Artistic Footprint

How we change.

people who live day by day have seasonal or part time jobs, pay rent, buy used and make do. They’re more instinctive, realistic, animal, quick on their feet, and have instant fixes for the issues facing them. as opposed to year by year folk who have careers, marriages, salaries, mortgages, debts, educations, retirement plans, investments, holiday arrangements. They scheme, plan, and sort out the pros and cons of problems to sort out a stable resolution. they are always looking ahead and are rarely surprised.

The more this thought pops into my head, the more often I see that we cannot change who we are, what we do, what we enjoy, what we hate, what’s attractive, scary, fun, logical, or insane. Whether we choose to or not, everyone has something they want to do, somewhere they want to be, someone they want to become. We have a definition for the perfect human being that none of us can achieve.

Are you not cool enough? Are you mean or annoying? Do people not get you? Are you healthy? Are you honest? Do you have an addictive personality?

The first half to solving these problems is to acknowledge the existence of these flaws, and figure out where they came from. But the second half, the one I am concentrating on here, is… how do you fix them to become this impossibly flawless person? Of course I am cynically arguing that it’s not possible, you are you because of your experiences. But one thing is for certain. When we notice our problems, we don’t dig deep inside and make a conscious effort to change. When has a new years resolution actually worked? Instead, we change our environments. We seek out friends, hobbies, habits, and homes to train our minds to adapt. Perhaps its forcing yourself into what you don’t like in order to like it. Maybe you face your fears to see yourself overcome it. Maybe you avoid it entirely by making new friends.

However you overcome your flaws, my point is that you don’t change them directly, you’re smart enough to alter your environment, but in reality, it’s the environment that fixes you. This would explain why a vacation from work refreshes your motivation, or an excess of drugs or alcohol brings unfortunate light into your life. It would also explain why meeting someone new after a tiresome and destructive relationship teaches you a few things.

Change is good for the lessons it teaches you and for the hopeful peace that comes from finding your niche. But changing too much can be stressful on the mind and cause it to shut down, just as damaging as living a placid, colourless life.

Alright this is going to be the last I write about anything political. I find it too conspiratory, far too complicated, and to be honest, damaging to myself. It turns me into a parasitic pessimist. But what I have learned from all this pondering is the awareness and responsibility I have as a citizen of a nation. But in the back of my head I will always have the bad taste of what power does to people, and how easily followers are manipulated into blindly following stupid leaders. Here’s my take on what makes the fantastic and almost impossible concept of democracy able to operate:

The story of a politian:

In order to get into politics, you already need to be one certain breed of person. That is you must meet foreign nationals, spend years in university, be a governor, and be from Virginia or Texas. You need lots of money to finance your campaign, as well as an alliance of lobby groups and conflicts of interest, which you may or may not be able to bring with you to office. You adopt values and beliefs that get you into office like religion, culture, drug enforcement, abortion, gay marriage, international policy, even your favourite baseball team. In the campaign, there really are only two options that the country cannot decide on, and so the vote ends up being 55% to 45% or something stupid, so your citizens might as well not have voted at all. Speaking of which, only half the population votes anyways.  Then you make promises to get yourself into office which you never planned to fulfill once you succeeded. You spend a less than 10 years in office so any long term plans simply never happen, you’re pressured to take a side based on your own affiliations or lobby groups, or you are used as a puppet by your staff who hide behind you, putting your face on their decisions. And if you make a wrong move, its ok because you can control the media and create some other problem to mask the first, no one would be the wiser. You are completely protected from your people in your atom-bomb-proof office, or bullet proof armada of helicopters and jumbo jets. You are mocked all over the world through your personal life, speaking skills, or attempts to destroy/fix the economy. Meanwhile, because you spoon feed your religious duty to your citizens, you feel that you have the right to invade other countries in the name of god and the idea that capitalist, spiritual democracy is the best and only way to run the world. But you remain safe at home in your office with a little red button as your soldiers bleed and die for you. You only come out to embarrass yourself with pre-emptive mission accomplished banners.

And when all is said and done, 8 years later, you retire securely, to appear on Oprah or Late Night and perhaps start some bogus charity campaign, meanwhile your term in office is now called a “doctrine” as if international and national conflict were diagnosed and actions were prescribed.

Ok so I may have twisted that one to resemble more of George W., but I believe the majority is universal to the workings of democracy. It’s just funny because everyone believes that democracy is the perfect solution and we believe that everyone in the world should have it. And in almost every case, this is true. But people rarely stop to look at the other side of the coin. Democracy, like everything, has flaws. Lack of awareness is, put simply, just another form of blind obedience.

Its scary to think that we went to two world wars over for freedom and the right to vote, and yet our capitalist greed has corrupted it since. Dignity, morals, and justice are sold for power, money, and resources.

Watched this and somehow it hit home: