to consider how we have affected the town, the country we just shit-canned because we are making money, gaining the coveted fianancial security. This is where my white privilege comes into play. I have the opportunity to emerge myself in all of this, and have; whereas countless other people do not and cannot because they were not born with nor into this privilege. Is that brutal honesty, yes. And, I ask myself, how can I stand for these things, how can I participate in a system as ruthless and uncaring and unresponsible as this? Simply, what choice does one have? You're in the game or you're out. So I am already taking advantage on a certain level, should I fully press this hand? Should I root for the unraveling and destruction of this world for my own benefit? These are the questions I am left with to answer, alone.

I have been on both sides of the argument. I have seen destruction first-hand; I have felt death first-hand. And the only tears shed for the 20 year boy who died in my arms nearly two years ago, were Tony and myself, the crew who watched him be carried to the Blackhawk, and his family. No boardroom was kept silent on his part. He was not considered nor counted; they were too busy finding ways to exploit his presence in this country to create more money. I have seen the devastation poured on third world countries because of trade policies and politics (GATT/NAFTA). The children rooting through industrial dumpsters, eating the remnants of military waste, sometimes eating toxic materials in those meals, the neon signs of your favorite brands blinking high above the Nicaraguan skyline, casting shadows on tar-paper shacks. These things can be helped, these things can be stopped by being responsible and taking ownness for what "we" have committed: responsible captitalism.

As I get older, I am always approaching this crux: financial security or justice? And, I know, that I can never give either up fully because on both sides there are things that mean too much too abandon. I guess one must keep on fighting for something everyday and hope they make a difference.