Well, that escalated quickly (or how the NRA went from lobbyist org to terrorist org in one easy commercial)

O hai. I'm back. I know, you're thrilled.

Truth is, I haven't been writing a whole lot about things that have been going on, because it's gotten me too damn depressed. That, and I've been hella busy with life, because, well, life. That's also had me kind of depressed. Frankly, I can only yell "FUCK YOU!" at everyone, everything, and the Universe so many times before I grow physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually hoarse.

Anyway, this gun insanity. I wrote a small thing this morning, and I'm putting it here, too, because I'm genuinely disgusted not only with the NRA (I mean, not that I wasn't before, but this has gone too far) but with everyone who's decided that gun control = "THEY'RE A-COMIN' FER MAH GUUUUNNNNNNS!" as opposed to, you know, limiting the amount of damage that can be done by limiting access to machines that are only designed to kill human beings as opposed to, say, dinner. So here:

(If you're wondering, it has to do with this in specific: The latest from the NRA, which everyone should be really, truly, and genuinely terrified by.)

Oh, but they don't endorse violence.

This? This -is- violence. This is mental and emotional abuse. The aim is to create self-styled soldiers fighting against an imaginary foe working to undermine Americans' freedoms. This is the sort of thing that's -encouraging- the violence that we've already seen among paranoid survivalist groups and neo-Nazis. It's a desperate bid for support from a lobbyist group who's losing left, right, and center.

How is this okay? Please, enlighten me. We're at a point in social history where we're talking about the idea of arming teachers and having guns in -churches-. We're talking about allowing for the potential of bloodshed in the last bastions of innocence, rather than talking about getting to and eradicating the root causes of the problems. 

The roots aren't in mental health, either, so don't even try that one. They're in the altogether manufactured illusion that certain groups of people have become marginalized, have had their voices taken away -- when all people who have actually been marginalized historically have worked to do is level the playing field. And you know who's creating that illusion? Folks like the one who made this ad.

We're supposed to be better than this. We're supposed to have evolved.

We -are- better than this, as long as we have the courage to allow ourselves to be. We don't need this divisiveness anymore. Please, please don't feed it.

I Pledge Allegiance to Something Something Something and Justice for All

Drowning in cold water

Right, so. I don't quite know why this is bugging me so much -- wait, scratch that, I do, and I will address it below.

Let me get a couple things out of the way up front:

I am fully aware of how devastatingly horrible ALS is
I know how the challenge works
I'm glad that so much money has been raised to fund the science necessary to a cure and the ALS Association is, apparently, very good about the way it uses money
Perhaps most importantly, I am not against doing the challenge

These things being said, however, I'm really rather disgusted by the way it's become a mini-polarization machine. When it comes to this issue, pretty much the entirety of the Internet has become "don't read the comments" territory.  On the one hand, if you point out what you might see as an issue with it, you're wrong and you don't care about/hate people with ALS and their families (and probably puppies, kittens, and babies, you evil bastard). On the other, if you embrace the challenge, you don't care about the environment, you're seeking attention, you're caught up in a trend and you're doing something that's basically the next step up from "slacktivism," and you'd apparently suffer dumping water over your head to give less money to a worthy cause.

I should hope obviously, neither of these is the case.  I believe the people who are doing the challenge have big hearts and open wallets (in the charitable-contribution sense).  I think they want to do the right thing and make people aware that this is an area of research that could use more financial support, and it's a creative and fun way to do it.  I love the people who are doing it, because they're caring folks (the ones I know, anyway, and barring celebrities because they are by definition attention seekers).

That does not mean that there aren't problems with this, and I only offer them up in the spirit of examining our motives individually and as a society.

One of the problems I see comes from the "calling-out" aspect.  Once you take the challenge, you're supposed to "call out" or "nominate" three other people to do it, too.  Here's the thing with that: whether you see it or not, it's a subtle social pressure.  People see that you've been called on to either dump-and-donate or just straight up donate a significantly higher sum of money.  Let's suppose that a "nominee" is living paycheck-to-paycheck, barely making ends meet.  That $10 s/he spends to dump water over their head might severely impact their budget (and don't you dare point out that it's only a nominal amount of money; I've been in that place and, let me tell you, it's an enormous stressor when you don't have the cash to put gas in your tank to get to work).  At the same time, s/he doesn't want to look like a jerk in front of people if they don't do the challenge.  The thing of it is, you may not know just how strapped for cash someone is when you "call them out."  You could be putting someone in a miserable position.

I also have to wonder how many people did this precisely because they were called out -- would they have done it on their own otherwise?  Sure, it's fun to make yourself look ridiculous in public (I do it all the time), but would you, of your own accord, choose to do it if someone hadn't "challenged" you to?  I suspect the answer is "no" for a lot of people.  So, you're sort of pushing someone into doing something, maybe.  Maybe the cash is nominal to them, and they don't mind taping themselves being silly, and that's great if that's the case.  And sure, a lot of people simply aren't going to give money of their own accord, and that's sad in and of itself, because we're here to help each other.  I'd like to think that more folks are more charitable than I realize, though, because despite the fact I'm not Christian I have always remembered this:

Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. “Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (Matthew 6:1-4)

In this case, yes, I know people are intentionally doing silly things in the spirit of encouraging other people to do the same silly things in a spirit of good faith, fun and kind-heartedness.  This is not how I choose to practice charity (publicly, that is), but that's me and not you out there in the 'tubes necessarily. I'm not the person for public, or even semi-public, spotlight when it comes to how I feed my heart. I'm also not the one who's going to force someone to be "altruistic." I can encourage, I can speak, but my personal morality has an issue with out-and-out saying to someone publicly "Hey, do this for a good cause! And don't forget to show us!"

And speaking of "minimal," I've read a lot of reactionary complaints about how the amount of water being wasted on this is "minimal."  Well, just like the cash thing, that's a relative statement, isn't it? What's "minimal" to me or to you might be a real gift to someone in a different position. In the case of basic environmental justice, each bucket that is dumped (and ohgod yes I know some people use pool water, etc.) is water that could have been used to water vegetables (and yes I'm sure some people have found a way to do this) to feed people, or given as drink to people who are suffering a lack of potable water. There's a drought on in parts of this nation, if you weren't aware; and even if it weren't here, there are a whole heck of a lot of folks in the world who don't have it nearly as good in terms of water, let alone money, as we have it in the States. "Minimal" amounts of things add up pretty quickly, as we've seen by the enormous slew of money raised by this fundraiser. Part of the problem, though, is that the "minimal" amounts of water add up, too, and could do a hell of a lot more immediate good in other ways. We've become very wasteful in our collective relative comfort.

This speaks to a broader issue for me: considering the very roots of problems and focusing on fixing them, rather than band-aiding the problems themselves, and shaking ourselves out of the complacency that that collective comfort has lulled so many of us into.  Some things, like genetic disorders, there's nothing else you can do but raise funds and apply them properly to the advancement of science, and I get that. But what about all these fundraisers for different kinds of cancer and for other diseases that have been proven to have at least partial environmental causes? I found it rather funny (not ha-ha funny, but funny peculiar, as my fifth-grade teacher used to say) that at the same time I was rolling all this around in my head, I read an article about how DuPont wants the standards of toxic material cleanup eased so that it doesn't have to spend as much money removing hazardous (and proven carcinogenic) pollutants from sites in New Jersey. Why don't we have a fundraiser to, I don't know, hire a bevy of lawyers to force change in environmental law? Why aren't we having public conversations about that? (In this case, at least for now, the DEP/EPA are sticking to their rigorous standards, but the cynic in me feels that it's only a matter of time before they back down in the face of stupid-large sums of money.) Why not a fun-run where the cost of entry is at least one old piece of e-waste, which is something the DEP is raising its focus on because of the hazardous materials contained in electronics equipment? Why not an event to raise awareness about the evils of styrofoam (not kidding)?

It seems like I'm traveling a little afield, but not only is that par for the course around here but it's also a natural consideration for me when I see the way we're attacking each other over the "Ice Bucket Challenge".  It has proven itself to be a ridiculously effective vector for both awareness and fundraising (I, personally, am still a little stumped over the "awareness" issue, but again, that's me). How aware are we of ourselves and of each other, though, if we cannot think about or publicly discuss a simple thing like this without immediately resulting to "You're heartless if you think this is stupid" or "You're just seeking attention and trying to avoid giving more money"? If we automatically polarize over an issue this small, I cannot imagine how the larger problems -- the roots -- are going to be repaired, because it's going to take the vast majority of us working in concert to effectively tackle things like proper environmental maintenance and peace among nations. 

Then again, maybe that's why the small things are placed into the center of public consciousness: to keep us divided. If we're not thoughtfully debating and coming to some sort of common ground on the small things, we're never going to do so when it comes to the big ones. That's the "awareness" I hope to see most of all.

A question I cannot help but ponder

Stress.

Stress is bad for me, it's bad for you, it's bad for everyone.  I've learned some tools to help control the stress in my daily life, but some days I suck at using them.  Some of my stress is more deep-seated than just deadlines, commuting and the age-old problem of what's for dinner.  That's something that seems to run in my family.

See, we (by which I mean in this case my paternal family line) tend to take things to heart.  By no means is this unique to the human condition, but for us it seems to be a major contributor to the issues of mental illness that have plagued us for generations.  It's not just simple things like, "Someone said I'm a jerk."  It's wider than that, it's global.

Here's an example: my father, who was a relatively young firefighter/EMT at the time, was driving along and saw a family parked by the side of the road, clearly in need of assistance.  This was the late sixties/early seventies, so it wasn't especially unusual for someone who could actually render assistance to stop and offer, which is precisely what Dad did.

You know what these fuckers did?  One of them pulled a knife on him.

This didn't do a whole lot for his view of humanity.  I won't swear to it, because I can't know his mind completely, but I suspect it had a great deal of impact on how he saw his fellowmen.  I know his view of humanity dimmed as he aged, but the light of hope never completely went out for him, not until his dying day.  He served for as long as he was physically and mentally able, in one form or another.

Unfortunately for me, I seem to have inherited the darker view of humanity.  It's made me far more cynical than he was (which is difficult to believe, for those of you who knew him and know me).  I'm skeptical of humanity as a rule, and very little of my experiences over my short time on this earth have helped alleviate that.  I've been betrayed, insulted, and punished.  The irony in all of this is that, like my father, I have always been driven by the need to serve.  Hell, when I was inducted into the National Honor Society back in the day, I spoke on "service" as one of the core tenets of said society (granted, the NHS, like lots of other things, was/is another way to say "I'm a better test-taker than you, so I'm better than you," but I digress, as usual).  Service to others is a fundamental aspect of my core beliefs, and something I can't help but avoid.

So what does all of this have to do with stress?  Or, to put more fine a point on it, how is this-all contributing to my stress level?  Well, increasingly, the source of my distress is other people (in the very broadest sense).  As a former co-worker, who very much shared my dim view of life, the universe and everything once said: "I love humanity, it's people I can't stand."  I expect that wasn't original to him, just like it's now not original to me.  So, I find myself in the position of caring about the people around me while they act like -- well, buttheads, by and large -- and I don't have the luxury of crawling into a bottle to avoid the cognitive dissonance the way my forebears did.  I chose to break that cycle long ago.  Instead, once in a while, I retreat when I feel overwhelmed by the sheer selfishness and barbarism of others; it's never for as long as I like, and I know in my heart of hearts that it's really strictly a band-aid measure and I have a long way to go in terms of accepting people as they are. 

My brain has distilled all of this down into one plaintive question, which I ask with the most sincerity: Why do people, by and large, find it so goddamned difficult to just be decent?  Not even the work I've done in evolutionary theory, where I often find deeply-buried motivations that most of us tend to overlook (since, y'know, we're all enlightened and shit compared to the rest of the Animal kingdom) can really help me on this one.  I mean, one of the most basic reasons for pair-bonding back when we were baby humans came from sharing -- playing to our strengths for mutual benefit.  Where we really start to run into problems is when our social/familial groups feel our resources are threatened.

We seem to have taken that last bit and run with it, though -- and run, and run, and run.  It's parlayed itself into things as simple as how we handle whether we open a door for someone else to things as complicated as the unrest in Ferguson or Gaza.  Sure, I'm oversimplifying a bit, but really, when you think about it, not all that much.  The selfishness of the human condition, which began like many other things as something of an evolutionary benefit, has really become a maladaptation as it's taken on a life of its own.  It really didn't take long for that to happen, either, from the standpoint of looking back over thousands of years of human history.

I've talked before (and at length, it's one of those things) about how I know we're better beings than our behavior toward each other would have one think, and it frustrates me to know that that's true.  I mean, really, it's so much easier to be kind to someone than it is to be a jerk -- and the benefits are far greater.  It's that whole "it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile" chestnut; that's something I can attest to, too, because my particular medical conditions make me pretty aware of what my muscles are doing whether I want to be or not.  I notice when I frown, and I notice how much fucking work it is.  It's far more work to stir the festering shit-pot than to let things go and "be the better person".  I mean, seriously, have you ever cooked something that requires a lot of attention?  It's a lot of work.  Much easier to, I don't know, have a bowl of cereal or order a pizza or something.

So, why do people act like selfish three-year-olds instead of mature adults?  That's where ego comes into play, I suspect, and ego does not forget the lessons of its ancestors: if you "protect" what you have, you not only get to keep it, but if you extend that concept of "protection" outward in some weird individual Manifest Destiny way you might wind up with more, and since some is good, more is better.  Okay, it may not be the ego as much as the superego or id, but, quite frankly, I'm not a psychologist so shut up -- I mean it in the spiritual sense more than the psychological one, though the two interplay something fierce.  It takes so little in terms of physical/mental effort to do someone a kindness, but so often Ego exerts itself and asks, "why bother?  More for me."  That "more" could be more time, more focus, more energy, more food ... the list, she is long.  But that's what the deciding factor comes down to on an unconscious level: "Why bother?  More for me."

But do you need it?  Really?  Is two minutes out of your day going to kick your ass that fucking much?  Could the time and energy you're spending on yourself (and your self-aggrandizement) not be more fully and better used tending your own garden for good instead of evil, or reaching out a hand to another in service?  Do you have to be an asshole?

Maybe, if we all approached each interaction by asking ourselves this question: "Do I have to be an asshole here?" our lives would be drastically changed.  It all comes back to examining our motives, which is something most people just don't do because they have the self-awareness of a piece of toast.  And sometimes, the answer is "Yes, I do," if only because you are, as someone once described me, "that cold, wet, fish-slap of reality to the back of the head" -- though even then, you may be doing a service by giving someone a perspective of reality that is sorely needed.

So, in sum: why are you doing what you're doing?  Why did you not bother to hold the door open for the person entering the store right behind you?  Why did you cut that person off?  Why did you feel the need to put your energy into painting an ugly picture of another person?  What's your motivation?  Do you really have to be an asshole? 

For the love of the gods, and each other, the answer nine times out of ten is no.  So knock it the fuck off, already, 'cause I, for one, am sick and tired of it -- literally.  I suspect most of us are, too, whether we know it or not.

Oh, good, something else to look at.

You may or may not be interested to know that I've started a tumblr.  It will mostly wind up being things I've found that I find amusing.  Enjoy.

http://jenniforensic.tumblr.com/

On "Religious Freedom"

So after a lovely afternoon in the park being all pagan and stuff, we were on our way home and passed a church.  This church has one of those great changeable light-board things (wonder how much -that- cost out of folks' tithes, but I digress).  It read "STAND UP FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM".

Okay, so I've been hearing this cry a lot again of late -- you know, the "CHRISTIANS ARE BEING PERSECUTED IN THIS NATION" one -- and, well, I'm frankly tired of it.  I find it absolutely laughable, truthfully.  I mean, are people knocking on your doors and dragging you out of your houses to beat you or something, and all the news outlets have either missed it or are participating in some huge cover-up?  Are people burning arcane symbols of some form or another on your lawns?  Are you being killed because you're Christian?  What's that?  Didn't think so. 

Do you even know what "persecution" means?  If you could find someone left over from the Crusades, I'd bet they could tell you.

Some of this, I understand, probably has to do with the gutting of DOMA earlier this week.  You know what?  Get the fuck over it.  You want to believe "traditional" marriage at the time the Christ was alive was 1 male + 1 female?  That's a nice thing to think, but it's pretty wrong.  See, numerous forms of both polygyny and polyandry were common in -many- societies, including -gasp- the Homeland of the Bible!  And and AND!  Abe himself had concubines despite being married to Sarah, which, when you really think about it, means that he (like many other notables in the Bible) kept a harem of women on the side in a form of sexual slavery that's, well, pretty awful.  So shut up, back off, and go have a nice, big, heaping helping of real-live history and anthropology along with your Bible study.  If you start feeling funky when wibbly-wobbly bits of truth start sinking in a little, you might want to talk to a counselor or take a Xanax or something.

Beyond that, okay.  Like I said, I spent the afternoon outdoors, being all pagan-y and suchlike.  I tend to do that, being a pagan and all.  I find my gods in nature and in other people (crazy talk, I know, right?).  I know people who are Christian and are very open about their beliefs -- good for them.  I'm happy that they've found a connection with Deity that serves them well and gives them purpose in life.  The fact that they're unkind and dishonest is, evidently, beside the point to most people, but it burns me something awful.  You know why?  Because their Bible also tells them that  "'A man or woman who is a medium or spiritist among you must be put to death. You are to stone them; their blood will be on their own heads" (Our good friend Leviticus, 20:27).  Guess what?  Most of the people I know who are mediums, "spiritists", "fortune-tellers", or whatever Christians call us are actually good, decent, hardworking people who would give you the shirt off their back if it would help someone else.  Moreover, they wouldn't step on an ant, let alone stone another person for any reason (except maaaaaybe something especially heinous like child molestation or murder).  Ever hear of the Jains, for instance?  If you haven't, look them up.  I'll wait here.

[Of course, my standard disclaimer here applies: most of the Christians I count among my friends are also decent, hardworking, shirt-off-their-back people, so please don't get all up in arms thinking I mean you if you're reading this.  Also, there are a whole lot of unkind and dishonest pagans, too, just like there are unkind and dishonest athiests, agnostics, Jews, Muslims, Zoroastrians ... you get the point.]

The one question that crosses my mind is this: do Christians not have faith that Deity is big enough, grand enough, and encompassing enough to believe that there -might- be more than one road to finding Him/Her/It/Them?  Is their faith not great enough to include all of those roads?  Is it not even possible, in their eyes, that their god could be -greater- than even they believe He is?  Is the Christ Himself not remembered as saying " ...Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there." (oh, hey, wait, that's from one of the Gnostic gospels, so I'm betting that doesn't count).

How narrow the Christian view of Deity must be!  How limiting! 

... How sad.  Who are -we-, as tiny meatbags on a bitty marble of a world, to limit the Power of Deity to such an extent?  The vastness of the Universe, the incredible forces that bind us all together -- including Deity -- the fullness of the wonders of Spirit, and all you can worry about is what face it wears?

It breaks my heart to know that people exist this way; but it helps me to understand why so many of the words they speak are from a place of bitterness and hate.

If Deity is limitless to you, and infinite, surely you can find it in your heart to show it in the way you act toward others -- and yourselves.  It's hard, I know it is.  We're human, we're frail, we are fraught with issues and contradictions and fears.  I promise, though, letting go of a fear like that of someone not worshipping the same version as you, or two people who love each other becoming legally married regardless of their sex, is not going to end the world.  It's not even going to put it further on the road toward whatever terrible path we're on --

It's going to pull us back.

Human Nature

"I can change almost anything ... but I can't change human nature."

The first time my heart opened, really opened, I wished it closed again immediately. It hurt so much. I couldn't understand why, either. I nearly broke down completely when talking with a Buddhist friend when the conversation got 'round to helping others who were suffering, because "human suffering" is so vast, so monolithic, so impossible to wrap one's head around -- even if you scale it back to one person at a time. It's a great part of my struggle with depression: sometimes, it's my own suffering; sometimes, it's someone else's. Can you imagine becoming so incredibly sad, feeling so incredibly helpless, over someone else's pain?

I'm gonna take a stab in the dark here and say that not too many people understand that feeling. Maybe not those of you who are reading this because you saw it posted on my Facebook, because the chances of your understanding deep empathy are pretty high. That's one of many reasons I call you "friend." Like attracts like and all. My father struggled with a deep sense of empathy, among other things. A strong sense of humanity drove him to do much of what he did in his life -- for good or ill -- and, at the end, nearly did him in. Sure, he was selfish, too. He hung on to the pain he felt and wrapped it around him like a favorite cloak, and used it to justify some of his shittier behavior. Sometimes, I feel that I was rather unfortunate to inherit his sense of empathy. It's driven me to incredible anger, deep depression and overall some very dark places in the recesses of my mind. I wish, instead, that I could go about my business and tend my own garden, happily ignorant of the lives and feelings of my fellow flesh motes. Really, I do. Or, I wish everything could all just be automatically "fixed:: everyone could be happy and carefree, have food in their bellies and a life that filled them with a sense of joy and wonder. Realization of the fact that that will never fucking happen makes me want to punch a hole in the wall next to me.

"But Jenniforensic," you ask, "how do you know it will never happen?" Well, my dear reader, the answer is simple: human nature. It's a concept that's often treated as kind of a "black box," especially among the social sciences. "Human nature" is a great compartment for all those things we cannot somehow logically explain away or pigeonhole. It's where all those behaviors come from that don't seem to have root in, say, upbringing or environment. And, by and large, that compartment tends to be filled with the causes of all the horrible things that we inflict upon each other. There are too few "positive" things -- for lack of a better way to put it -- in there. Those tend to get tossed into another black box: the "human spirit." This is that thing that's glorified every time one of those terrible things from the other box creep out, because it apparently contains things like resilience, humanity, and compassion. You should know I'm actually making my "thoughtfully confused" face while I write this, the one that I make when there's something causing a weird cognitive dissonance in my brain that I feel shouldn't be there, because the reasons for it shouldn't exist, but is.

I'm thinking this through today because a lot has happened lately, globally and locally, that gives me that terrible sense of WTF-fusion. I have this immense perplexity over this "human nature" thing, and primarily this part of it: What is it about us, as big-ol'-brained primates with smartypantsness, resourcefulness and all kinds of talent that causes us to tear each other down, rather than build each other up? Like, why did that old lady find it necessary to bang into me with her cart in the supermarket last week and then give me a dirty look like I'd somehow offended her? (No, that didn't actually happen, it's just an example.) Why did some dumbass with nothing better to do with his time, apparently, knock over a memorial to fallen firefighters? (That actually happened in Trenton about two weeks ago.) Why did two misguided brothers kill three people and destroy the lives of hundreds, if not thousands? (Oh come on, now, I don't have to remind you about that one.) Why are we so cruel?

"Well, that woman is clearly an unhappy person." Fine. Why'd she have to hurt someone else to show it?

"Well, that dumbass didn't understand the value of the memorial." Fine. Why couldn't he have just left it alone?

"Well, those brothers were part of a radicalized sect of some religion." Fine. Why does violence have to be the solution, and why does it have to be justified by pointing out that it's in writing in a holy book? Why was it written there in the first place?  At the end of the day, no matter how many reasons (or excuses) we come up with, questions such as these can all be boiled down to this: No matter what was going on in someone's head or heart, why didn't their sense of humanity stop them from acting incorrectly?

Like many things for Bill O'Reilly, you can't explain it. So, we tend to wind up in that murky black box of "human nature." It's evidently in our nature to act out violently when faced with adversity. Unfortunately, having been a student of human evolutionary history, I honestly can't argue against that very well. We've seemed to co-operate and build communities when it suited us to do so, and fight each other rather than share. In the beginning of our history, this may have made some-- some, mind you -- sense. Here in the crazy-advanced Twenty-First Century (!!!!waitIstilldon'thavemyflyingcarwtf), though, really it doesn't. Or, perhaps more correctly, it shouldn't. There is the potential within us and within this planet to create more than enough resources to support us all, and do it well, if we work together. All this hoarding and moneychanging we're doing really doesn't work for us anymore. Neither does the violence. Granted, just plain hoarding and moneychanging are forms of violence, too, but in this case I'm talking about the interpersonal crap more than anything else. Hitting someone with a grocery cart or blowing someone's legs off isn't even particularly satisfying (not that I would know ... forget I said anything), it's just childish acting out and further illustration of the old axiom that "violence begets violence." And, lest you think I'm just talking about the things that are relatively easily perceived as violent like explosions, I'm not -- I mean all of it. Sexual violence. Emotional violence. Psychological violence. Spiritual violence. All of it. None of it serves us. So much of it anymore is the product of the violence of generations past. That's sort of easily understandable. But ... where does it stop?

Why is it that we, with all our smartypantsness, resourcefulness and so on still choose -- and it is a choice -- to inflict violence, when certainly at this stage we realize that it doesn't serve us anymore? Because we have chosen to. We have chosen the easier path of saying: "This is the way we've always been. As soon as we learned how to make tools, and control fire, we made weapons. We are violent creatures by nature." We have chosen to allow ourselves to stagnate, and to disallow a glorious union to take place: the intersection of "human nature" with "the human spirit." We know that the latter has all that stuff that we like a lot, like crying eagles and hugs and rainbows and puppies, and makes us feel like we can do anything we set our minds to. Is it really going to take some sort of bad-special-effects alien visitation to bring us to the point where we can allow ourselves to become greater than we have historically been as a whole, on an individual basis? Do we really need someone else to remind us that, no matter our philosophical differences, our hearts tell us -- if we care to listen -- that the truest Law is that of Love, and that it can overcome even the basest of black-box tendencies if we permit its enlightenment?

"I can change almost anything ... but I can't change human nature." It's true. One entity, no matter how powerful, cannot change us, and certainly we cannot be changed overnight. We have to do it ourselves, make a conscious choice to do it, one person, one effort at a time. What's more, we have to choose to do it each time. It's often the more difficult choice.

Maybe I'll start by not hitting someone with my grocery cart the next time I go shopping.