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Thirty years ago the US was in the grip of the "Me Generation," with families divorcing left and right, imbibing cocktails of cocaine, peacock feathers and self-improvement movements. Today's young generation runs the risk of becoming the "My Generation." My iPod, my blackberry, my space. Yes, the worst culprit of all is the fatuous and shallow myspace.com. We can have so many friends, none of whom we really know. We can communicate with people from all over the world, see pictures of them, make a cheeky comment, and move on having had an experience completely lacking in substance. But the three major reasons to avoid myspace.com are:

1. It is owned by Rupert Murdoch

2. It is censored

3. And the number one rule of cool: never do anything that everyone else is doing

The country desperately needs an "Our Generation." Clearly from the incredible number of artists and musicians and friends that one finds on myspace who genuinely are looking to create community, there is an Our Generation out there. However, we are tightly controlled these days by the corporations that create the products we use and decide upon the names of those products and by the media that sets up the framework by which we understand our lives. Damn!

Let's say no to myspace and use other vehicles to get together and show what we got. Also, less time on the computer in general would be good for all us, myself surely included. Isn't surfing myspace really a distraction from actually making art and collaborating with other people? Is it not just another sedative that works quite well at subduing the masses?

August 2006 - You Can't Stop Terrorism

There is no way that any country on Earth can stop individuals from seriously attacking their planes, boats, borders, cities or buildings. The huge amount of money wasted on attempting to stop this, not to mention the major undemocratic changes regarding civil rights in the name of security, could well be used for more effective pursuits of peace and stability. As much as it offends so many, the first step is to look at why people are attacking the country. People do not go out and attack others because they just feel like it. These actions are borne of desperate poverty and despair. They are also borne quite justly from the brutal attitude the west has had towards Arabs and Muslims for the last sixty years. Trying to "wipe out all the terrorists" is akin to a giant trying to swat away all the flies. It is also akin to trying to "kill all the germs" in our body, a wonderfully analogous argument but I am getting ahead as that will bring us to our next treatise: western medicine, the germ theory and what we can learn from our bodies.

So what can our country do to avoid terrorism? It must learn to live with the very countries and/or displaced rebel movements that it despises. It must slowly start to right a half century of wrongs. Getting its armies out of all Arab states would be a good start. Forcing Israel to create a real Palestinian state would be a huge move for peace and security for the whole world. Learning Arabic and learning to understand and appreciate Islam would do wonders for diplomacy and for stopping terrorism. We ultimately all have to learn to live together. Bombing and jailing each other has no effect. A million security checks have nothing on the simple sentence uttered by Gandhi, "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." You can't get peace by killing or torturing or jailing. Peace only comes from peaceful actions. And the sooner that the American people and American government realize this, the better for the whole world.