I've been so busy thinking

I've been so busy thinking and not writing any my thoughts down! Shame on me! Recently it actually occurred to me that I have a social or moral obligation of some kind to write down my thoughts and try to publish because that is one of my skills. I used to do a lot of things with my writing, including public readings, workshops, and limited publishing. Now I do nothing. I have gotten so caught up with my mommy life and wife life that I have put writing to the side. That is not really acceptable because I have something to add to society and I should be doing my part, just like everyone else.

So what have I been thinking so much about? Well, I have really been struggling with some certain issues in our society and what I can do to make some changes around me. I tend to be a very overly-critical gloom and doom type of person (a part of my thinking that I am working on to be less consuming of my overall perspective on life) so I know that I probably blow some things out of proportion but I see real-life examples of these problems every day; some of the problems are everywhere I look and I feel overwhelmed, and some of them just pop up here and there and bother me a lot when they do.

Problems with our society in the midwest US right now (this is the area of my expertise, as I live here... Other places probably do have the same problems but I can only speak about what I currently have experience of) are as follows:

1. Disintegration of the overall community. I cannot get over how people take such meticulous care of their little space in the world, trimming their grass, clipping their hedges, and planting their trees and flowers, ultimately so that their neighbors don't think poorly of them, but they never talk to their neighbors nor do they ever sit outside in their own lovely yards and enjoy them. The whole setup is just ridiculous to me! Invisible lines that mark "property" that is divvied up among people who then cloister themselves within their lines and create tiny worlds of their own, separate from the tiny worlds of their fellow neighborhood dwellers. So where does the community go?! People have been conditioned to fear each other and be suspicious of most, if not all people outside their arbitrary little property lines. It starts when we are children and we are cautioned in a well-meaning way "not to talk to strangers." Don't get me wrong, I don't want Annika, for example, talking to strangers when she is a little one. But it is one thing to caution your child against talking to strangers because she is a helpless child whose experience in the world cannot compete with an adult's so she is much more easy to be taken advantage of and another to just preach fear so that she is instinctively afraid of anyone and everyone forever. As it is, adults are actually the ones who are afraid of strangers and they pass that right on down to their kids. Instead of viewing the person who is pulling up to ask for directions or who turns around and talks to you in the grocery line as another person with kids and a wife, or who also works a crappy 9-5 and is just doing their thing in the world, we automatically go on alert, thinking "is this person trying to hurt me? Is he going to follow me to my car? Is he going to grab me and pull me into his car?" etc etc. UMMM MOST LIKELY NOT! But that is our first impulse every time a stranger talks to us and it starts young--- it is an impulse that is ground into our systems from the first moment we can speak. I have been trying to debug this pattern in my software for a while now and will probably be working on it for a long long time. Community has broken down between neighbors and "strangers" and this is because of the starchy mechanization, incorporation, and sterilization of everyday things.. Such as: Grocery shopping. We all need food and other essentials to live. For ages and ages we have come forward to the front lines, as I may say, with our wares and presented what we worked hard for while people came through the marketplace, meeting with each other and meeting with the vendors, negotiating fair prices for all commodities, and picking the freshest and best ingredients for their needs from a selection hand-picked by the vendor. Such a thing is no more where I live. We rely almost solely on the "X-MART" big box grocery where produce comes from all over the world, ripened in the box, food is pre-made by someone who cares nothing about you, your health, or your palate-- who cares only about your money. That food is bagged and boxed and is stacked hundreds wide and several deep down long and clean aisles where shoppers do not interact, the prices are set by someone far far away at a desk who has no relationship to you or your community, and the only contact with a person is at the check-out where a little "hello" may happen but not likely much more. Even having a real checker is not necessary anymore. A person can literally (and many often do) go through the entire supermarket experience without having to interact with one person face-to-face. Where is the accountability of the producer, in this picture? When the person you are buying your vegetables from is Joe from down the street, his kids play with your kids and you all share other many things in life, he is not likely to load is produce with toxic chemicals which will not only affect your food and his, but his water and yours, and all the children who play in the gardens and fields. But who is to stop the producers of today? They will do whatever they please in other countries where the natives (the neighbors, whose children will be playing -- and working for too small a wage-- in those fields) don't have the channels to say no to the toxins and the work conditions. So they get poisoned, their land is destroyed and stolen, their children pay the price and then the food is shipped here, where our children are poisoned and we pay the price. What do the owners of the farm care? They dont live on the farm. They hire the locals to live/work on the farm. They live in poshy homes on beaches and have never gotten dirt under their fingernails before. Now the natives who do all the work do not get fair pay for the work, like they would if they were taking their own food to market. The person who reaps the wide profit never does a day of manual labor in his/her life. Do you all see the problem with this picture? The community of the workers falls apart, our community falls apart.
   
2. Disintegration of the family unit. So, whose fault is it anyway, that today's children are raised by television, raised on junkfood, and raised to continue being children until they are thirty and up even though they start having children of their own at half that age? Is it the parents' faults? Does no one love their children anymore? Does no one want the best for their children anymore?! I find that highly unlikely. While I'm sure there is the occasional parent who really doesn't give a crap about their kid because of drug problems or mental problems, the instinct for humans is to love their children with a feverishly immense love. So, why are peoples' children going to the wayside under the loving eye of their parents? My bet lays in misdirected love in a society that does not prize or even appreciate the family unit anymore. Let's start with the institution of marriage. Now, I am not the guy who walks around shouting about how the "institution of marriage" is being corrupted by gay marriage. I don't feel that way at all. However, I understand why people are saying that. It is a scapegoat because the family unit IS being corrupted-- but not by gay marriage. The institution of marriage has always been corrupt and easy to be based on the wrong things and is still today, only now parents and good parenting is no longer appreciated; those two things are a deadly combo for society. When people get married because of social pressures to create a family but then receive no support or encouragement from their community as a family, the family breaks up literally or psychologically and parents find themselves unable to give each other or their children what is needed to be healthy and happy functional people. It starts on the wedding night-- and no, I'm not talking about the hot bed scene! That's a good part of marriage, which also, too often, becomes lost in the shuffle. I'm talking about the fact that after marriage, the couple is no longer "check up on." Nobody asks how the couple is doing-- I mean really DOING. There is no support system for the couple and people prefer that they keep their "dirty laundry" to themselves. Therefore, problems in the marriage, with no help, become bigger and bigger and dysfunction can easily take over any relationship, no matter how much love was there to begin with. Then, add to the mix a social acceptance-- even encouragement, in some cases-- toward divorce when things are "unresolvable" and now we have a breakdown of the family unit. Now let's talk about kids. Oh, people are more than willing to give advice about child-rearing, and that's good; at least it's not like marriage, which people are expected to do alone but raising your own children is no longer a real option for most working people who need two incomes to survive, or who didn't make it with their spouse or mate (see the last section) so now their ONE income is extra-essential. Let's talk about maternity leave. Six weeks?! SIX WEEKS IS NOTHING. What is a mother supposed to do with her child in six weeks? A newborn is hardly cognitive at six weeks, not to mention the predicament of how a mother is supposed to nurse her baby if she has to return to work at six weeks. Now the mother-child bonding of breastfeeding is lost as a mother returns to work, the ability to relax and take the day moment to moment, as child-rearing should be is lost as the mother has to have the child to daycare before she is to work at some ungodly hour of the morning. It is noon here, and I am still in my bathrobe; Annika is just waking from a 3 hour morning nap and I have nursed her three times since she woke up this morning. I have an amazing relationship with my daughter because I have time to ENJOY her and also time to keep my house clean and to cook dinner and to sit down and nurse my baby several time a day. We take walks, we go to the park and she is learning essential life skills even now at six months. I have chosen to rebel against the norm and stay home almost full-time to raise our child for at least the first year of her life while she is nursing full-time. How many women in our culture get to do that? I am very lucky to be able to. Most women do not even have the option and if they do have the option to make it work (like we do) with very part-time work, extra work for the husband, and a little cutting here and there of extra expenditures, they don't realize it because it just isn't encouraged in our culture to even TRY to make it work. I'm glad for the feminist movement and all, but the whole idea of women working has turned against women and family in general. Now all women are expected to work and there is little provision and no monetary support for staying home to raise children-- a priceless duty to society that society is not willing to pay the price for, but is paying the price for not paying for! The entire family becomes strained when both parents have to be out the door early in the morning and they all return together at the same time at night to try to negotiate dinner, relaxation, and bedtime together. It's no wonder children are plopped in front of the TV while mom or dad makes something (prepackaged and quick from those wonderful food corporations we were talking about before) for dinner while the other one tries to pick up the mess that couldn't be taken care of that morning. Weeks turn into long stretches of barely seeing each other and weekends turn into catch-up time around the house and selfish "me-time" for moms and dads and kids because they haven't been able to relax all week. So before you know what's happened, parents have little-to-no significant understanding of their children who are growing fast into adults and it's hard to create that relationship when it's been neglected for so long, children are learning their values and morals from peers and television, and having kids of their own.

I have to cut this short now because Annika is ready for a playdate and i need to get moving. i'll post some more later!