i Fear Syndromes

It has been said many times that a little knowledge is dangerous. Nowhere does this scare me more than in the field of mental health. We are learning more and more every day, breaking through walls every day, yet this only exposes how little we truly know. True disaster could come from thinking we have got it all figured out (or even mostly figured out).

One of my favorite quotes is from a girl i spent time with in college. She said "if the human mind was simple enough to understand, we would be too simple to understand it".

As a society we are constantly adding subdivisions to our categories of mental attributes. Autism is now further divided up with new gradations including Aspergers. Mental retardation, genius, gifted, savant, the division of categories are constantly being increased as we identify the latest biological causalities of each possible rating. Getting overly focused on the individual gears i fear we are losing perspective in regards to the machine itself.

i am not going to get caught up debating predictions or speculations surrounding possibilities of altering genes in the future to dictate attributes or 'heal' perceived mental ailments. i am concern with what is actually happening now. i am filled with Einstein's fear of our technology growing faster than our humanity. Are our consciences keeping up with our technological discoveries?

Some people may claim that all this coding of individuals is creating crutches and excuses allowing people to justify their behavior rather than dealing with personal issues. My fear comes from the other side of possibility: what is we so frequently treat and explain away behavior that truly original and unique thoughts and ideas become progressively more and more rare?

i have struggled with depression for as long as i can remember. As a result i have developed mechanisms and outlets for dealing with it over the years. Had this significant personality trait been simply viewed as a chemical reaction to be balanced with pills i am sure that my life would have been different, and more so, i would be different. Would i have learned to play a musical instrument and have connected with other people as we created? Would i have developed the level of empathy for life that i have which has directly resulted in my decision to be a vegetarian and which has also strongly steered my career paths? Would i have gotten into poetry and would i still write books worth of it every year? Art, drawing, skateboarding all outlets for my depression, would i have done any of these things had i been medicated? If medicated would i be fulfilled or would i have just FELT happy?

Now i'm not making any Earth shattering contributions as a result of what some may call a condition, but i happen to be very grateful for my pathetic little life. In contrast, most (if not all) of the historically significant contributors to our society would have been diagnosed with one of many syndromes or ailments today. What if they had been 'treated', or worse, dismissed?

Eventually we will figure out the chemical or neurological cause of every difference in human beings, but then what? What do you do with that information? Our diversity is our strongest attribute as a species. It, and not any physical prowess, has lead us to where we are and helped us survive. My fear is not the struggles with depression, my fear is the great possibilities that we could be missing if we 'treat' everything, if we categorize everything? Then who will we be?

Step One: Racism

i can save our country in two easy steps. Here i will explain step one.

To solve problems of those in power abusing their power you must first understand how they obtained and maintain their power. In the case of our country it is because they no longer are afraid of the public. They seem free to do as they desire with no ramifications and no one to answer to. How they manage to keep this power is surprisingly straightforward and quite transparent.

A friend once said to me "You know, Shannon Doherty has a crooked face?" i threw in my VHS copy of the movie 'MallRats' and sure enough her eyes are at slightly different heights. This was something that up until this point i had never noticed but ever since, any time i see Ms. Doherty's face i now think of Picasso paintings. Suddenly everything was different. i hope here to do the same.

How is it that the top 1% or less of the population is able to control a majority of the wealth and more importantly power? How can such a small group of people hold such a large group of people at bay in a supposedly free country? The simple answer is RACISM. The long answer is prejudice and all of it's forms.

A simple way of representing the population in terms of finances is through a triangle. The top representing more money, the bottom representing less money. In this format it is easy to recognize that the majority of citizens in this country are working class or poor. As you go up in social/economic standings there are less members in each group. Fewer middle-class than lower-class. Fewer lower-upper class than middle. Few upper-class than l-u class, etc.

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How is it then, that decisions that would benefit the many are so frequently cast aside while decisions that benefit the few are frequently the rule? Why is that allowed to happen? How can that happen? The answer is a time-honored tradition of the powerful since the beginning of society: racism and prejudice. Keep re-directing the masses' anger towards each other or a common foe and they will never turn on you in large enough numbers to matter.

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Conspiracy theorists may now start pointing to the pyramid with the illuminated eye that graces the back of our currency and start talking about Free Masons, while others may start discussions about the ancient Egyptians but i am going to keep this very simple because again this just works to steer our attention towards isolated groups rather than the simple idea that is at work here. That would be quite hypocritical.

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Any time the few has amassed unprecedented power in history it has been by turning members of the middle and lower classes on each other. American immigrants against American Indians. American immigrants against England. American immigrants against black slaves. German populous against Jews. The Roman Empire even inspired Jews against early Christians. The list can go on and on throughout time with the easiest conflicts to insight regularly being based on religion or race. Of course sex and now sexual preference are largely joining the ranks of the big two dividers.

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How this is so easily accomplished is a case of not having to outrun the bear, just having to outrun the other guy. By believing that you are superior to another race, religion, sex, etc you are now a little higher up the triangle, if only in perception. You don't have to vote, you don't have to get paid more, you don't have to run for office. All you have to do is believe that someone else is inferior to you and you have done it, you have imagined yourself at a higher ranking with very little effort or work. You may not be first but at least you are not last. Meanwhile those out in front are pulling further and further away. How is this really helping you?

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The answer is: it is not! It is helping them out, those who probably need the least amount of help, and you have played your role in both aiding them and hurting yourself. So what do you do?

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Believe it or not it is quite simple. You stop worrying about things like skin color, body parts, and where others go to worship. You start worrying about the things that actually impact your daily life. You start worrying about the things that effect you and your family's well being.

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For starters how about quality of life? How about health/health care, workday/workloads, the condition of the air you breath and the water you drink? How about the food on your table? i tend to think that improving these things would have a far greater impact on your life than anything having to do with race, religion, or sex.

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How do we change the focus? First we must stop buying into and believing the hate that the top of the money pyramid feeds us, mainly through television (aggressive political commercials and even whole stations of political hate-mongering). Stop getting distracted by the hate fed to you and start getting angry about your quality of life.

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Second, we all need to vote. For this to work, though, we must ALL VOTE. Right now we have no choices, we just vote for one top of the pyramid or the other. They like it that way because they stay in power and we get disenfranchised and stop participating and lose say while they grow more powerful. If even 75% of the population voted, within 2 elections one of us could become a serious contender for ANY office. At the very least those in power would get nervous and have to start listening. People in positions of power SHOULD be nervous, otherwise dangerous things start to happen.

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Stop listening to them when they repeatedly talk about the woman candidate, the black candidate, the Mormon candidate, the southern candidate, the northern candidate. Start thinking about how they are going to help those you love, not those you hate. How are they going to help you if you or a family member gets sick? How are they going to help you when you want to retire? How are they going to help you breath cleaner air and drink cleaner water?

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How many of these things could have been improved instead of sending the bottom of the triangle over to another country to kill others with a different race and different religion? What could we have done with those resources? More importantly, what could we have done with those lives?

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Make them answer to you! Be heard, vote, write, blog, whatever you can. You only lose if you do nothing.

Why? Why has blogger stopped working right, why?

THE VERVE

Holy shite boys and girls, The Verve have gotten back together, are working on a new album, and are doing some tour dates in the UK this fall. It's the original Verve line-up. Oh i can't wait.

i hope the album comes out before they break-up again. i hope they stay away from Rolling Stones samples.

Sleep... Hopefully

Tonight i decided to put together a new playlist for my iPod to fall asleep to. i do so enjoy falling asleep to music. i only wanted a 30 minute playlist because that is the perfect amount of time to help you fall asleep. Sometimes when i listen to a full album i find myself not quite falling asleep so that i can semi-consciously listen to it until the end. With 30 minutes i will either fall asleep by the conclusion through the aid of music or realize that i am unable to sleep as of yet and should go do something more productive like write or draw until i am more tired.

i ended up with 32.3 minutes which is pretty damn close to my goal. Of course, had i made the list yesterday or if i were to make one tomorrow it would vary slightly but for the most part it would have come out quite similar. The beauty of iPod playlists is how easy it is to adjust them with your mood(s).

Looking the list over i notice it exposes the fact that i was of college age during the 90's. i listen to many periods of music and have kept up with new music as i age, but when it comes to sleep i realize i side heavily with 90's era music, which of course got me thinking: why? (this is magically when this post decides it will no longer acknowledge the use of the 'enter' key... sorry for the technological glitch keeping the rest of these paragraphs crammed together)

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Now unlike the children of the 60's i will not claim that the music of my generation is the best to have been made (how typical of that generation). As far as i can tell, ever since the advent of music artists have been making incredible sounds that reflect the times that they are living in, the experiences that they are living through, the moods of the era in which they compose.

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For me, i find it easy to find music from the 90's catalog that was gentle, sincere, and hopeful. Maybe it was the era, maybe it was that time in my life but there was a significant amount of hope in that decade, particularly in the early to middle segment of it. Sure there was also angry, sad, pop, and sexy music being written during those days but there was room for that gentle hope.

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Today's music (the good stuff at least) keeps up the responsibility of art and reflects the mood and feeling of our current times. It makes perfect sense that some of the most talented artists today are using the genre labeled Emo to express themselves. These are aggressive times and these are very emotional times (not that any time wasn't emotional... well the 80's maybe). Just as Bebop represented the restless souls of it's era; music today, as it always has, represents the restless souls of the now.

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When i fall asleep i want to find myself hopeful of what's to come while simultaneously reminded of the beauty of what has now passed. Musical excerpts from the 90's seems to do this quite well. So here is my SLEEP playlist (as of right now):

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Star Sail- The Verve: The heavily effected single guitar strum that opens this song is enough to get my eyes closed in almost any situation. Beautifully haunting, this song is not of the conscious world.

Street Spirit (fade out)- Radiohead: This outtro from The Bends album helps me do just that, fade out.

Drive- Blind Melon: This sleepy swagger of a song finds itself at peace enough to ask questions in the late night. Jimi, what would you do?

Play Crack The Sky- Brand New: The best artists know that you want to end a performance with high energy leaving them wanting more, but you end an album with a quieter, sincere, open heart to remind us why we love them.

I'm Not Worried At All- Moby: Possibly the king of music to fall asleep to, one could make a sleepy playlist of his songs alone but this song is a good one to put you at ease before sleep gets the better of you. You can't fall asleep if you are worried at all.

Immortality- Pearl Jam: i have fallen asleep to Vitalogy so many times as it winds down with this proper album ender only to be awoken but the somewhat scary bonus track sexyfoxhandlemomma. This is how it should have ended, and i would have slept much better if it had.

The Son Never Shines (on closed doors)- Flogging Molly: i know i have gone on at great length about this sweet song, and i know that the Irish blood in my veins may play some role, but no matter what happens over the span of a day it's nice to end with the reminder that we all find the same way home. We do indeed have more in common than we don't.

Not Necessarily The News

What has become of our news? It is just a television show like everything else. There are no cable news channels anymore, only cable entertainment and cable bigotry channels. Coverage of events that make no difference to us fill-in time between blinding hatred that would not be tolerated in any other social setting.

The news seems like it used to be a public service, a way of keeping people informed of what was going on outside of their immediate area. People were still fighting for some time after the Civil War had ended because word travelled slow. Today's telecommunications make information almost instantaneous. Shouldn't we be that much more informed, that much better informed? Shouldn't we have the information we need to make educated decisions as citizens because of our news capabilities?

The freedom of the press allows then to get access to places the rest of us cannot in order to cover issues and hence inform the rest of us. Information, and therefore news, should be above the influence of money. Television stations are making more than enough money, so why do they compromise their news programs in the name of higher ratings?

i could go on and on about the tabloid type coverage being passed off as news, or the 'if it bleeds it leads' mentality but something far worse is rumored to be true. Stations were said to have been offering Paris Hilton money for post jail interviews. Please, say it ain't so.

The problems with this are numerous, everything from 'why does anyone care about this story' to 'why would she need more money'? The problem i have with this all is supposed news departments now paying for a story. How fundamentally and practically wrong is this precedent? The news should be the news, and that information should be truth. In an all too short a time our news has gone from information to reality show type entertainment and recently to a new level where the 'actors' in our news shows are now being paid.

Our politicians have lost there way and now the check that was supposed to be keeping an eye on them has become lost on their own, distracted by another type of check: the fat paycheck. On top of all this, the major religions of our country have been plagued with pedophilia and greed at unparalleled levels. What is left in this country to believe in?