Bee Wars 3, The Revenge of the Sarcophagus

I woke up this morn, and to my eyes, what did appear? Why, a colony of bees uncovered, oh dear!
No longer the Sarcophagus covered, my dearest bee friends, who could hover.
The tub was overturned, was lifting a skill the bees had learned?
No, twas a neighbor who free the bees, man I wish I had my teas.
But, hark, what beist this? The bees had meet the death of kiss.
In piles upon piles they lay, lifeless and cold, in May.
Yes, they no longer menace my yard, but it is unfortunate that they are so marred.
Now the ants have a field day, fiesting upon the corpses of their insect brethren where they lay.
Hundred upon hundred lay still, in a tub shaped depression that I will fill.
A sultry grave for a colony, just like that guy Ptolemy.

That poem-esque rambling is in memory of the colony of bees whose genocide I had a hand in. I do feel guilty that I had to dispatch them, but they had sharp ends on their butts that made me scared to walk to my door. And the hovering... oh the hovering. So unpleasant.

In other news, my sublet is up in two weeks, and I still don't have a place to live after that. But, I am hopeful. Worst case scenario, I would have to spend a couple weeks with my brother.

Here is some food for thought for the estimated 4 of you who read this:
Gandhi's 7 Social Sins
Politics without Principle
Wealth without Work
Commerce without Morality
Pleasure without Conscience
Education without Character
Science without Humanity
Worship without Sacrafice

to that I would add these two:
Work without Community
Priorities without People

Priorities without people, is my way of saying that our priorities should always be each other.
So why do I feel guilty about the bees? I was placing the safety of my neighbor and myself over the lives of those bees, placing people at the top of my priority list. Well, maybe a simple saying like the one I wrote above does not take in the whole complexity of the world. I wish there had been a way where they could have lived.
I can even get a ends and means lesson out of this one. The end may be that the bees are no longer a menace. That was my primary goal. But the means we used produced unwanted consequences... feelings of guilt, regret and sadness. A smelly pile of dead bees covered in ants. On the macro level, fewer honey bees to pollenate the plants that make the food we eat. All this stems from the wrong means. I don't know what the right means would have been... maybe contacting a nearby bee farm and trying to sell the bees to them, or atleast get them to cart them away. Yes, that would have been a better outcome. Maybe if I had put in alittle more effort this sad outcome would not have happened. Yet another life lesson from my banal existence. (Footnote: I learned the word "banal" during SAT prep. Well, it might not have been entirely useless. It allowed me to use overly educated language on a low-traffic blog. Yay!)

Of Bees and Trickery Part 2

The bees appear to have taken up permanent residency in my backyard. So, not unlike the unlucky people of Chernobyl, we have put a sarcophagus over our problems.

But maybe I should start where I last left off. After my attempts to convince them to leave through pouring water on them, I tried a something different. One morning, I put a half-full jar of water out near the hive, with alittle honey in it as bait. The idea is that they fly in to get the honey and get stuck in the water, and die. Well, I tricked 6 bees... so at that point it was 6 down, 400+ to go.
The next day I noticed someone had put a plastic tub on top of the bees. The tub was, however, not a perfect fit with the ground. Bees still came out from underneath the sides where the ground was uneven. I found out that evening that it was my upstairs neighbor, Nathan. So, I hosed the bees down, which tricked all but 2 of them into landing, and proceeded to cover the edges of the tub with dirt, to fully sarcophagize the bees and prevent them from flying around the yard.

So far it has worked. The bees are not smart enough to dig themselves out, but they are still in there. I can hear them buzzing. Just waiting for a chance to burst forth from their sarcophagus as mummy bees. The problem has been put in a box, literally, and left to fester or disappear, whatever the case may be. But I doubt I will be here to see it. I move out of here in a few weeks, and I doubt that the bee situation will change. Although, I bet that I could sell those bees for a pretty good price, considering how honey bees are disappearing across the nation. It only figures that they would reappear in my yard.

Of Bees and Trickery

There is a bee hive in my back yard. It is just sitting on the ground minding its own business. The bees are in one large cluster that seems to move periodically from one spot of the yard to another. They appeared here today, and I have no idea where they came from. I wonder if this is what happens to those bees that are disappearing across the country... they just up and decide to leave, to become nomadic bees. Well, I wish they would migrate away from my yard. They are wholely less welcome than the usual visitor to my yard who I affectionately refer to as, "the cat." The last short-term visitor to my backyard was a cluster of birthday balloons which probably floated away from some kid. I gave those balloon's to Dan's friend Dan. I wish I could do the same with these bees.

I did learn something about bees though. If you try to convince them to leave by tossing water out the window at them, they are both not convinced to leave, and tricked into thinking it is raining. So now I know how to fool bees, check off that item on the things I wanted to figure out in my life. Right now the bees are crawling on the ground, not flying, because they think it is raining. I suppose this means that they are that much less likely to get up and fly away. Lesson learned, water does not convince bees to leave. But, if I ever need to walk through a mess of flying bees, I know to spray them down with water to trick them into landing.

Patrick, I know you aren't reading this, but that info will save your life one day.

I really love not having a TV. I can watch all the important shows on my laptop thanks to the wonders of the internet, and I am not tempted by the prospect of turning it on and listening to it. I have music for that, no need to have the TV on. And I am infinitely more productive when I don't have a TV, which makes me feel better.

Update

Well, I totally flacked out on blogging in April, so I decided to pump out two posts tonight. The last one was catalyzed by watching Gandhi the movie. Such a good movie.
I have been doing pretty well. California is treating me very well. I have a good and meaningful job. And I am going to soon acquire a semi-permanent place to live, with Dan and Bucky. Hopefully we will have gotten an apartment within the next 3 weeks. The few places we have looked at have all seemed fairly good. We are mostly looking in El Cerrito which is a few train stops north of Berkeley. It has entire houses up for rent, and the appeal of having an entire house is very alluring.
In other news, I wish I had more time to read, and more motivation to take the time out of my busy schedule to do it. I have so many good looking books on my shelves.

Overall, I have been coming to a general conclusion about a trajectory for my life. I think getting a law degree with greatly advance my ability to produce positive change in this world. Not because I want to be an attorney, but because it would give me a comprehensive understanding of the legal system.

The Way Out of Madness

I believe it was Martin Luther King who said "The curve of the universe is toward Justice." and Gandhi who told us to look back at history when we despair and see how "the way of truth and love has always won" in the end. Indeed, Love is the foundation of human society, so how it be any other way.

It is utter madness to me, all the violence and hatred that is infecting us. A pandemic of Madness on a scale that has scarce been seen in the annuals of human existence. But the cure does exist. In all its many forms, it has existed since the beginning. However unrefined it may be at this point in history, it has caused the collapse of empires and the restructuring of societies. Always has this cure been based on love, never on hate or apathy. This cure has been wielded by the greats of history to make their worlds better. The Plebeians of Athens used it to bring greater equality to their city. Jesus wielded it against the Romans and the corrupted officials of his land. Buddha used it against the corruption he saw in his own society. Gandhi used it in India, MLK used it in America.
The way out of Madness, the cure to the sickness of hatred is to embrace the love that all human organization and life is built upon. Understanding why this is, is the quintessential necessity behind vaccinating future generations against the diseases of the soul that our world is experiencing.

The way out of Madness is not just an idealistic approach, it is entirely practical. Humans are hard-wired to love, to want to be together, and to live for each other. This is the reason that isolation is a universal punishment across human societies.
Many will throw out examples of people who fail to live up to this ideal, i.e. misanthropes, psychopaths, etc. Unfortunately, there are many people who are so damaged by their experiences, so unable to cope with the horrible situations they are in, that they have fallen for false logics which compel them to do yet more damage to themselves and those around them. To heal these we must not ostracize them or isolate them, we must embrace them and show them the love that every human deserves. This is the idea behind rehabilitation prisons, and why punitive prisons consistently fail to prevent crime. The design of human nature makes this an inevitable fact.

The way out of Madness encompasses non-violence, as violence will only enrage and firm up the will of one's opponent. Violence will only drive a wedge between brothers and force them to believe each other to be less than human. Indeed, the way out of Madness is to believe that we are all humans and treat each other with the dignity that all humans deserve.

The full breadth of the way out of Madness is so expansive that it could not be contained within an entire encyclopedia set. But it can be boiled down to its essence, which is The Golden Rule.
Love all as you would have them love you.

Democracy and Violence Part 2

Some more rambling thoughts on democracy and violence. WARNING, THIS POST CONTAINS RAMBLING, INTENSE BRAINSTORMING AND STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS WRITING.

I think I need to do a more in depth analysis of violence.
Let me start by explaining something about human cultures. We have commonly held beliefs about the way things are accomplished. A simple example of this is the way we make circular holes in things. We make circular motions, like a drill. Indeed, the drill motion has become so accepted as the way to make a small circular hole that we are prone to interpret holes in ancient artifacts as produced through a drilling motion. But they often weren't. It is easy enough to make a circular hole with other carving motions. When a culture vests a certain amount of belief and confidence in a means, then they start to believe that everyone does it that way and that other ways do not really work.
This is what has happened to our culture with violence. Violence is seen as THE method to force people to do things, to force their consent. So people on both sides of the conflict tend to obey this misconception... the forcer will believe the forcee will accept it, and the forcee believes that they have no choice. As a result, the belief is reinforced because everyone consents to go along with it. There is nothing inherent about violence that makes it have this power, it is a social construction and nothing more. It is one of many social constructions that need to be dissolved before democracy can be installed.

Having large numbers of people solving conflicts through violence (either personal or state violence), as happens now, will not work for a democracy. Using violence to solve a problem does not actually solve it. In fact, it complicates the matter. It denies the right of the victims of the violence to have their concerns addressed and it assumes that those imposing the violence have the right to value the issue of contention over the person. In a democracy, people are the most important thing, they should be prioritized over everything else.

Violence is done out of desperation. Resorting to this type of action assumes that the victim is unreasonable and will not be persuaded any other way. It shows how little control someone has over a situation if they resort to violence. This is the difficult position police are put into. They are invested with the responsibility of keeping the peace, and controlling a situation. When they lose control, they get desperate and they get violent.

Right now our society lacks the social institutions necessary to conflict resolve on the spot. The police are the only institution vested with immediate conflict resolution, and they tend to do it by arresting one party. If there was a common belief in a system that involved real, on the spot conflict resolution, then the police would not be forced to resort to physical force and violence.

The act of forcing someone in this way is anti-democratic. Democracy is about discussion, compromise, consensus and understanding. It is not a results-oriented method of governance, it is a people-oriented method. Violence places results over people.

So far, I have said:
1. Violence and democracy have different priorities
2. Violence and democracy have contradicting products
3. Violence does not produce circumstances conducive to democracy.
4. Violence is used (ineffectively) in the stead of democratic institutions of conflict resolution.
5. Violence is a social construction that is thought to be practical, but ends up not being in practice.
6. Violence undermines the democratic prerequisite that citizens need to be able to make decisions free of oppression
7. Violence as a means to force consent would be replaced with other institutions under a democracy

Things I wish to explore further: How violence effects the victim. The ends produced when one uses violent means. And the chaos factors in democracy and violence.

Democracy and Violence Part 1

Well, I am concretely defeating Bucky when it comes to keeping up with my blog. He can consider that a challenge to try and catch up.

So, this is my first stab at trying to articulate why violence is anti-democratic.
Democracy, by its very nature, is supposed to uplift and equalize, to empower and enhance communication. To facilitate understanding and to bring about consensus. Violence is the opposite of this. It is forced disempowerment, a diminishing and isolating means that tends to breed hatred and more violence. In fact, it often destroys power through death. It attempts to undermine the power of a nation not through turning that power to a different mindset, as with democracy, but through the physical act of destroying people and the inherent power they have. Indeed, it undermines power by both destroying it and by forcing consent through fear.

Violence, in our culture, is believed to be an effective way to force someone to do something. I interpret this as forced consent. The person believes they have no choice, even though they do. They can refuse to be coerced and allow themselves to be harmed... indeed, to force the attacker to use violence out of their own desperation to control other people.

So, violence is used in two ways to try to consolidate control: 1. destroy power through removing number of supporters. The worst examples of this are genocides. 2. Forced consent through the threat of violence; most notable emotions involved are fear, a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness.

Democracy can not be created through a process of destroying power and/or forcing the consent of others. The whole point of democracy is for everyone to be able to affect and/or make the decisions that impact their lives. A system such as that depends on people's trust of each other and willing consent to be a part of the system. You can't get people to participate, I mean REALLY participate in the way we want them to, by threatening them. Nor will killing them get them to participate... for obvious reasons.

Now, that that basic argument is kind of out there... many people will rebut with the argument: There are people out there who are oppressing others and exerting coercion and forced consent over them. How do we deal with them? Would it not be prudant to force these people to consent to stop oppressing? And sometimes people will even take it as far as "Isn't a violent revolution necessary to overthrow such an oppressive system as this, it is so violent that it will respond to nothing but violence."
My answer to this is: That is a false situation. When one group oppresses another, they are forcing the other group to consent. All the oppressed group need to do is stop consenting, and they will, with sacrifice (sacrifice that is required for any kind of fighting, whether it is violent of non-violent), be able to end the oppression. The power is truly in the hands of the oppressed, since they are always more numerous. They could (and have in many historical instances) easily and non-violently thrown off the shackles binding them. This is how you build a democratic society, you create democratic institutions in the effort to overthrow oppressors. Using democratic means will create a democratic system, while using violent means will create a violent system. But I digress... violence will only serve to undermine democracy, because it will make the group who were the oppressors not want to participate in a new government, which would probably not be democratic if it were built out of the flames of a violent revolution. So already there is a problem of a (probably) large minority of people who do not want to participate, and are willing to actively oppose whatever democratic institutions had come about. This creates a situation where the people trying to build a democracy start to believe they need to actively take control, or force consent to the democracy from the actively opposing minority. And that is just plain anti-democratic. We come back to the problem of the impossibility of building a participatory democracy by forcing people to agree to democracy. That is just not how democracy works.

So far in this brainstorming session, I have explored what the means of violence produces (i.e. destroying power, forced consent) and how these products are incompatible with the project of democracy. Violence, as a means, simply seems to be ineffective at producing democratic outcomes.

I want to explore this more, but it is late. So I will put off further discussion for another post. I still need to explore the impact of forced consent on people more, and the products that non-violent means produce. I should also explore the chaos factor from both violence and democracy.

In other news, I got my California License!