music: E major alternating with E dom 7

colors: Green, Grey

mood: not really depressed, but just considering it.

thoughts: um, don't mean to bring anyone down, but the world has a bit of bad stuff going on right now. i try to be cheery, but i have too much awareness of the world to disregard that. i'm feeling a little under the weather today, which doesn't help matters.

let's take a look at a few things that make me depressed:

• global warming and the denial of it
• poverty and the blind eye turned toward it
• avarice of violence in western culture
• mass media that bears false witness to audiences of millions (especially in the sense of telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth)
• the dehumanizing capitalist system, and the "it's not perfect, but it works" attitude of those who are among the "haves", and the "have-mores" while the "have-nots" are marginalized, or at best, exploited for profit.
  
• the rape of the earth, and its animals and plants, as a result of the capitalist system, and a human race that is unchecked in its consumption, production, and reproduction
• a general sense of distrust and hostility among neighbors, nations and communities, at least toward strangers (or the other(search on "allergy"))
  
• a constant sense of impending doom, with any of the following peering over our shoulder waiting for a moment to make an entrance, while those who have control over our nations' economic power do very little (relative to the amount they spend toward war) to prevent: unsecured nuclear fissile materials around the globe; known killer diseases such as AIDS, cancer, etc; currently unknown but threatening potential plagues such as the avian flu; poorly-governed genetic experiments; a killer asteroid crashing into us
  

i mean, why bother to go buy duct tape? what's the point in getting a new shirt, or eating my spinach/broccoli/kale? in any case, my point is with the world this depressing, why are we treating the symptoms of individual people's depression with mood-altering drugs, instead of going after the causes of the problem? oh yeah, the people who control economic power in a state of denial, because as Malcolm X so eloquently said several times in his autobiography (and I paraphrase): The man telling us to believe and to work so hard so we can have paradise when we die, while he gets to have his paradise right here on earth. (i realize that living in the u.s. middle class, i am a member of the "haves" group, but still, i don't consider myself living in heaven on earth, right now, unless i really stretch my logic for it. wish it were though.)

sometimes it feels like my core purpose in life is the only thing that keeps me going.

chant/prayer/mantra:
For the real solutions to arrive, and to thrive.
Amen.

if it was the last day of your life, you'd still have to live it.

warm hugs anyway,
joel