I have to wonder sometimes whether any of us still have the time or energy for other things than dealing with survival, with the fear leaders all over the world seem to be leading us into. Everyone seems to feel, to varying degrees, as though it were all on the verge of collapse, the whole Western Civilization thing, I mean. Which of course the fundamentalists, of all stripes, really dream for. It is the war they have been dreaming of for milleniums, this idea of imolation in the service of rapture, to go to their "just reward" and take the rest of us to hell. What, you think that is hyperbole? These monsters really do believe that they are destined to bring about the "last days," though I can't say I haven't wished it were at least their last days.

But lets take at least a little time to look at something else for a change, at what might be possible for us to all do in this life, instead of being so anxious for the next one. If we are to do any justice to the lives we've been gifted, what is wrong with doing it right here, right now? Consider art, consider kindness, consider compassion. Hell, consider consideration.

When was the last time you said "thank you" to someone for a little kindness? Nothing big, maybe they held a door for you, maybe they said thank you for something you did. It doesn't matter. What matters is, did you pass the gift onward? Otherwise, it just flops around like a fish out of water, and you have to admit, that's not such a pretty sight, is it?

If you are reading this right now, then let me say "Thank You" for staying with me thus far. And, thank you for being willing to temporarily practice hopefullness instead of fearfullness. Yes, I know, its not easy, I don't pretend it is. I have known much fear in my life, and still do from time to time. So I don't talk this way like I'm some kind of guru or teacher, but as a freind. Its hard in this life, but thats usually because, in some way, we are each alone. It only gets easier when we allow others into our hearts. We cannot really do this thing alone, nor were we ever meant to.

The cure for fundamentalism is to stop fearing the future. It is the fear of the future that drives people to fall back into orthodoxy, to give their free will over to a formula, a deep and nearly impermeable mind trap. If we can just follow the formula, all will be well. One only has to look at the current religious wars around the globe, including right here in the good-old-USA, to see examples. Some of the worst, in fact.

But lets face it - the past cannot save us, the formulas - Islamic, Christian, Judaic, Hindu, whatever - cannot prevent the future from arriving, just as it does every day. Running away from the future just makes its arrival that much more difficult to deal with. Sure, its not predictable, and sure, it can often be messy and scary. But the past, well, its just past, and that is so, well, tedious, and boring, and frankly, it didn't really work the first time, now, did it?

So look beyond the fear that the fundamentalists would have you succumb to, look beyond the veil of lies and deciet being practiced by the so-called leaders. They've sold their souls for thirty pieces of greed. Why should you?

Now, how do you REALLY feel about a little blow job over pizza and a cigar? Doesn't seem like such a bad choice after all, does it? See the source of this great button at http://www.whatididinthewar.com/bush.html

Well, I for one have become increasingly puzzled by those remaining few who insist the Prez is doing a fine job indeed. I mean, how many debacles does it take before you screw in your lightbulbs? Or do you just prefer to sit in the dark?

I mean, the friggin list is GINORMOUS now. Katrina, WMDs, the Plame affair, domestic wiretaps, port insecurity, a deficit that just screams "We are yours, China," utter failures in Irag, Afganistan, total ignorance in Somalia, Big Pharm getting free keys to our very veins, on and on and on. What does it TAKE for you people to wake up???!!!

Here's a challenge - name just one thing this Bozito has done that has actually WORKED for the American People (and saying he has done something for corporations doesn't count, 'cuz that would take up more space than the entire Library of Congress) and that was supported by a MAJORITY of the entire country (not just the red staters, eh?) If you can actually do that, I will concede that Bill O'Really looks more like James Bond than Prince Charles looks like Daffy Duck.

Is it a deal?

The latest sad news from Iraq regarding sectaran violence just reinforced my contension that religion is bad for all our collective health. I don't mean spiritual practices per se, but organized dogmatism, fanatical adherance to an ideology where no room exists for anyone not a "true believer." Where did this idea that "we must kill all those who have not come to see things our way" come from? Again, I am not just speaking of Muslims here, but Christians and Jews, Hindus and animists, as well.

If god is infinite, how can anyone justify putting god in a definable "box?" And if that same god is eternal, how can mere humans, of whatever stripe, purport to know when, whether, and if god is planning on "pulling the switch?"

I like to think that spirit is truly infinite, and therefore cannot be ensnared and trapped by dogma, of any flavor. If god made all that is, then all that is, is good, right? Who are any one of us to tell any other of us what to believe, and how to express that belief?

Unfortunately, it appears a civil war in Iraq, which may well spread to Iran and Syria, and even Pakistan, is increasingly inevitable. India and China will act to protect their borders. Israel will act to protect itself. Internal stresses in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Jordan and other middle Eastern states will boil over. And thanks to El Bozito Presidente', our kids are in the eye of the storm.

Maybe the Christian extremists in this country will get their Armageddon sooner than they hoped. Trouble is, it won't quite match their longed-for prophecies. It will come before the Temple is rebuilt, and therefore will not fullfill the "way it is written" (meaning - the way we want to read it.) And that will really blow it with the Big Hairy Thunderer, now, won't it? Nothing worse than pissin' off the Big Guy by failing to follow the script.

I wouldn't mind it so much if we could just be sure that all the fanatics from all over the world, whatever their religious persuasion, could all be there in the front row when the thing blows. Then maybe the rest of us could have a little peace and quiet. Yeah. Peace. Might be an interesting alternative. We should try it, at least once. Who knows.....?

I wonder what it is that we really lose as we decend into an increasingly polarized world. With the primary divider being religion, how is this different than what we often refer to as the Dark Ages, where religion was the dominant fascist paradigm. Through crusades, inquisitions, pogroms, and sectarian warfare, both the so-called West, and the Muslim world, were set back for centuries. While the Islamic world often seems still mired in the 9th and 10th centuries, so too does the West appear to be moving backwards, in rapid retreat from the Enlightenment.

I cannot help but wonder at the increasingly obvious fear of the future exemplified by all three monotheisms in the present day. There is a call to retreat, to repudiate all of the advances of a once-great civilization. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the USA. The calls to condemn Islamic Fundamentalism increasingly issue from the mouths and pens of Fundamentalist Christianity and Fundamentalist Judaism. And both of these camps have enough sins on their own heads to render their pronouncements both absurd and, increasingly, worrisome. When an Ayattolah in Iran justifies the use of nuclear weapons "in the defense of Islam,", which is NOT what is obstensibly under attack, amid similarly irresponsible calls from American Fundamentalists that maybe assassination is not such a bad idea, I'd say we all need to be very worried indeed. In fact, I think it speaks to the very heart of the contention of our Founders that the separation of Church and State are of paramount importance.

Most of us are able to get along with people different than ourselves just fine, and do so on a daily basis. Some of us, in fact, prefer diversity over mono-culture.But, and this is an ever-growing "but," there are far too many who are easily manipulated by power and vengence-oriented individuals, through increasingly sophisticated uses of the media. We look at examples like R'wanda, and say "it can't happen here." But that is NOT true - it most certainly can, and has happened here. While on a smaller scale, the sporadic urban riots that have taken place in the USA over the past 40-50 years make it all too clear what we are capable of. Add into the mix a demigog like McCarthy, throw in a paranoid and heavily-armed police force strongly beholden to an isolated Executive branch controlled by a group of religious extremists, and an Islamic state like Iran, oops, a Christian Fundamentalist oligarcich state like the USA is not unthinkable.

Constant Vigilance, people, constant vigilance.

Who woulda thought this little guy could change the course of the world? So, why can't you?

I came upon this little gem a while back, and it just re-surfaced in my hopelessly cluttered world:

Gandhi's Seven Deadly Sins

1. Wealth without work.
2. Pleasure without conscience.
3. Knowledge without character.
4. Commerce without morality.
5. Science without humanity.
6. Worship without sacrafice.
7. Politics without principal.

Wow. I think we could apply nearly all of these to the present administration, most especially number 7. Well, number 4 comes in a close second.

I wonder sometime about all the various religions, how they tend to moralize on everything, yet so seldom apply that same set of standards to their own leaders. Religion, like politics, is first and foremost about power, and the wielding thereof. The gloss of "preparing for the next world" is really just the shuck and jive used to control the susceptible.

I've always lived by a simple credo: I'll defend your right to believe what you want, until that belief crosses over into what you expect ME to believe. Then, watch out, 'cuz them's fightin' words, fella!

I am going to try, over the next week or so, to look at those sins and try to see where I am committing them. I can tell you I am not even on the radar as far as Number 1 goes - no trust fund, no rich uncle about to kick, a serious working stiff, that's me. As for Number 2, well, I know I have been guilty of that one, just yesterday, in fact, watching Sure-Shootin' Dick get egg on his face, and blood on everyone else's.

As for Number 3, I'll have to give that some more thought. 4, definitley not. Most of my commerce is seriously under-earning. As for 5, I don't really practice much science these days, especially in the Age of the True Believers. Might get Intelligently Un-designed, nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Regarding Number 6, I worship nothing but the day when I rise, and the night when I rest. Everything else is conditional.

As for Number 7, I figure I have more principals in my little toe-nail than just about anybody out there spending a ridiculaous amount of hyperbolic energy bashing people who disagree with them. 'Cuz I don't care who agrees or disagrees with me. Just don't try to tell me how to live my life, unless you are ready to die my death. Seems only fair, dontch think?

Everyone's panties are in a bunch over cartoons. Yet no one seems the least concerned over the actual photographic evidence. Al Jezeera ran the story about the Danish cheese cartoons, and on the same web page ran a photo of an Islamic militant with a mask and sporting a snazzy grenade launcher. Just as I firmly believe that Jesus must be sick to his stomach regarding the crap that passes for his message being spewed from the feral wombats pretending to be Christians in America, Mohammed must be similarly sick at how the fundamentalist approach to his message is being ground into the dust by equally misguided and misled members of Islam.

All of this is by way of opening up the subject of how art and images, indeed, how stories, such as what our entertainment industry sells us, can no longer pretend that they are merely "giving the people what they want", and a "reflection of society." Sorry, folks, but that is just plain ignorant. Stories, whether told by mouth, movie, video game, book, news publications, television, have everything to do with the shaping of societies, and far less to do with being responsive to some imagined (no matter who believes it, or how often it is repeated) "demand" for said stories.

We are creatures that, from the very dawn of language (in whatever form) have been shaped and guided by the stories we tell, and the images we embrace. Just because the technology and the reach has expanded does not mean that the same order of actions/ consequnces no longer applies. Art, whether through a two-dimensional or a three-dimensional representation, first of all tells us something. That action opens the door to the possibility that we may choose some action in response/relation to that art/story. It is not the other way around. We do not go to the story teller and demand that they tell us what we want to hear, and how we want to hear/see it. When that happens, its called orthodoxy, or more au courant, fundamentalism.

What would happen, I wonder, if Hollywood, as one example, actually DID ask a large group of consumers what they wanted to see/hear? Would they, as I suspect, merely overrule the results because it didn't meet the profit projection criteria? And how would that be any different from what is going on in both domestic and geo-politics right now, where rulers ( and I apply that term liberally, meaning, with the broadest possible brush) only pretend to listen to their subjects (yes, us too) while continuing to do whatever they please? I see no real difference. Politics are merely a way we tell larger stories about who we are, where we are going, and how we are going to get there. Somethimes, those stories are democratic. Mostly though, they are not.

Its pretty incedible that I have been getting oddball responses to this blog and to bumpintheroad.net, as well. Didn't take much time. It seems there are some folks out there who feel that its a) irresponsible; b) a sign of failing to grow up and face reality; c) a sign of extended drug abuse; d) a sign of the Apocalypse, if someone wants to promote something beautiful in the world. I suppose if I was just blowing things up, at least through tearing down people's self-esteem, I'd be considered "right in the mix", or some such froo-fraa.

But me, well, I'm just a hopeful romantic, when I'm not drowning in cynicism. It seems to me that the world is rapidly approaching a juncture that will either hurl us all into oblivion, or push us past this very deep chasm we are currently descending into. The more who climb on the back of that train, the more hopeless it will all become, and that rather quickly, I would think.

However, those who, through their hopefull and robust imaginations, contribute to successfully crossing that chasm, will reap the real reward - a world where rising up means more than pulling down. They laid dear Corretta to rest today, and we all need to pause for much longer than a minute, to ponder what she and Martin brought forth in the world, and, more importantly, to try and understand where that same level of heartful, mindful, and soulfull energy resides inside each of us. How can you, starting today, make a difference?

Art, and other forms of creative expression, are what I turn to to sustain my heart in these especially difficult days. So that is the purpose of this blog, and of bumpintheroad. Yes, we stumble, trip over life's obstacles, and sometimes we get hurt pretty bad. But getting up, and going on gracefully, with humor, and foregiveness, beat the hell out of the other options.

So, those who feel they need to tear down, well, thats sad. But for you, not me. We both have a choice in these things. I've made mine.