GET YOUR HAPPY ON! - a meliorist worldview

I’ve written it before, and I will never tire of repeating it. Despite what the vast majority of humans believe, guns don’t solve problems; no problem has ever been solved with a gun.

You can shut someone up with a gun… until you turn your back. You can shoot a person preemptively, but that person’s friends will get you. You can shoot a person and all of that person’s friends, but someone else is going to hear about your killing spree and come after you. A cowboy diplomat really can’t even trust his own friends, because he knows that they’re likely to turn on him for a larger stake in the claim. About the only way, cowboy diplomacy works is if you kill everyone in a 500-mile radius, so you don’t have to worry about anyone rustling your cattle. Of course, now they have helicopters and tanks and ICBMs that can travel a lot farther than 500 miles, so the humble cowboy diplomat is screwed unless he kills everyone else but himself. “‘Cause a cow poke just can’t trust nobody no more no how, no sir!”

Aside from the fact that murder of even one person is unconscionably wrong, there is only one other problem with the Final Solution of Cowboy Diplomacy: the cowboy has no one to herd cattle for anymore, except himself. Perhaps, that is the Libertarians true goal: to live in a world without neighbors, to relive Cain’s folly.

One of the best American Westerns is The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance. It’s Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne’s first of three pictures together. Jimmy Stewart plays a bookish, pacifistic, yella-bellied lawyer whose mission is to bring law and justice to the frontier. John Wayne’s character is a tough old cowhand who knows how to handle a gun. The two men dislike each other on sight, and the tension between them increases when J.S. steals J.W.’s girl. Oooh! Drama! Anyhow, Wayne’s role diminishes as the film progresses, and Stewart’s liberal integrity receives the accolades of the community as he attracts the attention of Liberty Valance, a really bad hombre. It becomes clear that Liberty has to die if Justice is going to take a permanent hold in the West. Not that it’s very subtle, but the death of Liberty Valance symbolizes the end of the Old West. I don’t want to spoil the film for anyone who hasn’t seen it, but a question remains.

Who really shot Liberty Vallance? It wasn’t George Bush… I mean, Ron Paul… I mean, Fred Thompson… I mean, John McCain… Sorry, I mean, Jimmy Stewart. (I don’t know what got into me!) It wasn’t John Wayne either. The man who really destroyed the “cowboy way” was Theodore Roosevelt, America’s first and only real cowboy President (and incidentally, a gun enthusiast if there ever was one). Why? Because Teddy understood that the cowboy way had to die, so that the rest of civilization could prosper. He developed conservationism so that a portion of the West that he loved would be preserved, and he bullied anti-trust reform so that monopolies would never have too great of a control on the market. Oh, how we have backslided!

I hate to say it, but we NEED a government. A nation as large and as diverse as ours needs laws and regulations — to protect us from each other and to protect us from ourselves — especially when it comes to controlling the collective and individual economic welfare of each citizen. The only way humanity will ever be able to survive in anarchy or near-anarchy with equality, dignity, and liberty for all human beings is if we evolve into a species of altruists (beings who would die before hurting one another). A Libertarian government is a terrible misnomer, because it would result in the physical slavery of hundreds of millions.

I agree with the fiscally ultra-conservative crowd on very few issues, but I do agree that we need to have a balanced budget amendment added to the Constitution and that we need to get rid of the National Debt. I don’t believe that cutting costs across the board is the only way to go about doing that. We need a compassionate and creative solution to the grand economic crisis that threatens to crash down upon us, but I don’t think we yet have all of the tools to fix that particular problem.

Be good to yourselves, my friends. Don’t give in to the easy way out. It will only ever lead to more trouble.

Sometimes, when I’m feeling really claustrophobic in the city, I would like nothing more than to enjoy the open plains of the Old West. For a bookish “pseudo-intellectual” like myself, Libertarianism seems like such a great idea on paper, because they claim to regard the philosophical pursuits more highly than any other political organization — a government of the mind and of rationale. [sigh]

Libertarianism is a bare essentials approach to government: no executive regulatory office more than what the Libertarians think America needs (the Treasury, the State Department, and the War Department… I mean, Defense Department). Because the Libertarians would have us reduce the government to almost nothing, income taxes would no longer be necessary, and it would be a lot easier to balance the budget and expunge our nation of its multi-trillion dollar debt.

Some pot smokers advocate Libertarianism, because a Libertarian government would decriminalize pot, and no government agency would exist to control the flow of marijuana anyway. War on Drugs? Over. Some anti-Keynesian economists advocate Libertarianism, because it would theoretically allow the purest form of Free Market capitalism that has existed in over a hundred years — a completely unfettered approach to acquisition and divestment. And gun lobbyists LOVE Libertarianism because those living in a nation without federal justice would be forced to fend for themselves — a gun in the hand of every man, woman, and child strong enough to hold a weapon. Maybe that sounds great after a long day of killing animated pixels in Grand Theft Auto, until you realize that we don’t live in the great Old Wild West anymore.

Thankfully, most U.S. cities have regulations against walking around with a holstered pistol, because they realized that giving everyone a gun won’t solve any problems. In fact, no problem can be solved with a gun; there will always be a better solution to any problem. It doesn’t matter the situation. At best, a gun could only delay more problems.

[WARNING: Don’t even try testing me on this one, clever contrarian. I know you think you have a hypothetical desert island scenario where a gun would be necessary, but you’re absolutely wrong. I’ve thought about this argument to endgame and checkmate. Trust me, I’m Big Blue on this one. Guns don’t solve any problems ever.]

Not that I am a big fan of the police or the FBI, but U.S. crime would rise exponentially without a federal law enforcement agency, especially in states that did not have the same resources as other states. Crime would only continue to worsen after honest people realized that there are only two ways to survive and thrive in a Libertarian country: high finance and crime. Crime will seem like the only option to anyone who is not a financial genius, and most financial geniuses will turn to crime for protection anyway. It should be no surprise that Capitalism doesn’t encourage integrity and morality.

Look at the collapsed Eastern Bloc: Russia is a nation dominated by corrupt politicians and incredibly organized criminals. When Yeltsin took over, the most notoriously oppressive regime in the world became the most lenient regime in the world, and the former oppressors (the KGB) became the Russian mafia. Without the FBI, the Secret Service, and the ATF, the criminals would take over (well, they’d gain a greater stranglehold on the populace), and then you’d either be forced to either carry a gun or pay the mafia protection money. As I’ve already stated, guns don’t solve problems, but we live in a nation with a lot of would-be cowboys who suffer from pistol envy; they are Reactionary Neo-Objectivists. Collectively, I think of them as the reincarnation of Howdy Doody — a little ginger-headed, buck-toothed puppet from the Fifties, who wore a cute little cowboy outfit. It’s pretty hard for me to take them seriously, but Cowboy Diplomacy seems to have struck a chord with a large segment of the population, so I feel obligated to illustrate why Cowboy Diplomacy doesn’t and will never work. More on why guns don’t solve problems tomorrow.

Be good to yourselves, my friends. I hope you’ve been able to stay out of the heat wherever you are.

Lately, I’ve been getting questions such as “How did I get such bad karma?” or “Why is my karma so rotten?” This is the wrong way to look at karma, my friends. In Sanskrit, karma means “action.” We retain bad karma because of something that we have done or something we did not do. Only a handful of people in the world have no bad karma, but they do walk among us — not that I have met one, nor would I know if I had.

Karma is not the same as sin or luck. The more I think about it, I don’t think luck even exists, and I don’t subscribe to the concept of sin. I don’t believe in sin because sin has no utility as a rational descriptor in an objective test, and guilt is a fruitless emotion. (This is a good post to read if you are burdened by guilt.) Sin and bad karma are similar — just as good deeds and good karma are similar — but it really would be better if you completely discarded every previous misconception about karma.

One’s karma is the aggregate of all the past actions in which one has partaken, all the present actions in which one is partaking, and all future actions in which a person intends to partake. Karma is easily transferred too, so one could easily inherit good and bad karma from a loved one (just as easily as one could from a stranger on the street).

This is an extreme vulgarization, but I sometimes think of karma as a credit card that the Universe issued me when I was born. As soon as I started to exhibit free will, I began accumulating a debt of bad karma by acting selfishly toward others (as is the case with most young people). Eventually, as my conscience and sense of life purpose started evolving, I began behaving more selflessly toward others, and my karma started to improve.

Despite a supportive and loving family, I spent many years alone and unhappy because my debt to the Universe was substantial. Through the diligent employment of the Noble Eightfold Path, I became able to improve my life many times over. Today, I am a happily married man to a gorgeous, intelligent, and kind-hearted woman who reciprocates my devotion to her. I love the life that I am living today, and I have my good karma to thank for it.

Specifically, to improve your karma:

1) Replace all of your negative thoughts with good, non-violent thoughts, but don’t beat yourself up if a negative thought enters your mind (this takes practice, so go easy on yourself but keep at it);

2) Participate in more selfless activities and fewer selfish activities, and never partake in any kind of violence toward yourself or any other living being (this includes emotional and physical violence);

3) Speak well of others or don’t say anything, and always speak honestly but courteously; and

4) Make a living by benefiting other people — or at the very least, stop making a living by hurting others. (Note: this one is the hardest. It is so easy to make a good living by creating disharmony in the world, and often the jobs that help people don’t provide much fiscal revenue. I am sorry, but that is the price of a real happiness that will last you the rest of your life.)

The four steps mentioned above constitute the Ethical Conduct branch of the Noble Eightfold Path (i.e. Loving Thought, Loving Action, Loving Speech, and Loving Livelihood). Truly ethical conduct is the best and only way to improve one’s karma. The four other steps of the Noble Eightfold Path help Buddhists start and continue to maintain the Middle Way, or the path to true liberation.

Be good to yourselves, my friends. Life is too short. I hope you’re able to find happiness in whatever way works for you, as long as you don’t hurt yourself or anyone else in the process.

Buddhism is a system of learning based on logic, on reason, and on a long history of a pre-Cartesian scientific method through philosophical discourse and empirical experimentation. Buddhists have refined the “how”s and “why”s of human suffering to a theory that all are invited to test for themselves. If it doesn’t work, no harm no foul.

The cause of suffering is ignorance, because ignorance is part of and feeds a cycle of causation, known as the Twelve Causes of Suffering. All the distress (anger, sadness, fear, etc.) that you experience is rooted in this cycle, which has plagued humankind for æons; however, it is possible to end the cycle of suffering via adherence to the Noble Eightfold Path as described 2500 years ago by the Shakyamuni Buddha.

#1 As I’ve already noted, ignorance is the cause of suffering. One is not aware of what causes one’s suffering, so one continues to feed their own cycle of causation. Only in the pursuit of true wisdom may one begin the path of true liberation.

#2 Via an innate history of ignorance, one builds the false concept of one’s own selfhood (or ego) as though one’s own self has an intrinsic material value, and this conceptualization is affirmed and reaffirmed by everyone one knows (because they also lack wisdom and have their own selfhood/egos to protect and affirm). If one is wise and is able to escape the illusion of samsara, one realizes that there is no self to protect and affirm.

#3 If one has an ego, it should follow that one is conscious, but what the ignorant person does not understand is that the ego itself bears its own consciousness. The ego consciousness is like a piece of clay that takes shape as one experiences life, and each event results in the molding or scoring of that clay. A wise person does not feed an ego consciousness, and therefore is unaffected by life’s myriad daily events.

#4 And every day, there are thousands maybe millions of events that could affect one’s ego consciousness. If one broke down the consumption of a meal into each separate task and sub-task, the number of events would easily count among the hundreds. Each event that one experiences is a guest or a stranger to which one’s ego consciousness ascribes a name/function that allows the ego consciousness to temporarily cooperate with the guest event. The ego consciousness feels that it must justify its own existence by defining the world around it, but a wise person completely avoids this process. A wise person knows that there is no separation between the self and the other — that all events are part of a fluid continuum — so one needn’t tire oneself with causality. Of course, if one lacks wisdom, one has absolutely no idea that any of this is happening!

#5 After one has welcomed the guest event and slapped a name tag on the guest, one’s ego consciousness introduces the guest to the six senses (i.e. seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, and thinking) so that one may further perceive and categorize the event. A wise person perceives an event as what it is, but the ego consciousness is easily tricked into thinking that an event is something that it is not. For instance, an ignorant person may be easily insulted when no injury was intended.

#6 At this point, the event makes contact with each individual sensory organ. If one is wise, one neither affirms nor ignores the contact that the guest event establishes. A wise person simply acknowledges the contact and continues with one’s day.

#7 After the ego consciousness and the senses have made contact with the event, an ignorant person will experience either a positive or negative sensation (e.g., hunger, pleasure, pain, etc.) but the wise person understands that there is an alternative. A wise person seeks neutral sensation (by employing the Noble Eightfold Path) to avoid the extremes that feed the cycle of suffering; this is also called the Middle Way.

#8 After the ego-consciousness-of-the-person-who-does-not-know-about-the-Middle-Way experiences the event and internalizes the derivative sensation, the ignorant person’s ego consciousness will either tell itself, “Oh! Yes, I like that!” or “No, I did not like that!” Buddhists call this the moment of craving, and every addict knows that it is an extremely dangerous moment.

#9 Attachment (or fixation/compulsion/addiction/obsession) follows craving. An ignorant person who experiences an emotion will almost always choose to heighten that emotion — to become more ecstatic, more angry, more depressed — because they like how a particular event makes the feel. Equally, dangerous is a lifetime spent avoiding a specific event when one does not like how the event makes one feel. Both one’s desire to repeat an event and one’s approach-avoidance toward an event are sources of undue stress.

#10 Now, the attachment becomes a part of the ego consciousness, and the guest is an event that cannot be forgotten or simply erased; it is a part of you. When one welcomes a guest into one’s home and that guest does not leave, one might be forced to call the police to have the unwelcome guest removed from one’s home. When craving becomes attachment, the sensation leaves an indelible stain on the fabric of an ignorant person’s ego consciousness. Returning to the clay metaphor, the attachment often leaves a permanent wedge in the ego consciousness cleaves it or reshapes it into something completely different.

#11 Then the cycle starts all over (usually at the moment of contact) with the birth of the ignorant person’s newly disformed/reformed ego consciousness. And remember this cycle repeats itself with every new event many thousands of times every day! If you have ever gone to bed feeling like a completely different person from the person whom you awoke as, you might now have a better understanding of why that happens.

#12 Anyway, this cycle of suffering just continues to gorge the ego consciousness with sensation, craving, and attachment until the sensation itself ends with a painful ego death — which either results in the birth of another new ego consciousness or Enlightenment (in rare cases).

The preferable, easier path to Enlightenment is via the Noble Eightfold Path, according to the Buddha of this Age. Again, please feel free to try out the Eightfold Path for yourself. It’s easy, and there is no reason why it should conflict with any other belief(s) you may have. If anything, a strong foundation in Buddhism should help reaffirm whatever other faith to which you might choose to adhere. There is no conlflict between Buddhism and Christianiy, Islam, Judaism, Secular Humanism, or any other belief system — even though many of those different religions and non-religions have conflicts among themselves — nor is there anything inherent to Buddhism that should conflict with anyone’s lifestyle as long as a person has love and generosity in their hearts.
Be good to yourselves, my friends. Find contentment where and when you can. Life is too short to waste on anger and hatred and fear.

Gosh! I’m feeling so laaaaazy today, so I’m taking a page from folks who copy&paste gray noise straight out of National Review and other whiny conservative hate mags. I copied this straight off the Responsible Plan website:

The United States invaded Iraq in March 2003. Since then, nearly 4,000 American troops have lost their lives and nearly thirty thousand more have suffered serious injuries, while as many as a million Iraqis may be dead. The financial costs of the war to the U.S. economy will ultimately exceed $3 trillion. More than a year ago, the American public demanded a new direction in Iraq by electing a new Congress, and the bipartisan Iraq Study Group (the Baker-Hamilton Commission) presented a set of recommendations for just such a new direction. President Bush rejected the majority of those recommendations and proceeded - largely unchecked by Congress - on a course explicitly contrary to them.

Since that time, the current administration and its congressional allies have continued to use shifting rationales for extending our military involvement in Iraq with no end in sight. The American public has been presented with a set of false choices: a semi-permanent military occupation of Iraq versus a precipitous and destabilizing withdrawal. There is a deepening public desire for a new path forward and a cohesive military, diplomatic, and economic strategy that will end the war in Iraq while protecting American interests.

There are two strategic questions raised by our current dilemma:

1. How do we bring American military engagement in Iraq to a responsible end?There is no military solution to the problems faced in Iraq: the real progress that can be made requires diplomatic, political, and economic means. We must stop counter-productive military operations by U.S. occupation forces and end our military presence in Iraq.
2. How do we prevent a repeat of the mistakes we’ve made?The breakdown of checks and balances in our government led to bad decision-making which damaged America’s national security. Ending this war and preventing future situations like it requires that we restore these Constitutional checks and balances and fix the ways in which our governmental, military, and civil institutions have failed us.

Discussions of Iraq in the media have focused almost entirely on military operations and issues, but any real solution will require us to look at a broader set of problems. Beyond redeploying our troops, we must place equal importance on applying the full arsenal of non-military tools at our disposal. The American public must also re-engage in the discussions and decision-making about how to proceed.

What follows is a series of objectives that, taken together, refocus our current military involvement in the region while repairing damage to the U.S. to prevent a repeat of our mistakes. We have included some sample legislation currently in Congress to show that these objectives have been identified and can be addressed given sufficient political will. We have also included recommendations that the Baker-Hamilton Commission published in the Iraq Study Group Report. In some cases, no existing legislation or clear recommendations exist and new authorizing legislation plus careful planning would be required.

Supporters of this document have committed to these objectives. The American people do not need to wait for a new Congress and new administration to pursue this agenda: public pressure on our current elected officials to act can help us move in the right direction even before January 2009, when we hope a new presidential administration and a new Congress will avail themselves of the opportunity to address the great challenges we face as a nation. We are aware that facts on the ground will change moving forward, and the legislation is included just to show that a responsible end to the war is possible given the political will.

As circumstances on the ground change, what is required of our response may change as well; consequently, we will be updating information on this and other legislation at www.responsibleplan.com.

End U.S. military action in Iraq:

There is no military solution in Iraq. Our current course unacceptably holds U.S. strategic fortunes hostage to events in Iraq that are beyond our control; we must change course. Using diplomatic, political, and economic power, we can responsibly end the war and remove all of our troops from Iraq.

Using U.S. diplomatic power:

Much of the remaining work to be completed in Iraq requires the effective use of diplomatic power. Many of Iraq’s neighbors are currently contributing to instability and need to be persuaded to assist instead in stabilization.

Addressing humanitarian concerns:

The humanitarian crisis caused by Iraq’s situation is destabilizing to the region and damaging to America’s moral credibility. We must both take responsibility for the Iraqis who are now endangered because of their assistance to the U.S. and begin to address the regional problems of displaced Iraqis.

Restoring our Constitution:

Many mistakes were made in the course of this war, and our systems of checks and balances have failed us at critical moments. To prevent repeating those mistakes, we must repair the underlying Constitutional framework of our republic and provide checks to executive authority. Balance must be restored between the executive and the judicial branch (for instance through the restoration of habeas corpus), between the executive and the legislative branch (for instance through clarifying that the President does not have the Constitutional authority to unilaterally alter legislation through signing statements), and between the executive and the people of the United States (for instance by clarifying that the Fourth Amendment requires probable cause and a warrant for the government to spy on Americans).

Restoring our military:

Repairing the damage done to our military will require reforms in contracting procedures, restoring benefits for members of the military and veterans, and investment in repairing or replacing damaged military equipment.

The need for contracting reform is substantial. Private militias have direct incentives to prolong the conflict rather than resolve it; their use needs to be phased out. Contractors must be legally accountable for their actions. War profiteering must be stopped, and those who have engaged in it need to answer for their actions.

The safety of our men and women in uniform requires that we adhere to international standards with respect to treatment of prisoners. We must also make it clear that the United States does not torture, and that we do not send people to other places to be tortured, either.

The military is having substantial difficulty with recruiting and retention; we could begin to help by delivering on more of the promises the original Montgomery G.I. Bill made and by delivering on our promises regarding healthcare for veterans.

Restoring independence to the media:

The consolidation of our news media into the control of a relatively few corporate entities stifled a full and fair discussion and debate around Iraq. A more robust debate could be encouraged by expanding access to media.

Creating a new, U.S.-centered energy policy:

Finally, we are clearly tied to Iraq through our dependence on oil, which makes us vulnerable. Moving away from that dependence is necessary for strategic, economic, and environmental reasons.

I have noticed that some folks on other blogs have labeled me a spambot, and it has me rather confused. Isn’t a spambot an autonomous worm-like program that spammers use to leave advertising in e-mails and on comment billboards?

Am I a spambot simply because my liberal opinions rankle the embittered spirits of the anti-ACLU crowd? Sometimes, I get a spam filter thrown at my firewall, even when I visit friendly sites. Curiouser and curiouser.

Blogging has really been an interesting journey for me. When I have had the free time, I have gotten to share my opinions in a somewhat open forum. In semi-Kantian fashion, my thoughts will (in some imperceptibly small way) help shape others’ thoughts. I wonder if I’m doing enough though. As we leave behind the first failed American Presidency of the 21st Century, the U.S. needs to learn how to embrace a forward-thinking approach to problem solving; we need to embrace change and possibility — rather than cling to untenable safety.

Otherwise, I fear that so-called “conservatives” may find themselves rattling their burdensome chains like displaced Jacob Marleys, as they plead with future generations to learn from their socio-economic and geo-political indiscretions. (I’ve just been all over the map with the literary allusions in this post, folks. My ADD must have gotten the better of me today.)

Be good to yourselves, my friends. Forgive yourselves your pasts — you can’t change them — but don’t stand in the way of your children’s future. Why would you want to fix the problems of today with solutions that have never worked in the past? When I see the Children of Tomorrow in my mind’s eye, I don’t see them running around in a polluted world filled with casinos and guns. I see happy faces in a world of love, generosity, harmony, and peace. Be good!

This is something I have to get off my chest. It’s been bothering me for way too long. I lived in Dallas for five years. It’s a city that shouldn’t exist.

If it wasn’t for oil and air conditioning, Dallas wouldn’t exist. Seriously, it’s a gigantic shopping mall.  Don’t worry, I’m not crapping on Texas; I love Amarillo, Austin, Fort Worth, Lubbock, and San Antonio, but Dallas is disgusting. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more collagen injections and silicone implants than in Hollywood, and more strip clubs than in Las Vegas. It’s hard to tell the difference between the call girls and the trophy wives. It’s the city that shot JFK, and it should be no surprise that Dallas is the birthplace of “Needless Markup.”

Needless Markup is perhaps the worst store in the world. Their merchants sell gaudy and impractical goods at 200 to 500% the actual value. I can appreciate that they have a wide variety of unique and hard to find items, but doesn’t that ultimately translate as “Not Made by American Workers”? Do you really need a Faberge beer can cozy just because Jenna Hilton has the same one?

When an item has to travel thousands of miles in 10-inch thick Styrofoam containers just so that it will look fierce when held in your Gucci-manicured hands, I’d like you to ask yourself what kind of a message are you sending to future generations of consumer zombies? (“Labels. We need labels.” )

Foreign-made goods add millions of tons of carbon waste to the atmosphere when they are shipped here. Diamond hunters and precious metal miners fuel genocide and terrorism with their shady dealings. The American economy suffers when money is carelessly spent on frivolous and overpriced merchandise, when our dollars could be helping to feed families. When we rationalize our purchase with “I just had to have it!” are we doing right by our children and their children’s children? Dooming them to futures of debt slavery and landfills brimming with packaging waste?

I am convinced that no store in America is more responsible for the hyper-consumption in America than Needless Markup. They started it, but you can finish it — with your dollar votes. You have to participate in the market, right? You have to buy something if you want to eat, right? So, you might as well say something with your money.

Be good to yourselves and your pocketbooks, my friends. Buy American-made goods and American-grown produce from local shopkeepers and local farmers (not Wal-Mart!), and give back to your communities. We will all be much better off in the long run. Trust.

Economist.com sends me regular e-mail newsletters. It’s expensive, but The Economist is one of the best sources of relatively unbiased news out there. Yesterday I received the following news blurb about China:

Chinese companies are investing more abroad

AFTER 11 months of tricky negotiations, last week a subsidiary of China’s state-owned oil company, CNOOC, announced that it would buy a Norwegian oil-services firm for $2.5 billion. Foreign investment by Chinese companies has grown steadily, reaching $18.7 billion last year. But striking deals is getting harder. Since 2005, when CNOOC was blocked by the American government from buying Unocal, an American oil firm, many of China’s big state-owned companies have been wary of bidding for Western firms. And other countries are chary of China’s appetite. An estimated $40 billion of potential Chinese acquisitions are awaiting approval by Australian regulators.

Big deal, right?

Well, it could be a big deal. Amnesty International considers China one of the greatest abusers of human rights, and China is the greatest investor in our economy. Because the U.S. is the largest consumer of Chinese-manufactured products, China is essentially funding our war with Iraq so that we can continue to consume. (The Discovery Channel is airing Ted Koppel’s great 4-part documentary series on Chinese capitalism this week.)

Why is China so eager for us spend our resources though?

The blurb from Economist.com above suggest that China is a hungry dragon, but I believe the old sleeping tiger analogy is more appropriate. China is an ancient imperial civilization that knows how to wait for its prey. China keeps feeding our economy as we spend and consume, with little in the way of domestic production. One day we will consume ourselves to exhaustion, and China will be there to buy an entire nation of hungry slaves, who have become too fat and lazy to resist the tiger’s paw. And China will wipe its nose with the Bill of Rights. And who is to blame?

The downfall of the American economy can safely be lain at the feet of the lending industry, the oil industry, big corporations, OPEC, the Bush family, the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds, the Clintons, and anyone else who saw the problem and looked the other way.

I believe in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; together they are easily in the Top 10 of humankind’s greatest achievements. For a long time, it seems like the Republicans and the Democrats have been taking massive dumps on our country, and I’m tired of it. We have to make this country great again, but the only way that is going to happen is if we stop our self-destructive hyper-consumption and start taking responsibility for our Debt — all of it.

Get involved, my friends. Contact your Congressmen! Tell them you want our economy back! Tell them to stop selling our debt to other governments!

Recently, I reached a convergence in my faith that bridges Buddhism and the Christian tradition (in which I was raised). Essentially, it is the convergence of my mind and my heart.

Oddly enough, it started with my renunciation of Christianity in 1994 and my exploration of other faith traditions. In 1998, I converted to Buddhism, which made more sense to me. Buddhism is a logic- and wisdom-based discipline, the goal of which is to bring peace and contentment to all living beings.

What I discovered in Buddhism is the concept of Dependent Origination, which explains how the separation between each of us is an illusion. There is no You. There is no Me. There is only the Oneness of all Things, the cyclical web of Cause and Effect that connects every action and object (organic or inorganic) to every other action and object in the Universe.

A few months ago, I saw how Dependent Origination could fit into a Christian belief system that would work for me.

Think of it like this:

God is everything. Everything is God.

The sun, the moon, the rock, the tree, the cat, the dog, and you and me.

Everything. Everything we can see, everything we can’t see. From stars and blackholes to quarks and bosons.

Every action is also a part of God. Every cause and every effect. Every time a ball bounces. Every time a word is written or read. Every time a prayer is spoken. Every time a thought occurs in one’s head, (regardless of how insignificant), that is the presence of God. God is present in every Nobel Prize for Chemistry and present in every child’s first stumbling attempts at addition and subtraction.

But God is also a part of all the ugly moments. The angry words, the acts of violence and stupidity. Every time a gun is shot in anger or a teenager smokes crack or meth, every time a baby cries because its mother hasn’t enough money to buy food, God is present in all of those moments too. It’s as though all the Evil in the world is a disease or a cancer that has infected the organism that joins all of us together.

Everything. Every thought, every word, every action, every object, every microscopic subatomic particle is a part of the hyper-conscious organism that is God.

So, if you are a part of God, and God is an organism, then that means we are all cells in the body of God. Then, and this is the glorious part, you/we have to decide for ourselves whether we are bad cells or good cells, cancers or cancer-fighting antibodies.

Here’s why: if you’re not actively fighting the cancer, then you’re already a part of it.

If you’re not a part of the solution, you’re a part of the problem.

What is the cancer? The cancer is easily understood, but broadly misinterpreted. War. Greed. Ignorance. Hatred. Abuse. Dishonesty.

A cancer cell divides into three new cancer cells, whereas a healthy organic cell divides into only two. They spread quickly as they infect and consume healthy cells — one of the reasons that cancers are so tough to fight.

The cancers of greed and ignorance are no different. They spread quickly because they are so infectiously tempting, and they consume the weaker, healthy cells that were just minding their own business.

It made me cry the first time I realized that God was infected with cancer and that God created me (and others like me) to help God fight the infernal cancer. All of what you are reading may sound ridiculous to you, but a few years ago, I was convinced that God didn’t exist.

Now, I not only know that God does exist, but I know how to best appreciate and worship God — community activism!

Praying, singing, dancing, chanting, meditating — they all have their place, but what good is serving your own soul if the world around you is decaying? God wants you to get out there and feed the homeless; to fight for the environment; to stop gun violence and domestic abuse. God doesn’t want you to turn a blind eye. God wants you to take a stand against every wrong.

You can’t sit idly by while greed and ignorance takes root in your community. You have to get involved, and you have to get involved right away. Now. Today. Don’t wait.

The cancers of greed and ignorance won’t wait, and neither should you. Volunteer at your church or synagogue or mosque or other place of worship or meditation. Get involved with a non-profit organization. Give of your time, and give of yourself.

I apologize for going off on a preachy rant, folks! I guess I do that often. Sorry. The Spirit moves me, you know?

Be kind to one another, my friends. And have a safe and fun weekend!

Many of you might never have seen “Babylon 5,” but its many fans knew it to be one of the best TV shows that ran during the last few years of the 20th Century.

In “The Paragon of Animals” (the third episode of the last season), the leader of an alien race, G’Kar, is commissioned to author a belief statement that would define a tenuous bond among a congress of interstellar species. Entitled ‘The Declaration of Life Principles,’ a paraphrased version of that statement follows:

The Universe speaks in many languages, but only one voice… It speaks in the language of hope; It speaks in the language of trust; It speaks in the language of strength and the language of compassion. It is the language of the heart and the language of the soul. But always, it is the same voice. It is the voice of our ancestors, speaking through us. And the voice of our inheritors, waiting to be born. It is the small, still voice that says, ‘We are one. No matter the blood; No matter the skin… We are one. No matter the pain; No matter the darkness; No matter the loss; No matter the fear; We are one.’ Here, gathered together in common cause. We agree to recognize this singular truth and this singular rule: That we must be kind to one another, because each voice enriches us and ennobles us, and each voice lost diminishes us. We are the voice of the Universe, the soul of creation, the fire that will light the way to a better future. We are one.

I take words of wisdom wherever I can find them, so it shouldn’t be surprising that I would find inspiration from a popular science fiction serial.

Actually, I never saw “Babylon 5″ while it aired. I didn’t discover my love for science fiction until long after college, when I no longer cared what was popular or cool. I’m not certain that I would have appreciated a sentiment like the one above when I was younger and more capricious, but I sure do appreciate those sage words now.

Be kind to each other, my friends. Step into the world each day with love in your heart and you conscience as your guide. And don’t be afraid to look at the world through a new perspective. I love you all very much.