Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Technology and ignorance

The reality is that technology moves faster than the vast majority of us can handle. There's a real question as to whether we use it or it uses us. We must have the latest and most powerful, tossing phones and computers away like used toothbrushes. Technology aids science and medicine in their quests for knowledge and healing. And technology lubricates communication for more pleasurable experiences. It's available, we must have it; just as if an AK-47 is available we must have it.

But just like the AK-47, what's the real value of the technology we use. Communication has lost its intimacy. Phones and similar devices fill the boring minutes in which we might have to have a conversation. The technology is so seductive that the real world has lost any allure.We plug into music to drown the sound of life and nature. There is no more awe to be found in the world, and we don't care. Just entertain us with gossip, mindless information, trivia, sports facts, celebrity updates and all the other things that work to dumb us down into submissive consumers and boring people.

Whether we realize it or not, so often when we opt for technology, we opt for ignorance.

Monday, February 3, 2014

A poem


The Poisoned Heart

Original sin exists
Only in the poisoned heart.
For this is where the seeds of war
Germinate.
Don’t look to annihilate
With tanks and guns and bombs and poison gases.
Don’t try to heal
The schisms and fractures and
Feuds soaked in centuries of hate.
Heal the poisoned heart.

When war calls, ask:
Why?
For what?
Why not your sons and daughters?
Why make me into fodder?
What will be the prize for the rich and powerful?
Who are the true cowards?
Why must humans measure their worth
In piles of bloodied corpses? 

Ask instead:
How can we heal the poisoned heart?
Who has the endurance and courage for that?
Who can unmask the motives of power and ego?
Who can reform the empty man
For whom no amount of wealth and power
Are enough?

Who can heal the poisoned heart?