"That's The Way It Is!"

 

“That’s The Way It Is!”

   When stupidity is accepted as unquestioned reality, we have a problem.  I’m sorry but when the present ineffective rules of government are accepted as unalterable reality we are being cowed.  “That’s the way it is Buz, accept it.”  It isn’t working, but accept it.  No, I intend to praise the positive, but rail against what doesn’t work.  And, to me, more and more of government isn’t working.  Are we being cowed?

   When a single member of The US Senate can hold up the ceremonial promotion of our military leadership, it is no longer just a harmless senate show.  It is very real.  By what insane rule of the Senate, is one member given the ultimate control of the other 99?  Is it just the way it is?  Moo.

   When over seventy percent of our nation’s citizens would like to see better regulation of the tools of death, can a majority leader of the Senate or the House not allow a motion of this intent to the floor for discussion and vote?  Well, yes he or she can.  It’s the rule.  We don’t have the right to see our children and ourselves safe from mass murder.  It’s the rule.  Moo.

   Medicare is being charged one hundred and ninety five thousand dollars a year for a lifesaving drug, by Abbvie Pharmaceuticals, to keep me and a couple hundred thousand others alive (that is, $195K/per year/per patient).   The justification for the pricing is that the company paid twenty one billion dollars for the government enforced patent protection.  Paid, not to the government, but to the previous owner of those rights.  The original developer of the drug, Celera Pharmaceuticals, sold the patent rights for three million dollars.  So, through the bidding up of the patent rights price, through time and transactions, the cost of the drug has been increased by a factor of seven thousand times (not with a test tube & a microscope but with a pen).  Well, that’s the way it is.  Moo.

   When our annual military budget is greater than the next ten militaries in the world combined, our government adds twenty to thirty billion per year with a bipartisan vote of eighty to ninety per cent of our representatives for the increase.  Could we use some of these nearly trillion dollars annually for climate change defense, or universal healthcare, or education or infrastructure?  Well, that’s the way it is.  Not a hell of a lot we can do about it.  Moo.

   When your government tells you that they are burying the evidence from the Kennedy assassination in the archives for fifty years (to be increased by another twenty-five years, before the release) is it just the way it is?  When we carefully observe the three buildings falling to the ground on 9/11 and our government tells us that no demolition was involved, is that really the way it was?  (I don’t wish to insult cattle here.)  Cluck, cluck.

   Are we as a nation being cowed into accepting the absurd by: “It’s the law?”  “It’s the way it has always been.”  “That’s the way we (Democrats or Republicans) see it.”  “I’m only one person.  What can I do?”  Moo.

   When women were not allowed to vote, “It’s the law” wasn’t an adequate answer.  Neither did that answer suffice when our nation turned a blind eye to slavery.  When one senator can stop the promotion of hundreds of military officers, “It’s a rule in our senate” isn’t an adequate position.  When one of the most important trials in the history of our nation is about to take place, don’t tell me there are no television cameras allowed in a federal courtroom.  It is my country.  I am a citizen.  Do not treat me like a mushroom.  I will see.  I will speak my mind.  Do not sluff me off with, “That’s the way it is.”  Put on your God Damn cape and take to the sky.  Grr.

Cheers, Old Buz      8/5/2023

Iambloggerbuz.blogspot.com

“All living things base their conscious actions on their knowledge*. The difference in their effectiveness is the quality of their knowledge and their skill.” – Old Buz

*”The essence of knowledge is an ongoing search for accurate awareness”

"Thinking about Buddhism"

I'm reading a book by Steve Hagen, bestselling author and renowned Zen teacher, titled, “Buddhism Is Not What You Think”.  The basic theme, which I have seen before in Buddhist writings, is that the raw data you receive through your primary senses is “Truth”.  After you apply thought to the data, you have corrupted the Truth with your thoughts and previous life experiences and you no longer have Truth.  That is true, but if pure perception were how you observed the world and went no further, you would not be able to draw any meaningful information from your perceptions.  A simple example of this would be the page you are now reading.  The raw data, without thought applied, is black spots on a white background.  You have learned to interpret these symbols as letters, words, sentences and thoughts.  You deal with them in the English language.  The same thoughts would obviously appear differently if written in French.  So, the new data that you take in is affected by the previous truths (not a capital “T”) that you have received in your lifetime.  When I say the word “dog”, you may envision a Toy Poodle, while my mind’s image may be of a German Shorthair Retriever.  The individual’s interpretation of any word is based on their personal, previous life experiences.  It can't be any other way.  Oh, I suppose you could learn to sit still and attempt to only take in raw data and do nothing with that data.  I would rather water ski.  You don't accomplish more by water skiing, but I think it is a lot more fun.

The famous author and philosopher, J.R. Pirtle once said, “Life is what you think.”  This is a far more useful and realistic way to view your real world.  Life, to you, can be no more or no less than what you think.  Even if you were a fundamentalist Buddhist (in other words, catatonic) and only saw raw, unaltered data, that would be what you think.  A friend of mine, a professor at our state university, in reaction to Pirtle’s, “Life is what you think,” responded, “Sometimes I think that life is not what I think.”  My response was, “Well, then it isn’t.”

 

I apologize to you Buddhists for this blog post.  I should have written it sooner.  I have already made it a point to insult the fundamentalist Jews and Christians.  Fundamentalist Muslims do not require ridicule.  They do it to themselves.  But, I have held off on Buddhists and that is probably because they claim not to be a religion and they compose only about one percent of our nation’s population.  However, their eyes do glass over, just like fundamentalist Christians and Jews, when they state one of the gullible beliefs of their religion.  The Buddha knew and stated that he could not pass down his wisdom.  The Tao is an individual’s journey, not a group’s.  His followers often tinkle their little bells and try to shy away from the undeniable awareness of the concept, “self”.  Buddhists had better hold their nuttiness down or they will be classified as a religion.  I certainly can't blame them for trying to avoid that.

Comments are welcome, Old Buz (an agnostic who accepts any belief, as long as it agrees with his own)