Is it only a dream that there'll be no more turning away?

It just goes to show if you stay alive long enough, you may actually live to see a dream come true. The trick, it seems, is surviving all the torturous bits that keep testing it in an unrelenting manner and getting through it without poking out both your eyes in shame and horror.

Sometimes it takes awhile for dreams, art and truth to make their journey out into the universe and cycle home to remind us who we truly are. All the more reason to speak it and make it and cherish these things for their power to heal. Twenty years ago this song was performed - in hindsight - at the dawn of the dark decades for democracy. It seems appropriate to listen to it and contemplate its message today with the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States.

I hope we will all be as brave and smart as we want to be. Probably not; being human... but at least for a day or so we can feel like we've done something right. Perhaps we have reached a tipping point on our spin. On this day, we will collectively stand and not turn away; gather our strength towards wasting less and applying our Yankee ingenuity to dreaming up an even better world with all of the extra time we have not pounding the floor of a big box store...be a part of something larger than ourselves that is inclusive, wise and transparent in its intention.

On the turning away

On the turning away
From the pale and downtrodden
And the words they say
Which we wont understand
Dont accept that whats happening
Is just a case of others suffering
Or youll find that youre joining in
The turning away

Its a sin that somehow
Light is changing to shadow
And casting its shroud
Over all we have known
Unaware how the ranks have grown
Driven on by a heart of stone
We could find that were all alone
In the dream of the proud

On the wings of the night
As the daytime is stirring
Where the speechless unite
In a silent accord
Using words you will find are strange
And mesmerized as they light the flame
Feel the new wind of change
On the wings of the night

No more turning away
From the weak and the weary
No more turning away
From the coldness inside
Just a world that we all must share
Its not enough just to stand and stare
Is it only a dream that there'll be
No more turning away?


~Pink Floyd
A Momentary Lapse of Reason

Thanks to Jimmy Toast for posting the above video to You Tube.

Am I free?

"These eight qualities require a new skill set. Success in the free-copy world is not derived from the skills of distribution since the Great Copy Machine in the Sky takes care of that. Nor are legal skills surrounding Intellectual Property and Copyright very useful anymore. Nor are the skills of hoarding and scarcity. Rather, these new eight generatives demand an understanding of how abundance breeds a sharing mindset, how generosity is a business model, how vital it has become to cultivate and nurture qualities that can't be replicated with a click of the mouse."
~ Kevin Kelly, The Technium

The above excerpt is from a blog entry that was brought to my attention by a co-worker and as I read it, I got really excited about the content.... This open sourcing business is on everyone's mind these days from libraries to artists to business people. Then I remembered how excited I get when someone tells me what I want to hear.

I think it wise to consider some of the points made by Prokofy Neva in the comments section below Kevin Kelly's blog entry.

Especially the part in mentioning that tired old saw that everyone keeps forgetting about in talking about technology. At the risk of being the kid shouting about the naked Emperor, what if the lights go out? Gas pumps pump on electricity too, you know. It's not like it could never happen! Everything just stops if there is no electricity. It is like the perfect storm for an end of the world scenario for the United States and makes me cloud over. I think we have all gone a little bit crazy living under the dark lord's reign of war terror. I think, too, there is a rat in the kitchen and no one wants to deal with the messiness of being self-sustaining. I see a two year old child frantically running away from a stern and over-bearing parent - off she scampers after the shiny free object with untied shoe laces - Untied States of America. In a decade, will people even know how to feed themselves if the power goes out? There are already some young people who do not know how to cook anything without a microwave. They have never even turned on a stove, let alone built a fire to boil water! We are doing ourselves a disservice in not understanding the value of balance and protecting our product; whether that product be art, democracy, our children or our ability to provide nourishment and care to our people....You know, the real ones who fall down and hurt themselves or are hit by a UPS truck delivering our Amazon order.

I think we get a little too excited and caught up sometimes. I know I do. The seizing of an opportunity and being the first and the best is both America's glory and her Achilles heel. We need to be tempered without being oppressed. We need guidelines and communication without banishment and berating for error.

There is a whole cross culture of people who get up everyday to an alarm clock and flesh out to make real what we take for granted like it just appears off of the internet! Billions of souls are maintaining the parts of the story where the rubber meets the road. It is a sorry statement of our values that we should forget that these people even exists. I think the second lifer fellow, Prokofy Neva, makes more than a few good points regarding our ease in accepting the concept of everything becoming free. I mean, seeing how good we all are in maintaining a democracy already! The quick fix if things run out of control is rather daunting and when you consider the consequences of just loosing electricity for 30 days ...well, Katrina and bin Laden spring to mind. Everything has a price in an economic based society. We ARE an economic based society, like it or not. It is a solid and fair question to ask and it requires debate: What will we pay for free?


Thanks to David Carmack Lewis for the use of the painting "Loser"