Palin Makes Fun of Hope and Change

At a recent Pitty Potty Tea Party rally Sarah Palin mocking President Obama in her gum chewing breezy glib way said:  "How is that hopey changey thing workin out for yah?"  Is Ms Palin capable of using correct English?  Anyway,... thank you Sarah now I realise what you and the tea party are all about.  You have abandoned the hope of modernity that each day can be better than the day before, and that we can make the world a better place for everyone.  It is the cynicism of Fox News and the usually fellow travellers of doom, gloom, and despair having given up hope.  This was a remarkable revelation for me.

We have been indoctrinated through civics classes (do we even teach that any more?) that America is a place where you can make it, where you have a chance, and where hard work pays off.  Even Ronald Reagan believed that. It was not too bad of a social construct!  It provided the conscious of the civil rights movement and the women's movement.   The current bunch of hard core conservatives do not believe that stuff anymore..

The current tide of conservatism is cynical, greedy, and has turned its back on American values instead embracing some kind of Christian capitalism, Ayn Rand philosophy of the damned.  I opposed Ronald Reagan on some issues but I NEVER doubted his optimism.  He was many things but not a cynic. 

Our current struggle is not with communism, Islam, or any of that stuff.  It is much more insidious and much more powerful.  It is materialism. We have drank that hemlock.  Is it a fatal dose?

Reading, Texting, and Mindfulness

When I go to the park nobody is reading anymore.  It used to be that you would see people reading under trees, or parents reading to their  children.  Now everyone is talking on the cell phone while they are in the park.  I went into Barnes & Noble to get a copy of the Paris Review and there were two people outside smoking as they were texting on cell phones. Are they more addicted to cigarettes or their cell phones?  As a matter of fact companion texting, texting while somebody else is with you, is probably our number one social interaction besides, well,... texting.  Have our lives become defined by that little screen?  Probably.

47 percent of teens can text with their eyes closed.  Fact.  And, I bet less than 17 percent can diagram a sentence.  Texting is replacing talking.

I went to a meeting the other day and there was an executive setting there texting through the whole thing.  Then a colleague tells me they go to a board meeting and there is someone there with not one, but two, phones texting throughout the meeting.

See a movie?  Cell phones.  Somebody is running or cycling?  They are listening to music with those ear buds blocking out the world.We are not content to read, smoke, run, drive, or do any of life's little tasks which define us as human without a distraction.  We have to be doing something else.  Do people text while having sex?  Apparently so.  Scroll down to the comments:  Weird Texting Moments from Womens Health Magazine:  http://www.womenshealthmag.com/life/weird-texting-moments.  The interesting thing is not so much that the women sent a text to her mom during sex but that she read it in the first place.

By the way, we are still a long way from understanding the social or even health consequences of cell phones. Here is an interesting article from GQ magazine: http://www.gq.com/cars-gear/gear-and-gadgets/201002/warning-cell-phone-radiation

Here are some more things to think about:
"The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence.  When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers." Thich Nhat Hanh

So, turn off that cell phone and read Peace in Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh, or the newspaper, or really talk and listen to someone for a change, or maybe even do nothing.  Whatever you do, please don't text me.  I will not text back.