Education and Sorrow

When I graduated high school, I swore off school. But not education. I continued on my own, as I'd always been a voracious reader. I was "grounded" to my room a lot as a kid and books saved me. Locked in my room, I was out in the universe having adventures, or learning occult knowledge. Things unknown to my contemporaries and my family.

My K-12 years were a misery, getting easier toward the end in high school, even though I worked nights since tenth grade. My ADD certainly made my first nine years of school difficult. Though, in my own way, at my own pace, I could excel. That seldom was allowed to happen. Not unusual for any child, to be sure.

But that had little to do with how our national cookie-cutter, 19th century industrial age school system worked. One that we mostly still have today.

"Assembly line them out to get factory jobs!" Time and resources and not enough teachers meant you do it how you are asked, or you walk. More accurately? You're tossed out. I'm sure ethnic minorities had it worse. I was lucky. I was white, lower middle class. But the lower your economic class was, the worse you had it. Ethnic distinctions or not.

I never knew there was a method. Not until I took "Study Skills" in college. Then things got a bit easier. I saw it listed and thought what a great idea! Why did n't they teach us this in K-12? Apparently, you're just supposed to learn it through osmosis. Well? Some of us didn't. Couldn't.

After the Air Force at twenty-five, I floundered for a while. Until I sunk into being nothing. Though I started to acquire a greater love of life. Shrooms, weed, and LSD aided that sojourn.

One day my older brother talked to me in his backyard, where I was living for a year in his outbuilding, in a loft I had refurbished. I was a minimalist then, but it was a freeing, enjoyable experience. Knowing all the while that I was not living to my potential and had effectively lost all I had gained while in the Service. At least materially. Well, I lost a marriage too. But that was on me, in marrying too young.

My brother convinced me to use my VA benefits. And so I started college. For the fourth time. Though this time being my only real effort toward a degree.

“Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most must mourn the deepest o’er the fatal truth, the Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.” Lord Byron

But before I made my decision to start college and get an actual degree of some kind, I decided to take two weeks to ruminate and consider my situation, and my future.

I felt life had been somewhat painful up to that point. Though, I was making the best of it. At least, emotionally. Which was overshadowing my existence at the time. I had trouble finding a job after years in the military where I had great respect and responsibility. People's lives actually depended on me.

Now? No one seemed to want to trust me at all. Other than a few shady jobs I'd had. More than one of which had taken great advantage of me.

Over those two weeks, I considered what a degree, what higher education would offer me. More knowledge? Sure. A sharper mind. Hopefully. A greater understanding of both the world around me and the universe? To be sure.

I was quite aware of how, with greater knowledge, comes greater pain. I was very focused on that for that first week or so, not much interested in renewing my experience of being abused by a school system once again. But there was something I did not know yet about the difference between college and K-12.

During that second week, however, I started to consider how, with greater knowledge, also comes a greater appreciation of things. A better understanding of art, cinema, science, people, and living in general. There was an upside to it.

In the end, I decided I would give education one last try. After all, if I could survive the nonsense the military put me through, I could certainly deal with school of my peers. Though I would be older now, and returning to school after time away. I would have to get back to where I had been nine years ago when I graduated at seventeen. And that was a little unnerving.

Still, there would surely be wine, women, and song. This was not K-12, but an assemblage of adults. Or near adults anyway.

Once I got into college, took the study skills class along with my other first-quarter classes that first year. I settled in. People, other students this time, were different. People were there because... for a change, they actually wanted to be there. They paid to be there. Not like before where most of us wanted to be elsewhere and were working out issues about authority and our parents. Though, to bs sure some still were. But my K-12 years? Or parents did that to us. The government did that to us.

As one prof put it, he loved teaching college because the kids actually wanted to be there. They had made a choice. Most of them, A choice to be there. They wanted to learn.

And that was what I saw in my fellow classmates. It was addictive and invigorating. A bit shocking at first. Others in my classes would join in. It wasn't just the smart girl, speaking up, or the wise-ass clever guy joining in, all as the rest of us just sat there ignorant or annoyed. Or worse, bored.

People joined in the discussions. The learning invoked great attitudes and we all wanted to be there. I too wanted to be there. It was kind of amazing and rewarding, and after a quarter or two of classes, I was fully invested. The more I learned, the more I wanted to learn more. But also, the more I learned, the less I knew I knew of the ever-expanding awareness of the vastness of all knowledge. 

This was better than partying all the time or doing drugs. It was also giving me something back for my efforts. Something that would remain with me for the rest of my life.

However, there was indeed a downside. 

Deep into the last part of the Fall quarter in my final year, I wandered into the Career Center at Western Washington University. I thought, maybe they could offer me some help, as soon, I would graduate. And...then what?

I sat with a counselor and explained my situation. She looked at me shocked and said, "You're late." I asked what she meant. I had months until I graduated. I believe, about three left. "See these other students in here?" She said. I looked around. A few students were studiously reading various things and filling out forms. "Yes?" What she said next disturbed and shocked me.

"They've been coming here for months, some for a year already. You should have been here sooner."

And sure enough, she was right. I never did find a job for after graduation. I graduated and moved back home, to Tacoma. And... ended up at the same job I had when I started college, and at the same hourly rate. I was crushed. Happy to have a job. But despondent. 

It was a letdown to be sure. Why didn't ANYONE tell me to prepare for leaving college? Eventually, I transferred up to Seattle to another store with the same company, MTS Incorporated. Tower Records. It was a fun place to work, not much money, and not the potential for advancement.

IF you weren't interested in getting your own store to manage. Which I wasn't. Reason there being, I'd been in retail sales since tenth grade at the Drive-In Theater where I worked nights all through high school. I'd started there cleaning the field the night after shows played. It was back-breaking work for a ninth-grader.

Someone once told me that to make money in life, you can't be the employee who physically touches any of the money made. You have to get away from that. Which surely managing the store would do. But I wanted more, yet.

I tried to get a job in Seattle as a starting psychologist and got hit with the hard reality that I was already getting paid more where I was. I was stunned. It wasn't much more but after money, time, blood, sweat, and tears to get a university degree, I'd make the same money? 

I had found before graduating at the career center at WWU that many students were already volunteering for unpaid jobs. Then later after graduation, many got hired. I couldn't afford to do that any longer now that I was working for a living. I'd blown that opportunity.

When I found that out while still in college, I asked a friend and fellow psych student about that and she said, oh yeah, sure. I've been volunteering with special needs kids for a while now. Years later she was a counselor at a K-12 school. 

And so, I found myself stuck in my job for a while longer.

Eventually, I was able to find my first computer job which began my life in IT work. Which eventually paid very well as I worked my way up. I shocked coworkers on my IT team, all of who had computer science degrees. While I had a degree in psychology. 

Regarding that. You'd be surprised how many skills are similar between understanding people as a psychologist and debugging computers, systems, networks, and programs. I did quite well at it.

But I've gotten off track here.

My original point remains. With greater knowledge comes greater awareness...and greater responsibility.

The same is true in the opposite direction for those who remain uneducated and bluster their way through, wanting to be treated as if they deserve the respect some of us have put so much time and effort into achieving. 

Then they start to talk authoritatively about sophisticated issues. Like medicine, or sociological issues. Or politics. Some to be sure are self-educated and deserve our respect. But they are the few.

Certainly, few, who can do it properly. Which is why higher education and structured learning was developed in the first place. Without it, it's too easier to miss entire areas of relevancy.

Too many think they can and have achieved that proper coverage of knowledge on their own, and surely, as most of us have seen...that is simply not the case. And we all have to suffer them and their ignorance as wisdom. There's one at least on every job in every career who thinks they know more than they do. It is a costly thing for them to be employed, until they are found out, and removed. 

In ending, I'll just say this.

More education is almost always better than less. To assume the opposite is dangerous... and abusive. Abusive to the country, to our fellow citizens and to ourselves, our family, friends, and our loved ones.

Whenever you are faced with a problem, an issue, a concern? Take the time to learn more about it. But also and just as importantly, about the surrounding issues. Even some that seem completely unrelated. Because too often, they are related in unseen, and unforeseen ways. 

Because everything is connected and should be seen that way.

Otherwise one day you find yourself poor in so many ways. You find an unnecessary global pandemic staring you down as you die and you wonder... "How did this happen?"

How? It is because with great knowledge comes greater responsibility and greater sorrow. And if you allow it, greater joy too.

But if you don't handle it properly, you will suffer. And others will suffer. We, will suffer. And we do not appreciate it. Especially if WE did do the work.

  

Just as we're all seeing happen today. All around us. All the internet armchair quarterbacks. Political pundits, not worth their weight in...swamp mud. 

Yet, it does not have to be like this. We CAN handle things right. To see our responsibilities. To act to address them properly. To find our job in life that will give you the best life. 

It doesn't have to be this way. We can do better. It just takes effort. It just doesn't have to be like this. 

It really doesn't. 

Why America Stopped Being Great - Corporate Thought

Here's what I'm seeing in life today. "Corporate thinking" has taken over our businesses, our social institutions, our religions, our government. Look. It's really not that capitalism is so very bad. It's that at some point, people stop acting decent and start acting like they are at war.

Okay, fine. Business can be like war and applying Sun Tzu's Art of War can be useful. So can Machiavelli's, The Prince. The problem is at some point they throw meritocratic issues out of the window and go right for the jugular.

And at that point, capitalism breaks down. THAT is where corporate thought kicks in. One no longer has a need or consideration of the "bigger picture." The picture, the situation that is all-inclusive. In the capitalist sociopath's point of view the picture is only as big as they are. They do things like get to where they have power and money and then, change the rules for all those who come after them, or try to dethrone them. Wonderful, right?

I would argue, that benefiting only one person or group, is dysfunctional. Because we are a country, a nation, America. The entrepreneur is supported on a cloud of the nation. While they try to sell the belief they have pulled themselves up by the bootstraps so no one else has any claim on their success or their money or resources.

Hey, if video and fun are your bag and this is kind of try, hop over to Amazon Prime and watch Kal Penn's show, This Giant Beast That is the Global Economy. Try Episode 2: Are Rich People Dicks or Do Dicks Get Rich.

This is (in part) why capitalism is broken: Rent-seeking ...an individual's or entity's use of company, organizational or individual resources to obtain economic gain without reciprocating any benefits to society through wealth creation. An example of rent-seeking is when a company lobbies the government for loan subsidies, grants or tariff protection.

That, is a mistake and that, is where America has been draining reality off of the middle class for decades now to the point of killing it off. Of making a duality of the very rich and the very poor and that is where we are headed. That, has to stop. And where that starts is the lack of responsibility by the individual sociopaths in business and the lack of concern or understanding of how we all really are tied together.

There is a MASSIVE infection of a lack of responsibility in this country. Whenever you push through to something, past reasonable attempts, to what you have no right whatsoever to, merely in order to make money, gain status, or increase your power over others, that is shirking responsibility. There is a huge difference between perseverance and being unethical or immoral.

Because of that, others who do deserve all that do not receive it. We are seeing this too in government from the conservative Republicans who have purposely skewed facts, reality, even our elections. Some with the help of Russian interventions in our social media, or worse. 

Pursuing those kinds of behaviors are harming them, harming us all. As well as the structures surrounding them, in society. Harming our country. 

Many times, if not most of those times, people who do deserve it, have actually put in the hard work, have attained the necessary personality and infrastructures around them, and the understanding of those things. All in order to be able to handle that responsibility. 

While those others haven't. 

That is what corporate thought is all about. It's why I despise it so much, corporate thinking. It's abusive. It's bad, as the old saying goes, for children and flowers and all living things.

An example of this is as recent and relevant as 60 Minutes episode last night on opiates. They had on Ed Thompson who owns PMRS who said that in 2001 the FDA changed the labeling on Purdue Pharma's Oxycontin. Basically heroin in a pill. Ed said that was illegal. I think he was right. He is now suing the FDA over this to change the label back, to make it correct.

Purdue pushed the FDA to bow to their wishes and go from indicating on the label that Oxy was for short term use (which research dictates) to long term use (which research says it is contraindicated for).

He also said that the FDA lit the fire for big pharma to make billions. I disagree. FDA poured out the catalyst, tossed gasoline on the tinder. But it was big pharma who lit that fire.

THAT is an important thing because we have to put the responsibility on the right agency or entity. To think that falls on the corporations is correct. To believe that the government is the one who needs to set the law for this to keep greed from overwhelming corporations is also correct. But let's face it. This is corporate thinking at it's best example.

Purdue and others simply refuse to be responsible, except to their wallets and stockholders. At the expense of literally thousands of citizens lives. At the destruction of communities and families.

That is corporate thinking. 

I can play the game, too. I've just refused to. Most decent people do. That's the problem with our GOP, the party of (mostly) big business. They are happy to take all they can. And with a man as POTU|S who is more con than business, they are following his lead.

It is all about attaining what you deserve to aim for, regardless of your right to it, or your ability to achieve it. Shoot for more than you believe, but don't steal from others who deserve it more. 

When rather than attaining it by your own personal skills, abilities, and resources alone, when instead it is accomplished by breaking rules, ignoring humane considerations, mores, and even laws? You should be brought down. As our Pres. Donald Trump and friends now should be brought down, brought to heel, brought to bear the full weight of national security and jurisprudence.

They are the crowd of the ends justifying the means. Some others will praise you if they know that, merely out of envy. Many will praise that if they don't know because...they think you'd earned it. Or they use plausible deniability and accept all you do for all they can get. It's the new criminal, breaking reality, tossing citizen's on the trash heap, the environment into the garbage, all as long as they avoid breaking laws (whenever possible, but not always, and that is our hope), so they don't get caught. So they can keep doing it. 

It doesn't have to be that way? We can make changes. We can force those appropriate changes.

I knew a guy like, who would do anything to rise above, back when I worked for the University of Washington. He shocked me one day by openly saying he didn't have my abilities or education so that gave him the RIGHT to walk all over anyone, to climb over anyone however he could in order to rise up that ladder to success.

I was stunned. I didn't see the writing on the wall with him that day back in the early 1990s. I didn't foresee a large group of Americans leaning that direction. I just assumed he was a one-off, a low life, a potential criminal. And indeed, he got booted out of that office and off the campus workforce. But, it had to be done in such a way that it was legal, but covert. Which speaks to our current dilemma today. These people are getting away with these things. The laws have been written to allow their behaviors and if WE try to do what is right? Then WE become the criminals. 

It is an upside down reality now.

Today's way is to not EARN a damn thing, merely to attain it by hook, or by crook. 

What the hell do you think "by crook" MEANS? THIS is now the foundation of the Republican party. Of Donald Trump. Of Vladimir Putin. Of many on Wall Street. And THAT is who you are if you support them. Or if you choose that path. 

And if you do? If you do you are disgusting. Statistically speaking you are also most likely a conservative Republican. 

That IS the party of business and corporations. And with the tax cuts they always pine over, it is also the party of giving them(selves) tax breaks so they don't have to make it on their own. It is a kind of socialism they will not point to. Not needing to accept responsibility.

When poor people need help? They can't as the odds are (purposely) stacked against them and so they suffer. That is growing day by day to include all who do not have vast buffers of wealth and money to insulate them from the damages, the lies, elitist plutocratic cultures. 

Some will even kill you for it. Indirectly and at a distance, of course. Our healthcare system is a prime example of that. 

It is a natural and basic function to destroy that which attempts to destroy you. This current defective format of our government, our business, our wealth distribution has got to be eradicated. 

Culture has got to learn that this is unacceptable. So our children don't think they are someone to imitate. How many children right now think Donald Trump in being POTUS is some a role model? How many parents actually ARE teaching their kids that? 

There is even a Republican politician, Ron DeSantis running a political ad about exactly that! It's humorous, but that does not excuse it. It is an embarrassment to America. 

We are now living what government is supposed to be about avoiding. The rule of the jungle. The rule of gangs. It is, what society is supposed to be 100% against. Because it leads to chaos and mayhem which Donald Trump loves so much. Destruction, uneven playing fields. 

A disruption of our society, our government, our Republica, our democracy. A breaking down of infrastructures such as we're seeing today. 

It is what corporations today are all about. 

It is corporate thought. 

It is why American has been stopped from being Great. We didn't need to make America great again. We've been on that path for over two centuries. It is turning us from the path of greatness. It has even been ending our greatness, that effort by the conservative base, the Republican party, the Trump acolytes. They have moved from political party to cult entity.

So stop thinking calling out disingenuous attacks against "socialsm", while having nothing to do with what is going on in American politics today, have any real bearing on your or other's abusive capitalistic practices, if not outright criminal actions. Just because your President in Donald Trump seems to be getting away with it, just because Plutocrats in America have been getting away with it and Oligarchs in Russia are running that coutnry too, doesn't mean we will continue to allow the abuses to continue. Either in America, or Russia. Both Trump and Putin need to find their seats in prison, and soon.

It needs to end. This invasion, this infection of corporate thought into all of our American ideals and ideologies, has got to stop. 

And it can be done. WE can do it. We will do it. 

The Irresponsible Generation?

I don't get this attitude that I see so much of today. Blame laid anywhere but on oneself. Yes, times are hard, but they've been harder.

And sure, there's always some of that involved....

How do you not know you are going to graduate High School when you have been working for twelve years to get to that point? What happened to being responsible for oneself? Thinking for one''s self, thinking outside the box to get to where you need to be?

There seems to be some kind of a virus going around that absolves people from being responsible for themselves. It's a super virus among many conservatives, to be sure. You'd think in twelve years during K-12 years one would figure out they are one day going to be out on their own.

"I am 17, and my parents are going to kick me out on my 18th birthday in August to make me homeless. What do I do? I don’t have a driver’s license or a bank account."

Seriously? I suppose we can blame our parenting? I was a bit of a mess when I left home at seventeen. But I had a driver's licence, I got a job that started the day after HS graduation. I took responsibility and figured it all out on my own. My parents weren't any help, they assumed I'd do what I needed to. And I did.

It was painful. But no one helped me, I helped myself. I had no other choice. My parents weren't highly educated. My mother only got to ninth grade. My step-father graduated high school, but wanted little to do with me and was a blue collar warehouse worker. There were no expectations from them for me which was a good and a bad thing. Good emotionally. Bad career wise. But then, I had to figure things out for myself before I moved out and because of that, I handled my own situations after that.

What helped me more than anything was a friend back then telling me something important. He had said:

"Be responsible for yourself, because no one else will be. Yes, your parents may be to blame for your emotional problems or more. But once you are an adult at eighteen you need to accept responsibly for yourself. Even if your situation is not your fault or responsibility, take that responsibility on yourself. Because by accepting it you will be far ahead of the game."

And so I did that. It took a while but it was worth the pain over that next year or two as I adjusted to stop blaming anyone but myself for everything. In taking that responsibility, it gave me a brand new and more productive perspective.

We're seeing this lack of responsibility even in older generations now in things like the issues about Russian and even Republican disinformation campaigns. For over two decades now we've seen this kind of behavior in the GOP and with conservatives, with the NRA, with the tobacco industry, the car industry, and with many global corporations. Selfishness, greed, "me before others", this simple overall lack of accepting responsibility for our own actions and situations. Win at all costs, even if we are liars or abusers. I may even be in part an explanation for much of the sexual abusers we're now hearing about in the media that led to the "Me Too" campaign which was long overdue.

Once I had accepted responsibility for myself and my actions, my life got better. Eventually. It hurt, and it was painful. It took over a year to accept it, to get used to it. but life got better from that point on. It took a while for my living situation to get better but my mindset, my emotional state, my life orientation, even my friend's attitude toward me (and mine toward them) was instantly enhanced. And the rest of my life was all the better for it, than it would have been.

America needs to start doing that overall. Not just about our children, not just about ourselves. Not just about family, but about community in general and about our nation.

Perhaps in some ways we've confused a generation in our being so oriented to not do to our children what our parents did to us, in our being overly PC, in being too protective of our children. Perhaps our parents, even if misguided, actually (even if inadvertently), knew something we were msising?

I suspect one day this generation will get their act together, raise their kids differently and  (hopefully) do a better job than we did so their next generation will get it together overall and for us all.

Perhaps this is in part what is wrong with our government too. Not about our children obviously but about their parents who are now in power. We can see some of them, their attitudes, selfishness, being focused only on theory and defective agendas, not on humanity, process, or people, and not on our children.

Or perhaps this next generation will be even worse off? Well, hopefully not.

Our hope as it always is, is in our young. We need to invest in them, their education, healthcare, mental health, social health, and our own understanding of parenting them. I can only hope, we all can only hope, that they will be our hope and our future.

A future that will eventually get better than the ridiculous nonsense that is currently saturating our culture and our country,

Should writers respect or fear all of society's feelings in their writings?

Someone on Linkedin.com recently asked a question that I responded to:

Should a writer respect the feelings of all sections of society while expressing their views? As a writer can they enjoy unfettered freedom in the light of recent developments?

My reply...and then some:

It depends on what you are writing about, or what your intention is in what you are writing about. Some writers may not want to offend anyone (which is nearly impossible these days). Or a writer may want to inflame a certain portion of a readership, or wish to inflame or move, everyone. It depends on what the intention of the piece is.

Writers now a days have to be aware of backlash from certain elements to the point even of the writer's death. But we cannot let that dissuade us from our job. I am at times very vocal in my writings about what I think the ills of the world are to the point of calling out terrorists as the misled, the demented, the childish, and as cowards even in the face of brave situations, if one calls it that while blowing yourself up or being gunned down in the process of killing their own, the innocents, women, the old and infirm and, children.

It is good to consider, even if you are not a well read writer, how do you want your writings to be viewed after you have died? Either from natural causes or through the efforts and intentions of someone who has reacted violently to you because of something you have written?

Remember it's not about confrontation, it's about dialog on your side as a writer. That means on the side of enlightenment and change it needs to be about compromise and dialog. But also, on the other side, in that of a radical mind, it needs to be about dialog, but also about compromise in an individual with a mindset where that simply may not be an option. Well? It needs to be an option.

For some of us who are not fighters as I once was, though now I prefer to be more a lover, they or we can "fight" through our words for what is good and right in the world as we see it. Everyone should be welcome to speak their mind, as that helps to temper beliefs. But one must listen as well as speak.

Sometimes I publish things that are intentionally inflammatory in order to get people to see the error of their ways in beliefs and actions. If someone reads something I wrote on my blog and finds me a distasteful human being, but what they have read changes their mind to a better way of being, if they they then hate me for my efforts but go out in the world and do more good than they had been, what care is it of mine if I have offended them?

George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the United Kingdom, said:

"We shouldn't tolerate the intolerance." 

As writers and authors we produce art and words strung together in such a way as to evoke emotion. Is it only to be for entertainment? Or should we have an underlying and important message to convey to support or change things for the better? Further, should we at times overtly try to change people's minds away from their beliefs to what we understand to be the better good?

How does one do that?

By keying into someone's beliefs and gently changing their attitudes? Or at times by jarring them into reality and out of their delusions? There have been times when writers have spoken out and been killed for their efforts. Through their death change has been evoked, change greater than they could ever have achieved through their words while they lived. That is not a good thing for them, but it's something.

What should be your own legacy as a writer? To make a buck and no one ever knows of you or after you die your writings die with you? Or to change even one person to go out to do more, or better, or at least stop doing ill of others? Because for every one who stops doing ill, others see that and may follow suit or temper their choices.

Certainly it is your choice. I have made mine.

This all brings to mind... terrorism.

After 9/11, from that next day to December 31, 2013 there were on American soil, the following number of deaths:
Terrorism: 41
Firearms in 2011 alone: 32,351
Car/Truck Accidents in 2011 alone: 33,783

So "keep calm and carry on."

Terrorists in America  have blatantly failed. Overall worldwide, these are disaffected young Arab Muslim men. Muslims are not our enemies, religion is, if you want to entertain that kind of logic. But even then it is a disaffected and propagandized mindset by a minuscule hard core, radicalized group who propel and recruit through their pathetic agenda.

These people are lost in the modern world and not unlike those American conspiracy theorists who fear a "New World Order" when one is only going to happen regardless since we live on a planet together with limited resources. It is much in the same mental virus that involves fear and hatred of others who they do not understand or refuse to join with.

They are our failures in America.

Mostly these terrorists are poor individuals, poor in livelihood or poor in moral logic focusing only on what makes them feel good with no concern for either those they consider their enemies or their own people they claim to be fighting for and where those they claim to be fighting for en masse, have claimed that these terrorists are not fighting for them.

Be concerned in a relative and reasonable way.

Do not fear those who are of broken ideologies, mind, spirit, logic, reason, or religion. Consider that the late Saudi King Abdullah has been putting change into place in his seminal Islamic country for years that has been quietly bringing about change.

There are now more women in that country in universities than men. That alone is amazing and in years to come it will change the face of Saudi Arabia and their version of Islam, which is a part and heart of the over all world of Islam.

Change is coming. But it takes time. We need to help get Islam and those mentally deranged versions of Islam past this sad point in its history and on into the future.

Those backward types who find terrorism as a positive force of change will eventually fade away with time and proper action and be seen in hindsight as a cancer in the state of Islam during this period. Bringing all Arabs and Muslims into modern times mentally and economically is what they need, not the ill will of the entire world.

It will take time, but they are on the way out and this age of attempted terror is their death knell.

#Terrorism

I am...a Murderer

I am a murderer. It dawned on me the other day. Murderer.

It's my fault and that makes it thus: I murdered. Kind of by definition.

First let me say when I was younger, I used to blame other people, other things for my difficulties in life. Mostly my parents. And rightly so, as they really screwed things up, and me. But they also gave me things, like genetics and an orientation in life to survive, to succeed. Mostly though I owe my Grandmother, my mother's mother. But still, I moved out of my parent's house (mother and not very well liked step-father from since I was five, in either direction) at seventeen with a chip on my shoulder. Eventually I joined the USAF at twenty. Life was going no where for me and I thought this might turn things around. It did in a way, it didn't, in another way.

Eventually though after the military, during my University years toward getting a degree in Psychology and while working things out with my primary Psych Professor and Adviser, I came to realize that I needed to take responsibility for myself. Actually it was that Prof. who shoved that one down my throat until I finally understood and began to get it. Finally I realized that after I moved out of my parent's house, whatever was wrong or right with me became fully my own responsibility, to blame or to praise. And that was perhaps the biggest revelation in my life. It turned my life around. Failures started to turn into successes. Though I'll have to admit a nod to my mother and her mother for my persistence is surviving nearly anything. A troubled childhood, a difficult adolescence, a difficult decade in my twenties that didn't really stop there. Why? Because the paradigm I had grown up with, was faulty. But that is another story for another time.

So what's this about murder?

My first wife and I ended it on good terms. I was in the end, probably just too young to get married at twenty years of age. But that was only the beginning.

See, I have married three and a half times so far, in my life.

My second (non-wife as we were together long enough at around six years, but we never married) went through our college years with me, before and for a little while after. But that was just never to be in the end. I seem to find relationships end at seminal moments. Like when I got out of the USAF. And when my University years were over. Then things changed.

Divorcing the first time had traumatized me and I never wanted to do that to another. Regardless of whose fault it was. That first time had been my desire to marry and later my desire to divorce since it had just stopped working. It wasn't my fault, it wasn't her fault, it was our fault. But my second long term relationship was doomed to failure.

My (legally) second wife said she had really wanted me from the start, no matter what, from the time she first saw me, she later said she was going to have me. I on the other hand, wasn't interested. Not so much because of her, but because I had recently been run through the wringer after my University years and the preceding military years and by this time I had really had it with romantic relationships.

From the TV show, "Elementary", words spoken by the modern times, Sherlock Holmes character:

"I've lived most of my life with the firm conviction that romantic love is a delusion. It's a futile hedge against the existential terror that is our own singularity."

He then goes on to say that he then went on to meet a woman he fell in love with, who turned out to be, a criminal, the modern day, Moriarty. To which he said he now feels, liberated on the topic.

So I was taking a break when my second wife found me. Still, she put her mind to getting me in any way she could. And testament to perseverance and desire, she got me.

My third wife, loved me a lot. I loved her a lot. But in the end, she loves herself more than anyone. Still, in her universe, I had murdered...us.

See I didn't live up to her expectations of me. I didn't fulfill the concept, of who she thought I was. I broke her view of who I seemed to be and so in the end, I killed that view she held of me. It wasn't very long after, that the marriage ended, and well, I had murdered it.

I murdered it for my last wife, my next to the last wife, my unwife (the point five wife, as we had lived together a long enough for common law though we don't have that in Washington state, but I figured she earned, deserved, at least a half listing as a wife).

But still, I am a murderer.

I murdered my marriages. I murdered another's self delusions and misinterpretations of who I was. Who I was supposed to be, to them. Who they needed me to be. Was that their fault? Was it mine? Was it my responsibility to live up to who they expected me to be, even if I didn't fully know, or realize who that person was? Maybe.

Because when you take on another person as your responsibility, and when you marry, you are, isn't it at least somewhat your responsibility too? Isn't that the reason to be really damn sure of what you are getting into when you marry? Maybe that is why so many are choosing now a days not to marry but to simply live together.

So in a way I had murdered. I had murdered multiple times, multiple relationships.

Perhaps if I had known more fully who I was but more importantly almost, who others perceived me to be, and specifically who I was perceived to be by the women in my life, perhaps then I could say that I was responsible and had lived up to those expectations.

Because mostly, and this is the weird part, I was who those women thought I was. But not in the way they thought I was. Mostly from what I could later deduce, they saw things, saw me, in black and white. And I see things in various shades of grey.

My last wife actually stated it in those words, saying: "Life IS black and white." to which I responded, "No, no it isn't. Life is various shades of grey. Life is complicated. It's easier to live life as if it were black and white, but that is missing so much of what is going on. It is missing making the best decisions possible. It is setting yourself up for failure in the future. It is a temporary fix seeing things as black and white, an easy effort to come to a quick conclusion for something that may work for now, but in the future will turn on you and ruin your plans."

Okay, I didn't say all that. I just said I disagreed and that I saw things as various shades of grey.

My point?

I have been taking time off from relationships for a while. Trying to see who I was, what I was doing. So that next time, if there is a next time, I will chose more correctly. I will have more to bring to the relationship rather than needing someone to "complete me". One of the stupidest things to think a relationship will do for you. First, you need to bring a whole person to the relationship, to add to it, not take away from it to "complete you". That, is just a drain on the relationship doomed to failure.

Next time I decide to enter into a relationship, I will take my time on who I choose to spend my time with and who I allow to spend their time with me so as not to waste their valuable life time. Because their decision is in part my decision too. I will use a different set of criteria for making these decisions. I will give more weight to what they need and if they are looking for me to "complete them". Because if they are, I'm running the other way.

Actually, I will politely beg off and walk away with my (and their) dignity still attached.

And because, I don't want to be a murderer anymore.

Journalistic Integrity

I get these things. Why can't professional news media get it? Or politicians? Or political mouthpieces, or loudmouths? I am referring to Fox News. They seem to be the worst for this kind of behavior, pushing agendas, pushing the limits of journalistic integrity (I doubt they can spell that). But there are others. I can forgive some, sometimes, but not to these extremes we are seeing now a days. Edward R. Murrow should be turning in his grave. 

First of all, I am NOT a paid Journalist. But lacking resources or payment for what I write for free many times, I at least try to be honest and accurate. When someone has corrected me on this blog I have checked out their contentions and made the corrections, many times even leaving the original and noting the mistake in the text. I don't delete their posting even when they are being condescending or obnoxious and I don't take credit for correcting what they found if at all possible (but if they post anonymous, it's hard to give credit where credit is due). 

So here it is....

I've been called a Liberal. I'm not.

I've been called by a liberal, a conservative. I'm not. 

I just believe in the truth as I can best uncover and conceive of it. 

I prefer to have life be good, to maintain the status quo except for where it can be made better.

In some cases the status quo needs to be destroyed. In other cases, maintained. However, I know that I have to use my knowledge, my intellect, the newest information I can find in relation to it, along with a consideration of how History has shown any efforts to effect change, in order to change the status quo.

I want to make my life better whenever possible. but I think we should take some calculated risks to continue to strive to make life better not just for me, but for everyone.

When I profess anything as fact, I should strive to prove first to myself that it is, indeed, fact. Buy checking that item via another second source, disconnected from the first and then from a third source, a source as opposing to the first as possible. Or three primary sources with objective or unimpeachable reputations (if there are indeed, any left).

I do not think I should act hysterically and before I have all the facts in and act or speak. And if I speak, to make it clear this is my opinion and not yet a fully realized one.

I do not think I should speak negatively when there are positive ways to view and explain things.
I should not misrepresent facts. I should not color things to seem to be what I know them not to be or simply that they are not. I should not make things up or lie for my own benefit. When I do make a mistake I should correct myself.

I should not blow things out of proportion to make a buck or push myself into the forefront while misleading the American people and causing them to respond to incorrect information thus affecting the path of America in an incorrect direction.

Who raised you that you as professional Journalists, that you don't get these pretty simple things that your parents should have instilled in you as a child and your mentors in journalism should have beat into you as reporters of the news in the Public Trust?