Mark Gowan's Blog, page 20

Freedom

We’ve all seen the bumper sticker or the sign, or have had someone claim that “Freedom doesn’t come free.” But more to the point, what is the cost of freedom, and what is it? Most people aren’t free.

Most people must make their way in the world in any way they can. Most people do not have the luxury of choosing a profession or getting a degree. Most people on this planet must live out their lives with as little as others are willing to allow them.

There is a price for freedom, no matter how we define it. And while freedom does not come free, it is much more than the platitudinous statement that we so often see and hear. It is so much more than simply protecting our “freedoms” with war, or having the “freedom” to do what I want to do, or being free from regulations.

There is a price for freedom and there are at least two necessary ways of paying for it: intellect and allowance.

We are only as free as we are intellectual, only as much as we understand that we are free. And we are only as free as we allow others to be free. We allow each other our freedoms.

We owe each other our freedoms and we owe ourselves to ability to know why.

The Great Divide

On January 6th, a protest by Trump supporters turned into a riot. During the months before Black Lives Matter protesters rioted destroying property. The police did what they could, sometimes too much so and on January 6th, too little. Conspiracy and anger abound. There are too many armed people in this country. Militant groups continue their vigilant conspiracies while the poor point out injustices and CEO’s of banks walk away with hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses after committing fraud. Trump and his administration continued the work of the Republicans since Reagan of dismantling the government. The ineptitude of government officials in the last four years was atrocious, it was criminal. And yet the great divide is still defined politically.

This is not a political divide.

This is not an ideological divide.

This is an economic divide.

If this were a political divide then we could discuss policies that would be based upon a common good. If this were an ideological divide then we could discuss the validity of arguments, the strength of evidence. But there is no common good that is defined politically or economically. There is only the common good that we as citizens define, and this is not defined by the ticker tape numbers that flash across screens all across this country. There is Wall Street and there is the rest of us. There is what is good for Wall Street and what is good for the rest of us. There is political ignorance and ideological fear. These things simply feed the need for violence. Guns give the illusion of safety and power. God gives the illusion of purpose and justice. Greed causes wars and Wall Street profits from those wars.

The great divide is a three-part meritocratic tool, a wedge. The great divide is the result of guns, god, and greed.

“The Lords Day Alliance” (1928)

Note: written in the early 2000’s, I thought the idea was apropos to modern times.

The ‘Lords Day Alliance’ is a great example of what is now called “creating a market”.  The LDA was (and vestiges of its ludicrous ideas still remain) a group of fanatical evangelists bent on prying into the private lives of hose around them for the sake of saving souls.  “No work on Sundays” was their motto and a motto that they felt should be upheld by law.  They were so concerned about the welfare of the human soul that they wanted to make it illegal to NOT go to church.  Of course, working the plate was excused as was the preacher, the assistants and the accountant who presumably counted the money.

            All of this is just superfluous, as most people would have no problem in allowing those pious persons to hawk their wares.  The problem arose as it usually does in the propagation of ideas, non-consensually into the lives of others.  This penchant for the religious to be quelled, unquenched and generally unhappy until their narrow view and self-righteous interpretations of an aged, dated and antiquated collection of fear and hate are taken as the literal law of the land.  The reasons for this seem clear:  like a child, they must be validated in their own belief since evidently they are not happy in their own personal validation. 

They are power-mongers, since they must oversee the lives of others and they are true capitalists since they want to corner the market on working itself, at least on Sundays.  What people such as this really want is to rid themselves of any competition whether that be the business of making money or the business of saving souls.  Any good capitalist wants a cornered market for themselves and in the case of these religious zealots, if a few souls get saved in the process, so much the better.

A Civil Society

In New Hampshire, armed idiots chased the governor elect away.

Ted Cruz is leading a group of Republican traitors, trying to fight the results of the recent elections. Mitch McConnell gives them his “blessings”.

No warranted evidence for any of their allegations has been produced, and our current president tried to change voter results in Georgia and an ongoing health concern is still, still a political debate.

Most of us turn our heads in disgust with some egging the upending of our country on for religious or other ideological reasons. Gun sales are up and fear and loathing are at an all-time high while rational and critical analysis and thinking are at an all-time low.

It is time for us as a nation to ask some simple questions:

What kind of society do we want, and how do we get it? How did we allow our society to come to this point?

It is time for us to look past the platitudes and bumper stickers and realize that a civil society does not come free and that unfettered freedoms do not equal a civil society.

American Dreams

American Dreams

The holidays are past and there is New Year’s Eve left, where those who had to hold their tongues at the dinner table can drink their stresses away, and those that couldn’t help themselves can reassure themselves that they were in the right. The turkey couldn’t stuff the mouths that couldn’t keep the peace fast enough.

The little jabs, and the nonchalant references, and our insistence upon commenting on that one post. We can’t even talk about pandemics. And the fear, and the fear-mongering. It’s all wrapped up in that forty-eight hour period we call Christmas.

Out on the lawns are Santa Clauses and crosses. There are empty lawns and the last of the political signs still standing in defiance. It seems we all have a point to make, and being holed up in our houses we cannot drive around boasting our bumper stickers in traffic. But the corporate machine rolls on, it just invades our homes now.

There is a divide between fear and the unfortunate. There are the empty slogans that boast “freedoms” and “rights”, and there are the enlightened ones that are teachers but have never been students. There is the ignorant and the stupid, and never the twain shall meet. The common theme is anger, and the common thread is fear.

The holidays are past, but the problems that we all have had to face, separate but together, remain. An answer seems impossible. A solution seems unimaginable. Certainty is inevitable. And yet in the grey corners when the shouting stops and the high horse is simply the pony that it is, and we we look past our tribes and realize that none of this is necessary can we say that we may have been wrong, but we were trying to do right?

Santa

The legend of Santa Claus is an old one. It is filled with a history, broad and wide, that includes a saint, several stories from several countries, and an ad campaign. It belongs to everyone and is part of everyone in one way or another. Saint Clause was indeed a man who was sainted, not because he was a Christian but rather because of the good that he did.

But the story of Santa Claus is older. People have been telling stories since our languages would allow it and it is nice to imagine that these stories contained the spirit of Christmas. That sense of wonder and of doing good, of making others feel good, of feeling good ourselves. The spirit of Christmas is older than its modern, western version. And it is more important.

Coca-Cola gave the west its latest version of Santa Claus, a fitting story that explains the unfortunate commercialization of so much that makes up our lives. But we can look beyond the product of the season and find the simple reasons that an old story offers. Any old story will do, but we have to believe. We have to believe that our stories are important and meaningful. We have to search every once in a while for a jolly old man in a sleigh and for flying reindeer, and for that smile that we use to get when we were children.

Santa is an atheist. And Santa is a Christian. He is Jewish and Islamic. Santa is what we want him to be. Santa is that story that we remember as a child, and that excitement on those mornings we woke up early and ran to the tree. Santa sits at the dinner table when we invite him and dances around the tree when we let him. Santa Claus is a tradition that can bring us together over a meal or a drink. Invite him in and let your imagination fly. And let others do the same.

Merry Christmas.

Excerpt from Vikings On Two Wheels

Our bikes were down under in the parking garage and we wandered down to search for answers among the cars and campers that were stuffed efficiently in the huge open, metal maw of the ship.  Perhaps the big, overland trucks were more attuned to us and our mode of travel than were the cars?  Nomadic with destinations changing daily. 

We could picture the huge trucks drinking beer with their rowdy pals while the campers cowered and said nothing.  Perhaps the white BMW’s and Audi’s conversed, smoking silver-tipped cigarettes while the Volkswagens stared lackadaisically into the unknown, uninterested in anything.  Perhaps somewhere in the steel-tubing and sprockets of the few bicycles parked among the countless cars, campers and trucks, more pleasing, more thoughtful conversations were taking place like their ability to sneak into the back doors of towns silently and take in unnoticed worlds. 

Being invisible on roadways and how dangerous it sometimes was, but most of the time reminding each other how refreshing, having to notice the world around them, being forced to be self-aware and aware of their surroundings, being able to taste the air and feel every bump and every temperature change.  Perhaps they chatted about the ability to not be involved and silently roll out just as secretly as they rolled in. 

Maybe they were talking about how time slowed down, how they were not a beast on a road, but a ghost in the twilight, coming and going but always in limbo, blending with all of the worlds but belonging to none.  I turned over the sprocket just to be a part of their conversation.

Remember

Remember, it’s time to forget. It’s time to smile and understand. It’s time to soften up the unconscious frown and look up into the sky and admire the blues and pinks. It’s time to remember to notice the circular patterns in the tree limbs. It’s time to walk the dog. Tell someone you love that you love them. Know that they too are battling life one day a time.

The mornings are cold with just a little dewy ice on the grass, and the squirrels are always playing in the trees. The neighborhood is quiet, with just a little traffic noise in the background. It’s comforting. The houses are still asleep and the sun is peeking over the horizon, just a little. I like to remember these times, the cold on my face. The start of a new day.

Every meal cooked is an opportunity. Take the time to prepare food and give it the respect that it deserves. Cook because food is peaceful and the kitchen is welcoming. Take the pans out and listen to them clink on the counter. Take a look at the years of sauces and stews that have come to life and have left their marks. Remember each and every meal as if it were a child that has left your home.

Remember when you were young? Allow yourself to do such things. Play. Laugh. Take time to walk away from the memories that weigh heavy on your mind. Remember the time when memories were being made. They make us who we are. They are who we were. And the memories we make will give us reason to think, and to live another day.

A Philosophy of Life

Thinking the best of someone takes work, it takes trust. Something that we are programmed by evolution to do. To quote Malcolm Gladwell, we are trusting machines. Travel will teach you to, in fact, trust strangers and to recognize more often than not our fate is not in our own hands. Look around, our civilization is based upon the ability, our being trusting machines. Our economic system is based upon trust. Political norms are base upon trust. A civil society is based upon trust. It seems that we should never lock our doors. But we do.

And why is that, why do we lock our doors? The rhetorical question is easily answered by pointing out that there are people we cannot trust. People steal things. People lie. And so we lock our doors. We install camera doorbells and alarm systems in our houses. We come to call this normal, but it is not. We make it normal. Our trust machine is put into the background and we spend our lives looking over our shoulders.

People we love, our family, tells us that they support us, and yet…there is that sentence. Our families seem like loving and sympathetic people, but then why did they… We want to trust. We need to trust. We must trust others. But we must also adhere to truth. We must protect it and stand up for it. We must also realize that to trust we must lower our defenses and make ourselves vulnerable.

Both trust and truth are uncomfortable. But they are worth it. They are necessary, and they take courage to call a liar a liar, and a thief a thief. We must take it upon ourselves to do the work of being disliked at times, by someone all of the time. To trust we must be truthful and we must realize that others are not. To trust we must realize that we sometimes lie, and that others are truthful. It is not a game, but a philosophy of life. It is necessary for us to be happy and content. It is necessary for our survival.

There is Enough

Look around the world for the odd, the unusual, the few and far between. Look around for the special ones, the forgotten ones. Look in the darkened corners and burned out yards. Don’t pass them by, don’t turn away.

Think, for a minute, think about how little it would take and how much it would mean. Think about the smile on your face that would flower out of nothing, that would grow ever so slowly and blossom. Think of the comfort you could offer.

The world is what we make it, it is more than those that are blind to its beauty, it is greater than the short-sighted, and more precious than the cheapskates. There is enough, there is enough to go around. There is enough time to take from, to look into their eyes and show kindness.

Love is not enough but for the time we take to be kind to those that need it most.