birds

i keep meaning to post about the little birds i've been feeding at work.
i'm not a crazy birdwatcher per se but i really enjoy just watching them sometimes. i've been thinking alot lately about consciousness and perception and meaning. these little feathered life forms flit around, sharing our planet, enhancing our world and fade in and out constantly, dying, reborn, the usual circle of life crap.

We're told animals have no human emotions which is a stupid statement in the first place. ummm, duhhh? but we don't have bird or cat/horse/dog lizard, crustacean or trilobite pov, so obviously we don't get *them* either. does our perception that our consciousness is higher or more evolved grant us any advantage or entitlement to declare the value of their lives/existence lower than our own? the right to claim our perceptions of value as more than just assertions, but fact? i submit it is not.

i take it a step further to compare cultures.
here in the us a horrible horrible act of terrorism cost thousands of lives. yet in the news there is little evidence of even a tenth of the outrage when its thousands of people killed or dying someplace far far away. does physical distance justify emotional detachment?

if people are truly equal in value then we should be exponentially outraged at the living conditions so many millions more are forced to endure, not merely to say tsk tsk and then remain guiltily oblivious. i found myself recently talking to my good friend vicente in colombia about various personal complaints. he then gave me a wake up call by offering me a taste of what similar complaints might be where he lives. it wasn't his intent but that shut me up pretty quick. the phrase "you got served" comes to mind.

i just wonder sometimes, is it even possible for mankind to ever truly get it? because it seems to me until somebody starts to figure things out and then share the knowldge with people willing AND empowered to affect change we are really facing a collective downward spiral of a planetary clusterfuck that no amount of "greening" is going to fix.

collective sigh time.

on the plus side bush is gone. im not sure if i have hope exactly, but im definitely less jaded and pessimistic about the new guy. i think they should change the number of terms a president can serve down to one. just freaking make change every 4 years. perhaps if they were assured of a set time limitation our commanders in chief might try a little harder to make their page in the history books a bit more concentrated, lol or perhaps enriched. Power packed. Chock full of presidential goodness instead of reading children's books and spending 2/3 of the year on vacation. mind you, i'm not dissing children's books. i adore them and even kindof collect them. however, i assure you, i am not in the government.

more later