The dust of the war machine

The book and movie Fight Club was an interesting commentary on human beings' substitution of natural pain with artificial materialism, and the resulting backlash. To see clearly the state of one's existence is to feel that one is alive. Without feeling the sensation of being alive, we are essentially walking corpses.

But the feeling of being alive means more than just experiencing pain. We as human beings desire love, success, friendships. We want to feel exhilaration and acceptance and security.

But for those who seek pain either consciously or otherwise, the masochists, they create a dichotomy within the golden rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

If you enjoy or need pain, and you are a golden rule adherent, doesn’t that mean you will cause pain to others? And to people who don’t want it?

So where does that leave us? In a world where violence and pain are often the status quo, how can we ever live in peace? How can we treat others respectfully if we expect them to hurt us?

It comes down to knowing ourselves. How do we know ourselves? By looking at ourselves from the outside. How do we do that? By listening. How do we listen? By loving and respecting. How do we love and respect? We examine the great souls of the past. Yeshua, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Jr. The Saints. The Idealists. The Givers. Our ancestors who inspired us. Strangers who surprised us.

The irony of academic discussion is that improving the human condition is easy to illustrate via an essay, but in practice becomes horrifically challenging. It takes the full responsibility and dedication of every human being to make it work. We are, as CS Lewis said, all ships in a fleet heading towards the same destination. If one of us goes down, the entire fleet is weakened.

Objectivists may disagree, and argue that our innate selfishness is what inspires our compassion for our brothers and sisters. We only care because we get something out of caring, and we should only care if we are getting something. But, this sentiment only serves to strengthen and perpetuate the ego within each of us, further separating us from the natural wonders and the eternal connection of all living beings and all inanimate matter.

Academics, critical theorists, commentators, and college students with cause affectations, seize society’s flaws as if their own existence requires a state of imperfection. And that is, once again, a terrible self-perpetuating masochism. The idea is to come up with ideas that sound profound, because to actually create change would negate their existence.

So the real question is this: Why bother? If we made a change, we’d have nothing to talk about. We’d have no cause, no purpose. This isn’t a call for nihilism, but rather a call for singular and universal consciousness. Even in America where the oligarchy’s presence is hidden behind progressive and humane causes, where we limit ourselves by apathetic consumerism, where violence in the media maintains a bull market, where volunteers are used to create record profits while maintaining high unemployment rates, where images of computerized strangers affect individuals’ self-esteem, even here, positive change has conditions of acceptance. We can only improve x if y is unaffected. Or else, we will have to create z to combat the unintended consequences of x. And so it goes. The snowball of invention in the name of Utopia eventually crashes and leaves everyone in a melting pool of ignorance.

Let us revolutionize our minds. Let us begin the long process of understanding each other. Let us transcend borders and cultural barriers and reveal the true beauty that lies beyond the dust of the war machine. If we can see with our neighbor’s eyes, if we can hear with more than our ears, we won’t want to feel pain anymore and we won’t seek to be hurt. We will finally become alive.

July 12, 2007

The Price is Right to buy BP

I just purchased stock in BP. Now, I know what you’re thinking. Brilliant, right? Surely, any company with talismanic foresight for business planning is a shoe-in for our investment dollars. Any company that can allow an oil deluge to go on for three months has got a plan. Big plans. The PR debacle is the smoke, and the response effort is the mirror. I can’t wait to see my investment skyrocket in an afternoon delight of new capital ventures.

Of course, the price to be paid is high. Lord knows, we all love our seafood and we’re pretty much lost in a pre-New Testament quandary about what kind of meat is okay to eat now that our bottom dwellers are incapacitated, most likely to their inedible delight. It’s difficult to pay twice as much for shrimp, but I know that I must do my part in the economic recovery of our nation. So I purchase my overpriced cocktails with red, white and blue gleaming in every consumption.

And what a shame it is for the fishermen. What a travesty! Livelihoods lost in the blink of an eye. But at least there’s some jobs with BP cleaning up the spill. God bless capitalism!

It reminds me of the symbiotic brilliance of the fast food and fitness industries. Let’s face it, without Burger King and McDonald’s we’d have little need for Slim Fast and Weight Watchers.

Or the relationship between the mental health and pharmaceutical industries. Without the thousands of psychoses that our brilliant psychologists are discovering through the potent and unbiased scientific method, we’d have no need for the myriad drugs that clog the prescription shelves at our local pharmacy. Go agoraphobia! I always thought grandpa was just ornery, turns out he was suffering from acute stress disorder with remnants of cyclothymic and delusional disorders coupled with trichotillomania. No wonder why I still have my hair! He pulled out all of his! It’s not genetic! Let’s hear it for the DSM IV!*

Life never had such deep meaning until long, Latin-derived names were attributed to our woes. And the true meaning didn’t arrive until drug companies devised a delicious concoction to replace self-improvement. God bless instant gratification!

So in reality, BP is just following in the footsteps of its brethren. This clean-up effort is causing them to really dig deep into their pockets. But what they’re truly looking for is something big. It’s a nasty chess game, and it seems they’ve just sacrificed their queen to give the king a shot at the final blow. I can’t wait to see it!

Maybe this is an effort to depress the stock value, so forward-thinking chums like myself can snatch it all up, away from all them Middle Eastern what-have-yous and European neocolonials. Or maybe, they’re trying to destroy the Obama administration by making it appear impotent. That way, a more oil-friendly republican can take office in 2012 on the heals of America’s distrust for idiotic liberal policy. Small price to pay for the bigger picture. A few billion here to ensure the democrats lose office. There are trillions of dollars to be made in the energy industry. I’m glad I’ve got my bit of heaven.

We the people tend to only see the now, and our thoughts on the future are only relevant to what we see happening now. We don’t see what’s really going on, so we can’t see what’s really going to happen. Luckily for all of us, I recently purchased a hand-made Indonesian crystal ball from Walmart for 13 cents, and it told me that BP is going to rake it in big. Got rake? I sure as hell do.

Pay no attention to the liberal media’s idea that more government policy is needed to ensure safe oil drilling. Or the right-wing media telling us that liberal policy is what forced BP to drill in such deep water to begin with. Listen only to your inner Warren Buffett. What would Buffett do? Drink a margarita and eat a cheeseburger in paradise? Only after he was sure that he owned the tequila, the beef company and the royal park. So let’s start buying up BP stock. After all, we wouldn’t want our children growing up without cheeseburgers, shrimp cocktail, combustion engines and bipolar disorder. Would we?

* Narrative bomb! This grandfather passage does not reflect the author's feelings regarding his parents' fathers. In fact, he's bald and so it goes in his family.