Engineering Welfare State

While one nation wants to declare that its scientists, engineers and technicians have perfected the process of nuclear power control, other nations make sure that tax revenue from the citizenry pays for education, training and employment of their best, brightest and/or most dedicated thinkers and doers.

These are the ways of our people.  These political entities of ours are for us, by us, with us, against us, of our own inventions.

A nation does not exist by itself any more than a corporation can.  We are ourselves.  We choose to support, live for, die for, and protest against ourselves instead of what we've led ourselves to call "nations," "countries," "republics," or other nonexistent bodies.

As people, we have no special powers.  We have skills.  We have talents.  We have some differences that we gladly reward in our barter exchange.  I happily call one of the people my mother, one of the people my father, one of the people my sister and some of the people my nieces and nephews.  I celebrate when some of the people choose up sides, form teams and play in sports gatherings against one another, no matter what they call sport or who they call their people.  We are one species, after all, and I insist on having every single one of you on this planet with me.

A reader asked me if it's okay to belong to a gang.  The reader wasn't sure if I support gang activity or if, as a person who thinks we should all live together, peace is my goal and that seems to contradict gang involvement.

Good question.  The word "gang" does connote much, doesn't it?  Some equate gangs with aggressive, violent acts.  By extension, some equate aggressive, violent acts with certain countries, do they not?  Thus, gangs and countries (both merely words or symbols) are synonymous.

As a species, we have decided that all people must belong to a political entity (i.e., country).  You cannot be born without a country attached to the words (name, birthday, gender, parents) attached to your identity.  We say we are not just the bodies we are.  We were born into the society of the times and whatever society says in general, it says about us as we take our first official breath of air (assuming, at this time, that a person is an entity that extracts oxygen from the atmosphere and processes it through the body, along with water and nutrients, to be the near-equivalent of an ambulatory, bipedal primate; of course, exceptions to this generalisation occur, but I digress).

Therefore, all of us belong to gangs of one form or another because our societies and cultures define opposing societies and cultures as aggressive and violent.

But I remind you I do not condone aggressiveness and violence for the sake of aggressiveness and violence.  Just because you can push around someone smaller/weaker than you does not mean you should.  Just because you can't can-can doesn't mean you should can the can-do, can-can act, either.

Because we're all gang members, what do we say to one another when we meet up?  After all, if your colours clash with my colours, does that mean you're a threat or does it mean you're a rival clothes designer?

I know all sorts of gangs in my neighbourhood.  Some wear colours that are easy to distinguish.  Some use head nods, handshakes, signs and symbols that are not obvious to the casual observer.  Gangs are not all drug dealers, pimps and thugs.  I see gangs whose sole purposes are to analyse popular novels, bake meals for the homebound and watch sports on TV.  Inside these gangs are the usual rivalries, jockeying for position of power and backstabbing that goes on in all gangs, literally and figuratively.  The give-and-take of social creatures.

You do what you've got to do to get by, don't you?  You may work 20-hour days because you're a type-A personality or you're the sole breadwinner for a family of 10.  You may play racquetball at 5 in the morning after getting up at 3:30 for a one-and-a-half hour workout, then read the news analysis at 6 while working through a backlog of emails, tweets and other work-related information.  You may sleep until noon, check the mailbox, take a walk to the local coffee house for a couple of hours of catching up with your friends, go home, and then party the rest of the day until the wee hours of the next morning.  You may work four different jobs just to pay for half of your lifestyle, depending on less-reliable others to cover the other half.

Gangs are not all bad.

I was a Boy Scout for many years, helping those in need while learning skills to live and play in the outdoors that taught me discipline, respect and obedience to others inside the "gang" of the Boy Scout world.  I became an Eagle Scout because I learned to live by the guidelines the adult and youth leaders provided me, despite my thought processes that didn't always jive with what they were saying.  Through Boy Scouts, I made some great friends who stayed in Boy Scouts with me through our Eagle Scout years and some beyond, into Explorer Scouts (only a few went on to become adult leaders in Scouting).  I saw some friends of mine fail to grasp the full meaning of Boy Scouts, dropping out because hiking and camping were too hard on their psyches, learning through other less physical methods the determination it takes to dream big and achieve great goals.

How you treat your gang members says a lot about how you'll treat others outside your gang.  As an adult, I see children who'll make poor, untrustworthy gang members.  They have no focus.  They go along with whatever someone tells them they're supposed to do or be, instead of getting to know themselves - their thoughts and the rest of their bodies' capabilities - because they have no self-respect.

This blog is all about you.  It is only about you.  You and no one else can build respect for yourself which leads to respect for others who are all part of this species we call us.

If you choose to belong to an aggressive, violent gang that only wants to intimidate others, then I am not for you.  You are still part of my people, our species, but until you figure that out I will work with hidden channels and obscure gangs to turn your aggressiveness and violence toward activities that respect you/me both as a person and as part of our species.

My goal is to get us off this planet, using methods that require all of us to work together to preserve our world heritage.  I will not be able to save all of you from yourselves - your life is your own, after all - but I will keep that thought with me as I make progress in moving us toward a future you can barely understand right now.

Do not get fooled by those who want your attention solely to make them rich and powerful, including those in the news media, politics, religion, business or other gangs.  Respect yourself.  Respect for self leads to unselfish attitudes that open up opportunities for positive growth in all gangs, including your local social circles, your state/country and your species.

When you redefine a word like "gang" and see it in a new light, you understand why we give too much emphasis to labels and symbols, instead of seeing life as it plainly is.  For instance, some say they're technology workers employed by or for their government.  Some make the same statement, claiming they're part of the engineering welfare state.

Look around you now and see that we're all gang members.  Watch for the simple signs we use to acknowledge our gang membership.  Look a little closer and notice something else about our species that will open your eyes to why we should soon stop using labels like species to separate us from our environment.  But's that a line of thought for a future blog entry about us, isn't it?  Time for me to focus on the moment, free of symbols and memes.  See you in another moment.