Robert Greenwald's Rethink Afghanistan is appropriately named. Not "Abandon," or "Destroy," or "Remove the Taliban From" or "Liberate," but "Rethink."
US veterans of the Iraq and Afghan conflicts, former CIA agents, current Afghani men and women, former Soviet military leaders who were defeated in Afghanistan, and others paint a bleak picture for any chance of military success.
The documentary clarifies the identities and missions of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and raises some serious questions and offers some prospective answers to the most effective approaches for combatting terrorists, if, in fact, that is the purpose for our presence in Afghanistan and around the world.
The documentary is available online in 6 segments, approximately 12 minutes each, and also as a DVD.
Highly recommended if (re)thinking is something you find valuable.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
What You Don't Do
You don't tug on Superman's cape
You don't spit into the wind.
You don't pull the mask off that ol' Lone Ranger.
You don't harass John Rambo as he walks into town.
You don't get better, good, personal or even intelligent service from Wells Fargo Bank just because they got $25,000,000,000.00 in TARP funds.
And for Josh's supervisor at Wells Fargo Mortgage, you don't get a raised seal on an Executor Appointment Letter when it comes through a FAX machine.
You don't necessarily get an education just because you get a degree.
You don't spit into the wind.
You don't pull the mask off that ol' Lone Ranger.
You don't harass John Rambo as he walks into town.
You don't get better, good, personal or even intelligent service from Wells Fargo Bank just because they got $25,000,000,000.00 in TARP funds.
And for Josh's supervisor at Wells Fargo Mortgage, you don't get a raised seal on an Executor Appointment Letter when it comes through a FAX machine.
You don't necessarily get an education just because you get a degree.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Assholian Resistance
My sister, Anne Marie, passed away on March 17, 2009 at the age of 55. Her death was unexpected, and a long backstory preceded it (as is true for any death).
A good friend and fellow poet/multi-genre artist, Mar Walker, has honored Anne Marie online at the following sites:
Memorial Blog
Poetry Performance
Quilts
My own writing and reflections around Anne Marie's death are still emerging and very raw. Most of my energy after her burial has been directed toward settling her estate, which is a eufemism for dealing with vendors, creditors and attorneys.
My euphemistic partners include New York State Electric and Gas, Citibank, American Express, Macys, Wells Fargo, Wachovia, State Farm, the IRS, the New York State Police, the Westchester County Medical Examiner, the New York State DMV, Franklin-Templeton, TIAA-CREF, West Asset Management and Verizon, among others.
While my sister died in some debt, and creditors have every right to recover what is theirs, the diverse levels of competence, compassion, reason, and systemic chaos within high-tech, low-consciousness bureaucratic infrastructures, while not surprising, ranges from very frustrating to absolutely infuriating as I go about my executor's "due diligence."
If you were to guess and rate the above institutions from lowest to highest in terms of competence, compassion and reason, what might your ratings be?
I will have much more to say about this in coming months, and, probably years. For now, my top three experiences have been with the New York State Police, TIAA-CREF, and the NYS DMV. The IRS did a slow, methodical and competent job as well.
My own personal work (i.e. my ongoing development) continues to manifest through this process as I attempt to hold the perspectives of the individuals on the other phones, who are doing as they are told in order to do and keep a job--a position for which I have both empathy and compassion, even as they misplace files, ask for the third time for a death certificate, or having received it, continue to write to my sister, five months after being notified of her death, opening with, "We do not understand your reluctance to pay your balance" (Allied Interstate on behalf of Verizon Wireless, August 6, 2009).
"Well, shit. I'm sorry. Everything seems harder since I died on St. Patrick's Day. And the mail service, nevermind the internet connection, is just horrible inside this box below the earth on top of my mother and next to my father. I will do my best to overcome my reluctance. In the meantime, I hope that the $88.97 I owe does not force you to lose any ring tones or permanently end your calls."
I'm pleased to say that while I thought of this response, I didn't write it or pick up the phone (although I came verwy, verwy cwose). My inner asshole has only emerged and dominated two of quite a few challenging conversations, and as unevolved as this may sound, in both cases the recipient got 1) what he deserved and 2) off easy.
But I'm striving to stay conscious and keep the assholian episodes to a minimum--all the while seeing myself with more and more clarity and honoring the joy and sorrow that such clarity brings.
I feel lucky to have Marianela (and some great friends) in my life through this. She sees me at my best and worst and still loves me. Even more impressive: she still likes me. Thanks, esposa.
A good friend and fellow poet/multi-genre artist, Mar Walker, has honored Anne Marie online at the following sites:
Memorial Blog
Poetry Performance
Quilts
My own writing and reflections around Anne Marie's death are still emerging and very raw. Most of my energy after her burial has been directed toward settling her estate, which is a eufemism for dealing with vendors, creditors and attorneys.
My euphemistic partners include New York State Electric and Gas, Citibank, American Express, Macys, Wells Fargo, Wachovia, State Farm, the IRS, the New York State Police, the Westchester County Medical Examiner, the New York State DMV, Franklin-Templeton, TIAA-CREF, West Asset Management and Verizon, among others.
While my sister died in some debt, and creditors have every right to recover what is theirs, the diverse levels of competence, compassion, reason, and systemic chaos within high-tech, low-consciousness bureaucratic infrastructures, while not surprising, ranges from very frustrating to absolutely infuriating as I go about my executor's "due diligence."
If you were to guess and rate the above institutions from lowest to highest in terms of competence, compassion and reason, what might your ratings be?
I will have much more to say about this in coming months, and, probably years. For now, my top three experiences have been with the New York State Police, TIAA-CREF, and the NYS DMV. The IRS did a slow, methodical and competent job as well.
My own personal work (i.e. my ongoing development) continues to manifest through this process as I attempt to hold the perspectives of the individuals on the other phones, who are doing as they are told in order to do and keep a job--a position for which I have both empathy and compassion, even as they misplace files, ask for the third time for a death certificate, or having received it, continue to write to my sister, five months after being notified of her death, opening with, "We do not understand your reluctance to pay your balance" (Allied Interstate on behalf of Verizon Wireless, August 6, 2009).
"Well, shit. I'm sorry. Everything seems harder since I died on St. Patrick's Day. And the mail service, nevermind the internet connection, is just horrible inside this box below the earth on top of my mother and next to my father. I will do my best to overcome my reluctance. In the meantime, I hope that the $88.97 I owe does not force you to lose any ring tones or permanently end your calls."
I'm pleased to say that while I thought of this response, I didn't write it or pick up the phone (although I came verwy, verwy cwose). My inner asshole has only emerged and dominated two of quite a few challenging conversations, and as unevolved as this may sound, in both cases the recipient got 1) what he deserved and 2) off easy.
But I'm striving to stay conscious and keep the assholian episodes to a minimum--all the while seeing myself with more and more clarity and honoring the joy and sorrow that such clarity brings.
I feel lucky to have Marianela (and some great friends) in my life through this. She sees me at my best and worst and still loves me. Even more impressive: she still likes me. Thanks, esposa.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Our Nation Turns Its Lonely Eyes to Lyman Bostock
[I wrote this on the morning of March 17, 2009, and did not get to edit it until today. While some AIG bonuses have been returned since then, the essence of what’s below will remain relevant for a long time].
When Lyman Bostock began the 1978 season with the California Angels, he perhaps tried too hard to live up to his 2.7-million dollar, 5-year contract—a huge number back then—and batted .150 during the month of April—about half the average that had earned him the salary. What he did next was unprecedented: he offered to give back his April salary to Angels’ owner, Gene Autry, because “If I can't play up to my capabilities, I don't want to get paid for it.” When Autry refused, Bostock donated his month’s wages to charity.
By mid-September of that season, he had raised his average to .296. He was tragically murdered in a case of mistaken identity on September 23, 1978.
Missing from the debates and dialogues around the AIG bailout bonuses are the cognitive, moral and ethical worldviews of the men and women who receive our money. It is easy and perhaps appropriate to vilify the faces of Treasury; it is expected that the right will point to the newly arrived administration and the left will point to the departed; and it is both fair and predictable that AIG’s new leadership remind us that we are a nation based on law, bonus contracts fall under the law, and governmental interference with those contracts would create a dangerous precedent at the very least.
Law emerges due to the moral reasoning and ethical values of a given culture, and by definition is at best a step or two behind the leading edge of ethical reform: prior to 1865, the law allowed slavery; prior to 1920, the law prevented women from voting; and right now the law is wrangling over whether sexual orientation is a valid basis for conveying or denying specific civil rights.
Law evolves as humans evolve through ever-more-inclusive worldviews—from ego-centric (it’s about me); to ethno- or group-centric (it’s about us, where “us” may be family, gang, company, union, industry, religion, nation, etc.); to world-centric (it’s about all of us on the planet); to universal or everything-centric (it’s about the universe/creation). Folks who hold those self- or group-centric worldviews, often quite literally cannot see beyond themselves or their groups, and are primarily interested in how the law affects them as individuals or groups. The dynamic is actually more textured and less linear than this depiction, but you get the point.
Add to this the basic developmental truth that cognitive development is essential, but not sufficient, for moral development (e.g. Hitler, Madoff, et al.), and we get “brilliant” minds who commit horrible acts in order to further an individual or group agenda—not to equate those two men, but rather to show the diverse guises cognition can take when governed by moral stagnation.
Beyond the useful and valid essence of contract law lies the ethical dilemma created when taxes collected across a broad spectrum of millions of competent workers making five-figure annual salaries, or who were making five-figures before they were laid off, are transferred to a few thousand individuals whose incompetence and/or carelessness is clear, and many of whom will receive five-, six- and seven-figure bonuses, in additional to their five-, six- and seven-figure salaries.
What accounts for the distinctly different worldviews of Mr. Bostock thirty-one years ago, and those who would dispense and keep the bonuses in question here in 2009 is an overdetermined mix of individual and cultural values, beliefs and behaviors arising within and causing to arise the intricate infrastructure of the 21st-century planet: it’s complex.
The “right thing,” like beauty, is in the eye of the ego-, group-, world-, or universe-centric worldview. Right leadership, however, needs to act from the most evolved worldview available in order to serve the broadest spectrum of constituents. Those at AIG do not hold the most evolved view available and they are not the broadest spectrum of constituents. Even now, those who are returning some of the bonuses do so in response to an outraged populace. Lyman Bostock responded to something inside of himself.
When Lyman Bostock began the 1978 season with the California Angels, he perhaps tried too hard to live up to his 2.7-million dollar, 5-year contract—a huge number back then—and batted .150 during the month of April—about half the average that had earned him the salary. What he did next was unprecedented: he offered to give back his April salary to Angels’ owner, Gene Autry, because “If I can't play up to my capabilities, I don't want to get paid for it.” When Autry refused, Bostock donated his month’s wages to charity.
By mid-September of that season, he had raised his average to .296. He was tragically murdered in a case of mistaken identity on September 23, 1978.
Missing from the debates and dialogues around the AIG bailout bonuses are the cognitive, moral and ethical worldviews of the men and women who receive our money. It is easy and perhaps appropriate to vilify the faces of Treasury; it is expected that the right will point to the newly arrived administration and the left will point to the departed; and it is both fair and predictable that AIG’s new leadership remind us that we are a nation based on law, bonus contracts fall under the law, and governmental interference with those contracts would create a dangerous precedent at the very least.
Law emerges due to the moral reasoning and ethical values of a given culture, and by definition is at best a step or two behind the leading edge of ethical reform: prior to 1865, the law allowed slavery; prior to 1920, the law prevented women from voting; and right now the law is wrangling over whether sexual orientation is a valid basis for conveying or denying specific civil rights.
Law evolves as humans evolve through ever-more-inclusive worldviews—from ego-centric (it’s about me); to ethno- or group-centric (it’s about us, where “us” may be family, gang, company, union, industry, religion, nation, etc.); to world-centric (it’s about all of us on the planet); to universal or everything-centric (it’s about the universe/creation). Folks who hold those self- or group-centric worldviews, often quite literally cannot see beyond themselves or their groups, and are primarily interested in how the law affects them as individuals or groups. The dynamic is actually more textured and less linear than this depiction, but you get the point.
Add to this the basic developmental truth that cognitive development is essential, but not sufficient, for moral development (e.g. Hitler, Madoff, et al.), and we get “brilliant” minds who commit horrible acts in order to further an individual or group agenda—not to equate those two men, but rather to show the diverse guises cognition can take when governed by moral stagnation.
Beyond the useful and valid essence of contract law lies the ethical dilemma created when taxes collected across a broad spectrum of millions of competent workers making five-figure annual salaries, or who were making five-figures before they were laid off, are transferred to a few thousand individuals whose incompetence and/or carelessness is clear, and many of whom will receive five-, six- and seven-figure bonuses, in additional to their five-, six- and seven-figure salaries.
What accounts for the distinctly different worldviews of Mr. Bostock thirty-one years ago, and those who would dispense and keep the bonuses in question here in 2009 is an overdetermined mix of individual and cultural values, beliefs and behaviors arising within and causing to arise the intricate infrastructure of the 21st-century planet: it’s complex.
The “right thing,” like beauty, is in the eye of the ego-, group-, world-, or universe-centric worldview. Right leadership, however, needs to act from the most evolved worldview available in order to serve the broadest spectrum of constituents. Those at AIG do not hold the most evolved view available and they are not the broadest spectrum of constituents. Even now, those who are returning some of the bonuses do so in response to an outraged populace. Lyman Bostock responded to something inside of himself.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
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