Do we really have a chance?

60 Million Bloggers in China!

"Darkness at the break of noon / Shadows even the silver spoon / The handmade blade, the child's balloon / Eclipses both the sun and moon / To understand you know too soon / There is no sense in trying." - Dylan

As a former student of la science politique, I can safely say that the idealism of my youth has faded inversely proportional to my ass hair.

The idea that we can change the world is really only true if we are actually in a powerful position. And usually you can get in a powerful position only by being born into it or by playing the game and paying some 'big-time" dues. Sure there are folks that will say, "That's not true at all, look at Cindy Sheehan, or Julia 'Butterfly' Hill. See all the change they have made!"

To that I reply that this is a classic gambler's fallacy. Let's admit to ourselves that there are no absolutes in this world and in every example of human psychology or sociology, there will be answers on all 3 sides of the coin. With that said, how many individuals can you name that have changed anything of significance? I am speaking of people like me and you and not folks that were born into powerful families or have paid their dues by doing years of hard labor to their bosses and sacrificed their souls in the process to get where they are. Can you say Karl Rove? - One smart bastard on a human emotion (read: manipulation) scale, but not exactly a guy you would want to call your friend...

So about us - what can we do short of suffering a great loss and then deciding we have found our purpose in life (ala Cindy Sheehan with her son, or Julia Hill with the loss of the virgin redwoods) - or maybe that really is the only way to do it. We have to care so much about something that our life is then guided by a sense of purpose - for better or for worse. Otherwise, we are just living the routine, chasing the cheese, and dumbing down in the evening to our drug of choice.

But maybe there IS another (3rd side) option. With that, I will leave the blogosphere with a selection from J.K.
-------

. . . it is important to understand, not intellectually but actually in your daily life, how you have built images about your wife, your husband, your neighbor, your child, your country, your leaders, your politicians, your gods--you have nothing but images.

The images create the space between you and what you observe and in that space there is conflict, so what we are going to find out now together is whether it is possible to be free of the space we create, not only outside ourselves but in ourselves, the space which divides people in all their relationships.

Now the very attention you give to a problem is the energy that solves that problem. When you give your complete attention--I mean with everything in you--there is no observer at all. There is only the state of attention which is total energy, and that total energy is the highest form of intelligence.

Naturally that state of mind must be completely silent and that silence, that stillness, comes when there is total attention, not disciplined stillness. That total silence in which there is neither the observer nor the thing observed is the highest form of a religious mind. But what takes place in that state cannot be put into words because what is said in words is not the fact. To find out for yourself you have to go through it.
-- J. Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known