I you we us them

mine yours ours theirs

i feel alone

i crave shared values and goals

My world is awash with calories

but barren of nutrition

my world is filled with pleasures

But empty of fulfillment

The human quest for physical survival has been replaced by a barely named hunger for connection and meaning.

I just received an interesting job connection from the lovely people at Careerbuilder.  Apparently, I may be well qualified for a position with the “Breast Pull Rotation”.  Pretty sure I didn’t list my qualifications, for this opportunity, in my resume.  West Liberty Foods, I’m interested in you too.

I heard somewhere that the literal translation of happy, in Japanese, is quick pleasure. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it serves my purpose, so I’m going to assume it is.

It’s a complex cake, happiness. In different places, at different times, it’s been made different ways. People used to make it in more of a whole grain, stone ground, bread format… But today it’s cake! We eat it; and it’s sweet; and we like it; and we want more of it; and it gets us all wound up; then it leaves us to crash… Our cake is heavy on pleasure light on substance.

I mean the world is pleasure central these days… If you live in one of the nice places, but we can’t all live like this – at least not right now – not with all that’s going on over there – and my representative says their sending aid, coordinating with the UN and Europe, because something must be done – it’s in committee – and not too much about the ethnic cleansing in that…. Ohh, The View is on :)!

TV is pretty great, right? Boy, it sure is flashy. 11 minutes of actual play in an American football game. The rest is adds and shots of guys walking around in helmets and spandex getting talked to by other guys with head sets and clip boards… Oh, and there’s also the guys in suits talking about the spandex and clip boards… Oooh, the new iphone will go down on me in the shower and has an angry ex girlfriend app (the non-ironic song lyrics are a hack)(cross reference of no less than four shared commercial experiences… Priceless)(make that five!).

Well, watching all those fit fellows and their commercials for attractive people has left me feeling empty. Things could be better. Something seems to be missing from my life. Let’s go shopping. In the developed world the act of buying is an act of malcontent. We rarely buy out of need. We buy to replace. Because I’m not happy now, but if I get the new Android with my NSA discount points, I will be… Happiness = quick pleasure.

The people in the poor countries are miserable because they can’t support basic living (food, shelter, water). The people in the rich countries are miserable because we don’t know the basics of living. You can’t consume your way to contentment.

Bread has two ingredients – physical security (food, water, shelter), and connection to trust worthy loving people.

Were I to learn I would live 1000 years, would the urgency with which I write slack?

And it occurred to me…

If not for fear of death, life would – in it’s innate sloth – slack and then cease.

The only known path to immortality is division or procreation… and so we do.

It moves the great organism that is the universe. Kept in motion by pleasure and fear. Ying yang. whatever. There are no more great ideas left, but I hear what was old is new.

The talkers on NPR say that, before agriculture came along, we were a fairly egalitarian species – with regard to gender equity at least. Agriculture, coming on the scene, apparently led to the greater physical strength of men gaining a significantly larger share of social capital – in the form of grain. This would seem to be the first great energy grab in human history. Every once in a while, there would be some powerful women, but mostly men ran stuff.

This went on until some smart guy invented industry. Vacuum cleaners and electric washing machines gave women time to think. And, as women were thinking, thinking started to become a much more valuable tool than lifting.

So this whole gender role thing is on its head compared to the last lots of years. Men used to know what they were about. You know, hunting, clubbing, shooting, ploughing. We had rituals for it; festivals for it; all manner of phallic stuff laying around… Fuck, I’m going to go hang my head in shame, in my fucking man cave, and wait for No Shave November. Women weren’t different, cooking, making babies, milking themselves and other mammals. Everyone knew what was expected.

Today, people lack valid archetypes. Man, woman, penis, vagina. At most, we have polar opposite caricatures of stereotypes. We are fed a steady stream of images which seek to outdo one another by orders of grotesqueness. All balance and order have left Western culture. Hell, yes, I participate. Have you seen the shit you can get from stores?!?!?

We have exchanged inequity for excessive inequity. No longer the inequity of gender, but the inequity of geography. Never before has where you are born mean to much to how you will live. It is literally the difference between flying and walking.

I heard the normal order of things is to have several human species running around the place. I do not think we are all currently moving in the same direction. We have replaced geographical segregation with self imposed geographical segregation – a segregation for which the ability to travel greater distances, with greater ease, decreases the likelihood of mixing genes with outside groups. Call it intelligentsia, the meritocracy, Oligarchy, whatever you like, but those with money, certain physical characteristics, certain cognitive and emotional types, and other traits deemed favorable by this organism’s zeitgeist, are forming a distinct genetic pool, all connected by the internet and air travel. At the same time, the people from this very group are the most likely to have access to the potential advantages of genetic engineering. This may further increase the number of genetic differences between human populations. I wonder what it means to our sense of humanity if we are truly moving further away from one another.

It was nice seeing you tonight…

with your hair short like that

I’d never seen it that way before

Things change…

I’m not mad. I don’t think you are either. I don’t want to ask.

Smile

Don’t look too affected effected both

It was nice seeing you tonight…

To be so close to someone I used to know; so far from who you are.

I wish I could take the me I am to meet the you you were.

It was nice to see you tonight…

I’ve never done this before – a blog that is.  I think I’ll use it as a place to put things.  Maybe I’ll take things from it as well.  That’s how the best stuff works, right?  Put some in… wait… take some out… We’ll see.