Tuesday, May 03, 2005

It's not our world, but we live in it

I'm going to get personal for a moment without trying to whine. And I do not blame all of this on George Bush, but this is the schism that's been destroying my current sensibilities.
What the fuck is going on in this world?
Now I'm an anarchist. I don't usually place that outright, I often use terms like "independent" or "liberal tendecy" or even "semi-socialist". But really I'm an anarchist. I believe that we've got too much society going on and not enough actual living. Our government is so wrapped up in business venture that it's not able to properly take care of it's essential tasks. Why am I bringing this up now? Well here's why:
As many of you know, I've been "unemployed" for a while now. And I'm not going to say I've been busting ass to get back to an office, nor have I sat on my ass either. But I thought about something the other day listening to the radio. NPR had an author Howard Zinn on the Diane Rehm show. He's the guy that wrote "the people's history of the United States" and basically he's into discovering the truths about history by actually interviewing families and people that lived during the time and finding out the stories that didn't make the papers and whatnot. There was also a lot of anti-war commentary from him claiming truthfully, that war really affects civilians more than soldiers.
It led to a conversation with by right hand man Dan(who was in the army for three years as paratroop infantry). We were talking about how every time a bomb lands in Iraq, we create enemies of the civilians killed around it. Everytime we strike on a target that wounds others around it, we lose the war a little more. And we continue to raise the question, "Why are we there?" What are we doing exactly? Do we have a plan? Do we have a strategy? Or is it just that we're going to wander around until we figure out that they're good and we can take off. Before I get my head chopped off, I'm not suggesting that we're "done" over there. But I am pulling out the "why did we go in the first place?" question. Anyhow, a soldier called into the show and started to get a little pissed at Mr. Zinn because he felt that he was downplaying something that's good about the war. Well nothing is good about war. But that's not really where I'm going. I want to root back to the part about anarchy for a bit.
Why are we living lives that cost money? Every religion that has taken hold of a culture that still exists today preaches the exact same type of path to elightenment. In just about every text I've read from the Tao Te Ching to the Bible has pushed a path that admits that man's law is bullshit and god's law is nature. So why the fuck do we pay to live on land? Why do we have to earn money to keep from starving? Whatever happened to a family owning land and that land being in the family as something to be passed down. Why do we not make what we earn anyhow? Why do we pay income taxes and property taxes and dare I say it even consumption taxes? Is our return worth the lack of true peace within ourselves first? In our society, we can never follow any chosen religion to it's fullest. Jesus tells us to cast our coins aside and walk the earth on god's path. Buddah says that enlightenment is gained through quiet silence. Taoism says to forget everything to become wise. Judaism teaches community values, but it's base intention seems to me to protect their culture by living a life of remembrance of the past and caring whole heartedly for your brethren. I could keep going here, but what I'm trying to get at is that you can't live in the United States by casting your coins aside. You can't find quiet silence in any city. You can't spend your life as an effort to live in harmony with your brethren. You have to screw someone in order to get anywhere. You have to cheat in order to get ahead. And you must neglect your family to keep your head above water.
I tell you where this comes from. Now maybe it's just that my dad is an asshole, and I can admit that he can be at times. But basically right now, my Dad wants to do whatever he can to try to keep me from screwing him out of rent money, even though I have no intention of that, so that he doesn't have to worry about paying a fucking house payment. So my father had to choose to treat me like a fuckin' lowlife piece of shit in order to feel confident that he won't slip into the deep abyss of debt that swells over the majority of American families.


Wow, I think I didn't whine the entire time. And here I was almost going to blob about sympathy from you guys because I'm poor and my dad is hedging on paying me fifty measly dollars for painting a room because he's currently disabled thanks to a job that put a fifty year old man in a garage by himself in the middle of the night to fix giant cranes and trucks for the steal mill without considering that his injury may make him unable to work ever again and a union that won't declare him disabled until every possible medical treatment is exhausted before they'll give up and give the guy his fuckin' pension so he can live without barking down my neck every ten minutes for a couple of hundred dollars. See, thanks to the bullshit society that we've created, and perhaps I'm being anti-capitalism here, but the relationship between my father and myself may disappear completely because of situations created by this "society". And republicans want to tell us they're all about family values. Yeah, they value tearing families without enough money apart.

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