 |
"A Rotting Idea"
2008
Acrylic and Screws on Drywall
Kim Barry
|
Maybe the only real continual problem we face in society is not allowing a bad idea to
die when its initial good has lost its purpose. Older generational mentalities have been amazingly adept at giving life support to a few ideas
gone zombie. They fully invested in the early, televised ideal of the nuclear,
materialistic, white collar, big insurance, big
banking, big business, profiteering medicine, and legal drug dealing circles. They birthed and raised pharmaceutical companies,
nuclear power plants, a $400 billion army, Monsanto, Dow Jones, Wall Street
Reaganonmics, and the oil industry, They created lots of ideas—that turned into
things- some at the beginning were sold to the masses as ideal in purpose, but many were based on
fear, image oriented, and in opposition to the best in our God given potential and trust. The Ideas became money
generating, familiar, and institutionalized (I loathe that word). These Ideas
created a perceived, safe economic resource for “jobs” for themselves, their
future children, and the future of their children’s children’s children’s
children. But their children’s children’s children’s children look, think and act like monsters now. Those that aren't, are lashing out by literally going postal from knowing their
future is being forced into a really bad past idea gone rotten. The same old
ideas that need to die in order for their purpose to shine and grow for the
benefit of themselves, their community, and nature. This overly controlling
action shows the worst in lack of faith while simultaneously forcing an outward, perfectionist version of morality onto everything and everyone else
outside their Barbie Highrises.
Quite frankly, unless you are Jesus, I think it's
super controlling and egomaniacal to think your personal idea is so freaking
great that it not only stifles one generation, but the 2,3,4, and 5 generations
from newer ideas and growing realities????
Makes me think fondly of my own grandma's myth. My mother, living in
her mother’s ideals, still swears by doing things the "old fashioned" way for
everything!! Sometimes it is right on. Sometimes it is soooo not. I am the only young person that knows how to change a knob fuse
from in 1910’s and any call to updating the home’s electricity is not only
suspicious but hazardous! Ok.
Sure. I’m going to go up in the roof now and patch another slate shingle.
We want change but don’t want TO change. We want the image
of change not real change. And adults have been following this mantra really
well.
Children have no fear and know they will be happy with or
without what most adults would have a nervous breakdown over- healthcare, for example.
What is healthcare?
It began, I suppose,
as a virtuous mission to care for the well being of others while
striving to learn new techniques in bettering lives, social health, and
awareness. Right?
By my definition, healthcare is caring for the health of the
all encompassing "us"- top to bottom. It is no accident that it is
has deformed into an institution of sickness profiteering.
Remember hearing, "Oh you should be a doctor when you
grow up! You'll be rich!" ? Enough said. That statement we’ve heard for 4
generations and has attracted more of a financial incentive to enter that
collective conversation than a
primary care incentive. Case in point? Ask a doctor if foods do a body
any good over the prescribed drug they just wrote. And what was a splint the
country doctor fixed up for little Olaf’s broken arm for a dinner and cookies
is now a $3,000 debt for the ambulance alone. $10,000 for the splint. Hmmmmm.
That’s a rotting idea.
Currently, and generally speaking, it has transformed into an economy surviving off the causes and effects of toxic food,
stress, depression, natural accidents, legal drug dealers. It has become profit
driven through the “Maintain
Sickness. Do Not Cure. Do Not Report Real Causes” rule of thumb from hospitals,
Monsanto, the FDA, pharmaceutical companies, and insurance companies. All the
CEOs of these “ideas gone institution” are in it for the money and that’s why
they are on top setting the current tone. All the little people within each
institution go along with it. It lost its idealism and integrity long ago. My
grandmother said she saw this coming while she was head nurse of a prestigious hospital
in upstate New York in the 1940’s. “They’ve lost the “care.” She would say to my mother.
Why does this happen?
“I NEED A
PAYCHECK, KIM, so shut up with all this idealistic talk. It’s just a job!!! I
can’t fix the world and I just don’t know what else to do.”
I reply, “It’s
just a job until it gets you, too.”
If someone walked into a hospital with a true cure for
anything, the Hospital administration, the doctors, the pharmacudical
companies, and every Sickness Research Center and Donation Non-profit would be
fighting to shoot him first and burn the evidence. Why?
A massive economy has been created here!
Fear of change.
Loss of control.
Over belief in Money.
Under belief in
a Phoenix rising from its ashes.
What would we do with ourselves????? We fixed ourselves out
of this specific work idea, familiarity, stability, 5 Mercedes, and a Martha
Stewart Living subscription!!!!!
It would be an economic crisis in America!!!!!
This is just one example of how this mentality has distorted
so many opportunities to work in THEIR time to
truly make for a faith based progressive world. I find it funny when hearing
the words, “faith-based,” “conservative,” and “suspicion” all expressed in the
same thought. There is no fear or doubt in the concept of faith.
In lieu of the healthcare industry, we could insert the oil
industry, the real estate market, the meat industry, the banking industry, the for-profit federal government, and
the conformity based federal education as further examples of ideas gone rotten from loss of care and faith
into dependence, greed and deformity.
Generation X saw their former best intentioned, Flower Power parents buckle to
their own ideals and initial actions only for many to fall into their own
nuclear parents fearful world. 800,000 lawyers and doctors were born in the
1970’s after college kids put down their signs and shaved their Afros. And
let’s be real here, maybe only 1% of the population of that generation really
got it, believed in their actions and purely acted on it. But even those who made the impact and
those masses beginning to get it, still receded into a safety-first mentality.
And then the money became really, really nice. Those initial actions did not
die, though. The thoughts and ideas were whispered into the ears of the babies.
Parents, who had gotten timid, quieting hoped their kid would have the balls to
create a better world.
SIDE NOTE:
Just by having kids, you are expressing trust that things
need to naturally change. Why do we stifle and instill fear in them when it becomes
their turn to shine? Hey you in the ironically worn WWJD Tee, well you tell me, buddy.
Even with this progress, many times, I hear parents say,
“You can be anything you want as long as you fit an already solidified and
respected profession that was created one to three generations ago. The
frontiersmen of America were allowed to be creative back then. Now we just need
money and sustainability from you, ok? Furthermore, you can fix this
dilapidating system from within even in your own little way but the
institutions, themselves can never really change or put to rest or it would be
anarchy. In other words, pretend to change- don’t change. Maybe just change the drapes, k? ”
By the 1990’s everything that had been building in the last
century was stinking of toxins in cannibalistic thought and motivation with a
Wall Street, bottom-line focus. Need I say more than this- that era birthed Nirvana. Enough said.
It was the 90’s. An entire youth generation was in
grunge. I looked like crap in a XXXL flannel, cutoff jean shorts, unbrushed
hair, and military style ballet shoes. We were all depressed and angst ridden
before Reality Bites made it cool and fashionable. Children know when their
hands are tied. They express it only for adults to drug them into stopping
their new action from being expressed any further, and then the adults wonder
why so many children are 10 times more depressed, hopeless, and go frigging
postal.
The 1990’s youth saw the rottenness of their grandparents
and parents’ laid down limited options in, by then, had become destructive
action as a good economic path for their lives. To pappy and grandpappy’s
credit, it seemed a good idea at the time when THEY were young, but the bads
were now outwaying the goods. What else for the children to do but dive into
the closest coffee shop and play slacker? The youth with any heart knew how
jacked up the institutions were. Those that took the
“I-will-fit-in-even-if-it-means-losing-my-soul-to-make-money” pill and
proceeding to build up the marketing industry of the 1990’s, the revamping of
reality tv and MTV, well, there is a special place in hell for you guys between
Dahmer and Kujo. Woof woof…….
Idea---
Faith-based living is not expressed by doing whatever hurts
yourself and others in order to succeed and be accepted. You cannot be a compartmentalized coward and say, “Well, I
was just doing my job." It's a rotten idea.
Another Idea—
Faith based is trusting that each moment that unfolds is a
gift to put to good use, even if we may be hesitant on a step or two. We keep
walking and trusting and it all will be ok and what dies a natural death is for
the better.
Could faith be a sign of youth? Yeah
How about language?
What’s the magic of generational language?
Every generation has a language. Every language dies with
that generation. What if there was someone who could jump the generational
languages. Learn each one of them as they go. Would they live? Would they die?
You start with one generation. Learn that generation’s language and that’s
symbolic of learning that language
changes, ideas change, actions change and its all for the better. Unless you
allow fear to be the language and that’s regression. So there’s that. So as
long as it is loved based, child like, faith based circles of new youthful
language- what if that is the fountain of youth?
Could be.
What if our own words were what killed us? What if our own thoughts were what aged us? What
if we could reverse it with the reversal of our own heads—in our thoughts—in
our words? Words are magical. I think its true.
It’s so effing late right now. Maybe I am in a dream or
maybe you all know this already and bored with all this stuff that is only new
to me.
Ok.
I have been doing an experiment for some time now. I find that those who tune in to the
ever evolving language of the youth, seem to be in a more optimistic, open
minded, youthful in body, mind, and soul.
It is the language of new ideas, open doors, new sounds, new
movements, and yeses.
Those that stopped new ideas, language , and movement after
high school, college, or upon entering the job market--- Well, at the very
least, you need a new haircut, k? Oh wait….. I think it just came back in.
For many, pure ideas stopped with the utterance, “Grow Up”
The concern for others’ perception of you is what really
“grows” as your beautiful, free, spontaneous being gets squeezed into a one
page resume that must always look top notch, look loyal, and look consistent.
Your image of what you do becomes more important than your honest, spontaneous
action in being you. Your thoughts become routine. Your dress becomes routine.
Your routine becomes routine. And all to often you reply- “Oh, I am too old for
that.”
You believe it.
Your body follows suit.
The end.
When thoughts stiffen
The body stiffens.
When the spirit of a person is smothered,
You can see it in the eyes.
When the stress takes over after a time
The weight gains
The hair grays
The wrinkles tell the story of what is going on inside
Good news,
This can be reversed.
And I am not talking plastic surgery.
I was older at 18 to 25 than now
It’s all in your spirit
When you are weighed down by “life”
And the no’s out way the yes’s
It’s all seen
When you start letting the yes’s out way the no’s
letting go of the crap they throw at
you knowing that it truly doesn’t matter
It doesn’t exist
All the prisons unlock.
And there’s so much fear that is thrown at us.
If you don’t pay all your bills at exactly the right time,
at EXACTLY the right time,
And your credit score is not perfect perfect perfect
And your job history isn’t perfect perfect perfect
And everything you do isn’t perfect perfect perfect
Oh my you will lose all of it
You are going to be homeless
You are going to be jobless
No one is going to love you
It’s so sad and people believe it
Is this the idea of living we have been handed down to value
and protect at all costs?
I’ve been saying this since 2005—Throw away your television.
Throw it out!
That’s the number one way it gets in your head. And it’s so
sad that people pay to get brainwashed into prisons. It just blows my
mind. Maybe tv started
perfectionism in a way.
Like that weird commercialized sense of perfectionism like
the reality never matched up to the commercial whereas it should really be the
reverse.
So many ideas gone rotten when they have outlived they stay
and have been on life support for the singular incentive of money.
Let us let the children do what they do best. Maybe we will
allow ourselves to think the same way someday. Let's forget numbers and routined, prescribed deadening language and keep the youth in our heads. Maybe we can start with a 21st century taking care of each other rather than the 20th century's mission of just making money. There’s my idea. Oh, and when this
idea goes rotten, please throw it away.
Thanks.
