Respect

The current gangster culture uses a perverted concept of respect as a currency to justify murder and other crimes. Gangsters demand respect with brutality and violence. The music of this subculture has infiltrated into the general society. It has been sold to youth by unscrupulous capitalists for profit. Television and films have furthered the infection of society by these dehumanizing influences.

Respect is indeed a concept of evolved civilization. Not the fear and threat of retribution, which gangsters equate with respect. True respect begins with the educated and evolved human being who understands that self respect is the precursor to generalized respect for all beings.

Respect cannot be extorted or demanded. To get respect, one must first learn to behave respectfully. And, despite having self respect and giving respect, there is no guarantee of getting respect when dealing with human beings who live in a low life condition due to stupidity, addiction and/or poverty. In the face of disrespect, the wise person immediately places distance between himself and the source of that disrespect. There is no sense in bargaining with disrespectful behavior.

Respect is both an element and product of practice.

Television

When I was bedridden for weeks after being treated for cancer in 2003, I learned the power of television. I spent most of my time alone, drifting between sleep and blurred consciousness. I kept the TV on constantly. Banal sitcoms, hideous commercials, stupid talk shows, game shows, endless headline news programs. I watched it all with the desperation of an invalid. I was an invalid.

Television works best, in my experience, with the reptile brain. Passive, cold-blooded, impressionable. When we are truly immobilized by pain and weakness, we tend to revert to our animal natures, which focus on nothing other than escape from the realization of the truth of our situation.

More and more, people in industrialized nations are giving their free time over to television. Children are exposed to hours and hours of television. If television works as a drug, as it did for me in my illness, I suppose watching TV can be seen as a form of recreational drug use for those who are quite well enough to be doing more constructive things with their time. This could be expanded to see a whole civilization as becoming addicted to the recreational drug of television.

If television becomes controlled by the Rupert Murdochs of the world, then the drug (TV) will be laced with the worst poisons: Messages about selfishness, antisocial individualism and materialism. What will be the antidote for this poisoning of millions? Who will have the power to administer it? Will the suppliers of the poison not be poisoned by it themselves?

Turn off the remote. Do not poison your mind with commercials. Participate in media which allow your participation and independent thought. This too is part of practice.

Wilderness

Wilderness frightens most human beings in this time. This is a sad commentary on our species. Wealthy humans will flock to undeveloped countries where amputees have to beg for their food on the streets before they will try to hike in wilderness. What does this say about our regard for the natural ecosystems from which we emerged? What does this say about our evolution as a species?

I was led to these thoughts after hearing a radio story about the forest fires that have disturbed people living on the edge of national and state forests in the West of the U.S.. The lumber industry, which has plundered all available old growth forest they have been allowed to exploit. now feels they should be allowed to 'thin' the national and state forests down from 1,000 trees per acre to 50 treees per acre. They see this, in their greedy little minds, as a public service, which just happens to yield them great profits. Only in times of a demented relationship between humans and environment would this suggestion be considered long enough to be reported on a national media outlet.

Take a walk. Look at the sky. Find a patch of trees somewhere near you. Reacquaint yourself with your true roots, the roots you have in the soil of your Mother Planet.