FREEDDOM OF CHOICE

I went to the grocery store last week for my weekly perusal of the myriad of new products that are introduced on a weekly basis by such grand company’s like Proctor and Gamble, Bristol Myers Squibb, and others along those lines. I usually try to buy enough food to last at least a week. I cannot remember how long the mass proliferation of corporate product branding has gone, but it has invaded every aspect of our modern lives. For instance, buying salsa has become a chore since there are at least eight different brands and each of those brands there are several different flavors or styles. It would be easy if only one feature of salsa was of interest to me. If I were a frugal consumer - I would buy the cheapest. However, like most people, I am concerned with price and quality. You know that elusive combination marketing and sales managers are always trying to capture; price and quality, for the consumer of course. With all these different brands and styles the simple task of choosing a salsa has become yet another decision I need to make in my already choice-heavy day. I guess giving the consumer what he or she wants creates a by-product that all post-modern humans must now endure, CHOICE. The media, culture, and other unfaltering institutions want the masses to agree that choice is good; we should welcome it with open arms. I believe the concept of choice has changed as the proverbial times have changed. It has transformed over the years, I will explain briefly the perception of choice in the context of each significant and relevant time period. Prehistoric time: Choice was forced upon the early homo-sapiens (Hunt and gather or die) Colonial time (Pre-revolutionary America) The only real choice; sovereign state or muddle in serfdom to an imperialistic big brother. Industrial –boom; Work at the mill for 12 hours a day for 14 days straight or take a stab at farming and become dependent upon entities you could not control: an unstable market, less-than-desirable weather forecasts, and archaic farming techniques. Post Modern Life. Do not get me wrong choice is good in some aspects of daily life, in some cases required. We cannot all be preprogrammed androids that go through the day without having to make some choices. In Post Modern America “choices” enable us the following: 1. Give citizens the chance to exercise their inherent right to feel like they are free to choose. This is a perception and can be seen different ways through different sets of eyes. Example: An affluent individual has the choice between buying a Mercedes or a Lexus. In comparison to an individual living in the inner city that is choosing if he or she wants to live the rest of their life. Option One: a life of thuggery and drug pushing in which he or she may become wealthy and face the very real possibility of dying or being incarcerated. Option Two: Stay in school, perhaps graduate with a good enough GPA to get into a “decent” university (or not) and find a “decent” job and live and dwell somewhere in the “middle.” 2. Choice, in a pure utilitarian sense of the word is meant to make our lives better, whether it is less expensive, more efficient, and/or faster. Choice is your friend if some options are in some way “better” than the rest. And of course you have the power to make that choice. (Believe it or not people you don’t even know you are making decisions about your future/fate – but that is a whole other topic). As with number one; the consequences of the choice are very different and are dictated by one’s circumstances and worldview. Choices are their individual succinctness means very different things to each person. As with the plight of Achilles, his choice was similar to example #1; live a long ordinary life, or live a short existence packed full of notoriety and fame. Achilles choice had greater consequences than my salsa dilemma, but he choose swiftly. It was a difficult choice by today’s standards, and he lived a short, but storied life. Perhaps if he did not choose this way I would not be typing these last sentences. In post-modern life, forces we cannot or would not control are providing an illusion of a multitude of options, when in truth few really exist. Take for example, that large color box that sits in your living room. Full of choices, but nothing is really on. Cable and satellite TV make you pay a premium for choice. This is just one example; we are bombarded with a copious amount of choices that are more illusionary than utilitarian. Here are some examples: paper or plastic David Lee or Sammy tanning bed or that spray shit peppermint or spearmint black or brown shoes Grey Goose or Ketel One beef or chicken Merlot or Shiraz XM or Sirius Snowcaps or Goobers Ben or Matt Wal-Mart or Target “The ordinary man believes he is free when he is permitted to act arbitrarily, but in this very arbitrariness lies the fact that he is unfree,” GWF Hegel. I believe Hegel was referring to those who have a deep and intimate fear of choosing (fear of consequences known or unknown) and those who have no choice at all. Take for example my fiancé and I, every time we decide to go to out to dinner it turns into a conversation such as this; Me: “I don’t care where, where do you want to go?” Her: “I don’t care.” Me: “No, I think it’s your turn to choose.” Her: “Whatever.” You see how this causes distress on both parties. However in the back of my mind I have two or three choices, but being sensitive to my partner’s feelings I don’t want to upset her. She is thinking the same thing; either of us wants to make a choice, thinking the other will not be happy. We would rather have no choice to make or some outside force make the arbitrary choice on deciding on a restaurant. As with most choices there is also a fear that the given choice not chosen would be better than what we chose. This presents a whole new stress of the decision making process. I suppose for any choice, restaurants included, the decision-maker strives to maximize the benefits of the choice made. As we all know there are pros and cons to every decision make there is that fear that the decision we make (right or wrong, good or bad) will plague us with the underlying fear that we made the wrong decisions, no matter how beneficial the decision we made was. Choice has been with us since the first synapse fired in pre-nethertdal man/woman. Choice is life; life is choice, they are intertwined and connected in all of us. Every being, it is not a matter of society, culture, race, or class – decisions and choice can keep us together. It is an individual’s choice, do you rule choice, or does choice rule you. ___________________________________________________________________________

Everything is broken - sorry to bring you down (reality check)

Everything is broken, I am broken, life is broken. When do we (humans) realize all of our hopes and dreams are shot - Settle down into soft medocrity, welcome to the middle. Life is a speeding train and I am standing at a way station; eating dust and sucking exhaust. How did we get so off track? Time is limitless Time is our enemy What happens when 50 years piles up and you look back at what? I live to work, to exist in a fabricated media-induced matierial world. When I close my eyes forever will I be disappointed or relieved to leave this world behind....

Quit Your Job Quiz

Quit your Job Quiz 1. When your alarm clock goes off in the morning? A. Jump out of bed (not touching the snooze) and looking forward to the day ahead (1) B. Cursing (2) C. Stuck in the fetal position, refusing to get up. (3) D. Wish you had no arms or legs so you could stay in bed all day (4) 2. Which person is most like your boss? A. Mother Teresa (1) B. Arnold Scheneggar (2) C. Pol Pot (3) D. Jessica Simpson (4) 3. How long is your commute? A. 30 minutes or less (1) B. 30 to 60 minutes (2) C. You have stock in Books on Tape (3) D. Long enough you want to stab your eyes out with a screwdriver (4) 4. What do you wear to work? A. Wear what you want (1) B. Business casual or suit and tie (2) C. Polyester pants, name tag, and paper hat (3) D. Dunce cap (4) 5. On your birthday what do your co-workers do for you? A. TGIF or something similar with cocktails (1) B. Nothing (2) C. Make you do shots of Jagrmeister (3) D. Give you an atomic wedgie (4) 6. What percent of your day is spent doing what trained monkey could do? A. 1% (1) B. 25% (2) C. 50% (3) D. Koko could do my job (4)

MLK

Just imagine if MLK - wasn't MLK? Not prolific man of peace, no dreamer, no freedom-maker, no 1963 march on Washington - "I have a dream speech" - an examperaneous freedom writer breaking the act of normalcy (or what was the norm at the time) - A segregated Amereria? What if there wasn't a stage for MLK? What would life be like? For a society to come so far, has anything really changed...?

Start of a short story....

“We do not exist unless somebody thinks about us. We evolve from light and purity into a covetous dark and gloomy.” Logan proclaimed on the corner of Grant and Fifth. His only audience is anybody that would listen. He continued, “Of all things beautiful on this rock, all that you could smell, taste, touch, see, and hear was extraordinary and all of these things are compressed into one. All those metallic orbs are aligned so righteously in the midnight sky that we should all see the core of it, the meaning of it. Yes. That is right. The meaning of life. People, they are shining brightly upon us. The time is now. We must act before it is too late. Change while you ca-.” A distant pop and Logan felt a sharp pain on the right side of his head, he felt dizzy and nausea and helpless all at the same time. He could no longer remain vertical. Ribbons of crimson lay over his face, transforming his skull into a neatly wrapped presented. The pale blue eyes rolled back into his head as he lay on his side. Only a few people gathered around him to comfort him, a few stood around him and speculated where the shot came from; while others ran for cover. Logan tasted metallic blood in his mouth when his vision faded to black. Across the street, deep in an alley an indistinct figure snapped pictures of the grizzly scene.

Math is Everything

The building blocks of how things work and operate; the basics, each building on the last Creating something large from something smaller, such as the nuclei within us. Math is never subjective, only objective; there is only one right answer-there isn’t a compromise. Much how life should be, straightforward and black and white? Would life be worth living if it were simple, computable, all the components right in front of us? Love would be about statistics and metrics, no feelings or emotions. Personalities would be fractionalized to the minutest part (.000020). Mistakes (and more importantly, learning from mistakes) would be non-existent. If HUMAN life was built on math we would be completely functional, in that each second of our waking day would have purpose and meaning. Meaning that something or some construct would be getting achieved, or a part of a goal. There would be no more slack time, math is too precise, it would not let it happen. It simply could not occur. The outcome would not let it occur. In all of its complexities and infinitesimal infrastructures, math is simple. Either right or wrong. Yes or no. Will math translate to reality? Hard to say, in fact impossible to say. If ever I am placed in the position of god, deity, shaman, etc… I may dabble a bit and see what shakes out. Going to the other extreme, what if there weren’t any math (or structures or derivatives). Hard to image? Perhaps not. Think of early Homo Sapiens (i.e. Homo Erectus) and their culture and lifestyle. Somewhat bleak, when the daily grind mostly comprised of just surviving the day.

Self Preservation

You will never see a dog on a trampoline, Max or Fido would never be caught on one, It comes down to one basic and universal truth that is innate to all organisms, large and small, that traverse this good earth. SELF PRESERVATION – the fundamental equalizing force that balances nature through mechanisms and phenomena such as natural selection, chaos theory, and alcoholism; is the greatest gift God or a group of Gods bestow upon a species. However, on many, many occasions the human race has either lost SP, somehow intrinsically forgot about it, or physiologically suppresses SP so deep within (under all the garbage Post-Modern Life has given us) our souls. A dog on a trampoline places Max in a situation that he knows is not safe, it’s not stable; Max is accustom to the ground not so pliable and springing. He knows, through some signal (chemical / electrical) so deeply ingrained over the generational desert wired into his soul that he just KNOWS he does not belong on a trampoline. He does not need to prove to other dogs of the opposite sex of his courage or virility by risking his life (or by eating a plateful of pig intestines) ; all he knows is that he must survive until he can procreate. To live another day, another chance to extend his generational blood line, It is that simple. When it comes to SP and being honest other humans, SP always wins. The great economist, Martin Freedman states, “There is only one thing you can be assured about the other man, he’ll put his priorities above yours.” Honesty and SP are viewed in the same breath and with nobility, do not be fooled, priority of all beings is SP. Think of the solider going into battle; he or she kills and eliminates those who wish to eliminate him or her. They, being a faceless enemy that may have to die so I can survive. Throw political dogma and national policy out the bomb doors , the solider is at war for survival; it is the ultimate natural selection for national armies.