We Are Americans, and We Have Values

I have recently watched a documentary called "Zeitgeist", you can watch it for free at zeitgeistmovie.com. It was interesting, although I don't know how much of it is true, half-true, or complete lies. But it was interesting anyways. It lead me to find a site that allows you to watch several different documentaries for free, although I think some of them are obtained through less than legal means, so I've been watching lots of documentaries of late. Pretty much all of them doom and gloom type. I guess happy documentaires aren't as interesting. It's really got me thinking why don't people rise up and do something about all this bad stuff? There's people dying because they can't get food or clean water. There are people dying in this country, the richest country ever seen on this planet, of curable desieases because they can't afford medical care, and medical care ain't cheap.

It reminded me of a post by this blogger calling himself Fake Steve Jobs. It's a guy who writes posts as if he were Steve Jobs (for those who don't know, Steve Jobs is the founder and CEO of Apple Computers), it is a humerous blog that I enjoy reading. This one post that I keep thinking about was written the day that the iPhone came out. As some of you may remember (it was after all less than two months ago) there were lots of people waiting outside apple stores in the hopes of being of the first people to own this magical device. So this blog was mockingly written to those people who were so devoted to Apple and this part made me laugh out loud in a painful kind of way, "That's what this is about. It's about communicating. It's about connecting. It's about bringing the world together in common cause. It's about saying, Look, I realize there's something bad happening in Darfur, and there's some kind of AIDS epidemic in Africa, and there's some crazies who want to blow us all up, and there's a war in Iraq where thousands of people are dying for no reason -- and yes, those things are important, and someday we may take to the streets to say something about them, if we can think of anything to say about them, but for now we Americans take to the streets for this cause.....let the message go out. We are Americans, and we have values. Hear us, world. Hear us and say, Wow."

There's been a couple of other quotes that have been floating around my head, this first one I heard in the new Michael Moore documentary Sicko "The people should not be afraid of the government. The government should be afriad of the people." And this one is from a movie called Network, there's a clip in the movie Zeitgeist, "First you've got to get mad. You've got to say 'I'm a human being God dammit, my life has value!'"

Good Vs. Evil

I just finished the new Harry Potter book. It was much like the other ones, which is to say, an easy read, but for some reason strangly engaging. So many of these fantasy/sci-fi stories all have the same basis; a fight between good and evil. Star Wars had the light and dark sides of the force, Lord of the Rings had Frodo trying to destroy Sarun, and Harry Potter has Harry fighting against Voldermort. People love these stories, love this fight between good and evil, but it hardly seems realistic. I mean, where in the real world do you see such a clear distinction, where it is so obvious which side you should be on. Maybe that's why people like these stories. It's very easy to see that Darth Vader, or Voldermort is evil, and should be fought. There would be plenty of people willing to fight, and die, to eradicate such people from the planet, because anything that opposes them must be good. But unfortunately in the real world you have to choose between the lesser of two evils, you have to decide where you are going to stand, even if you're not completely happy about it. I think that's what people like about religion so much, it certainly was something I liked about it. God was obviously good, Satan obviously evil, thus it was easy to say that I was willing to live for God, and if neccessary, die for Him, because I knew that I would be giving my life for something good. But in this world....what's there to die for? Maybe some friends or family, but not so much becasue they are "good" but because you love them. It makes me wonder, if there is no cause worth dying for, is there any cause worth living for? That is a question I'm sure many people have asked, and I for one haven't found an answer yet.