I'm back! And the real world sucks.

I am such an old, lazy teenager! In December, I took a break from the blog for the holidays and now it's, what? July? Like any good adult adolescent I have many good excuses, especially the shoulder surgery I had in February that continues to require twice weekly physical therapy.
Turns out that, even though my mind believes I'm still an adolescent, my body knows better. So I took a semester off from grad school, went to summer school to make it up, and now I'm ready to write.

As part of my recovery, I have spent a lot of time on the couch pondering the TV. One show really got my imagination going. It was Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman, and it was a (mostly) scientific based inquiry into the idea of collective consciousness. One scientist studied the magnetic fields generated by the electrical activity in our brains and found some evidence that we influence each other in this way. That got me thinking.

The world just seems to be getting crazier. Believe me, I've seen a lot of crazy and I've watched a lot of news. Earthquakes, tsunamis, flooding, fire, famine, heat and drought are pressuring a large portion of the world's population. Add in the worldwide economic crisis and over 10 years of war, and you create a human pressure cooker. Just look at the inability of the US legislature to make any progress on the budget. Is it just politics? Really? Would our elected officials take our country to the brink of disaster just to make political points? And if so, what does that say about our collective mindset?

Why aren't we out in the streets demanding a compromise? None of us run our household budgets this way. If we are chronically short of money, we go looking for another job, work more hours, or hell, have a yard sale. We don't let our children go homeless, hungry or naked. One can only cut so far.

OK, no backlash. I know the government has to make cuts. I'm all for it. But I also know that to make a dent in the deficit, we all have to sacrifice. And if that means that those who earn a quarter of a million dollars a year have to pay another five hundred dollars in taxes, then suck it up. That's six week's groceries to me, how many lattes for millionaires?

I think I'll just go to physical therapy, take a pain pill, and get back on the couch. For now, anyway.