Guns
A new data visualization emphasizes that there are six licensed gun dealers for every Starbucks in the U.S. - http://www.citylab.com/crime/2016/01/map-gun-dealers-starbucks/423801/ -
This cartoon wasn't meant to be funny. I am feeling sick and unwell and going to bed for an hour, images of guns and gun talk literally make me dizzy and ill. The overarching message here being .. our steady commitment to obliteration. We were born in a violent burst only to end up creating one. I don't get it. I get hate, I get beating the shit out of someone, I get violence... maybe ( although not the bomb ), but our sheer nonchalance towards violence I don't get. I even get how we can be hated by ISIS. I get self-defense, I get rifles in your home in Montana, I get pistol for your safety ... to defend your home in the burbs somewhere. But having gun stores and gun culture, and casualness in violence, I don't get. And I can't bear it. And it is my fault, although I am not gay I thought we made big progress with legalizing gay marriage. It is my fault, I feel we are still savages although we sent rovers to Mars. Shame on us really because 100 rovers can't make up for having a thriving killing culture. It is nice living in a big liberal city like San Francisco or New York, comforted by the company of like-minded liberals where we pat each other and congratulate each other with plastic wine cups over having achieved various achievements that we liberals usually achieve. And while, having nice dinners, people around us shoot each other, starve and plain don't make it. It is our fault and I can't bear it. I look around my studio and see meaningless pursuits and wooden sticks with dry paint on them, it doesn't make sense to wave them this way or that whatsoever.
Imagine a tiny rock in the middle of nowhere in a vast ocean of pretty much nothing. It wobbles and probably hisses, whatever it takes for it to get more round. This tiny rock becomes a bigger rock and probably wobbles more. It gets hit by other rocks and dances around a little, most likely. It grows and starts to settle. There are big dimples on this rock and these big dimples become big oceans. Now, I don't really know since I haven't been there - but there were tiny things at some point very willing to divide into more tiny things. The nature of the process escapes me and, frankly, the urge too. These tiny things at some point grew little appendages and started exploring and became fish. Fish made more fish, the Universe kept spinning, fish made it to shore and became a lizard. That didn't work out but luckily other things did work out better. So Earth tried to make large forests and put large animals in it. It practically took forever. And one day a monkey stood up and was aware of the world that surrounds it or maybe it took millennia from one monkey to another, can't tell ya for sure.
After billions of years there is man. And we are wonderful. We clawed ourselves out of the mud, we fought out the bad guys and took to the sea and then we took to space. And how far we have come for man used to be chained to the earth like a beast. We have created the Garden of Eden on earth. There are wonderful machines and tools delivering wonders to our homes. we open little jaggy things and water flows, we open chunky boxes and food comes out, we flick switches and light comes on. There are these bright screens we have conjured miracles on with dreams streaming in, hierarchy of angels as Joseph Campbell calls them.
And we are beautiful, for the most part. We command nice bodies with versatile trimmings, we command consciousness with imagination, we command machines with wonderful properties, we command a lot of the earth and the sky, and the oceans, well to some degree but looks like we are getting better at it. We put designs of the mind through ores and out come fantastical creations for the first time in billions of years.
As far as I am concerned we are gods walking this planet.
And then there's the gun store on the corner. It takes a jury of 12 men to convict and sentence to the death in our land.. it takes years of deliberation, lawyers and paperwork and until the end someone fights for the life of this man or woman.
And then there is a gun store on the corner, with ready made weapons engineered to take the lives of dangerous criminals and animals. Anyone could become a judge and jury on tens and hundreds of people, and take a life, in an instant.
Killing has become trivial, merely a shopping experience.
Why did we bother then to create and build a civilized nation our of this large chunk of ground. Why cross the seas, why brave Ellis island and make all the skyscrapers in New York, why make a California out of the desert when we still fear getting shot downtown? I recently drove through Oakland in California with a map of the latest killings and robberies on my phone to make sure to find a parking spot with the least likelihood of getting shot. I just don't like killing, man, and I don't like dying. I have this instinct built in me to make sure I stick around. It is our DNA and common sense built into every living human. It is time to put common sense into how we govern our nation and where we want our nation to stand, on the subject of killing.