IRAs

Yes, dear friend. I have been away for a while, but, prodded by the events of yesterday, I feel compelled to share.

It is remarkable to me how unusual connections appear at seemingly ridiculous moments. I was just sitting at South Station yesterday, having returned from Oregon, simply waiting for my train, when I was approached by two surveyors who wanted my opinion of our attitudes regarding planning for retirement. The odds of asking a homeless guy this question are phantasmagorical. Yet, I was gracious, and perhaps a bit profound (two other complete strangers approached to let me know that they agreed with everything I had said), and given that I was feeling rather sad, the optimistic nature of my answers surprised me. It also led me to offer some of it here.

There is nothing new in anything I had to say. I let them know that my basic belief is that greed is what rules the world, yet we all have a choice not to be greedy. And, as I had been sitting there simply watching the dour looks on peoples faces, I began to understand why, at least viscerally. People are simply scared shitless. And we all suffer from the same unfounded phobias; that you will arrive at old age with nowhere to go preeminent among them.

For the most part, old people are cast away in America. Gone are the days of respect for your elders, and respect for their acquired knowledge. And given how stupid most of them really are, this is somewhat justifiable. Let me explain.

Greed is simply fueled by fear, and fear itself is our greatest motivator. This of course is why the 'christian' majority in this country does not actually heed the words of Jesus H; specifically regarding our duty to care for those who have less or nothing. Fuck 'em is the synonym for laissez faire christianity, unless of course, the poverty stricken heathens convert. Be like me...or I won't help you!

Now, going back to my pollsters. I do believe that I delighted them, but I wish they had approached me after I watched Brian Williams piece on fixing education in this country. While educational advocates proffered the idea of doubling the starting salary of all teachers, out pols in Washington went straight to the party line of cutting costs. Of course, nether are correct, but the true sin here lies with the old fucks who run this country. Given the projections for job security, oil reserves, and Wall Street protests, these dinosaurs happily reside in the belief that what was education for them is good for the thieves of tomorrow. And that might very well be true, but, what of the rest. Given the specialization and specificity of our current educational model, we will either wind up with too many people studying the biological makeup of tree frog scat, or a population of very stupid people with self worth issues.

It is time to offer our children the benefit of creative thinking again; to allow the 'out of nowhere' thinking of Isaac Newton, or Albert Einstein, or Descartes, or Michel de Montaigne to flourish in the minds of our children; to teach them to understand why math works so elegantly, why the top tier of physicists almost universally accept the spiritual connectivity of the universe, and why taking care of each other should be the dominant theme of our future path.

Somewhere, in everything I have ever written, lie the solutions to all our problems. Bringing creative thinking, and kindness, back into our approach would be a good start, settling into the connectivity which actually provides happiness wouldn't be bad either. But until we do, universally, we will continue to be driven by the fear, and greedy, self protection, that consumes our current attitudes.