Life and Other Passions
Some advice to the young, which they don’t want, but here it is.
Develop as many skills and learn as much as you can about a lot of diverse topics, while you can.
Because no matter what you do in your life, either your job will become obsolete, or you will.
The more skills and education and experience you have in all manner of things, the greater your chances of being employed and earning money all your life.
You’ll also have more joy.
Keep yourself open to life.
NO.
Don’t equate a degree with employment potential.
It often does not match.
What counts is what you learned while getting your degree. Not what the degree is.
In my day, experience counted for a lot more than education. It was your education.
Now I would say, a good combination of both experience and education will make your life better. Not just for the money.
I had a lot of growing up to do when I quit my very secure, very well paying government job to pursue a Biology degree. To say I suffered a shock at that transition is an understatement. But it was the shakeup I needed. I was an emotional mess when I started university at the advanced age of 25. That experience matured me quite a bit and boy, did I need that.
It didn’t solve all my problems, but it set me on a better path in many ways.
And I NEVER made the money, nor had the security I had in that government job ever again.
I always had a lot less.
But what I gained mentally can never be equated with money.
I confess, when I was young it was not only OKAY to read books, but they were part of our school studies. We were encouraged to read everything.
Imagine that, we could read whatever we wanted.
And we did.
I remember books and the subsequent classroom discussions of them that had a huge impact on me. That made me THINK.
That is what the written word does. Makes you think.
Some of those books would never be in schools today. In Cold Blood. Catcher in the Rye. To Kill a Mockingbird. Of Mice and Men. Flowers for Algernon. Twelve Angry Men. Romeo and Juliet (Our teacher even took us to the theatre to watch Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, where, gasp, there was brief nudity).
The list is extensive. I was fortunate to have teachers not only present us with these, but discuss them as well, and let us decide for ourselves what we like or don’t like.
My parents had a huge library of books and none were off limits to me, from the day I could read. I read Benton’s Row. A Clockwork Orange. Valley of the Dolls. There were also lots of non-fiction in my house, Time Life Books, Reader’s Digest, National Geographic, and a plethora of physics, mechanics, biology.
At lunch time at school I used to read automotive mechanics. Can you imagine me doing that today?
When I was young we had, what probably no one has heard of today, debating societies.
In school we would have contests to see which side could give the most convincing argument either for or against a certain topic or idea.
It gave us a chance to see important points on both sides of the street, as it were. These debates never, as far as I knew, caused trouble.
There were no murders or personal or cultural cancellations. It gave young people a chance to explore other opinions and ideas without fear. It made people think about issues and formulate their own opinions.
The debates never involved personal attack. No one was belittled or condemned for a point of view. It was all about facts and presentation. You might not be swayed by one point of view, but it made you think more clearly about issues.
To shake things up, a teacher would assign you, regardless of your personal opinions, to present a case often against what you believed in. This forced you to use your brain, to do research, and to see that often things are not as black and white as you previously thought.
This is what a good education is suppose to do – give you critical thinking and expand your mind.
Sadly missing today. Today, everything is about emotion. Just react to everything without a thought. It’s all about ME ME ME.
I’ve had all the emotion I can handle for a life time, thank you. Can we please just have interesting debates instead of out and out fury?
One of my favourite movies is The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. So I borrow this title for my post, with a minor modification, because I am not going to write about the movie, but about life.
Life is the good, the bad, the BEAUTIFUL and the ugly.
We forget the beautiful part.
We also forget that life is ALL of the above. You cannot live without experiencing all it has to offer. If you focus only on one of the the four, your life will suffer.
Life is the whole package and it does not play any favourites.
But you can get through the bad and the ugly by remembering the good, and mostly, the beautiful.
You may come to realize, surprise, surprise, that the bad and the ugly are also beautiful.
In fact, all of life is beautiful.
The bad and the ugly will teach you that.
I wanted to sleep in.
But I have a cat.
After numerous head butts, some bites, meows and loud purring Sam my cat sat at my face and glared at me.
“Sam, what is the point in getting up? No one cares if I get up or not.”
Those big golden eyes burned into mine. “I am not no one. I care.”
I got up.
Sensitivity readers.
Who invented this scourge upon writers and readers?
These self appointed know it alls are now rewriting Agatha Christie books so people won’t be offended.
Self righteous, self imposed censors of what we write and read. Scum. Degenerates. Useless self appointed guardians of our imaginations. They rewrite Roald Dahl because we can’t hurt our precious children’s eyes with phrases like ‘fat women’. And we can’t have playful poems like Dr. Suess because obviously, we can’t decide for ourselves what is dated or hateful or just plain fun. Good Lord. Sensitivity readers – you are disgusting. You insult our intelligence to such a degree, that even a preschooler would gag.
Can this be real?
NOTE: I WANT TO BE OFFENDED, CHALLENGED, MADE TO THINK BY WHAT I READ.
That is what books are for, you idiots. They are there to make us think and formulate our own opinions of what is good and bad, right or wrong. And it is good that everyone has their own opinions and they are not yours.
I want controversial books. I want to read all flavours and colours and opinions. Don’t make my world your vanilla. Let me paint my own colours.
I want to choose what I read. And I want all the shit in those books. I don’t want to tone it down. If I am really unhappy, guess what? I JUST DON’T READ IT.
Often characters in a book are not nice people, they may be a product of the time they live in, so they say and do things that are offensive to our sensibilities of the current age. But that is what makes a villain, you idiots. That is what makes a character, a character. They are not perfect, they have good and bad points. Don’t turn imaginary characters into marshmallows. You have to read that they are racists, misogynists, whatever, to understand their perception, behaviour and actions in terms of the plot. People who lived in the 1920’s are a lot different that in the 2000’s. People of different cultures have different ways. I feel stupid even having to explain that!
This is what makes you educated, you dufus. Reading about this stuff. Gee whiz.
And let me say this, sensitivity readers – you are hypocrites, vipers, pharisees. We see people cut up, tortured, blown to bits, raped, maimed, shouted at, swore at, called racists names, humiliated, all in gory technicolour, widescreen detail in nearly every movie and television and news program produced today, and ultra violent video games that is watched by children. These are a thousand times more damaging to our psyche than the printed word. Movies are so bad, that if sensitivity watchers were a thing and got a hold of them, all you would have would be the beginning and ending credits!
And what about real life? Are you going to edit what we experience too? Are you going wade in there and make my life easier? Perhaps some soma?
What is next in this brave New World, 1984 life? First we rewrite books and history and ban what we refuse to look at. A short step to Fahrenheit 451, where we don’t just ban books, we burn them!
We live in a free country, despite all the screaming that we don’t.
I say to any of you who think our country is a dictatorship, that you need a hefty reality check. You need to ask an immigrant what dictatorship is.
Ask a person who has escaped North Korea. Ask an immigrant who made great sacrifices to live here. Ask those that lived in dictatorships under tyrannical rule what freedom really is. Ask them why so many want to live here.
Freedom is what we already have. In spades! We are so incredibly fortunate. You need to take a look around. You need to educate yourself. We are free in so many many ways. We elect our leaders. We have abundance of everything. We can choose from a huge selection of cars to drive, clothes to wear, food to eat, furniture, electronics, appliances and gadgets. We can get jobs, an education. We can live where we want. Buy a house. We decide who we will marry. We have health care, hospitals, ambulances. We have pensions for the disabled and seniors. We can travel by planes, trains and buses, anywhere at anytime. We can speak our minds. Write books, make art, music. Sure nothing is perfect, but compare our country to the rest of the world. Do you realize these things we take for granted are not available to a huge amount of people in our world? They have no options and they live in constant fear.
Years ago I met a man from South America who was so grateful to live here. The story he told me of his life was shocking, and it is amazing he is alive. He had been beaten and tortured and lost his family. He had to watch everything he said, did and thought. He couldn’t go anywhere without permission. He didn’t have choices. He didn’t have options.
You cry because our government wants to protect us? By making us wear masks and get vaccines while we are in the middle of a global pandemic killing hundreds of thousands of people? I ask you, how do we stop the spread of disease? We are all in this together. The virus is our enemy, not our government. You think wearing a mask and getting a vaccine is persecution?! You know nothing about persecution.
You don’t understand how democracy works. It means we do what is best for everyone, and that sometimes means it may not be the best for you personally. We make some sacrifices. But we have so many benefits. So many freedoms. We live so well!
There are 50 dictatorships in the world, and the number is growing. You want to add this country to that list?
You have absolutely no idea what freedom is.
Once a month or so I reflect on the current state of the world and have some thoughts.
Soon the world will be under the total control of the one percent, unless a miracle happens.
Watching women’s rights being flushed down the toilet on this sad day as the Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade. Next plan is ban contraceptives and same sex marriages. Step back into the dark ages. Once again, we must rise up and fight.
If there are no guns, or, as a comedian on Bowling for Columbine suggested, bullets were $5,000 a piece, there would be no more mass shootings.
Health care should be free and available for everyone.
Ditto for bus transportation and education.
Everyone should get basic income, especially senior citizens and the disabled, in addition to their meager pensions. That might bring them to the poverty line. Maybe. Better than always being below it. No one in this world should be impoverished. There is no valid moral reason for it.
Housing for everyone. Everyone. Not tents and cardboard shacks. Brick and mortar. Appliances. Heat. Running water. Bathrooms, kitchens. You know, decent living.
Gone, gone, long gone are the days you could earn enough to buy the things you need and want. Further gone is the notion that if you just work hard and long enough you can better your life. Or that higher education will get you a higher job. Ha! Now the process relies on supreme brown nosing, and even then, no guarantees the boss will like you and promote you. And lord, what you must do to keep what you’ve got! Rewards? How about some pens and lifesavers for 27 years of service?
Education should be about relationships with other people, history, how to handle money, how to care for and treat animals and the environment and not about how to hide under desks when an active shooter arrives at your school.
Education should also be about learning, thinking, solving problems, innovation, and most of all, having fun.
We need to stop worshiping celebrities and billionaires, and get them to pay taxes. We don’t need more electric cars, telephones and space junk.
And last of all, enough with the lame ‘thoughts and prayers’ from our leaders. DO SOMETHING.
Motorcycles, hotrods and trucks.
Instead of tanks and armies, these are the weapons of takeover in our society.
They are especially prevalent in the summer and impossible to police.
The strip of highway near my apartment is a perfect unpatrolled ribbon of straight road that motorcyclists and hotrods take full advantage of. It crosses a canal and a river and cuts through a park and is therefore just one big long bridge. A drag strip.
But many places in our city have become lawless avenues for vehicles. Witness the infamous trucker takeover in our downtown. Eighteen wheelers are massive and incredibly hard to move, noisy and smelly, and also pretty terrifying to encounter.
There seems to be a growing aggression in our world and the everyday man is resorting to vehicles to express their hostility. I think it is the only way to be powerful in a world bent on making us slaves and voiceless.
I have always maintained that the world is swinging to the right and violence because of the huge gap between the haves and the have nots. There is no middle class, no stepping stone from poverty to wealth. It is impossible to go from being poor to being rich. Hard work does not do it anymore. Luck and brown nosing works, but one is extremely rare, and the other, extremely costly.
There is nothing worse than not being recognized or compensated for your hard work, and to find yourself slipping farther into poverty the harder you try to get out of it. The system is rigged. Combined with our poor educational system, people cling to self serving leaders to fix things for them. Which, they won’t. The people who rage and hold others hostage with machines are undoing the good for all in the hope of bettering themselves. This will be the end of all freedoms and hope and secure the rich as rulers of our world. A global dictatorship. 1984.