Sunday, September 28, 2014

Pan-African Festival, Silver Spring, MD - Sat 9/27/14

Sorta a line dance, exercise class type thing.. Chuck Brown, a Washington  DC music icon, is playing in this video. Everybody is really getting deep in the groove. There were grills serving halal goat, lamb... There were clothes vendors, jewelry, etc. Silver Spring has some kind of event every Saturday when the weather is warm.


Authority is bad


Exercising authority over someone that isn't your child, is demoralizing. Authority is corrupting. Its corrupting because without the ego cancelling affect of parental love, having authority over people inflates your ego and forces the one under authority to condescend.

No grown man wants to have another grown man tell him what to do to make a living. No grown woman wants another grown woman to lord over her. In this capitalist society, that's exactly what we were being asked to do.

There are archetypes in the human psyche. One of them is Parent and Child. That's something that goes back millennia. There were no bosses in prehistoric times. There were alphas, but that was only if you choose to live in a collective. You could opt out. The only way to opt out in capitalism is to become a capitalist. Start a business, work for yourself, but then you become part of the problem.

When we force people into these artificial positions because of Authority, one group acts like parents and the other acts like children. Why? Because authority over adults is unnatural. So they rebel. If you rebel against authority you're acting like a rebellious child. The authority figure has to bring you back in line, like a parent. Both exercises are degrading and unseemly.

We need managers because we can't easily make a living doing what we love. We can do it, but there's a period when the necessities of life may be in doubt and everybody can't wade through that period successfully.

What I'm advocating is the abolition of capitalism, money and wage slavery. Collectives of people should ban together and build the necessities of life, food, clothing, shelter, education and healthcare for the masses. Thereby creating leisure for human being to explore what they are passionate about and pursue it.

To quote Oscar Wilde "the government will make what is useful. The individual will make what is beautiful.." There are articles all over the net about "flat" companies. Companies without managers, they just hire talented, passionate people to do a job they love and let them do it. How wonderful that must be. How like the first state of man it must have been.

Authority is a symptom of disease. That disease is called fear. We, as a society are afraid of each other. We are afraid of being taken advantage of, afraid of asking for help, afraid of being labeled. The anonymity of the internet, seems to eliminate some of that angst.

I hate telling people what to do, but love organizing people around a task to be completed. I just asked that you do your piece without my consistently checking up on you. The institution leans on you it that, but I know it distort my personality and character. Try as a I might. I'd be a fool to think I'm not tainted by Authority. Maybe I can write myself into a career as a writer with bosses and without becoming a boss. It sucks.

Monday, September 22, 2014

Lessons from Film

I have four disposable cameras on my desk. They're old, older than a few years. In technology speak, they are ancient. The convenience of going to the drugstore to get them processed is long gone. Even department stores phased out this service. Specialty shops are my only option.

There was a time when I took lots of pictures, at those times I wanted to remember things. That time is not now. Many of the things I'm experiencing, I don't want to relive in a photo.

We create so many of our own problems, stresses and hells. The most difficult thing is really learning from these experiences so we don't repeat. If I could capture that in a photo… if I could take a picture of me smiling and thinking "Glad I learned that lesson" that would be a photo worth saving.

A picture says a lot, so does my reflection in the mirror this morning. It says, I ate too much salt last night and I really am under tremendous stress. No photos please, but… if I had that other camera. The one that could take the "after" picture, where I learned from my mistake and everything worked out. I would carry that picture in my wallet forever.