Thursday, January 06, 2011

Consider yourselves "stung"

I’m no fan of Sting or his safe, trendy political stances...but he did write some decent lyrics back in the day, e.g. “Driven to Tears":

“How can you say that you’re not responsible?/What does it have to do with me? What is my reaction, what should it be/confronted by this latest atrocity?”

Noam Chomsky sez: “You are responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions.”

...but how many of us ever consider the “predictable consequences” of how we eat, what we say, where we shop, how we spend, whom we trust for information, what stances we’re willing to take and/or support? Terror attacks have become increasingly common. More often than not, these atrocities can be traced back to something the US government or the corporations that own it or nations aligned with it have done while we averted our eyes. As Americans, it is our tax dollars that fund the US war machine...and the retribution that war machine provokes cannot be shrugged off by any of us. Our lack of curiosity and suspicion enables the corporate media. Our willingness to trust and believe our leaders empowers them far more than our votes.

“Seems that when some innocent die/all we can offer them is a page in some magazine. Too many cameras and not enough food/this is what we’ve seen.”

Billions of our fellow humans live in abject poverty. Yes, Sting...there are too many cameras (not to mention all the other diversions disguised as consumer electronics) but there is enough food (at least for now). Why are so many starving in places overflowing with resources and what does that have to do with me, you, and every single one of us?

“Protest is futile, nothing seems to get through/What’s to become of our world? Who knows what to do?”

Amen to the protest line (as Mitch Hedberg sez: “I’m against picketing, but I don’t know how to show it.")...and we can readily see what will “become of our world” if we remain on the current path: if a select few continue to rape the planet, hoard the resources, and spend billions to keep our eyes averted and our focus distracted.

Look around...it’s already happening.

Who knows what to do? Just about every single one of us knows what to do...but most have yet to find the impetus to start doing it. It requires seeing with new eyes, making changes in way we live, and perhaps exposing ourselves to a fair amount of sacrifice and risk. The sides are being drawn...but the world’s 587 billionaires cannot stare down the hungry, angry eyes of three billion living on two dollars a day without the support of proxy armies and the tacit approval of distracted, disinterested Westerners.

“Hide my face in my hands/shame wells in my throat.
My comfortable existence is reduced to a shallow meaningless folly”

The ball, as they say, is in our court.

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Another of my recent photos:

Astoria-bound N Train now entering the station

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Poem: “seeing eye-ku"

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Posted by Mickey Z on 01/06 at 05:15 AM
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