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.

Drawn from the supernal to the infernal
Death and the spark of rebirth
The longest night
The bottom of the year
Roots are fed
in the quiet
of Solstice.

--Baruch, Yule 2014

It amazes me that it has been nearly a year since I last made an entry here. Facebook is to blame! I am the responsible one but it is true that I have put this kind of energy into FB posts. In truth I think FB is pretty lame but it is the latest iteration of addictive social media, like AOL was back in the 1990's. Like AOL, FB will wane. I mostly use it to play Scrabble.

Anyhow, enough with such mundane trivialities. Why blog today?

It is July 2014. The entity riding this local consciousness has a long view of existence, beyond the personal or the immediate. That's been with me my whole life; some awareness of before and after NOW.

It's also true that the ego "me" is present and has an effect.

Watching the world has been my main occupation in this life. I realized that my job was to be a witness when I was a teenager. Participant yes, but first and foremost, a witness. I have been developing those skills ever since.

I live in a little wooded canyon in the hills, just a mile from sprawled pavement, buildings, freeway and commuter rail. The canyon is quiet, cool, even though the creek has dried up for the summer, there is a lushness. It is the edge of the megalopolis. Beyond are hills covered with drought gold dry grass. I live in a green bubble surrounded by heat, dryness, people, cars, and buildings.

I am house sitting for friends whose home sits atop a mountain facing Elephant Mountain in Inverness, California. They have a piano. Yesterday and today I played music of my own creation for the first time on the piano. I remember my fingerings from childhood lessons, and I go slowly, but for the first time I "get' the instinctual quality of keyboard chords, the same way it has been happening on the guitar. I am able to choose what direction and what notes are dominant, which I never understood before. So, for the first time, there is an intentional musicality happening with me and the piano. It's an amazing feeling, especially since I had long ago given up on the piano as a means of expression.

My dog took off today. I have let him be collar and harness free this week...a naked dog is a happy dog...and today when I wasn't looking he went out the open back door. I spent the next hour or more yelling his name, driving up and down the mountain, walking around in the tick infested grass, yelling his name. I never got really upset though, partly because I thought he'd come back, partly because I thought if he didn't then that's life, and partly because I feel emotionally pretty tuckered out already. I got him announced on the local radio station and was just about to print out fliers when in he walks, big smile, breathing hard. Clearly he had a good time being a naked dog outside on his own on open land. I picked a few ticks and foxtails off him and now he's asleep.

The world of not-humans will not be easily tilled under by us. I hope we cannot do it.

If you do anything today, please call your congressional delegation and let them know that YOU know that the meltdown at Fukushima poses imminent danger to the world. If the fuel rods that are 100 feet up in a collapsing building are allowed to collapse, we could all be dead in a a matter of days from the radiation that would be released. No joke. There needs to be an international effort to address this NOW. TOP priority. http://fukushimaupdate.com/the-real-fukushima-danger-spent-fuel-pools/

Today is the ninth anniversary of my mother’s death. Two days ago was the ninth anniversary of my mother being struck down by an intruder, probably some poor recently released from prison schmuck come to rob her of her meager supplies and money. I remember, when I was small, my mother told me that after she died she would become part of everything. The memory has, for some reason, especially a feeling of the sky, so today I talked to my mother in the sky, in the trees, in everything. I’m listening to one of her favorite pieces of music as I write. Forest Flower, by Charles Lloyd. There’s a lot to say, and there’s nothing to say. I honor who she was by how I walk in this life, because I know that despite our generational and personal differences, both our lives are about honoring life and experiencing immanence. Onward Rita, who/what/where ever you are...

I don’t feel alone in being deeply troubled by the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the murder of Trayvon Martin. It’s a shock and at the same time it’s a reminder of the numbness that has become the hallmark of the United States. This is a country whose “leaders” send robots to murder children, whose “leaders” have poisoned the soil in Iraq creating millions of birth defects and immense suffering. I could go on and on listing just the violence against children around the world that is perpetrated daily by Barack Obama and his cronies in Congress and on the Supreme Court. And now George Zimmerman, the cold blooded murderer of an unarmed teenager, walks free, and can even have his gun returned to him, the gun he murdered a 17 year old boy with. What is the proper response to this? Is it to focus on the obvious racism of both the court, the jury, and the defendant? Is it to focus on the larger issue of how the United States murders brown skinned children daily? I know there are many with vengeance in their hearts, but I also know that leads nowhere. Passivity is also not an option. At what point will enough people in this country refuse to cooperate? Is Barack Obama planning martial law and mass internments? That’s the rumor, but it was rumored about Bush also. We know Obama has a kill list and orders the murder of citizens of this country, as well as citizens of other countries. We know that the government is listening to every phone call, can access every email, and can track anyone with a cell phone. The big picture is daunting, chilling, appalling. But back to George Zimmerman, I wonder if he has any conscience. Does he care that he took the life of another person? Or is he an empty shell, an animated body with a mind and no soul? There seem to be a lot of those around these days. I have no answers, just questions and grief over the tragedy, the travesty, and the waste.

Summer is here! It's in the 80's in Vermont, after a long cold winter. Halleluja! This Sunday, June 2, will be the final episode of Paradigms for the season. The guest is Graham Hancock, author and archaeologist and visionary. The interview was very interesting and fun, I think you'll enjoy him. It will air Sunday June 2 at 8 PM EST streaming on WBKM and at Paradigms.

I am excited about tonight's radio show! The guest is Kisten Tynan of the Fully Informed Jury Association. We had a great conversation about what FIJA is and what it does, the history of jury nullification, the for-profit prison industry, and what we, the people who may be called to serve on a jury, should know about Juror's Rights. This includes information that judges will misinform you about, amazingly, as part of routine jury instructions. This is actually very interesting and significant and provides a way for citizens to reign in runaway government. I hope you'll listen because this is stuff everyone should know. Of course there is great music mixed in with a "Justice" theme. The show airs tonight on WBKM at 8 PM EST and the podcast will be available at Paradigms and in iTunes
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I have heard that there is a thin line between going crazy and transformation, and that they often overlap. Hear hear!
This last weekend was one of the most difficult and intense internal times I can remember in this life. I encountered my rage at a level I have never allowed myself to experience before. In truth it was scary at times. It was definitely not pretty.
I fasted for 4 days, not intentionally so much as having no will to nourish my body. I slept a lot, and when I wasn’t asleep I was in my bed enraged, ruminating. Like I said, not pretty.
I slept a lot and I dreamed. I don’t remember all the dreams in detail but I was experiencing a review of my life; memories, people, mistakes, joys.
The family I grew up in was one that, by the time I came around, had been hurting for years. My parents were unhappy with each other, unhappy with where their lives had brought them to. My three older brothers were all engaged in their own survival tactics. Along came me; smart Aries child with BIG feelings and BIG questions and hardly any boundaries. You can imagine what ensued.
Now I am in my 50’s encountering still the patterns I learned as a child. I learned that I am too much for the people around me and I better tone it down. I learned that being smart meant having to defend myself from attack. I learned that I was on my own, and that no one would ever really come through for me.
It’s been decades of deliberately choosing to change how I see and what I do and all that, but the patterns are stubborn and were etched deeply. Just choosing to change has not erased them or transformed them. Encountering myself in a different way this weekend, and thanks to one of my housemates who was willing to hear my rage without taking it on, and thanks to the many friends and family who reached out to me, I feel in myself the space that opens up when something is released. In this instance releasing rage, like releasing a caged ferocious angry animal, has exhausted me and in so doing is setting some part of me free. I think it’s an ongoing process though, not a momentary event.
Now I find that I must be gentle with myself. I am honoring the space that opened up and not wanting it to be filled quickly or without intention.
The pain and rage are teaching me. I’m listening. I’m watching. I’m feeling. I’m learning.

The last week has been challenging for me. I find myself angry, frustrated, feeling really fed up with just about everything. No, nothing dire has happened in my little life. It is the aggregate of a lifetime of living in a society which is increasingly vapid, soulless, conformist, imperialistic...I could go on and on with a list of adjectives a mile long. I am just really tired of it. Whine whine, yeah I have a good life compared to many. Yes I have enough to eat and medical care and heat and a roof. I am not saying that I have it any worse than anyone else. To the contrary, I have it better than most and this is how fed up I am. Think of the rest of humanity! I do! Every day! And from what I see things are not getting better. Humanity seems to me to be a great failure. There has been a lot of beauty and goodness, but it is the ugliness that is such a part of our species, to which I refer. I won’t bother citing specific incidents of said ugliness. We are all painfully aware of so many. I find myself wanting, more than anything, to disengage. I am unsubscribing from nearly every list I’m on, deleting and unfriending on facebook, throwing stuff away, packing up my belongings, giving things away. I am reducing the clutter in my life, physical, emotional, and virtual. I’m not sure what comes next but for sure my circumstances are about to change.

Alrighty then! It is over a month since the world was supposed to end. It didn't. Now what?
I'm thinking that it's time for a post-(neo)liberal wake up call for the United States.
I know a lot of nice people think they did the right thing by voting for Mr. Obama. As Obama's various murder sprees using drones are receiving media attention; children in Pakistan, suspected terrorist teenagers, now he has also given himself the authority to do the same thing here in the US. Seems only fitting really, since he is a world-class despot; the latest in a line.
Wake up Americans! Your country has been taken over by corporations who care about power, and not about life. Certainly they do not care about YOUR life unless it profits them. We have for profit prisons, for profit schools, for profit medical, for profit food, everything is for profit, and all you have to pay with is your life, because that is real. Money is imaginary. The Fed makes up numbers every day, giving itself more made-up money with which to dominate YOUR life, and we allow it.
Lately we are saddened by the murders of children that the media has presented to us, and yet no one is talking about the fact that we are a nation of child killers. US drones murder children around the world regularly. So why should OUR children be exempt, just because we live in the seat of the empire?
"He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword." So many Americans are "believers" yet they forget the teachings of their own religion and are shocked when the chickens come home to roost.
If we want to live with less violence then we must become a society that is less violent. It's that simple.
People respond to the actions of their leaders. Obama is a role model. His very public murdering of children gives unconscious permission to those among us who are also prone to similar sociopathic behavior. If you want your country to be less violent then insist that your country stop promoting violence.
The US is the world's premier weapons manufacturer and merchant, for profit. The US arms both sides of conflicts around the world, for profit. US TV and movies promote, exalt, and at the same time trivialize violence. Most American children have seen hundreds of thousands of murders on TV shows by the time they are 10 years old; for profit.
Is it moral to profit in these ways?
While it is easy to blame the crazies among us, or to campaign for gun control, those issues are symptomatic of a larger societal ill. Our country is run by people who promote violence for profit, and for whom it is advantageous to keep the rest of us fighting each other, lest we see how those at the top of the pyramid are exploiting us.
If you really want change, start by noticing how you support the status quo, and STOP DOING THAT. Voting for democrats and republicans is supporting the status quo.
Notice what issues you turn away from, and instead, look at them straight on!
Notice the "official versions" of things that you have accepted, and question them. Come up with your own questions, and discuss them openly, with friends, at work, in public.
If you really want change, be different.