Esoteric Meandering Shouting Into the Void

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

As a rideshare driver and one that listens to political podcasts and news (left leaning) I invariably get some push back but sometimes can lead to an interesting conversation.

It’s true that I have never been someone that shy’s away from uncomfortable topics i.e. politics, religion… I fact I relish those back-and-forth topics as long as the other person is amenable to the conversation.

I was listening to something this morning and the topic was the strained platform of the current republican party, namely their restrictive position on abortion. Always a touchy topic and everyone has their opinion which I totally believe that everyone is entitled to have their view, but they also have to understand that others can disagree with them.

Well during this the rider said that this was a touchy topic because he was currently in the middle of that debate with his ‘girlfriend’ because she found out that she was pregnant. She does not what to continue with the pregnancy and it is still very early on, but his opinion is why does she get the final say if he doesn’t agree with it.

I asked him how long they had been together, and he said not that long… but. But always leads to something but he didn’t go any further.

So, I asked if he had plans to stay with his girlfriend and potentially support a child for the next 18+ years? All I got was silence.

Then I proposed the equity of time argument… I said realistically your part in the act took minutes, but you expect your girlfriend to invest a minimum of 40 weeks and all the health and emotional issues the come with pregnancy, that is if she doesn’t want to keep that child. I reasserted that he hadn’t affirmed that this was a situation that he was ready to support for possibly the next 18 years.

This begged the question of how his belief that abortion was wrong eclipsed the other parties when they would be the person with 100% of the responsibility of this accident growing inside their body. He really hadn’t taken that argument into perspective and when he exited that car appeared to be second guessing his position.

I propose that next time someone disagrees with your position on any controversial topic each party politely explains their position (perspective) on the subject and then see if there is some common ground or enlightenment from either side. This I feel has been lost in today’s very tribal mentality and needs to be reestablished.

I have a suggestion for our current political upheaval, ideas should be presented unvarnished with no party tag line and be judged purely on the merit of the idea presented. I have read party platforms to very ‘conservative’ people and had them completely disagree with the premise until I tell them where it came from, then invariably they tell me that I am lying. But whatever…

We used to have ideas that move us all forward but differed on the route we should take to get there, now if the idea, good or bad, comes from a position party is instantly denigrated. Take for example MTG coming out and saying that Biden is actively helping the build infrastructure, ensure access to healthcare, and creating jobs… all good things right? Not to the republicans they are wholly against all of these because President Biden is getting them done. They have lost PERSPECTIVE, the one thing that can save us.

Thanks for putting up with another rant.       

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us, only sky

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too

Imagine all the people
Livin’ life in peace
You

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine all the people
Livin’ for today
Ah

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

Song and Lyric by John Lennon

I have loved this song since the first time I heard it but the more I read the lyrics the more profound I find the meaning.

Seriously, if there were no borders, no hate, no greed what a different world we would live in.

I know Lennon wrote this song during the ladder years of Vietnam, war and death was on everyone’s mind especially the generation that was being conscripted to fight in a war that they had no rational of why they were putting their lives on the line. We seem like we are a long way from Vietnam, but the millennial generation had their war in the middle east that was just as ridiculous and unfounded although there was no draft to force them into an unjustified war. The war in Afghanistan and Iraq lasted as long as Gen Z was alive… My son is 18year old and I am grateful that we are not currently in a state of war.

Maybe I’m a dreamer but I hope that there will be no more major conflicts on a global scale, but I don’t think Vladimir Putin has the same dream.

Unfortunately, war is in our DNA and as a species we are too arrogant to put petty differences aside and recognize that we are all on the same spinning blue marble floating through the cosmos.

To quote John Lennon…

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I hope I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one…

Lyle Northey (Silent/Boomer)

  With the predictions of major events by science it makes one wonder if there is really a reason to worry about politics or even paying your bills. Major earthquakes to occur, floods and extreme heat all would be less than ideal, but are they really going to happen? Hopefully they will not and we will have to deal with the other situations just not Mother Nature having a fit. 

  If a federal court takes the advice given that a person that is threatening and encouraging others to threaten  harm and/or death because someone is being charged with crimes should not be walking the streets and puts Trump in jail at least till certain events are concluded.

   At present our national focus is on the antics of one very overstuffed shit bag. He continues to be in the public eye when he should be out of sight, out of touch and out of drawing breath. We have had people that were dissatisfied with our government and they did some terrible things to prove they were unhappy with things. It got them nothing but trouble, one was Timothy MacViegh and he bombed a federal building and killed a bunch of children in a  daycare, that got him the death penalty. What is to be the fate of this idiot I do not know, but for the record it had best fit the crime.

    The issue of his being arrested and jailed is another cause for some concern at least from the less thinking elements. He did not win the last election, the documents he took are not his to take and sell, and his continued pushing the envelope for violence will only bring problems to the people that are swept up in the madness. Do the people that are willing to put it out there really think the police or National Guard are going to hold back this time. If I were called to defend the Capitol or any facility and I was in fear for my life someone would go before me as I would do what was necessary to stay alive. We do not need a civil war to resolve our problems we need a civil treaty with the ideal situation of I listen to your opinion, you listen to mine and then we sit down and work out a plan that makes the best for all, not the best for Trump or Biden or anyone else, that includes the rich bastards pulling the strings. We take back the congress and turn it into a legislative body instead of a mockery of stupidity. 

   Another issue that seems to be on the board is the idea that if a woman were to want an abortion she should be put to death. Well, all you far thinking Christian Men when you kill the mother you kill the baby or blob regardless of the stage of development. Let us take this a step further and do a DNA test on the fetus, match it to the father and kill him as well. Must be a reason the woman wants to rid herself of the child, rape, he is the rapist, not a nice person. This is incest, really no good reason for that except being, yuk. She was drunk or drugged or just did not want to get hurt. Even if it was consensual protection is available and if not used negative results happen. The other possibility is that the father is one of the most generous Christian Men that feel she should die if she doesn’t want the baby.

   Societies are built on the idea that daughters are expendable and yet without them there will be no next generation. Daughters have been sold for various amounts and reasons throughout history. Some require that the daughter be paid for before a wedding, so then we have the normal marriage where the husband to be buys an expensive ring to get the ball rolling and then continues to buy things for as long as he lives to keep her happy, maybe.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

I often wonder if mankind is ready for what we have created… the dissemination of information that is currently accessible with the click of a mouse or the swipe of your finger is staggering, but are we evolved enough to handle it?

As evolved as we have become, we are still in a relative sense a very juvenile species. In reference to the time that we first walked upright and discovered fire, discovered is a very loose term because we didn’t discover anything just learn how to use it, to the computer AI we are currently living comically is a blip. Seriously the age of giant dinosaurs was millions of years and we have been around for even a tenth of that. With our big brains we have pulled ourselves from hunter gatherers to huge metropolitan cities and no longer revere the land but exploit it.

We are still superstitious with a majority of the world’s population believing in an all-powerful, omnipresent, omnipotent being that created and controls everything. It’s that magical thinking that has got us where we are, but it is also the same deep-rooted interpretation of those shared beliefs that continue to hold us back.

Millions believe that the Bible, Coran, The Tora were written by God, not by man. Those same text have been translated numerous times, and anyone that speaks more than one language know sometimes the is no direct translation. That is especially true when translated from a dead language like Aramaic. Not only is there the translation but many of the tales are written as parables and riddles to be interpreted and we all know how the human mind love to twist a riddle to fit what they want it to mean. So we a have ancient text written by men thousand of years ago that could have never imaged the world we are living in today and on top of that millions of people picking and choosing passages that fit their personal narrative while ignoring the rest.

This is just one example of information overload with a religious message now add in the billions of bits a data we are bombarded with every day. It is no longer Joe Friday, “Just the facts mam…” Facts have become something that is up for debate, a group of people can witness the same event or read the same article but not agree what happened or what the article said, it all up to the witness’s internal bias to interpret the events.

I am not saying that we should have hive mind and be part of the collective like the Borg but when there are such things as alternative facts, I thinks it time to step back and reevaluate. I don’t know that we are ready for the information overload.

I hope that this wasn’t too depressing, thanks for putting up with my mental vomit.