Election Day

The time has come around once again to cast your ballot. You are either a die-hard democrat or a die-hard republican and you think what you are doing is changing the way that the country is going to ran. Then thoughts of one of my favorite worker right activist, Emma Goldman, comes to mind. "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal."

Nothing is truer of American. Democrats will always fight Republicans and the Republicans will always fight Democrats. It does not matter how each bill are similar in some ways, if it is Republican supported and Democrats will fight it, or vise-versa.

What do we do about it? Currently, we vote. What does this gets us? Elected life-long politicians that care nothing of their constituents but only care of what is going to get them elected the next term. That is all that they care for. What brings them the most money and what will get them elected the next term.

The majority of Americans are apathetic to this situation. We support, the lesser of the two evils. We should stop! If we are sick of it, then we need to do something, because voting does us nothing. The Europeans know how to do it. They don't like something, they strike! We don't like something, we say "there is nothing we can do about it."

So, this year, I choose not to vote. The idea is not to throw my support to the other side, the tea-partiers, because it takes my vote out, but to not give support to a system that is broken and say it is okay to be governed. Henry David Thoreau said it best "Participation [voting] is an instrument of [government] conquest...encourages people to give their consent to being governed."

It is okay to not vote! Strike the Root is a great web-site and I support his ideas. What we really need to do is to get educated (something that the government is totally against) and rise up and take power!

Communication...or the there of.

With technology today, communication is easy. The the invention of cellular or mobile phones, a person can be reach practically ever where (within reach of a tower). When the internet was formed and e-mail soon there after, people can be reached immediately when they are at a computer. This has been a great advancement over sending mail out through the postal service, but has almost bankrupted the postal service itself. Now with the innovation of the smart phone, and the combination of e-mail, internet, and phone service, it is very easy.

So why has people became so reluctant to communicating with each other, now more than ever? Even in public, people have became cold. Passing by others on the street, people look down at there feet, don't look at each other, have ear buds in, and keep to themselves. I like the general nod or the smile from a passerby. But this is not what I want to write about...

What I want to know is why people, even friends, do not return phone calls and/or e-mails. It is common courtesy to reply. With e-mail, a general, "Hey, I'm have a lot to do right now, I'll get back to you soon" would be great, but I get nothing. On the phone, people would generally let their voicemail pick up. I, when people call, if I am with someone, will generally excuse myself, walk away and pick-up. If I am really busy, or if it is interupting something important, I'll send the caller to voicemail, but I'll call back as soon as I can possible do it. If I am really too busy, then I make time to reply and I make sure of it.

It is very cold and disrespectful of people, especially ones that people that you consider friends, to not return communication. Should you keep them as friends and contacts? I say "NO!" Even with facebook, why have 500 friends, when there is no communication. People just post something for other people to see, and that is good enough for them. I can be found guilty of not communicating with people sometimes, but in general, I go through my list and send a message ever now and again. Most times with no reply. Then there are those people that send out friend request, without even sending out communications. For those people, I wait a month and let them sit there, and if they don't have the common courtesy to send a message to try to set up a line of communication, I press ignore. Then after three or four times of a person doing that, I send a message to them explaining my reasonings.

Communication is what is lacking in our society today. On so many level. Communication with our government, colleagues, friends, academics, etc. Maybe something will get accomplished, especially with our government, but that is another story.

So, I say take the time in your day, to say hello to a friend, or a passerby. Maybe it will make a difference.

As we approach the tripping point...or has it already been past?

With the oil spill in the gulf from the Deep Horizon oil platform 52 days ago, and not being able to stop it from gushing out of the well, we need to rethink what we have and are continually doing to the earth. On reading last months issue of adbusters, "The Ecopsychology Issue" (#89), recent review of Mary-Jane Rust's books entitles "Ecotherepy: Healing with Nature in Mind" and "Climate on the Couch," brought on frightening realizations on where we are heading and how people cope with it. In "Ecotherepy: Healing with Nature in Mind," they explored people behavior and coping methods. In it, it is described, while having in a therapy session that her client admits to:

"spending there entire leisure time drinking heavily and taking drugs. She [the client] denies that this is a problem and tells me [the psychiatrist] that is the norm among her peer group of thirtysomethings...We explore the issue up and down, round and round, for some weeks. In a moment of wild thinking I ask 'What do you feel about the future?' 'We're completely fucked' the client admits...The clients esplains that we humans do not stand a chance. We consume and pollute the earth, causing climate change and widespread distruction, out future looks bleak. After we explore this further, I tentatively ask if she thinks there is a connection between this and her drinking. 'Oh definitely,' she [the client] replies. 'Why not drink and do drugs? There's no future. We might as well go out partying'"

This is curious and I will be looking for this book in the future. It is also scary, in that, I can see this happening. I see in happening in my own life and in the eyes of my colleagues. I learned in a population and community ecology class about populations being in equilibrium and how they crash when they fall out of equilibrium. In fact, as we become smarter, we can see that we are causing our own extinct, but not until we kill off every other living thing in the world first.

It is time to stop passing blame off into other people (both democrats and republicans parties) and start making a ecosystem revolution. Small things that each individual can do, does not and has not worked. But we still do them. Our landfill keep getting larger and larger, we destroy hundreds of thousands acres of natural habitat yearly, and we just see it as something that we must do to survive. Things need to change. Things need to stop. Ways to do it is changing our government and removing special interest. We constantly look for a change, but it has not happened. We elect new people, but still there is no change.

We need to stop being so selfish and realize that there is not much left of this finite earth. I think that you need to ask yourself, "What am I going to do?" Are you going to be apathetic and say that nothing can be done, or will you organize a movement? Will you wait for technology to save us, because most likely it will not? It hasn't so far.

Cap and Trade....come on?

Cap and trade is not a climate solution. It is a way for mega-corporations and the government to pollute legally. It is a scam and will create our next market bubble. T. Boone Picking is supporting this, but he is also supporting making money by extracting natural gas and using it for transportation (another greenhouse gas emitter) instead of importing oil.

Cap and trade will only create our next bubble and keep us on tract to destroy this earth that we inhabit. This is just disaster for the U.S. and the rest of the world will hurt because of our doing.

The end as we know it.

I happened across this interview through facebook on how we have harmed the earth and have passed the tipping point of survivals of our species. "Eaarth": Earth is over is a powerful interview of Bill McKibben, the author of "The End of Nature," on how we have far surpassed what is sustainable. What I cannot believe is that, "Forty-four percent of Americans still don’t believe global warming is man-made." This is very scary. We have hard evidence, but American are ignorant. Little changes by individuals, might make you feel good, but WILL NOT make a difference. We need governments and major corporation make changes on what they do.