Philo Socio Politics – thebottomlessblog.com

Book Review – “Art of Solitude” by Stephen Batchelor

This was one of my audio book experiences while I was working at the medical dispensary in the city about an hour away form my house. I guess you could say I was going through a transformational period myself. The overall impact of the COVID pandemic plus the isolation of being on the road for 2 hours a day was tough for me. Factor in a schedule that didn’t allow much free time and I was feeling the burn of solitude and isolation. I was motivated to try and promised a lot that ended up not panning out. This book was a symbol of me trying to cope with the isolation of a work grind with over 2+ hours of driving daily. This is all to add some context of why I chose these self help, motivational, and personal productivity type books.

The book wasn’t bad at all. In fact it was really good but I do remember the readers voice being very monotone and not very exciting to listen to. The book is basically the tellings of a famous guru type Buddhist Teacher philosopher named Stephen Batchelor. Stephen basically quit his teaching and took on a journey that sought clarification into his own mortality and isolation, as well as, a deep dive into his thoughts on lonliness and solitude. I thought this relevant to all that was happening in our personal and social lives during the onset of the COVID pandemic during the late summer and fall of 2020.

The book was fairly short and nothing really stuck as being super enlightening and impactful to me at least. It was a long time ago that I finished listening to this book, but it was less teachings and advice and more of his experiences during this period in his life. Some of the more entertaining parts had the author describe attending various psychedelic rituals involving Peyote and Ayahuaska. I have experienced these substances and can more or less relate to someone who has never tried them and is experiencing them for the first time.

I liked the even tone of the book. There was more substance aside from his personal experiences. The author would add his own statements and ideas that relate to all the great thinkers in our history. I appreciated that he did a deep dive into what solitude means to himself, although, I didn’t quite connect to some of the concepts. In some of the experiences he was not alone and he was not in solitude but in a group setting. To me solitude is .. solitude. Like being up, tripping face, doing art or music at 3:45am when the rest of the world sleeps and nobody will disturb you.. solitude.

Not to get all philosophical with it, (pun intended) I think for an upper class academic who most likely has never really dove into the world of intense psychedelics, his accounts are all the more valid because he went to the deepest end of the rabbit hole doing ritualistic doses and purges of Peyote and Ayahuaska. Holy shit.. I bet he felt alone on the steps of death at points… I can honestly say I’ve experienced similar feelings on massive head-fulls.. but never in a ritualistic setting with all the spiritual mumbo jumbo attached to it.

I would recommend this book for anyone who is into philosophy, or has a desire to seek answers within themselves. This book has way more positive content than I can factually remember and it contains tons of solid quotes and ideologies by a professional thinker.

My overall thoughts are that this book would probably have meant more to me if i had listened to it in a non work or non driving setting. The audio books have to keep my attention and I feel like my mind probably wandered a bit during this book. As always I hope this was helpful or informative. Please let me know in comments if you ever want to discuss or talk about any book or subject.

Thanks for reading!

Pax

Book Review – “Zen and Now: on the trail of Robert Pirsig and the art of mototcycle maintenence” By Mark Richardson

I listened to this book on audio book, as I was driving to and from a job a city over. The expeience was good and the reader was clear and had character.

This book is a re telling of a famous book called “Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance” written by Rober Pirsig, of his own accounts of a cross country motorcycle journey with his son. I have not read the original book which was published in 1968. The author of this book I read is named Mark Richardson and he basically followed the famous path of Pirsig and wrote it his own accounts and philosophies as a docu/memoir. If i remember correctly he was in touch with some members of Robert Pirsigs family or friends. Mark Richardson studied and took great interest in the story, man, and philosophy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, to the degree where he literally followed in the late authors footsteps and retraced his epic journey for himself, only solo and with no passenger.

In this story, the author describes his situation and need to escape and all that encompasses the desire to ride solo across the country on an old motorcycle. Throughout the book he relates philosophies of the original “Zen and the art” book as he sees them in relevance to his own life and relationships with his family and others. Mark goes on a journey two thirds of the way across the country as a quest to himself for his birthday and more or less to ponder who he is. Maybe like a midlife crisis thing or maybe to satisfy that itch that only a writer/journalist would know. The overall story is entertaining and not as much actual motorcycle maintenance as I thought it would be.

I liked the relation to Zen and motorcycles. A friend of mine recommended the original “Zen and the art” and when I needed something to listen to on my long solo drives I found this “Zen and Now” book by Mark Richardson. I believe the author even Read the book for the audio book I listened to. I found the story satisfying and entertaining. The philosophy is mild but relatable and the motorcycle jargon was a nice fit for my attention while driving. I didn’t find my self bored and I could pay attention easily.

I found this story particularly relevant for two reasons. 1) I own a motorcycle and have ridden myself for years so I understand the terminology and the feelings of combined freedom and isolation, confidence and caution. Thoughts and feelings that only comes with being on the road by yourself, on only two wheels. 2) At the time I was driving a full hour to and from work by myself with just my thoughts if not for the Audio book playing.

I think I found a deeper connection with the book itself because of the long hours spent driving. I could relate to the stress of weather and maintenance and traffic issues. Before I had ever heard of the book or it’s title, when people ask me about riding motorcycles, I would automatically tell them it has very zen like qualities to it.. So I learned I was far from the only individual who had ever made that connection.

I would recommend to anyone who is interested in motorcycles, true life adventure, or philosophy. The book isn’t heavy or in depth on any of these subjects but combines them into an entertaining and ultimately satisfying experience.

Overall, thinking back, to when I was working in a different city, I listened to a boatload of music and a handful of audio books and this one is the one that resonated with me the most and has also stuck with me the most. I definitley recommend it all the way around as just a good piece of literature. One that explores the common mans desire for adventure and brushes on the the workings of relationships and how they relate to stress and passage of time.

Good read

Thanks for reading the review! Stay tuned for more.

Pax

It’s 2021, we are entering Post-pandemic life, half the year is over already, and we have a new President – so whats new?

We have a new president! I think the world is Genuinely stoked about that. The USA not so much.. Hopefully the US can begin to heal, however opinions are more important than facts it seems these days. Orange man baby is still running his mouth from the corner and he still has a chunk of the USA under his lying corrupt thumb. I don’t get it.. Well, I do to a degree.. our country is strait gullible, ignorant, and ultimately racist. A large part of our voting populace will believe anything they are fed online or on the TV. Many if not all of our high offices and institutions are plagued by white supremacy and institutionalized racism. We are more aware than ever before thankfully. I keep saying that 2020 was the year of perfect vision. It may not have been what we wanted to see but it is what we have to and were meant to see. We were shown that our society is a big facade, our healthcare sucks, our governments response to a pandemic is Shoddy at best and serves only to make corporations more money, and all the while our policing institutions have been blatantly murdering Black people and can’t figure out what the problem is.. I know its not that black and white but that is only a tip of the ice berg.. Long story short, 2020 was a hellish year all around and I am glad that 2020 is over.

I progressed a lot in my current career with cannabis, and subsequently the laws changed and now New Mexico is legalizing recreational Cannabis. Now as of a month ago I work for myself. I left Sacred Garden at the end of May for what I call visionary differences, but I mention some details below. I definitely didn’t like the 40+ hour work weeks plus the 10+hours of driving per week, or waking up at fucking 5 am. I liked the benefit of having money on paper. I got paid well, and was making more money than I ever have in my life by like four or five bucks. The grind was definitely heavy, I was more tired in general then I ever have been in my life. I didn’t have much free time, and my mental health was slipping into a funky depression. I was spending so much time every week for someone elses dream.. I realized the hard way that I am not happy doing that, and no amount of money makes it worth it. I quit over a personal issue with a tough guy shoddy maintenance man, we never had problems at work but he just talks to people like a bully and I wasn’t having it, and none of my bosses or managers could care less or backed me up. Fortunately for me I have a strong sense of dignity and self worth. I’m thankful honestly it gave me a very direct sign that it was my time to move on. I wasn’t learning anything and I was promised lots but nothing ever came to fruition and when I inquired it was like ” yeah right, we’ve never gotten a bonus,” or they told me when I started, “we’ll pay 100 bucks a month to help cover gas and expenses,” (never offered or paid me a dime for gas beyond my paycheck and gas was 300+ a month). Another one was “we’ll give you a raise at your review,” and then after a 3 month late, basically self given review, there was no mention of any added compensation yet the facility looked remarkably better than when I started. I could go on and on, that facility and the atmosphere didn’t let me do my best work although I left very proud of what we did accomplish. I left the facility in a MUCH better state than when I started And ultimately everything I was told or what enticed me to the job was never honored. I learned a lot but it was a lot of how NOT to do things. Otherwise I was just an overpaid team member with no official authority. I was hired as a “manager or assistant Lead”, yet i still had like 5 experienced growers who always knew better methods or do what they saw what someone in California was doing on Instagram.. Literally anything I ever said based on my experience was thrown our or ignored and then i would do what I was told.. something would mess up or be wrong.. then I would follow our SOP and still mess up even though I was doing what I was contractually ordered to do.. Ultimately it was kinda a waste of my time. I did however get ton of positive reinforcement that I could do my own facility and Cannabis business with success. Again 2020 was a year of vision and realization to me, and many others I’m sure.

We are steady cruising through 2021 and the world has somewhat come back to life. Music and events started happening back in May, and now just this past Thursday July 2nd, New Mexico has re-opened to max capacity. It feels so good to move forward. I am not naive and I know that we have a long way to go. I’m so thankful for all of the support and gigs I’ve gotten. I wouldn’t be who I am without my music community. I had gotten jaded with music over the past 18 month and barely touched anything music in at least that long. I was just feeling burned and sad that something that was such a big part of my life was no longer a thing for the foreseeable future. Many of us in the music and Entertainment industry had no idea when we would be able to do what we know and love again. It was very stressful as we learned what businesses and industries were being effected the most. This time last year in 2020 seemed hopeless and like music and events may never come back the way they were before. I’m so happy that is not the case. It’s been hard to shake the anxieties and stresses of the pandemic but it has felt SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO good to see friends and peoples smiles and dance together with amplified music in social spaces… some things I, and many others, will hopefully never ever take for granted again.

So not much new except for a new president who is carrying the status quo. I voted democrat. I voted for Biden and Kamala, however I don’t feel their platform is aggressive enough on the progressive end. We need systematic change, not just throwing temporary solutions, but digging deep and rooting out the corruption, greed, and racism.. However the establishment is too embedded in greed and systemic racism to work any differently. I voted Democrat but for the first time in my life I wasn’t really proud or stoked to vote Democrat. I literally carried my party line to prevent the Orange Shit stain from taking office.. Biden should have won by a landslide and seeing how close it was does not give me hope for much of a progressive future. About half of voters still vehemently voted for Baby in Chief and still stand by his moaning that the “election was stolen” despite there being not ONE single piece of evidence that supports that claim. Even after he was gone and cut off from social media he continues to represent the absolute worst this country has to offer, and undermine American democracy.

My personal solutions that I came to, to help me move forward.

I have stopped paying attention to the day to day political stuff because it was literally damaging my mental health. FUCK social media. People act so differently online as opposed to real life. The hate and ugly that people (friends, family, and associates) displayed has made it easy for me to move forward with, and definitely without, certain people. I know going forward how, who, and what to spend my energy on. I hope others made these self discoveries as well. I stand firm in my belief that if you and someone you thought was a friend negatively disagree on basic moral and ethical subjects, that person doesn’t care about you or to understand where you come from. They usually just want to argue or debate. That person is probably not as good of a friend or community member as you may have once thought. I’ve been called more hateful things by family and people I know over the past 2 years than ever before in my life. I can thank orange shit stain for that. He inspired people to show their true colors and sadly much of those colors were out of touch, completely false, blatant lies, violence, racism, and general lack of compassion for others. yeah I can forgive and “still be friends” with lots of people, however I do not want to be friends with hateful, racist, blatantly ignorant with no desire to learn, and overall uncompassionate people.. I don’t have time or stress for these people moving forward. You, [readers] don’t deserve to stress about these types of people either, the choice is yours. I made my social medias a nicer and more peaceful place, now I try to only use them for business, promotion, and networking, more or less how they were originally meant to be used. I choose to remove negative and hateful people from my social medias. I choose to move forward with love and inclusion, productivity and community. These things helped me and might possibly help you

If you read my posts thank you and I hope you gained something or got a chuckle at least. Feel free to comment. I don’t entertain trolls or shit posters, I’ll remove negative comments unless they are constructive in some way that I can determine.

Pax out! Much love and music!

Communication is Key

I find it is getting harder and harder for me to communicate with my peers genuinely. I know I’m not alone in the act of letting a phone call ring out, hoping they will “text me if it’s important”. I am not the only one who has stumbled uncomfortably through in-person interviews. These days there is a growing trend of leaving relationships by just simply not talking to the other person or just completely choosing to ignore them. We live in an age where communication is no longer genuine in the fact that people generally prefer to communicate in forms that allow them to review and then edit their thoughts before they are ever voiced. This destroys the fabric of what one would call genuine human interaction. It’s hard to describe but it’s important to be able to read someone’s body language and tone of voice to be able to tell how they really feel. I believe it is doing damage to our psychological and social realms. The age where we have 500 plus “friends” but don’t know how to genuinely speak to anyone, we feel isolated and alone.

As I grow older I have begun to realize that I deeply enjoy meaningful conversation. I have also begun to realize how important it is to our wellbeing. Humans need an amount of human interaction in order to feel normal, after all we are social creatures which is why social media seems like such a positive thing. I’m not saying that Social media is not a wonderful tool for communication and networking, what I’m getting at is overuse and oversaturation, and the adverse effects it has on us as a civilization over time.

There is nothing in the world more satisfying than sitting and having a good conversation with people who are interesting or have ideas to share, or sharing a good laugh with friends over complete nonsense. Even random encounters and conversations with strangers you meet, Its these conversations that teach us about ourselves and inspire us to do more. It is proven that laughing relieves stress and is great for your core among other things. Genuine communication is part of any relationship both business and personal, and an important factor of any group setting large and small.

It seems to take people by surprise anymore when you call them because we are all so used to receiving most of our correspondence through some sort of electronic text or picture message. If anything I encourage people to use their phone to actually make voice calls, even if it’s just to call your parents or a good friend. It’s good practice, and it’s always good to hear a loved one’s voice is it not?

Verbal communication is one of the human traits that make us what we are as a species. We have been able to advance faster than any other species in part because of our ability to adapt quickly as well as our ability to communicate. We are the only species on the planet with languages and detailed vocal communication that is not impulsive or instinctive like other creatures. Our languages have developed over thousands and thousands of years. The first human communication most likely came as grunts, pops and clicks, eventually becoming different tones and incorporating more body language. Over thousands of years humans refined it into the dialects and sounds of modern language that have been used and shared to strengthen the human bond over time.

Today that bond is breaking at a rapid pace due to the over saturation and dependence on technological communication. It has only been around for a couple generations in its apex, but already I believe we are witnessing the overall effects of being hopeless dependent on our little screen devices. People can be whoever they want online, and can see information and details about a person without ever actually interacting with said person. Men can lust over pictures of the girls they know but are too shy to ever ask out just as the women can post pictures of themselves every five minutes in a grab for attention or some kind of validation. Despite all of the good and positive, social media is a breeding ground for bullying and trolling with little to no recourse for the people who are cyber bullying others to the point of death in some instances. In the past couple years we have seen kids live stream their own suicide. Like damn… Am I the only one who sees and feels there is a problem? These are not healthy behaviors both on the individual level or the societal level.

In today’s turbulent political and social climate most social media has become simply a shit slinging match from one side to another with neither side offering any logical solution or compromise. Using logic and taking a more centrist stand in hopes of maybe finding compromise usually attracts even more hate. I won’t get into that, I could write a whole other post about that… I probably will eventually.

If you have read this far I encourage you to try to communicate more offline. I realize that technology is a huge factor with communication in the modern world. However, we still have the choice whether we want to use online or offline methods. All of those little smart devices still make and receive calls it’s up to us to use them and to schedule time out of our lives to chat with each other. Yes, It does take effort.

I urge everyone to challenge themselves to try to communicate better. It can be something simple like calling a friend or loved one out of the blue, just to say hi. Possibly scheduling a date or think session with a good friend or coworker just to share ideas with each other. Getting over the angst or nervousness of calling someone is a big part of the battle. I always feel like I am bugging someone when I call them. Bottom line that isn’t usually true and if they are unavailable they will simply silence it and you can leave them a message, because I know everyone just loves voice mails.

If you have to say something important or time sensitive, just call them dammit! So many people (myself included) just let the phone ring then answer with a text. I don’t know what the fuck that is about!?! It takes more effort and energy to write the response than it would be to just answer and say “nothing, yeah let’s meet up later”, or whatever. People spend incalculable amounts of time simply waiting for so n so to answer. Don’t waste either of your time, Fuckin call them.

Play table top, card, and board games. What better way to get a couple friends together? Table top games are excellent ways to have fun with a couple enjoyable people and it is excellent practice for communicating really. It seems kind of corny but it forces us to respond genuinely without any forethought. As well you can learn a lot about people by how they play and react to certain games or situations. Playing any game with others requires communication but even more when you remove the technology or video element.

Practice what you have to say or present before you have to meet face to face. This is a suggestion that has helped me through many class presentations and interviews. It’s kind of a no brainer but practicing beforehand, when I know I have to communicate, really helps me to get my timing down. Also it helps prepare for any questions someone may ask. I practice out loud and time myself if there is a time limit. I will also ask questions of myself and make pretend dialogue, again sounds corny but really helps. When I finally have to talk to whomever it usually seems to take the edge off of my nervousness.

Remember communication is key in any relationship, business or otherwise. Use it! It is one of the amazing tools we are intrinsically gifted as human beings. One of our great essences.

What can I do? – Ways to stick it to the man while living a better and healthier life

I’ve read tons of other blogs and other articles calling on people to do their part to resist the current administration or more generally the “establishment”. While I do generally love this current establishment (Non political, my home country the USA) there is much to be desired as well. We live in a country that more or less gives us right to free speech and an opportunity to seek out our own living based on our acquired skills and experiences.. Please, spare us, I’m not saying that everything is perfect, in fact far from it but I am trying to look at the positive. I observe many people asking what they can do to help, or ways they can make a difference? Lately I have seen an abundance of articles of ways to do just that. This is one of em.

Let’s face it, we live in a world dominated by finance, credit, inflating prices, and stagnant wages. As I have learned pursuing a degree in Business Administration, The USA does have a systematic strata that is set up against the poor, lower, and middle class. This can be taken as my opinion but you can read about that yourself.. It takes massive amounts of money to start and fund businesses on the level required to be sufficient in the fast paced, technology based world. No matter what it always seems like they want money when you don’t have any, with ridiculous fees charged when there isn’t enough to pay the bills in the first place, as well as insane taxes on profits for small business owners. We also have college students who are unable to get good jobs and struggling to pay off loans that were required just to get through school.. won’t even bring up the medical cluster fuck.. The list of ways to stay broke ever increases whereas ways to make a decent living are drastically disappearing.

It does seem hopeless when you pit yourself against “the system” or “the establishment”.. So don’t do it.. There are healthy ways you can join millions of other dissatisfied citizens to subtly fight the good fight without spending your extra stress and energy. With diligence, patience, and motivation you may even be able to make yourself a little extra money on the side. Following is a small list of several things that you can do to take your mind off of the ever stressful world, while giving a little back and ultimately sticking it to the man where it really hurts them… their revenues. $$$

First off! Buy Local!!

You gotta start small. These are all things that are habits that you have to teach yourself and be diligent with. They aren’t revolutionary new tactics or strange thought processes. Yes it may be a little bit more expensive but the overall act of buying local is a healthy one. That money goes right back to your community, and helps a local family(s) support themselves. This simple habit directly takes millions out of the hands of big retail corporations when practiced on a large scale.

Food manufacturers spend billions on advertising to manipulate people into buying junk food. The simple act of eating healthy, and more locally, is actually sticking it to the man more than you would know. This goes hand in hand with buying local, you can get pretty much anything you would get at the grocery store, at local farmers markets. It takes a little more effort and yes it may be more expensive but being active to pursue a better world requires action, yeah? You know when buying your food from farmers markets that you are getting some of the best local produce available. Seasonally you can find discounts on certain produce as it come in and out of season. And if you like to eat out, which I do, why not smart phone up the best mom and pop local restaurants? You may find a new favorite place to eat and you are putting money back into families in your community. Again this directly takes massive amounts of money money out of the big food corporations bottom line, and puts it directly back into your own community.

Second. Live a healthier more active lifestyle.

Big Pharmaceutical companies are sneaky. This sector makes massive amounts of money effectively by keeping people sick, stressed, disabled, and addicted. Their marketing is genius in that it’s coming up with things to make people think they have something wrong with them and hey!! X company has some pill to make you feel better. This is compounded and made more successful because Americans are advertised and eat shitty food, are unhealthy in general, super stressed out, and addicted to random weird shit. I know I am, but being raised by medical professionals I learned to take care of and listen to my body.

Every single person is different and it’s not fair for me to generalize healthcare in the United States…………. but it’s pretty shitty. Way over priced and my families past several experiences were marred with basically what amounts to customer service problems. All they want to do is push some drugs on you somehow, sign you up for some chemical treatment, or resort to surgery. All these options are wildly expensive and don’t leave the patient with many options.

If you are an unhealthy person and actually need help, get it, don’t let my post deter you from getting the treatment that works best for you. Let us know in the comments. I encourage everyone to explore herbal and holistic treatments as well as a healthy lifestyle as a first way to combat the big pharma corporations.

There are options. It is difficult and it does require change in the way you eat, think, sleep, and work. Eating better is the simplest thing you can do that many people take for granted. I learned personally when i was around 27 years old that I can’t eat fast food like I used too. It just didn’t make me feel good anymore. If you are stressed out or need help focusing try meditating or reading about how to recenter yourself and take hold of emotions. Sleeping is required, it’s super good for you and insomnia is NOT A COOL OR TRENDY THING.. Feeling yourself and how your body reacts to the things you put into it is very important. Being healthy invalidates the big pharmaceutical industry, and effectively takes money out of their earnings. Fuck expensive pills and treatments, try being healthy first.

Third. Growing your own vegetables and fruit.

What better way to combine all of the previously mentioned methods of consumer disobedience into one single act. Growing vegetables, fruits, herbs, and spices is arguably the best way to stick it right to every man imaginable.

Having a garden is incredibly relaxing and teaches us how to nurture things. The art of growing anything is a crucial life skill, often taken for granted, and teaches patience. Ultimately a good hobby and habit of gardening of any kind will accomplish all of the above methods of resisting the big money corporations. You will eat healthier overall and be more aware of what you are putting into your body. Gardens give a calming new hobby that will help lower stress and hopefully be productive with healthy consumables you can enjoy most of the year round, which will save little bits of money. Lastly if you have the space and time you may consider growing extra and then selling produce at the local farmers markets, making yourself a small profit for your new hobby.

You can grow small herb and vegetable gardens right on a window sill or small raised beds in the front yard. Many varieties of edible plants are grown in pots or containers as well, it just takes a little bit of effort and will to do. It doesn’t have to be huge or super productive even just the act of gardening is a wholesome one that is great for kids and adults alike.

All of the above methods are simply suggestions of things you can do to help give back to your community overall, as well as live a little happier and healthier. There are many more ways to resist and do your part for a more equal world but All of these habits and actions have a proven effect on the revenues of mega corporations who have for decades taken advantage of workers and their labor.

In the end, we may never see the effects of the changes our single actions make, however if millions of individuals regularly partake in even the smallest ways, it adds up to billions and billions of dollars in lost revenues for the big companies that don’t serve the broader populace. Big corporations have been taking advantage of our economy and livelihood for decades and it feels to me like a shift is happening. You can start and be as active or passive as you want but the fact that you have read this far means you obviously care about our socio political world.

I am a big consumer as well, it’s in our culture. But we as consumers ultimately have the power, Americans have forgotten this. The very dollar that enslaves us is also what the big businesses of the world use as their bottom line for a measure of success. Our dollar and time is what validates them and ultimately makes them worth anything. We have the power, we earn more of it everyday, it’s up to us to use it.

Loser in Chief – Let’s talk about climate

Sad day in the world. The so called “leader” of the most advanced and richest nation on the face of the earth has pulled us, The United States of America, out of the Paris Climate agreement. It is a fact that we as a country are the single largest contributor to carbon emissions and greenhouse gasses next to china, and that is by a large margin… Worse is the fact that a man in such a high office is ignorant enough to blatantly disregard scientific facts that are overwhelmingly agreed upon throughout the world. It is sickening, and a huge step backward for Americans, and the “free world” in general.

I am not a Trump supporter.. anyone who knows me knows I have the most vile hatred for him and everything he represents in humanity. However I had hope that he would do somethings to actually make America better in some ways and he has miserably failed at every turn and every policy. Our allies across the planet think he is a joke and do not respect him just barely tolerate him. He is mocked at every turn for his hypocrisy, boisterousness, and ignorance, and yet he is the leader of our country and yet still holds a solid base of people who blindly support him no matter how many American ideals he throws down the toilet. When will we wake up?

Now America joins the only TWO other countries on the face of the entire planet who are not in accordance of the Climate agreement. Let’s look at those other two countries. Nicaragua is not a part of the Paris agreement because they said it didn’t do enough to guarantee that countries actually pay their fair share. The Nicaraguan president argued that it should be the richer countries who are contributing many more times the amount of pollutants, than smaller developing countries, who should be required to pay larger amounts. He argued that the agreement was voluntary and didn’t enforce those who didn’t keep up with, or altogether neglected, their agreed contributions. That sounds fair to me. I am sure they have something in the actual agreement stated for smaller developing countries so they can continue to grow. I do not know this for sure but such an extensive plan should if it does not.

The second country is Syria which at this point is barely a country because it is so ravaged by a civil war that has raged for almost a decade. The Assad regime has strict sanctions and cannot even travel to the meetings for the climate agreement, to say whether or not they even want to be a part of it, is unfair. Realistically Syria is not in any position to set up restrictions and regulations on an already devastated infrastructure and population.

Millions of American jobs could have been created and maintained by pursuing a cleaner America. America could have started exporting natural gas and oil to other countries once we lowered our dependency on it. We could have lead the world and paved a path toward a cleaner future.. It is all just really sad and short sighted. Now it is up to individuals, businesses, cities, and states to take control and pursue a cleaner world.

There is still hope.

Alas, all is not completely fucked. Since Trump announced the US exiting the Climate Agreement dozens and dozens of articles have surfaced of states, businesses, and city representatives saying they do not agree and will continue to support and promote the green movement overall. This gives me hope. This means people are finally realizing that we control what actually goes down in our communities, not rich white men thousands of miles away. Knowledge and the urge to know the truth is winning over ignorance and blatant disregard for facts.

One thing Donald Trump has done remarkably well is emboldened the general populace to check the facts and to become a bit more politically active. This makes me very proud and I encourage people to not depend on one news media source but have a collection spanning several views and political affiliations. This guarantees you can get a better rounded picture and a clearer resolve for your own views and beliefs. We are not all meant to agree all the time but knowing how to politely disagree is key to successful debate and dialogue.

There appeared to be a large void of eligible people in the US who simply didn’t care enough to vote. Well look what happens when you sit on your thumb.. No offense.. but it is my opinion that we would have had a much different turnout if people had have voted with a bit of logic instead of a hurt ego.. Trust me I reeeeeeeally wanted Bernie Sanders too. But I didn’t think Hillary’s emails, and various wiki conspiracies were important enough for me to just abandon all hope for something that would beat Trump. Regardless no one will ever know, this is what we have to deal with now.

I encourage people to VOTE! Become politically active, it kinda sucks but at least you have a legitimate argument and opinion based on your own knowledge. Vote in city, county, state, and Midterm Elections. That shit matters. Nobody votes in any midterms but old white people (no offense) but we live in a modern very culturally mixed and fast paced economic world. By not voting we have, as example, our current set of all our worthless politicians who can’t even get a bill finished with someone on their own side. It’s a Joke!! Read about people who you want to represent you, then get out and vote. Even if your opinion disagrees with mine, I am proud of Trumps supporters for organizing and pushing for something they felt was right. good on em.. Now we have to do the same only with sane and legitimate politicians. Lest we become one… lol.