Brother, can you pluck a beam from my eye?:):):):):):)...

Days like today...

I have to ask myself...

Is there any end to the cynicism and the bullshit...

My senior year of college, I did a speech in intercollegiate forensics on political cynicism...

I thought it was bad then...

I've never seen it as bad as I'm seeing it, today...

OK...maybe it was worse a couple of years ago...

But the last 5 years or so have been some of the most cynical, nasty, bitter, rationalizing years that I ever remember living through...

I'm sure we must have had cynicial periods when I was a kid...and that I just didn't know enough to notice them...

But this is the worst shape I've seen people and my country and the world in in my years of paying attention...

And one of the signs of just how bad it is...

Is that I have to periodically ask myself...

Can we all step any deeper in the bullshit?...

Could we all be any more cynical?...

Could the world get any more FUBAR -- Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition -- than it has in the last few years?...

It's not isolated to ideology...or background...or religion...or career...or anything...

It's just us...

All rationalizing what nasty, calculating, self-centered, recalcitrant pricks we all are...

And I wonder on days like today...

Is there ever a bottoming out?...

Are we all forever cursed to moral and personal cowardice?...

Is that the fate to which we will all choose to be cosigned?...

Because I can't handle it if it is...

If that's our fate, and I have to give up with everyone else...

I'm doing it for real...

I'm not sticking around this ugly little species if they can't learn to clean up their acts and be decent people...

I'm making my millions...heading off to some isolated, idealic island...

And I'm going to permanently enjoy a life of misanthropic hermitude...

Because I am SO GODDAMN TIRED OF THE BULLSHIT...and the denials...and the pretending to be better than we really are when we're not even trying, too much of the time...

I am no martyr...

If I don't think there's a shot at humanity getting better...

I'm heading off to the tropics somewhere...

Never to be heard from by the rest of humanity, again, if I can help it...

Because I am SO GODDAMN TIRED of the bullshit that passes for honest living, these days...

Watching people bottom out their expectations of themselves in the last few years has helped me understand the Christ story so much better than I ever did as a child...

I don't believe that Jesus was the Messiah...I don't even believe in a supernatural deity...no personified God...

But I do think that Jesus of Nazareth was a great man and a great teacher and a man who suffered the greatest and a most horrific sacrafice because the people of his time could not face the darkness in their own hearts...Mohatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, Jack Kennedy, and others faced similar fates for similar enough courage, I think...

And I've never so clearly seen just how recalcitrantly rationalizing of our nastiness that we can be, the small little species that we can often be...

I have hope for humanity, to be sure...

And think that hope (and love) is not only the most needed resource in these dark times...it is one that is too often in too little supply in those who want to rationalize what cynical, mean, nasty pricks we can all often be, at times...

And some days, like today, sap you a little of that much needed hope...

Perhaps, like all such challenges:):):)...this period will make me stronger:):):)...

But I have to say that I've rarely known such a lonely and dispiriting path to strength:):):)...

My faith tells me that not only do these times make us stronger:):):)...but that we all get better, over time:):):)...all of us:):):)...not just those facing the challenges to our faith:):):)...

I don't know...

I just hope...

Because I can't think of anything else to do...

And I'd rather hope than do my bit to drag humanity down with my own cynicism...

Which helps NOT A GODDAMN PERSON...including ourselves...

When we expect the world to be perfect...and it's not possible for us or the world around us to perfect...

It only makes sense that we would be dissappointed...and cynical...and bitter...

Except that bitterness and cynicism doesn't do a GODDAMN THING for anyone..and does so much to keep us from doing and being better...

Makes you wonder why people would hold onto it...

Except, I don't think people who do hold onto them know either...

Except to maintain their illusion that if they believe in their worst fears...

That they can control them...

And not have to face them...

As more courage and a bigger version of themselves might lead them to do:):):)...

Why do we all expect so little of ourselves, I wonder?...it's a defense...but a defense against what, exactly?...against failing?...and then what?...the only thing that can come next...trying again...and again...and again...and again...and again...and again...and again...and again...and again...

I do have confidence that me and all of my friends and family try...and fail...and try...and fail...and try...and fail...and try...and fail...and try...and fail...and try...and fail...and try...and fail...and try...

...and succeed:):):)...

I'm not seeing something here:):):):):)...

Someone want to point out the beam in my eye?:):):):):)...

I could sure use it:):):)...

Love,
Ben