One Hell of a Dream

The long conspiratorial road from reform to real change is darkened by overhanging doubts in our basic abilities to communicate our ideas effectively. Will anything ever change or have things changed so much they seem the same? I like to think that we are running, hard, on the spot. Sure, I will likely pay twice as much to heat this dump this winter, but then didn't last year cost me twice as much as the previous year? Last year beef killed, this year chicken, next year it will be fish. 'Chicken Little" is too adult and violent and the "Roadrunner" was too. Just like Hollywood, our social psyche is hooked into a loop that won't allow new ideas to emerge. Our 'complain' mode is still engaged and change represents new topics, not new ideas. Even that complaint is just a re-hash of what's come before. Are we happy yet? The world is still dangerous, hate is still our favorite pastime and people are wearing leg warmers again. No surprise when you've been around for a couple of revolutions.

Zen Buddhists believe that enlightenment comes one person at a time. You take care of business at home and, assuming your neighbors are doing it too, everything will be alright. We just can't resist the opportunity to peak in their windows, late at night, to see if they actually are trying to clean up their acts. On of my favorite examples of this is the shock I see in people's eyes when I throw a pop can into the garbage instead of the recycle bin. "You don't recycle?" I also don't choke the life out of people who disagree with me on who should be allowed to vote, wear pants or marry their housepets. Things are curiously out of whack when in one area of the world you can be put to death for smoking pot and in British Columbia there are whole towns that still think its 1972.

I am, of course, reducing all of this to imbecilic simplicity, but then I wouldn't fit in if I used reality as a basis to form my arguments, now would I? I was told this week that diapers in a land fill represent no more danger than a sheet of paper, Saddam Hussein works for the U.S. and that Tienemen was faked, much like the lunar landings. It's a good thing my attention span is so short.