Looking Around

And now for a quick entry.

Look! Another entry from me, ok... so what? Is there anything more to say? I am guessing yes. I want to make more of a direction for this blog. I just can't go on whining about my not writing... ok, I could, and I could whine about my job or the state of the world. What I kind of want to do is pick up the interest level, if nothing else for me. Ok, the other stuff can be interesting to me, and it is the stuff of most conversations (like the one I had with a buddy on the way home). He had just flown back into town from a bike vacation in Serbia... yeah, that Serbia in East South Europe with the bad reputation for being picking fights or something. His observations were that the people there had a little bit of a complex about not being good enough or something. They had felt the sting of CNN and huge media outlets going on about how "blood thirsty" they were. According to my friend, he and his wife had a good time visiting with them (as we say here in the South).

He observed that the people there had a more localized loyalty- you had your family, your neighborhood, your town... sort of in that order of importance. Here in America we have taken it to a more national level. We are Americans first. There the people were from this town or that town, which was why the one town breaking free was such a big deal to folks that want "Serbia", but why the people in the town felt justified in leaving the "national" government and striking out on their own. Their first loyalty was to their locality. So I guess we will see how that plays out.

In listening to my buddy's story I got to thinking. One of the main starting points for just about all conflict is the drawing of strong delineations between "us" and "them". It is like the boundaries of DeKalb County where I live- I see a sign post by the road, but the line is only in some map makers imagination. So, to cut to the chase, we imagine these lines all around the globe. We then humanize the folks on "our" side while dehumanizing the folks on the "them" side.. which makes it ok to kill, or bomb, or maim, or torture....THEM. Never mind that if one of them and one of us was on the dissecting table of some weird out of the world AlienSpaceShip the scientist doing the cataloguing of parts would see NO meaningful distinction between "US" and "THEM". The lines are all imaginary.

I am thinking that I want to spend more time finding and erasing those lines. It is past time for building bridges not walls. This maybe one of those things that is easier said than done... like writing every day....hmmm?