Demolishing the Edifices of Our Oppression

It is one thing to topple a single iconic structure, but our overseers have so completely wrapped us in the chains of servitude, breaking a single link will not be enough to slip free. Sport was initially invented by the Greeks to keep citizens out of politics and they are serving the same function more than six centuries later. Even with the recent growing awareness that repeated head injury leads to life-long disability, self-medication with drugs and alcohol and violent temper tantrums in brain damaged individuals that can lead to suicidal tendencies, many of the fans still want to watch the carnage that takes place on football fields across our country. Bringing reason and sensibility to the masses would be a mammoth task if we were to undertake it and one of the towering lies that are used to control us is that football gives "hope" to many underprivileged individuals who have no other route out of poverty. Other sports are equally hailed as a great thing for minorities and others who would normally be chewed up and spit out by our social order, but the tiny fraction of those who come out ahead in their sporting career is unbelievably minute.

Tackling this issue will take a sea change in our attitude toward our own children, valuing them and their brains appropriately. When I was in school, I had routine contact with football players and others players of a variety of sports. On the whole, they seemed normal enough, although the football players were slightly duller than most. Those who made sport their top priority always seemed delusional to me, especially those who were on the football team. If there are around thirty-five teams and forty-five players per team, that means 315 guys will eventually make some money when they finally make the ranks of professional play. Barring the illegal payments that flow to collegiate athletes, which I do not overlook completely, but which only serve to reward and model rule breaking as ethos, guaranteeing that the players who come out of collegiate sport are schooled in how to break rules and get away with it. In my state alone there are more than 315 high schools preaching to their athletes that if they work hard, hit hard and destroy the team on the other side of the ball, that they could be in for some big money when they make it to the NFL at the very least, if they work hard, play harder break whatever rules they can get away with and vanquish their "foes", that some college will at least give them a full ride scholarship. It is also a well-known fact that many of the colleges make "special payments" that can range into the tens of thousands of dollars per year to select athletes who hold promise as much needed young blood for their programs.

I apologize for going so far down this single path, but the sentiment extends to many areas deeply embedded in our culture. If you speak of these things to many in our culture, they screw up their faces as if you are a nut. Why would any of this matter? Why would the game be any less entertaining? Like the games in the Colosseum, many people wonder, if we eliminate this entertainment, what would we do instead? Many fans are completely happy using these events as an excuse to drink too much, snack for three hours straight and opt out of participation in meaningful discussion of any type. Just for fun, I once watched an NFL game with the VCR (video cassette recorder) set to record. Each time the ball was snapped I allowed the machine to record and each time the whistle blew, I paused the device. once the recording was made, the entire game, resembled rugby but only lasted a matter of minutes. Supposedly, the game is supposed to be an hour long and fans always argue this point, but what they neglect to realize is that the clock ticks away at several times that the players are not playing. The fact remains that it only takes a microsecond to permanently damage a brain.

In addition to the sporting world, we have agents that do nothing but police the population, looking for trouble skews their perspective radically. Imagine having to deal with criminals and criminality all day long every day. I know that I would be turned into a grumpy, self-righteous and aggressive bully if I were to go into this profession. Imagine the reality that exists in a sub-culture that can do no wrong, is always supported by the brotherhood of fellow officers and that "knows" where to look for illegal behavior. Much has been written about the fact that three times as many black men are incarcerated for drug crimes as white men, even though the use characteristic for the two groups is nearly identical. Boatloads of ink have been spilled documenting the fact that white collar criminals often get off scot-free while their blue collar cohorts pay the full price of their indiscretions. In my state we have an attorney general who condones illegal behavior as long as it takes place in the halls of power, is perpetrated by campaign donors and whose victims are the general public, so that everyone pays the price while his buddies come out ahead. Ultimately policing the masses and prosecuting them falls to those who feel that they are better suited to make decisions about the lives of others than they are themselves.

Many of these same complexes are at work amongst our doctors. After all, we would not be coming to them for help if we could manage our lives appropriately on out own. Several of my relatives have worked in the hospital and they all have mentioned  that no one dies on the operating table. If there is a cadaver that is in that particular room, they are quickly wheeled into the recovery room before being pronounced dead. This assures that the doctor keeps his record clean. Likewise, in the maternity wards, every intervention possible is made as quickly as possible, even though the fact is that a single procedure increases the likelihood of an array of further obstacles and impediments to the natural outcome. In court, if it ever gets to court, the doctors can say, "We did everything possible." In one of my former lives, I was a childbirth educator. The heap of lies that the whole medical establishment uses to exert power over us is understandable, but certainly not warranted. Tuning in to natural processes, or ultimately understanding them requires the opposite of what most scientific endeavors are seeking to do. Science slices and dices things into their component parts, examining each in turn, trying to understand the whole through close inspection of dislocated parts. In the realm of biology, we can plainly see that sliced and diced life cannot be reconstituted.

A very telling result of medical intervention is the almost instant visceral reaction that doctors have against what they call anecdotal studies. Anyone encouraging a different approach that has been successful can be written off completely and instantly by the use of this powerful word. However, if a patient of theirs takes a medication for their heart and by chance their acne clears up after starting treatment, they will often take that as proof that the drug works for acne. If they see a relationship, it has to be true, but if someone else has had luck using a specific treatment for a specific malady for years, it is still considered anecdotal.

We have similar issues in the ivory towers of our educational institutions, the social service agencies and the news media. Taking them on one at a time cannot wrest power from those who limit our freedoms or micromanage the laws which govern us. All of them must be taken down simultaneously. Luckily, there are young people coming up, who know more than the old farts who grew up on a steady diet of hatred and misunderstanding. We must educate one another on these points or we run the risk of losing even more freedoms to those who seek to oppress us. Giving more and more of our autonomy away in the hopes of becoming safer can only lead to constraint of options that are necessary to adapt to changing conditions.

I would like to know what people from around the world think about these issues, please comment.

Since discovering how to make my own char, I am now liberated from buying charcoal. I built a retort in which to bake wood without oxygen. My superior product to what is sold in most markets also yields a soil enhancement for the garden at extremely low cost. Biochar provides fourteen acres (5.66 ha) of surface area for each handful added to the soil.

Dare I Say It?

The time has come for action. I know that the vast majority of "Americans" shun any mention of responsibility for the supposed freedoms that they love to claim. I also know that the major media sources that feed our country information try like the devil to strangle public discourse rather than encourage it. Considerable experience has also taught me that no matter what obvious path to a better way of life that I mention, probably because they all require hard work and sacrifice in the short run, are ruthlessly rejected out of hand. There is little excuse for the way we have treated one another, no justification for the raping of the planet and no cogent argument for saddling future generations with the lasting effects of war, extractive economic methods that foist boom and bust burdens on those who do not benefit from the boom times, but are crippled by the bust, poverty, ignorance and debt, but I fear, chances are that we will continue to do all of these things if we do not take a stand now for what is right and good in our civilization. Believe me, we are not, as we are told, isolated pawns in a rich man's game, unless we let ourselves be. Taking our civil rights back will be an extremely hard road and there may be more blood shed on freedom's path. Rest assured that there will be sweat, toil and sacrifice, but the change must come at whatever the price. If we continue to let the powers that be railroad us in the directions of their choosing, we are going to fall deeper and deeper into the chasm of ruthlessness and hate, remain at odds with planet Earth and succumb to the evil that drives the ultra rich to pick the pockets of our elderly, ransack the stores of knowledge that we have developed over centuries to pass on to our children and continue to exploit and confound both mothers and fathers who, after all, made a commitment to the future just by having children.

Frequently, when people ask what I do for a living, I say, "I am a living manifestation of the infinite." I say it not so much to enlighten them, because, let's face it, most folks don't have the background or level of understanding to decipher that truth, but for myself, to help remind me of what I do for a living. We are all facing terribly complex ciphers. The puzzles themselves are usually manufactured by various different interests and the pieces rarely seem to fit or have distinct information on them to give us clues about where they go or even whether they "fit" with the puzzle that we may be working on at the time. Recognizing that we are part of a centuries long struggle and that our responsibility is to the next seven generations seems to be a good place to start for many. With this basic starting point, it is easy to see that atomic energy, whether for electric power generation or war, cannot stand the basic test for safety over future generations. The radioactivity that results from our need in this moment will be a dangerous legacy for thousands of generations. One of the pieces of the puzzle will be finding our way to generating energy that does not kill, maim or saddle future generations with the cost of providing us comfort.

Transportation, as well, needs to be transformed. As we learn to reestablish connections to the locations in which we live, produce more of our food locally and begin to re-think the last generations decision to separate people from capital, goods and services, we will have to use triage in dealing with the empty suburbs. When I was a child, even tiny towns had bakeries, medium sized ones had several and it was rare to find a neighborhood that didn't have fresh bread within walking distance. Try that today and chances are you would be wearing out a lot of shoes. The right wingers seem to be overjoyed with their own voices chanting the mantra of "mass transit can't work", yet in truth, it is the greed of folks who live on the city edge that forces us to expand every other service to the point of recklessness and whatever the opposite of thrift is. The properties that lie beyond city services are going for inflated prices because everyone seems to want their little piece of heaven, but then the trash needs to be picked up, eventually hey want curb and gutter and fresh clean water like the rest of us, so we pay for their wants by sacrificing our own needs. Them subsidization of suburban fringe communities is at once a greedy money grab for the outlying communities, hoping for increased revenues from taxes and a multi-generational sentence for those who cannot afford to flee the cities. It has been frequently pointed out by people far smarter than I that the ultra-rich only call it class warfare when we fight back. I am somewhat resolved to the fact that I may forever be a city mouse, but I should not bear the burden of contaminated air, water and soil left behind by the wealthy exploiters of planet earth. We need their wealth and education to help us solve the pressing problems of the city, not having them squander their money and time mowing acre and a half lots that used to produce food.

It is hard to tell a farmer who has struggled all their life that they are not entitled to millions in retirement because they sell their land to Target, Costco or Wal-mart, only to have it paved over and ruined for ever, but one can look back just a few generations and find people who went into farming because of a deep connection to the earth and a desire to do what was right for their communities. Now, many have been kow towed into thinking that it is every person for themselves and if their greed is not as over the top as the next guy, they will end up losing everything. Some say that growing population will inevitably force the further degradation of the planet, but improving the efficiency with which we do business and increasing quality of life for all people, our needs will become much easier to meet and with far less environmental damage as well. We need to stand up and let local decision makers know that we will not tolerate another back room deal to sell out the towns and cities of our great nation for he sake of another get rich quick scheme that only benefits the few at the expense of the many. All of this is hard work that needs doing if we are to leave our children anything worthwhile.

We have been told that the generation gap is inevitable, but that is another popular lie foisted upon us by those who really don't care about us. If your children see you working for a better world, and you explain to them that all of your efforts are to salvage a liveable world for them, you will be surprised at how quickly they will respond to the great and pressing needs as well. if they see you buying into the lies and deception that "business as usual" wants to sell you, they will see what you are made of and hate you to the core. Fortunately, there are more voices joined in the cry for justice than ever. With a bit of work and taking some time to get involved, we are making change happen. It comes at a time when the inertia of bad decision making has all but overwhelmed us, but there are those all across the globe who realize that we must take one last gaps and fight our way back to shore, or we will surely perish. This is truly a fight for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, not only for ourselves, but for the coming generations as well. The time has come to stop standing idly by and "waiting for the world to change". We have every right and the responsibility to take charge, not only of our own lives, but the direction of the governments that we supposedly elect and the discourse about what will make this a better place and time to live in. Get involved, become agents of change and remember, the hardest part is starting. Once you resolve to give your life to the betterment of others, the rewards are nearly infinite and the difficulties along the way transform from boogey men into temporary hiccups and gems along our spiral path.

Why I Need Money

First, I should say that I am set up with a Paypal account and if you would like to support my quest for money, you can give securely online by using account: tnsaladino42@hotmail.com. If you would like to contact me directly, use the same e-address without going to Paypal first. The money that flows through Paypal is what we use to fund our labors of love, planting native trees, guiding ecotourists through Northeast Wisconsin and teaching the elements and principles of sustainability. Even though I would love to just do this all day every day, we are limited in our efforts by a continuing lack of funds. If you would like to assist us in bringing our program to even more people, please pass on this blog entry and encourage benefactors to give as well.

In our culture, money is the primary way that we use to keep track of human effort, or potential. Necessarily, we find great disparity in how we value human effort. For instance, there are a special few who earn more per hour than most of us earn in an entire year. It is hard to fathom why their efforts are uniquely valued. Just let that be for now. we are also struggling with the fact that the vast majority of workers are off the books. Housewives for instance are typically not reimbursed, although by all measures they perform essential tasks that have great impact on society. Even though we have such inherent imbalance in our monetary system, we are routinely told that "we have the greatest system in the world."

I have just completed an eighty hour week during which I earned just enough to keep me from looking poor on paper. Now, it is back to half time employment and perhaps no work at all next month, but that is the cost of my profession. The difficulty that temporary workers find themselves in is that government assistance is based on income over time, which they assume to be constant. That means that last week throws me out of contention for Wisconsin's Badger Care Insurance. It also throws me into a realm of taxation that makes no sense if we look at my annual income. I have no problem paying for the continuation of our government, if we get something of value from it. I do, however have a problem with being treated as if my need for money is not so great, as to deserve the fruits of my own labor.

Because of the passing of a relative, my wife and I received a bit of inheritance. The federal government got 15% of it and the state got another 5%. When we spend the remainder, we will pay another 5.5% in sales tax. Fully 25.5% of the money that was intended to go to us was absorbed by the government. If we made $100,000 or more each year, this would be a remarkably tiny percentage. Certainly fair and affordable. Giving away over twenty-five percent of your inheritance when you are flirting with the poverty line is infinitely harder to swallow. That money could have allowed us to put a new roof on our house, or finally do the car repairs that we have been putting off for years, heck, we could have purchased a car that was less than twelve years old. Instead, we will continue to work for hourly wages doing what we always do for the benefit of others, and hoping for the promised rebound of the economy.

In time, perhaps the value of our homes will rise enough to be higher than the amount we owe on them. Perhaps after another thirty years, we will finally re-establish train service between the town where we live and the town where I work and perhaps, in time, we will be able to travel. My hopes are not very high for this, but I will be the first to admit that I will enjoy making enough money to be able to afford and extra tank of gas or two. The money that we had invested in our homes was never supposed to make us a large profit. Instead it was meant to reduce the impact our budget would feel upon retirement. Instead, all of that "value" (called equity in real estate) evaporated and now we owe the bank twice as much as those properties are worth. The news this week indicated that top bank executives nationwide received 5.7% more compensation this year than last, while my own pay went down again. For the foreseeable future, I will be driving further still for fewer hours and be expected to continue to hone my skills, pay for my own education and eat ever more meals away from home while my employers receive tax breaks and special consideration, allowing them to cut costs further and increase their profits.