Buddha on Diet

Dieting: A system of starving yourself to death so you can live a little longer.
Jan Murray

A diet is when you watch what you eat and wish you could eat what you watch.
Hermione Gingold

A diet is the penalty we pay for exceeding the feed limit.

I have a great diet. You're allowed to eat anything you want, but you must eat it with naked fat people.

Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie.
Garfield

I'm on a seafood diet. I see food and I eat it.

The cardiologist's diet: If it tastes good, spit it out.

I tried every diet in the book. I tried some that weren’t in the book. I tried eating the book. It tasted better than most of the diets.
Dolly Parton

Never eat more than you can lift.
Miss Piggy

A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand

If hunger is not the problem, then eating is not the solution.

I have gained and lost the same ten pounds so many times over and over again my cellulite must have déjà vu.
Jane Wagner

Inside every fat person, trying to get out, there is a beautiful thin one - or even two or three.

Outside every fat man there was an even fatter man trying to close in
Kingsley Amis

I don't diet. I just don't eat as much as I'd like to.
Linda Evangelista

My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four.
Unless there are three other people.
Orson Welles

There are no fat people, just people too short for their weight.

Praise is the best diet for us, after all
Sydney Smith

Probably nothing in the world arouses more false hopes than the first four hours of a diet.
Dan Bennett

An optimist is a person who starts a new diet on Thanksgiving Day.
Irv Kupcinet

The second day of a diet is always easier than the first. By the second day you're off it.
Jackie Gleason

I told my doctor I get very tired when I go on a diet, so he gave me pep pills.
Know what happened? I ate faster.
Joe E Lewis

Can you imagine a world without men? No crime and lots of happy fat women

I found there was only one way to look thin, hang out with fat people
Rodney Dangerfield

The older you get, the tougher it is to lose weight because by then, your body and your fat are really good friends

It's strange but true. Fat chance and slim chance mean the same thing

I went on a diet, swore off drinking and heavy eating, and in 14 days I lost two weeks.
Joe E. Lewis

I've been on a constant diet for the last two decades. I've lost a total of 789 pounds. By all accounts, I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.
Erma Bombeck

No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat.
Without a brain, you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office.
Covert Bailey

The Fall of Idols

We are all God.
That is until we develop an Ego and we start thinking we are Gods.
And that ignorant belief throws us in a lot of trouble because your Ego is not God and it cannot control the universe and therefore it cannot control your life.

Sooner or later, like a blind man walking a tightrope, you gonna take a wrong step and your castle build out of cards will come tumbling down.
Then you start asking questions like:
- Why is this happening to me? Maybe there is a God and for some unknown reason he really doesn't like me and is trying to ruin my life.
Or something like that.

Let me start all over again from the beginning.
We are all God, not Gods.
We are born from the De like waves are born from the ocean.
We all have the same Divine nature. Actually, to be more precise everything there is, has the divine nature.

What differentiates us as persons start after we are born.
After our conception, we start a process of indoctrination by our power figures, which I call our IDOLS, into believing that we are something different than God. That we are human beings, a name, a race, a religion or country.
We are taught and learn to identify and therefore to separate ourselves from anybody and anything else. Thus we become strangers to our own divinity.

Furthermore our teachers, our Idols teach us how to lie, steal, hate, judge others, kill, deceive and betray and all that wonderful things that "humans" think, say and do all in the name of protecting US from THEM.
Of course, no Idol will ever take responsibility for this corruption of the Divine in us, for teaching us the evil way, but somehow we all learn and know it by the time we hit adulthood or the time we leave our family nest and start acting out our independent life.

It is at this time and point in our life when our disaster scenario programming starts unfolding.
Yes, we all follow the same path of self-destruction with some variants of time, place and circumstances.
It is inevitable. It is our destiny.
The biggest problem is not that we fail but that we keep following our programming again and again, repeating the same mistakes until we die without ever realizing what's going on.

So let me start again from the beginning.
We are all born God.
Everything else following our procreation is an experience of God in this material world.
Everything else you believe you are is just a role you have been programmed by your Idols to play, which in turn have been programmed by their Idols, which in turn have been programmed by their Idols since the beginning of human civilization.

In this process of self-programming, the chaos and error introduced by Ego each generation is perpetuating and amplifying constantly.
Translation: Our dysfunctionality as individuals and society is increasing with each generation and it will end in self-destruction and a spiritual renaissance revolution shortly after.

This revolution will be brought by the fall of Idols.
The personal realization that your Idols, your mother, father, teacher, priest, politicians and scientists, prophets and laymen and last but not list YOU are ignorant assholes. That there are no Idols outside your erroneous perception that everybody is just like everybody else.

I know it is scary to think that our Idols are nothing more than ordinary people doing their best or worst depending on how you see it, but their shit doesn't smell like roses and they are as ignorant and clueless as anybody else no matter how many diplomas, how much fame money or powers they have.

But that is the inevitable outcome the inevitable end of our Ego experience, the liberation act from our Idols and the return to the original truth.
We are all God.
Everything else is just an illusion, the experience of our human manifestation.

The Tao of Relationships

Relationships are becoming increasingly more difficult to have and to preserve.
From the dawn of history, we have tales of bad relationships.
The Greek mythology is full of stories of relationships gone bad.
From family feuds to tragic romantic love affairs to wars between clans and nations, people had always had a hard time getting along.

But all those Greek tragedies were special, rare occasions, not the social norm. Most of the time people had good relationships. They knew how to start a conversation, communicate effectively, handle differences and settle disputes.
I know this first hand because I grew up on a farm were the social dynamics were unchanged for hundreds of years.

There was a time when everybody knew their neighbor by name when children play in the streets without fear of being kidnaped and when romance ended up in marriages that lasted a lifetime.
Those days are gone.

We are living in the Internet era where everyone has thousands of friends and followers but if you need a ride to the airport you have to call a taxi because you don't know anybody that will give you a ride. We are living in the era where internet dating offers thousand of matches to choose from but not a single one that you would choose to go out with.
Our marriages are statistically doomed from the start. Our best hopes are to find somebody that will stick around for more than a couple of month.
We live solitary lives in cities crowded with millions of people.

What happened?
We build societies and the human civilization to serve us the humans, to make us safer, prosperous, healthier and happier.
In time the roles have changed we are no longer the masters of the social and economic system. We are the slaves.
We have become part of the machine part of the system.

Our relationships have changed into social contracts. Love has become business. Anything that doesn't serve the system is discarded everything that benefits the system is promoted.
And we buy into it because it gives us the promise of success.
But people are becoming increasingly unhappy and all the material success and convenience of the modern life cannot replace the feeling of love and belonging we have lost.

To love is to give without asking anything in return.
That goes against the social construct which is to take, to accumulate without giving anything in return or at least to give back as little as possible. That is the formula for success.
That is the way we live our lives.

This is the Ego reality. The world of fragmentation and separation, the world of scarcity and fear.
We have promoted the worst in us the Ego to be the one that takes all the decisions and directs our lives.
We have created a soulless society where love and happiness come in a pill bottle.
We all want love, we are starved for love, we all are beginning to receive it but who is the one to give?

Business is good for business but life is not a business transaction.
The business rules do not apply to life and relationships and if they are applied, the results are always a disaster.
The business model is based on competition on having winners and losers. Love is not a business affair
In love, you can't have a winner and a loser.
In a bad relationship, both parties are losers.

The Age of Righteousness

As we were discussing in my last post, in the Western culture we see time in a linear fashion, we see the society evolving on a never-ending ascending path, like climbing an infinite mountain.
That vision, of a linear timeline, is not shared by all cultures.
Some people see time as a circular trajectory, they see the society evolving in cycles of growth and decay and according to that philosophy, we are now experiencing an age of decadence, the Kali Yuga.

One of the symptoms of a decaying society is the polarisation of spiritual beliefs, part of a larger trend of social fragmentation.
The middle way of thinking has been abandoned in favor of the hard-line extremism.

According to Buddhist teachings, things and actions are not "good" or "bad" - for example, guns and killing are neutral.
You can use a gun to rob a bank or you can use a gun to protect the bank from being robbed. Or the second World War, the Germans use guns and killing to subjugate people and destroy democracy and of course we used guns and killing to liberate the subjugated nations and reinforce democracy.

So all things being equal, the middle path is always the wise path to follow.
That could be summarised in a simple statement:
"Everything in excess is bad" or "Everything in moderation is good"
This middle way path is a path of harmony, of balance rather than this, is "good vs this is bad" path of righteousness.

It is very hard to convince anybody that democracy is no better than dictatorship, that actually a political, social system is only as good or bad as the people that are running the system.
A democracy run by corrupt people is not a good thing at all, and we are starting to see that in our own government at this very moment in history,

A dictatorship run by intelligent concerned people will always be superior to a democracy run by corrupted politicians.
I know, that idea is very unpleasant and unacceptable to us Americans born and raised to worship democracy and freedom but the truth is that China, a communist dictatorship, is kicking our democratic asses, at this very moment, on all fields, economic, educational, healthcare, research and development and basically, military power would be the only thing that we could say we are better  at, but even that is a very relative assumption.

That is just one example but the problem has become an epidemic. The "my way is the right and only way" philosophy is embraced by almost everybody.
You cannot have a decent polite argument anymore, therefore all the paths to progress and reconciliations have been shut close. The only solution left is the frontal confrontation. The only outcome acceptable is the total annihilation of the opponent part.

This polarisation of beliefs will continue covering the lad, will continue to grow, especially with the help of mass media that thrives on chaos and negativity.
The only good thing about this darkness is that will allow a lot of people to finally discern the light of spiritual teachings we have lost or forgot.

The NFL quagmire has begun

There are no more controversial and explosive subjects than religion, politics, and sports.

Nothing else makes people lose their common sense, reason, and temper like the three.

So what do you think will happen when you mix politics and sports?

Nothing good for sure. People will lose their minds and the whole debate will be just accusations, insults and irrational screaming tirades in a raging storm of emotions.

Well, brace yourself because the NFL quagmire has just begun.

I’m not a sports fan and I try as much as possible to stay away from politics but with today’s media intruding in every corner of our lives it would be impossible to miss the big news:

NFL has declared war to Donald Tump.

If you missed it, this is what’s going on:

A large majority of NFL players are upset with Mr. Trump whom they consider being a racist and have decided to protest by refusing to stand or show up during the National Anthem.

I just want to know who is the genius that came up with this idea?

I’m not saying that the NFL players don’t have the right to protest or that they should not protest but before protesting before starting a war did anybody thought about how to win the fight?

This is very much like what happened after 9/11 when everybody was really upset and decided to go to war just because it “felt” better but without thinking about the consequences.

You know what happened; we are still mired in the quagmire of war.

So this NFL political fight is a very, very bad idea and it will end in a very, very bad outcome.

This impulsive emotional outburst will backfire and will do un-repairable damage for NFL.

Once again just to make things clear; I’m not debating the validity of the NFL players complains, I’m debating the method and strategy of their offense.

And here are two very good reasons why:

One:  No one will become a new NFL fan just because the NFL players are protesting Mr. Trump.

 A lot or at least some of the NFL fans will be driven away to other sports because a lot of people think that disrespecting the National Anthem and the American flag is insulting and unpatriotic.

Two: The NFL has started a war they cannot win. They have no exit strategy; they have no way to win.

How long are they going to sit or kneel? One month? One season? Two. three, four?

Sooner or later they will have to quit and that by definition is a defeat.

You see my point? How are they going to win? Nobody knows, nobody has thought about it.

Just like Afghanistan and Iraq, the war was lost before it started.

Don’t start a war before you have figured out how to win it, and that applies not only to NFL but to all the wars and battles in the world.

So congratulation NFL players for handing Mr. Trump another unwarranted victory.

I think I figured out the Trump strategy; he doesn’t have to be good just better than the opposition.

Just like the guy running from the bear; he doesn’t have to run faster than the bear just faster than the fat guy.

The Human De-Evolution

The universe is not a random explosion but a growing evolving organism.

The grand law of the universe is “Evolution” Not the evolution of one thing or another as we understand it but the evolution of the universe itself.

There are other fundamental laws of the universe like the law of harmony, the law of simplicity, the law of effortless action aka the path of least resistance, working in concordance to the evolution of the universe.

Once again, these universal laws apply to all aspects of existence, not to any particular instances.

As part of the universe, humans are subjects to the same laws. We are evolving as the universe evolves.

It is an ignorant belief that human evolution or any evolution for that matter has started at a certain moment in time.

Our evolution has started with the universe itself. We are the final result in this evolutionary chain but not the last.

We carry in our DNA all the experience and the lessons learned from the dawn of life, all life history, from the first living cell to what we are today.

Our “flight or fight” instinct is not a human invention.  All the instincts we have, have been developed and perfected long before the humans appear and passed down to us.

We are not a new invention of life but an extension of it.

We have to understand that in order to understand the predicament we are in today.

We have interrupted and disrupted the law of universal evolution and we are de-evolving.

We are on a path of self-destruction and on the brink of catastrophe.

It all started with the newest development “the reasoning mind” This quality we humans have has made us the dominant species on the planet but also created the danger of self-destruction.

For as long as life has evolved the laws of nature have been respected.

We have a wrong understanding of the natural life. We see it as a fight for survival.

We see predators and prey as enemies and our environment as a hostile habitat we have to conquer and beat into submission.

The natural world is perfect. There are no animosities or conflicts in the natural world.

The good of one is the good of all and all species and all life live in harmony, or I should say used to live in harmony until we the humans took over the world.

We used to be gatherers and hunters living off the land like all the other living organisms.

It all changed when we developed agriculture. The natural harmony of the environment has been altered to our benefit.

Crops no longer grew in accordance with the universal laws but grew at our command.

The balance of things has started to crumble and it would get even worse as we developed our civilization.

We have burned down forests, destroy habitats, level mountains, forced rivers in dams and levees use all resources for our sole benefit and disregard all the rest of life on this planet.

There was an obvious reason for all that, we wanted to make our lives easier, safer, better.

But we have lost track of that. We have accomplished all those goals but we didn’t stop there.

Technology is no longer a tool no longer our servant but it has become our master.

We are developing and expanding not for our benefit but for the sake of developing and expanding.

Our growth has no target, no purpose, and no meaning.

We still like to believe that we do it for our own good but the reality is that our lives have not got any better.

Yes, we live longer because all the drugs we take, but is our longer life better?

Yes, we have more food than ever before in history but are we eating better today?

Yes, we have the internet and the miracles of modern communication but is our social life better today?

Yes, we have accomplished amazing things but in fact, we have created more problems than we have solved.

Actually, I cannot name one single problem we have ever solved.

We have not evolved we have de-evolved

Here is what we have accomplished so far: Wars, poverty, inequality, corruption, greed, sickness, pollution, ignorance, racism, prejudice, addiction, violence, intolerance and fear.

On the other hand, we have more money than ever in recorded history and our phones have become smarter than many of us.

What we need is not better technology, what we need are better people.

It is time to stop the technological revolution and start the human evolution.

The Creation of Wealth

There is only one way to create wealth: CREATIVITY

There are only two ways to amass very large amounts of money:

One – Create Wealth

Two – Steal it

The rest of us who are not creators or thieves are just tools for the ones that are.

We’re the workers making it all possible, keeping the system running.

There are thousands of ways of making a living, too many to mention and too unimportant to analyze.

Working for a living will not make you rich.

The richest man in the world (at some point in time) was Bill Gates.

He and others like him, Steve Forbes, Henry Ford, Mark Zuckerberg, Ellan Musk and many more like them are CREATORS.

Creators create wealth by offering to society necessary products or services.

There are also other people with very large bank accounts, people like J P Morgan, Charles Schwab or Warren Buffet.

They make money by taking it from the wealth creators.

They have created a system that forces people in debt by making it almost impossible to function in the society, unless you are extremely rich, without using their system.

You have to know all this in order to understand the “Golden Rule”

“He who has the Gold makes the rules”

This society was not been built for your benefit but for the benefit of the rich.

The notion of democracy and the myth of the American dream were fabricated to keep the people hoping and somehow believing in a future they will never have.

The best you can do is make a living, maybe save some money for retirement and hope not to die before your savings run out.

My advice to you. Stop making a living it will only have you killed.

The easiest way to make a lot of money is to steal it.

The problem with that is that if you were not born rich, you are not allowed to steal and if you do you will end up in jail. Not a very good way to spend your life.

The second-best way to become financially independent is to employ your creativity.

What people do not understand is that you can do that right here and now.

If you want to build personal computers in your garage and sell them to millions of people or if you can make a painting and sell thousands of copies online, the principle is the same.

The scope and size of your enterprise may be different but the principle is the same:

You have to offer other people a product or service they want.

Do you have a passion, a talent something unique to offer to the society?

Then you have it. You are in business.

Have you ever heard of “Famous Amos” who became a millionaire by selling chocolate chip cookies?

Well, that’s the way you do it.

People believe you must have the next greatest invention, a revolutionary new product nobody has ever made. WRONG

People believe you must have a large amount of money and time to invest. WRONG.

People believe that you must have the business knowledge to run a business. WRONG again.

I used to work with a fellow named Mike. He started selling homemade candles as a side business.

I watched him starting from nothing.

He started by selling candles to his coworkers on special occasions like Valentine’s Day or Christmas.

I helped him setup his first online website.

He had no business plans, no ambition no grand expectations.

He just loved what he was doing and he kept on doing it.

He started by making a few dollars profit here and there and then a couple of hundreds every month.

He developed relationships with people and his little side business grew and grew.

Eventually, he had to cut his regular working hours in half to tend to his online business and then to quit his employment entirely and become self-employed.

I’m not saying that he is making a fortune in his new business but he is making a living doing what he loves. And that should be what all of us and our children should strive for.

Gender bender toilet offender

There are some essential differences between genders, some inherent pluses and minuses being a man or a woman.  I heard both sides complain and argue about the shortcomings of being one or another.

Personally, I like being a man. There are some nice perks coming with the gender.

One of the things I like having a penis is that allows me to use a urinal AKA man’s ability to pee standing.

For those not in the knowledge of this little secret, this is a short rundown.

You get into a bathroom, unzip your fly, pull the penis out, pee in the urinal, lovingly shake the foreword mention penis, put back in pants, zip, wash hands and go out on your merry way.

Fast and efficient, the manly way of doing things. Wham bam thank you, mam! If you know what I mean.

It doesn’t sound too much unless you have to go really bad and there is a queue at the bathroom door, which I’ve seen many times in front of a women’s rest room. As a man, the only time I recall having to wait in line was at concerts and sporting events.

So, I don’t understand why a man would want to use a women’s bathroom.

It doesn’t make any sense. It has no rhyme or reason.

Why give up the wonderful thing that is peeing standing and put up with setting a paper cover on the toilet or God forbid having to build your own but protection out of little pieces of toilet paper?

I thought hard about this and the two only reasonable answers I could come up with are:

1)      The man wants to pee all over the toilet seat. (We do it even when we try really hard to aim)

2)      The man wants to see some women or young girls using the bathroom.

Both of the answers thou should be enough reason to ban men from using women’s bathrooms.

The same argument goes for a woman wanting to use a men’s bathroom.

Why would a woman want to use a men’s bathroom, with the exception that women’s bathrooms are sometimes crowded, as I mentioned?

I’ve seen women waiting in line and sometimes ask permission to use the men’s bathroom and  I can proudly say that in every occasion men behaved with utmost respect and courtesy, making everything possible to be helpful.

So the only other argument I could come up with is that some women love to see naked men.

So to that I want to let them know that you don’t have to roam around men’s bathrooms you can go to any bar, find some drunk guys and they will be more than happy to help.

Of course, there is the transgender argument.

But peeing is not a matter of gender identity, it is a matter of plumbing.

You have a penis you pee standing. You have a vagina you pee sitting.

It doesn’t matter if you identify as a man. You can’t use a urinal. You may try it but I can assure you it will be messy.

So, there is a simple rule we can all use, even if you are sexually confused.

Look into your underwear and see what kind of plumbing you have. 

The day you’ll see a vagina there you may use the women’s bathroom.

Until then stick with the dickheads' crowd.

But I suspect that nobody will take my advice because this is not about gender identity or human equality. This I suspect has nothing to do with what we’ve discussed here.

Let’s look at the problem a different way. Let’s ask a different set of questions.

Was the government eradicated poverty, drug abuse, and violence? Have they solved the healthcare, education or environmental problems we are facing? Just to mention a few pressing problems we are facing.

The answer is NO. The government has no clue or intention on how to fix these problems.

So it is easy to see why given the opportunity to focus the population attention from the important problems of our country to issues like bathroom use, the government is more than happy to oblige.

The sad thing is that as the population is losing the sense of common sense and the average human attention span shrinks to that of a cat facing a red dot laser, we’ll see more and more of those absurd debacles happening.

Every freak looking for his or her 15 minutes of fame will come out of the woods demanding something and the government will be more than happy to make it into a political debate.

If you wonder where that will take us you should watch this little movie gem called “IDIOCRACY”

The Poverty Excuse

You shouldn’t judge poverty unless you have experienced it.

Is like me trying to understand what is to be a woman or black or gay.

Your views are always distorted by your social conditioning and the only way to know reality is by direct experience.

But no matter what your background is and what your life experience has taught you, we still have a common bond, a common truth, and understanding and that is:

“The world is a reflection of who we are, of what we think and how we act.”

I was watching a video on YouTube about India and although the program was focusing on the Indian culture in general and Indian religious beliefs, in particular, I couldn’t not notice the backgrounds of the sites and scenes.

Sorry to say that but India is a filthy place.

Among the most beautiful natural settings and the most amazing architecture, there was always the presence of filth, decay, and neglect.

I know India is a poor country and I heard that excuse a hundred times in a hundred places, but poverty is not an excuse.

I was born and raised in a poor country, in a poor village.

The people of the village had maybe one set of “good” clothing they wore on Sundays to go to church or very special occasions.

Their daily clothing was patched until patching was no more possible and then the rags were turned into quilts or patches for other clothes.

But they were washed as soon they got dirty.

There were always flowers in the house and in the yard.

The roads were always clean. And people did their best with the little they had to make the village look as good as possible.

You don’t have to be a millionaire to pick up a piece of garbage from the sidewalk.

You don’t have to be rich to take a shower or wash your clothes.

And I heard the excuse that they are “lucky” if they have clean water to drink.

But I lived in a village and the water was always clean. The rivers and streams were always good to drink. The water doesn’t get filthy by itself, you know. So unless you live in Sahara or some other desert where water is scarce, I don’t buy that excuse either.

How can such a spiritual culture as India can be so obvious to such basic things like cleanliness and beauty?

Maybe spirituality is not what I think it is; an enlightened state of mind and being.

Maybe spirituality is just a superstition, a belief in supernatural and things we don’t understand.

Yet even that doesn’t explain it.

If you believe in God, in something superior, pure, and beautiful how can you not want to elevate yourself above your condition?

How come you not aspire for something better, for a better self and a better surrounding?

I think poverty is just a convenient excuse, a way to blame responsibility on somebody and something else.

You don’t need to be rich to have dignity and self-respect.

The only explanation I accept for our human condition is that of “spiritual poverty” which is not given but a choice.

If you can have a smart phone and you are not taking a shower you are filthy because you are filthy. What the world needs is not more money or more and better technology and gadgets.

What the world really badly needs is better people.

Where The Truth Lies

A long time ago I had a very nasty car accident.  

I was stopped, waiting to make a left turn at the intersection when out of the blue a car smashed into my back.

There were several motorists that witnessed the accident and stopped to help. When the police arrived and started taking testimonies from them to my surprise their stories were all different and not as I recalled the accident happening.

Furthermore, one of the witnesses even went to say that the accident was my fault. I couldn’t believe it! Why a complete stranger with no vested interest in the case would lie like that? Or maybe he wasn’t lying, he was honest but wrong.

Was he then telling the truth? Then… what is truth?

There is no universal accepted definition of truth and the subject is still out for debate. The classical definition of truth deals with how well a statement represents the actual facts or things it describes.

So a painting, let’s say, it is true to the degree it reflects the reality, hence a photography will be better but still limited to a two-dimensional representation, while a hologram will be even closer to reality, but in an absolute sense still not real. Reality is the only absolute truth.

For more than 2000 years we have been trying to bring our language closer and closer to that reality with direct, explicit, clear words. At the same time, our vocabulary has developed to reflect the social, political and economic trends, specifically the male dominance in the society.

The rise of women rights movement in the US brought those discrepancies in the limelight. The argument was that the male culture and language promotes sexism and discrimination against women and had to be changed to reflect the equality of sexes.

So mankind became humankind, stewardess became flight attendant; policeman became the officer, chairman chairperson, manmade synthetic, fireman firefighter and so on.

The changing of the wrongdoings of the past was done not as a favor to women but as justice. The new words were not a departure from the truth but rather a better reflection of the man, woman equality. And this is the most important most misunderstood and abused thing about the truth.

This misunderstanding has started a new trend in the American language to change the vocabulary not to serve the truth but to accommodate certain human sensibilities thus in the 80’s the “politically correctness” movement was born.

The crippled has become handicapped, the retarded are now mentally challenged, fat people are overweight, midgets are little people, old people are senior citizens and dead people are expired.

Why? Are those words a better reflection of reality? Do they hold a higher truth? No. Fat people are still fat, old people are not getting any younger and stupid people are not getting any smarter.

So are we really doing them a favor by pretending that we don’t see their condition? Do really deaf people say “I don’t like the sound of that word, I prefer to be called hearing impaired.”? Isn’t African American as racist word as black, since it makes the same artificial discrimination?

There is only one race, the human race; shouldn’t we all be called just human beings?

We are witnessing an ever increasing abuse of the truth, in our everyday life.

The media, the pundits, the experts, they all are stretching and abusing the limits of language in order to persuade and control public opinion.

The obvious reality is no longer the truth. Facts are no longer facts. All that it matters is the spin, the interpretation, the opinion, the words.

 And of course, everybody is too busy to use their own brain.

After all, why do we have computers for?

What can I get from you?

The “Ego” sits alone in the middle of the universe, feeling, weak, poor, helpless and lonely.
 It is the normal emotional state of anyone that thinks it is a separated entity from everything and everybody else. This perceived separation creates the illusion of scarcity. The “Ego” is always poor, always wanting more, no matter how much it has already. And the manifestation of that poverty is the prevalent thought that permeates the human society. “What can I get from you?”

I see this happening more and more. There is desperation, a wave of new methods and tricks of squeezing more and more out of anything and anybody. We have trashed the Earth beyond repair and create poverty and suffering at a global scale in the name of prosperity and progress. We want more and more but never have enough.  It is a false and deadly path and we are driving it 100 miles an hour towards a dead end.

No wealth, material or spiritual has ever been created by taking from others.
All wealth comes from human creativity, from people that have found something others need and fulfilled that need.  Only by giving one can become rich.

The question is not “What can I get from you?” but rather “What can I give you?” Find something that everybody needs and you will be rich beyond your dreams. Creativity is the key to riches.
Not all of us can be bankers and thieves after all J

…Can we?

Swine flu and common sense

I have stopped watching TV around September last year.
One of the best decisions I ever made – I highly recommend it!
But of course if the mountain doesn’t go to Mohamed, Mohamed comes to the mountain anyway.
So like it or not I couldn’t avoid the “swine virus” news craze from forcing itself on my private life.
All the people are talking is the swine flu – Paris Hilton and the Octo Mum must be fuming!

Where is the news?
What is the news?
That we live in a society of dumb down individuals that can not see past the media manipulation and the BS the big money and big government is feeding us daily?
That common sense has being damned unacceptable and the only thing that matter is the expert’s opinion and the so called “scientific evidence”?

I grew up on a farm and although the farmers were uneducated people they knew that smoking cigarettes was bad for you, they knew that drinking alcohol was destroying your liver.
I mean they did not need a scientific study to tell them that putting a foreign substance in your body is bad for your health.
Yet we are consuming industrial quantities of artificial coloring, sweetening and flavoring every day – why?
Because there is no scientific “evidence” that the crap is bad for us.

So let me put it this way:
For decades now we have been raising animals in agro industrial complexes – translation –
We are raising animals in hell holes and in order to keep them from dying we fed them buckets of drugs and antibiotics and pump them up with steroids and growth hormones.

Then I ask you: Why is swine flu or bird flu such a mystery?
I mean after exposing the viruses in those animals to such a bombardment drugs and genetically mutated feeds, what exactly do you expect?
Healthy, delicious, nutritious food?
If you are what you eat, then you are what your animals that you eat, eat too.
Right?
Well that pretty much means you are full of shit :)

But have no fear, the government and the scientific community will protect you from the evil viruses.
Of course that is until they will be caught sleeping at the wheel – can you say Katrina?
And trust me if a virus pandemic goes out of control it will make Katrina look like child’s play.

Europe lost half of its population in the great plague.
We should have learned that you don’t shit where you eat.

We should have learned by now that beating nature in submission is a loosing proposition and the only way to survive is by living in harmony with mother nature – which by the way can provide for us all, if we stop being so greedy and looking only to make a profit by exploiting our planet.

So since there is no “scientific evidence” that we are fucking up our environment, forget your common sense and keep on watching that TV for more enlightening and entertaining news!

The bubbling trouble

It used to be that capitalism was a mirroring image of natural competition and evolution.
That’s why they call it the free market.
You made a product that people needed and wanted – not necessarily in that order – and if your product was good, people would pay good money for it.
That was the “good money for good products” glory time, when Cadillac use to mean the best money can buy.

Then some brilliant ass hole came up with the idea that you can make more money if you make a lot of cheap “disposable” goods.
And that brought us in the “consumer capitalism” phase, where we started to loose “the best in the world” title but we made lots and lots of money.

Then some other brilliant genius came up with the idea that we don’t’ have to make the products in USA anymore we make the junk wherever the labor is cheapest and sell it over here at astronomical profits.
Ant that is when “Made in China” became a national logo.

But making junk in China was not profitable enough so we decided that making nothing over here and selling it for billions was even more profitable.
Thus, we had the dot com bubble and of course the first bubble burst that inevitable followed.

The dot com bubble was gone but the idea of selling nothing was too good to drop so here we go again, this time with the subprime – real estate bubble.
Of course that ended up with a big bang also, and we are still trying to clean up the mess it created.

The interesting thing is the way we are fixing the “irresponsible” actions of the financial community is by “irresponsible” actions of the government.
Here we go again in a bubbling situation.
The money bubble.

How long do you think this bubble will grow before it pops?
Because, I am sorry to say it, but any bubble that keeps on growing has to burst at a certain point.
OK, we are going to pay back our debt. The question is how?
We have to make again products that are better and cheaper than what the Chinese are making and sorry folks but the only thing we seem to be good at, is blowing bubbles.

Looking into my crystal bubble, the future doesn’t look vey bright at this point.
It is going to be a very interesting ride, to say the list.

What do you say?

Is the end of the world real?

Yes it is. The end of the world is unavoidable.
It is scientifically proven that as soon as the Sun burns out all the hydrogen it will explode into a supernova and the Earth as we know it will be pulverized.
There is no question if the end is real. Everything that has a beginning has an end.
That is not the real question.
The question is not how are we going to die, but rather how are we going to live.

I believe it was Camus who said: "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy."
Once you have settled that question there is no other thing left to do but live.

So how are we going to live?
Is it unavoidable that corporate greed and political corruption should rule the world while enlightenment and decency should suffer and wither?
Well, it is all up to you.
Yes you have the power to determine the future of this country, the future of this planet.

The so called powers of this world are actually powerless without you.
You are the ones that plant the crops and put the food on the tables.
You are the ones that build the houses and the roads.
You are the ones that build the guns and that fight the wars.
Without you the rich and powerful would die of starvation.

Yeah, that is nice BS you might say, so let me ask you:
Would the banks and the lenders have succeeded in raping the Americans house market, if millions of people would have not bought into the financial scam of the sub prime lending?
You see nobody has put a gun to anybody’s head to buy a house that they could not afford, or to get a second mortgage they did not need.
Who is putting the corrupt politicians in power year after year, after year?
You do. And you know what they say: “You fool me once, shame on you. You fool me twice shame on me”
Who is fighting the wars? I don’t think the rich and powerful are spilling their blood for the protection of democracy and cheap oil. Do you?

So you see it takes two to tango.
Evil needs ignorance and ignorant people in order to succeed; because frankly, evil is very weak and cowardly, and unless it finds the suckers to do its deeds it is pretty much helpless.
Something to think about when you feel helpless, used and abused.

Vacation is over!

I love vacations:
I love the anticipation, the preparations, the adventure, the discovery, the people and places, the laughter and joy, the memories that last a life time.
The only thing I don’t like about vacations is the time warp.
Why do they have to be so damn short?
Why when you have fun, time seems to fly and when you are in one of life embarrassing or painful episodes, time seems to slow to a stop?
Good question!

Like it or not, between the maternity ward and the crematorium – I find the burial process rather creepy – we have but a brief moment of time to experience joy, love and happiness, and even before we realize this impermanence of life, the experience is over.

Life is a journey and what makes this journey worth the effort are the little moments of happiness we manage to steal from the mundane and ordinary struggle for survival, our little vacations from life.
The picnics in the park, the bicycle rides, the weekend excursions.
Taking the kids to a movie, a museum, a concert or an amusement park.
Going trick or treating on Halloween, buying a Christmas tree and decorating it. Opening presents on Christmas Eve.
Having a Thanksgiving dinner with family and friends or watching the 4th of July fire works.
These and many more are the little “roses” on the side of life’s road, that make the journey worth while.
We should stop and smell the roses more often. I know I will. It is part of my New Year resolution.
See: Are you enlightened?

I love vacations.
They recharge my batteries and give me energy and purpose.
They enrich my life, my mind and soul, and coming back home they make me appreciate more what I have. Vacations give me a new perspective on life.
How would you experience what you have if you would never let it go?
So my advice to you:
Don’t ever pass an opportunity to take a vacation.
Don’t ever pass an opportunity to smell the roses.

Be loved!

Election Special Edition

It use to be that you didn’t ask a fellow American about how much money he makes or what his financial situation was, or about his private life and for God’s sake never discussed politics, unless of course he was one of us not one of them.
If you wanted to discuss politics you got together with your political friends, people that had the same views as you and basically told one each other how right you were and how wrong the others were.
Of course those other people were never around for the debate.
So slowly after years and years of ignoring each other a huge schism has been created.
America is now divided between us and them, to the point of political civil war.

The other day I went to a kids Halloween party. The kids took over the back yard while the parents gathered into a corner by the barbeque.
To my total surprise 15 minutes into the party, a political debate ensued.
As you might now by now – if you read my posts – I am an X Republican.
Actually I believe I’m still a Republican, my values have never change but my political party some where has lost its direction.
For the first time I witnessed a real political debate, with passionate arguments, under the belt punches and clever setup traps.
The group divided in two opposite combat groups and two leaders arise.
The Republicans were lead by “John” and the Dems by “Jane” – not real names.

The battle started with the same old tired arguments, abortions, gay marriage and guns.
I didn’t even entered the debate because I consider these issues non political and just a distraction from the real problems.
Then the debate got more passionate and focused on Obama’s lack of experience.
I stepped in and asked, “Is experience just time in office and if that, is Fidel Castro the best president of the world, since he’s been in power the longest.
Is Dick Cheney the most qualified person to lead this country because he has the most experience?
My friend John was very disappointed on my betrayal and admonished me for not being a good republican – follow and don’t question type.
I said to him “John, if McCain was the democrat nominee would you vote for him?”
He said “Of course not!” I said “That’s exactly my point, you are voting for the republican party not for the country.”

The truth is that a president is as good as the people he chooses for his administration. When McCain choose Sarah Palin as running mate - for his own self interest, disregarding what America needs - I had a bad déjà view, of Bush forcing Colin Powel to resign and giving the job to kiss ass Condoleezza Rice.
Bush is the worst prez in history of USA because he has surrounded himself with incompetent, corrupted ass licking cronies and McCain shows exactly the same judgment.

November 4 is around the corner, and after months and months of grueling political debate the moment of truth is here. What will America choose? I am as curious as anybody else.
My prediction; Obama will squeeze in a victory.