The World Desperately Needs Us But NOT Online

Today is Wednesday, January 27, 2016 and the good ol' Seattle Times has given me the best excuse to make a decision to stop blogging.

So let's get right to it. What was on the pages of the Times this morning?

It was the confluence of two different but somehow related stories that really caught my attention. On A2 the headline reads: Panel urges all U.S. adults be screened for depression. Then, on B1 the headline reads: Mayor Ed Murray defends actions on homelessness.

There is something about that A2 headline that kinda makes me laugh. If you've been paying attention at all to how people feel these days about the prospects for their lives, do you really think screening them for depression is going to unearth anything valuable? If it is not obvious by now what would drive the average person to be depressed, confirming the fact won't change a damn thing.

It is a newspaper article after all so they're required to get quickly to the bottom line: lost productivity cost an additional $23 billion in 2011. Lost? I don't think so. You may have picked up on the fact that the productivity of an American worker is not reflected in his wages but in the profits sent much further up the food chain. Nothing is lost. We're just bumping up against the limits of corporate greed by seeing the toll it takes on people whose only ambition is to work for a living.

Perhaps the strangest statement came at the very end. The task force gave the recommendations a grade of B based on how much clinical evidence there is to support their findings, a rating that should provide coverage for the screenings under the Affordable Care Act.

So let me get this straight: If theses folks all agree that the depression situation is bad enough, well, gosh, then if we rate it as above average in severity and importance then at least the govmint will pay for us to tell folks, uh, yup, you're depressed all right.

...But dang! Please don't start abusing stuff or gettin' in trouble cuz darn it, you just won't be productive enough.

Please take this pill instead. NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEXT! 

It turns out even the mayor of our fair city has reason to be depressed these days. The Times tells us: Seattle will spend about $50 million in 2016 to combat homelessness, but Murray said the city can't solve it unless it receives more help.  

I'm not always a fan of Ed Murray, but I will say he appears to know what he's talking about when he says:

It's about the fact that we don't fund mental health. It's about the fact that we're in a national heroin epidemic, he said. It's about the fact that income inequality has made it hard for some people who work to sleep anywhere except in a tent in an illegal spot.

Both of these articles make it abundantly clear that we have plenty of experts who know exactly how to identify the causes of problems. Unfortunately, even when these problems are at the peak of crisis the main cry is always that somehow there isn't enough money to deal with them. As long as we believe this we will suffer the consequences. There is enough money in the world, its just managed by people who control way too much of it. You do know the difference between a billion and a million, right?

At times like this I am often reminded of the adage that in this world there is always enough for human need but not enough for human greed.

My human need is to step back from time spent online so that I can better attend to the matters of real life. I've allowed myself to get so caught up in the things that bring us all down. It takes time away from what I might be doing to bring my loved ones and I back up. Redirecting the only energy I've got is pretty important business.

I've loved blogging, but I'm just one more voice in all the noise that we're drowning in. I'd like to see what I can do besides "pushing electrons" as my darling husband puts it.

So it is with a sense of relief and fairly drawn conclusion that I bid a very fond farewell to The Twenty-First Century Citizen. I appreciate any and all who have read my meandering thoughts and chimed in or even just smiled.

Hang in there. Be well. Love your peeps.

Writing the never ending story

How do you know when the book is finished?

Earlier this year someone advised me that maybe I was too hasty in wanting to finish the production of my book.

More editing, more revisions. I realized that I already knew my energy was spent. If I had forced myself to go through more rounds of revisions, I would have created a different work, but would it be better?  Everything in me said: No. I'm done.

For better or worse, my book became its present form from that decision. I realized that so many of the things I touched on, especially in chapter five and the epilogue, could have been expanded and made more elaborate. That would have taken more time, effort, ruminating.

Ah, rumination. It is what cows and goats do. When you have multiple stomachs it comes easy. I only have one and I have to save it for current nourishment. I can only be an expert in how to manage my own life. I look to the experience of others to see if anyone else is doing it better or smarter. The people I mention in the book are prominent in the area known as "thought leadership." It is a useful term.

It is difficult to describe or explain that sense of knowing that the finish line has been achieved. To give you a Hollywood metaphor, it is similar to when George Bailey, after having seen life in Bedford Falls without his presence, realizes he still wants to live.



He tells Clarence that he wants to live again. "Please, God, I want to live again." At the invocation of the deity, it begins to snow and Bert shows up to take him home.

The events described in the book changed me. Some for the better, some definitely for the worse. Some tendencies I already knew I had were made deeper and richer, but not in a good way. I've mixed a sort of gallows humor with all the characteristics of a classic misanthrope. Even as I think the human species is worth saving, I think it shouldn't be. I'm kind of beginning to see why the major world religions believe in a god oriented toward punishment. If I were god, I'd say we're long over due for a plague of some sort. But wait, you could argue we are in multiple global ones right now, and we just don't see it. But all that is just mind play at the moment.

I want to get back to real life. Even though it may be economically hindered, it is still mine, and I'll take whatever I have left of it. I'm ready any time, Clarence.

Epigraphs and anticipation

As I eagerly await this Saturday's event, I'm on a continuous path of imposing organization to my physical environment. Just as I think entropy is going to overtake me, I come across a piece of paper on which I wrote something that I thought was important. Today's finding comes from the wonderful Barbara Ehrenreich:

Never wallow in your troubles; despair must be kept private and brief. This is typical advice, and I've tried to follow it as much as humanly possible. The drawback of being intelligent and well-informed is a dangerous inability to think your despair doesn't matter. Even if you come to the conclusion that ultimately you can do very little about it, you must still, at least, consider the source of it carefully enough to understand the real root.

This is from her autobiography, Living With a Wild God. I have since come across many other quoted sentences that didn't make their way into the book, thoughts from Dmitry Orlov, Chris Hedges, and so many more. It seems there is no end to all the things that might have made their way into the book. The endless process of picking and choosing what to include and how to weave it into the narrative kept me busy for two years.

Now with the launch of my book I'll have to construct conversations around why I did it and what the hell I thought would come of it. At least, I'll have to think about how I might like to answer some of the more typical questions that will arise. As with so many unanticipatable events, I'll probably just open my mouth and start expounding on whatever is forefront in my mind at the moment. I've been living this topic for so long it isn't difficult just to begin. Where it goes from there--Who knows?

There is a certain relaxation you can experience when you realize how worn down you are. Like an old river rock, you've been battered by the endless stream of water washing over you for so long, that now your edges are gone, the surfaces are smooth, you are perfect as an egg, naked, raw, and unmistakable. This is what I aspire to be.

I have no ulterior motives left. Sitting with a certain emotional honesty is all that matters in the end. No one's truth is greater than you're own. We show up so that we can stand in witness with others who are willing to be there with us and if we're lucky they'll say: Yeah, you know, I think I see your point. I still think I would have done it differently, but to each his own....

And so ends this stream of consciousness for today.

Sightline schmoozefest

Today I was invited to an event at Sightline Institute. The topic of conversation for this event next month will be climate change. The email touted conversations and social connections as the way to begin creating change.

As a member of the Sightline community, you're part of a web of connections that make Sightline so effective, and that ultimately leads to change. 

I hope they're right.

Perspective Shift

This afternoon as I was working in the home office. The distracting whirr of the local leaf blower guy grabbed my attention as it usually does. This offending noise has been an ongoing situation. I have yet to figure out how to deal with it effectively. The guy can only shrug and say it is his job. This time he pulled out his cell phone and called the company he works for and allowed me to have my say with his employer who was surprisingly well versed in the city's noise abatement stipulations. She was far more defensive than she needed to be. I knew I was beat.

So what does this have to do with a climate change think tank? Follow the breadcrumbs.

We've got this lovely, noisy, energy-swilling device created to make work lighter. The device is manufactured because ostensibly it is filling a need in the marketplace. However, the work is nothing more than collecting leaves and moving them to trash bins. This is typically done with a rake. As I have personally discovered, with big jobs this is accomplished quite neatly with collecting the leaves onto a blue tarp, pulling up the corners of the tarp and hauling them to the proper dumping site. Good, clean work done efficiently with human energy.

Inject machinery usage, multiple energy requirements: electricity, oil for parts etc., and the noise pollution in a densely populated neighborhood, and what do you get?

You get some wiseacre, yours truly, left wondering why abandon the rake?

And again, what does this have to do with the good-hearted think tank?

Well, if I'm going to be encouraged to chat about the current state of climate change action, this is what I need:

• I need a say in revising this version of human "progress" with machinery usage.
• I'd like to have a conversation with the management company that only knows me as someone who complains.
• I'd like to convince this guy to be concerned about his hearing that he will soon be losing. He doesn't wear ear protection. I'm not kidding; you can hear this machine from two blocks away.
• I'd like to know if the wasted energy use and human impact explanations are understood.

Every human interaction, every expenditure of extracted industrial energy is open to scrutiny. Presumably this guy is getting paid for his labor. I am certain that the 45 minutes he blows leaves would be more effectively used raking. He simply shows up and does his "work" and there is no measure of effectiveness for the effort taken to redistribute leaves. (That's right. He doesn't collect them or dispose of them later. He just blows.) He gets a paycheck and so the economy is happy, but everything else suffers and continues unseen.

Allow me to be effective in one tiny area of life and I'd gladly show up to schmooze about how humanity can save itself from climate disasters--one leaf blower at a time.