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.