‘Serving’ is a job, not a sacrifice. These men and women are not heroes. What they did at the capitol on January 6 was their job. What they suffered & are still suffering should serve to remind us of the lawlessness, racism, hate, & bad intent the mob on that day had.
And it should serve to underscore Trump’s evilness and culpability.
Their eyes met by chance. An old man and a young woman walking in opposite directions in a hall.
She's thinking - Oh look he’s checking me out. Gross, he’s so old. What a perv. Wonder if he thinks Im pretty?
The old man briefly notices her then wishes his foot would stop hurting.
Woody Allen once said, ‘rather than live on in the hearts of my countrymen, given the choice, I’d prefer to live on in my apartment.’
'There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, Reichsmarks, Rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels.' - Network. 1976.
Nation is human invention. It is not real, it does not exist. Can't see borders from space. If they were real, where did the Soviet Union go? People just stopped believing in it and it was gone. Now if only that were to happen worldwide. It is one very small, very fragile, globe, after all.
And yet we still do not understand this. Not even close. We cling to the concept of nation, waving our flags, bullying and murdering - our own, and others - all in its name. Our flags in reality, veils to wrap oneself in to block out a confusing, threatening, ever changing, world, and to be used by cynical people in positions of authority to manipulate and consolidate wealth and imagined 'power.' Then again, I suppose that has always been the case. As with religion, money, 'success', prestige, patriotism, race - as most of human construct - human invention - fantasy - uniquely out of phase with our inherent goodness and our ability to stop from destroying ourselves.
It is time to evolve past these constructs in order realize our great potential and for our very survival.
Long since time.
I live in an enormous, ancient, universe of tremendous beauty that I've barely experienced. Shallow human construct and people nonsense seem sort of unimportant in comparison. Moments, life, love, and awe - all I really have.
The woman at the corner table leering at me as I sat down to have lunch. It was a familiar look. Eyes angry, her jaw jutting out in maskless defiance, as if the mask I had worn coming in was an attack on her country, her freedom. Angry and so proud. Yes, I'd seen it before, and it was utterly absurd. So absurd that she didn't really register, and I had forgotten about her before I ordered.
But as I think about it now, many months later, I realize how little so much of this country has learned from the over 600,000 Covid deaths. Most of those deaths were avoidable were it not for an incompetent, opportunistic government, and medical community, and selfish, purposefully ignorant, people.
Former White House response coordinator and career health expert Dr. Deborah Brix has stated that out of the over 600,000 Covid deaths in the US, nearly 500,000 were avoidable. Put another way, save for selfishness, ignorance, and twisted realities, 500,000 people died that needn't have.
As an ICU physician I ask, how do I reconcile THAT? Horrible, suffering, prolonged deaths, alone, separated from those that love them, and then when I do leave the hospital it’s maskless people in restaurants leering at me for not being a patriot because of a mask I wear to protect others.
600,000 deaths exceed American deaths in all wars, combined, save the civil war. And yet it is still not enough to have touched enough people’s lives where meaningful lessons have been learned. It is 1.6 deaths per 1000 - meaning lots of families were not touched by this horrible disease. The defiant woman in the restaurant has learned nothing and in fact has reinforced her bizarre, twisted sense of reality - 'nothing happened to me - so I'm right'. Lessons learned from 600,000 deaths? For so many, none.
I will ask again. How do I reconcile all those horrible deaths I witnessed, with that?
50 years
1. Most material needs will be provided by subterranean autonomous machines/factories - procuring raw materials, refining, fabricating, distributing, while producing the energy needed to do so, self- repairing, and self-designing without human intervention. Full automation should be free - if its not free society will collapse - getting there will be the issue - for it will disrupt the worlds economies, and the fabric of society unless we plan for it now
2. Medicines next greatest leaps - Cellular repair/genetic manipulation = curing most diseases, repairing injury, and slowing/stopping the aging process Lifespan determined by devastating traumatic events - murder/accident ~1000-2000 years? more?
3. Unlimited clean energy - power of the sun from space, fusion, quantum manipulation - energy from empty space?
4. Colonizing other planets - and if it is possible - other star systems - if wormholes or equivalent exist - sending craft to other stars at sub-light velocity = unlikely unless we have no choice
5. Autonomous transportation, robots, mechanical lovers - what on earth will keep societies together? No money, no religion, no nations, no materialism, even sexual desire sated without human partners = Common pursuit of knowledge/artistic endeavor?
6. Transmutation - a rose from dirt, a tomato from raw materials - we will master all living organisms biologic processes and learn to manipulate matter in ways the alchemist of yore could only dream of - star-trek's replicator
100 years
1. Super intelligence - be it 'machine' or human modification - again getting there is the issue - imagine Putin gets it first
2. Human evolution - our next giant steps
