Global Exchange

As you might be able to tell from past posts, this blog is not just about comedy. Occasionally I like to post something on topics relavant to our world today. This site, globalexchange.org gives me much concern. Hopefully if you read the articles you will become concerned with their seriousness which requires that something be done. What I like about the site is that they frequently have things that normal people can do in order to combat the problems that are presented. Read, think and do something.

The Sneeze

The Sneeze is a funny website. I get a lot of inspiration from it. Perhaps you may find it interesting.

The Radio Announcer is a Person

This is a short essay that I wrote about a personal event tied into (sorry) the attacks that occured on September 11th, 2001.

It is a stark realization that I had today. On the anniversary of the September 11th attacks on the world trade towers. I sometimes have a hard time remembering how I felt on that Tuesday morning two years ago. There was a little confusion in my mind but mostly a lot of annoyance; everybody wanted to talk about their feelings and everything. Mostly I felt that I just wanted to get over it, put it behind me and forget the entire thing happened. And this thought came to mind today:

An announcement at work made about 10:30 am this morning struck me. You see at work, there are often announcements about fire drill testing, blood drives and other miscellaneous events and concerns. The speaker is almost always the same person. He speaks in a plain voice that isn't like any announcer on NPR or something like that, it's not very alive. In the normalcy of events where I work, this same voice is reduced to an almost computer like quality. The voice itself is scratchy and has that through-the-microphone sound to it. For all we know the voice may as well be a program that the words are typed in and the message comes out. It was this voice that gave an announcement today on the anniversary of September 11th.

The message was not anything super special, mostly a recap of president bush's speech made earlier in the morning. Apparently the speech was a resolve to continue fighting terrorism. Some other thoughts and statements about how Americans will rise to the challenge and all that. Then, at the end of the recap, the announcers request for a moment of silence. There was a short pause, and then the announcer said "Thank You".

That short silence and those two final words reminded me of something very important: the announcer was a person. In the moment after his words I had felt as if I almost encountered this man, as if I saw a part of his heart while listening to his voice. All of a sudden this mechanical noise giving information less-than-crucial to daily work information had sprung to life in the uniquely human manner that us humans can do at times. I imagined that maybe he was immediately affected by the attacks. Not being far from New York City, it was possible that he had friends or even close family living and working there. But at very least it seemed he was at least moved, he at least cared and he was not the robot that I made him out to be.

In light of this experience, my initial reactions to 9/11 are understandable. It can hurt to see other humans as persons. When you see them as they are in the person-hood with all their troubles, heartaches, glories and in-betweens, you get hurt. Maybe not physically, or even emotionally, but on some level your heart goes out to them and it breaks, it breaks and it hurts. And in response to this heart breaking for our fellow man we try to protect ourselves, and we do it by turning these people into mere faces, and mere voices mostly for the sake of our own comfort, but also because it's just easier. In our minds, the ones around us lose their individuality, they take up the space that we want to use, they make us late by being in front of us, they cause long lines at stores, and they always seem to be causing all those problems.

However, I would alert the readers or listeners to this very dangerous behavior that may occur in ones own life. The warning is that the engagement in this behavior would actually make that person also less human themselves, forgetting about the relationships that they were created to have in order to become more self-seeking and selfish monsters. This leads to a downward cycle where people treat each other more and more inhumanely until finally we hate one another and resort to killing each other over seemingly unimportant things. Wait, we already do that.

Postmodern Christianity

Here is a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the subject of the future of the Christian church as it relates to the emerging postmodern society we live in. Interesting thoughts...

"During these years the Church has fought for self-preservation as though it were an end in itself, and has thereby lost its chance to speak a word of reconciliation to humanity and to the world at large. So our traditional language must perforce become powerless and remain silent, and our Christianity will be confined to praying and doing right to our human brothers and sisters. Christian thinking, speaking and organizing must be reborn out of this praying and this action.. It will be a new language.. the language of a new righteousness and truth, which proclaims the peace of God with humankind and the advent of his kingdom. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "Letters and Papers from Prison"

Oh yeah I stole it from another blog.

The Subtle Loss of the Human Touch

Donuts, Muffins, Pastries and Coffee. These are the things that surround - and some would say support - the modern business meeting. Rarely can you go to a significant meeting in any technology company either and avoid the sweets and the scent of coffee. Does this bother me? As a connoisseur of sweets, it does not in the least.

However, a modern problem plagues the future of donuts and coffee at meetings; It is the internet. What used to be a regular part of working in a company (a face to face meeting of people on a team) is dissappearing as fast as any endangered species. Due to the rise widespread use of technology meetings (especially in my company) are increasingly held virtually. On my team we have a semi-regular occurance of people who call in to meetings who by the way do not live far enough away to warrant calling in. You lazy #$@!*%$'s know who you are.

Not only is the way we meet being affected on our team, but also the way our team is organized. After a recent reorg in human resources, my team is now half in the Northeast US and the other half is in the Southeast US. And the manager is also located in the Southeast. Don't get me wrong, the structure makes sense in terms of our skills and direction, but we're hundred's of miles away from each other.

Well, one advantage to this all is that due to technology, it's possible to work at home more and more. If half your team-mates are on the other side of the US (did I say with the manager?) then it matters less when you are in your office. You could be at home working in your underwear and nobody would notice.

In my mind, the tradeoff between working at home and the donuts may not be a deal. What we've lost is more than just the snacks and drinks, but a oversight of the truth of business and the reality of human beings: work can be hard and boring and we need something sweet to keep us going if at least for the day. And not having meetings with these amenities denies us the recognition of the fundamentals of work and being human beings, or at least it is the start of such denial.

Perhaps donuts and coffee isn't the lifeblood of the American business but its absence does mean something. Thinking about this subject I was reminded about our need to be connected to others, having a relationship and validating our existence as people. Does coffee and donuts do all this, probably not. But it can help provide an atmosphere in which people can briefly drop their roles in the workplace and show their human side to one another and engage in relationship. Sounds good to me anyways. So grab your insulated thermos, pick up that raisin cruller and fill up on relationship.

Politicians not playing fair

I went to this website targeting christians that discusses the alleged anti-christian behavior of the current professing christian president George Bush. While some of the stuff I knew beforehand, there wasn't much to get very riled up about, even if you are a follower of Jesus. Don't get me wrong, it puts the President's faith in Jesus into question but it just didn't come as a surprise to me.

Something on the website did bother me though, although it had nothing to do with the intended purpose of the website itself. It was about a Msnbc article in which the President was being asked about different political issues. A question brought up was about the President's involvement with a secret society at Yale known as Skull and Bones. Before this article, I didn't know that both George Bush and John Kerry are members of this stupid club.

Does this bother anyone else? I guess I just an a little bit concerned that this Skull and Bones is a mite too powerful. Albeit this may be just in my imagination. But there are questions about this secret club. What kind of society is this? What is the influence in American society like? Are they doing illegal stuff? Is there any truth to the wacky conspiracy theories? I'm not willing to go as far as they are and write a book about it based on suspision and hearsay. That probably plays right into the hands of the 'Bonesmen' (members of Skull and Bones). They must love it.

Still there is a problem with a public figure having such a secret, don't you think? Of course people in public life need to have some privacy and everything doesn't need to be known by every Tom, Dick and Harriet in USA. (Are there people named Harriet anymore? Probably not) But shouldn't there be some kind of transparency when it comes to politics. Perhaps I'm asking too much of politicians; to be honest.

And the politicians are asking too much of us as well. We're being asked by these candidates running for Presidential office to trust them with the most important things a nation can posses and the power of the strongest nation of the world. There should some honesty here. Don't keep secrets that can give the impression that I can't trust you to protect the liberty and freedom of the United States or use it's power wisely for the good of it's citizens. The X-files type dudes are going crazy with the connection theories as a result. Now who has more credibility? Jeez, all the drama is enough to make you not want to vote at all, or maybe just vote for Nader. OK, maybe I got a little carried away there...

Americans: One hand on the wheel

Did you ever take drivers ed? What is the first thing that you're supposed to do once you get in the car? After, putting on your seatbelt and adjusting your mirrors, yeah we know those. What I'm referring to is that you are supposed to put BOTH HANDS ON THE WHEEL. Hold onto this thought because it's the theme for this post.

Anyways, I drive about an hour from home to work and then another from work to home. I get to see plenty of people driving alongside me. And just like any other nosy American, I watch other people. And many people drive with one hand or maybe half a hand firmly on the wheel. And not even close to the 9 and 3 positions. And, yes I do it myself too.

Well, first I thought about the reasons why we were all told in driver's ed to put both hands on the wheel. The reason: incase you need to manuever quickly, especially in the case of an emergency situation or one that could quickly become an emergency. I once saw this internet video of a guy in his car driving with one hand on the wheel and no seatbelt. Of course the video wouldn't have been interesting if he didn't get into an accident, so he did. Yikes. No blood, but you could see how he desperately tried to manuever around his then potential accident with one hand (not very well mind you) before he finally was hit and thrown into the back seat after slamming around the cabin of the car. Hopefully he survived.

So we're supposed to keep our hands on the wheel and our belts buckled. Not because we're planning on getting into an accident, but because it just may happen. Observing the driving behavior of fellow Americans I was thinking that most of the time we are lulled into a false sense of security that would convince us to only put on hand one the wheel and forget to put on our seatbelt.

If you can't tell, this is not just about putting both hands on the wheel while driving. It's more about an American mind-set that's got us all convinced that we're on the good ride and that everything is only going to get better. Being part alarmist myself, I find it hard to buy into this way of thinking for long, although it does get to me sometimes. There are plenty of issues that confront us as a global neighborhood that put us at great risk to ignore. These issues range from the depletion of the world's supply of oil (which by the way is what our economy runs on and how we get our food), environmental issues (global warming, pollution), and stuff like the cost of government, medicare and medical insurance. And lets not forget personal choices too like racking up personal dept, avoiding saving, eating poorly, and bad choices on sex and relationships. And this is not an exhaustive list. Hopefully you can see how the act of taking our hands off the wheel indicates the thoughts going through our minds.

We're all convinced that we are invincible. The majority thinking of USAmerica must be the equivalent of an 18 years old kid who's got it made and never thinks he's going to die. I know that things in American are great, their awesome, and I wouldn't want to live anywhere else in the world. However, we need to be thinking about the future in a manner that makes sense, being politically, financially, morally and personally responsible in the decisions we make for today and the future. In addition, we need to have more concern for the global community that we live in. Let's not forget stuff like the fact that the average age of a civilization is 200 years old and we have only just passed this very meager benchmark. What America needs now is an attitude of diligence and desire with awareness for the unknown ahead. We need to put our seatbelt back on, get both hands on the wheel, and start looking at how much gas is in the tank and preparing for the road ahead by watching out for our passengers and all those commuting around us.