I have blogged many times about watching Tv that can make a difference in your life. This time is no exception.
I currently have two friends living and making a difference in Africa. I respect them for it, very much (You go Kate and Brian!). So when I got home today from U.S. Senator Evan Bayh's Service Leaders Summit and started to flip through the channels to unwind, it wasn't odd that I would stop on the Travel Channel.
Most of the programs on the Travel Channel are usually extremely stunning, but Bob Geldof in Africa takes you into the heart of Africa in much more than just a visual way. The western world has got to stand up, as ONE, to help an entire continent survive through to it's next generation.
Take two hours, just two hours, that you would have spent watching football, skanky housewifes or not-so-reality TV and let the world change you, so that you can change the world. Go buy the DVD or email the Travel Channel to put it on the air again.
"Thinking will allow no man to be your master", Sir Bob Geldof
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Are you slightly privileged?
I'm white. I'm lower-middle-classed. I'm a male. I'm slightly privileged.
"History which keeps alive the memory of people's resistance suggests new definitions of power. By traditional definitions, whoever possesses military strength, wealth, command of official ideology, cultural control, has power. Measured by these standards, popular rebellion never looks strong enough to survive.
However, the unexpected victories-even temporary ones-of insurgents show the vulnerability of the supposedly powerful. In a highly developed society, the Establishment cannot survive without the obedience and loyalty of millions of people who are given small rewards to keep the system going: the soldiers and police, teachers and ministers, administrators and social workers, technicians and production workers, doctors, lawyers, nurses, transport and communications workers, garbage men and firemen. These people-the employed, the somewhat privileged-are drawn into alliance with the elite. They become the guards of the system, buffers between the upper and lower classes. If they stop obeying, the system falls.
That will happen, I think, only when all of us who are slightly privileged and slightly uneasy begin to see what we are like the guards in the prison uprising at Attica-expendable; that the Establishment, whatever rewards it gives us, will also, if necessary to maintain control, kill us."
~Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States, Chapter 23, page 633
"What can I do to change things?" What can't you do? If Prof. Zinn is correct, the majority of the people I know in my life have all the true power. We have been doped, by the Establishment, into think we don't.
"Okay fine, but what can I DO?" I think the simplest of answers has to be: Cut down on your waste. Debt is wasted money. Cable is wasted time. Car pool to work. Share a meal between two people at a restaurant. The guards of the system live way outside their means. It is the greatest weapon the Establishment has to control us. If we all began eliminating the "waste" in our lives, they would have less control over us.
In all seriousness, "VIVA LA PEOPLE, VIVA LA REVOLUTION!"
It starts TODAY. It starts with ME. It starts with US.
"History which keeps alive the memory of people's resistance suggests new definitions of power. By traditional definitions, whoever possesses military strength, wealth, command of official ideology, cultural control, has power. Measured by these standards, popular rebellion never looks strong enough to survive.
However, the unexpected victories-even temporary ones-of insurgents show the vulnerability of the supposedly powerful. In a highly developed society, the Establishment cannot survive without the obedience and loyalty of millions of people who are given small rewards to keep the system going: the soldiers and police, teachers and ministers, administrators and social workers, technicians and production workers, doctors, lawyers, nurses, transport and communications workers, garbage men and firemen. These people-the employed, the somewhat privileged-are drawn into alliance with the elite. They become the guards of the system, buffers between the upper and lower classes. If they stop obeying, the system falls.
That will happen, I think, only when all of us who are slightly privileged and slightly uneasy begin to see what we are like the guards in the prison uprising at Attica-expendable; that the Establishment, whatever rewards it gives us, will also, if necessary to maintain control, kill us."
~Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States, Chapter 23, page 633
"What can I do to change things?" What can't you do? If Prof. Zinn is correct, the majority of the people I know in my life have all the true power. We have been doped, by the Establishment, into think we don't.
"Okay fine, but what can I DO?" I think the simplest of answers has to be: Cut down on your waste. Debt is wasted money. Cable is wasted time. Car pool to work. Share a meal between two people at a restaurant. The guards of the system live way outside their means. It is the greatest weapon the Establishment has to control us. If we all began eliminating the "waste" in our lives, they would have less control over us.
In all seriousness, "VIVA LA PEOPLE, VIVA LA REVOLUTION!"
It starts TODAY. It starts with ME. It starts with US.
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