In some ways I feel like one of the luckiest people, but in other ways my life has seen some struggle.
One of the ways I feel incredibly lucky is in the crew of close friends I have had over the years, throughout the differing phases of my development.
___________________________________
My intention with this post is to draft an explanation as to the role that negativity has played, and continues to play I my life, thoughts and conversations.
I offer this to all of my friends past and present, with the hope that it can help you all understand this aspect of my personality.
__________________________________
As I look about me in the world, there are things that I dearly love and that excite me, thrill me, intrigue me and that I want to be a part of. There are also things that I understand, that seem cool or important or in some other way real, tangible aspects of life & times.
However, there are, sadly some things that one sees or hears about that seem to fall outside of these parameters, and that is what this post is about –
Some of these things are, like, unfortunate things, short comings, hang-ups, draw-backs, etc. These things we learn to live with; These are the Brakes, as the saying goes.
What I would like to discuss here are the things that are going on not because they are some sort of problem or issue in an otherwise OK thing, but rather these things are the result of an initial primary misunderstanding. In other words, these things are not stemming from some sort of inherited wrinkle in the face of a standard practice of life dealing, AKA survival strategy/system.
No, these are things that in and of themselves represent a mistake. They are mistaken steps.
______________________
Its like there is some sort of panic room where these babies breed – and somehow the rest of us are like out here going, “Gee, I wish life didn’t suck sometimes so much.”
Well you know, here’s the funny thing – the more I live, the more I’m like, “You know what?, this stuff is a joke!” The only reason we have to deal with it is because people put up with it in the first place.
And here is where the Negativity comes in –
Isn’t negativity basically the most basic form of non-violent protest. You know, this is me saying, “No!”
________________________
So I guess here’s the real issue/deal here:
How can you be positive about being negative?
You know I’m looking back here going, Awgh gee, all these amazing, great, incredible people I have known who have touch my life, and all I can think about is all of the negative stuff I have said to them; not about them, mind you; just the negative statements I have made about the world as part of our conversations, when I have been with them –
and – that are still part of my conversations today.
__________________________________
__________________________________
Currently, the thing I have been making negative statements about is the marketing of “Smart Phones”. I have been telling people when I talk to them, as part of a mutual dialog that is being held about the world around us, life & times, etc., that I think that the massive amount of advertising of Smart Phones that is currently ongoing, represents a liability, or has implicit negative consequences.
So why do I feel this way?
Here is my confession:
I honestly think that it is a fact that our culture has been Out of Balance, as is implied by the title of the epic film Koyaanisqatsi, 1982, ( Time lapse footage, directed by Godfrey Reggio, music by Philip Glass.) The film’s title is a Hopi Indian word meaning: crazy life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a state of life that calls for another way of living.
And what I am trying to say here is that, I will not sit by and let this crazy life be reborn in another generation of fools.
_________________________
OK to get off topic here and be positive; information technology in principle is totally cool, like awesome. We have every reason to believe that we have reached a point where we can turn the corner, stem the tide, on chaos and confusion. People everywhere should be able to access what they need to know to do what they do almost instantaneously, etc.
This is the promise.
_________________________
How sad is it that this sweet promise is followed so closely by corruption, and the patented insanity of Greed?
The marketing of cell phones today, I believe goes too far and is causing us harm. It does this in the sense that it is giving people The Wrong Idea. It is causing people to put the importance of cell phones Out of Balance in importance in their minds. While this is not totally critical for adults, who generally will know better, this sort of false promise has truly terrible consequences for our youth. Quite obviously our society is today suffering, and in some ways quite badly, from mis-placed/directed priorities.
We literally cannot afford to have our consciousnesses artificially influenced in such a way that we end up with a collective misunderstanding of the way life works, ie what is truly important in life.
In other words – there is no possible way for a Smart Phone to be more important that a true friendship, etc.
Every second that we allow this message to be propagated is a moment someone has the chance to become lost in it and to get The Wrong Idea about things.
Unfortunately, the makers of these messages are still being driven, at some level, by primal fear and the insecurity it breeds.
We as the public are so surrounded by these packs of lies, we are subsumed in a sea of false objectives and fake promises.
My ex-wife calls it: Dianetics, as slang way of referring to the way life becomes corrupted through misunderstanding, driven by fear and hate, etc.
Somewhere, right now today someone is teaching their child to operate is a cloud of deceit and insecurity.
Because they truly believe that the only way to get ahead is too get over on everyone, and everything, else.
How can we continue to live like this.
How can we continue to accept that someone will feel superior and someone – inferior.
This is all wrong.
_____________________________
The more I live the clearer this becomes.
I now know this is what I have been fighting against for my entire young life; this is what was holding me down, this is what was the problem – all around us, in every town, in all of our cities.
Surely, as Martin Luther King preached – This Must Be Defeated ( finally and permanently, discredited and abandoned – Haile Selassie I ).
These sentiments have defined my life, as I write them today I can honestly say that I have held them, and honored them throughout my adult life.
_____________________________
Therefore, the positive thing that we must see in negativity, is like seeing the positive in losing.
This is precisely the challenge that our society faces. We must be strong enough, mature enough, insightful enough, to realize, to see, to understand, that it is this side of human nature that we must lose.
We must now leave it behind.
We must cease our addiction to it; and the perverse fruit it bears.
_____________________________
And what is even more Positive is that – WE CAN DO THIS!
How incredible is it to think that – in order stop another cycle of this disease all we have to do is stop people from selling it; to stop ourselves from thinking it, and so from buying into it.
Let us take it off our air waves.
Let us revel in our ability to produce an enormous volume of positive celebrations of life itself, real life; the actual lives we are living. ( & not the worlds into which fear is driving us.)
Let us live and breathe the truth that this is where we must rest – Let us have the power to hold all of our relationships in this spirit, be they our Boss or our Employee, Father or Mother, Boyfriend or Girlfriend, Older or Younger.
_________________________
So that’s that –
In conclusion, it is not OK to sit by and let things occur that are actively generating a problem.
By speaking up, in this case against the thing we disagree with, can we not see that what’s really going on here is powerful.
This is the opposite of defeat. This is taking command; it is asserting control.
I do this not to be mean, or for my own selfish interest. I do this because in this way I can, everyone of us can, take the power away from what we are against.
Therefore I will say this – I must ask anyone who is reading this, anyone who knows me – trust me; do you trust me?
Do you believe, do you know in your heart, that the people you talk to, the people you share your life with, are looking out for you. Are they feeding the best of you? Are they training you away from your problems?
Do you keep the sacred place where these transactions occur safe?
I pledge to use this negativity with the utmost conscientiousness; to arrest failure, to stop waste and to redirect energy from problems to solutions.
This is all I have ever tried for.
Furthermore this is all that this can do, where I was wrong, where I was in excess, then the tide has run against me.
In other words, it’s not that Smart Phones are in and of themselves the problem, quite the contrary; rather it is how we allow our perceptions to be influenced that is the question.
This is what we can do, can we not? We can have a modern world that is not out of balance, a world in which Old and more so: Ancient, things share equal value in our minds, with the newest of things. In which technology serves as much as a tool as does money, which after all is just that: a financial tool.
______________________________
Best of Luck Everyone!
– Heron
