RING OUT THE OLD, RING IN THE NEW.

Ultimately, it's just another cycle.

End of the world. Yeah, whatever.

The Maya simply devised a calendar. Nothing more, nothing less. When a calendar ends, a new calendar begins. I would consider it to be not only optimistic but simply commonsense to assume that the Maya had no interest in predicting the end of anyone's world, much less the one that the Maya had been living in at the time. Perhaps the Maya just figured that they'd be around today to devise the new calendar in time to start anew, but, you know, Spanish conquest and forced subjugation attempts and shit.

The intelligent and practical will see this time as an era of renewal. It's s great time to take stock in your future. After all, preparation for the future is, in reality, the only thing that has meaning to life. There are people out there who like to keep yammering on about living in “the now”, but usually the ones who walk their talk the most are no longer in any good shape, if even alive at all, in “the now”. Their best moments, as well as their fixated thoughts, end up merely existing in the past. This is never healthy or worthwhile thinking.

Time in its ultimate existence is infinite. Sure, when our mortal coil is up against time, it can feel frustrating in that one can sense that goals of personal accomplishment look unpromising in terms of actual achievement. But it can be beneficial to see this situation as simply one more challenge of life, or better yet, just another discipline like that required of physical exercise or intellectual growth. In any case, getting obsessed with when the world is going to end is simply a waste of time and thought. A will indicative of survival, and not death, is what the essence of life is made of.

SHOW UP AND VOTE. OR DON'T.

"When the political columnists say 'Every thinking man' they mean themselves, and when candidates appeal to 'Every intelligent voter' they mean everybody who is going to vote for them." - Franklin P. Adams, American journalist-humorist

People are faulted for only supporting one of the two major American political parties, but the reasons for such isolated support may be similar as to why someone shops at a big box corporate retailer instead of a locally owned small business. Perhaps they don’t see any alternative. Thus, the fault lies more in the Establishment Media political machine than the people it allegedly serves.

People should have the conscience to vote for whomever they want, regardless of the chances of victory for any particular candidate. In an extreme circumstance, as a show of protest or disgust at the lack of suitable candidates, choosing to simply leave the office choice blank should be considered a perfectly acceptable choice.

Showing up to vote, and turning in a blank ballot, would be the true protest as opposed to simply staying away from the polling place and not voting. Imagine if every qualified American voter who did not feel like voting in a particular election turned up and dropped a bunch of votes for nobody in the box.  

In the end, it does not matter who you choose in the ballot box. Elected officials are in office to represent all of the people, not just those who voted for them. Despite the traditional rhetoric of the pundits, there is really no such thing as a “mandate” of the electorate.

WARNING. ETERNAL LIFE CAN KILL YOU.

Let us be intolerant of the violent fringe element of organized religion. For centuries, various paths of belief, for certain individuals, have been just a good excuse to kill each other. Of course, the vast majority of the clerics, practitioners and followers of the world’s creeds are not violent and abhor the extremist element of their own faiths. Unfortunately, no one religion is innocent; all have had some level of historic infamy at one time or another.

There should be an island out on an atoll somewhere where religious fanatics of all faiths can get isolated and feel free to kill each other without any bystanders getting affected. We can name it Dogma Island. Let me help. How about someplace at the edge of Antarctica as a home for these fools? It doesn’t matter if it’s a little cold down there. They’re going to off each other soon enough anyway. Just take ‘em to the final location CIA Black Site style, and airdrop down enough food, short-range weaponry and ammo, etc. to last a while and help them do the job right. 

In reality, of course, I jest. Those of us who value tolerance and living in shared respect of each others’ personal beliefs need to stay patient in our mutual acceptance of our right to exist in peace. Just for once, though, it would be nice to see those who attempt (and unfortunately sometimes succeed) at fanning the flames of mob destruction and murder to be taken out of their sheltered environment and thrust into the middle of the chaos that they instigate. Let’s see how brave and resolved they are, with their hateful rhetoric, at that point and place.

DON'T WORK SO HARD.

American Worker:

Are you currently employed? Good for you. Is your job in a large corporation? My sympathies. Anyway, if you answered yes to both of those questions, here’s an important bit of advice for you.

Do your job. Just don’t work so hard.

Sure, you have certain levels of job requirements that you must maintain in order to keep your gig. You just don’t need to exceed those requirements. You may be one of those folks who think that you need to push full speed ahead in order to advance in the company. I will tell you now, in no uncertain terms that you will simply be wasting your time and effort.

Your added effort will only serve to fatten stock prices and CEO bonuses. In the end, when the company decides that you are no longer an asset, too expensive for their payroll, or interfering with the profit margin, they will simply dispose of you, with no fear of repercussion and no remorse on their part. You are cannon fodder for the next fiscal quarter’s flash report stats. Nothing more, nothing less.

Do yourself a big favor. Just do your job. Perform the job abilities that are asked of you, and fergoshsakes, do not volunteer for anything extra. Overtime pay is very tempting and can be useful for extra cash when available. If you do get stuck with extra duties, and need to work some overtime to do so, don’t feel guilty about taking it. They want to get the work done, and since they are not volunteering to keep the business operating, neither should you.

If you are not feeling the company line, don’t go along with it. If your higher-ups are trying to get you to go along with the corporation’s pet charity du jour or feel-good community PR stunt, and you don’t feel like getting involved, simply refuse to do it. Sure, there are plenty of charitable organizations that are worth donating and volunteering for, but that should be reserved to your personal choices and your own free time as an individual. By all means I encourage that level of participation, but on your own time and judgment. You will feel even better with your efforts in the end if you keep them personally in your own realm instead of “like the hypocrites”.

If you have paid vacation available, take it. Make sure that you are unavailable to be contacted on your days off, even if you are not leaving town. If you have a health insurance plan, scrutinize the coverage and take full advantage of it. Don’t feel guilty about any company-related awards or prizes given to you, and don't end up feeling like you owe them anything. That’s all simply intermittent reinforcement that gets handed out at random to practically the entire workforce eventually. That’s why you shouldn’t feel concerned about that type of recognition not coming to you, because it will get to you eventually if you stick around long enough.

You may actually desire advancement to a management or supervisory position. Consider, then, to pursue an advanced position at another company, most especially a small business, nonprofit or even in the government, where in the latter, you can at least feel like you are working in some level of public service. You may not be hired for an upper level job right away, but your experience will ensure consideration much more strongly in most cases. Plus, you may have made some friends in your current job that you don’t want to ruin by suddenly supervising or managing them, or make you subject to accusations of favoritism from those you are not close to.

Don’t fall into the fear trap about high unemployment, lack of available jobs, or any of that typa crap. As long as you are doing your job satisfactorily, they won’t consider you any more or less for layoffs or termination than any of your co-workers. It takes a great deal of time, resources and expense for a corporation to hire and train new people from the outside, and besides, if you do get laid off or have had enough and hand in your two weeks notice, your chances of getting hired for a new position are actually higher than someone who has been unemployed over an extended period of time. 

Most importantly, do whatever you can to save every extra penny you earn and, at least, try your best to avoid living paycheck to paycheck. The one truly effective survival tool for the worker in the capitalist world is capital. Keep your expenses down to a bare minimum and try not to fall into the trap of usury. When you own a home instead of renting, you are actually allowing the lender to “own” the home for the  up to 30 years or so that you are paying off the mortgage. In many cases, renting and saving the money that you would otherwise blow on house payments can pay off for the better in the long run. Ideally, you want to maintain an emergency fund that will ensure security in case the company cuts you loose and you need to depend on only a severance package or unemployment checks for a while. That way, during the hard times you will stress less over not only the future, but the present as well.

This all requires a considerable amount of self-discipline, but it can be done. Your sanity and self esteem is more important than their shareholder obligations or quarterly conference calls. Begin to live for you, not for them. You are earning a paycheck, not selling your soul.

FOR FUCK’S SAKE, DON’T CHANGE SO HARD.

In some circumstances of life, change is necessary.

Unfortunately, folks are into changing simply for the sake of change, which is alternately inefficient, pointless and/or just plain stupid.

Businesses, or to be more accurate, the people who run them, are notorious for invoking change merely for the sake of change. I like to call this particular practice “The Two Pronged Management Approach”. Its basic implementation involves merely two steps:

1. Change it.
2. Change it back.

To clarify, they make a change to something and, after allowing for a certain stretch of time, change things back to what they once were.

There are executives and also managers all over America, and probably the world, who have built and maintained their careers out of this practice for years on end, straight through eventual retirement, earning fat performance bonuses and spectacular annual reviews from the bosses along the way. Nothing really changes, but that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that a change was technically made, and therefore these so-called leaders are doing their jobs. Confused? Well, I don’t blame you. Think it through for a while. It will make sense eventually. It may also seem totally fucked up, but still, it will make sense.

Actual innovation or development seems too difficult to undertake, it seems, for so many nowadays. Instead, we witness in the world endless cycles of useless replacement again and again, and never ending ineffectual change at that. In a society of increasing throwaway trends and planned obsolescence, such misguided strategy is not that surprising to me.

Very few people in this world have a single good reason to put themselves through any significant level of constant alteration in their lives. I’m generally in agreement with the notions that if a person does not intellectually and/or experientially grow consistently in life, then they could very likely shrivel up and die.

But it also seems that many folks confuse personal growth with change. 

Sure, there’s plenty of stuff in my life that I wish I could change. I know for a fact, however, that simply changing certain things isn’t going to make my life any better. On the other hand, change simply for the sake of change would, more often than not, just make things worse.

WANT TO MOVE MOUNTAINS? JUST TELL THE TRUTH.

Too many people nowadays live in their own little silo worlds where they assume that they can say or do anything and get away with it, no matter how completely full of shit they are. This kind of behavior is driving the national psyche, but inspires me to seek and speak the truth, at all times, under all circumstances, no matter how difficult it may seem sometimes to do so.

In a worst case scenario, staying silent is an alternative to a situation where an honest opinion is neither constructive nor quite necessary. A lot of the polluting effect of misrepresentation comes from promises that simply can’t be kept. It is important to remember that avoidance of avowing commitments that can’t be met is equal to speaking the truth.

I have discovered that dedication to an honest outlook on life has given me the advantage over practically everyone else who chooses to buy in to the fake option. It is ridiculous to think that simply telling the truth is a revolutionary and even rebellious act, but nonetheless, it’s the sad state of affairs that we face in today’s society.

DISSENT. THE OTHER LEADERSHIP.

Leadership. It’s a word that challenges and befuddles the (mostly self-proclaimed) movers and shakers of the business world. Unfortunately, those who strain the greatest in attempting to describe and teach leadership to others are the same folks who fail miserably in being any sorts of leaders themselves. They’re usually middle management or, at best, corporate executive submissive types who just sit, heel and fetch on command for the company status quo, attempting to pass such behavior off as “leadership”.

Dissent is the least appreciated yet possibly the purest demonstration of leadership. Consider the fact that there have been so many dissident leaders in recorded history. I won’t bother to list examples, and there are a wide variety of dissidents whose actions have resulted in both good and evil results. Still, I can't help but surmise that innovation and progress are necessities which could have not truly happened in modern civilization had it not been for those brave enough to question the status quo from time to time.

From what I have witnessed and experienced in this world, I feel strongly that any true change results from leadership through dissent as opposed to unquestioning devotion to questionable dogma. Dissent, more often than not, is leadership through the dialectic of the search for truth. We need more honest evaluation in our leaders from all levels of society, and therefore perhaps we need more questions asked from ourselves as well as among us all.   

A WORKING CLASS POSEUR IS NOTHING TO BE.

Too many members of the American working class piss me off with their attitude.

They think that just because they have a flimsy tract house in the suburbs, are up to their necks in debt, and have jobs where they probably have to wash the bosses’ poop off of their mouths and noses every (really late) night after work, that somehow they are in the same league as the owners of their very short and tight leashes.

These drones are convinced that they will someday be in the top tier, running their own businesses, owning their own McMansion in an exclusive zip code, and receiving awards from the local Chamber of Commerce. They are utterly clueless to the fact that advancement in Corporate America is, more or less, a predestined and fixed game. If you are not a friend, relative, relative of friend or friend of relative to these pukes pulling the corporate puppet strings, then you will be kept in the same old position of subordinate servitude for possibly years on end. There is a slim chance that you will be noticed and considered for promotion to middle management if you are an asshole, but only if it is toward your fellow workers and not your bosses.

You will be dragged through their dumb ass company meetings, leadership and motivational programs, and functions where the employees are “voluntarily” enslaved to work in public on behalf of the company’s pet charity in order to provide good PR to the local community. In the end, you will not only fail to achieve any level of advancement in the company, but when the time comes to cut the fat from the quarterly budget, you will be shown the door, hopefully with a few weeks of severance pay to show for it. With a little luck, you will end up at yet another corporation, kneepads on at the ready to ride in the vicious circle yet again.

Keep pretending to manage those pipe dreams, suckers.

FAME. BULLY FOR YOU, CHILLY FOR ME.

"Hero-worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom." - Herbert Spencer

Who needs dictatorial rule and jackbooted enforcers when you can get the general public to remain obedient, passive and docile thanks to the Establishment Media’s well oiled and extensive fame machine?

It is liberating to reject any attempt to quest for fame.

The genuine artist needs to pursue pure creation, without any intention of notice whatsoever. What is important above all is the ability to be original, vital and relevant. Any underlying quest for fame is simply going to pollute the output.

Critical thinking needs to be instilled and encouraged at an early age.

Too many famous people exist nowadays whose only accomplishment seems to be achieving fame. This trend can only serve to sicken the future of humanity at large, since the only examples of role models for future generations are those with no relevant talent, accomplishment or abilities to demonstrate. Instead of achievement in science, art or any other sort of pursuit of substance, heroes and heroines of tomorrow’s world will be admired simply for the act of gaining media attention.

Don’t confuse success with fame. Success is doing what you want to do, no matter how much money you make or how many other people notice, save any. Success is creating something vital and worthwhile, and also can be the state of self-realization. Fame doesn’t care about if something is good or bad; it’s just a condition of false gratification, very similar to the highs from drugs or alcohol.

People need to stop mindlessly monitoring the Establishment Media, eyes and ears pathetically fixated upon the latest straw dogs of corporate idolatry, set upon the masses for the purposes of stealing hard earned workers’ pay and program ratings.

CLEAN, SOBER AND NEVER BORED.

On the evening of March 4, 1992, I drank two beers. They were the last two alcoholic beverages that I would have drunk for the rest of my life. In the months previous to that day as well as the time that soon followed, I had become completely drug free as well. Well, unless you count caffeine.

I don’t regret a single day of my decision. I had never experienced any sort of moment of epiphany when I had some guilty moral revelation about quitting all my shit; I simply came to the gradual conclusion in my mind that I was through with drug and alcohol use.

I feel that whatever works for someone to help with quitting an addiction, within reason, is something that I fully support. However, I had never felt any real need for such groups to be necessary for me. I’ve spent perhaps about 30 minutes in an AA meeting (at the behest of friends), but in the end, I wasn't interested. Somehow, it just seemed like I had eventually come to a conclusion in which I thought to myself: “You know what? I don’t even like alcoholic beverages.” To be quite accurately descriptive, I had finished drinking. No DTs. No jonesin’ for a drink. There was nothing even close to that stuff.

Family history may have contributed heavily to my eventual choice to go alcohol-free, what with my mother dying of cirrhosis at 55, my father staying drunk for most of the last 30 years of his life, and my brother probably heavily intoxicated when he committed suicide at 31. Perhaps the decision drew heavily upon personal health contemplations. After a bout with pneumonia in late 1991 that brought me down to a rather svelte weight of 123 pounds (at six feet tall), I began to take stock of the stuff that I learned about during my four days of hospitalization such as the importance of maintaining adequate blood oxygen levels. In time after quitting alcohol, I began to notice the difference on how my body felt. It seemed as if my veins were feeling, well… cleaner, actually. The new high was now to do without what was making me high. Imagine that.

Between the ages of 12 and 29, I had used or at least tried pretty much every narcotic as well as alcoholic beverage known to Western civilization. If I had to ponder the question of whether I would do it all again, I would be slightly torn on the answer. Although I don’t have any regrets, and feel that I have learned a lot about the wilder, darker and underground side of culture (thanks to 17 years of experimentation), I would probably have avoided all of that with only a slight twist of fate early on in life.

Artistically, I don’t think that substance use affected or influenced my output any differently than sobriety has done. I do hold the personal opinion that my songwriting actually improved after getting clean, but I can also write that improvement off to age and experience. I doubt that I would have had the discipline (or extra cash) to get into oil painting, even with the relatively low output of ten works total, had I continued drinking, although that didn’t seem to stop a lot of famous painters in history. (Well, perhaps in the end, it did stop them permanently.)

The extra money I have saved over the years, admittedly, is rather nice. For example, I can look at my Telecaster and see it replaced by several six packs of beer combined with hours blown away socializing in various bars and nightclubs and, well, not be playing the same guitar today. That’s simply a matter of personal monetary policy. In the matter of gainful employment, I can only speculate that I would be in a far less secure position in the work world if I had continued the typical habit of calling in “sick” following the then-standard all nighter (or, in my case, frequently, the two-dayer), that is, if I bother to call in at all and don’t become a no show for the day. The time I’ve gained back to pursue various endeavors of the mind and body, as opposed to simply sitting around and drinking with only some trivial conversation and lost sleep to show for the time wasted, has been a beneficial side benefit as well.

I don’t feel that I’m any sort of militant prohibitionist by any stretch of the imagination. What goes into a person’s body is simply and solely a matter of the personal choice of each individual. It’s what comes out as a result that might piss me off. That’s why I tend to be unsympathetic on any level whatsoever when someone uses substance abuse as an excuse for behaving badly. If a person is being a drunken asshole, it’s because he or she actually is an asshole deep down inside the personality and the booze is simply amplifying those character flaws. I don’t exclude myself from that analysis, which was probably one more motivation to finish drinking. I feel that I came to the ultimate conclusion that I like to be in control of myself – my mind, as well as my body - and alcohol, as well as other drugs, can pose way too much of a risk to lose that kind of personal control.

Ultimately, I would put forth that alcohol is just one of many unnatural substances in life that humankind has harnessed and embraced, and if one enjoys imbibing in strong drink then more power to them. On my end, I found out eventually that I don’t like alcohol in the same way that I don’t like certain foods and I am feeling much better without any of that stuff in my system whatsoever. Additionally, I feel much more mature and sophisticated without a social accessory which is perceived by so many as a symbol of maturity and sophistication. I’m never putting another drop of an alcoholic beverage in my system again. Ever. Why the hell would I need to?

DON’T FORGET… THE HUMANET.

It’s pretty easy to assume that the power and influence of today’s world is carried solely through channels of modern technological communication. The real change and progress always happens directly through the direct interaction between, at first, two people and then perhaps spreading to more.

In history, disasters have destroyed electronic lines of communication, and even if telephones, radio transmissions and the like were not operating, it all came down to the direct cooperation of real live people working together. It’s amazing what people can do when they know that, as a group, they need to work together in order to survive.

High technology du jour can be a wonderful tool in helping to accomplish great things, but ultimately, only people moving forth on their own willful device will actually accomplish anything worthwhile. The technology has never been, is not and never will be realized without us. Always place the people as the primary purpose. Technology should be implemented and utilized to improve and serve the human race, and not just to placate and pander to it with irrelevant toys and pastimes simply for profit.

The people of this planet are the hub of the very essence of technological progress. Too much backwards thinking is applied in this regard nowadays. This basic human network is the only true hope we have in the future. It is the oldest communications pipeline in history.

Call it The Humanet.

Let’s keep on developing and upgrading it.

LET’S KEEP ASKING THE QUESTIONS, UNTIL WE GET THE ANSWERS.

It’s time for a shift in the function of the American collective conscience, and that time is now.

Small segments of the population are starting to speak out here and there re: the steady control and exploitation by the ever-shrinking members of the ruling class inflicted upon the increasingly underpowered lower class. It’s encouraging, but not nearly enough to change the attitude of the people who are negatively targeted in this situation.

The working people of America need to somehow tear down the wall of financially motivated political doctrine that is gripping the entire United States like a prison of the conscience. Public policy needs to be created and implemented in the interest of the public at large and not the select group of individuals who are making a comfortable living out of politics, nor to the benefit of the corporate commanded money-grubbing power hungry political machine.

The challenge lies in the matter of communication methods. In today’s national psyche, we are facing, from the middle class on below, a syndrome in which half of the population are too afraid for various reasons to question authority and economic disparity, and the other half whom have conditioned themselves to believe that their opinion or input would make no difference and energy and time would be better spent on the survival of the self.

No matter who is elected to office in this or any other year, the fact remains that representation is for all of the people, not just for those who have won the election with the majority vote. We, the People, need to keep a fire under our elected officials, federal, state, and local, asserting our voice and our presence.

There needs to be a paradigm shift in the way that the American people drive and influence the policies of its government. The hired guns in the form of corporate and special interest funded campaign lobbyists need to be replaced by a surge of the public voice. Democrat as well as Republican special interests have well paid and well funded influence all over the halls of Congress, and none of this activity is remotely beneficial to the stability, safety or general welfare of the majority of the American people who are not in the controlling interest.

Face reality. Most of us are not in the same rigid ideology as those on the TV network political talk shows or the campaign rallies. Most of us want pretty basic things in our lives: security, privacy, safety, opportunity, and the most politically abused condition of liberty. Some of the conditions that guarantee these things require legislative oversight and some are better off without it. With practice, and as long as sensible process and consensus override mob rule, the people in the streets can eventually figure out the logical paths much more efficiently and fairly than the pundits in front of the cameras and the cash hustlers under the Capitol dome.

It’s not a pretty picture ahead for the typical American worker if people just ignore the warning signs. The middle class will become targeted increasingly by the controlling interests to get soaked in the pocketbook. Food prices will continue to rise, everyday necessary expenses will get more expensive, and revenue will be raised for the government coffers by extorting more tax money from the have-nots while the haves get to pay less thanks to their influence and control of the government. Jobs will continue to disappear and move into other countries. The perpetrators of these exploitations against working people will undertake these actions simply because they can. If the targets of their avarice decline to protest, or just continue to buy and consume as usual, then there’s no reason for the abuses to cease.

In the coming years, as the ruling class interests become increasingly desperate and clueless in dealing with deteriorating socioeconomic conditions, an iron hand approach to controlling the general population will become a more attractive option. Now is the time for the working class to begin to become aware of this not too distant future possibility, and work out a counteractive strategy to fight any such attempt to neutralize organized proletarian unity and efforts to intercommunicate dissent against various types of authority.

Under the conditions of today, the lower income majority of Americans are experiencing a condition of taxation without representation, while paradoxically, the higher income minority gets to enjoy the outrageous privilege of representation without taxation. This situation alone, of disproportionate revenue responsibility against benefit of governmental response, can be seen as a suitable enough reason to encourage and organize working class revolution.

The few of us who have been speaking out in an effort to get the American psyche adjusted to a new path need to continue and also extend the conversation. There needs to be an eventual refinement of the communication method in order to generate a wave of dialogue as opposed to simply a one-way message attempt. Speeches can be nice but only rarely do they instigate true mass action.

At this point in time, the current populace of economically disenfranchised Americans do not even need an organized effort to change the policies in Washington DC, their state capitols, or even their local government. They just need to get into the practice of speaking out their opinions and talking amongst each other about what is wrong and what can be better.

When it comes down to it at the end, the most legible strategy is this: every one of us needs to do what we can. Whether it’s simply ideas or direct action, many people can make a difference on just about every level of American society. Working people don’t need to just sit idly by, feeling helpless and allowing the ambitious few to dictate the conditions and future of the everyday lives of the rest of us.

Resolve to the goal that if you can’t get up and do something, at least start to communicate to those in your area of the world who are closest to you. Help those close to you who need assistance as much as you can. Most people aren’t evil or stupid; most of them in this country, however, are, for lack of a better term, asleep. It’s time to sound the alarm and wake some folks up.