a critique of many things

ok, so i am officially livid right now. after watching the first part of the critique of the story of stuff and reading people's comments i am absolutely shocked at how STUPID and in denial people are about the reality of the world we live in, though why i am so shocked i really can't say. accusing the story of stuff of being leftist indoctrination is totally ridiculous, our entire socialization/civilization process is almost by definition indoctrination and the educational system the most widespread and institutionalized method of disseminating ideas and culture that human beings have developed (yet, humans are ingenius at such creations and i'm sure the version for the new millenium will be rolled out soon enough). i read a comment from a "concerned parent" stating that opinions are like asses, everyones got one, but they don't have the right to put it on their kid. that parent is apparently unaware that socio-cultural norms are one specific group's opinion as to how everyone should act and that by being alive in this "civilized" age of microscopic controls and information overload other people's opinions are literally being rubbed all over their child: someone elses' opinion as to what is safe to put in lotion or shampoo, someone elses' opinion as to what should and should not be put on your television, written in newspapers, published in books, done to your food,etc.

all of my life i have been trying to figure out what is so utterly disappointing about being a human being sometimes and i finally feel like i'm making some progress: human beings love patches. a patch for the economy, a patch for our emotions, a patch to cover what we think is ugly, a patch to cover the pain, but patches are not repairs. we have spent a boobly trillion hours of thought, megatrillions of watts of energy and gagabazillions of dollars looking at ways that we can patch life to make it more wearable to our liking instead of addressing the most important issue of all: why does life fit us so damn uncomfortably in the first place? could it be our illusory perceptions of life and all of these beliefs we hold about how it SHOULD be (and the belief that it should be anything other than exactly what it is in the first place) instead of basing our perceptions on real knowledge and understanding of WHAT IT IS?

no wonder we can't get it together and accept peoples, cultures and beliefs with open hearts and minds, we can't even accept the single most basic principle of all creation: that it exists exactly as it is and no other way. we wonder what happens to people to make them go crazy, why so many people fail to grow up whole with any understanding or appreciation of this wonderful and crazy world. every single day of our lives we are brazenly lied to about the nature of this existence. every. single. day. we shield children our children, crippling them, we show them the rainbows and butterflies, but don't tell them rainbows are ephemeral and butterflies get eaten by crows. no wonder as we grow up and are confronted with realities that trump the lies ingrained in us, when we learn that rabbits don't hide eggs (that they don't even lay eggs to begin with), that the blue of the sky exists only as a conversation between our eyes and our minds, that no jolly fat man is the source of christmas presents, that this world is just as cruel as it is beautiful, we panic; we aren't raised with these realities as part of the basic information of life. i think that often adults are embarrassed because they don't really know it either, but won't look past their embarrassment to see what they can find out about it; or simply admit their ignorance. so we create patches to cover it, to hide what we don't know and instead of admitting that we don't know we perpetuate the illusion of wholeness with a patch of a lie.

we are a country plagued by personal crises, it's been documented that the united states is the most mentally unstable country on this earth: the twenty-something life crisis, the mid-life crisis, the empty nest crisis, the seniorhood crisis; there is absolutely no other place with the same widespread manifestations of mental, emotional, and spiritual disorders, why? i obviously have no absolute answer but i suspect it has something to with the fact that we are taught to view the cycle and progression of life as a negative thing, that youth is better than age, elasticity better than wrinkles. we have created whole industries out of keeping certain deceptions alive and off the disharmony that is created when the illusions clash with the truth; the models you see in magazines, even they don't actually look like that. there is nothing other than a particular perspective creating these negative relationships with the life cycle and process, it is what it is. time, life and exposure take their toll, nothing in life is free, least of all life itself. that unnerving paradox, the price we pay for being our selves is our selves.

while this may seem unrelated to where i started, i promise it's not. we are raised believing we are the coolest kids in school, that every other country is jealous of us, that by virtue of nothing more than being born in this country every single one of has can grow up and lead it, swim the english channel, find the cure for cancer; children are wiser than our culture and society gives them credit for and they know it's not true. we are not all leaders, we are not all scientists and mathematicians and we are not all athletes. half of the trauma of growing up could be eliminated by acknowledging and accepting the fact that everyone is not an alpha male (and thank life for that, imagine if everyone, not just politicians and business people, spent their lives vying for control of this handbasket). because what we learn as children forms the foundations of our world it is hard to let these ideas go as we grow. those that would accuse a 20 minute long film that is more about the way we look at and consider the material world around us rather than a subtle attempt to brainwash children into believing that we're destroying the earth, which we are by the way, are keeping these unhealthy illusory beliefs alive and thriving. lies cloud vision and make it impossible to see reality; and there is no windex to eliminate the veil leaving a streak free shine, the only treatment is complete honesty, something we are not taught to treasure because it's decidedly not easy, simple, comfortable or quick and has no monetary value (though if you observe the results of people who take this long road, success, however you measure it, is often the result). and so the world will continue to turn, and we will continue to destroy it because we lack the courage to do anything else. that's enough for the day, other than this, in my eyes our greatest crisis is the horrible friction that exists when what is real inside of us presses against what is real outside of us, and we find they are not the same. achieve a unity of interior and exterior and you achieve peace. and to those that might want to come back with snarky comments about me being a tree hugging lefty: yeah...and... what's your point? i don't write to preach, i write to teach. do what you will with it, just be well.