We don't have to allow ourselves to be screwed!

Have you ever been overcharged by the bank or credit union you deal with?  Have you ever been overcharged by a doctor? Have you ever been ripped off by what should be an honorable institution like a bank or doctor or utility or any other service that is pretty much a necessity in this society?  I bet you're nodding vigorously!

I am one of those people who just can't stand injustice. I campaign for justice in much of my life, so when I encounter this kind of chicanery it really gets me going.  I am sharing this with the intention of encouraging others to not allow themselves to be screwed.

Recently the credit union I was banking with charged me for overdraft fees that were not legit.  The funds were there, but they charged me anyway.  I made a stink, filed a grievance with the state agency that regulates banking, who forwarded my complaint to the federal agency that regulates credit unions.  It took about 6 weeks but the credit union called me, apologized, and paid me back.  This experience led me to wonder, how many people are charged fees by banks and credit unions...$25 here, $50 there...that are not legitimate? I bet it ends up being millions of dollars a year.  If it happens to you, you have recourse!  Your state has an agency that regulates banking, and you can contact them, file a complaint, and they will have to deal with it.

Currently I am dealing with a situation with a doctor who charged me $500 for a 10 minute consultation that involved looking down my throat with a scope.  The outcome was that I was told to drink more water.  $500 for 10 minutes?  You have got to be kidding.  Whether a person has insurance or not (I do not due to a snafu at Healthcare.gov which is hopefully being resolved) that is wild overcharging.  That is the kind of overcharging that creates hugely inflated medical costs all around.  Why is this tolerated?  I have filed complaints with the Medical Board and the Consumer Protection Agency of the state I am in, Oregon.  The Medical Board replied telling me they did not find any illegal activity, but they keep the complaint and add it to the doctor's file.  I have yet to hear from the Consumer Protection Agency.

If we do not speak up when we are being ripped off, then we are allowing it.  I, for one, am not inclined to just allow this stuff.  These are minuscule issues in the bigger scheme of things, but the ongoing disenfranchisement of regular folks in favor of institutions is not healthy for people and not healthy for society.

I encourage you to notice when you are being ripped off, and to do something about it.  The mechanisms exist for holding institutions accountable, and it's not difficult to access them.  It can be tedious to fill out the forms, so some patience is required.  Outcomes are not fast, so again, patience is required, however when one is vindicated it is a great feeling, and hopefully the offenders learn from the experience and stop ripping people off!

So, if you are being ripped off by any provider of a service, you do not have to just take it.  You have the right to seek and to find justice!

Depolarizing Campaign 2016

The presidential campaign in the US continues to highlight what is at stake in this election.  On the right hand there is Donald Trump playing the part of the blustering strong man who will say anything, no matter how outrageous, for the cheers and applause.  He goes out of his way to appeal to the lowest common denominators of fear and anger.  It is actually people like Trump who have brought this country to this point of moral and ethical bankruptcy, and who have created this shell game of an economic system with it's periodic bubbles (one is about to burst any day now in fact) that lead to increased concentration of wealth among a few while more and more people are impoverished.

I think Cruz and Kasich are the only other republicans left standing, both hideous christofascists who espouse the most medieval policies to punish the poor for being poor while making it impossible for anyone to get out of poverty.  Lovely. Also on the right is Hillary Clinton.  She's running as a democrat, because the democratic party has embraced a right of center position for many years now.  A Clinton presidency would be as repressive and violent as if any of the republican candidates won.  If Clinton becomes president you can count on more war, more privatization of natural resources like water, more "Free Trade" deals which actually create more poverty and  are environmentally unsound.  You can expect more fossil fuel subsidies, since Clinton herself is an investor in fossil fuels. The surveillance state will grow, education will continue to be expensive and the quality will continue to diminish. Basically, Hillary Clinton is a republican.

Then on the left there are two candidates, Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein.  Bernie is running as a democrat though he has been an independent for most of his political career. His proposals all stand in stark contrast to those of the rightist candidates.  He wants less war, better education made available financially, proper taxation of the wealthy, an end to the toxic "Free Trade" treaties that the Clintons started us on in the 1990's, renewable energy, jobs programs to employee youth and rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, and more.

Jill Stein as even more progressive than Bernie.  She would end the US taxpayer's subsidizing of the Israeli occupation, and make deeper cuts into military spending than any of the other candidates.

This whole "right vs left" paradigm is absurd.  It's a way of simplifying things for people, but it does not serve real critical thinking at all.

Rather than think in terms of right and left, how about just looking at each candidate's stated policy proposals and deciding which ones actually would be good for the people?  If you do that there is no question that either Sanders or Stein would be the best choices. Both place the physical environment high on their priority list.  That's good because...hah...no clean air, no clean water, no humans! They also both recognize the need to de-corporatize the government. The folks on the right want to increase the role that corporations have in running the country.  We have already seen what happens when the profit motive outweighs valuing life, and it's horrific.

Discard your labels; republican, democrat, independent, right, left, center, progressive, liberal, conservative; and just think about what would actually be most healthy.

Vernal Equinox 2016

I find myself stepping back from the fray, a bit. The emotional hooks, to be angry or afraid, are not interesting anymore. I feel them, but really, in stepping back from it and observing a bit, what I see is that we humans keep reliving the same stories over and over, from civilization to civilization, age to age. Love, pain, treachery, trust, social progress, social regress, round and round, and we are now at this point in the story, again. And each of us is in "our" story living a life, also living out cycles, playing our part, in a personal cycle of evolution, regeneration, karma, if you will.

It seems to me that if we want to change the story, we can. It requires each of us recognizing that we are repeating a story, both as a society and as individuals, and making different choices. It's that simple.

This week's episode of Paradigms

Just to listen to this upcoming episode of Paradigms, people probably wouldn't think that it took me over a month to process my way through what initially felt like an ethical dilemma; only to rediscover, yet again, the organicity of everything, in order to be able to bring this episode together.

It is gratifying to be continuing to learn from putting together this weekly radio program. Sometimes I learn new technical stuff, new production strategies, and sometimes, when it's really good, I am shaken to my core and have to recognize more parts of myself in order to bring something out to people that has depth, that hopefully will touch people and ask them to recognize more parts of themselves.

Making the upcoming episode of Paradigms has been that experience for me.

The episode airs Sunday March 20 at 8 PM ET on WBKM 107.1 FM Burlington, VT (wild cheering for the new FM signal!) and streaming at WBKM.org, and of course the podcast will be available at Paradigms.Life and in iTunes.

Welcome to 2016! I haven't been posting regularly here, but this blog is still here and is about to become more active again.

Some exciting news! The book I wrote is now available in Kindle format. Virtual Survival: Staying Healthy on the Internet Check it out! The new publisher is Davis Studio Publishing, who also publish other wonderful books and apps.

Paradigms is doing great at the new website, with lots of fascinating guests and great music.

Stay tuned for more!

Dear friends...tonight is the 6 year anniversary of Paradigms! The first episode aired on WBKM on Sunday May 31, 2009. Tonight episode #182 will air! It has been an amazing experience. I have learned so much and had the privilege of speaking with hundreds of remarkable people doing great things. I have made some great friendships along the way too! Thank you WBKM - Eric and Tony, and thank you listeners and contributors! Tonight's episode, featuring a young woman just starting out on a singing career, and a man who rides his bike to raise money for kids...or last week's sax player who got into music via studying philosophy, or Freda and Toghestiy of Unist'ot'en Camp blocking oil and gas pipelines...on every episode people who embody the essence of Paradigms by daring to have visions of a viable future for life on Earth that includes humans. Thank you all for existing. Inspire and be inspired! Love, Baruch

It is International Women's Day...only one day??? OK...fine...it's better than nothing.
Dear women, the ones I know directly and the ones I don't:
Thank you Mom for giving birth to me! You didn't have to, you chose to. I'm glad you did.
To all the girls and women I have known...many of my best friends, sisters, teachers, lovers, priestesses...what would my life have been without you? Who would I have become? I can't imagine. I honor you.
To all the women of the world...whether you live in a society that explicitly honors you for who you are or one that requires you be hidden and disempowered, and everything in between...my hope my wish first is that the crime of rape become a distant memory for all of humanity.
Second my hope my wish is that humanity embrace a woman's right to choose when to bear a child.
Third my wish my hope is that men and women can continue healing the wounds that create obstacles to full partnership and co-creation of humanity. All of us who were not born women can learn from women. We can all learn from each other, and benefit by it.
We can honor all of the life on Earth everyday if we choose to!

O People of Earth, Hear My Plea!

Especially to the younger people, please put down your weapons, put down your hate and fear of “the other.” Look someone in the eye. They are not so different from you. Put down the burden of carrying the hate and narrowmindedness of your elders. Refuse that legacy! Let them know, who would have you carry their hate forward in time perpetuating this endless bloodshed and misery, let them know that you will not do it!

And to those who strive ever to acquire and attain more more more, know this. No matter how much you have, power over others or material wealth, you will still suffer as all humans do, and you will die as all humans do. Make peace with that! Share rather than hoard! Offer rather than taking!

Share Share Share

For many years my meditation has been on the Earth...seeing the whole...choosing to be aware of all the life, all the lives, as much of the whole picture as I can hold, with love.

I choose to be aware of as much as I can, in love.

I choose to love every life. I have not perfected this, but I do my best. That is what I offer.

As I get older I feel my relationships with the world, culture, politics, as well as with my work, and with the people in my life, all changing.

I am less attached. I see with a longer view. I am less interested in outcomes and more interested in how things are happening.

Each year I find myself choosing to ingest less and less media. What we call “news” is pretty much just propaganda. What we call “our political system” is a military dictatorship on a global scale. Whatever brand of partisanship one buys into, it is all a lie designed to perpetuate bigger deeper more encompassing lies.

I see it. I cannot change it single handedly. It tires me and brings me great sadness.

Earlier in my life I did learn that it is enough for me to focus on what’s in front of me, to do my work the best I can, and that my small contributions, though a drop in the bucket, aggregate with all the work of all the others, and so together we make a difference. I still believe this is true, however, I also believe that the more encompassing lies I referred to above have not been widely exposed yet, so even with all of the amazing contributions by hundreds of millions of people, we are still living in what is essentially a mass hypnosis/delusion that maintains acceptance of injustice as a core value in contemporary human societies.

Referring to a pop-culture event, The Matrix; remember when Morpheus tells Neo that he is a slave? The worst thing would be to be enslaved, right? And yet, look at the reality. We work at whatever it is we do, and we pay a hefty chunk of the money we earn (a ridiculous concept on a planet that used to feed us all “for free”) to people to make weapons, to train our youth to be killers, and to send them around the world to impose the same system upon others. That is how it is happening, and the only way it will change is with refusal to continue participating in this sham, on a massive scale. Refusal is happening around the world in flashes. Nowadays there are always protests just as there are always wars. People are gathering to refuse at least for a little while. It doesn’t last, or at least it hasn’t yet, but it is happening more and more, everywhere. Real change occurs from the bottom up, and it takes time and numerous attempts before it “takes” but that is what’s happening.

More and more people now understand that the so-called leaders, the Obamas and “past leaders” like the Clintons and Bushes, are enemies of liberty. They serve another master, call it greed, call it blood lust, call it whatever you want. These people thrive on the destruction of culture, the destruction of the Earth, the destruction of YOUR liberty. They purvey and profit from death to your children, by violence or poisonous foods and drugs they sell to the world. Anyone who is amassing a fortune and not using it to help is an enemy to liberty. Bill and Melinda Gates have spent fortunes getting vaccines out to the world; vaccines that sterilize, cause permanent brain damage, and even bring death, to children. These are the kinds of people that the propaganda “news” tells us are good people doing good work in the world, but that is all part of the lie.

For the first time in my life I see people in the US questioning the role of the police. I’ve known since I was a child that many of the people who are attracted to police work are actually dangerous psychopaths. This is finally being acknowledged on a large scale. Contemporary police forces are an outgrowth of union busting private thugs from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Finally even some of the privileged classes are questioning the existence of these police forces that operate above the law.

Shakespeare’s popular phrase again shows itself to be so true “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players...”

We each play our part. It can be profoundly disconcerting to realize that we are playing into the hands of the very people who mean us harm, when we participate in the status quo, and yet more and more people seeing this is exactly the cure! The more of us who wake up and see, and who are ready when the time comes to STOP complying, the better.

The only revolution that can work here in the US is not a violent one, but one whereby those who seek to control us are rendered irrelevant. If the soldiers would just all stop participating. If the good cops would stop turning away when the bad cops rape, rob, and murder. If the people who work as peons in the banks would just stop what they are doing that enables the great thieves in the big offices to get away with their deeds. Basically we need to acknowledge our co-dependency, as a country, and stop enabling the money/blood/war addicts who are running the show.

Recent events regarding the deaths caused by police in Ferguson MO, New York NY, Oakland CA, and more, have highlighted the perception of separateness between police and the citizenry. The execution of two police in New York has caused further polarization. The "thin blue line" has become a line of death. This is an unacceptable situation. As a society all of us need for police to either protect and serve the communities they work in, or be disbanded. The adversarial posturing by police is unacceptable. They are not a private cadre in blue who get to terrorize the citizenry. They are not above the law. Anyone who becomes a police officer should be high on the altruisim scale and low on the narcissistic. They deserve to receive excellent mental health training as well as how to handle violent situations. Training should include de-escalation as well as how to use force in the form of non-lethal restraints. Etc...my point is that if police are to continue to exist there needs to be a paradigm shift. People who are not police need a role in oversight of police, which means people have to step up. Police need to humbly shed any belief that they are above the law. Every police person needs to take a good look at their motives for being on the force. If you're in it for glory, or because you like the power, admit it to yourself and go into a different line of work. That would be serving your community better than being a cop when you're in it for the wrong reasons. I suspect that a truly effective police force would involve people rotating out of their positions after a set number of years. Service to the community should be rotated to prevent burn out, entrenchment, and corruption.

I am one of many trying to make some kind of sense of what is happening around me. There have got to be better ways for us to proceed.