The Smoke Obscuring the Horizon

Where there’s smoke, there’s confusion.

North Korea is threatening. So is Iran. The Middle East tensions are now global. Racial tensions have reached a boiling point again. Something’s up with Russia, but for now it's speculation.

And our climate is changing.

And the rich are getting richer.

The history revisionists have their quills wet with ink, wanting to rewrite what the world already went through to make it more palatable to the masses.

Where there’s smoke there’s fire. And man, there’s a lot of smoke.

Man there’s a lot of confusion right now.

Where there’s confusion, people make blind choices. The smoke of the confusion is blinding.

Blind choices make one search out a side to join. There is safety in numbers. You have to say you agree with one side or the others views – facts are dismissed as alternate facts – you have to buy in before you can join a side.

Man the water is really murky. The media forces the people to make murky choices.

You either like team CNN or you like team Fox News. Or you have given up on both.

You read, but the papers and the new media of the internet make you choose the same teams.

People who were moderate now are taking firmer stances on the left or the right – succumbing to the forces pushing them there.

The common definition of what is right and just is now not accepted as right and just for some. The Alternative Truth.  Ignorance is complimented by laziness. Thinking is just too hard. People beg to be told what to think.

The real truth lies somewhere down the middle – and we all know that. But to go with the flow, the path of least resistance takes one down the road in quest of the approval of the side you chose, you dismiss what you know as reasonableness.

Reasonableness is just not sexy. Reasonableness doesn’t sell.

Extreme sells.

Say all this took place on a stage. A world full of actors. A global play, or a global wrestling match and the world is the ring. Twists and turns of plot. Overacted and deliberate but grandiose wresting moves and dirty foul play.

It all makes reasonableness look boring.

But say you could look down on this stage. Remove yourself from the scene. Perch yourselves above it all – sitting on a rock in a cool breeze as you watch the world unfold. And you quietly contemplate what it is you are really witnessing.

Is this the start of the end?

The pot on the stove is starting to boil over.

People are pissed. On both sides. All over the world. People have had enough of what was. They want what should be – again based on the side you have chosen to dictate what should be.

Is this the crossroads that will determine what kind of people we become? Yes.

Does America traverse this crossroads alone? Or do we all get caught up in the wake. Do we all go through this metamorphous together, or do we all change based on how the falling dominos impact us directly.

We all go through it together.

What will this world look like when we come out of this change? What is the world my daughters will grow up in?

Will this world make it through this?

There’s a lot of rash threats flying around out there.

And there’s a lot of people vying for attention.

All thoughts are now broadcast worldwide in a mere second. Twitter and Facebook and Instagram are the new network news. And everyone is an anchorman.

The world now truly is a stage. And yes, we are now truly are all actors.

But I wish I could read ahead in the script and see how this all ends.

But it’s just too damn smoky and too damn murky.

The masses will follow the path of least resistance. You see the path, it always flows downhill. If the flow builds up to much speed it will crash at the bottom.

And then, only then, will the world come to a more common conclusion. 

Perpetually Perplexing

Another year has come and gone.


With Christmas now in our rear view mirror, the sights are re-set to the road ahead – to the new year we will call 2012.

Time continues to march forward. The world continues to spin, the sun rising and setting continuing to march forward – never stopping – effortlessly plodding on.

The spin of the Earth – as with all the other planets in our local solar system – continue to their relentless path around the sun.

The ultimate perpetual motion machine.

Seemingly never slowing. Seemingly holding each component’s position perfectly.

Yet we believe that creating a perpetual motion machine here on our big blue marble to be impossible. The friction created by passing through the air, and the constant force of gravity created by the spinning of this planet we live on its axis and the pull from the planets around it – the very perpetual motion machine that makes life on Earth possible – is the reason we cannot reproduce perpetual motion of our own.

Or maybe we are just not smart enough yet?

We can remove the impact of air on such a machine by simply building the machine in a vacuum. But we don’t know how to turn gravity off in a given location.

We could build the machine in outer space?

“Why do you want to build a perpetual motion machine?”

Well, it’s the holy grail of engineering. Such a machine – one provided the right amount of energy to get started, would regenerate that same amount of energy with the completion of a cycle, an engine that would only need to be started that would run forever.

Learn how to make such a machine, and all our needs for energy would be answered.

“But we have solar panels now, and wind turbines powered by the slightest breeze, and water turbines that are powered by the energy of the oceans?”

Yes we do. But they are still very inefficient. They do not yet produce enough energy to account for the human races tremendous thirst for power.

But the good news is we are getting there. A perpetual motion machine would take us to that next level that could allow us to end our dependency on fossil fuels – and nuclear power.

“But wasn’t the universe created by nuclear power?”

The big bang? Yes I guess that’s likely true.

The universe appears to have harnessed that power tremendously efficiently, little if any wasted as our own Sun as an exhibit proves – continuing to burn for eons yet to come.

We as mankind are so arrogant to think how intelligent we are. But in comparison to the bang that God set off that one single bang those billions of years ago? We hook a couple of pistons and gears together and dig out the fossil fuels from the earth from life that lived here a millennium before us, and we make a big explosion to make the stuff move, only to have to make another explosion milliseconds later to keep it moving – to drive to the store to get milk.

What we have been able to accomplish however is to provide the means for all of humanity to connect their collective thoughts – ideas – dreams – concepts – stuff in our heads – headstuffing – so that we can collaborate on these next steps forward.

But in our most inefficient way – we squander this technology on menial sentiments – telling the world that we just had a bowl of Cheerios for breakfast – or that we are out walking the dog.

I am no better, do not get me wrong and think that I am spouting off here in some superior voice to say the rest of man is fat and lazy. I am a prime example of the epitome of inefficiency.

I take more than I give. I use more than I make. I am like a termite consistently eating away at the very resources – in my own gluttonous pace – until all are exhausted.

We need that perpetual motion machine.

We need that divine revelation – that inspiration that removes our dependency on fossil fuels. We need to be smarter.

I am not that smart.

Nor likely are you.

But if we put our collective minds together – and push full steam ahead to brainstorm on a singular common goal … we need to overcome ourselves.

We need to overcome what we have become.

And we had better hurry. Because the Earth continues to spin, and the sun continues to rise and set, the moon continues to circle us, as days to into months then into years.

Because time, as relative a concept as physicists insist it to be, time waits for no one. But while time is limitless – our quantity of time is not.

We expire.

And time will continue on without us.

Seemingly perpetually.