The Power of Change

In America we have freedom and liberties that the majority of the world do not have. We have the ability to change a situation, any situation, if we really choose to. Not only do we have the choice to change it, but we can change it however we would like. That is how the American Dream works. If you want something badly enough, you work for it and you acheive it. If this is truly the case, which I feel it is, then why is it that so many just play to the status quo? Is it because they simply are doing it for money? Or have lost their internal spark along the way? Or is it because they are taking the middle road?

Heading Home

Heading home for the holidays…. ah… I am so excited to finally be heading back to the United States. By this December I will have been living in Brazil for a year and a half – away from all family and friends back at home with the exception of course of online communication.

Ahh… To hug my dad and mom, to play with my neices, to listen to my sisters talk about boys, and to eat as much as I can of my Aunt’s delicious food!!! Ahh… home.

What about the Moment?

How can we ever truly relax and be ourselves in a picture perfect society? Always rushing around, always picture perfect ready, never slowing down to take it all in… moving from one moment ot hte nxt without ever slowing down to understand its value or its meaning or how it affect us? What about the moment?

Posers in Pictures

If we live in a picture-taking culture and we’re always having to pose… does that poser environment then reflect us, hence we all become posers? Does our reality consist of posing how we have been taught to pose, totally losing connection with ourselves and our true nature?

Losing the Moment in Pictures

Have we become so picture oriented nowadays because we are in such a rush to experience things that we actually rush right thought the scene? Not taking the time to fully take in whats around us? How we got there? Who is around us? Why it’s them around us? In turn never stopping fully to enjoy the moment to create a memory in our mind’s eye which is more valuable than any picture?

This is crap

How is it that the wealthier Americans who have absolutely benefited during Bush’s reign are now denying that they did actually benefit and that they should buck up and help out now. Obviously the government has been hand in hand with the major corporations in the past 8 years, so much so that they allowed corporations to actually govern and decide what was best for the US by throwing money at corrupt politicians who let it slide as they were also getting in on the cut.

How can they deny this? Of course they can. Right? If you are educated enough to know how the system works and how to get your cut out of it… The idea of investing so that your money will make money for you- which obviously is a lot easier when you have money to begin with (hence the big corporation and shareholder ties). Or by picking up the National BestSeller by Robert Kiyosaki illustrating how to become incorporated so that one can exploit government loopholes, avoid paying taxes and in turn become wealthy.

So if Location is the determining factor for development…

I have recently been turned on by a friend to Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. Being here in Brazil and not having the luxury of a fully stocked library with books in English, I opted to search for it online. I came across a National Geographic show, in 18 parts which I have been watching. Fascinating stuff. It all came about when thinking of the relation of intelligence and wealth in colder climates. I have now found that the Middle East, also formerly known as the “Fertile Crescent”, was the beginning of the technological advancement in the way of farming versus hunting and gathering. Since that area specifically had more animals that could be domesticated along with major cereal crops naturally growing there, specifically wheat and barley, they then started to farm. Food being something that one could leverage over which also started the inequality that we see today. I buy it. I totally makes sense.

My question now is… So we have continued to develop and if natural resources are what, in the past, started to separate one country from another, where does that leave us now? I live in Brazil which is unbelievably rich in resources. Boasting the most tapable water, third largest reserve of oil, copper, iron, a host of other minerals, lots of land, and the Amazon Forest. São Paulo is South America’s financial business leader and the third largest in the world. The land mass of Brazil is the size of the continental USA and they are free from natural disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis… so they can build freely. Half of the country touches the ocean with beautiful beaches stretching for hundreds and hundreds of miles.

Being a developing country, a euphemism that I have opted to use as when I say “third world country” I am looked at in shock amongst the rich business people of the city. They have a huge uneducated labor force which can do whatever the top what them to do and are ladden with political corruption at all levels. Where does this leave them?

Why is the Artist removed from what they produce?

Why is the artist removed from what they produce? Why is a song distributed to the masses without concern as to what the songwriter had in mind when they wrote it? Why is the significance of the meaning lost when it is put out there? I understand that words should be taken literally but that certainly isn’t the case as I see it. I also understand that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but in this day and age in music and fashionable art, why isn’t the message digested along with the art itself?