I just really like Soren

Some of my favorite Kierkegaard:

How absurd men are!  They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have.  They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breathe forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend in a soft whisper, so the mystic longs for the moment when in prayer he can, as it were, creep into God.

Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.

Purity of heart is to will one thing.

The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, not read about, nor seen, but if one will, are to be lived.

I'm going to wear a sandwich board

I finally got around to watching Blood Diamond.  How I waited this long to see it is a mystery.  Many years ago I made a conscious decision to never buy a diamond, yet I never went to see a movie that was anti-diamond.  In fact, I'd been against diamonds for a few years before I'd even heard of the movie (ya i know I'm so forward thinking and cool...no wait i think i jumped on the band wagon when one of my cool progressive friends told me about the diamond debacle...okay I'm not cool just a sad sad follower who envies people who really ARE informed).

Anyway all this is beside the point.  The movie was quite well done and rather enjoyable, but it lacked a real in-depth look at the facts.  I was disappointed to say the least.  I hate to step on toes, knowing how many of my lovely friends and family wear diamonds, and I mean no offense.  It's simply a choice I've made based on facts that I've been given which have created and emotional response in me that were a catalyst to a moral decision.  All that to say I don't judge you based on your bling. 

There are several reasons I don't buy diamonds, including:

1.  Diamonds in and of themselves are worthless.  De Beers has a monopoly, meaning ALL diamonds come from them.  ALL (they buy up the ones that they don't actually mine).  It's the last great cartel on earth.  I don't like cartels, I'm a good capitalist (well socialist, but whatever).  Furthermore, De Beers actually price controls by only selling a fraction of the diamonds they actually have.  Diamonds, as De Beers says, really "are forever."  You can't sell them.  Have you tried?  They have no value except in pawn shops, and there it is at a fraction of their original price.

2.  Open diamond pits are bad for the environment.  The minerals, chemicals, oils, and all the crap that mines make leaches into ground water and poisons it, killing animals and plants, even people, that are down stream from them.  

3.  Diamond mines are often located on indigenous peoples' land.  In Canada, Africa, India, and Australia people have been displaced in order for the diamond supply to continue.  Often at the expense of their culture and health.

4.  I don't like being told I NEED a diamond.  De Beers marketing is ingenious they've convinced the world that you can't be married without a diamond ring.  This is preposterous and totally fabricated in the name of profit.  And I like to be free of such uncool constraints as marketing, which is why I drink sprite and use an apple computer. (Yes that last bit is tongue in cheek, it comes across much better when i say it sarcastically in person). 

There is more, however.  And it gets worse.  I want to tell you what Blood Diamond didn't.  The movie gives a rather incomplete picture of what a conflict diamond is, claiming less than 1% of diamonds are conflict.  Even more Utopian, one can actually buy diamonds that are certified as "non-conflict"  This is simply untrue.  All diamonds are conflict diamonds, the certificate is meaningless. 

 Here's why:

1.  You can't be sure they weren't mined by warlords using children as their personal gun toting body guards.  Diamonds can be laundered and "cleaned" of their dirty past.  

2.  Diamond smuggling is intimately connected to the small arms trade.  Buy diamonds and you are supporting illegal gun sales across the world.  

3.  MOST IMPORTANTLY!  Almost all diamonds (estimates on the conservative side say more than one half), regardless of where they are mined, are sent to India for cleaning, cutting, and polishing.  If a diamond is mined in Canada and is certified non-conflict it still goes to India.  What happens in India you ask?  Slave laborers and bonded children are used to transform a raw diamond into something that can be used in jewelry.  This means that children are sold as virtual slaves to pay off a relatives debt.  This debt, of course, can't be paid off in one lifetime and when the the child is an adult, the debt is passed on to their children or another younger sibling.

THERE IS HOPE!  I want to point out that diamonds are not just decorative they are useful in drills and other uhh stuff (shrugs shoulders at what said stuff is, but knows it's out there and has long technical names).  We are redeemed though.  Diamonds can now be made in labs. And I'm not talking cubic z's.  REAL DIAMONDS that are molecularily identical to mined diamonds.  You can't tell the difference between them.  NO ONE CAN.  okay that's not true and expert can occasionally pick them out simply because the grown diamonds are PERFECT.  Flawless.  No mined diamond in the world is flawless.  So if you really want one, buy a lab diamond.  It's better and cheaper.  

All of this leads me to the conclusion that I cannot, in good conscious, wear a diamond.  Chances are, it's either a true conflict diamond (as in a blood diamond), or at the very least passed through the hands of a slave laborer, poisoned the waters of a village, or displaced a community of people.  Diamonds just aren't as beautiful as the lives of the people they destroy.

Okay.  It's out.  I've said it.  I'm sure I've stepped on toes.  But be assured, I'm no angel.  It's struck me recently that I own a lot of books.  That's a lot of dead trees.  Even more, it's a lot of money i could have spent to solve world hunger.  I mean we have libraries.  I could be renting books for free and saving paper.  But I really like having them on my shelf.  It's a pride thing.  I can say look at me I'm smart.  If I had all the money I've spent on books, I could have fed a village of Africans for life.  So I'll humbly get off my soap box and pull the planks out of my own eye.  

"Participating in the Creative life of the Creator" -- Imago Dei

I made a comment in my last post about the disparity between humanity's most beautiful endeavours and his basest atrocities.

My mother cries if someone else in the room is crying, even if she doesn't know why.  My father cries at hallmark commercials (sorry dad, i outed you).  The older I get the more I, too, cry at the drop of a hat.  Recently, I've found myself choked up at the oddest moments: like watching fireworks at Epcot  -- I love Disney, but not that much.  Why cry?  I even found myself tearing up while watching Cirque De Soliel with Thomas  -- What the hell could be sentimental about that?  

It struck me on both of those occasions that humans are capable of beauty that borders on genius: music, film, painting, grace, sculpture, poetry, and acts of love.  From the great works of Michaelangelo, Keats, and Picasso to the simplest moments of kindness.  

But it wasn't just the grandeur of moment that caused that inevitable bit of water around the eyes, it was the fact that everyday we are surrounded by it's converse.  By greed, war, poverty, and hate.  We see genocide, fear-mongering based on religion, race, and creed, and ugly weapons being built for even uglier wars.  In our lives we are capable of jealousy, envy, and anger.  But it becomes worse, much worse.  George Bernard Shaw, an Irish playwright that won the Nobel Prize, once said "The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity."  We walk past the destitute, we avert our eyes to the woman crying alone a table, and we claim that their suffering is not our business.

Humans are so good and so terrible. "Do I contradict myself, very well, then i contradict myself.  I am large, I contain multitudes" (Whitman, Song of Myself). 

We, I, am able to create and destroy beauty.  I will do well to remember this because humanity is so easily attracted to destruction.  To destroy is human, to create one literally becomes god-like.  Transcending to such a level takes much more work.

Gypsy On.

20 days....

I've been rather absent as of late haven't I.  Apologies...life and what not.

Well i went 10 days with no food.  In the end I'm glad I did it and I lost a ton of weight and hopefully some toxins.  However, after 2 weeks in Flordia, 10 days without food, and a few days in Portland I've managed to not run in A MONTH!  I went for my first jog today.  2 miles later I'm whipped, but it's a start.

Things I'm pondering:

What music to download off Itunes for Africa.  Suggestions please...what songs/artists/albums would YOU take to Africa?

Along the same lines, which books would you bring?

The disparity between man's greatest acts of beauty and their basest acts of evil.  It's a wonder we are able to contain such multitudes.

Gypsy on.

Oh and an update.  I am staging in Philly.  (Staging is where I meet my Peace Corps group, learn about how to not get AIDS and how not to get robbed.  Then I get shots....sounds fun! hehehehe)  Then I fly out of Philly to Paris then to Mali....or that's the rumor anyway.