Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Friday, January 2, 2015
This is your age
Good Morning, Screams.
A month or so ago I was carrying a sign at a Ferguson protest that read as follows (poem by me, almost a haiku):
Love, no longer weep and cower
Come out from the shadows
This is your age.
Though the original poem was specifically addressing war, I was carrying it in Ferguson because I thought it also applied to the issues fueling these debates. Several reporters asked me about it and I found myself having difficulty capturing its meaning concisely. I thought it spoke for itself and now wish I wouldn't have even attempted an explanation. Let's just say that the Blasphemer, who was with me at the time, called me Princess Snowflake.
I will attempt to explain it now with a little less fairy dust.
I don't think, as some do, that there is some inevitability about war. In this debate I come down firmly on the side of nurture. I know many believe that violence and hate are an intrinsic property of human nature. Some say it is necessary on a psychological or evolutionary level: the warrior spirit or an adaptation to cull the herd. I would argue that it takes on the appearance of inevitability because humanity has been soaking in this potent bath of culture, religion, socioeconomics, anger and fear for so long that we've absorbed it deeply into our skin. The full elimination of humanity's ultimate crime against itself I put in the category of the probably impossible. I don't see it going away any time soon.
That being said, it is abundantly clear to me that those who believe strongly as I do that biological rights should be the organizing principle of all societies must advocate for the total eradication of it. Just because it has an ice cube's chance in hell of coming into fruition doesn't mean one should abandon the argument. So, of course, achieving a global path to peace begins with love.
"Love? Snicker, snicker. Alright princess snowflake. Go back to the sixties, take some shrooms and kiss the flowers. This is reality we're talking about here."
I know love has a bad name. It was given a bad name long before Bon Jovi's girlfriend put on that blood red nail polish and gave him her very first kiss goodbye leaving him, thankfully in my teenage mind, back on the market. "Love" in this context is not the free love that results in an uptick in difficult to spell STD rates and it does not mean giving a terrorist a hug and sticking a flower in her machete. It means investing in people instead of investing in the war machine. It means winning hearts and minds, to use a phrase that may be more acceptable to the establishment. It means abandoning the cycle, shrugging one's shoulders and walking away from the battlefield, letting the "enemy" win momentarily and while they are busy celebrating, building houses, transportation systems, sewage systems, schools, hospitals. Turning swords into ploughshares. This is the true meaning of taking action in the name of love.
It strikes me as utterly absurd that love is equated with foolishness while war is deemed sensible. One-hundred thirty two children killed last month in Islamabad the name of war. All's fair, they say. A hundred-million active landmines scattered across the globe from wars long "over" still killing people. War is hell, they say. The United States has two-thousand active warheads stashed around the country and somehow all the sweat and treasure that went into building and now maintaining these monsters is rational, but advocating for food security or education is not. I don't know what made me select these particular facts, the list could go on for eternity.
War is not working. Global powers cannot keep responding to short-term conflagrations with wars that generate more wars and never really end. Say what you will about the wars of the past, the wars of the present are primarily wars of ideas that cannot be eliminated with weapons. You may as well shoot at the wind.
Yes, I am talking about a real secular global effort to end human misery not only as an end in itself, but also as a solution to war. All factors in, the cost would probably be about the same in the short-term, less in the long-term, it would not take as long, and the effect would be permanent and sustainable.
From the top, this solution begins with the election of real compassionate visionaries in wealthy democracies that have the resources making the case for suppressing the catastrophic, reactive, impulsive, approach in favor of the rational, methodical, preventive one. From the bottom, what Neil Degrasse Tyson calls the "cosmic view" needs to penetrate the collective human spirit: an understanding that even if your neighbors grill in the front yard instead of the back yard, they still want the same things you do: food, water, safety, love, a chance to reach their full potential. Hatred and fear resulting in dehumanization of the "other" in all its forms, is the staple fodder of the beast.
Though the latter component of the formula is slogging forward at a grueling rate, I do not see these great visionary leaders anywhere in my country. Leaders that aren't bought and paid for by the capitalists and/or are motivated by their own ambitious lust for power. Barak Obama had potential, but if he truly deserved his prematurely awarded Peace Prize, he would stand up for love to the point of utter exhaustion. He needs to give it back.
I do, however, imagine that people with vision and the potential to lead are out there in the shadows, somewhere. You see, the zeitgeist has your back. War has dominated every age in recorded history and it has overstayed it's welcome. It is done.
Love, this is your age.
Lara.
A month or so ago I was carrying a sign at a Ferguson protest that read as follows (poem by me, almost a haiku):
Love, no longer weep and cower
Come out from the shadows
This is your age.
Though the original poem was specifically addressing war, I was carrying it in Ferguson because I thought it also applied to the issues fueling these debates. Several reporters asked me about it and I found myself having difficulty capturing its meaning concisely. I thought it spoke for itself and now wish I wouldn't have even attempted an explanation. Let's just say that the Blasphemer, who was with me at the time, called me Princess Snowflake.
I will attempt to explain it now with a little less fairy dust.
I don't think, as some do, that there is some inevitability about war. In this debate I come down firmly on the side of nurture. I know many believe that violence and hate are an intrinsic property of human nature. Some say it is necessary on a psychological or evolutionary level: the warrior spirit or an adaptation to cull the herd. I would argue that it takes on the appearance of inevitability because humanity has been soaking in this potent bath of culture, religion, socioeconomics, anger and fear for so long that we've absorbed it deeply into our skin. The full elimination of humanity's ultimate crime against itself I put in the category of the probably impossible. I don't see it going away any time soon.
That being said, it is abundantly clear to me that those who believe strongly as I do that biological rights should be the organizing principle of all societies must advocate for the total eradication of it. Just because it has an ice cube's chance in hell of coming into fruition doesn't mean one should abandon the argument. So, of course, achieving a global path to peace begins with love.
"Love? Snicker, snicker. Alright princess snowflake. Go back to the sixties, take some shrooms and kiss the flowers. This is reality we're talking about here."
I know love has a bad name. It was given a bad name long before Bon Jovi's girlfriend put on that blood red nail polish and gave him her very first kiss goodbye leaving him, thankfully in my teenage mind, back on the market. "Love" in this context is not the free love that results in an uptick in difficult to spell STD rates and it does not mean giving a terrorist a hug and sticking a flower in her machete. It means investing in people instead of investing in the war machine. It means winning hearts and minds, to use a phrase that may be more acceptable to the establishment. It means abandoning the cycle, shrugging one's shoulders and walking away from the battlefield, letting the "enemy" win momentarily and while they are busy celebrating, building houses, transportation systems, sewage systems, schools, hospitals. Turning swords into ploughshares. This is the true meaning of taking action in the name of love.
It strikes me as utterly absurd that love is equated with foolishness while war is deemed sensible. One-hundred thirty two children killed last month in Islamabad the name of war. All's fair, they say. A hundred-million active landmines scattered across the globe from wars long "over" still killing people. War is hell, they say. The United States has two-thousand active warheads stashed around the country and somehow all the sweat and treasure that went into building and now maintaining these monsters is rational, but advocating for food security or education is not. I don't know what made me select these particular facts, the list could go on for eternity.
War is not working. Global powers cannot keep responding to short-term conflagrations with wars that generate more wars and never really end. Say what you will about the wars of the past, the wars of the present are primarily wars of ideas that cannot be eliminated with weapons. You may as well shoot at the wind.
Yes, I am talking about a real secular global effort to end human misery not only as an end in itself, but also as a solution to war. All factors in, the cost would probably be about the same in the short-term, less in the long-term, it would not take as long, and the effect would be permanent and sustainable.
From the top, this solution begins with the election of real compassionate visionaries in wealthy democracies that have the resources making the case for suppressing the catastrophic, reactive, impulsive, approach in favor of the rational, methodical, preventive one. From the bottom, what Neil Degrasse Tyson calls the "cosmic view" needs to penetrate the collective human spirit: an understanding that even if your neighbors grill in the front yard instead of the back yard, they still want the same things you do: food, water, safety, love, a chance to reach their full potential. Hatred and fear resulting in dehumanization of the "other" in all its forms, is the staple fodder of the beast.
Though the latter component of the formula is slogging forward at a grueling rate, I do not see these great visionary leaders anywhere in my country. Leaders that aren't bought and paid for by the capitalists and/or are motivated by their own ambitious lust for power. Barak Obama had potential, but if he truly deserved his prematurely awarded Peace Prize, he would stand up for love to the point of utter exhaustion. He needs to give it back.
I do, however, imagine that people with vision and the potential to lead are out there in the shadows, somewhere. You see, the zeitgeist has your back. War has dominated every age in recorded history and it has overstayed it's welcome. It is done.
Love, this is your age.
Lara.
Saturday, December 20, 2014
letter to a friend: Transgression
Dear Screams,
It is eight o'clock and I am still suffering the effects of last night's revelry. Why did I go to a party full of late 20-somethings and drink like I was one of them? Was I trying to be inconspicuous? I think they probably noticed I wasn't a peer. Don't let the label fool you, "The Kraken" is not the sea monster from Icelandic folklore but instead is a onomatopoeiac warning describing how your head will feel the next morning after drinking it. This is what happens when you are a lonely person accepting invitations to parties from strangers.
Though only time will cure the cruda, I have at least removed the psychological component from this familiar experience by adopting a trick that eases my next day anxiety about possible manifestations of my disinhibition as stupidity, obnoxiousness or offensiveness. During the episode I periodically {about every twenty minutes} check in with my brain with the following survey question: "Are you doing or saying anything you'll regret right now?" If I find that I am, then I stop. If not, then I answer with an emphatic "no". The next morning when I think "oh crap, what the hell did I do"? I can refer to my mental checklist and feel comforted.
So why do I feel so bothered today? Guilt, I think, because I live the same way now that I've lived since I was in college. I have grown up in the sense that my thinking has evolved and my emotional maturity has increased, but life-style wise it's the same old thing. Not by choice. I go out into the world to quell my loneliness, and do this significantly less when I get what I need at home. Still, I would never be a homebody. I am a restless spirit drawn to measured iniquity. These characteristics are sealed in my brain's immutable rock, the progeny of the blank slate, an impenetrable foundation, not innate but formed in the first few years, months, weeks, days, hours or even minutes after and during the birth process. I have to listen to it.
I know, Screams, I promised I would embrace my loneliness, accept it as fate. I am trying, but the night falls so early now and my heart starts to beat like a drum, and then the churning in my chest: I call it the gerbil on a treadmill. It is a physical sensation, not a mental one. I cannot rest or concentrate even on tasks I usually enjoy like painting, knitting or baking. Some projects, like reading, writing and cartooning are less difficult because I can do them while being out in the world and through them I can imagine a world of good friends.
I must get back on schedule. Early to bed, early to rise will keep my flying right. I am planning to do some volunteering and regain my political activism soon. This will also make a difference. The party threw everything out of whack since I stayed up until four and slept until eleven. On the couch. My clothes scattered everywhere across the floor. My head Kracken open. My mental checklist at least releasing me from regret. Living as I did in college. It is not by choice, Screams. Not by choice.
Love, Lara
It is eight o'clock and I am still suffering the effects of last night's revelry. Why did I go to a party full of late 20-somethings and drink like I was one of them? Was I trying to be inconspicuous? I think they probably noticed I wasn't a peer. Don't let the label fool you, "The Kraken" is not the sea monster from Icelandic folklore but instead is a onomatopoeiac warning describing how your head will feel the next morning after drinking it. This is what happens when you are a lonely person accepting invitations to parties from strangers.
Though only time will cure the cruda, I have at least removed the psychological component from this familiar experience by adopting a trick that eases my next day anxiety about possible manifestations of my disinhibition as stupidity, obnoxiousness or offensiveness. During the episode I periodically {about every twenty minutes} check in with my brain with the following survey question: "Are you doing or saying anything you'll regret right now?" If I find that I am, then I stop. If not, then I answer with an emphatic "no". The next morning when I think "oh crap, what the hell did I do"? I can refer to my mental checklist and feel comforted.
So why do I feel so bothered today? Guilt, I think, because I live the same way now that I've lived since I was in college. I have grown up in the sense that my thinking has evolved and my emotional maturity has increased, but life-style wise it's the same old thing. Not by choice. I go out into the world to quell my loneliness, and do this significantly less when I get what I need at home. Still, I would never be a homebody. I am a restless spirit drawn to measured iniquity. These characteristics are sealed in my brain's immutable rock, the progeny of the blank slate, an impenetrable foundation, not innate but formed in the first few years, months, weeks, days, hours or even minutes after and during the birth process. I have to listen to it.
I know, Screams, I promised I would embrace my loneliness, accept it as fate. I am trying, but the night falls so early now and my heart starts to beat like a drum, and then the churning in my chest: I call it the gerbil on a treadmill. It is a physical sensation, not a mental one. I cannot rest or concentrate even on tasks I usually enjoy like painting, knitting or baking. Some projects, like reading, writing and cartooning are less difficult because I can do them while being out in the world and through them I can imagine a world of good friends.
I must get back on schedule. Early to bed, early to rise will keep my flying right. I am planning to do some volunteering and regain my political activism soon. This will also make a difference. The party threw everything out of whack since I stayed up until four and slept until eleven. On the couch. My clothes scattered everywhere across the floor. My head Kracken open. My mental checklist at least releasing me from regret. Living as I did in college. It is not by choice, Screams. Not by choice.
Love, Lara
Friday, December 19, 2014
Oops
Here it is, the long awaited return of Approaching Zero. Perhaps it has been revived...or perhaps it is only taking its last futile gasp before expiring. Who knows? Apparently Squeak has a boyfriend now. I had no idea. Quite an interesting development but he appears to be a neurotic freak. You'd think she would have better judgment considering her cognitive capacity and I'm very surprised she has the time.
(For those of you that are not aware of this aspect of my artistic life, I have written over 100 of these, the last about five years ago. This one I created yesterday.)
(For those of you that are not aware of this aspect of my artistic life, I have written over 100 of these, the last about five years ago. This one I created yesterday.)
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