All Smiles

All Smiles, originally uploaded by lucienphoto.

Families are strange configurations. We strive to be part of one and simultaneously seek to divide and separate out. We laugh with our families and then we laugh at them. We complain that they are too little of this and too much of that. We praise their great work/family ethic and then whine about the way they choose to live out their lives. We include and exclude. We talk behind their backs and will not share our feelings to their faces. We all belong to one and we have all some if not all of the acts listed above.

Families are everything and nothing. They are the beginning and end of many people's problems. They are our alpha and our omegas. Families make you laugh and they also make you cry. We live in them even when we do not want to. We die as part of one even when we are not wanted. We sacrifice for families, too.

It is Thanksgiving 2009. I am a natural born US citizen. I have lived under the tutelage of what we think of as "Our Greatest Generation" . They survived World War II, the Korean Conflict, the Cuban Missle Crisis and the the Bay of Pigs, the Vietnam War, The Gulf War, the invasions of Grenada and some have lived long enough to experience both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have seen facism, totaltarianism, communism, socialsim, and fundamentalism, and extreme idealism as motivations for war.

Families and war have these unquantifiable abstract associations. I still do not comprehend what makes people kill each other for an idea and I do not comprehend family systems at all.

Ruler or Lawyer

SOP, originally uploaded by lucienphoto.

Sometimes at the most innocuous moments, life will toss you a bone of wisdom. Today was one of those days, as I soaked in the warm soapy water of my morning shower. Lawyer vs Ruler.

We have laws that we like to think of as fair and impartial. We have rules that we also like to think of as objective. Neither is really true. Here is the pearl: There are laws of physics and gravity and mathematics. And there are human laws based on the Old English interpretation of Judaic-Christian principles. We presume to think that everyone should abide by these principles. If human laws were as specific and certain as gravity and inertia, perhaps we would not need prisons and corrections people. But they are not certain. And they certainly are not impartial or objective. New evidence is "unearthed" daily about convictions by the Law users that were based on rumor, suspicion, falsehoods and innuendo. We had lawyers arguing the admissability of evidence and we still manage to unjustly convicted and execute a number of innocent people.

We have rules, too! These rules are based on our Constitution and the Judaeo-Christian ethics. The rules are based on the laws that the lawyers and legal beagles think we should all be following. Only problem is that our laws are always subject to interpretation. We have judges and appelate courts and supreme courts that all look at interpretations of the law.

So are we overrun with Rulers or Lawyers? I purport that our problems arise because we don't recognize laws and that we put too much faith in rulers. Do you understand the difference?