Educive

Someone had a very long profile, but it didn't really say much of substance. I am one of the wordiest people I know, so I guess I'll type me up a seriously long profile, only I aim to say a lot that actually has purpose.
I like my fellow human being. Well, most of them, anyway. Some people don't qualify as people to my way of thinking: you have to have some semblance of humanity in your nature to be a human being. Native Americans referred to each other as human beings, meaning it as a compliment. They had another name for men who were inhuman, but I dont remember it now. A lot of people I know, older people, like people my age, like to pass their time watching TV, or go to Pennsylvania looking for antiques... stuff that most self respecting children cringe at the very idea of doing. (Well, maybe not the watching TV part.) I like the spirit of those who like to chat, who provide personality and flair without even being there... I frequently comment on the beauty of the souls I run across online. If you think of it in its most spartan terms, I praise personality quirks and facets that are not amazing, as perhaps another might honor extreme bravery, or selfless generosity. I praise those little touches that are not as rare, but are just as precious as one could want them to be... are not cherry blossoms exquisite? Are they not manifold as well? Common does not mean worthless. And another thing... much of what each of us experiences as we go through life is in the form of the stories we come to understand... not just the commercial stuff like in books and movies, but the story of you, my story, his and hers. I see people express themselves and I think its beautiful, except when its brain-dead and mean. A lot of people dont live, they just watch life. Online I see people who live as who they want to be. What's not to love about that?
I grew up knowing my brother would die of muscular dystrophy, he went into a wheelchair when he was 7 and I was 5, so I asked what was wrong with him and I was told. It lends an unusual perspective growing up so near to someone who is dying slowly. It took him 11 years to die, and since he couldnt walk, and he had no one else to pick on, he used his mind to attack me. Days before he died I was fortunate enough to tell him how foolish he was in using me to vent his frustrations, how I would have wanted to be a better brother to him, how I could have been his legs, his right hand man, instead of just wanting to avoid him as I ended up doing so often. He and I cried and we resolved to be good to each other from then on.
I try not to type mean things to anyone I have the pleasure of knowing online. I'm poor at judging what isnt appropriate to say to people sometimes, and I can get on some people's nerves, but I usually dont take offense and never mean to be mean. My grandmother used to say "I dont mean to be mean, I just am" and I think I have that same affliction; I say what I think before realizing what I say could be taken harshly sometimes. Whilst typing away in a chat room I related a variety of experiences, opinions and facts of my life before some young lady harshly responded to my statements. I was bothered by it. I know I'm odd, but I am who I am. I let her know I would be happy to mute her and invited her to do the same, and that I meant no harm. Another young lady, Wolvie, was less than thrilled with my nature and said so. Again, I apologized for my offense and muted her after inviting her to mute me. I was saddened, because she is such a beautiful person, and that was before I saw her picture and her artwork. I only saw how she playfully related to others in the chat, the way she prettily identified with the foxy-wolf, how she related that she had taught herself to play the piano at a very young age... all little facets of a pretty soul, traits commonly exhibitted by good people. I was glad to find out subsequently that she had opted not to mute me and invited me to unmute her, which I did. When I mute a spammer, or someone who is so shallow or dense that all they have to offer are offenses I dont miss them. I would have missed Wolvie, she makes me smile. Iwannakissthesun is a sweetheart. A friend of mine, who, like most of my friends, is half my age, was skipping down the driveway one day. He's a cool dude, and I admired his spirit in that. I try to tell people what I think of them while it will do some good. I dont wait until someone's dying to tell them I think they rock. If I dont get along with someone the easiest thing to do is avoid them. There arent many people I've had to avoid.
I hope I never have to grow up, it's fun being a child at heart. One day about 4 years ago a narcotics officer strode into my dad's garage which I had made into a videogame gameroom. He sounded like another friend of mine and yelled "Police, freeze!" as he walked toward me. I thought my friend was right behind him and that it was a joke, but as I went to step aside for him to pass by me he dumped me so quickly to the ground and cuffed me that I was amazed. I was asked why I hang with people so young, to which I responded "Do you play Halo?" I think that this is a great century to be alive. At one point in my life I was being stressed so badly that I didnt care if I lived or died. I changed my life, and now I like my life. A friend of mine said the right words to me back then, and if I can have the good fortune of saying the right thing to someone and it makes their life better I will, and I will consider it an honor.
I am very good at scrabble, and a fairly good chess player. I love to give a pretty woman a massage, as I am a natural at it, but I have given massages to women I've found to be unattractive, as well as helping out a dude with a knot under his shoulderblade on the rare occasion. I believe that love is real, that it is precious and just about the most important thing there is. A young man looked to me as if I were a father. I loved him as if he were my son. He was proud of being a liar, and would boast from time to time that he was a great liar. He was unfortunate in life and many events occurred which I would try to help with a dose of perspective, until as time went by I had to tell him "Either you're the most unlucky guy on the planet, or you're sort of a scumbag!" Today I dont speak to him, as I realized that I don't know who he is, that he lied about so many things and was so intelligent in so many other ways that it was entirely plausible that everything I liked about him as a human being was likely a lie. A book I read a long time ago said that love is made up of stories, and it makes sense to me. The things we admire, the nature that we seek to be around is revealed to us primarily through the conversations we have, so if someone is relating lies we are led to feel for someone who is not real. Today I pass that young man on the street with a curt nod of my head. I miss his conversations, he was entertaining and dynamic, but I do fine with the other people in my life. I relate this here to sort of explain who I am. If there's a 40-45 year old nerdy woman who reads this and likes who I am, if she finds me cute and I her, if she's near enough or is just down with the way I live, who knows? The world is a crazy place, and you never know. Oh, I guess I could go for a woman who is a little bit younger, but no younger than 35. 50 is about as old as I'd go. Too many years difference can cause problems. Some people can make it work, but I dont think I can. I like philosophical conversations, science, nature and the lively chat of young people. Many people my age seem to have lost their taste for silly topics, like "What would you do if you could be president for a month?" or "What's the 50 best movies ever made?" I share an appartment with 2 guys half my age and their friends become my friends. It looks a little grim, but few women my age find me appealing. I exercised poor judgement once and kissed a girl who appreciated who I was, but she was only 23, so I couldnt have a realistic chance of having relationship with her. I like my life, and I hope to find a woman who would enjoy the young people and the videogames, chess and scrabble, low stress, no drama life that I enjoy. I still love my ex-wife, but I know that we can never be together. Once, about a year ago, she called me for help and I helped her. Later, as we were talking, she burst out crying, because she'd forgotten what it was like to just talk and joke and be light-hearted. (She doesnt believe in love, which to me is a silly thing for a mother to say. I wonder if she was just pulling my leg, but she'd said other things I consider poorly reasoned too, so it's possible she might believe herself.) Well, I guess I'll go see if the chat is amusing, or find something else to do... the problem with being the old man is that I dont always get invited to all the parties! Wah!
I am a dad. I worry that the world I leave, not only to my son, but to all of my fellow people, will be worse than I found it to be. And so... I will commence my rant. May it help my people to unite.
If someone steals from you and you let them, without physically stopping them or even trying to make it harder for them to steal from you, why would they stop? Recently a number of financial institutions engaged in lending money and selling the loans without ensuring a reasonable likelihood of the money being honored, or paid back. Our government gave the banking industry's CEOs $700 billion specifically to stimulate economic activity by providing these banks the liquid assets to enable them to offer loans to businesses that rely on those loans. November 19,2008, The NY Post reported that some of those financial institutions decided to buy up weaker banks that had been competing with them, which left them still unable to make the economically stimulating loans. This was clearly not the intended purpose of the $700 billion. Are these people being held accountable? Is this criminally negligent? Willfully disregarding the spirit with which the taxpayer's money was loaned, the economy, your future jobs and careers are being jeopardized by a small group of men who ask that we trust them and leave them in control. (By the way, a revolution would be suicidal, the weapons are too sophisticated for an aggressive attempt at stopping the people in authority from commiting all manner of irresponsible acts. Any large gathering of my fellow people could be turned into a terrible tragedy. I'll mention the Director of Homeland Security later.)
Unless we unite family by family, friend by friend, neighbor by neighbor, the people who run important posts will continue to mishandle things. The most common rationalization of the evil thieves who steal your future is probably "If I don't do it, someone else will!" Oh, and by "evil" I mean either stupid, greedy or cowardly, and by "steal" I mean make clever business deals that are not fair business deals or accept bribes. An individual can be bribed or threatened, but the entire population of a country can neither be bribed nor threatened.
I believe that this country can be saved, but that it can't be saved through violence. It might be saved through care and intelligent direction. Our technological capability is not what it was 200 years ago. We can attach nanny cameras to our police force and other public servants to ensure they're unable to accept bribes or be threatened. We could develop a system of voting in which issues were voted on instead of leaving it in the hands of people who have driven this country to the brink of failure.
What could we do to help our country survive? We could get involved and be vigilant. The price of freedom is vigilance. We could insist on people knowing what they were voting for before allowing them to vote on a given issue like Socrates envisioned over 2000 years ago. To do anything, we must first care enough to unite though. We must know our neighbor, so that an evil man with an agenda can't "invent" residents to sway a vote the way he wants it to turn out. We should be brave enough to vote publicly, so that unscrupulous people can't change our votes on us to make what they want happen. We could use little colored lights on a geographically and population correct map to indicate how we vote, neighborhood by neighborhood, such that if a hacker tried to add people to the count we would see the lie as it happened. (If I vote yes with a green light and I look at my local TV station and see that my vote showed up red I'd know someone was trying to cheat us, or if I didn't vote I could tell that someone voted for me without my permission. The way it is done now I can't check if my vote was honestly counted or not.) Community by community, if we were truly a united and brave people, we could eliminate corruption.
By the way, I typed that I'd mention the Director of Homeland Security earlier. Anti-terrorism funding is divided throughout the 50 states using some nonsensical formula through which places that are not terrorist targets are still being entitled to recieve funds. For example, Louisville Kentucky recieved a share of anti-terrorism funding. What did they do with it? They added extra security to some bingo parlors to ensure that Al Queda interests weren't funneling money through bingo winnings. Aspen Colorado bought large screen TVs... another instance in which I'd like to vote that the politicians who accepted and used that money in those ways be held accountable, perhaps answering to charges of criminally irresponsible allocation of funds. We can't hold our politicians accountable unless we unite though. (If I were running the country into the ground but profiting handsomely in the process I might not stop it either... am I a good man because I want justice or am I man who would serve himself from the defenseless if he could? I don't know for sure, I like to think I'd do the right thing, but how could I know unless I had the power to do wrong and profit thereby or do the right thing and remain poorer for it?)
We all have friends, and we all have neighbors. It is not impossible for us to know each other enough on a small scale local basis to see what we want to vote on, and which way that vote is really being voted on. Of course, if the people ever did design and use a system through which people voted according to their intelligence and their community's interests, lobbyists would need to appeal to the people rather than try to convince a small number of powerful people in our government. I see this as a good thing.
What would we need to do to unite? A few Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) to construct a diagram of the available number of voters in each area to prevent corruption or hackers from changing people's votes on them would be a reasonable starting point. Some neighborhood committees discussing the country's problems and choosing what to vote on, then comparing their issues and votes to other people in other places they know might be a good step. It will be very important for people to actually have the decency to not harrass each other over each other's votes, and to accept that if you have joined a community for their voting board you must either follow their rules or choose another community voting board. Also important is that people actually vote on the same issues at the same time so that unscrupulous people don't fraudulently join several different voting communities just to try to help sway the vote their way. Just like people have to cast their votes at a voting booth today, they should be vivibly casting their votes before their whole community to ensure authentic true voting. Sorry for those who want "absentee" ballots, I disagree that the security of a system should be compromised for the convenience of a few people.
Here are a few of what I consider to be important issues that people should vote on:
The North American Free Trade Agreement...
When this offense was committed, the first year it was in effect $99 billion was traded down to Mexico and $13 billion was traded up to the United States. Sounds good until you see what was traded. Almost all that went to Mexico was factory building equipment, and all of what came up to us was hand made goods. Think about it for a moment though... does Mexico have the same requirements as a company up here does? An EPA, or lawsuits for unsafe working conditions, or the same standard of living or wages? If I had to vote on whether or not American jobs were being sold to Mexico I'd vote no.
Citizenship requirements for people to work in this country. No more illegal aliens not patying their fair tax burden. If you hire an illegal alien or forge citizenship documents it is a crime.
Credit card fraud to stop. With more strict measures of identifying the rightful owner of the card it couldn't be as big a problem as it is now. Credit card fraud cost the US twice what illegal aliens cost us, and it's sooooo preventable with better security measures. (Picture ID, no more online sales without a waiting and confirmation period, etc.)
Banks that fail for making bad loans should NOT be given more money to squander. I recently spoke with my own bank and asked how they were doing. They were fine, they didn't make risky unsecured loans. A business that fails from being poorly managed is not like one that fails because the competition is importing goods or services from an area of the world that the pay, living conditions or regulations provide extreme advantages. It is mismanagement, and should fail to make room for competent businesses.
While the topic is business, NO MORE GOLDEN PARACHUTES!!!! If an executive drives a company into the dirt, no bonuses for the elite and no golden parachutes. In any year that people were laid off from a company they should not be legally able to award bonuses to their executives.
I'm sure I could go on and on, but I'd like to see a real interest in my fellow Americans before I write about the changes we could make in our legal system to reduce the injustices that occur in our country today. I will be amazed if anyone reads enough of my profile to read how amazed I will be! So instead of more ranting, I guess I'll end with some truly unimportant stuff, like how I'm a beast at Starland Tower Defense, how I'm great at Scrabble or how badly I suck at any game that needs you to use the keys of the keyboard instead of a mouse, or those quick games like where the stick-figures kill each other!
I believe in good and evil, but I'm not particularly religious. My son thinks I make no sense when I type all this crap onto the Kongregate profile, but I don't care, I'm going to be who I am anyway! I like philosophical discussions and scientific speculation on a variety of offbeat topics.
Good luck to us all.
♪♫... Thanks Naru! (The musical symbols!)