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From the mind of critic: “If the streets are wet with pouring rain, do we adjust our driving speed accordingly? Do we slow down and put 2 hands on the wheel, but keep driving forward, realizing we can still get where we want to go, even if it takes longer to get there? Do we continue driving the same speed, with the same one hand on the wheel, because being relaxed is the best way to get where we want to go? Or do we speed up, and swerve around people and cars as the rain falls harder, specifically because of a determination nothing is gonna slow us down, and by speeding up we’re showing the rain that it ain’t nothing, but motivation to get where we want to go? The road we end up traveling out of the infinite number of roads, will always feature road blocks placed by us and the outside world, as well as ruts, dips, and all sorts of baked in atitudes fueled by generations of uncritical thinkers. The path we choose will determine our thoughts, feelings and actions, while those same thoughts, feelings and actions will determine what path we choose. Once our decision is made even if it’s made by indecision, we must move forward if we want to grow. If we don’t move forward, we’re still growing, but in the wrong direction. Once we realize that moving forward is for our highest good, We’ll see that whatever speed we’re traveling at, the rain will try to run us off the road, making us swerve, and spin until we forget what direction we were traveling in. We may have to adjust our speed, but the only thing that can change our direction, is us. We can either slow down and have success, or we can speed up and possibly be run off the road. Adapting to our environment, is how we evolve” 🙂

From the mind of critic: “If our clock stops out of the blue, whether it runs on batteries, electricity or solar, is it even possible to restart it? Do we try and try and try to get our clock running again, getting angrier and angrier when we can’t? As our rage boils over, do we understand why we’re getting angry? Are we upset at the actual clock for stopping? Or are we upset that we took for granted the fact our clock was running, thinking it would run forever? Is it the clock we’re mad at, or ourselves? Time is certainly a finite concept, and not finite at the same time. The more effort we expend to make our time enjoyable and productive, can make moments last forever, while also speeding time up because we aren’t focused on the physical number. That’s just it though, the concept of time only exists because we put our faith in it that it does. Like the proverbial pot of water that never boils when we stare at it, time will not run out either if it’s the only thing we focus on. Of course who wants to spend all their time counting the phsycial essence of time, instead of enjoying each moment by fully immersing ourselves in it? While enjoying each moment might make time seem like it’s moving faster, but it keeps moments flowing in and out in a continous stream of uplifting energy. We can either hold on to time so hard that the stream of life stops, because we dont think good moments will happen again. Or we can enjoy each moment for what it is as it comes, treasuring it while it’s happening, then letting it end naturally, specifically so other moments can flow in. If our clock breaks, it’s broken, that’s it. Do we want to spend our entire lives worrying about the day our clock will break because it undoubtedly will? Or do we wanna spend our lives enjoying our time befiore our clock does break? What will make our life worth living? What will make us smile?” 🙂

From the mind of critic: “If the opposite of fascistic double speak is democratic truth defended by enternally courageous vigilance, why do we roll over due to the volume of blind faith we’ve consumed? Is it out of tiredness because of all the consciousness we’ve espoused and expressed, that we take breaks from critical thinking when listening or watching a point of view we agree with? Or are we so anxious to succeed because of our supposed enemies defenses, that we’re looking for any advantage we can get, even if that means we start conserving our energy for other uses, and tune out? There are many of us who actually pay attention, who actually ask questions and who actually care about other people and the world around us no matter what side of the political, religous, philisophical or financial spectrum we find ourselves on. We all want to make a better world, but refuse on a constant basis to see the truth that will steadfastly unite us. Maybe we’re scared of letrting down our peers with opinions, that aren’t as generationally inbedded as theirs. Maybe we have low self esteem, and don’t feel confident enough to stand up to the other side, let alone to our own side. Maybe we aren’t ready to have our world flipped upside down. Once we realize that losing our humanity means losing our critical thinking skills, we’ll see that taking better care of the well off than we take care of the downtrodden, will lead us all to ruin, specifically because the grass is always greener on the other side, no matter what fertilizer we use on ours. If we want to get rid of waste and fraud we must get rid of it on all levels, or we haven’t gotten rid of any. Calling all democratic truth seekers, are we willing to admit what has kept us at each other’s throats, so we can unite and take on our true enemy? Are we ready to get over ourselves? 🙂

From the mind of critic: “If painting is 90% prep work, do we refrain from painting at all because of all the work we have to do, before the work we have to do? Do we shy away from scraping, sanding and primering, because how is anybody gonna tell when there’s a fresh coat of paint? Do we not care what the paint looks like a few years from now, because having a fresh and shiny beautiful facade as fast as possible is all that matters? Or would we rather have our hard work last for years to come, with paint not chipping or fading away early, specifically because we spent long hard hours preparing so we didn’t have to come back in a year or so, and have to do the same thing all over again? So many issues with so many facets with even more solutions evolve, mutate and might completely change from person to person are extremely daunting, which becomes even tougher when we discover we have to lay the foundation, before we get to do the work we wanted to do in the first place. We can either buckle down and hone in on what we want to accomplish, realizing that more work is involved than we might have expected, but it isn’t going to keep us from our goals. Or do we completely turn off, go in with guns blazing and no preperation, and fail miserably by instantly going down in flames, or have our work break down and fall apart after a short time. This not only wastes our time, but proves that we didn’t want to accomplish our goals as much as we thought. Do we want to accomplish great things? Do we expect them to fall in our lap? If we want to be a real painter and not just play one on TV, we’ll do the work required so the job is done right. If we do something half-ass, what’s the point of doing it at all?” 🙂

From the mind of critic: “If the rain falls harder, faster and with more frequency, will it evaporate fast enough to allow for drying out periods? Are these drying out periods imperative, so we can remember what normal life is like and how to live it? Or is drying out a pipe dream, because we’re so waterlogged from all the rain that has fallen and all that’s to come? Life is and has always been a balance, a teeter totter of good and evil, positive and negative, yin and yang and countless other definitions we can think up. We go through periods of fear and hate, hope and love and vice versa. This depends on who we have in power, and the prevailing consensus of the population. We can’t completely stop these swings from happening, because they occur naturally due to our environment and increasingly invasive human evolution. However, we can speed up, slow down, strenghten and weaken these cycles with our thoughts, feelings and actions. We must ask ourselves on a constant basis, what influence we have? We have much power to ease the destruction of humanity, and stop the corporate fascist takeover of this country that’s guised in regressive populism. We must see how this power affects us and others around us, because making things worse for a group of people just so things will be a little better for us, doesn’t make us safer, it gives the power structure more time to plan our demise, because they already have their teeth sunk in, and want to have fun playing with their food before they devour it. We control our destiny, as long we’re honest about what’s in front of our face. However, that honesty is only discovered if we take nothing at face value, and don’t ignore what we don’t like, especially if it’s a verifiable fact, and not the orwellian double speak and double think of alternative facts. We can make the rain fall harder, or we can make it lighten up. It all depends on whether we decide to share our umbrella” 🙂

From the mind of critic: “If we all reap what we sow, how come some of us reap more than others? Is it because we reap what others sow, riding coat tails until we can swoop in and take credit for somebody else’s hard work? Is it because we willingly and unwillingly allow others to do the swooping, not believing in ourselves enough to benefit from the fruits of our labor? Or are we all trying to find success and love amidst a sea of chaos, taking advantage of every opportunity, no matter what cave it decides to crawl out of? We all want success, love, joy, and are willing to put various effort levels into getting it. Some of us are convinced that as long as we end up on top, it doens’t matter how many head we step on along the way. Some of us are so practiced at self-sabotage, that we can’t picture success being our reality, so when somebody else takes the credit and praise that’s due us, and changes the original intent of our hard work, it plays into our inbedded self-image of the person who always falls short. The one issue that could fix this dilemma which all sides could agree on, is accountability and accepting resonsibility. If we think we can never do wrong and have never done wrong, we will forever pass the blame. Not only will the buck never stop with us, the fruits of hard work will also never be with us, unless we steal it from somebody else. If we want to reap what we sow we will, for our bad and good actions. We can’t choose either or, because we’ll never know what each truly means. If we can’t be accountable to ourselves, how can we expect to be accountable to others, let alone 300 million Americans” 🙂

From the mind of critic: “If hell hath no fury like a woman’s scorn, what about a man’s scorn? What about a sister’s, brother’s, mother’s, father’s, son’s, daughter’s, uncle’s aunt’s, nephew’s, niece’s, friends, or lover’s scorn? What about an immigrant’s scorn, a senator’s, congressman’s, activist’s, christian’s, muslim’s, jew’s, union member’s or artist’s scorn? What about a president’s scorn, does hell hath no fury like a schoolyard bully and narcissistic con-artist, when he’s behind the bully pulpit? No matter our gender, family, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, culture or station in life, we all get mad. No matter what our label is, some of us do get madder than others, and some less because we’re people. No group believes monolithically, no matter how deeply inbedded stereotypes are. All movements and groups will have disagreements within them about action and level of militancy. Once we realize that when we generalize about a certain group, it’s because we see them as different,due to us having knowledge, not having it or not wanting it, we’ll see the more information we gain by asking questions, the more we’ll see the disagreements in other’s groups, are the same disagreements in ours. This is how what makes us different, actually makes us the same. Hell does hath a lot of fury, but not nearly as much as us when we’ve been take advantage of and been lied to repeatedly. Focusing our true collective fury, destroys the illusion of power” 🙂

From the mind of critic: “If love conquers all, what the hell is it waiting for? Is love an all knowing omnipotent power, that cherishes it’s enemies, and smites it’s enemies? Is love a seperate entity from us, coming in and out of our lives without our say so, and sometimes without our knowledge? Or do we as humans have a completely symbiotic relationship with love, where we don’t exist if it doesnt exist, and vice versa? Many indescribable and completely subjective concepts exist in the ether of our psyche, not least among them hate, sadness, money, credit, jealousy, joy, happiness and ofcourse love. These concepts only exist because we put out faith in them that they do. If we didn’t think they were real, they would cease to be. If we all create our own realities, and we put our faith in certain concepts that make up those realities, will hate and darkness dissappear if we stop putting our faith in it by feeding it? Will love and joy also dissappear if we stop feeding them, because we expect them to fall out of the sky and into our laps without any effort? We must believe in love for it to appear and absorb into our soul. If we don’t believe it’s possible for us now and might not ever be, we’ll be brought right to the cusp of love and be shown all it’s aspects, and how it would positvely change our lives. Then we get our hopes up that it might actually be possible, only to see it pass us over one more time. This can make us grow more cynical, which repels love even more, because deep down we didn’t think it was possible. Once we do believe love is possible and we are deserving of it, we’ll begin picturing it playing out in our lives. This is when love washes over us like rain. Love does conquer all, but we’re the conquerers, and love is the weapon” 🙂

From the mind of critic: “If speaking truth to power is the biggest way to prevent our consitutional democratic republic from going the way of the Roman Empire, then how come power is so afraid of truth being spoken to it? Is power afraid truth will uncover all it’s secret methods of greasing the wheels, causing the system to fail? Or is power afraid of truth not because they’re afraid the system will fail, but because they’re afraid they personally will lose power? Many similarities have been proven over the years comparing our system, to the Roman Empire. We both had military bases all over the world, as well as political, financial and economic interests to foment control. That massive power can only exist if truth is made to be the enemy of the state, but only if that truth didn’t come from power. The power is okay with truth if it’s their truth. If somebody esle’s truth confronts theirs, it’s automatically false and a lie. Can our American system survive the people’s truth is spoken? Will the system change to better represent the people, if power isn’t concentrated into hands that are too human to understand it? Can truthful power be held or even exist? Is truthful power an oxymoron? If we want to live the life we see in front of our face and feel in our hearts, and not what some power broker tells us through our ears, then speaking truth to power is imperative. We have nothing to lose, and only positive and collective consciousness to gain” 🙂

From the mind of critic: “Is anger really the 2nd in 5 stages of grief, if we don’t reach bargaining after we get past the anger, but instead reach action? Is anger necessary to rouse our passions, to make us want to take action? Isdenying what’s in front of us specifically what makes us angry, because we could have taken action sooner? Or does seeing the completely unfiltered truth, and understanding the schemes and under-handed relationships committed under our name what makes us angry, and to truly move past it we can’t deny it’s there or bargain it away, but have to accept it by not being fearful of the unknown, but by excitedly going in head first because of all the amazing possiblities? Anger, like all other emotions we have, feature a good side and a bad side. Anger can be good if it spurs us toward thoughtful action, once we slow down and think. These clear thoughts are never acheiveable when we’re angry, because we’re running on emotion. When we act from this emotion, is when anger can be bad. We can’t stop emotions, but we can control them by not making decisions when we’re overly emotional. A lot of events and issues can make us angry these days, no matter what end of the political spectrum we find ourselves on. Once we realize that if we focus this anger to our true target, we’ll see that to take useful action toward our focal point, we must think honestly and clearly so our action makes a difference, insetad of adding fuel to the fire that has been burning for thousands of years. If we’re grieving a death, anger might come out when we stop denying what’s in front of us. However, if we fully accept what’s in front of us before we get angry, we’ll see we won’t completely fly off the handle, because we’ll want our actions to make an actual difference over what was making us angry in the first place. If we wanna keep fighting each other forever, we live with our anger, giving us the false picture that we’re thriving. To make positive change through thoughtful action, we must be thoughtful to each other” 🙂