Out of Arizona...
A berserk act with state, national and global implications.
The violent shooting eruption that occurred on Saturday, January 8, 2011, when US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was critically wounded, six people died and over a dozen others injured by one gunman, has reverberated around Arizona, the United States and both Hemispheres. To state that most Arizonans initial reaction was shock and fear, would be an understatement. Everyone has their own mechanisms for dealing with such news but it is fair to say that many Arizonans will go through various stages of a grieving process. We have only just begun to absorb the impact of what happened that day.
Why Arizona?
It is fair to say that many of us decades long (three or more) residents and second and third generation Arizonans are asking "What has happened to our state?" The question is in the larger context and not solely related to the brutal shooting fracas in Tucson. Arizona has been considered a conservative state since the Sixties in the era of Goldwater, when conservative here meant a more libertarian "live and let live" attitude. In the Eighties we tilted more to the right as social conservatives began to become a stronger force in state and local politics as the evangelical fundamentalist movement grew nationally as well as here. It was then a lack of tolerance began creeping into our culture. It was clear by 2000 that intolerance had become a more prominent feature of our social landscape and that "live and let live" had finally died after lingering attempts at survival. Many of us began to feel uncomfortable with the prevailing social attitudes among the voting population and felt they had swept in like unwanted tumbleweeds during a wicked dust storm.
The irony is that most of us ourselves are of a conservative bent, fiscally conservative and social libertarians but not social conservatives, raised by parents in the tradition of Barry Goldwater and Sandra Day O'Connors Arizona. An Arizona that was wide open spaces with plenty of room for other people's opinions. We had become outsiders in our own state.
This is attributed by many of us to the decision of the "movers and shakers" to build an economy on unlimited growth, engineered primarily by real estate developers and mortgage companies, on the foundation of construction. The price of which we are paying for now in two ways. The first is the obvious housing bust we have experienced that lags only slightly behind California and Nevada and is among the top in the nation. It was unsustainable from the beginning. The second is a less obvious byproduct and almost never openly discussed and that is immigration from within the US...not illegal immigration from Mexico. Illegal immigration in large part is a result of the legal migration of people from other states in the US who wanted the cheap labor of the illegal migrants from south of the border.
We had an influx of Americans who did not come here to invest in the State of Arizona's way of life and to contribute and become involved in it socially, culturally, economically or politically but rather to escape to a "lifestyle" of fun and sun beyond their financial means. A perpetual California of the Mind. We had inexpensive housing with a low cost of living and the basis for that is another unspoken reason, we also have low wages. That also meant we attracted people who commonly, certainly not all of them but a large segment, didn't have higher education and with lower skill and economic denominators. People involved mainly in construction or the byproducts of the industry, joined by plenty of retirees on fixed incomes, with almost no spread of other types of employment and income. In general these were people not very interested in investing time and money into developing a high-level economy, strong cultural institutions, solid educational systems and long term sustenance. This negatively impacted our strong points and drove out our solid manufacturing, computing, defense and aerospace industries.
This phenomenon became clear to a lot of us after the 1993 recession when population, housing and other construction began growing nonsensically gangbusters; in a state with limited water and energy resources. Those of us who pointed this out were rewarded with being called elitist spoil sports who just didn't understand The American Way...never mind it was an ephemeral desert mirage of the real American Way.
Can you hear us now?
The bottom line result is we have a population largely ignorant of their own local area much less the history, culture and politics of the state. When and if they do get involved, it is at the level with the least knowledge, resulting in local and state officials elected without the electorate really knowing what they really stand or rather, don't stand for. The trend got worse in the 2004 election and progressed from there and we now have a State Legislature who operates at the basest of political animal instincts. Propositions, Referendums and Initiatives were passed by voters with short sighted concern for the damage to the long term interests of the state's economy.
We don't stand apart, only at the forefront.
My belief though is we are but a microcosm of the country, that things tend to come to the forefront here earlier than most states, due to our population being more forthright. At the very least we are honest, for better or worse, about our antipathy and mindset. Dung flinging didn't originate here but was developed as a fine art, by both of the two major political sides, outside of this state. We simply have a population that absorbs and mirrors it, our best hope is that we learn from last Saturday's events but I'm not counting on it.
What happened here could have happened anywhere in the country. Already the Limbaughs, Olbermanns, Becks, Maddows, et al have sharpened their arrows and tightened their bows and are projecting more venom into the atmosphere. This in spite of it being long past the time we lower the rhetoric, vitriol and character assassination from both sides of the spectrum to focus on legitimate differences in opinion in a more civilized manner. Although the gunman might be mentally unsound, it has to be considered that the toxic political atmosphere that has escalated these past 15 years or so, infiltrated his thinking and influenced him into action.
It occurs to me that as all of America absorbs what happened, it's possible that many of us who have become tired of the extreme bombastic rants from the television, radio and internet, will speak out against it while still supporting free speech. A key element people should remember is that the people blasting us with these negative invectives, are making huge amounts of money from it, go home at night to a comfortable home and do not suffer the consequences of what they have said. This includes not just the Mainstream Media but the Political Class whose arrogant, petty bickering and backbiting is effrontery to civility, the US Constitution and the people of America. We do ourselves a disservice if we listen, tolerate or repeat it and we should be asking not only "What has happened to our country?" but also "What can I do to stop the caustic atmosphere and help improve the climate of our discussions and debate in this country? While still preserving people's right to speak their minds, no matter how much we disagree?"
1/11/11
1/6/11
Geography of the Mind
Navigating a toxic culture...
We live in a time with so much information bombarding the wired and wireless world, the old and new media, online and offline life, that if we are not discriminating and filter a lot of it out we become overloaded. So much of it is like zany Morning Zoo radio that our minds drive time in the wrong direction, on roads that either lead us endlessly to nowhere or to dead ends. It is up to us to distinguish what we are exposed to, distilling the stream of data flowing in, to avoid pollution of our intellect.
This can be difficult to do but critical since more than we cognizantly recognize, our everyday lives are affected by what we see and hear, consciously or not. It has the ability to affect our judgment and perceptions more than we realize. There is a menu of junk for the brain readily available that damages our mind just as much as fast food does our body. Much like surface-radiation inversion creates a bad air quality cloud over an urban area, too much mix of poisonous information creates a low quality cloud over our critical thinking.
Some of this can be hard to turn off but an effort to do so is not as hard as it seems. There's a barrage of messages, sales pitches, broadcasts, banners, announcements, links, friend requests and spam to fend off. The first place to start is television and radio, few original ideas come out of them and they're mouthpieces for their sponsors, noise is not news. My choice is not to watch it at all. The web is both wonderfully full of information but a lot of it is disorganized and useless. Because most of our media and communications have moved onto the internet, it is not as easy as turning off the television or radio, since it also contains a lot of useful and valuable information. This requires choosing careful discrimination on what sites to go to and how much time we spend on them to avoid saturation.
Another source of information blast is not so easy to quiet and that is people. We may be exposed to cynical contrary people we can't avoid in our work, family and in public. We can choose our friends and who we associate with by choice. Avoid negative people and don't listen to constant whining and failures. Anyone who is involved in too much excess or extreme at anything, constantly complaining, never resolves their own problems, stay away from them. The chances they're going to change are highly unlikely. With inescapable people at work and family members this requires developing a mechanism to tune the discord out, a difficult but not insurmountable task. There are ways to mute their dissonance both by your approach and response to them but it requires some trial and error effort.
The more distilling down of the babble of information streaming at us from multiple channels we do, we discover that day to day life becomes more harmonious and less disquieting. Cleaning out the clutter of the clatter and chattering blows the bad air out and improves our field of vision. The knowledge we intake is of better quality and allows us to breathe clearer air and think with more clarity and calms the mind and soul.
We live in a time with so much information bombarding the wired and wireless world, the old and new media, online and offline life, that if we are not discriminating and filter a lot of it out we become overloaded. So much of it is like zany Morning Zoo radio that our minds drive time in the wrong direction, on roads that either lead us endlessly to nowhere or to dead ends. It is up to us to distinguish what we are exposed to, distilling the stream of data flowing in, to avoid pollution of our intellect.
This can be difficult to do but critical since more than we cognizantly recognize, our everyday lives are affected by what we see and hear, consciously or not. It has the ability to affect our judgment and perceptions more than we realize. There is a menu of junk for the brain readily available that damages our mind just as much as fast food does our body. Much like surface-radiation inversion creates a bad air quality cloud over an urban area, too much mix of poisonous information creates a low quality cloud over our critical thinking.
Some of this can be hard to turn off but an effort to do so is not as hard as it seems. There's a barrage of messages, sales pitches, broadcasts, banners, announcements, links, friend requests and spam to fend off. The first place to start is television and radio, few original ideas come out of them and they're mouthpieces for their sponsors, noise is not news. My choice is not to watch it at all. The web is both wonderfully full of information but a lot of it is disorganized and useless. Because most of our media and communications have moved onto the internet, it is not as easy as turning off the television or radio, since it also contains a lot of useful and valuable information. This requires choosing careful discrimination on what sites to go to and how much time we spend on them to avoid saturation.
Another source of information blast is not so easy to quiet and that is people. We may be exposed to cynical contrary people we can't avoid in our work, family and in public. We can choose our friends and who we associate with by choice. Avoid negative people and don't listen to constant whining and failures. Anyone who is involved in too much excess or extreme at anything, constantly complaining, never resolves their own problems, stay away from them. The chances they're going to change are highly unlikely. With inescapable people at work and family members this requires developing a mechanism to tune the discord out, a difficult but not insurmountable task. There are ways to mute their dissonance both by your approach and response to them but it requires some trial and error effort.
The more distilling down of the babble of information streaming at us from multiple channels we do, we discover that day to day life becomes more harmonious and less disquieting. Cleaning out the clutter of the clatter and chattering blows the bad air out and improves our field of vision. The knowledge we intake is of better quality and allows us to breathe clearer air and think with more clarity and calms the mind and soul.
Arizona Landscape
Tapatio Cliffs...
View of pollution cloud overhanging desert floor of The Valley
photo by Gregory A Z Nelson
View of pollution cloud overhanging desert floor of The Valley
photo by Gregory A Z Nelson
1/5/11
You Can Quote Me On That
They believe their own public relations...
"There's a mark born every minute and one to trim 'em [rip off] and one to knock 'em [warn away]." Mark Twain
You can't question their belief in themselves and their ability to convince their public and each other, that they are the greatest and there should be no doubt in the stock market, that the purveyors of Wall Street regard themselves with. Their opportunistic manipulative optimism when there are significant problems on Main Street and across the real America is a testament to their removal from reality and is simultaneously surreal and magnificent.
When have you ever known the common broker to tell you to sell? Before the 1962 wild crash? 1973? 1987? 1989 mini crash? 2000? 2001? 2007? 2009? 2010 flash crash? It is in their interest to keep the stock market aloft no matter what, regardless of underlying fundamentals, economic conditions outside of the market and common sense. In a perverse way, you have to admire their capacity to convince themselves and whoever is buying stocks right now, yet one more time, that stocks always go up and never go down. As it stands now they are all looking up, huffing and puffing and blowing, to keep a bubble afloat.
Anyone interested in buying some municipal bonds?
"There's a mark born every minute and one to trim 'em [rip off] and one to knock 'em [warn away]." Mark Twain
You can't question their belief in themselves and their ability to convince their public and each other, that they are the greatest and there should be no doubt in the stock market, that the purveyors of Wall Street regard themselves with. Their opportunistic manipulative optimism when there are significant problems on Main Street and across the real America is a testament to their removal from reality and is simultaneously surreal and magnificent.
When have you ever known the common broker to tell you to sell? Before the 1962 wild crash? 1973? 1987? 1989 mini crash? 2000? 2001? 2007? 2009? 2010 flash crash? It is in their interest to keep the stock market aloft no matter what, regardless of underlying fundamentals, economic conditions outside of the market and common sense. In a perverse way, you have to admire their capacity to convince themselves and whoever is buying stocks right now, yet one more time, that stocks always go up and never go down. As it stands now they are all looking up, huffing and puffing and blowing, to keep a bubble afloat.
Anyone interested in buying some municipal bonds?
1/4/11
Quality
It's not what you do but how you do it...
It's peculiar to me how many people place classification judgments on individuals and their abilities, intelligence, vocabulary, education, opinions and perceptions by the particular work title they have, rather than their actual aptitude. Some medical doctors can be quite boorish and clumsy at figuring out a patient's problem while a good mechanic can finesse a difficult car problem far better than that doctor. Some lawyers can shine a beam of light on a topic like no one else, while a mortgage broker might befuddle you on the same simplest topic in twenty minutes. A smart manager leads their people to making their own decisions for everyone to succeed while a dictatorial floor supervisor intimidates the group into fearing for their jobs, making everyone unhappy and less productive. The lady at the front desk knows more about the locality than the professional tour guide and imparts it better. A know-it-all service rep can terrorize your service problem in an hour, while a good technical support trouble shooter can sectionalize, isolate and resolve a problem in minutes.
In my thinking our judgments about other people should have less to do with which college they went to or if they didn't go to at all, if they're a professional or a tradesman, an executive or an hourly wage earner and more about the quality of their competency and ability to communicate well. Whether a company vice president or laundry manager, the assessment should be on competency in how much knowledge and skill they have in their basic duties, how well they have priorities figured out, their ability to reason and deal with complications and how they interact with other people, both their peers and customers, in resolving them. Quality interaction is now a required component of any working environment and it's appropriate to make an appraisal of someone's skill at it on any level . Communicating well is of absolute importance since it involves listening to what someone is telling you, interpreting it correctly and what they really mean and being able to communicate back by reducing a complex issue to a simple explanation.
It's peculiar to me how many people place classification judgments on individuals and their abilities, intelligence, vocabulary, education, opinions and perceptions by the particular work title they have, rather than their actual aptitude. Some medical doctors can be quite boorish and clumsy at figuring out a patient's problem while a good mechanic can finesse a difficult car problem far better than that doctor. Some lawyers can shine a beam of light on a topic like no one else, while a mortgage broker might befuddle you on the same simplest topic in twenty minutes. A smart manager leads their people to making their own decisions for everyone to succeed while a dictatorial floor supervisor intimidates the group into fearing for their jobs, making everyone unhappy and less productive. The lady at the front desk knows more about the locality than the professional tour guide and imparts it better. A know-it-all service rep can terrorize your service problem in an hour, while a good technical support trouble shooter can sectionalize, isolate and resolve a problem in minutes.
In my thinking our judgments about other people should have less to do with which college they went to or if they didn't go to at all, if they're a professional or a tradesman, an executive or an hourly wage earner and more about the quality of their competency and ability to communicate well. Whether a company vice president or laundry manager, the assessment should be on competency in how much knowledge and skill they have in their basic duties, how well they have priorities figured out, their ability to reason and deal with complications and how they interact with other people, both their peers and customers, in resolving them. Quality interaction is now a required component of any working environment and it's appropriate to make an appraisal of someone's skill at it on any level . Communicating well is of absolute importance since it involves listening to what someone is telling you, interpreting it correctly and what they really mean and being able to communicate back by reducing a complex issue to a simple explanation.
1/3/11
Geography of the Mind
If your time to you is worth savin'...
Then you better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone
We are in an epoch where I believe people will be distinguished not as much by status and financial worth, income from employment or other means (or little to none), looks or personal bearing, community or style of life, rural or urban, although those things will always matter to some degree. Rather it will be if they are coping with the times or they are not, regardless of what populace they are from. The world is rapidly changing and living in it, at it's basest, is either acceptance or denial.
The darkest angst of most people is being alone, with no social significance, income or money and living in a weekly motel splitting pills and dumpster diving. How you cope with that reptilian fear determines how well you will fare in difficult times. There is a grain of truth in what you believe will happen to you, actually will. If you encounter your lizard brain fears, you will likely overcome them. Among us are many people, who have never experienced life during a significant economic downturn that affects most of society. They probably are in most need of examining their innermost dread, if they're smart and they dare to, to avoid being surprised in the worst way. As a matter of fact it is worthwhile for everyone to explore, far better to be surprised in the best way, whether or not you believe the world is turning a different direction.
Everything that I needed to learn about life I learned during the turbulent times of the late sixties through the early eighties during my teens and twenties. For me the years spanning between 1968 and 1982 were packed with racial strife, assassinations, political scandal, war, riots, anti-draft movement, hostage-taking and terrorism, energy crisis, labor difficulties and unrest. All of those things seemed distant to me at the time though, although it was ever-present in the news and the topic of conversation among everyone. What directly affected me was the economy and how I was going to not only survive but thrive in it. I had to face what I was afraid of.
Every once in awhile you feel a tap on your shoulder and turn around only to face yourself.
There were technical recessions in the years 1969-1970, 1973-1975, 1978, 1980 and 1980-1982 but to me it was one long economic haul of "stagflation" and constantly figuring out ways to keep my head above water and staying afloat. I started working and paying taxes and social security in 1968 when I was 14 years old. In 1972 I went to work for the Bell System which from 1974 onward, operated in constant surplus and layoff mode. I eyeballed my fear that life would be a long treadmill of deprivation and resolved that I would not let it be like that. The amazing thing is that it forged me into living in ways that not only made ends meet but more often than not, improved what I had, while also still being happy and not feeling deprived.
That time period forced me into a life of thinking creatively, learning self-reliance, independence, motivation, problem solving, never giving up and always going forward. I learned how to take what I had and make it into something better, enjoy life without an excess of material consumer goods and often more than enough. I managed to be comfortable in my living situation and obtain what I needed and wanted in innovative alternate ways. It was very often difficult and I sometimes thought life would always be that way. In hindsight those years prepared me for how to deal with all kinds of difficult situations, not just economic, as I encountered them. It also made me more original and I created my best early art, photography, writing and music.
Your old road is rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand
It is my belief that people will either learn to live ingeniously and do the best with what they have, figure out ways to obtain what they don't have if they really need or want it, or they won't. There are many people living more innovatively now, many who aren't but will and many who never will. Those who don't will remain stuck in a time warp the rest of their lives and there is little the rest of us can do about it. There is still enough "America" in the United States to rise above difficult times for most people. The knowledge is out there to figure out means, although it may require significant changes in attitude and approach to life, to rise above hardship and difficulties. Very often what some people consider a catastrophic lifestyle change isn't that at all, their expectations are out of alignment.
If some do not want to confront their basest reptilian fears, no one else can force them. Our only obligation is to make what is known available to them, it is their obligation to mobilize themselves and actuate their reality.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrVkEKcSoFE
Then you better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone
We are in an epoch where I believe people will be distinguished not as much by status and financial worth, income from employment or other means (or little to none), looks or personal bearing, community or style of life, rural or urban, although those things will always matter to some degree. Rather it will be if they are coping with the times or they are not, regardless of what populace they are from. The world is rapidly changing and living in it, at it's basest, is either acceptance or denial.
The darkest angst of most people is being alone, with no social significance, income or money and living in a weekly motel splitting pills and dumpster diving. How you cope with that reptilian fear determines how well you will fare in difficult times. There is a grain of truth in what you believe will happen to you, actually will. If you encounter your lizard brain fears, you will likely overcome them. Among us are many people, who have never experienced life during a significant economic downturn that affects most of society. They probably are in most need of examining their innermost dread, if they're smart and they dare to, to avoid being surprised in the worst way. As a matter of fact it is worthwhile for everyone to explore, far better to be surprised in the best way, whether or not you believe the world is turning a different direction.
Everything that I needed to learn about life I learned during the turbulent times of the late sixties through the early eighties during my teens and twenties. For me the years spanning between 1968 and 1982 were packed with racial strife, assassinations, political scandal, war, riots, anti-draft movement, hostage-taking and terrorism, energy crisis, labor difficulties and unrest. All of those things seemed distant to me at the time though, although it was ever-present in the news and the topic of conversation among everyone. What directly affected me was the economy and how I was going to not only survive but thrive in it. I had to face what I was afraid of.
Every once in awhile you feel a tap on your shoulder and turn around only to face yourself.
There were technical recessions in the years 1969-1970, 1973-1975, 1978, 1980 and 1980-1982 but to me it was one long economic haul of "stagflation" and constantly figuring out ways to keep my head above water and staying afloat. I started working and paying taxes and social security in 1968 when I was 14 years old. In 1972 I went to work for the Bell System which from 1974 onward, operated in constant surplus and layoff mode. I eyeballed my fear that life would be a long treadmill of deprivation and resolved that I would not let it be like that. The amazing thing is that it forged me into living in ways that not only made ends meet but more often than not, improved what I had, while also still being happy and not feeling deprived.
That time period forced me into a life of thinking creatively, learning self-reliance, independence, motivation, problem solving, never giving up and always going forward. I learned how to take what I had and make it into something better, enjoy life without an excess of material consumer goods and often more than enough. I managed to be comfortable in my living situation and obtain what I needed and wanted in innovative alternate ways. It was very often difficult and I sometimes thought life would always be that way. In hindsight those years prepared me for how to deal with all kinds of difficult situations, not just economic, as I encountered them. It also made me more original and I created my best early art, photography, writing and music.
Your old road is rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand
It is my belief that people will either learn to live ingeniously and do the best with what they have, figure out ways to obtain what they don't have if they really need or want it, or they won't. There are many people living more innovatively now, many who aren't but will and many who never will. Those who don't will remain stuck in a time warp the rest of their lives and there is little the rest of us can do about it. There is still enough "America" in the United States to rise above difficult times for most people. The knowledge is out there to figure out means, although it may require significant changes in attitude and approach to life, to rise above hardship and difficulties. Very often what some people consider a catastrophic lifestyle change isn't that at all, their expectations are out of alignment.
If some do not want to confront their basest reptilian fears, no one else can force them. Our only obligation is to make what is known available to them, it is their obligation to mobilize themselves and actuate their reality.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrVkEKcSoFE
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