Knowledge and Belief

I used to believe we could take education for granted. That Jefferson and Adams, Mann and Palmer, and so many, many others had paved the way for us the privileged to enjoy a near perfect education system. Of course that view falls flat with any bit of insight or research into the American Education system.

This state-run patchwork of limitations shoves advantage and opportunities down the throats of children of the affluent while everyone else picks up the tab. As we progress backward towards economic segregation and eagerly await book burnings and the bans on teaching history, we can ironically dream of the dark-ages of Europe. Just as now, a pseudo-religious cult of off-brand Christian teachings manipulated the masses into fear and fallow. Enormous quantities of technologies were lost for centuries as "faith" choked the life out of science while the rest of the world prospered.

Thankfully it seems Catholicism learned its lesson but the cult of militant evangelism has proven itself to be this age's benchmark of weaponized stupid. Encounters with the "faithful" are challenging and dangerous because these radicalized powder kegs overcompensate for their lack of biblical familiarity with a frothing desperation to defend what they don't know. What they've been told. What they've never read.

Choice segments of the Bible, all of which stand far outside its core teachings, have been curated, redressed and hammered into the psyche of the faithful poor; literal spikes of hatred and fear designed to construct the framework of authoritarianism.

This campaign has been so thoroughly effective that I don't need to name a single issue or idea associated with it, yet there are already half a dozen or so likely floating through your head right now.

This is what happens when we do not educate our population; when we let a political party push their agenda through a church; when we subsidize religion while gutting funding to public education. We proclaim separation of church and state then flood our congress and our courts with people based entirely on their religious views. Lying to the public is now seen as both statesmanlike and holy, and at the confluence of these points we stand poised to desecrate our religions, our country, and our future.

Trick

or Treat.

Tricked out.

Dirty Trick.

Sweet Trick.

Here's the Trick.

Connotation is everything. Denotation is a lie and one of the fatal flaws of our society was stapling our laws to it. So here we are. Killing ourselves for profit and pride.

Inertia

Someday this blog will be a daily thing. It will transition from its current format of something of a diary into more of a log of abstract thoughts guiding my purpose and process. That will come with time. For now I'm beholden to expressing the more mundane expressions of the existence of my art career.

Summer has been good, but busy. I've had a number of exciting projects and wonderful clients come my way. Side-projects like this blog end up in limbo. Guess I am ok with that as long as other important things are moving forward. Forward is never as direct a vector as it should be, but none the less I seem to be headed in that direction. A direction. Anything other than standing still.

It feels like the most important part of my work process is inertia. Never really realized how much of a role that plays even in the non-physical world of things like attitude, work ethic and process. The more time I can create for myself the easier it is to get more. The more limits I push with my work, the faster they come and the less fear I have of facing them.

I'm both humbled and frustrated at the lessons I am learning now in my mid 30s. I suppose better late than never. Still, I look around and see millions of adults that seem to have forgotten all the lessons they were taught as children, so I suppose I should be thankful for not falling into that category. Maybe inertia is carrying them in the other direction.