name-calling

People who write blogs should realize that it never makes them look good to call other people bad names. There is a lot of conflict in the world, and to avoid destructiveness and conflict, you have to avoid negativity in your own consciousness and emotions. If there is a disagreement, or others are doing things that you don't agree with, it really never helps to refer to them in degrading and nasty terms, and it ends up dragging you down in the mud too. My theory is that one should express his opinion calmly, and not get sucked into angry and emotional debates. If you are advocating peace, or the end to the war, you should be sure that there isn't anger and conflict within yourself.
On a related subject, Critical Mass bike ride really seems to me to be trivial at times. If you go out there and ride around and make a statement, fine, but if you go out there looking to get into a conflict with the police, and then that happens, you have noone to blame but yourself. If you really want to advocate bicycling, then bicycle every day, and that is the best way to promote bicycling. It seems to me that a lot of young people that are advocating causes like, for example, preserving the old growth, or riding bicycles, are basically going out there to look for a fight, so that makes them basically as morally compromised as anyone else. If you are going to complain about something other people are doing, make sure that you yourself are doing the right thing or you are just creating more problems.

On the other hand, people need to get out and protest unnecessary wars, unnecessary logging of old growth, and promote the use of bicycles. Critical Mass really just seems like an unnecessary stunt to me, though. Get out and ride the bike every day. Then every day there will be so many bikes on the road that people will have to start noticing them. Having a big herd of them out on only one day is just an annoyance, and pointless as well, because how many of those critical mass types really bicycle every day? On the other hand, maybe I'm being overly negative.

I guess I'm really the type of person that would rather look inward, or at least try to look inward and find peace, than to go out and try to effect change in the world. It's not that I am satisfied with how this country is being run, but I have always in the back of my mind living a life in connection with nature, separate from society.

I will arise and go now, and go to innisfree
and a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
and live alone in a bee-loud glade.

and I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
there midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
and evening full of linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I head the water lapping with low sound by the shore;
while I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.






Unrelated quote:

Job 35
Then Elihu said:
"Do you think this is just?
You say, 'I will be cleared by God.'
Yet you ask him, 'What profit is it to me,
and what do I gain by not sinning?'
"I would like to reply to you and to your friends with you.
Look up at the heavens and see;
gaze at the clouds so high above you.
If you sin, how does that affect him?
If your sinsa re many, what does that do to him?
If you are righteous, what do you give to him,
or what does he receive from your hand?
Your wickedness affects only a man like yourself,
and your righteousness only the sons of men.

Men cry out under a load of oppression;
they plead for relief from the arm of the powerful.
But no one says, 'Where is God my Maker,
who give songs in the night,
who teaches more to us than to the beasts of the earth
and makes us wiser than the birds of the air?'
He does not answer when men cry out
because of the arrogance of the wicked.
Indeed, etc.

This kind of relates to my own belief that you can do anything you want, but you may as well do the right thing.