There’s something extremely swollen in the back left part of my throat, such that it’s quite a painful endeavor to chew and swallow. This was bothering my last night as well, and then I went out and played Ultimate for an hour in the chilly night air. I would suspect my tonsils, but unless they grow back (and they don’t) it can’t be … unless, of course, it’s just a phantom pain, and I’m imagining that my non-existent tonsils are swollen. Hmm.
Anyhow. Enough.
When I was in the airport on my way to Duluth, I happened to pick up a copy of the Financial Times. In a single issue, there was so much information of trouble and concern– so much that never reaches the mainstream news sources. Kofi Annan is rallying for the abolishment of the ineffectual UN Human Rights Committee and proposing to replace it with decentralized groups in every country. Surprising, the United States and China are offering the strongest objections against this, since they both have used the existing Human Rights Committee to cover up human rights abuses. A bus, carrying eager Indian émigrés, traveled from Pakistani controlled Kashmir to Indian Kashmir, reuniting families that have been divided for sixty years due to the division of India and Pakistan. Despite fear or bombings or terrorist attacks, nineteen brave people crossed a bridge across a border that has been uncrossed since the 1940’s. The bus was not attacked. Concerns are on the rise as OPEC gradually increases their oil production capacity, but not enough to meet demands. China’s oil demands are expected to double in the next ten years due to an increase in Chinese car ownership, and their domestic oil production can only amount for a small portion of this increase. Globally oil reserves are stretched, and, in the face of a pending oil crises, demand is still on the rise. In Peru, a town of about 30,000 people declared itself a socialist state, under the direction of Evo Morales (leader of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS)), and has every intention of letting its government spread. Struggle threatens to resume in the French Ivory Coast, and it seems everywhere there’s political, economic or social unrest.
I say all of this only to point out that we live in such troubled, tumultuous but exciting times. Things may be calm and dormant in the United States– perhaps, but even then I don’t think that this can last long– but in the scope of the world, there are so many things demanding our attention and concern: tsunamis and floods and famines and civil wars and regime changes and colonies gaining independence… the still too close memory of genocide in the Balkans, and the exponential spread of aids in Africa, claiming two and a half million lives every year… The world is far from the utopian, self-sustaining dream that we in America try to believe but somehow never can. Every morning the newspapers and telecasts proclaim that the world needs men and women—people of integrity, who believe in the dream of humanity and human rights, who believe in fighting against hunger and abuse, hatred and senseless killing, who stand up against corporate exploitation and stand for education, health and our environment. We’re so needing for those who will give selflessly and hope and affirm, even when everything they see tells them to do otherwise. It’s my firm believe that when individuals wake up every morning with a dedication to affirm life and serve humanity that, even if the world will never be “a better place,” at least a delicate few can know a better life, and a volatile few can be saved from hunger, and a unlikely few can know human dignity and be allowed the opportunity to live and learn and love and hope and dream and perhaps continue on the cycle…
It’s so easy to say all these, and it’s so hard to do any of them. But perhaps its not as hard as we’ve been told. As for me, although I currently see none of the above qualities in myself, I do find the sincere desire that someday I’ll be one of these. Not today. Probably not tomorrow. Doubtful in a year or even ten. But everyday I think I get a little closer…
I hate to break it to you, and China but in 10 years man, there will be NO oil left.
Optimistic sources say we may have fifteen to twenty years before the huge crunch hits.
i have this funky article on the oil crisis that you should read, its from rolling stone so you shouldn’t take it as gospel but still…apparently not even hydrogen is going to save us. oh well.