My Tech Blog

Once we say X can’t be forgiven they will say Y can’t be forgiven.  Christ said without sin first stone.  Why should a tyrant think he could be saved if we can’t forgive a drunk fraternity guy that got encouraged by his peers and a broken system? One saved tyrant could save many many lives.

Some situations are shit, they happened and there is no turning back the clock.  No reason to take or ruin a person’s life.

If we give something nice to one person do we have to give something nice to all people?  If people complain they didn’t get one, people might stop giving all together.  If we help some then they will help others.  That’s the idea, but trickle down seems pretty broken.  Helping people seems to bring persecution.  They see that guy giving to the community they might expect us all to.

The one of a kind. I would rather someone else have a beautiful flower than to split it in two.

God should be the answer to all this.  A great loving divine creator taking into account everything and everyone and still looking out for our best interests.  It feels like God leaves prayers unanswered though and the unknown seems like it can be used to string people along.

I still think I would prefer to give than not give.  A chance at a better life for some is better than leaving everyone in the dirt.  I wish God would make life better for everyone.  Trying to strive and achieve goals and dreams shouldn’t come at the cost of others feelings being hurt, but that doesn’t seem to be the reality.  People see other’s with nice things then they look at what they have and want more.  Would that be enough for you?

I don’t expect to win the Super Bowl.  I haven’t trained for it and I am not a football player.  When the few things I do try to do in my life seem to be such great obstacles it is frustrating.  Life is hard, people want progress without sacrificing anything and that is difficult.  A lot of guys get left on the sidelines striving to be pros.  Just like women and models.  God says He loves us all yet it seems like He gives more talents to some than others.  A bad set of health problems can bench anyone.  We talk about the excessive cost of healthcare yet we don’t seem to talk about all the lost dreams.  There is a real cost associated with all that and I am tired of it.

Life seems like it will always be unfair.  Jealousy comes with the territory of being successful.  Yet without star players how will we cure cancer, or fix the environment?  Maybe someone in the Church has a better answer to this.  Humility mitigates all this, it doesn’t seem to cure human nature completely.  Be thankful for what you got.  Easier to say when your not lonely, when you have freedom, when you don’t have many health problems.  Being thankful does help me feel better though, just wish it was easier to believe for myself and others.

Success can bring resentment.  Power can be hard to talk to.  Successful powerful people probably spend more time in silence than they would like.  For those that have been in solitary confinement like me, silence can play tricks on the mind.  Power and outcasts probably have a lot more in common than they think.  To say this all couldn’t jade some would be an understatement.  Maybe I have the right words to say to some and hopefully they can forgive my own jadedness.  I don’t have all the answers and that doesn’t mean I don’t want to try with what I got.  I do need a clean bill of health.  The right support makes all the difference in the world.  “Where you end up usually depends on where you start”

I am having some pretty amazing dreams these days when I am sleep.  They feel like parts of a puzzle piece.  My health problems and tiredness seem to make it somewhat difficult to remember the full dreams.

Earlier I was in a city.  Seemed like a costal city but a bit run down.  I think I was in an arcade though it was an older one.  There was another part of the dream that said a woman was in trouble and had been sent somewhere else.  Remind me kind of like New Jersey and kind of like Vietnam.  Possibly a city in California.  

I went to a vending machine and the guys that were there one Colored and one Caucasian said they were out of Dr. Pepper.  I went in there and found one that had a Dr. Pepper in it but only had a 2 liter.  2 liters are a bit too much to carry around easily.  Reminds me of the idea of having 2 women.  It likely raises a lot of attention and can make it more difficult to travel around.  Not a swing at men with multiple wives, just a reminder that attention isn’t always a good thing to draw on yourself.  Maybe the idea is reminding of a doctor that wants double proportions being the price to get them to some places to help.  The people there want another Doctor but they are priced too high for what they can afford.  I have cared about more than one woman, not really how I planned things to work out.  That said my price isn’t 2 or even 1.  Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to have love and emotional support in my life.

Another dream tonight. This one was shorter.  I was in a high school cafeteria.  I felt young again, a bit odd to say at my age, but there was that feeling of the weight lifted off me that age and experience bring.  It was like going back in time.  The faces I did not recognize.  I was at a table talking with some guys I think they were repairing something, though I am not sure what.  The faces were younger men.  Not sure if high school or in college.  

A young beautiful woman came to talk to me, her hair was light brown and she had dyed parts of it pink.  In the dream I felt as if I knew her and that we had talked moments before.  She seemed both familiar and unfamiliar.  This time she came to talk to me and she was speaking with a lot of attitude and while she didn’t seem upset she seemed out of character.  A bit funny to say she was out of character talking about someone you briefly met in the middle of a dream.  Next I was shaking one of the man’s hands that was doing the repair saying I guess I should go talk to her.  I went to catch up with her and the dream ended.  

There was also pieces of visions from my high school football field and visions from the band hall at SMU.  They might have been similar places at different schools.  Though the sequence of those events was hard to discern.

I don’t know what to make of all these dreams.  I really haven’t had them until this past year.

Someone that works people excessively hard, makes them show up 30 minutes early to be able to start work on time, calls them out for how much time they spend in the bathroom, reduces the size of toilet paper into 1/2 of what it was would be likely view as a tyrant or a nazi.  On the other hand a boss that lets people show up to work whenever they want, drink alcohol in the office, doesn’t go over safety instructions could sink a company because of people getting hurt or not being able to compete with the competition in the marketplace.

So if the easy going bosses go too easy on people the nazi bosses could win out.  People need personal time and a work life balance.  Either extreme likely burns people out and might make it harder to find good employees and people to work with.  Would it be better to arrive 5 minutes late for work than end up in an accident? Yes.  If someone shows up late for work everyday is it a bad example?  Yes.  Should a man or woman be able to go home and live their life without interruption when they are off the clock, ideally yes.  There are emergencies and those should be the exception and not the rule.  Prolonged periods of exceptions can burn people out.  Losing star players because they are burned out is costly.  A lot of training goes into building an employee and people make connections with them.  Continuous turn over is bad for morale.

If a couple people spend too much time at work, others might feel like they have to as well.  Now the competition has to do the same just to compete.  An entire industry burns out because we can’t all find a work life balance.  The USA is competitive, the world is competitive, and everyone is trying to get their piece of the pie.  People with families have less time to spend after hours working hard.  Single people with nothing else going on in their life sometimes throw their life completely into their work.  If you didn’t have anyone to talk to might as well make a little money with free time.  This further isolates an already isolated person.  It alienates those from people with families or active social lives outside of work.  People with families might see that the single person is taking food off of their plate and cutting in line.

This is tough.  If the people with families talked to the guy they could probably see what is missing from their life.  Some people might not think they are missing anything and might want to be sharks, because they don’t truly understand the end game in that.  I wanted relationships and friends.  I got jaded earlier in life, and compounding problems reinforced negative stereotypes that people weren’t really my friends.  Individual people fail each other in different ways.  Some we see and some we don’t.  People can harbor resentment for years and if we miss the signs we can lose a chance at reconciliation and a better life for us all.  I was a harder worker before I had health problems.  We don’t always understand until it has happened to us.

Being jaded I alternated by trying to go to bars to maximize my probabilities of meeting new friends and women and throwing myself into my work to excel and achieve more so that women might find me a more attractive mate.  I seemed to hit brick walls on both sides of this equation.  I tried dating sites and even Church and it seemed as though some unknown force was always stopping me.  

This pushed me towards work and I started looking to get into leadership roles.  When I was working for a restaurant chain I was the IT guy at the top, and didn’t have a lot of leadership in my field.  I had great people to work with and learned a lot from them yet having no leadership in my field made me improvise.  I worked hard but there are some problems in business that aren’t easy to understand earlier on in life.  I tended to think that everyone had my best interest at heart and my way was the better way.  We don’t easily understand the issues with company mergers and down turns in the economy and how tough it can get when everyone is competing to get ahead or put food on their families table.  Some people’s wives will leave them when the going gets tough, who wants that to happen and at the same time who doesn’t want to stay off the streets.  

I would say leadership early in life is difficult because many times wisdom comes with age and experience.  To compound it other’s might feel cheated furthering the divide.  When someone half your age is in charge it might seem like your life experiences didn’t matter.  Finding the middle ground in all this is difficult.  Stagnate at the bottom or fight to get to the top.  Both have real and significant impacts on my life and the lives of others.  Some seen and some unseen.  Individual actions and collective actions can determine history.  The individual might think it is just one job they will find another.  The collective might leave them out in the cold for numerous reasons.  They annoyed me, they acted in a way I didn’t like, they just weren’t popular.  

Even knowing these things there is a ton of unknown variables in how things play out which doesn’t make decisions particularly easier.  If you have to eliminate a project or part of a company to help the overall company succeed, is it better to know the chain reaction that will occur in everyone’s lives as a result?  Sometimes the big injustices can be highlighted and the squeakiest wheel gets the grease.  As time progresses those that stayed silent let the injustice fester inside.  As time progresses people that might be in a better position to help don’t always know someone is still in pain or hurting.  If I only knew, we had this great new project and you would have been a good fit.  Two people working with the hands they were dealt, a bit oblivious to the other’s needs because they went silent or harbored resentment. Or possibly because the rest of us just were to lazy or stubborn to help them make a connection.

Pride, silence, and unforgiveness leads to a lot of problems for us all.  So we owe it to each other to try and make it right for those around us.  Sometimes the right words from the right person can make all the difference in the world.  Sometimes it takes resources and new opportunities, distance, or different perspectives.  So that person in the office that you might not think picks up on everything might be your saving grace. A lot of times it takes meeting people where they are in life, and as all of our life stories are different this could require the right words from the right person.  

Some people think they know or understand and don’t, some mean well but say things in the wrong way or at the wrong time, some will stop from trying because of this kind of stuff.  Some just don’t have your best interest at heart, and that reality can prevent the person from hearing the voice of reason in the room.  Given all that it might be easy to give up on someone.  The lost.  A few out there by hell or high water refuse that notion, that’s the team I want to be on.

I realize I am not a CEO.  Searching for leadership on being a leader has found me silence.  One could argue it is a valuable teaching tool.  I would have rather been told hey you should read this.  Maybe I missed that one, never been the best reader so people like me you might have to bug more than once.  With some women in life I have tried different ways in talking to them and continuously failed.  Maybe there are thousands of ways and I only knew the few, maybe there were things outside of my control going on in their lives or mine.  

Trying too hard makes you look like a stalker or crowding a person.  Nobody likes not feeling free to make their own decisions in life.  If your keep a flower in doors it can’t easily grow.  Having the result of the actions I tried cause so many problems made me want to give up, and balance more to the lighter touch side.  I might have over compensated and lead people to feel abandoned.  So if I am trying too hard or too little I am sorry, trying to find the right balance has been difficult because I seem to constantly be in the middle of a storm.  

Even if my ideals are solid, in practice and reality everything doesn’t always work out as planned.  So if we don’t leave room for forgiveness and reconciliation we will lose time and problems can fester.  The injustices snowball until they are problem for us all.  Why we should all work together to fight a world that won’t reconcile with each other.  So hopefully my position is clear my door is open for reconciliation and time is short.  If I am not around to reconcile with, don’t beat yourself up over it, just please reconcile with those you can “because life’s too short to spend thinking what I could have, should have did” – Lyrics Born

Give me a pro life governor of Texas that ends the death penalty and I will try to promote him for President.  Preferably someone of color.  I like vanilla though it would also be nice to see a bit more color represented at the top.  A country where we keep people out of the ground and everyone has a seat at the table.  I can get on board with that.  If Abbot ends it I would be glad to follow him.

I realize I am not a PR guy, just like to help where I can.

Right – Mercilessness and Greed

Left – Mercilessness and Hubris

Libertarian – Mercilessness, Chaos and Anarchy

Socialism and Communism  – Mercilessness and Oppression, stagnation

Democracy – no consensus, warring merciless factions

Jason – many

If your a pawn, stop the game, otherwise you march forward.  Sometimes war is required, many more times it can be solved with real conversation.  Imagine your future self in a war 5 years from now.  Now what can I do today to stop that from happening.  Maybe I will never be a soldier but if I can save some of their lives by my choices today I am help fighting the good fight.

Would sacrificing a piece of bread today be worth it to keep us out of war yes.  Add in health problems it would be wiser not to eat what is on my plate.  Sometimes the simplistic view doesn’t correlate to the actual reality.  Hard to think the best of people when things don’t appear to make sense.  People with their own agendas can use the appearance to trap and ensnare.  People with their own agendas can use this to leave them with a bigger plates as well.  People trying to protect people might not choose to argue.  Yeah it was me, I don’t want them spending life in jail.

I have experienced situations in my own life where I would look ridiculous to those around me.  I know full well that others looking in and if having to judge the masses would make the wrong decision, though they might be making the best decision given the information they had at the time.  Someone with a weird package in the airport might just be carrying a musical instrument.  Some might be carrying something worse.  That’s why people need to inspect what is inside.  

Discernment is not easy, given more information people generally make better choices.  Oppression and oppressive societies make this much more difficult.  Even the one carrying the package might be leveraged.  Sometimes the leverage is not so obvious.  Another reason to be merciful because they or someone they care about might be in trouble.  Diffusing a bomb or a hostage situation is hard from what I can tell, people make split second decisions.  More information might surface later that can paint a clearer picture.  Some might deem that information to be too damaging, for protecting lives or protecting pocket books.  Mercy doesn’t always have to make sense.  If the unknown leaves people out of cages, out of the ground, and off the street I support it.  If people misuse the shadows to conceal corruption I don’t. Unless revealing the corruption destroys more lives.  Doesn’t mean I support the corruption or don’t want to fight to stop it.  People that say it is always this way or that probably don’t have a clear enough picture.

If people were more forgiving, and less oppression existed in the world transparency would be far easier.  The right choice is to turn them in, not if that means a corrupt state executes them.  We all need to protect each other in society and I know we all have our own problems and agendas.  Silence can make us all step on each other’s toes.  Some people need the right person to talk to, and you never know unless you try.  The email isn’t always delivered, and corrupt people could make you think it was.  

Where was the support?  I didn’t know you were in trouble.  Where was the support?  I passed it up the chain, you’re telling me nobody showed up?  Where was the support?  We got delayed at the airport.  Where was the support?  There was a rolling blackout and I didn’t get the message.  The list goes on. 

Where was the support?  They showed up with extra resources and bottles of water for the elderly.  Now that is what I like to hear.  All valid excuses.  How do we prevent the support from being limited?  Multiple fallback plans.  “Those who fail to plan, plan to fail”.  People without support don’t have the luxury of fallback plans.  So mercy.  Because life can be like standing on a balancing wire while people take pot shots at you until you fall to no safety net. So mercy.  Because they were terrorized and didn’t have emotional support, this one hits close to home.  Mercy, because letting live doesn’t need an eraser.

Not trying to cut in line, I would prefer a bag of money and a beach house to an empathy room, though not at the expense of anyone’s life.  I like working with people to make others lives better, would be nice to be able to enjoy existence too.  What that means I am not sure. I make plans and God laughs.  Would be nice if the comedy show stopped for a while.  I have been running with this torch for a while, could use a real break.  Or at least a good bill of health and some real emotional support.  A limp and a whiffle ball bat that’s me.

You set out to hike up the nearby hill.  You look down to tie your shoe.  You look up again and now are standing before Mount Everest.  It is bitterly cold now and you didn’t bring a jacket.  What do you do?

Being white shouldn’t matter in what you achieve in life.  Sadly to many around you years of oppression and hardships view your skin as a symbol of oppression.  Like looking at a confederate statue.  You don’t deserve it and they didn’t deserve the years of oppression and indignities.  To make matters worse the entire system seems designed to make you choose sides.  Even the language itself is working against you.  Light is good and dark is bad.  You can not easily use the letter K, or wear a white shirt without furthering a stereotype.  People use codes to label furthering this, now we can’t use words that have “ck” in them.  C is the 3 rd letter in the alphabet so now ck means 3K.  Not very lucky.

Why has language developed like this?  One thought is people use creative solutions to fight oppressions.  If your child is going to be executed by the state, what sacrifice isn’t willing to be made to prevent it?  This might help stop some problems yet it also creates other problems.  Reminds me of the childhood game where the ground is lava.  This is why oppression is so problematic.  This is why I don’t think the death penalty is wise.  Sacrificing society itself to allow some people to get their revenge is a terrible idea.  Don’t ruin your families lives and future generations lives to get justice.  True justice is rare, and would take in to account all hardships and wrongs.  True justice is scary and would likely end up with us all going off a cliff.

Singapore interests me.  It is a beautiful city.  I would not go there.  Not because I would transport drugs.  Because the world is an evil place and someone else might use my suit case to do so.  The price of a completely drug free city is high.  Giving people true healthcare and stopping oppression would go a long way in stopping drugs.  People’s lives should be more valuable than drugs, people’s lives should be more valuable than the drugs they transported or sold.  So part of the price of that cities laws are me not visiting.  Other’s might feel the same.  Life is more than the sum of our own actions, so it is always a roll of the dice how the chips may fall.  Creating a system without mercy might seem like a good idea, as long as luck is on your side.  Sadly those that weren’t lucky might have been executed for the sake of a more perfect drug free world.

We can learn a lot from the world, about our own countries and our own lives.  Not all parallels are apt but seeing patterns can help us learn what the means to the end is.  Who we mean to achieve what end.  I can understand how people might decide the end justify the means.  I would prefer a way that works out better for everyone.  If I was in their shoes would I have made a better choice?  Maybe.  Maybe is enough room for doubt to be merciful.  What would it take for me to make their same decision?  Where did they go wrong and where did they go right.   Sometimes the right choices have the wrong result, this makes it easier to understand people making the wrong ones.

I don’t want crime and scams and people being oppressed through mob rule.  An oppressive government is really no different.  Evil takes many forms, and if it can’t effect one side of an equation it might try the other.  In reality it seems to be a problem for all sides, even though all sides like to present perfection, image matters.  If the people think the cops are corrupt why should they listen to what they say.  If people think the cops are perfect they’ll lock up innocent people and throw away the key.  

Death penalty on either side removes the eraser.  Who wants to drive a car with no brakes and no reverse.  So we are left with an imperfect system.  An imperfect system requires mercy.  Solving the problem requires creative solutions that don’t leave people dead.  Maybe they just needed a job.  Would losing 5k from my salary be worth it to keep them off the street?  Yes.  Leaving people with no means of survival is a death sentence.  I realize achieving dreams requires resources and I haven’t come up with the perfect solution to this yet.  “But they don’t want to work, they are just a junkie”, the effect, what was the cause?  We win based on the goals on the board, and the ones we leave on the field.  A pay check and a sky room to jump out of and no emotional support?  How about we suck up our pride and talk to them instead.  CEOs and leaders need support too, I realize speaking truth to power is hard, but I don’t want to lose that one on the field.

Everyone’s permanent record is modifiable.  So don’t hold something over anyone’s head for life.  Forgiveness.  Without it kiss progress goodbye.  Maybe God let them walk in those shoes for a reason.  I am glad it wasn’t me and how do we help make their life not suck.

”It takes a society to make a monster”, so don’t leave all the blame on anyone. And don’t take all the blame on yourself, that isn’t even close to fair. Don’t use past mistakes to dictate your future and where you went wrong make amends the best you can and leave the rest in God’s hands. We all won’t agree on everything, “but they are different”, if everyone was like you life would be boring, and talking to yourself gets boring, trust me. At least I have a cat to talk to, must be what those on death row feel like. It’s not enough. Better than being completely alone.

I am 37 years old. I don’t have close to all the answers.  This is my perspective so take it or leave it.

I have tried various drugs Marijuana and Adderall.  I took a supplement that was called 1AD a precursor to an androgen.  I have taken many legal supplements and over the counter drugs.  I have drank alcohol on and off at different times, many times to excess.  Some drugs I have taken wanting to feel better, some to help optimize my performance though not for competition on the sports field.

My advice with drugs is generally as little as possible and no less.  I like caffeine because it has helped me concentrate better. I have drank alcohol for bad reasons and some good reasons such as thinning my blood.  I only took Marijuana once.  Adderall only once as far as I know.  I suspect that I might have been dosed with LSD in the past though it could have been something else.  This was not my choice.  Psychological, Lack of sleep, and other stresses and health problem has affected my cognitive functions at times as well.

Some people need medications to survive.  Problem is medications often bring side effects, some on the label and some off the label.  Drinking alcohol makes me tired, so I might drink caffeine to counteract this a bit.  This doesn’t make it ok to drive, just saying drugs bring a bit of a balancing act which is hard to maintain for prolonged periods in life.  What happens when you lose a job, you get delayed in an environment where you don’t have access to it, or what happens if it’s side effects make you miss something you would have otherwise caught.  You might catch other important things with heightened focus, though the key here is to know the effects of what you are using and they are not always obvious under the influence.  This world has a lot of evil in it as well, so those under the influence are easier targets for it both direct and indirect.

The more drugs the more side effects, and the optimization balancing act continues.  This is a requirement for people that have Diabetes or other health problems that require medication.  We as a community need to support each other, because people could be at a different part of the balancing act and we don’t know it.  Further some medications bring stigmas Marijuana – lazy, Alcohol – out of control, Caffeine – wired, etc.  Some of these stigmas are unfair though they exist non the less.  We live in a competitive world, and in bad times it will get more competitive.  Smoking pot shouldn’t mean you end up in a homeless shelter, though often times in reality and practice it can.  It doesn’t mean everyone in a homeless shelter is there because of smoking too much pot.  The reason I say this is to make people understand what is being risked, because it is not always obvious.

I have generally thought Marijuana should be legal.  Over regulation seems like it causes significant problems and being lied to doesn’t make me want to believe in the laws.  At the same time I don’t think it should be used by everybody.  CEOs, Doctors, Engineers, and infrastructure are a lot of good jobs.  I don’t think I would want someone that smokes pot too frequently doing these jobs because they might miss something important.  I don’t want to smoke it because I have enough other problems that attack my productivity.

Music, Art, Video I think has likely been influenced by some drugs in creative ways.  Creativity is also very powerful, so one might question under the influence if people would miss something, or maybe create something that is detrimental.  There has also been studies that have shown Marijuana is bad for children and I tend to believe this.  

Lack of real healthcare leads to people self medicating, so until we fix this as society I can’t judge anyone for self medicating.  I also don’t believe in judging someone for their past use.  Sometimes what people need is a real chance for things to get better.  Further anyone could have something slipped into their drink or airstream, so I am not a big believer in drug tests.  I might be more apt to believe lie detector tests, though in oppressive systems they can be detrimental too.  Also money and profits control a lot about medications and this causes numerous problems.  Just because they can fix something doesn’t mean they do.  Marijuana might be a safer route than some of the medications pushed by Big Pharmaceutical.  Also people that are pushed to the point in their life to take Marijuana should be protected from the evils associated with cartels and people modifying supply lines.  Legalization and regulation can at least give people some quality control, though this isn’t perfect and is subject to the dollar like other support systems.  Bring in oppressive governments or people trying to teach you a lesson and it is hard to rule things out. More influences the more difficult it is to know what’s the effect of the drug and what is not.  Evil people can use this fact to their advantage.

There are some drugs that can remove taste and smell.  In normal cases this could be no big deal and might lead people to be safe.  If there is a gas leak this could be a significant problem.  So again sometimes less is more and we always need to look out and support each other because we are all viewing life through some distortion.

I am not perfect. I believe sober people haven’t always treated me right and people under the influence have protected me at times.  The inverse is definitely possible and probable at times as well.  Alcohol has brought problems at times in my life, it has also reduced anxiety.  What people don’t always understand is when we are young we take for granted things like being able to sleep and eat without problems.  Drinking alcohol has led to stomach problems in my life, and made me more anxious at times when I go without it.  Not really the warning label you get when your going out for a drink with friends in college.

It would be ideal to find the optimization algorithms that give the benefits of heightened awareness and physical strength without balancing act and side effects.  This is a competitive world as well, and some with the knowledge of the optimized life might keep it as a trade secret.  This world has more than one solution to many problems, and finding the optimal ones aren’t always easy.  If we could trust everything people tell us that would be different.  Some people don’t want us to succeed.  Some people want us to chase the wrong solution to gain a competitive advantage.  Some people might not like the idea of you or me advancing because of preconceived ideas or one comment we made in jest they didn’t like.

Important to remember that Christ’s way of thinking and forgiveness is not embraced by everyone.  So in a competitive job market it is easy to be labeled in an unfair way.  Whether you smoked pot 5 years ago shouldn’t matter when you are considered for a promotion.  Other’s might not be that forgiving, specially when things are neck and neck.  Specially when automation is taking away many of the jobs we have, and the pace is accelerating.  Being young it is not easy to be saddled with so many burdens and I wish our world was better at forgiveness and not being sharks.  Would be nice to think jobs are plentiful, people are forgiving, and every word doesn’t matter.  Sadly when times are tougher it can be more of a problem.

If you made it this far I am impressed.  When I was younger I was a bit more full hearty and didn’t listen to everyone.   Not saying all voices have your best interest at heart, just sometimes we forgo good advice for popularity and convenience of a quick  fix.  Some people are saying the right things but possibly in the wrong way to you, so if my advice and wisdom doesn’t get through hopefully someone else will.  Younger people can egg each other along as well, so bad ideas can snowball and turn a simple night of having drinks with friends into something really bad.  

Beautiful young women you have a lot of power to do good, so please try and be a positive influence to the men in your lives.  The battered wives later in life might come looking for the woman that set their man down the wrong path.  You like them bad? I liked them bad.  The Devil is popular until he’s not.  Easy to confuse disobeying good laws with fighting oppression, if we had a better system it might be easier for younger women to discern the men that are looking out for them and the rest of society.  

I have rewarded bad behavior at times as well, not always easy to stop caring about the ones you care about.  Can I have the attitude without the problems?  The attitude that stands up and fights for what is right, makes me laugh, the strength to tell me when I am wrong.  Without the passive aggressive attacks and miscommunications and the years of unforgiveness?  The beauty without the pain.  Sometimes the same qualities that bring out the things we love about a person are qualities that rub us the wrong way.  Attitude, I like that, sometimes yes and sometimes no

We need a country where we all are proud to live in.  Until then we have work to do.  Not eliminating people, eliminating the problems that seems to enshroud us all.  If changing a name helps instead of hurts change it. A fort or a mountain by a different name seems a small price to pay to help people feel more welcome.  All people might not agree, so we need to choose what is best for all.  The majority does not mean all, the minority does not mean all.  Any race, tribe, class, or group does not mean all.  All means all.

A pay check helps.  A pay check without emotional support will never be enough.  A pay check and artificial ceilings will never be enough.  People play the hand they are dealt, and there are a lot of bad hands out there.  If someone’s cards are bad they have two options.  Fold or bluff.  In life it is shitty to be given those options.  This is why we owe it to everyone to help make their hands better.  Not make them feel as they need to resort to scams, leverage, or manipulation just to have a chance at life.  How we got to where we are was caused by many different issues.  From history, from human nature, from greed, from corruption.  

It matters and it doesn’t.  How do we make tomorrow better for everyone, how do we not leave runs or touchdowns on the field?  The task is daunting, our resources are low, we are in massive debt, and we have people with health problems that are going unfixed.  When we do fix health problems we medicate the symptoms possibly because we can’t fix the problems, or possibly because society is just too tired.  Pile up enough problems on anyone and it can become overwhelming.  This is why direct support is crucial.  If we can’t talk directly about issues, have real conversation, things will get missed.  I realize oppression in many forms can prevent people from having real conversation.  Threats and leverage don’t open up real conversation, they silence it.

We have massive gains in technology.  We have a choice, do we use that technology to help better each other’s life, help people find connections and love, or do we use it to make each other’s life miserable?  My vote is love conquers.  That one, they are one of us.  That one, I want in my life.  Because God didn’t make anyone for less than greatness.

It’s difficult to understand that those who flee oppressive environments constantly live in fear of it.  It would be nice to think that we could all move on from the past and be able to forget the problems of the past.  Some people fear that they haven’t escaped the reach of oppression even after they have left that environment.  An interconnected world where we put financial and health information online could help us detect diseases earlier and could help doctors easily get the information they need.  The bad is people that have fled oppression whether governments, mobs, crazy ex boyfriends etc know their records and location data is now available.  What happens when we move a data center to China, or Russia, or to a city where the mob has control, or an out of control religious group for that matter.  On another note some might scale this perception up to drum up business for their city.

The greater good should not come at the cost of making a minority, any minority’s life worse. The problem is technology advances so much.  We live in a world now where everything and everyone has the potential to be bugged.  What was done in the name of national security to protect us from terrorist, a very real threat, can now be used at the whim of those in charge to do as they please.  Sometimes the change can be so gradual that we all miss it and wake up one day thinking what on earth happened?  Also we can create a system that works for years and a bad leader, organization, or slight advance in technology could turn something good into a machine of distraction or destruction.  

Leaders can be puppets as well as controlled by machinery and health problems installed in them, or the same in the non literal sense.  Drugs and medicine can save lives.  They can also be weaponized in direct and indirect ways.  Even well meaning doctors without a true understanding of the underlying problems can be part of an engine of oppression.  The doctors could not understand what is happening or they could understand it and be powerless to stop it.  This is sad, people who have devoted their lives to the preservation of life are now tools that trample the flowers beneath their feet rather than helping them to grow.

Good times where everyone is prosperous and things are going great for everyone are easier, or at least seemingly so.  We grow accustomed to a certain way of life and wanting to believe the best in the world around us.  We simplify our world view and tend to think everyone feels the same as us.  We think resources and jobs are prosperous, everyone gets healthcare and those who do don’t are just choosing not to get help.  So the problems are there it is just easy to see the world as if it is all perfect.  With less interaction with people outside of our circles we are jaded (might be a better word here, under the spell of an illusion) that life is good, when in reality it is hard for many.

Finding the true reality is hard, can get the people we think are close to us to turn on us, and the answers and reality we find can be dark and grim.  We are let out of the cave, yet we find ourselves wanting to return to a place where there is not so much tragedy.  

This a bit of a dark view.  Maybe we get let out of the cave and see wonderful and amazing things and find ourselves in a new and beautiful tomorrow.  Then we fight tooth and nail never to return.  Or another possible scenario is we see new things wonderful and amazing and terrible and tragic.  Or maybe the inverse less highs and less lows.  Different people making changes in their lives, risking instability for the potential of a better tomorrow.  Or sacrificing the hope of a better tomorrow for stability today.  

Some who get support and prosper and flourish and others who do not and are further jaded by life.  Probably many who get some support and some obstacles.  Scale up the support and likely their tomorrow is better.  Increase the obstacles and the barrier to a better tomorrow is limited.  Further some can be lead to believe there will be more support and less obstacles yet get stuck in a new situation they don’t like and didn’t want.  

Other’s might do everything right and due to circumstances out of their control are prevented from achieving their dreams.  The directors ex wore red and black and broke his heart.  It’s not you did anything wrong, the dress is beautiful.  Life is more than the sum of our own actions.  This is difficult.  This where the right support is crucial, knowing what to say and who to say it to is hard.  The right word at the right times and in the right way can save dreams and lives.  Protect and make sure your PR people have all the support they need.

For those in charge having support that is not trying to take their power or manipulate a better deal for a subset of people is hard to find.  The support is crucial to success and yet is many times suspect.  Those in charge could be jaded into not taking support or advice at a crucial time.  They decide to go it alone because they feel everyone around them is trying to manipulate them instead of help them.  Sometimes they have to go it alone because everyone is.  Though one would hope they could have a few close friends that always look out for each other.  A rogue leader devoid of direct support would likely be labeled a tyrant whether true or not.

Popularity is profitable because it gains people support.  It can also be deceptive because not all the voices have yours or other’s best interest at hearts.  Saying the wrong thing or the right thing in the wrong way could cost you popularity and support that could leave you on the street or worse.  Some popular people want to help yet could make the decision they value their support over speaking up when needed.  They are choosing their battles and looking at the cost benefit.  Is being friends with this guy worth the risk?  I can’t blame them, because in a world where image matters so much, and popularity is so fleeting it might be extremely costly to be close to someone like me.  Love should be greater than this, yet I understand why people love being off the street.  My preference at many stages has been to try to speak up.  From what I can tell so far it hasn’t added much value, to my life or others.  Doing the thing we think is right doesn’t always have the right result.  This is jading.

Some might prevent me from saying this last part.  Because we always want people to speak up and do the right thing.  I just want people to have the wisdom, at least as I see it.  Being a hero is likely to cause anyone problems in a fallen world, yet without them who will save us?  Sometimes it’s easier to run into battle when we don’t know the cost, and when I was younger and hadn’t been on the street these thoughts didn’t occur to me.  I am not saying don’t speak up just realize the high road is not always an easy one or a popular one.  Also realize taking the wrong road can give you the same problems or worse later down the line.  So better to take the high road.  Also look to support those who take the high road because they will likely fight a lot of adversity.  This is when not having support can leave people in the gutter.  

Don’t hand a guy a football and expect him to make a touchdown if you don’t stay on the field to help protect him.  Also why the star players should help make sure their support is getting everything they need.  Last realize that any one can fail, fumble, be blindsided at any point in all of this.  Why lawyers have acts of God clause.  So don’t leave the blame all on a few or use it as an excuse to deny them support.  Today is what it is, working harder might make tomorrow better with a bit of luck and direction.