we are obsessed with variety

by Mark Hammerschmidt

 

Okay, you win, true believers, I give in. I throw up my white flag in surrender and take your theory of the Bible being an accurate history of the creation of the Universe as truth. At least for the sake of this argument, I am willing to suspend my disbelief and accept it all as fact. Adam and Eve, Noah and the flood, Moses parting the Red Sea, the virgin birth, resurrection, eventual eternal life in Paradise (if we are somehow one of the lucky few to slip under God’s radar and make it into Heaven), Hell—all of it! I’m right there with you. I believe it all.

So what is a new believer to do next? Well, let’s open the Bible and find out.

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” (Genesis 1:26).

No wonder religious folk get so bent out of shape when you bring up the EPA or climate change or the dangers of fracking. This planet is ours to do with as we wish. God says so.

But if you were to use a friend’s vacation home, you wouldn’t trash it like you do the earth. Even if your friend said, “Make yourself comfortable. Mi casa es su casa.”

God may have put everything on Earth for us, but that doesn’t mean that it’s all ours for the taking. You have to take into consideration the things that we really need. We have to be responsible and pick and choose which lives to destroy for our benefit. It’s like the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. God put it here, but look at what happened when Eve listened to Satan and ate of the fruit. You need to apply that same rationale to everything you do.

It’s like this—God created this world for us, but does that mean we are entitled to all of it? Shouldn’t we take into consideration that some things that we really need to survive require the existence of other things that we may not necessarily want, and taking pleasure the destruction of everything for no real reason (other than our own demise) isn’t such a great idea?

That’s the real curse of man. It’s the irresistible craving we all have to destroy ourselves. We can’t stop it. We’re fiends.

Take, for instance, oxygen. Oxygen isn’t just a passing fad that a few fringe weirdoes enjoy. Oxygen is necessary for survival. Without it, we cease to exist. All of us. Trees, on the other hand, don’t require oxygen like people do. Trees take that nasty carbon dioxide stuff that people exhale and essentially turn it back into oxygen. It’s a wonderful relationship. One would think that making sure that we have plenty of trees around to keep us in oxygen would come second nature. Instead, we've cut down most of the trees that God put here to provide us with clean air. Then we wonder why the polar ice caps are melting.

And this goes for just about everything.

Yes, I agree that those new Nikes not only make you look amazing, they actually give you an extra half inch on your vert. But as a God-fearing human, shouldn’t the actual planetary devastation and human exploitation that one pair of Nikes has on a global scale mean more to you than listening to the media’s words in your ear telling you that you how cool they are?

Maybe I’m using the Bible wrong. Maybe you’re just supposed to pick and choose the parts that fit your life and make you feel comfortable. Is that why it’s broken into verses?

With all the royal screw up us humans have blundered through, you would think God would come smite us to show us a lesson like he did in the Old Testament days. Or is that what all this religious fuss is about? You’re worried that God is going to teach us a lesson like he so often did in the Bible and you’re trying to cushion the blow?

That seems a strange way to go about it. Why not stop waiting for God to punish us and just start doing things right? Why not back away from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and eat some of this other fruit? Look, there are apples and oranges and bananas. All kinds of fruit. Stop worrying about what other people are doing and focus on yourself for a while. Because for everything you condemn in one person, chances are you are violating twice as many rules yourself.  

And if I hear one more person discount the plight of the polar bears in favor of economics, I’m going to flip out. Saving the polar bears isn’t the issue. The demise of the polar bears is a symptom of a larger problem. The polar bears are the canaries in the coal mine. Forget saving them because they are cute and fluffy and drink Coke. Save them because once their gone, guess who’s next?

But that’s what we want, isn’t it?

Call it self-fulfilling prophecy or call it human nature—just don’t ever say we didn’t have warning. It’s in the Bible. In the first chapter, even. You don’t even need to read the whole thing. Just the first few pages. Or did you interpret those to say that humans should destroy everything because we can? I mean, think about it—you’ve spent all these years pissed off at Eve for the whole fall of man thing, when all this time, you’ve been doing the exact same thing.

Now that you realize it, you can stop the cycle. But it's up to you to decide what to do next.

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fa la la la la, la la la la

by Mark Hammerschmidt

This Christmas, I declare a moratorium on all things commercial. I declare a respite from the pressures and anxieties of the season.

Yes, we’re back into that War on Christmas time of year that we have all grown so fond of. That very special time (that starts with Black Friday and ends sometime in May when we finally get caught up financially) when the conservative media stops talking about abortion, gay marriage, and Benghazi just long enough to insist that a soon-to-be-dead pine tree decorated with blinking lights and plastic ornaments somehow symbolizes the Son of God. That calling it a “holiday tree” is somehow an assault on Christianity. That Jesus Christ himself would rather offend others than worry about semantics.

On the other hand, if you ask Charlie Brown, Christmas is a feeling in your heart and shouldn’t be directly tied to the decorations on your wall or the amount of money in your bank account. 

But let’s be real. Regardless of the true meaning of the season, most of us are barely hanging on. And trying to figure out where you’re going to come up with money to buy things for Christmas that nobody really needs as you’re also considering giving up on contributing your 401k for a year or two to cover the $200-a-month increase to your health insurance starting in January doesn't exactly lend itself to holiday cheer. As much as you want to look past the commercialism that Christmas has become and focus on life and family and God, the unrealistic expectations of giving purchased gifts like we had money to do in the 1990s destroys all the love and reverence that should be associated with the holiday.

It seems to me that true Christians should be outraged with the thought of a commercial Christmas. While the idea of elves, flying reindeer, and a magical bearded man slipping down chimneys to leave gifts under indoor trees is just as ridiculous as most religious symbolism, it actually violates the first two of the Ten Commandments (Thou shalt have no other gods before me and Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image). Throw in the tenth commandment (Thou shalt not covet) that Santa typically encourages our children to disobey, and you've got a viscous soup of anti-Christ holiday sentiment.

So, fellow Christians, I am asking you to join me in an honest revolution. Let’s take Christmas back from corporate America. Call and write your legislators and ask them to create a new holiday to celebrate Santa Claus, that jolly old man with his round belly that shakes like pagan jelly when he laughs. Or perhaps, more appropriately, let’s move Christmas to the summer, closer to Jesus’ actual birthday, and return Saturnalia (the pagan holiday that Christmas took over and stole much of its imagery from) to December where it belongs. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to stop worshiping false idols that have nothing to do with Jesus Christ and focus more on Christ’s teachings and living my life accordingly. After all, living according to Christ has nothing to do with the decorations in our homes and everything to do with the opening of our hearts.

Rather than a single day of the year where our levels of Christianity are measured by the amount of unnecessary made-in-China garbage purchased from big box stores, let’s spend the entire 365 days of the year being kind to each other. Let’s look for common threads with our “enemies” that we can focus on to bring us closer together instead of the negative aspects that divide us. Let’s work on seeking forgiveness for our moments of selfishness and forgive those who seek the same. Let’s embody Christ not Claus. Let’s lay down our arms and break bread in peace. Let’s worship appropriately and spiritually instead of artificially and hollowly. Let us show our children, through example, that we stand for something good. So this Christmas, leave the tree in its box, spare the landfill from the green and red wrapping paper, and let's spend some time tending to the relationships with the people we claim to love.

After all, Christ would never ask us to purchase something with money to show our devotion (remember that whole lenders at the temple scenario?). He would, however, expect us to love our neighbors as ourselves, regardless of the words they use to describe the sacrificial illuminated conifer in the lobby of the City/County building.

Wouldn't you agree?

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it’s as bright as white paper, as dark as a girl

by Mark Hammerschmidt

I’m slowly coming to terms with the fact that I’ve passed the midpoint of my life. I’m not sure exactly where the midpoint occurred, but I know it’s already happened. This leaves me wondering what my legacy will be. How will I be remembered? Will my message be broadcast and accepted by others? Or will the overall purpose of my existence pass unnoticed?

I suppose it’s up to me.

As we grow older, time speeds up. As we experience life, we start picking up on the queues. We start to understand that A plus B usually equals C, and the more we see proof of this, the faster time moves as mystery and suspense dissolve and are replaced with predictability.

Of course, we always have those moments where we choose to follow false storylines and we are slapped brutally in the face from time to time by reality. We all do it—whether it’s rooting for a politician or allowing yourself to believe you can afford a car payment that is a little out of your price range or hoping that U2 will put out another Joshua Tree.

We know in our heart of hearts that these things won’t ever happen, yet we allow ourselves to go along with them because we’re just so bored with our otherwise lackluster lives.

When you think about it, the people who have left lasting legacies have all had a pretty good idea about which thread to follow. Look at the big ones—Jesus, Gandhi, George Washington, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Theresa—those are people who made monumental strides toward a better humanity. They didn’t do it by ignoring reality. They did it by meeting reality head on and offering real solutions. Karl Rove, for instance, will not be remembered 100 years from now as a man who accomplished great things. You can’t operate in a false reality and create true good.

I’m not saying that we should all strive to leave a legacy like Jesus. But if we can acknowledge hard facts and make difficult choices (easy choices typically aren’t based in reality and usually only benefit one or two people, as opposed to being the right thing to do for the whole), chances are that we can all do some real good in this world. And if we’re all doing real good, we just might see some change for the better.

The names we remember, the people we look up to, historically have not been concerned with their individual income tax rates. You can’t sweat the small stuff. You can’t focus on the person on food stamps with the nicer phone than yours. You can’t worry about every corporation that avoids taxes through loopholes. If you get down into the weeds like that, you’ll go mad. Because for every one of the takers, there are a dozen kind and humble people waiting patiently to inherit the earth.

We need to keep our attention on the larger goal. We need to protect the meek. We need to make sure that the people who need help get help. We need to reduce the suffering of others. We need to look out for each other rather than making sure others aren’t getting what they don’t deserve.

Don’t we? If we want to leave a legacy?

I don’t know, I guess I’m just looking over my life and not recognizing my legacy yet. I’ve spent more than half of my lifetime getting to this point and I’m just now getting a handle on how to steer the ship. I’ve made some mistakes and lazy decisions. I’ve wasted some time on selfish and fruitless endeavors. And I hope there’s time to change my overall contribution to the world. To give a purpose to my existence. To add some good.

I wonder how my children will remember me? Will it be as a guy who bitched about work and government and never contributed anything to the world outside of his own house? Or will it be as someone who taught them through example and not just words that the world has enough shit in it so be light instead?

And will they be light?

I hope so.

if i live the life i’m given, i won’t be scared to die

by Mark Hammerschmidt

It’s easy to blame our faults on others. No, I'm not getting preachy. It's true. You know it's true. I mean, come on—given the choice to blame someone else or blame yourself, 9 times out of 10, you blame someone else. It’s way better than facing ourselves, right? She’s always late because her mother always made her be there early. He expects dinner on the table when he walks in the door because that’s the way his dad said it should be. I tend to get hotheaded and say things that hurt because I had a step-dad who was a prick (and I know it was his fault because I have to recognize that’s who I'm acting like when I get that way and picture his face in my head to make myself stop). We all do it. We’re all one messed up lot because our parents didn’t give us what we needed. It’s a story as old as the Bible. It’s part of the human condition. It’s their fault! I refuse to take credit!

But what we also seem to do a lot is take all the credit for our good qualities. As if the bad things were all somebody else’s fault and the good things just sprung forth from your eternally good and humble soul. I’ve never said, “Dude, you sure are one nice dude,” and gotten the response, “It’s not my fault. I spent a lot of time with my uncle when I was a kid. He was a big tipper,” do you? Do you? Ok, you might. I don’t know, stranger things have happened.

So I think it’s good, from time to time, to recognize the people who have made such a large impression on us that we consciously add them to our own personalities. So I guess that’s what I’m getting at.

My Aunt Julie played a pretty profound role in the making of the person that I am. I’m sure she’d be shocked (and possibly appalled) to hear this. I spent a lot of time with her when I was younger, but not so much in the last 20 years. But she’s one of my heroes.

There isn’t much more that life could throw at a person that would make that person crack. And she just keeps trucking forward. Just business as usual. But that isn’t even really it. It’s the way that no matter what you disagree about outside of that moment, she always lets you feel like you’re in on the joke. No matter what that joke happens to be. She always makes you feel like it’s ok to be whoever you are, she just wants to know how you’re doing. And to compliment your kids. And asks you about that one thing that nobody ever asks you about. Nobody ever even thinks to ask you. But Aunt Julie did and it makes you feel good.

She taught me that no matter what your differences are, why fill the room with kindness when we get together to break bread. Let’s talk about the things we do agree on while we’re eating pie. Wouldn’t you rather share air charged with positive energy than bickering about differences? Let’s keep the air light. Whatever personal crap we have going on in our lives, let's talk about something happy instead. We’ve got Facebook to say mean things to each other.

(I’m purposefully not Facebook friends with my Aunt Julie. Not because I don’t like her, but because I know she won’t argue with me… so what is the point?)

Now let’s be clear, my memory ain’t what it used to be and I could have really learned these wonderful things from someone else but I somehow attribute them to Aunt Julie, but that’s neither here nor there because isn’t personal perception really all that matters? Well, isn’t it?

And don’t get me wrong. I did learn a lot of good things from my mom. That opening paragraph should be probably be taken tongue-in-cheek..ish. I’m just not ready to write about her yet. I’m not able to get deep enough into meditation at this point to blame myself for my bad side. But I’m getting there.

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the instinct of the blind insect

by Mark Hammerschmidt

In 2004, I met a girl. I call her a girl not in the sense that she was young (though to me, she was) but in the sense that our relationship was young. We were both starting over in life. She was the girl and I was the boy.

In 2004, I also started writing a novel called, Green Babies. I wrote it partly to impress the girl and partly to purge my own inner turmoil. Eight years later, the novel is unfinished. I got the girl and no longer needed the book to impress her and as our relationship grew, the internal turmoil faded, and I could no longer relate to my characters. I’ve tried many times to continue on with it. But it’s no use. I’m just in a different place now.

I’m here now.

So instead of finishing the book, this past spring, I planted her a garden.

The biggest secret to growing a successful garden is having patience through the first few weeks. All of my failed gardens of previous years met their demise almost immediately after I planted them. The speed of life in our young adult years doesn’t lend itself to gardening. It isn’t until we mature and either start checking some of those goals off the list, or realize that the goals we set for ourselves when we were young and stupid are not based in reality, that we can stop running toward some imagined and arbitrary finish line and focus on the here and now.

When we were young, we were only interested in immediate satisfaction. Waiting weeks for some action, let alone the months it takes to bring a garden to complete fruition, would just never do. And it wasn’t until getting lucky with a job that allowed me to work at home, thus freeing me from a commute, that I actually figured out that it took some attention to make things grow.

So I went all in.

In what I thought would be an experiment with organic gardening eventually evolved into a study in karma-based gardening. I took every measure to avoid any type of chemical or method of death to animals. However, like in most real-world scenarios, it’s sometimes impossible to compromise with those unable to communicate rationally. Because I tried to compromise. But gophers don’t speak English, so I took what I thought were necessary steps at times to ensure the garden’s survival.

When gophers waged an assault on my beans, I initiated an immediate counterattack. I located the entry hole and inserted a hose and cranked it on. It took several minutes for the water to make its way through what I can only imagine was a labyrinth of tunnels exposing the roots of the vegetables for the feeding frenzy going on below the surface. Finally in the middle of my beets, the water broke through the surface.

I left the water running for a few minutes more. I imagined them drowning. I wanted them dead.

I filled the hole with cat litter and used a whole bag of castor granules to cover every square inch of the garden, watering it in good, making sure that if any of those nasty creatures survived the flooding, they would soon meet the bitter taste castor oil and flee my territory. I felt rage.

When that didn’t work, I employed the use of gopher traps, eventually bringing peace back to the garden through use of deadly force. But why? Those gophers didn’t act maliciously. They were just going about their natural business. They were doing what I was doing. Just looking to get a break from eating weeds.

I still feel terrible about it. Because I am the rational being in this story, I am able to look back and feel remorse to the harm I caused to other living creatures and search for ways to avoid doing it in the future. To balance karma, I always tried to provide something else to another living being (i.e., well-stocked bird feeders, fresh branches of green leaves cut from trees and left on the ground for the rabbits, etc.) when taking another’s life to keep the yin and yang in balance.

I organized the garden into boroughs. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like it was a well-thought-out gated community. It’s what happens when you cross urban sprawl and an incompetent city manager. It was like most cities.

You had the corn, all grown from seed, looking up at the greenhouse-grown squash with their lush, full leaves and giant yellow blossoms under the shade of the peppertree. But the corn didn’t have it so bad. The cucumbers were cornered in middle-class suburbia. They had the high-rise corn stalks to their right but to the left was the weed patch—the territory I gifted to nature so she would leave the rest of the garden alone. A patch of ground I jokingly referred to as Palestine. The cucumbers wished they resided between the squash and the corn where the view wasn’t all that bad from either direction. But they didn’t. And even though the cucumbers got some government aid in the form of a trellis, they spent their lives looking at the graffiti on the rocks from the gang of milkweeds across the street. Because I had no intention of straightening their rows or giving them more water than they already had. Water is expensive and I only had enough energy to go around.

In the end, the garden turned into a living work of art, with vegetables and flowers growing side by side beside wind chimes. I am grateful, though, for autumn because it was a six-month endeavor that has left me exhausted. I’ also excited to do it again next spring. Only this time with lessons learned from this version of the garden.

You see, I’ve learned a thing or two from the girl I met in 2004. I’ve learned that we are not the sum of our mistakes. We are shaped by acknowledging our mistakes, by learning from them, by making reparations, and moving forward. And if you can’t see that, I highly recommend that you plant a garden this coming spring.

Happy Anniversary, Hollee Ann. I may never finish that book, but I’m looking forward to planting many more gardens filled with green babies for you.

bring the fine print to the top

by Mark Hammerschmidt

I have an idea. I’m not sure that Baby Boomers will be on board with it, since it’s their generation who more-or-less decimated the economy and now they’re trying to get away with as much as they can while leaving their children and grandchildren with a hole in the ground, but hear me out.

Since I have heard from many Conservatives that the Romney/Ryan Medicare and Social Security plans are so great, I would like to make a proposition.

If Mitt Romney is elected President, his first order of business after repealing ObamaCare should be to implement VoucherCare for current seniors and those becoming eligible for Medicare in next 10 years. Let’s give it a 10-year beta test beginning in 2013. If, in 2023, the voucher program is working well, we will implement it for everybody. However, if after those 10 years, seniors are eating more and more cat food to survive and insurance company CEOs are getting wealthier and wealthier, we go back to good old Medicare as we know it now.

The same goes for Social Security. If you are 55 or older, your Social Security gets privatized immediatly. The rest of us pay into the regular system just like it’s always been. If, in 10 years, the privatized version of Social Security shows to be a huge success, all of us young bucks will pat your wise backs and tell you how great you are.

What do you say, Baby Boomers? Ready to put your money where your mouth is?

red tag clearance item of the week: you

by Mark Hammerschmidt

The median yearly household income in the United States in 2011 was $50,054, 8.1% lower than in 2007 and 8.9% lower than 1999. The average yearly income of the top 1% is $717,000. That’s about 15 times more than the average American income. In fact, 1% of the population of the United States controls 43% of the wealth.

And we say good for them. They’ve earned it, right?

Well, it might not be as clear as you think.

How did it come to pass that we, as a collective people (and, supposedly, a Christian nation), decided  to follow capitalism as our economic model of choice? I mean, I get it. There’s a lot of upside. Supply. Demand. Motivation. Reward. However, capitalism in its purest form lacks morals. It encourages people to value money above humanity by assigning a dollar value to human life. Capitalism removes any semblance of Christianity because Christian morals detract from motivation. It encourages financial growth at any and all costs to everyone and everything other than the individual. It’s kill or be killed. It’s dog eat dog. The means always justify the ends.

The invention of money and the ability to accumulate money has resulted in those who have amassed the largest piles of gold being granted the rights to assign arbitrary values to the importance of individuals in society. This isn’t a new occurrence, which is why it is so deeply ingrained in our collective psyche as acceptable.

For instance, as a society, we are all in agreement that someone with the skills to become a Wall Street executive (in other words, someone who doesn’t always operate with strong moral values but is good at manipulating numbers and operating around the laws) is much more valuable than a firefighter (who risks his/her life every day in the service of others). It doesn't seem right, but it's true. By sitting apathetically silent as the Wall Street executive brings home millions of dollars a year compared to the firefighter’s $42,000 a year, we are saying that one is more important than the other. In fact, if you look around, you will see it everywhere. The average corporate executive’s year-end bonus is 62 times more than the average worker’s annual income. That’s just the bonus. That’s not including the regular income.

Is this because corporate executives work harder than their employees? Possibly. But studies show that the American worker’s productivity has gone up 80% since 1979, yet pay has remained relatively level. In fact, corporate executives make larger bonuses by finding ways to cut workers. So it would seem that we hold the life of the corporate executive in higher regard than that of the average worker.

To be a good capitalist, you can’t be a good Christian. You just can’t. The two systems are not compatible. Yet, as a Christian nation, the monetary value we place on human life is inversely related to moral character. As moral character decreases, income increases. Just look at how Wall Street profits are soaring as unemployment continues to be a problem.

And we eat it up, man. We buy into that personal responsibility crap that they feed us. We poor, hard-working losers look around at our meager belongings and think that we just aren’t doing enough. That we are the failures. Of course we believe this. It’s been force-fed to us since humans developed agriculture and stopped hunting and gathering. Since that time, those with the most money have been assigning false values to other human beings to serve their own selfish purposes.

Did you know that over 250 members of Congress are millionaires and the average yearly income for members of Congress is just under $1 million (which is more than the average income of the top 1%)? Of course they want us to continue buying into the system. Of course they wrap it in patriotism and false morals. Of course they favor laws and regulations that keep the system slanted in their favor. They do this by making you think they are on our side. And we believe them. Because we are stupid, manipulated animals. We're Pavlov's dog salivating at the bell.

Listen, the whole “I built it” notion is completely absurd. You know it. I know it. Everybody knows it. But we go along with it because we believe in the dollar value assigned to us by the wealthy elite. I’m a technical editor. I enjoy it. I’m good at it. But I will never be wealthy unless I change professions and lose some morals. I will never be able to dine in fine restaurants or travel the world freely or sleep on a pillow that costs more than $7.50 from Big Lots. Not unless I change professions. Does this mean I am less valuable as a human being than an oil executive who skipped a few safety steps to increase the number in his bank account at the cost of human lives and an environmental disaster? Does this mean you as a school teacher or a factory worker or a retail clerk is less valuable than a venture capitalist who finds ways to make money by eliminating wages?

If you are counting dollars to donuts, and I think that you are, you bet your ass it does. Are you going to take it? Of course you are.

References:

http://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/p60-243.pdf

http://www.forbes.com/sites/moneywisewomen/2012/03/21/average-america-vs-the-one-percent/

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