Occupy 1

We schedule our meetings. They hold the line. We bicker. They act.

That band of rag-tag, dirty idealists have been sitting there in a park adjacent to the seat of global financial power for three weeks now, determined to change the world--and they have. They don't seem to know how they are going to do it, but the mere thought of them there, sitting, talking, fighting off the autumn cold, is enough to keep the rest of us hopeful and dedicated.

They want a voice. They want to be heard. They want to believe in democracy, like back when America was great, before the arrogance set in, before the guys who fought in Europe faded into senility and we took their courage and turned it into a sense of entitlement.

There is a lot of fear, both inside and outside of this movement. The outsiders, the 1% and the political elite are scared because, yes, this is indeed their worst nightmare. Much of the un-supportive or skeptical 99% are scared because the thought of restructuring the social constructs, the economic architecture, and the political system currently dominating our world is scary. However, it is inevitable and the folks at Occupy Wall Street and their supporters in nearly 1000 cities worldwide are probably going to get a lot more than they bargained for.

Every major step in human history has been preceded by a significant advancement in the way in which we communicate.

35,000 years ago, homo sapiens evolved their modern-day vocal chords, allowing them to communicate using complex sounds that represented symbols, both concrete and abstract. This resulted in order out of the chaos, the ability to teach others methods and techniques, the beginning of an oral history where something someone learned was not lost with that person. Man separated himself from the animals. This new development even caused the extinction of human's faster, stronger cousins, the neanderthals.

Somewhere around 6 or 7,000 years ago, language became written. Some visionary Sumerian decided to create a series of symbols to represent the words coming out of people's mouths and literacy was born, and with it, civilization. Ideas were saved for future generations. Advancements, improvements, plans, messages, belief systems, political power, literature, religion, and everything else that is civilization did not have to be lost in translation. Next were the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Christian revolution when Europe became connected by a common belief system, but the message was limited to the few who were trained by the church to read and the fewer controlled by the church to write their propaganda.

Enter Gutenberg, a German inventor in a small town on the Rhine called Meinz. His printing press opened up the possibility of mass messaging. Books besides the bible were printed, not hand-written by scribes in the church's pocket. Pamphlets illustrating new ideas began to circulate as the general population learned to read. The protestant reformation occurred, then the Enlightenment with its scientific leanings, it's humanism and the idea that not everything was God's doing and that maybe, just maybe, humans should take responsibility for themselves.

Now we are experiencing the growing pains of the information age. All of human knowledge stands ready at anyone's fingertips. Communication across oceans is instant. Groups of thousands, perhaps someday even millions, can simultaneously share and experience each others' messages. The truth about everything from working conditions for sub-Saharan African diamond miners to the exorbitant luxury of America's 1% can be sent and received to and from nearly every individual in the world. In short, the blinders are off! Governments and institutions can no longer realistically control the flow of information. Their self-serving policies will no longer go unnoticed.

Combine this ability to gather knowledge with a society weary of its inequality and primed for change and it is reasonable to assume that we, as a species, stand on the precipice of the next great social revolution.

We can not even begin to predict the ramifications.

It is possible, taking the optimist's view, that this smaller world could render irrelevant many of the fundamental social, Geo-political, and economic structures that we have come to accept as unchangeable and axiomatic, even to the point that we would never consider the possibility that there might be other options. What good are borders when economies and peoples are so co-dependent that the economic failing of one nation ruins all the rest? Why fight for resources when their eventual depletion will be instantly catastrophic for every individual on the planet regardless of nationality or ethnicity and these same resources are necessary for the smooth operation of the global economy? If that's the case, why not share them?

Because this is how economics is now viewed, as one complete system where the only boundaries are the outer edges of the atmosphere.

It seems completely within reason that capitalism, communism, free-markets, welfare states, currency value discrepancies, corporations and every other "real-world" institution that props up our sense of order and gives us the feeling that one ideology is better than another or that there are even choices will be soon rendered moot. Perhaps, optimistically, some kind of global cooperativism will emerge.

However, the power structures currently in place are deeply rooted and will not give up their power so easily. What's more is that they have massive arsenals of killing tools at their disposal.

This is all merely speculation. However, it seems apparent that this is no longer just about Wall Street or campaign finance or the Federal Reserve or lobbyists or the democratic ideal. It's about change on a scope that we have not seen in nearly 600 years. 

Such prospects, thoughts, musings, or even the rants of a psychopath if you view them as such, are scary and I think it is safe to say that that the process that will eventually tear down those structures has commenced. But while the lives of all humans will no doubt be forever changed, be encouraged that all that is in the hands of the people will be well.

Thoughts on Touring, Thoughts

There are so many of us,
and so many are lost.
The world is bursting at the seams with us,
covering her like a pox

We are all Job's and Jezabel's
looking for some peace.
Looking for a leg up,
or vengeance for some unremembered transgression.

Every time I travel, the sheer amount of people I see who I will never know, will never meet, will never affect my life in any perceivable way is staggering. The bums, the businessmen, the musicians, the waitresses, sailors, the small-town moms and dads, their kids, their future girlfriends/boyfriends, the hotel maids, convenience store shoppers, restaurant patrons, groupies, the power lunch crowd, taco truck owners, park visitors, tourists, bicyclists, freeway drivers--all coming from somewhere, heading somewhere else, and wanting more.

I don't care about them in any individual, mother Theresa, humanitarian, the-poor-lot-of-the-world-huddled-masses manner. It may be callous, but meh... I think about how all of them combined are a tiny fraction of the real, unfathomable population of the world (7 billion). I think about heroin addicts in Amsterdam and Prague and how no one cares for them in an individual, mother Theresa, humanitarian, the-poor-lot-of-the-world-huddled-masses manner. They are left in those dirty streets to fend for themselves. Not everyone can be president, you know. Not even me with my relatively comfortable lifestyle, full set of teeth, relative self-awareness, and education. I am just another writer in a sea of writers competing with Pakistanis who can pay their rent with what it costs me to drive to the coffee shop and back six times. I am just another musician swimming in a soup of musicians, competing with 21-year old's with no kids and nothing to lose.

The predictable response to this kind of post is....you're a cynic, a pessimist. I think these two adjectives are often confused with...an unwavering sense of what is actually realistic. I often wish I lived in Yugoslavia where it was ok to be a bicycle courier, where being a bicycle courier is a pretty good job and not every Tom, Dick, and Harry, every Buddy, Guy, and Harold, every Jane, Sue, and Patty felt the overwhelming, crushing, don't-get-the-bends pressure to make more, More, MORE!! money, buy more stuff, spend your talents, time, and energy on attaining that (let's face it) impossible, reality-tv life. "Hey son... you can be (president, a millionaire, a CEO, rock-star, Oscar-winner, pro football player, etc.)  someday." Well....nope.

You can be happy though. That one is possible. It's not wanting all that crap that's going to do it.

Breaking 30 Years Worth of Eating Habits

So for the last week or so, Dominique and I have been scaring ourselves silly watching documentary after documentary on how totally MISGUIDED our eating habits, food industry, government regulation, and overall ethics regarding food are.
At this point, I don't want to watch these things anymore. But I can't unlearn what I've been bombarding myself with. Suffice it to say, we are making a few changes around the household. It's amazing what knowledge will do. It creates ideas which leads to action which may quite possibly alter forever the course of your life.
We've been sufficiently educated concerning what is wrong with the system--and we've decided to remove ourselves from it as much as possible. What we don't know is exactly how to deal with this.
The shift has already occurred. We've been eating organic for the last 3 days or so with various unpleasant physiological side affects--wicked gas (theoretically from the addition of vitamins), headaches (presumably from the lack of sugar), and irritability (likely a result of uncertainty and stress related to making major life changes).
We really don't know what we should eat, only a vague idea of what we shouldn't eat. Furthermore, this stuff is expensive. An organic chicken is $17 a pound, weighing around 3 pounds-you're looking at a $51 dinner. That's not acceptable. We need help. We need to know how to keep costs down and eat what we need to eat. If somebody out there has some advice, please post. We've been going to farmer's markets and balking at the prices. We spent about $80 at the co-op on probably four meals, we've been to the other organic grocery store in town and interviewed the cashier. But it's frustrating because we're blind. We don't really even know what to look for. We've been a cog in this machine all of our lives and have escaped, only to find that we don't know how to survive on the outside.
If you're in the dark about this stuff, watch "Food, Inc.", "Food Matters", "The Future of Food." You'll soon realize, something needs to change.