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!

Advice for a young father

I grew up in a very patriarchal society.
I did not know any better and I thought that was the way things were supposed to be.

Men were supposed to be the bread winners and the women the home makers.
Boys play with swords and cars and girls play with dolls and lace.
Girls were supposed to be soft and gentle and boys were not supposed to cry.
Women were supposed to be romantic and men were supposed to be chivalrous.

I remember coming to the United States in the very beginning of the 80’s.
Feminism was still alive and a very shocking and puzzling thing for me.

If men were such an evil bunch, why the American women were trying to emulate them?
It seemed to me totally backwards.
Women were destroying femininity because masculinity was bad and some how turning women into men would make the world a better place?!?

I was working for a big corporation.
The director was an older woman.
I remember going to a business lunch with all my colleagues.
I walk ahead of the group, being the youngest male, and opened the door for everybody to exit.
To my surprise our young accountant said to me:
- Why are you opening the door for me, do you think I am handicapped?
I was speechless as she exited the company ahead of everybody including our older director, which by the way stopped in front of me and said:
- Thank you, that is vey polite! – I think she wanted to make a point.
And then at the elevator, same thing, the young lady cut in front of everybody.

I was puzzled by the fact that every American woman was waiting for the prince Charming to come and rescue them on a white horse – or a Rolls Royce, but at the same time they called me a male chauvinist pig for calling them the “fair sex” – probable because I lacked the white horse or the RR :)

I still believe the women should be beautiful and soft and feminine and I don’t think that being feminine it is less than being a man – actually I believe that women are much better human beings than men – and I even learn some things from them, like getting in touch with my feelings and not be ashamed to show my emotions.

I am the father of two beautiful daughters and as they grow up and start turning into young ladies I dread the fact they will live in a society where chivalry is dead.
Equality between sexes in the working place is a natural right and as so it should be the legal right of all men and women.

But I always wondered as a woman how does it feel to be treated like a man?
Do you think that a man that opens you the door, kisses your hand, offers you a chair or brings you flowers is a chauvinist?
Is chivalry a bad thing or even better; is teaching my daughters to be and act like ladies a bad thing?

I don’t think your opinion will change the way I raise my daughter – my wife is already in charge of that – but I am really curious of knowing how you see this issue.

What would you do?

I am one of those people that had a hundred jobs in his life.
(I’m not that old but at least it feels like that.)
Three times I had the opportunity to be in charge, to be the boss.
I found that dealing with equipment and problems are a breeze compared with managing people, specifically managing their personal relationships.

Here is a little story that happened to me.
I was managing a group of five people and my department got four tickets to a football game – expensive ones – from a satisfied client.

In my department I had one guy that went to high school with me.
Not a big friend in high school but now that he worked together we got closer.
The problem was that he was not a very good worker and everybody knew it.
Now here is my dilemma: Who gets the tickets?

This dilemma – of choosing between my feelings and my reason, between my heart and my brain – has visited me a couple of time in my life and it is one of the things that have made me ponder a great deal.
I’m not going to tell you – yet – what I did because I am curious on how would you deal with a situation like that.

So what would you do if you were in my position?
...
I thank you all for your comments.
Some very interesting and creative answers!

The way I did it was like the majority of you suggested; I give the tickets to the people that deserve it and kept one for myself :)
The problem was that right after I made my public announcement of the winners my good friend stormed in my office and gave me a piece of his mind.

I thought that he knew that he did not deserve the reward and that wouldn't be a problem but instead he brought up our friendship and how I betray him and that I was a shitty friend and all sorts of nasty reproaches.

I was in shock and did not know what to say.
Fortunately I came up with a good lie. I told him that the ticket I kept was for him not for me and I did it to keep up the moral of the group and avoid the favoritism accusations.
He bought it and everything went smooth.
Fortunately that was the last year for me at that company so I did not have to face that choice again.

The problem still remains unsolved for me.
How do you choose between an undeserving friend or lover and deserving colleague or person?
How do you choose between your heart and your brain, between your feelings and your reason?

The best advice I have for that is to keep your eyes open for that kind of conflict arising and do your best to prevent putting yourself in the choosing position.
Be cause if you have to choose, no matter what you do you will get screwed :)

The secret of success

The secret of success is:
“ignorance”

This is a story of a young man in search of enlightenment.
He dropped out of college – after the first semester – to earn money for a pilgrimage to India.
He came back a Buddhist with his head shaved and wearing traditional Indian clothing.
During this time, he experimented with psychedelics, calling his LSD experiences
"One of the two or three most important things he had done in his life.”

On returning from India Steve started assembling computers in his garage and in 1976 with his friend Stephen Wozniak started Apple, the first company to produce a commercially successful small computer with a graphical user interface: The Macintosh.

Fifty of the world’s self made billionaires are high school or college dropouts.
The most famous of them Bill Gates got his honorary degree from Harvard 30 years latter after dropping from the prestigious school to start Microsoft.

What do you think of starting a company in your garage?
Bad idea, right?
I mean, I can think of a half dozen reasons why such an enterprise would fail.
Hey, a really, really intelligent person could come up with even more reasons why that wouldn’t work.

Behind every failure there is a good excuse.
And it looks that the more intelligent you are the more likely to find a really good reasons for failing.
A lot of very intelligent people are frozen in fear of failure, while the ignorant just keep on trying.

Ignorance is bliss.
The more ignorant you are the more unlikely to find a reason for failure, hence you have no reason for quitting, no fear of failure.

There is genius in action and opportunity opens the doors to those who have the courage to knock.

Looking for a purpose

You must know my favorite principle by now:
“I am that I am”
I am the result of my actions and my actions are the result of my thoughts, witch in turn are the results of my beliefs.
Change your belief system and you will change your life.
Keep the same beliefs and you will be stuck in the same karmic wheel.

So I have done some rethinking and rearranging on my belief system and I am about to start some new planning in my life.
Another of my favorite sayings:
“If you're not in control of your life, somebody else will be”
My new plan has to start with a purpose.

Every life has a purpose and so should our endeavors.
There is no purposeless life.
Not only that every person is born with a purpose in life but also every person is born with the talent, intelligence and all the resources he needs to fulfill that purpose.

The cause of human suffering – IMO- is not “desire” but “wrong desire”.
We do what we think we should do; what we think it is good for us and what we think will give us the maximum satisfaction in life, but rarely what we were born to do.
In other words we set out goals that are against our own purpose and nature.

We see ourselves as single individuals rather than a part of a greater existence and our desires are of a lower, personal level rather than of the bigger and complex design of which we are part of.

We also go on achieving these goals alone, not as a part of the group, and instead of creating cooperation we create competition and friction with our fellow man.
No good will ever come out of any enterprise that serves the desire of one single individual no matter how small or big that enterprise is.

A blog is a small enterprise.
What is the purpose of a blog if it serves only the person that writes it?
Of course there are some therapeutic benefits coming out from the venting out of ones frustrations in an open forum – that is the basic mechanism of a confessional – but after that what higher good does it serve?

What is the higher purpose we serve, you and I?
After half of year of blogging I ask myself:
“Where is this road going?”
Do you know where your blogging is going, and if so would you be so kind as to share on your perspective and experience?

Other wise you will have to suffer through another six month of self inquiry and running in circles looking for an answer :)