Ephemeral Stream

I loved my father so much, but he was gone for much of my life. He was a pilot and was sometimes away for three weeks at a time. By the time he got a job where he could stay home more, I was already in my 20s, moved out, and married. He did make it up to me and during those hard times in my life he was always there. But it didn't last long because by the time I hit my 30s he was diagnosed with cancer, and soon after he was dead.

What I remember most about him is how knowledgeable he was on every topic, and I enjoyed talking to him on a variety of subjects. If it was about aviation he knew everything, and he was also an expert on cars, home repairs, religion, politics, and you name it.

In his final years he restored and sold vintage aircraft and he was an international expert on the T-28 military trainer airplane. He would get calls from around the world and I remember him in the evenings jabbering away with people, always giving free advice. As he laid on his death bed I once commented that it was ashamed that all his massive knowledge would be lost.

All our brains are like an ephemeral stream, which flow for a short time after a rain, and then stop. So, during my 15 years of blogging and after 400-plus posts, I've tried to empty out my brain as much as I can. All my older posts can be found on my environmental blog, We Live on a Planet. I've dispersed my writings to five different blogs, and should they all crash, or should the host close them, I have all the email copies somewhere.

While I enjoy the support of a few faithful readers, for the most part my blogs go unread. If anything, the writing simply helps me to sort out my thoughts as I spend my life trying to figure out what it means to be human.

Epiphany #1

Today I had a life-changing epiphany. I've decided to dedicate the rest of my life to environmental and social sustainability, and teaching nature awareness. It would be a dream to do this kind of work for a living, but right now I have no idea how to achieve that goal. In the past three years I've developed a special love for hiking, and now that's all I want to do — hike in the woods with my dog Lucky and get away from all the shit.

Epiphany #2

I had another big epiphany yesterday. In 1997 when I was still a church leader my love for the environment started coming back to me, from my childhood days. There was a huge building boom going on in the Atlanta suburbs and seeing so many forests bulldozed was killing my soul. I began doing research and learned that global population was the issue where I could make the most difference. So, I joined the Sierra Club and immediately got involved in their population program. I also worked fiercely in their urban sprawl campaign.

Now, 22 years later, I've learned that laws to limit family size will never work, and are a human rights issue. I now see that access to family planning, women's education, and gender equality are the only way to address our exploding population. It suddenly hit me today that these initiatives are, in effect, a form of birth control. 

The Meaning of Life

As an evolutionist and as an animal, I have peace in knowing my purpose for this life. My purpose is to be here to support my family, friends, and anyone else with a good heart. And my purpose is to support the deer who know me in the forest, and all other animals. My purpose is to support candidates and public policies that move us in a positive direction. There is plenty for me to do in life. When someone has a need I want to be there for them, even if just being there is all I can do.

I don't have a girlfriend, but I have some lady friends whom I love deeply. Each of them, as well as my male friends, have given me new perspectives and a greater understanding of my being. I will die alone, and that's okay, for today I've decided to become an environmental priest. There is no time for drinking, parties, or movies — there is only time for the goal of protecting nature and making this world better.

I have always vowed to be as good a father to my daughters as my father was to me. I have big shoes to fill. But as long as I breathe I will always be there for them. 

Fear

My thoughts keep evolving and in the past few weeks I've learned how fear plays such a major role in religion and ultra nationalism. The entire underlying theme of conservatism is fear, and how half of America responds to it. I have no ill-will toward any conservative or Republican, but I have a difficult time understanding them. However, I pledge to always listen and to try to see their viewpoint. These red hat wearing Americans are not my opponents, but rather my fellow citizens who believe in a different path. Nonetheless, creating mythology and lies to provide self-comfort is never good. I'm learning that the truth is always the right course, no matter how painful and scary it may be.

Epiphany #3

This leads to my third epiphany, which is that conservatives are simply running behind in our social evolution. I thank them for not letting change happen too quickly. As always they will have to be dragged forward to every level of enlightenment and then we'll have to hear the usual, "I never said that" and "I never did that." It was a fight, but we finally got them to let go of slavery and Jim Crow laws, and they finally have let up on the gay-bashing some, thanks to Trump making the brown-skinned people the new boogeyman. But some progress is being made. No, I don't see the red hats carrying reusable sacks in the grocery store, but at least they are letting women vote now. So, there is progress.

Photo: Daniil Silantev

Diary of a Young Cynic

It was 1982 and I was standing at the stairwell between classes in college. I looked down the flights of stairs and watched the flow of humanity going up and down. My best friend in college Ken was there with me. We were in a deep philosophical discussion about religion. Over the past months Ken had been asking Christians his favorite question: Why does God let good people suffer? When he asked that question, people would cough and sputter and try to give an answer, but never really could.

I thought about it myself. During my senior year in college I went through phases of praying, going to church, and reading my Bible daily to being an angry rebel. I realized there was no correlation between me being a holy roller or hellion and good or bad things happening to me. It was all random. At the end of my senior year a series of bad things happened to me, despite all my hard praying. I thought God was trying to break my yoke, but I later realized that each bad event had a logical explanation — there was no man in the sky throwing lightening bolts at me.

So, on that spring day in the early 1980s I confirmed what I had suspected for six years — that the whole religion thing was made up. I had been tricked and lied to. I was the victim of a giant practical joke. The only supernatural being that existed is what I could conjure in my head. My epiphany that day was the beginning of a 20-year recovery from religious brainwashing.

Nationalism

In middle school I loved my history and government classes. But I eventually found that the textbooks were slanted. The Great Crusades were not about freeing the Holy Land from Muslims. They were about profiteering, corruption, power, and murder — including murder of not only Muslims, but Jews and other Christians. It was okay to kill the Orthodox Christians because they were different and didn't believe the right way. So, the Crusaders sacked and pillaged their land and cities.

When I was growing up there was a war going on. Two of my classmates lost family members and I remember the look of deep grief on their faces. We were all told that Vietnam was a struggle to contain communism and I believed that lie until I befriended a Vietnam war veteran and he gave me his book to read. His story sparked my curiosity and I begin researching the Vietnam conflict. I learned that the U.S. used a highly questionable Naval confrontation in 1964 as a pretext to expand the war. This act is no better than the Nazis, who staged a fake military intrusion in 1939 to begin World War II.

And secondly, the war wasn't about containing communism. It was a war about colonialism and rich capitalists versus the pheasants. The Viet Cong were not motivated to fight for political ideology, like I was led to believe, but rather they had been promised land. 

Back on our own continent, the United States has meddled in South and Central American politics for over 100 years. We are told that our interventions are to contain Marxism and promote democracy, but often it's to protect the commercial interests of American companies.

In short, the idea that the United States is a noble country that always pursues good is a lie. Our country does have a history of doing good deeds, such as rebuilding Europe after World War II, but our record is far from perfect. When you hear the euphemism of "promoting democracy," it is often a code word for "protecting the commercial interests of companies who have strong influence over Congress." Cuba is a great example of how our lies and meddling badly backfired.

Code Words

When I hear the words "job creation" I know that really means forcing a community to accept a big, dirty factory. The truth is, most production facilities are highly automated, and companies prefer to bring in their own people. In the end, a company expands and makes more money and the community is stuck with the impact, sometimes in the form of poisoned water or air.

As we are seeing right now, the "tax cut for the middle class" was a huge lie. Corporations received a nice tax reduction, but many average citizens are now shocked at seeing their refunds being changed to large amounts owed.

Little Ol' Me

There are different types of cynics, and I am the type who believes that everything is a giant joke. I see working class Americans who vote for a political party that only cares about big companies and the rich, at their expense. I see our country engaging in endless war to benefit large defense contractors. I see Americans tell me they don't WANT socialized medical care even though their insurance companies will fight them for every dime when they make a claim. And so much for the poor bastards who can't afford insurance — they just need to work harder.

After 30 years of pondering this I'm beginning to think that I'm not a cynic after all, it's just that the rest of the world is crazy. People accept and buy into lies way to easily, and the ability to question and analyze appears to be lost by the mainstream public. Whatever baby food we are given by our political leaders, so many people appear to just swallow. Hey, we were completely tricked about the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. How many more times must we be tricked before we finally learn?

The Wall

A main theme of my four blogs is to QUESTION EVERYTHING. When we are told that the U.S. is being invaded by sex traffickers, drug dealers, and criminals, what is the extent? Don't Americans create this problem by buying the drugs and prostitutes? And what is the percentage of good and bad people crossing the border? Aren't most of them good families simply trying to find work and a better life? Is climate change causing droughts that are forcing them off their land? Is our constant meddling in Latin America creating unstable political environments that's forcing people to flee? Do our trade agreements favor big agri-business at the expense of the common farmers? I will dare say that we created most of the fucking problems at the border, and now we want to build a steel barrier to keep out the victims of our greed, our lust for drugs and sex, and our insistence on burning fossil fuels. Look in the mirror for once — maybe we Americans are creating our own problems and screwing over the developing world.

So, going back to my early 20s, I have to ask myself the question: Was I really cynical in thinking that life was one big joke, or is maybe life really one big joke?

Photo: Steve Halama