Friday, March 19, 2010

Happy Anniversary

The Global Musings of an Educated Man..............vol.128
 
 
Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I just wanted to extend a happy anniversary commemorating the 7th Anniversary of the Iraq war and the fact that we have spent 787 billion dollars over the past seven years to help out the Iraqi, Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni peoples find their way to democracy and freedom. Not to mention the extra 100 billion we spend every year in Afghanistan to allow the opium warlords to extend their reach with the help of the Taliban to further drive the price of heroin up on a global scale, and also the access that our participation provides for us to the oil pipeline in the Caspian sea, because as former ambassador to Afghanistan for UnoCal, we can be safe in knowing that President Karzai has our back. I truly want to extend my deepest hearfelt thanks and understanding to all of the military service men and women who have volunteered and faithfully executed their beliefs in serving our country and the families of those service men and women as well, and I hope that they will never have to pay a dime for excellent health care coverage, ever, and will always be treated with the utmost respect they so readily deserve. But I am always left wondering, if we were never to have abandoned Afghanistan in 2003 to invade Iraq, where could we use those dollars now?


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Saturday, March 13, 2010

"Is there anybody out there? Nod if you can hear me, is there anyone home?" Pink Floyd, The Wall

The Global Musings of an Educated Man.............vol. 127
 
Is there anything in your life that is transcendent? Is there something that gives your life meaning? Can science and religion exist at the same time and space? Sure they can. They are both flip sides of the same coin, the search for truth.
I was lucky enough to catch Bill Moyer's Journal last night on PBS, where his guest was NYU President John Sexton, and they were discussing the class that Dr. Sexton teaches, "Baseball as a Path to GOD." The title immediately grabbed my attention, and I began to wish where do I sign up? It is the vehicle for finding something, anything, in our daily lives that gives us meaning as a people, a person, a wife, a husband, a mother or father, son or daughter, friend or neighbor. It is asking us to "think strange." Some of us may be more advanced than others at that. I'm just saying. Sorry, had to get that in there. Other than the obvious answer of children giving your life meaning, what else is there? What do we as a general public, or myself as a person, give myself and ourselves meaning in this attention deficit disordered, immediate gratification world of today? In the past for America, there was Baseball, and for some there still is, that each spring rewards us with glimpses of what might be, but as Bill Moyers asked, "How do you respond to Mark Mcgwire, admitting that he took steroids to break the home run record?" Dr. Sexton's response was perfect...."There have always been bad Popes."
Dr. Sexton posed questions to ask of ourselves such as "Am I living a useful life?"
He educated me to the fact that our political discussions have "fallen into a discourse by slogan" or sound bites if you will. There is no substance, no nuances that people can wrap their heads around. Instead, we as a people "listen in feedback loops" only listening to what we want to hear, simply reinforcing our own beliefs, and not forcing us to "think strange." For 8 years we had a president that would not change his mind on anything, and did we then adapt that quality of his for our own, or have we been sliding down the slippery slope for so long, that it just seems natural to never hear another side of a discussion. To never admit that we might be wrong or be headed in the wrong direction. That there might be a different path to take to get to the final destination we are all headed.
Are we too far on either the right or the political left to reach any common ground? How long will we go on getting nothing done of any substance because of it? Instead we are left with the fact that "there is no marketplace of respect" in today's political discourse. We've given birth to a "society of distrust and cynicism" and unfortunately a lot of our elected officials have done nothing to deserve any respect, and I admit I can be rather distrustful and cynical when it comes to the government, but I still believe that there are more than two answers to a problem. There are more than two viewpoints held so firmly by the two major political parties in this great country of ours. So as a solution, we need to set up ourselves for "making new memories." We need to more often than never at all, take ourselves out of our comfort zones. We need to stretch our minds more and begin to "think strange."
 
On a personal note of accomplishment, a monologue-rant of mine has been selected to be performed by the Metro State University theater group at the end of the month in their "Theater Du-Jour" performances, and if interested in attending please contact me and I can try to get you RSVP'd for seats, there is no charge, just donations if so moved. My monologue will not be longer than 4minutes, to not demand too much of anyone's attention, but, it's another step on this beautiful path.
Much peace and happiness.


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