Isn't it ironic?

Isn't it ironic that forcing our way through issues and being forced means noone ever taking responsiblity, really?

It makes total sense to me, really. The question is when we will face up.

Love,
Ben

The political philosophy of Austin Powers

Final scene: Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery.

Austin Powers: I've got you now, Dr. Evil.

Dr. Evil: Well done, Mr. Powers. We're not so different, you and I. However isn't it ironic that the very things that you stand for - free love, swinging, parties - are all, now in the 90's, considered to be...evil.

Austin Powers: No man. What we swingers were rebelling against is uptight squares like you, whose bag was money and world domination. We were innocent, man. If we had known the consequences of our sexual liberation, we would have done things differently, but the spirit would have remained the same. It's freedom, baby. Yeah.

Dr. Evil: Face it. Freedom failed.

Austin Powers: Freedom didn't fail. Right now, we have freedom and responsibility. It's a very groovy time.

Sadly, his Shagginess spoke too soon. It turns out that the current era is about neither. But how nice a world of freedom and responsibility might be.

Groovy, baby.

Love,
Ben

Fairy tales and bikini briefs

I think I just heard some of the most profound bullshit that I have ever heard in this long, foolish period of romanticizing force.

We have a paraprofessional who drives the kids (and her colleagues, too often) crazy. She's abrupt. She's too often rude. She's far too dependent on others to make decisions for her. The kids hate her guts, is the truth, some of which she has earned.

And she's gotten a lot better. I've stood by her when others were ready to throw her overboard because I felt like everyone needs a chance to learn and get better at life.

And I just listened to this woman say that she was well-behaved as a kid because her parents forced her to behave.

And I'm thinking, "So what fucked that all up?"

Because she's got a long way toward learning to be a better behaved adult, nevertheless a kid. Many, if not all, of the adults who are caught up in the most popular craze in child-rearing - forcing, people, and among them, your kids to be good - are like this, in some relative degree. As were their parents. And their parents before them. And their parents before them. It's not really the most original idea. And it never really has delivered on the goods that it promises.

It's a big load of horseshit, is what it is. It's a lot of people pretending to be better than they really are. So of course they know what to tell everyone else to do because look how great and infallible they turned out. It's the most vomit-inducing form of undeserved self-congratulation that I've ever watched a whole society of adults ever engage in.

And this woman had the gall to say to a group of fairly real world-savvy adults that she couldn't misbehave as a kid because she was forced otherwise. And this is a woman who has a hard time getting along with teachers, some of the nicer folks in the world, nevertheless with students, who think of her as rude and overbearing, which she too often is.

The sad thing about not being honest with yourself is that it is you who suffers for that, ultimately. When you claim to be a better person that you really are to justify whatever it is that you want to justify, you are the one who starts to lose touch with reality, as your defenses for your self-image loses track of the reality of who you really are.

We all do this. Me too. I was just thinking about it yesterday morning, actually. All the ways I have to work to be the kind of person and man I would like to be. And who I am absent those qualities in the meantime. I have a long way to be my most positive image for myself.

And so do we all. Which is exactly why we are all in such need of looking after the beams in our own eyes more than forcing out the splinters in the eyes of others.

This is where Twain was brilliant and I have such a long way to go. To give us all needed shit, all in good fun and in loving seriousness, about what jackasses we so often are, especially when we are getting all worked up about one thing or another, and often when we are getting worked up about our children.

We're all a bunch of petty emperors, bossing everyone around and wearing nothing but our bikini briefs. And telling everyone about what saints we were as children because our parents had the sense to shackle us to the prevailing moral and legal order.

And the really big question is, "If we're really all so damn good, then why has the world turned out to be such shit so much of the time?"

And the other really big question is, "If this is a route that has been tried and true in the past, and has never really gotten us to the promised land, why do we keep pretending like we've crossed the Red Sea?"

I know, I know. We haven't done it enough. One elusive day, we will have used enough force and imposed enough of our will and coerced our way to higher ground and then it will finally be enough and the world will live happily ever after.

Nothing wrong with a fairy tale. But I think I'll stick with Twain.

Love,
Ben

What I want more than anything else, right now

I want someone to be nice to me.

I want a nice girl to spend quality time with. I want to go down to Wichita and hang out at the River Festival, maybe.

I want to spend some relaxing time with someone who is more interested in being decent than in being right. I like debates about important issues. And my experience is that the people who feel most comfortable with debating and arguing openly are the most sensitive and decent of the people I know.

And I want a girl like that to spend some quality time with. Lay in bed and talk about nothing. And everything. Watch a movie. Take a roadtrip. Bitch about my lousy, stressful day with someone who can be a good listener and give me a hug and not lecture me about knowing what I got myself into. Long, deep kisses with someone more passionate about being in love and about how people are doing than about any other self-righteous cause.

I want some kindness from a girl who treats everyone decently, so that I know that I can count on her treating me decently, more often than not.

If you make me choose between nice and smart, I'll choose nice, because I'd rather have someone be decent to me than someone I can verbally spar with. I'm afraid I will never really feel close to someone unless she is nice and smart and have a little courage in the world, though. Because I need someone who understands the slings and arrows of my life to be able to have any reasonable level of empathy.

I want a nice girl, because I've had quite enough of a people being rough with me. I think everyone has, no matter how tough they might be.

I want someone to be nice to me. Because having people be jaded or mean or calloused just doesn't get me out of bed in the morning. And it certainly doesn't put me to bed at night.

Love,
Ben