Riddle Me This Batman

Riddle me this batman. What is this life all about? Why are we here? It seems all a waste of time to run around and act all important and then to die. What do we have to offer? Why do any of this if we are only dead meat on the hoof? There seems to be no meaning to anything. Every year I watch as 400 plus children make their rite of passage into adulthood, for what: to work for 40 years with no guarantee of healthcare or a decent retirement or stuff or the lack of stuff.

It makes me question everything that I have held as important. What is there to parenthood? Marriage? Work? To know that all I am going to do is die and someone else is going to rise up in my place as I rose up in someone else’s place can be unnerving. That is the cycle of life. Really, it is the cycle of meaninglessness. We give life meaning with things. Things that we accumulate. Things that we have to see and feel. We work and work for this stuff. When the stuff is not enough, what next?

Look to today. Go no farther. Do not plan for a future. It will drive you crazy. We are trapped in the material world as Madonna so aptly put it. Future means nothing until it is upon you. You can work, save and do it all correctly and never see the fruits of your labors. The future can be stolen in the blink of an eye. 

What is there to show for my father after his death? Nothing of substance. What about my grandfathers? Nothing. Grandmothers?  Nothing. What is the point of living if you are not living for today? Tomorrow will never come. No one is going to worry about yesterday when they are worrying about tomorrow and too often forget about today.

Today, we put everything in a cloud. Life exists in a transcendental world of servers using 1s and 0s. In a blink of an eye this information can vanish just as we do. Time has no friends. It marches on regardless of our personal desires. It evaporates all in its way.

I look around and see a temporal world that only believes in change and that change too often throws away the past. It is beholden to a tomorrow that will never come and a yesterday that is all but forgotten. There is hell to pay when you never play the game that runs in the present. A present that has no memory except what we give it, and when we die, that memory is extinguished like our presence.

Life is all the same no matter the scale. It can be as simple as putting the dishes put away correctly or cleaning bathrooms or as complex as billion dollar mergers. All the same in the end. It is all destiny. We are destined to die. We are destined to fill our time until we die. This is not morose. It is fact. What are you to do with your time between birth and death? You can get no more elemental than that. That is the only fact that matters. Most philosophers filled their time with meaningless hyperbole. What is your destiny?

Are you going to spend your time trying to justify your existence only to die like the rest of us? What are you about? Are you going to dance the dance of death or life? It is up to you. You can let the world drive by or you can get in the fast lane. No matter what you chose, it matters not. You will die, and if you are remembered, it will be a caricature of your life. Make time meaningful for yourself in the present. That is all that matters.

Rock on.

Blank Spaces

Every time I look at a blank page I want to start with, “the door opened…” What does this mean? It really is nothing. On the other hand, it is all about running away or looking for something new to change the pace of life and get me out of the rut of daily life. There is so much daily repetition that it is shortening my life. Leaving me a shadow of myself. A large, gigantic shadow, but a shadow none the less.

I turn to the screen to fill in all the blank spaces of life. What are we to do with all these blank spaces? Do we color them? Where do we find the markers that will change our trajectory? We must look past the end of our noses. We have to open closed doors and look into dark corners of our minds to see what is hidden.

When you find what is hidden, grab on to the tiniest of ideas or visions. Roll them around on the tips of your fingers. Put them in the palm of your hand and feel their weight. Don’t put them in your pocket because you will forget them, and they will become lint that you pull out of the dryer lint trap. Your car keys will crush them and you will be right back into your old routines.

Take this revelation and put it on your bedside table. That is not the greatest place for it to live, but at least it can breathe and stay alive. It will not suffocate like it would if it was in your pocket. Now, you can take the time to look at it from all sorts of angles. You can think about how you are going to fit it into your life. You can break the cycle of boredom and repetition. Break out of your comfort zone.

Put your new vision into action. Step outside of yourself and look in the mirror. If you look long enough you can see the future and the past. Time is of no meaning at that moment. You will become one with the universe. Okay so that is a bunch of hokum; who gives a shit. You have to give in to the unknown. You have to be willing to take a leap of faith, or you will wake up and it will be the same day different year.

What do you have to lose? Nothing. You can always walk back through that door and put your vision or idea back in your pocket. You can forget about the future and live in the world you have created before that idea pushed itself into your frontal lobe. There is no genie that has to be put back into the bottle. Everything is as it should be. Chamber that round and holster that revolver. The lights will come on and gas will be in your car. Order will be restored to your world and all will be right.

Is that what you really want?  No. You want to look into your pocket. You want to find that ray of sunshine and feel that warmth on your face. You will run as fast as you can from the rain and clouds as they bare down on your being. All right that was a little dramatic, but you will be curious as to what could be. You will think about how the change will affect your place in the world and your feeling of self.

Or not. I mean the ball is in your court. There is something to be said for being content with your daily routine. There are no surprises to make you feel out of place. Change is something that can upset the balance in your life. It is not always welcome.

If none of this is for you. You will always know when dinner will be served. You know what your bedtime is no matter the season. There is such safety in this knowledge. You can breathe easier knowing what to expect. That is not for me. I will be looking for a bit of magic. It will give me a new reason to live. It will let me explore all I don’t know. I don’t care if the heat will be on or if there will be gas in the tank. It is the little surprises that bring satisfaction to my world, but not yours, so be it.

 

Go in peace.

Credit Lie or Keeping the Poor in Their Place

I can’t write about love, lust, education, politics or religion. What is there left? War? It is the same thing over and over. No matter what time period we study the cycle is repeated from generation to generation. The only changes are technology. The idea of killing or being killed is imbedded in human DNA. Modern warfare not only uses weapons, but also uses wealth as a means of stratification and centralizing power. Look at the way Germany was punished after WWI or look at how we punish those in our society with bad credit or the lack of credit.

I want someone to argue against this idea. Come on you peaceniks or social economists. Prove to me that my thesis is wrong. Show me how humankind is altruistic as a whole. I am serious. Humankind is selfish and greedy. Jesus is used as a weapon to separate the wheat from the chaff. By this I mean that humans want to feel good about themselves, so they set up food kitchens and warehouses so that the homeless can be housed. Lately, these do-gooders have created tent cities. Yet none of these institutions have created something that will put these people on the path of full integration into society. As a country, we do not want this to happen.

These institutions are not set-up so that you are giving a hand up. They are set-up so that we can keep these people away from our neighborhoods. We don’t want their kind infecting our homes and way of living. We (as a society) need these people on the bottom of the economic scale so that we can feel superior. We can give them bread and not teach them how to bake. We can give them fish and not teach them how to fish. This way we can feel good about ourselves and still keep the riff-raff in their place.

We need a stratified society for us to survive. The wealthy understand this fact. They are desperately afraid of what would happen if people revolted against this stratification of society, and the rest of us go along with it because of our own greed and anxiety about our place in the world. This goes beyond our borders and around the world.

Credit has taken off and been heavily supported by the wealthy to provide the middle class with all the trappings of being wealthy and none of the benefits. It is a full proof system to keep all but the wealthiest on top and in control be it politically or economically. It is like a movie set all pretty on the outside and empty once you step behind the credit façade.

Credit is the great lie. Look how the World Bank uses credit against what is euphemistically called developing nations. They extract a pound of flesh for every euro or dollar that is lent to these countries. None of these countries are able to get out of debt and grow beyond the idea of developing.  They are in no way on the path to become a first world country.  What would happen if the European Union, the United States or China wanted to do the right thing and pull these countries up? Another war would break out under some phony premise. Can you say Iraq?

We depend on these countries feeding at our economic trough. We need to be able to manipulate their economy and politics for the benefit of our economy and politics. Foreign Aid is the number one way that first world countries keep third world countries in their place. It becomes the perfect way for them to do our political and military dirty work. Ask Yemen. However, look what happens when we overreach with our greed and phony magnanimity: Libya.

This idea of the value of credit is an old trick of the mob. I just lent you money, or do you remember that favor I did for you? Now, it is time for you to reciprocate. One problem for first world countries is the fact that so many third world refugees are flooding our shores. These unwanted immigrants are upsetting the balance of power. They are bringing us down. Germany experienced this phenomenon when the Berlin Wall fell. We need to model our behavior after the Germans if stratification is to remain in place.

One last idea. There will never be a One World Government because there are too many plutocrats in too many countries that need and will protect their piece of the pie at all costs.  They are doing everything in their power to remain on top and keep the tide of poverty at a manageable level so that credit can be used to placate the masses here at home and across the globe.

The credit lie infects all societies in all countries. In some places, it is the credit card that takes advantage through banking manipulation. In other places, it is parents selling their children for money or goods. Maybe it is the World Bank extending credit to countries on the brink of collapse. In all these cases, there are winners and losers. It is always the same: those doling out the money or goods are the winners and the borrowers are the losers. Think about your own economic position. Who has the power?