So, first we have to set up some very concise ground rules if anything is going to move in the right direction. I saw three common laws should be good enough to start with.
1. No changing history.
2. Everything starts as it currently is today.
3. There can be minor negativity if it leads to major positivity.
Let’s start with number one. Look at all that history behind us? Depending on who you talk to it is anywhere from a few thousand to a few billion years of this, that, and the other happening to billions upons billions upon BILLIONS of people. There are people that had lived even just a few dozen of years ago that did things that not only do we not know a damn thing about but we also do not even care, either. History is an expanse of 99.9999% laundry, walking the dog, chatting up with the neighbors, and watching television and .0001% (if not less) war, hate, renessiance, death, peace, innovation, discovery, and destruction on such a scale that even though we had no REAL idea what actually happened – we still choose to pump it into a child’s head during twelve to sixteen years of schooling.
Out of all that history we have that little moment in the timeline of eternity where we happen to be. These very minutes that you sit reading this – there are billions of people out there doing things that you’ll never know about and will never change your life, and if they do change your life it probably won’t be talked about for another six to twelve months anyway – unless it happens to a drunken celebrity. Then we are all over that.
So we are starting with war, poverty, racism, violence, natural disasters, oil, crazy governments, rampant pedophilia and homophobia (or so it would seem if you watch the news more than once than a week), drugs, sex scandals, and tons of other things that do not exactly seem like a plan for a so-called “perfect place.”
For now, and because it happened to pop up in the news today itself, I’m going to run through a monologue on racism, specifically the much documented whites vs. the world type of racism that seems to flow like a river through more people than will ever actually admit (see Tell Me A Lie from yesterday for other details on that one). Anyway, whether or not anyone likes (or dislikes) it, slavery happened in the United States of America. It last a long damn time and there was a war that was fought that was partially based on it (to be far, however, there were plenty of people in the North and South that did not care one bit whether or not the slaves were freed). After they were “freed”, people wanted to continue their domineering ways and created all kinds of goofy laws and legislations to say “hey, just cause you are free doesn’t mean you are as free as we are” and it worked until the 1960s or so (or the 2020s in some areas).
Now, it has been on the news (although not nearly as much as it possibly should have been given the person and action involved) that the Reverend Jesse Jackson decided to drop the n-word into some conversation about Barack Obama. Fair enough, I guess. I think the freedom of speech should be upheld and that he should really be allowed to say whatever he pleases, but this is the same person that has came out against that word being spoken by ANYONE regardless of their skin color. This is where I would start working toward a “perfect place.”
Stop it.
Just, seriously. Stop it.
On one hand, say whatever you want, I don’t care. On another hand, this one word has caused so much grief and trouble and problems for society as a whole that it might as well just be taken out of the lexicon of humanity. If it is such a horrible, horrible, HORRIBLE word – don’t say it. I don’t care who you are, what you look like, and who you are talking to – just don’t say it. If you want to think it, go ahead. Whatever. But there should be no double standards when it comes to this. Not anymore. Maybe twenty years ago something might have been able to be worked out to keep the word haplessly floating around – but it has stepped over and danced atop that line time and time again since it became such a buzzword in the popular culture of today. It really is a buzzword. It arises some sort of emotion in every person that knows what it means whenever they hear it or even see it mentioned in abbrevated form.
This is what my emotion is. Just stop. Don’t change the -er to an -a or an -ah. Don’t say you have some crazy right to say it because it is of reference to you or your people. If you do want to use it in a hateful manner, realize that the english language has millions of combinations of words that can probably be put together to voice your digust in something without having to resort to that. I’ve never even seen the point in hating with such fervor a group of people just based on the actions of a few. If you want to say “hey, I hate that one particular black guy because I know he stole from that convenience store,” then go right ahead. If you want to say, “hey, I hate that one white guy because I know he stole from some other convenience store,” well I won’t stop you. I know some racists, those real kinds of racists that say whatever they want about whomever they want and will scream “freedom of speech” if you so much as question a word that comes out of their mouth – and these guys are huge sports fans and can not wrap their own heads about how bizarre it is when I see them rooting on a football or basketball team that is a majority african-american and then turn on the news and freak out about “all them crazy black folk” when they see that one might have been involved in a carjacking.
That is how we start, and it isn’t just about the whole white/black thing, but that is something that gets the most news coverage anymore. This utopia, being close-to-perfect, will no doubt have a little bit of hate here and there, but it is one thing to say “I don’t like you” and another to say “I don’t like all of you because of what that one guy over there did yesterday.”
Peace,
James.
