Freedom of the Press

This is a complicated topic to bring up.  After all, those who've lived in countries where there is no such thing as free press press us to keep our news/entertainment complex running at full speed.

Yet, freedom requires responsibility, does it not?  And if there are fewer and fewer official news outlets in comparison to the average citizen's ability to become an instant journalist, how do we teach responsible news reporting, knowing that completely uncensored news contains sensitive information?

I approach this topic because of the set of copycat murders that have taken and will take place during this lull in economic times, where people with no sense of humour get wound up in their thoughts that their only outlet is a violent ending.

By reporting and dwelling on details of murderers, we give a voice and/or thoughts toward murderous action for those who haven't yet formulated how they can get out of their current miserable conditions.

Now, I can look at this anthropologically-speaking and say that it's just our species weeding out the marginal personalities but even I, with my satirical/sarcastic sense of humour, am not that cold.  We're talking about real people here, both those who could have been helped and those they murdered when help was not available.

We are one species.  By that, I mean we are all the same, we are seven billion copies of the same person, we are one big family.  Therefore, we should not hesitate to get to know one another, talk to our neighbours, break down the invisible social barriers and quit thickening our falsely-protective cocoons.

I don't need a crystal ball to know we're going to see more and more people reach the end of their livelihoods and want to end others as they go out with a big bang.  My concern is the intensity of these follow-on copycats.  We are social creatures who tend to herd together, even in acts of unspeakable atrocities.  Inside that herd are those who are competitive, including how they want to outdo the last great criminal act of the herd members.

In an effort to help others in need, I recently reached out to my neighbours during the crisis of one set of neighbours.  If we all did the same, we could reconnect the old-style, smalltown family ties of previous times.  In this day and age of electronic social networking, we still need plain ol' hugs and frank in-the-face conversations with one another.

You do not need to kill someone to make your life complete!  It's okay to be humble and ask for help.  We can move in with one another, if need be.

If nothing else, take a walk.  Exercise is one of the best ways to burn off pent-up energy.  Do not resort to violence.  It's unnecessary.

In the education of our children, a healthy sense of humour should be one of the foundations of life-coping skills we teach.  When we're at our wit's end, we can still find a way to smile, which often leads to insights to a new path out of our predicament.

Eight and a half years after 9/11/01 and most Americans have become used to the safe sound of airplanes overhead.  Now, what will we say to our friends who get a sudden urge to fly their private planes?  What will we say to our friends who complain about their children's uncontrollable behaviour?  What will we think of our friends who display violent tendencies or won't talk about blank places in their CVs?

It is well with what you can call my soul.  I accept that whatever will happen to me is meant to happen to me because it happened and we can't turn back the clock.  However, that doesn't mean I'm willing to accept arbitrary acts of violence against my person that could have been prevented with some simple acts of kindness to strangers by strangers.

During WWII, this country enacted a set of censorship rules.  With the Internet's uncensored setup, we have created a wonderful gathering place for people of all sorts of dreams, desires, personalities, quirks, hobbies and backgrounds.  How do we make our society less prone to violence, including individual acts of violence or group-centered (gang) violence?  Is censorship possible?  Is it necessary?  How do we reach out to those in need if we shut them out?  Why is it always after the fact that hindsight showed us what we should have seen?  Where is the social progress that promised us future people with insight to see problem people around us and act on our instincts to pull those problem people aside for counseling or other means of making them less problematic?

I'm concerned we're going to take the direction of creating a stronger police state, devoting more and more of our tax collections to incarceration and clamp down on openness altogether, using censorship for promoting a one-size-fits-all social message.  In so doing, we would limit our futures.

I look to you for other solutions to our current crisis of random violence (i.e., domestic terrorism).  It's up to you and me to solve this problem.  There's no magic bureau or agency or department that has an infinite set of solutions already worked out.  We are one people, including those in the private and public sectors.  Together, we make this a better world or we fall apart.

We have faced these crises before and survived.  In fact, we've thrived since then.  But we survived and thrived because we took action, not because we stood by and let apathy rule the day.

I use the freedom of the press to communicate with many of you out there who are working to get our people up and permanently off this planet.  The Space Monkeys, we often joke.  There are those of you, including the space monkey subset, who communicate for an even greater cause (meaning we all do).  We must act with more compassion for those around us who we might normally ignore in our daily rush to accomplish our nearly impossible tasks.  It's okay to slow down a little and take the time to care for those we easily can give a helping hand - we already have the gift of insight so let's use it for more than large-scale social change.

To Pam, Patricia and Beth - our thoughts and prayers are with you right now in your time of mourning.  To Annette - there are better days ahead.  To Monica - I haven't talked to you in a while but I'm thinking about you during this big change in your life.  To Pat - you're a beautiful person who will find new dreams fulfilled.  To Raymon and Ann - we're still praying for full recovery.  To Scott - we're hoping you get your house sold and can move on with your life.

These notes of love are the types of messages we should use the press and Internet for, not spreading more details of how desperate, violent people decided to take out their frustrations, no matter how much people seem to be attracted to stories of violence and mayhem and thus willing to support adverts that pay for crime reports.

Vernacular, Vehicular, Ventricular

Interesting to read that the world leaders officially announced today that a permanent committee of centralized planners is going to run the world from now on. I was really surprised that they would make such a bold and obvious statement. I expected them to ease into it, first going to a truly global currency by way of necessity and then moving to centralized planning as the final solution to fix the global crisis. At first, I thought I was watching the movie, "1984," and although I flipped past it, I confirmed that it was the regular world news I was watching (and followed up with reading about it on the Internet). The scary part was seeing the parallels continue in that the major world governments had announced a set of border zones where wars are to be officially conducted for the next five to twenty years, depending on public opinion. The wars have themes, too, such as the war on drugs, the war on global terrorism and the war on rogue leaders.

Meanwhile, activists are officially being allowed to ransack businesses, letting them wage their personal peace on war and vent their frustration publicly so the covert activist trackers can keep tabs on them, and by indirect route, sending a message to capitalists that governments want to reassert their control of the world. And all of this before I finished my first cup of tea this morning! I was surprised that we didn't get the usual dose of Greenpeace battling the Somalians for control of the high seas but maybe that broadcast is being saved for tomorrow's news.

I spoke to an Indian friend of mine who had just finished blessing the purchase of his new Nano (the car AND the iPod, a cool pair of geek gadgets for a high-tech, middle-class Indian). He talked of the promise of the future, when Indians will control the finances (a/k/a purse strings) of most major political groups in many parts of the world and will have to face the economic strength of China in control of the world economy. The question of whether Gandhi or Confucius wins the hearts and minds of the people will finally be answered. I wonder.

A student of mine from the U.S./Mexico border expressed concern about his relatives literally caught in the crossfire of the cartel drug trade war. He wishes that the U.S. would legalize illicit drugs. I assured him that the illegal drug business lines the pockets of too many politicians who like high profit and high risk - until a good replacement comes along that funnels greenbacks into the money laundering business, nothing will be done except the show of big guns on the border, making life worse for his friends and relatives. The only choice they have is to move further north, like he did.

A Brazilian colleague recently emailed me and asked me how the job market here is going. He was contemplating joining an organization to unite the poor and show solidarity with his compadres in Venezuela, but didn't want to get too carried away with the idea if he could get his high-paying technical job back with the American distributor. I reminded him that this recession is giving people many opportunities for changing their lives. Only he could decide what was better for him. We cracked jokes that the Brazilian rain forest might be a great place for many of us to wander in the wilderness for a few years until all this blows over.

I haven't heard from my Australian friends lately. I assume that the fires didn't wipe them out but I can't remember which suburbs they lived in. I reckon they're eating cane toad and kangaroo about now, if nothing else.

Oh well, I can't control the rest of the world. All I can do is enjoy my part of it. The air is full of flying insects today, the sun is shining, and birds flit from tree to tree getting their supply of free energy. Think I'll put aside writing today and soak up some rays for myself.

But first, this being the day of fools, I think I'll fool around (not that kind) and post all my novels for free for a few weeks. You can go to the link below only one time and download a copy of the novel(s) of your choice. Be a fool if you want, or choose wisely, but remember to download the novel on your one visit per novel - otherwise, you'll miss out, foolishly:

A Space, A Period, And A Capital: https://www.createspace.com/Preview/1056261

Are You With The Program?: https://www.createspace.com/Preview/1056262

Sticks To Lying: https://www.createspace.com/Preview/1056263

Helen of Kosciusko: https://www.createspace.com/Preview/1056264

Milk Chocolate: https://www.createspace.com/Preview/1056265

The 100th patrol

What will you do to fill your day?

By chance, this blog entry marks the 100th time I've written and posted a time-stamped thing on this Google-owned software app. Numbers in action. Ten times ten fingers. Five times my fingers and toes. I drink a glass of Chambourcin in mock celebration. Drained. Done.

In 1985, I wondered what would relieve my daily boredom. In the small bookstore on the main campus of Walters State Community College in Morristown, Tennessee, I found a slim volume of poetry, titled, if I remember correctly, "Bars, Babes, and Boo-Boos," written by an instructor / professor at the college.

I can almost picture the author's name. I met him once or twice.

He might even have served on the committee that issued the Outstanding Student Award in the discipline of Creative Writing to me. I don't know.

The typewritten pages of his poetry and his stark scenery of searching out overnight companions at old watering holes inspired me to self-publish my early work on photocopying machines ("Of Friends, Neighbors, Lovers and Miscellaneous Passers-By" in Knoxville in 1992, using the photocopier in the little office I usually sat in alone, supposedly analyzing sewer flow data but often working late night hours on my writing, instead).

Neither one of us found fame but did we seek it?

We uncorked silence and let it flow between the spaces. Intoxicated with self-satisfaction. Aah!

Tomorrow marks the first day I'm to teach college-age kids. Hmmph. I'm taking the easy path. I know that now. Hiding in my parents'/family's vocational shadows. Destiny? Cheating myself? I don't know.

Need to mention Eimear in other parts of "The Mind's Aye." At the beginning - foresight? Hindsight - at the end? The end - mais oui! D'accord!

In reference to my last blog entry to build my next story:

• When would the local/committee censorship, self-policing policies of one nation slip into the night and create a Chinafication of the West? Has it already happened?
• Have we morphed from free-market capitalism as birth twin of a democratic republic to centralized capitalism as conjoined twin of a socialized republic?
• Has the West become little brother to the Middle East and East Asia?
• Will restrictive Eastern governments absorb Western practices and turn freedom of speech into a pure pacification tool, as long as speech leads to improvements to society in the form of marketable ideas, goods and services (including ones that seem to diss society but breastfeed the innocent minds and hearts of well-meaning infantile dissidents) - with art and product advertising being the purest form of pacification?
• How will this be reflected in decentralized Internet marketing campaigns for pacifying isolated subcultures?
• What about Latin American gangs? Russian conglomerates? In other words, how to build a better society off the strength of the underground economy?
• Legalize illegality?
• How do those of us who walk both sides of the street put our self-destructive habits to good use while keeping the goody two shoes blissfully unaware of what we're doing, not turning purely self-destructive people into happy zombies but simply tools for which all of society can prosper?
• Is violence really an inherent part of the system?

Am I dreaming? Where am I going? What's it all about?

Quick! Where's a calendar? What year is it? 2009? Somebody slap me. Please.

I just dreamed it was 1984 all over again.

Wait! It is!

Kevin, I think we misunderstood our musings that mushroomed out of control - everything DOES go in a circle. A very vicious one, too! But this time you've got five mouths to feed. I only ever had to feed me. At least we both stayed under the radar while we read people's faces and stoked their egos. No crime against that, is there? If they only knew...hehe