I started reading "Nickel and Dimed" by Barbara Ehrenreich. Shusli just read it and suggested I do as well.
I have spent a lot of my time recognizing patterns. That is why I want to "relearn" to play chess. A common pattern here in Coos Bay is that there are few people who play chess. So I have bought myself a hand held chess game as well as I have a book and computer chess game coming in the mail (thanks to my "hush money").
Patterns I like to follow are things that stimulate my mind, things that give me pleasure. I want to live beyond survival, and "Nickel and Dimed" is about survival.
Survival is something that Shusli and I do, but we also do more than survive. We Love each other. We Love each others company. We communicate well. We do things that stimulate our minds (which is why Coos Bay is becoming RAPIDLY not the place for us to live). We lounge together. We walk together. We do our best to expand our consciousness.
Our friends, Jerry and Jessica of "Colette's" fame, have started a spiritual center called "The Catalyst." They have just started a news letter and are doing many classes and other things to help stimulate the community of Coos Bay/North Bend for folks who want to look beyond the White Racist Christian ethic that founded this town. There is a thirst, a need for this type of stimulation. This exercise in humanity and thinking. Imagination beyond "survival." "Nickel and Dimed" is about survival. Survival doesn't require such things a spirituality. Survival requires that one stay alive.
My "hush money" has expanded my "purchasing freedom." I can't buy a member of congress and run protesters out of Minneapolis for exercising allegations of freedom of speech, freedom of gathering, etc., but I can buy this nifty chess game by Mephisto. It's endorsed by one of the greatest Chess players ever! Gary Kasparov. I have played two games at the lowest level and thus far won, but honestly, I recognize the pattern that my chess is not very good. But I am stimulating a memory of chess patterns and noticing that I am, indeed, not a good chess player. I use the lowest level to exercise my brain, to remember those patterns, to see the vast interconnectedness of the patterns of the pieces and the board. Defend! Attack! Develop! How does one get there? What does one do when one gets there?
I am only on page 45 of "Nickel and Dimed" by Barbara Ehrenreich, a must read by one and all according to Shusli, and according to me after just 45 pages. It is about survival. Survival of the working poor. Survival of you and me. And in this book, I realized a pattern that gives me a greater understanding of American humanity and why there will not easily be a Revolution that will lead to real change (do not, under any circumstances, believe that Obama will bring change when he becomes president, or at least prepare yourself for some serious disappointment [at least he's a democrat]). A large portion of America is simply struggling to survive. This is called "freedom." Many have the freedom to just survive, a few have the freedom to benefit from those whose survival is FORCED to depend on the owning class. When one is in simple survival mode, that is, staying alive, which requires; eating, some form of shelter, clothing; and these human rights come at a struggle, that is a majority of what a person sees in their lives.
Since the U.S. has had poverty FORCED upon its citizenry by the owning class, and since the owning class has structured public education to dumb down the masses so they won't rise up against their destructive behaviors that are required for their amassing wealth, it is a pattern amongst the poorer folks to struggle mostly for survival and not to disturb the owning class for fear of the retribution they may purchase against them.
Thus, when in the smoking area of work, where I tried to change the course of the conversation to the varied analysis of Russia's war with Georgia, where some stimulation of thought was going through the mind of one of the elderly residents, one of the younger less intelligent folks immediately regurgitated what she had been told to regurgitate (without thought, of course) by the news: "Russia is trying to be another Hitler." Ahhhh! The deep analytical minds of the folks in Coos Bay in action. Revolution? Not gonna happen.
However, with a little history, a person can learn that W has more connections to Hitler than the Russians who fought off his invasion. W's grand-daddy, Prescott Bush, helped fund the Nazi's and even participated in the attempted fascist overthrow of the U.S. government under FDR. (He still became a U.S. senator). Prescott, it came out in recent documents, even profited off of slave labor from Auschwitz during WWII. Do you know what it said above the doorway to the entrance of Auschwitz?
"Nickel and Dimed," by Barbara Ehrenreich is an awesome book about the freedom of the "beasts" (as founding father James Madison would call us "lesser peoples") to merely survive and keep their mouths shut or face punishment by the owning class.
My patterns include finding happiness in life. Joy. And to struggle in one way or another to bring non-owning class freedom to the world, because the massive suffering all over the world benefits only the wealthy and privileged, and they hire folks like you and me and the Minneapolis Police to keep it that way.
Freedom! It's not what you like to think it is.